Build Your Development or Lab Environment with Ravello Systems

When preparing for my Simplifying Application Workload Migration workshop (coming in webinar format in autumn) I tried to find a solution that would allow me to recreate existing enterprise virtual network infrastructure in a cloud environment. Soon I stumbled upon Ravello Systems, remembered hearing about them on a CloudCast.net podcast, and got in touch with them to figure out whether they could help me solve that challenge.

It turned you might use Ravello Systems’ solution to implement disaster recovery, but I got way more excited about the possibility to use their solution for labs or testing. To learn more about that, listen to Episode 32 of Software Gone Wild.

To push electric cars, Seoul rolls out portable chargers with RFID

Seoul is trying to put one of the world’s highest concentrations of electric vehicles (EVs) on its roads with a project that would let drivers charge their vehicles in residential parking lots and other everyday locations.The city is planning to give out electric charger cables fitted with RFID readers that would allow drivers to recharge their batteries through standard power outlets at 100,000 locations—a huge increase from current numbers.Central to the project is a charger cable called the EV-Line, developed by Gyeonggi-based Power Cube. The cable has an RFID reader than can scan an RFID tag attached to power outlets in parking lots for apartments, offices and elsewhere. It also has a 3G wireless module.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

United launches bug bounty, but in-flight systems off limits

United Airlines is offering rewards to researchers for finding flaws in its websites but the company is excluding bugs related to in-flight systems, which the U.S. government says may be increasingly targeted by hackers.The bug bounty program rewards people with miles that can be used for the company’s Mileage Plus loyalty program as opposed to cash, which web giants such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo pay.Many companies have launched reward programs to attract independent researchers to investigate their software code and confidentially report flaws before hackers discover them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Show 237 – Too Stupid To Give Up Now – Our 5th Anniversary

In this show, Greg and Ethan share some big news - Packet Pushers is our full time job now! We suppose the question then is...what's that really mean? We chat all about it, so that you know what to expect from us. Here's to five more years!

Author information

Ethan Banks

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks

The post Show 237 – Too Stupid To Give Up Now – Our 5th Anniversary appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Revolutionaries vs. Lawyers

I am not a lawyer; I am a revolutionary. I mention this in response to Volokh posts [1, 2] on whether the First Amendment protects filming police. It doesn't -- it's an obvious stretch, and relies upon concepts like a protected "journalist" class who enjoys rights denied to the common person. Instead, the Ninth Amendment, combined with the Declaration of Independence, is what makes filming police a right.

The Ninth Amendment simply says the people have more rights than those enumerated by the Bill of Rights. There are two ways of reading this. Some lawyers take the narrow view, that this doesn't confer any additional rights, but is just a hint on how to read the Constitution. Some take a more expansive view, that there are a vast number of human rights out there, waiting to be discovered. For example, some wanted to use the Ninth Amendment to insist "abortion" was a human right in Roe v. Wade. Generally, lawyers take the narrow view, because the expansive view becomes ultimately unworkable when everything is a potential "right".

I'm not a lawyer, but a revolutionary. For me, rights come not from the Constitution. Bill of Rights, or Supreme Continue reading

Bing joins Google in favoring mobile-friendly sites

Microsoft is adjusting how it ranks Bing search results for mobile users, prioritizing sites that display better on smaller screens to accommodate the increased use of mobile search.The changes, announced Thursday, come less than a month after Google started prioritizing mobile-optimized sites in its search results. Both companies are looking to attract more users by providing a better search experience on smartphones and tablets.Microsoft said it expects to roll out the changes in the coming months. Sites that display well on smaller screens will also be flagged with a new “mobile friendly” tag.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Reddit’s new anti-harassment rules anger some users

Upon learning of Reddit’s plan to change its rules to prohibit harassment and make the site friendlier, some users reacted with resentment and confusion.Reddit, known for the unconstrained nature of its discussions among people who post anonymously, said on Thursday that it will also now let users contact Reddit employees to report abusive posts. The changes were made to balance free expression with privacy and safety, and improve the quality and range of discourse on the site, according to the company.But in a discussion thread on Reddit, some users called the changes vague because they didn’t clarify what constituted harassment. Others said the changes would destroy free expression on the site, or characterized them as a ploy to attract advertisers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Critics blast NSA phone records bill as ‘fake reform’

A lopsided vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week to rein in the National Security Agency’s domestic telephone records dragnet won muted praise, with many supporters calling on Congress to take stronger action.Critics, meanwhile, slammed the USA Freedom Act for extending the section of the antiterrorism Patriot Act that the NSA has used to collect the telephone records of nearly all U.S. residents. The bill, passed by a 338-88 vote late Wednesday, would end the NSA’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records, while allowing the agency to continue to collect phone and other business records in a more targeted manner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Critics blast NSA phone records bill as ‘fake reform’

A lopsided vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week to rein in the National Security Agency’s domestic telephone records dragnet won muted praise, with many supporters calling on Congress to take stronger action.Critics, meanwhile, slammed the USA Freedom Act for extending the section of the antiterrorism Patriot Act that the NSA has used to collect the telephone records of nearly all U.S. residents. The bill, passed by a 338-88 vote late Wednesday, would end the NSA’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records, while allowing the agency to continue to collect phone and other business records in a more targeted manner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

With a fresh $40M, Percolate wants to be a Swiss Army knife for marketing software

Simplicity is an oft-cited goal in the world of enterprise software, but by most accounts, it’s rarely achieved. Percolate is hoping to change that, at least for marketing professionals.The startup says its namesake software platform offers an all-in-one alternative to the hodgepodge of smaller marketing tools used by many companies today.Percolate’s software is designed to act as a central hub for myriad aspects of the marketing function, including campaign planning and collaboration, storage of all files and brand-identity elements, production of marketing and advertising content, multichannel distribution, analytics and customer interaction.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iOS 9 rumor roundup

With WWDC now less than a month away, it's only a matter of time before Apple takes the wraps off of iOS 9, the mobile software that will power Apple's next iteration of iPhones.While typical iOS updates involve the rollout of hundreds of new features, iOS 9 will reportedly be a bit different. Indeed, with a growing chorus of users complaining that iOS has become too unwieldy and a bit buggy, iOS 9 will purportedly focus more on under the hood enhancements rather than a bombardment of cool new features.In that vein, it's fair to look at iOS 9 as the mobile version of Snow Leopard, Apple's 2009 OS X release that was designed primarily to increase machine stability and improve overall system performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Liveblog from ONUG Day 2

Yesterday’s Liveblog was a success, so let’s try again. Today I’ll be covering the ONUG Town Hall meeting on the topic “Will the DevOps Model Deliver in the Enterprise?”, featuring such luminaries as:

  • Najam Ahmad (Facebook)
  • Mike Dvorkin (Cisco)
  • Tim Gerla (Ansible)
  • Dimitri Stiliadis (Nuage Networks)
  • Marc Woolward (vArmor)

This has the potential to be a great discussion; based on lunch with Dvorkin I can confirm that he is in great form. Please join me by following along below!

If you liked this post, please do click through to the source at Liveblog from ONUG Day 2 and give me a share/like. Thank you!

Linked lists

Python has a rather handy list method. It allows you to add and remove items at will. How it actually does this is rather elaborate and you can read all about it over here. C doesn’t give you the same flexibility. When you create an array, it is of X size. That size cannot change … Continue reading Linked lists

Adrian Cockcroft to Speak @ DockerCon 2015

In his keynote from DockerCon 2014 EU, Adrian Cockcroft (Technology Fellow at Battery Ventures and former Cloud Architect at Netflix) shares his thoughts on the future of microservices, summarizes the differences and commonalities across various microservices architectures and shows how they are evolving. Adrian’s … Continued

Smartphones from Xiaomi and Micromax pressure established manufacturers

Indian smartphone manufacturer Micromax and Xiaomi from China have given the low-end segment a shake up with their latest products, and even if the devices don’t go on sale around the world, their launches will likely be felt globally.The Micromax Yu Yuphoria the Xiaomi Mi 4i’s combination of impressive specs and aggressive pricing will put pressure on the likes of Samsung Electronics and Motorola Mobility to step up their efforts in the segment for sub-US$200 smartphones.“It’s more pain for the established vendors. These devices have the potential to reset customer expectations,” said Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight.The Yu Yuphoria was launched on Tuesday in India. It’s an LTE smartphone that will cost about $110 without a contract in that country. It has a 5-inch, 720 x 1280 pixel screen and a Snapdragon 410 processor. The specification also includes an 8-megapixel main camera and a 5-megapixel front camera, as well as 2GB of RAM and 16GB of integrated storage. While smartphones in this price category used to look as cheap as they were, the Yuphoria has a metal frame to help it look more premium.To read this article in full or to leave a Continue reading

Asian nations increasingly hit by espionage groups

Multiple cyberespionage groups are specifically targeting government and military organizations from countries in Asia and the Pacific region with the goal of gathering geo-political intelligence, according to new security research.Some of the groups have been active for years, but the extent of their operations are only now coming to light.One Chinese-speaking group, dubbed Naikon, has been operating for five years and has had a “high volume, high profile, geo-political attack activity,” researchers from Kaspersky Lab said Thursday in a report.The group has targeted top-level government, military and civilian organizations from the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore, Nepal, Thailand, Laos and China.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here