The World of a Penguin

Adobe has today released a beta of version 10 of their Flash-player. As opposite to earlier flash version, the Linux player is released at the same time as for the other operating systems. That is good news. But I still miss a 64-bit version of the Flash-player for Linux. Adobe, give us a 64-bit flash-player for Linux Now. Worth mention is that Adobe is listing Ubuntu as supported Linux.

Note to self: Before start threading a Python GTK-program call gtk.gdk.threads_init() otherwise will strange thing happen. The call must be done before gtk.main().

As a result of the OOXML voting chaos here in Sweden has the Swedish standardization institute now changed its rules. At the OOXML voting several new members attended in the last minutes before the vote after being promised marketing money from big daddy Microsoft. Sweden did not vote in ISO because of this. In the future must a member have been member for at least three weeks in the working group to be able to participate in the voting. Sources in swedish: NyTeknik , Computer Sweden

I am thinking about the art of combining security and usability which in most cases does not exist. Security experts are trying to do everything so secure that nobody can use it or wants to use it since it to complex. If people use it they does everything they can to find workarounds which tends to create new security holes. On the other side of the ring are the usability experts that totally ignores the need for security. What most people miss is that these two types of experts need to cooperate. The usability experts can hep the security experts to design usable secure solutions and vice versa. A usable secure solution is much more secure than a non usable secure system. The usable system will help the user to do the right thing and not encourage them to use their energy to find unsecure workarounds. Which side of the ring will take the initiative?

We have a public holiday here in Sweden today. I have celebrated that by upgrading my server to Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), the last of the computers I take care of. Of all five computers I have upgraded to Hardy this was the only one I got some problems with. The server runs, among other things, a ldap-server to authorize users. During the upgrade I noticed that the ldap-server were turned off and I got time out when looking up some accounts. The upgrade took therefore very long time. I edited my /etc/nsswitch.conf and removed all lookups to ldap. When the upgrade was finished I added it again and everything seems working perfect again.

I have started to take a closer look at Google Web Toolkit (GWT). It looks very nice giving me the possibility to debug AJAX-clients and removing the need for quirks for different browser (read MS IE). Unfortunatly GWT is only shiped as 32-bit and I am running a 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04. The SVN-repository of GWT include some pre-compiled libraries which are compiled for 32-bit Linux. The easy way is to download and install a 32-bit Java from Sun. Following the GWT getting started got me up and running. But I wanted to use my usual Eclipse in 64-bit version. So I started Eclipse and imported my lab project according to the instructions. Then it was time for some settings. First, add the 32-bit Java as an JRE to Eclipse: Open the Window menu and select Preferences. Select Java and then Installed JREs in the tree menu to the left. Select add and pointed out where you installed your 32-bit Java and closed all the dialogs. Now its time to connect the GWT-project to the 32-bit Java. Right click...