Information Security The theory behind security

For Sun Customers & Sun Partners Only: If you are interested in attending this session drop me a comment here!! Simon Phipps - Sun's COSO(Chief Open Source Officer) will be presenting on Sun's role in Open Source Community and also how Open Source is the way to go in Software Business for future.

We have an exciting opportunity to invite you to meet Simon Phipp's - Sun's Chief Open Source Officer!
Date: Friday 30^th May, 2008

Time: 2:00pm ( for 90 minutes )

Venue: Sun Melbourne, Level 7, 476 St. Kilda Road, Melbourne.

Simon
believes that open source is
the pivotal moment in IT, and is definitely heading for mainstream.

Please
join us to hear Simon talk about the history,
current status, and future
challenges of open source including
topics like :

• Changing
  the economic equation for IT : Now that the Internet has
  become pervasive, examples of open source abound, but also
  controversies, because "open source means different things to
  different people."  Still, the movement is spreading
  globally and changing the way of doing business, with development
  centers in China, India, and South America.
• Gartner
  predicting 90% : Traditionally conservative Gartner predicted a
  year ago that by 2012, 70 percent of all software will be based on
  open source.  That percentage now reads 90!
• The
  "Adoption-Led Market" : IT
  managers must decide whether to hire support personnel; purchase
  subscriptions for support, training, warranty, and indemnity; or just
  risk it out.  No matter what the choice, IT now has more control
  over on what and when to spend its budget.
• Open
  Source moves power from the vendor to the user : With
  open source there is (usually) no cost to acquire, no vendor lock-in,
  you pay at the point of value (hardware, warranty and services), and
  your investment is protected : your software costs are no longer
  sunk, they are running costs. This is the coming software market.
• Sun
  is the leader in Free and Open Source Software : Sun
  is both a technological and a thought leader. Sun seeds open source
  communities with cutting edge, unique technology.

 

Hey..Everyone in Australia must be enjoying their long weekend here. Well, I was just sitting on Sunday afternoon and thought let me share something interesting about food here. I have been to many cafes and restaurants around our office on St. Kilda road for lunch & brunch. Its like if you eat even a sandwich roll its $7-$10. A Subway sandwich will cost around $6-$8. Well eating it in lunch is just fine but after a while you might feel hungry again, means little more to spend before the end of the day. 

 I recently came across a website called www.tiffins.com.au, they deliver indian veg. & non-veg. lunch everyday at your workplace as far as you work in CBD or near to CBD area. Tiffins service is very well-known in Mumbai, where wives cook for their husband everyday and send it using this tiffin network to their respective offices. The tiffin travels a lot before reaching to the final destination, but as hot as it was packed and also within the time frame agreement. While there are lot of indian work in Melbourne, some one has come up with this idea of delivering lunch to everyone here. Check it out..its at quite an affordable price. Just $6-$8 for whole lunch, free delivery / free pickup of empty tiffins everyday.

Check it out, you might like it..its worth giving a try. www.tiffins.com.au

Something to learn here is..its all about how well you serve your customer while being price competitive!! Its similar in our IT industry as well, isn't it? 

Cheers..

I was very excited to see Sun logo on A380 television screen. Sun is now part of airline revolution, Sun provides its StarOffice 8 as part of 'Office Productivity' on the fly. I was very impressed with the screen size and the two sided remote with inbuilt keyboard. It was little bit difficult to type with that tiny backside keyboard. But I still managed to type a bit and take a perfect snap of it.

 I know..I know its couple of months old news now. But still just wanted to share my photos here.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.amsn-project.net/

http://www.ubuntux.org/how-to-install-p2p-bittorrent-client-azureus

Downloader for X : Downloader manager for Ubuntu Linux.
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Internet/HTTP-WWW-/Downloader-for-X-045.shtml

Firefox: Still on IE...uhhhhhhhhh..make a switch, at least now.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Thunderbird: Annoyed with outlook..looking for a change..make a switch.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Opera: Another browser of choice, very good competitors with some cool features.
http://www.opera.com/download/

Firestarter Firewall: One of the best firewall available for Ubuntu.
http://www.ubuntux.org/how-to-install-the-firewall-firestarter

http://www.getautomatix.com/

Java 6: Refer to this tutorial on installing Java 6 on your Ubuntu.
http://www.jaxmag.com/itr/news/psecom,id,35104,nodeid,146.html

Adobe Reader: Very good article on installing Adobe Reader & mozilla plug-in for the same.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/install-adobe-pdf-reader-on-ubuntu-edgy/

Adobe Flash: Install adobe flash on your Ubuntu install.
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/flash

OpenOffice: A very nice blog on openoffice - Ubuntu Stories.
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/ubuntu/index.html

NetBeans: It received developer's choice award, the best Java IDE ever.
http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.0/final/

http://elisa.fluendo.com/

Exaile Music Player: The complete music solution, arrange, strangle, play, make playlists....
http://linux.wordpress.com/2007/01/08/exaile-media-player/

k3b: The complete CD/DVD burning solution.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ubuntu-63/repo-to-install-k3b-on-ubuntu-7.10-desktop-x8664-613062/

http://www.getmiro.com/ (Available for Linux, Mac, Windows)

Mplayer: The best plug-in for all your internet videos.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

Real Player 10: A necessary player to have.
http://www.real.com/linux?pcode=rn&src=freeplayer_partner&opage=freeplayer_partner

Quicktime: Apple quicktime for Ubuntu.
http://quicktime-downloads.com/

http://www.songbirdnest.com/

Beryl: Looking for some desktop effects, envy Mac & Windows Vista users with some cool things.
http://www.beryl-project.org/

OpenLDAP: Make your Ubuntu LDAP server.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenLDAPServer

VMware server: Host virtual machines under your Ubuntu.
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-vmware-server-in-ubuntu-710-gutsy-gibbon.html

Wine-doors: Opensource solution to manage your windows application under GNOME.
http://www.wine-doors.org/wordpress/

https://launchpad.net/awn

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mac4lin

http://www.getdeb.net/browse.php

After using Ubuntu Linux on my laptop for a while, it seems it has everything Linux has to offer on desktop. But it still lacks some of the features which Solaris have since years e.g. Zones, DTrace, Trusted Extensions, ZFS, Cryptographic Framework and the list could be endless. If you look at Solaris history it has been out there in production environments since years, its one of the most trusted Unix distro out there. Linux has grown up a long way since its inception, Solaris has done similar for Unix market. I think Solaris would have been more prevalent in the industry then it is today if it had been open sourced before 10 years. Initially solaris was glued to SPARC architecture to target small number of high-end enterprise customers, but after it has been opensourced it now supports more hardware platform then any other operating system in the world. OpenSolaris community is growing up day after day and more and more people are contributing to this open source innovation.

OpenSolaris Indiana Preview: Indiana lives as a project under opensolaris banner. Sun has made it clear that its going after the binary distribution of solaris after hiring Ian Murdoch, founder of Debian Linux. The project is going at a steady pace under Ian's leadership and first preview was released October 2007, and next preview release is expected later this month. Two production versions are set to be released later in the year.
 

After playing with Indiana preview, my first impression were of mixed feeling. I was happy in a way that I could use linux like interface and be a solaris user, but at the other end there will be so much stuff in Solaris will need to be transferred to this binary distro. I hope the project team and open source contributors are working on converting all long command line utils under solaris to GUI under Indiana atleast. Not out of a personal choice I prefer to have GUI for most of the tools but it makes many people to come and try it out. As Ubuntu has developed its community around desktop and server versions, Indiana will just to that to attract more and more end users on to solaris. There are few active developments currently under way, if you are interested please visit following links:

Indiana Projects

The following individual Indiana projects have their own documentation
page.

• Image Packaging System Documentation
  Choose packages from a network repository of Open Solaris packages that are ready for distribution

So, watch out for the next Indiana release as we are tracking well with all other OpenSource projects. It will definitely be in time available to play with later this year. Lets make 2008, the year of Solaris on Desktops / Laptops.
 

The world is facing a severe issue of climate change, an issue of global warming. In recent times, we have heard a lot about these two terms 'climate change' and 'global warming'. I recently came across a very nice video about the life cycle of a product and lifestyle of a consumer. The pattern of the process has been dramatically changed since last few decades. In short the environment is changing, temperature level is increasing .  It has become a major political debate during elections, this issue is very serious for the wellbeing of human mankind.

I was recently searching through few channels on my internet TV and came across this website called http://storyofstuff.com/ represented by Annie Leonard. Please take a time to check out her 20 min. video on this website. Spread the word, protect the environment and save the world.

Image source: http://learningfundamentals.com.au/wp-content/uploads/combating-global-warming-map.jpg

Video URL: http://storyofstuff.com/

Please share your GREEN comments underneath...

Well after a coffee table suggestion from a colleague to include Cricket on my blog. I almost created category called Cricket, then renamed it to Blog Sports!! After last couple of days intense reading about the cricket controversy of 'India vs Australia' and Umpiring blunders followed by Match referee refresher.................Enjoy!!

Scene: Australia and India at the hearing..!! Cast:Procter, Bhajji, Ponting & Symonds..!!

Ponting and Co

Procter:Did you call Symonds as Monkey?
Bhajji: No,I called a monkey as Symonds.
Procter:So you did
Bhajji : (Silence)
Procter : How dare,you insulted a monkey.You are banned for 3 matches.
Bhajji : Sad
Ponting& Co : !!???
Ponting : hey,Symonds.What he said?
S ymonds : What ever,he is banned.You can bat well next game.
Ponting : No,Anil is also there,ask him whether he can ban him also.
Symonds : We'll see in next match,if he takes your wicket,we'll complain.
Ponting; Then ok. Come

Ha Ha...Lighten up your day...Keep laughing.  

Its been two months since I haven't touched Microsoft Windows now as I am using Ubuntu Linux on my Dell laptop. Its been a great journey from Mr. MS-proprietary to Mr. Linux-opensource.  It all started a long time back when I thought I should give Vista a try, but as everyone knows Vista doesn't live up to its expectations even after a year of its launch. A real memory hungry OS with little added benefits, I think Vista will never be able to replace XP market in the coming future unless some miracle happens. But because of failure of Vista there are other players making some money e.g. Apple, with its proprietary hardware & software and MAC OS Leopard doing the job for them.

I bought my first Dell laptop just little over year a go and was loving its performance with XP pre-installed (this was just before Vista release though).  But when I joined Sun in early June last year, it looked like 1 GB RAM wasn't enough for the stuff I wanted to do with it, like VMware and running up different virtual machines of my laptop talking to each other all the time. It was slowing down its performance, which makes me wonder how does my PC back home runs on Intel Celeron 644MHz processor with only 64MB RAM..yes only 64MB RAM is running XP!!

Well it was the time for a change, even though I loved Macbook Pro for its slim design, better performance and cool Mac OS desktop effects. I couldn't afford to buy it and dump my Dell Inspiron. So, I went and did some research looking for alternate options out there. I knew about Ubuntu since long and played with it as live CD and some cool features. It was all worth the effort to put Ubuntu on my laptop and searching for different applications which works with Ubuntu. I would say its the easiest installation I have ever seen for any Linux distro and even Windows. It has built-in support for NTFS read/write support which is a big plus, also support for plug-and-play hardware has never been easier than this under Linux. If you loved your Windows environment for years but you are looking for a change on your PC/laptop. I would definitely recommend Ubuntu over any other Linux distro or XP and fluffy Vista too.

I would like to share my transition experience on this blog category over period of posts aiming at different software packages I have searched and installed on my laptop for making most out of my current desktop needs. As it says 'Ubuntu', Linux for Human Beings. I would like to take a step forward to help people easily transition from Proprietary to Open Source, a FREE community based knowledge sharing space.

Image reference: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/images/2007/05/01/prec_m90ubuntu.jpg

Welcome to U-B-U-N-T-U World !!!

Welcome to the launch of my blog on blogs.sun.com. This is my first ever post on here, I am the proud owner of the 'infosec' blog at Sun.  I would like to explore a little bit on 'digital identity' in my own words here, So lets start with basics....

What is an Identity?:
Simple words its “YOU” on The Internet, on Your Computer, on Your Company Network, on All Your Favourite Shopping websites, on Your Internet Banking account, on Your Blog Account, on Your Online Social Network.

What is the problem?:
Another simple thought on this widely discussed issue, how many people are connected to Internet these days? How many people have mobile handsets these days? How many people join forums, blogs, discussion groups, social network each day? How many people use internet banking? How many people sign-up on new websites everyday? How many people come online to Chat with friends and family everyday? How many people in this world have E-mail addresses?

Answer to all these can be different respectively but the common answer could be billions…!!!! And specially in the
near future this figure is going to grow rapidly as more and more people are getting connected using one of those means.

Remember Sun Vision: “The Network is the Computer“, all this makes this sentence more and more true
day-after-day.

What are the Challenges?:
Where is the infrastructure to manage all those digital identities connecting with each other everyday? Who is doing what to meet those Challenges? What steps are being taken by big organizations? Who are the key players in Identity Space? Why security is everything? Where is the real transformation happening in this world? Who else is adopting Identity management? Why all of a sudden everyone’s talking about IdM?

Identity management has been around since few years now, but adoption has been slower than it should have been. Remember the evolution of antivirus on to the corporate network. It was a hot cake before few years and still is, but it happened only when corporates realized the true value of keeping viruses out of their company network. Its the same with Identity Management, more and more corporates are facing the question of 'who has and done what,when,where,how,why' on the network/system? I agree its been a slow adoption but 2008 will be the year for IdM. Also its amazing the way the software mergers are taking place these days, every big software giant is after small futuristic software startups. Look at Oracle, IBM, Sun Microsystems, CA today and their software offering, compare that with few years back software offerings. Amazing thing that I notice is more focus on Security, Identity, Access Management, Access Control, Compliance etc.

The identity market is hotting up day-by-day, big organizations wants more automations around user provisioning, user
on boarding process, change user access requirements, disable unwanted accounts, protect privacy, user self service, password administration, one-point-of-contact and all this while being compliant with certain government regulations. Sun is the market leader in most of these focus areas at the moment.

Reference: http://photos.windley.com/albums/iiw2007a/DSC_0018.jpg, please visit IIW

Identity Management Resources (Sun):

• http://www.sun.com/software/products/identity/
• http://www.sun.com/software/products/identity/resources.jsp
• https://opends.dev.java.net/
• http://www.openid.org/start.aspx
• https://opensso.dev.java.net/