BerkeleyLUG News/Events – Page 2

Lean IT

2014-11-09grantbowLeave a comment

Information Technology (IT) has been getting leaner, doing more with less. Moore’s law marches on but CPU speeds and memory density aren’t often the primary impediments to getting something done. Lean IT is the application of some older ideas to IT using newer technologies. What have been your experiences with this?

We meet at Bobby G’s Pizzeria on the second and fourth Sundays of each month from Noon to 3PM in Berkeley near the Downtown Berkeley BART station. Bobby G’s is on University Ave near Shattuck Ave. We hope you join us, join the discussion on our email list and/or join us in #berkeleylug on freenode.net by following the tabs at the top.

TDD – Test-Driven Design

2014-10-12grantbowLeave a comment

A newer, sometimes controversial best practice these days when writing good, maintainable code is to write the unit tests for your code before writing your code. This is called Test-Driven Development or Design. I have had some good experiences with this methodology lately. I have used the nose for python and the built in prove which uses Test::Simple or Test::More in perl. Test::More is recommended by both modern and enlightened perl. While I haven’t used it yet, the BASH specific bats testing framework looks good for shell code.

Standards exist for unit tests. Perl developers have a long history of unit testing. Nose, prove and bats are all TAP compliant. Though the xUnit family is popular there are competing frameworks exist for many languages. Jasmine and others are ready to help unit test javascript code. The history of unit testing overlaps with many areas of computer science. The Mythical Man-Month talks about unit tests, first published in 1975.

The time taken to write code is arguably a savings of time overall. How can this be? This is due to work taken to clarify specifications which is required anyway. This should lead to better, more efficient code. The theory is that the much more modular code required for unit tests is also easier to understand and maintain. This theory has been validated in several research studies. The extensive regression testing can quickly identify changes that introduce bugs if the tests are run just before and/or just after a check in to a revision control system. However there isn’t quite consensus that TDD is the best way to code. What have your experiences been with Test Driven Design?

Internet Slowdown Protest

2014-09-14grantbow1 Comment

On September 10th websites protested online by displaying a symbolic loading symbol on their sites. The results measured by the number of calls, emails and comments conveyed to the FCC, Congress and the White house were strong. This is very important to us now. It is difficult to imagine our lives before the Internet. In May, 2014 I wrote about Net Neutrality. The US focused article on Net Neutrality in the United States helps to summarize and remind us of some relevant history dating back an century and a half. “While the term is new, the ideas underlying net neutrality have a long pedigree in telecommunications practice and regulation. The concept of network neutrality originated in the age of the telegram in 1860 or even earlier, where standard (pre-overnight telegram) telegrams were routed ‘equally’ without discerning their contents and adjusting for one application or another. Such networks are ‘end-to-end neutral’.”

HTTPS Everywhere

2014-09-06grantbowLeave a comment

Web sites who install an SSL/TLS certificate allow the encryption of web browser traffic. Why should you care? Awareness for this need was raised for the public in April 2014 by the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug. HTTPS is especially useful in preventing eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks when using public Wi-Fi access points.

Encrypting web browser traffic is done with HTTP Secure. This provides an additional level of privacy between your computer and web sites you view by layering SSL/TLS over HTTP. TLS replaces SSL as of 1999.

On my computer I installed a browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, Firefox for Android and Opera. The extension makes my browser default to prefer the use of HTTPS when possible. "HTTPS Everywhere is produced as a collaboration between the The TOR Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

When reading about the use of HTTPS Everywhere I was surprised to find an entry related to berkeleylug.com. I hope to work with our LUG members to update our website and links to embedded content to automatically rewrite the requests of web browsers to our web server.

Computers as Docker Platforms

2014-07-13grantbow3 Comments

Docker (using LXC, Linux cgroups, Linux namespaces and union mounted file systems) is a powerful and efficient alternative to virtual machines. docker.io released their 1.0 version last month.

This is an ingenious implementation of boundary separation as seen implemented in the past on computers as inter-process communication (IPC), OS virtualization (as KVM and Solaris Containers) and
Java servlets on tomcat. As a side note, in the software world Java was heavily promoted with a promise of allowing the writing once and running anywhere of software. Reality has not fulfilled these promises. Recently Java was surpassed by python as the most popular programming language for teaching programming in higher education.

An operating system simply allows software applications to run. Keeping application boundaries clear has been tied to operating systems for a long time. UNIX software and the hardware used to run these computers has changed a lot. Docker may be the answer. The power of boundary separation and abstractions is that you don’t need to understand the other parts. It’s gotten so “easy” for end users that even without a full understanding of how things work many people today in the developed world can use embedded computers in their TVs, thermostats, raspberry pi, phones/tablets/mobile (often using iOS or Android), laptops or desktop computers. Yet when something goes wrong, down the rabbit hole we must go to figure out what’s really going on across the layers of abstractions and boundaries. What do you think?

Due to the 2014 FIFA World Cup final game viewing we may not be able to get as much space at Bobby Gs as we need. We may seek more space at Cafe Au Coquelet down University on the same block, 2000 University Ave.

We meet on the second and fourth Sundays of each month from noon to three in Berkeley near the Downtown Berkeley BART station near the corner of University & Shattuck. We hope you join us at Bobby G’s Pizzeria and/or join the discussion on our email list.

Fast Lanes

2014-06-07grantbow1 Comment

How can you have a fast lane without a slow lane? What do you think?

Net Neutrality, Part II

2014-05-25grantbowLeave a comment

Happy Memorial Day weekend!

So the FCC’s fast lane Internet proposal was proposed by the chairman and the vote passed. Many people were surprised. With so much public, vocal opposition it is an example of how a broken system makes broken decisions. If this moves forward it will affect all Internet users directly and/or indirectly. The challenge is getting more people to understand what this means and why it matters to them.

What does this mean? No new rules are in effect yet however this proposal will not go away. The FCC is moving forward developing what was passed. In opposition, Net Neutrality advocates are strengthening their determination and efforts. I look forward to seeing comments here about additional developments in this story.

Wi-Fi 802.11ac

2014-04-29grantbowLeave a comment

Let’s talk about wireless. The new specification has been passed, making different use of both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Some devices clearly are easier than others to modify and change using Linux distributions such as OpenWRT among others. Device manufacturers change hardware (chipsets and other things) without changing version numbers, helping lead to further confusion about what a new router/access point really can do. The number of radios and antennas in each device can make a big difference in performance. Manufacturers also constantly change models and price points. It’s hard to keep up with all the changes to commonly available Wi-Fi brand network adapters (built in or USB) and access points. Software defined radio (making hardware changes less necessary) is still far too expensive for most applications. People most interested in radio often become amateur radio operators by passing tests to get privileges to legally experiment with radio in the US and elsewhere.

How are the Wi-Fi chipsets you own supported by the Linux Kernel? What access points do you use and what would you now recommend to friends? What do you think about the so called Super Wi-Fi proposal by the FCC? How do you feel the SF Digital Inclusion (or other municipal network efforts) are going?

2014 User Experiences

2014-04-13grantbow1 Comment

One of the advantages (and sometimes confusing) aspects of Free Software and open source software is the choice of user experiences (UX). Desktop choices include Gnome (and derivatives including Mate, Cinnamon & Unity), KDE, LXDE and XFCE. Google’s Android UX and derivatives are perhaps even more popular now. The fragmentation of end user communities is specifically allowed by the licenses these groups choose for their software and the licenses of the underlying software.

Coming up April 17th Canonical and the community are scheduled to release 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr. 14.04’s Gnome derived Unity experience is designed to transcend the phone, tablet, desktop and television form factors. 14.04 LTS is also enabled for phones and tablets which is called the Touch UI. You can try the Touch UI by installing 14.04 on at least the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 devices. California 14.04 release parties in San Francisco and Fullerton are developing as mentioned on the BerkeleyLUG email list and many others throughout the world organized by local communities. Please consider yourself invited.

In five years every TV may have an Internet experience built in. The need for a separate device like the newly announced Amazon set top box Fire TV, Linux powered Roku, AppleTV or other device may go away. Not content with just millions of Chromecast dongle sales, last week The Verge broke a story on the heels of the Fire TV announcement that Google plans an Android TV. I hope user freedoms are preserved on these and future devices.

Other recent news also supports the move of the computing industry as it focuses on convergence and UX. Facebook recently purchased (wired, marketplace) Oculus VR. In recent weeks Microsoft announced it will be focusing on UIs that do not require keyboards and mice, they have released Office365 for the iPad and their Build 2014 annual developer conference (mobile, desktop and other platforms) in SF has just concluded. What user experiences and on what form factors do you compute?

Windows XP End-of-Support Day

2014-04-08goossbears2 Comments

Microsoft’s support for Windows XP is officially over today.
Nope, Not kidding!! MS’s official announcement is linked here ==> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/end-support-help

Anyone still have Windows XP installed alone or else installed dual boot?
Other than those of you who have XP installed in a VM or a Hypervisor, what are your thoughts about using Windows XP further??

Are any of you going to fully migrate to Linux with maybe using Wine for any remaining gotta-have XP apps? Or assuming your hardware is sufficient for upgrading, any of you with XP still around contemplating a straight move to Windows 7 or Windows 8?? Or are some of you (admittedly like me!) going to keep Windows XP as a side Operating System; never to be seriously used any longer for most purposes???

Here is a helpful link for those of us who may want to keep Windows XP around, even though support has absolutely ended; ==> http://www.zdnet.com/windows-xp-support-end-10-steps-to-cut-security-risks-7000028193/