Conecuh Software

My resume is on the web. Most of the time, however, I’ve asked the ‘bots to leave it out of the index. Recently, though, I’ve allowed the ‘bots to index my resume, and it’s generated a bit of harvesting action. Here’s the snippet from the weblog Actual Link Here:

210.245.110.78 - - [17/Sep/2007:02:56:34 -0400]
“GET /MyResume.html HTTP/1.1″ 200 4592 “http://www.google.com.vn/search?q=inurl:cv+%7C+
inurl:resume+%7C+inurl:vitae+%7C+intitle:cv+%7C+
intitle:resume+%7C+intitle:vitae)
+(%22Java+developer%22+%7C+%22C%2B%2B+developer%22)+
(C%2B%2B+%7C+Java+%7C+J2EE)+
(Linux+%7C+Unix)+-usa+-india+-C%23+-.Net+-PhD+-Ph.D+-CA+
-NY&hl=vi&start=80&sa=N”
“Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; InfoPath.1)”

Which translated means:

210.245.110.78

This is the IP Address of the requestor. DNSStuff.com reports that this IP address is from Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam). This is consistent with the Google site used for the search (www.google.com.vn)

[17/Sep/2007:02:56:34 -0400]

The date of the search

200

The webserver response. 200 is success

4592

This is the size of the document - my resume is only 4592 bytes. There’s an associated stylesheet, and that’s fetched right after the resume.

referrer field

The remaining information is the referrer field. This is how you tell what document the user was on when they clicked a link.

http://www.google.com.vn

This is the Google site in Vietnam. Looks like our visitor was from Vietnam.

/search

This is the search url - nothing special here

inurl:cv

Specifies a search where the URL fetched has “cv” in it.

+%7C+

the “+” symbol represents a space in URL encoding and the %7C is a “|” (bar) symbol. This construct means the previous search term is “or’d” with the next search term.

inurl:resume |

Specifies a search where the URL fetched has “resume” in it.

inurl:vitae |

Specifies a search where the URL fetched has “resume” in it.

intitle:cv |

Specifies a search where the title of the document fetched has “cv” in it.

intitle:resume |

Specifies a search where the title of the document fetched has “resume” in it.

intitle:vitae

Specifies a search where the title of the document fetched has “vitae” in it.

("Java developer" | "C++ developer")

Document text contains “Java Developer” or “C++ developer”

(C++ | Java | J2EE)

Document text contains “C++” or “Java” or “J2EE”

(Linux | Unix)

Document text contains “Linux” or “Unix”

-usa -india -C# -.Net -PhD -Ph.D -CA -NY

Documents without the words usa, india, C#, .NET, PHD, Ph.D, CA and NY

So, as you can see, the headhunters (at least the Vietnamese ones), are very proficient in Google searches. If you want to type in the text to the Google search box, here’s the text you’ll need:

inurl:cv | inurl:resume | inurl:vitae | intitle:cv | intitle:resume | intitle:vitae) (”Java developer” | “C++ developer”) (C++ | Java | J2EE) (Linux | Unix) -usa -india -C# -.Net -PhD -Ph.D -CA -NY

Enjoy, and now you’ll recognize the resume harvesters when they drive by your site.

I’m a member of a local Linux users group. Most of the members have Linux installed at home, and are happily learning how to use it, develop for it, or deploy it in a corporate environment. The reality of today’s computing environment is that there are still many Unix (AIX/HPUX/Solaris, etc) machines installed or scheduled to be installed, that require administration. Unix big iron pays the bills in may enterprise shops, and while Linux may get you in the door, Unix will keep the paychecks coming.

The barrier to entry for large Unix environments has the potential to be very high. Contemporary hardware is expensive, and the operating system and software are equally expensive. New System Administrators need access to the Unix OS to at least gain some knowledge about it’s quirks and capabilities. HPUX admins need to know SAM, AIX admins need to know SMIT. Everyone needs to know how to partition logical and physical volumes on their Unix systems.

Luckily, most of the large Unix vendors have test drive programs that allow access to many of their products over the internet, or even in the comfort of your own home. These are usually just a registration form away, and can provide access to OS, compilers, configuration, web servers and a host of other software. Below find links and capabilities of the programs offered by the large Unix vendors.

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Think about it - when I navigate over to Digg and my processor utilization jumps to 100% because of the video advertisement, I’m burning more electricity than if there were a discreet text advertisement.

In addition to “lap warming”, this must be contributing to global warming as much as anything else (due to electricity usage). Flash advertisements seem to be the worst CPU offenders, especially those that have animated cursor tracking like the Sony advertisement on digg.com

Maybe it’s because I’m using Linux or maybe it’s Firefox - either way I’ll be looking around for a flash video / flash advertisement blocker later today.

From the article: “Today I’m launching ajaxWindows - a complete virtual PC you can experience using only a browser from any web connected computer. If you would like to see it in action, check out the online demo or the video. Remember that everything you see is happening within a web browser.”

Will ajaxWindows.com herald a new era? Internet access is mostly ubiquitous now, and has enabled such technologies as web-based E-Mail, project management, social networking and IM. When using VMWare sessions, I *really* like the fact that session state is saved perfectly when I stop the virtual machine, and ajaxWindows promises similar functionality.

The logistics of the service are more easily implemented, since they’re leveraging existing online services, such as gmail and MP3tunes, which should reduce the space requirements for the ajaxWindows.com site.

The adoption of this as the computer, rather than simply yet another service, will depend on two things:

Security

Will there be a significant breach of security, compromising credentials for the services configured in ajaxWindows? I personally am uncomfortable storing my credentials in a centralized place without significant safeguards in place. While my MP3tunes information is not confidential, my G-Mail account has lots of information that I want to keep private. I’m sure the script-kiddies and botnets are amassing forces right now to attempt the compromise of confidential user information.

Developer API

The Facebook phenomenon has proved that a great developer API will speed platform adoption. I’d be delighted to be able to provide an application platform to users using the ajaxWindows OS. If (see above) security is acceptable, users could be encouraged to use ajaxWindows to access personal banking, retirement information, healthcare information etc, without installation of fat applications on multiple platforms.

As soon as the site comes back up, I’ll log in and give it a test drive. I’ll be particularly interested in the security and API, since I think that’s what will drive large scale adoption.

Update: If you go to ajaxWindows.com, you see:

Thank you for
visiting ajaxwindows.com

We are currently experiencing massive amounts of user registrations
and traffic.

Please check back with us in an hour.

Thanks for your interest, The Ajax13 Team

Looks like there’s a ton of interest in an “Internet OS”. I played around with the site a bit before it went down, and noticed a few things:

• Many of the applications open in your own browser
• Java is used for the synchronization process - make sure your JVM is up to date
• You’ll be strongly encouraged to give them your gmail credentials (yuck!)
• There is a full set of office application - interestingly there’s a PowerPoint-style application
• There are lots of applications that I just didn’t have a chance to play with - maybe in a day or so when the traffic dies down

Good luck - I hope you get in and get an account.

read more | digg story

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been running Linux on my work laptop. I’m a C++ (among other things) developer, so the tools on Linux are in most cases more mature than the tools on Windows. A constant source of angst was the cisco VPN software that I was forced to use. This software had several problems:

• Kernel Dependent - needs re-compilation after every new kernel release
• Restricted access - You, or a friendly IT person, must have access to a password protected Cisco site to download the software
• Slow to update - The source for the VPN software doesn’t track the kernel source and tool chain changes closely. This means you’ll need to be able to make a few code changes to support a new kernel or compiler occasionally
• PCF file requirements - Again, the friendly IT person has to provide a profile so that you can use the vpn client

Recently, however, I found the NetworkManager-vpnc package for Fedora. It’s an awesome package that automates almost every aspect of VPN connection. Some of the benefits are:

• Packages for your favorite distribution - no more re-compilation
• Integration with NetworkManager - yay!
• Integration with the Gnome Keyring
• BEST - Split tunneling, whether IT allows it or not

Simply install the NetworkManager-vpnc for your distribution, enter the group password and your login credentials, and voila!

If you don’t know the group password, you can discover it by using this handy website:

cisco vpnclient password decoder

I hope this helps - Happy VPN!

dhw

I don’t own many books with color pictures. They’re almost never worth the extra money/time-to-market. designing the obvious by robert hoekman, jr. is an exception to this rule. It’s hard to classify this book - it’s certainly not a “how-to”, nor is it a reference - there’s nearly no code in it. It’s not a design book - there are no design tenets either. It’s more of a “user interaction” book, combined with some well thought out process guidelines for designing for the web.

Chapter List
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• Title: Ruby For Rails Buy it at BAMM!
• Author: David A. Black
• Publication Date: May 2006

Most new Ruby on Rails (RoR) developers figure that their first book should be “Agile Web Development with Rails - Second Edition”. While this may be true for developers who have had exposure to Ruby, most new RoR developers will be coming to the framework with no Ruby exposure. Ruby For Rails is meant to address this problem.

I found RoR in late ‘06, and (luckily) Ruby For Rails was my first Ruby book on the subject. I previously had no exposure to Ruby, but had developed extensively in Perl, C/C++, and Shell on Unix platforms. In retrospect, without the aid of this book, my Rails development skills would have been much slower to mature.
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