New Hosting Provider

My subscription to my hosting provider, VPS Link is up for renewal and the cost to renew for what I have is $35/month or $360/year. So, it was time to find a new provider that offered similar specs. After a lot of research, I found VPS NOC that has a very similar offering (at least for my needs) for $13/month.

As I like to manage my own VPS, I chose an unmanaged plan. I moved everything over today and we'll give it a try. There weren't many reviews I could find on it, so at most I'll lose $13 (they do have a 7 day money back guarantee, but I'm not sure I can fully evaluate during that time) and some time.

Sony Reader RIP

A few months ago, I received email from Sony saying that they needed to upgrade the firmware in my Sony Reader PRS-500 to support the ePub format as Sony was moving away from their own format. Sony paid for shipping in both directions and returned the unit to me fairly quickly. While I think it was great that Sony did this, it was a bit short sighted on Sony's part to require me to send in the device to do an upgrade when other company's like Apple do firmware updates right through iTunes.

Then a few or two ago, I received another email from Sony saying that the last firmware upgrade caused shortened battery life and they needed to do another firmware upgrade. The same day, a large empty box with lots of bubble wrap (far too much to protect the Reader) came for me to ship the Reader back. Again, a failure on Sony's part to not allow end user firmware updates.

My Reader arrived back yesterday, the day before my iPad was set to arrive. The timing made me laugh as I need to find a new home for my Reader that I likely will never touch again. It's amazing how far Sony has fallen from grace. This example shows Sony's poor planning and poor quality control which cost them a lot of money in shipping and repairs to bring my Reader up-to-date (all the shipping was 2nd day UPS).

Anyone want to buy a Sony Reader PRS-500?

You call that a bug fix?

The other day I wrote about a security fix that Apple put into Mac OS X server. Basically Apple removed a checkbox that said "Require Authenticated Binding between Clients and Server". The original bug was that you couldn't turn off anonymous LDAP binding which is a security risk if your LDAP server is exposed to the Internet or hackers are on your LAN. Apple's fix effectively removes the illusion of security as anonymous LDAP binding is still permitted. I've re-opened the bug as Apple's fix is not acceptable from a security point of view.

I'm a bit disappointed with this fix as it took almost 2 years to remove a checkbox which doesn't even come close to fixing the problem. Nice job, Apple!

Geek cred just went up!

Almost 2 years ago, I wrote about a security issue with Mac OS X server. Well, Apple has finally addressed this in the latest security update and latest Snow Leopard Server. I even got credit in the security update notes for reporting it! One thing I'm a little confused on is the fix, "The issue is addressed by removing this configuration option." I'm going to have to download the update and see what exactly they mean.