Linux

The Slow Route to FastAccess

Six hours I'll never get back: Hooking up a LinkSys WRT54G broadband router to my Windows XP box. The router, which I bought for around $50 after a rebate, is an amazing Linux device that's an 802.11g wireless access point, router, and four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch. You can reprogram it with SSH and a lot of other Linux software, turning it into a killer pint-sized wireless ISP. Robert X. Cringley calls it "disruptive technology": ... the WRT54G with Sveasoft firmware is all you need to ... (read more)

2005/01/21

The magazine eWeek broke a huge tech story that got lost over Thanksgiving: Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen of the Free Software Foundation are working on the first new version of the GNU Public License in 13 years. The changes planned for the next release, Version 3, a draft of which is due next year, focus on several broad topics that reflect the dynamic change in the software industry since the early 1990s—intellectual property licensing and patent issues, the question of how to deal with ... (read more)

2004/12/09

Secure Linux Practically a State Secret

In my mailbox: a review copy of O'Reilly's SELinux: NSA's Open Source Security Enhanced Linux, a new book by Bill McCarty on a Linux enhancement developed for the National Security Agency. I wasn't familiar with this project, but the book makes it tempting to carve off a hard drive partition this afternoon and try it out. SELinux offers role-based access control and privilege escalation baked into the kernel, as described by the NSA: This work is not intended as a complete security solution for ... (read more)

2004/12/03