Let's Encrypt provides free SSL certificates, which is awesome, and a free tool to automatically verify domain ownership and install the certificate, which is also awesome. Unfortunately I was finding the process to be much less awesome whenever I needed to manually verify my domain ownership. After trying a couple different tools, I found what seems to be the simplest cross-platform way to get a…
The Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update is gradually rolling out OTA (over the air), but if you are impatient you can update manually. I had previously unlocked my boot loader and installed su (superuser), but I otherwise like to keep things as stock possible (no custom ROMs, no kernel hacks, no custom recovery manager). If you have a similar setup then this upgrade is very simple; it can actually be…
The Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean update is gradually rolling out OTA (over the air), but if you are impatient you can update manually. I had previously unlocked my boot loader and installed su (superuser), but I otherwise like to keep things as stock possible (no custom ROMs, no kernel hacks, no custom recovery manager). If you have a similar setup then this upgrade is very simple; it can actually be…
For some bizarre reason the beta version of Chrome for Android doesn't expose a menu option for accessing the browser history. Thankfully, the latest (Apr 17) update includes support for accessing the history via the chrome://history/ URL (just type it into the URL bar). You can always bookmark this URL for future reference. Hopefully they will add a menu option soon, but till then you can use…
The manual OTA upgrade from Android 4.0.2 to 4.0.4 on my Galaxy Nexus caused me to lose root access. Apparently the setuid bit was removed from /system/bin/su during the upgrade. This can be easily fixed by following the steps below. It assumes you are familiar with adb, fastboot and Clockwork Mod Recovery. Power off your phone and boot to the bootloader Volume Up + Volume Down + Power Temporarily…
The Android 4.0.4 is gradually rolling out OTA (over the air) , but if you are impatient you can update manually. I had previously unlocked my boot loader and installed su (superuser), but I otherwise like to keep things as stock possible (no custom ROMs, no kernel hacks, no custom recovery manager). If you have a similar setup then this upgrade is very simple; it can actually be completed without…
Gavin King of Red Hat/Hibernate/Seam fame recently unveiled the top secret project that he has been working on over the past two years, a new language and SDK designed to replace Java in the enterprise. The project came out of hiding without much fanfare or publicity at QCon Beijing in a keynote titled " The Ceylon Project - the next generation of Java language? ". It took a fair amount of Google…
Red Hat has announced that their executive team will be hosting a technology webcast on November 10 . Chances are they are going to launch (or at least announce) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 which reached the Release Candidate stage a couple weeks ago. I am also hoping that they will use the opportunity to lay out a comprehensive vision for what they plan to do with their Virtualization, Identity…
With the acquisition of Zimbra VMWare has very clearly signaled that it is no longer satisfied to lead the (soon to be commoditized) virtualization infrastructure market, and that it intends to move "up the stack". Zimbra always seemed like awkward pairing with Yahoo! and I have long wondered who might be a better parent company for them. Sun being the new poster child for Open Source seemed like…
My new job has me spending more and more time working with Oracle and PL/SQL. Up until recently, I had been getting by with the functionality provided by the Eclipse Data Tools Platform , but I have been having issues using it more recently. The other day I came across jOra, an Oracle specific database browser/editor plugin for Eclipse. It is much more powerful and flexible than the datatools…
The grapevine is abuzz with rumors that IBM is offering to acquire Sun for about $6.5 billion . Want to know my opinion? I don't like it one bit. While IBM benefits by having a bigger piece of the server market, the two companies have a lot of overlapping areas and they can't all get priority. AIX or Solaris? Websphere or Glassfish? Eclipse or Netbeans? Power or Sparc? But those clashes aren't the…
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has a interesting series of blog posts outlining Sun's major strategic imperatives. In his latest post Schwartz announces (in a casual, offhand manner) that Sun plans to compete directly with Cisco by selling Solaris based routers and networking gear built on general purpose hardware: "...general purpose microprocessors and operating systems are now fast enough to…
Intel is set to officially launch their new line of Xeon processors this month. This release is the latest "tock" in Intel's tick-tock development model , and is based on a new microarchitecture code-named Nehalem. Intel has been following the tick-tock model (refine existing architecture one year/create new architecture the next year) for the last few years so technically this release shouldn't…
Not wanting to be left out of the party, Red Hat has finally laid their cards on the table by announcing their virtualization strategy . Their plan will be rolled out in stages over the next 18 months, with the first product being released 3 months from now. While this announcement doesn't have nearly as much direct impact as Citrix releasing XenServer for free , it does a pretty good job of…
In a bold and unexpected move, Citrix today announced that it will be releasing the enterprise version of its virtualization management platform free of cost. This aggressive strike against VMWare, the incumbent 800 lb gorilla in the virtualization space, comes just a day before VMWare's 2009 European Conference . Over the last 2 years Citrix has been catching up with VMWare in terms of features.…
Forget the ill-fated on-again, off-again merger with Microsoft, if Yahoo! wants to be relevant in 2010 they need to buy Sun Microsystems. If/when Yahoo! sells their search business to Microsoft, there is going to be a big unanswered question. Who/What is Yahoo!? Yahoo! needs a purpose/identity other than "a portal". Sun on the other hand needs to make some key acquisitions so it can complete its…
After working in IT for more than 10 years (if you count college), most of which was spent in web development, I have finally created a blog. The Rationale What is this blog all about? Well it is certainly going to have a technical slant to it, I work in IT and that is what I spend most of my days thinking about; however I do expect some non-technical things to creep in every now and again. From…