Liudvikas Bukys

Apple, Genentech deliver open-source BLAST [MacNN]

More evidence that the tune is changing. No longer are we the unwashed masses yearning to be taught the true path to enlightenment by the C developers, now they’re pleading with us to help them work around limits in their crippled environments. Heh. Now don’t go overboard. But the self-deprecation is appreciated. One of our mottos is It’s Even Worse Than It Appears. We are all members of the Church of Murphy, whether we use static or dynamic environments.   [Scripting News]

MSDN: Don Box on the Importance of Being WSDL

Despite the years I spent trying to make SOAP a standard way for programs to communicate over the Internet; I find that raw SOAP and XML are at odds with all of these compilers I am now using. I am told that if you give me machine-readable contract definitions, my compiler can help me talk to your Web services. A lot.

If you don’t give me a machine-readable contract, then I am going to have to write one of these weird-looking WSDL files by hand, and that always makes me cranky. I understand that writing WSDL makes you cranky too, but I’ll bet if you wrote the WSDL once and put it on your Web site, everyone else would just use it, and no one would ever need to write that WSDL again. And if you wrote a ten-line WS-Inspection or DISCO file to go along with it, I could find out about all of your other services too.

I know that WSDL isn’t perfect. God knows I tried to make it better prior to publication. Luckily, the W3C just launched a WSDL working group and it looks like the community at large has the will to clean it up, just as SOAP was cleaned up once it got the attention of a large community of practitioners and experts. In fact, SOAPBuilders is running a WSDL bake-off in February that surely will yield some progress on this front.

I also know that writing WSDL for your script-based Web services is more work for you, but your suffering would benefit thousands or more developers anxious to use your stuff. And just think of the nice things they will say about you once you made their lives easier.

And not under their breath.

Via SANS Institute:

New Guide For Windows 2000 PRO

The US National Institute for Standards and Technology released
a security guide for Windows 2000 Professional desktop systems in
configurations used by office workers, at home users, or road-warriors.
NIST is inviting comments and suggestions on the guide.

–31 January 2002 Lawrence Livermore Bans Wireless LANs

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a national defense technology
research lab in California, has banned the use of wireless local area
networks (LANs) due to security concerns. A lab spokesman said that
Los Alamos National Laboratory might introduce a wireless network
ban as well.

[Editor’s (Murray) Note: Yesterday I received an ad for a wireless
access point for $130-, down 50% from a year ago. Connectivity
trumps security every time. A ban cannot succeed. The only way
to successfully exclude wireless is to close the network. Get used
to it.]

–4 February 2002 Improving 802.11b Security

Wireless networking standards 802.11a and 802.11b are both popular and
vulnerable. A new security algorithm, called Temporal Key Integrity
Protocol is being tested. It generates a new encryption key for every
ten kilobytes of data transmitted.

Miguel de Icaza: Mono and GNOME. The long reply. [Linux Today]

News.Com: Giants forging Web services consortium.

InfoWorld: IBM, Microsoft, BEA partner on Web services.

IN AN ATTEMPT to ensure consistency in the development of Web services, IBM, Microsoft, and BEA Systems on Thursday will announce a software group the purpose of which will be to promote existing and future standards as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Organization for the Advancement Of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).

According to those who are familiar with the charter of the new group, called the Web Service Interoperability Organization, it will campaign to better educate developers about how to build Web services as well as advocate the consistency of building block standards such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), and the WSDL (Web Services Description Language).

And, perhaps more importantly, the group will be actively encouraging the consistency of future Web services standards to come that address fundamental capabilities such as transactions management systems, security, identification, and authorization, sources said.

Funk to ship 802.1x server solution in February [Network Fusion World]: Funk’s software is apparently a full implementation of the 802.1x draft standard, according to the article. The writer says that the server completes three separate tasks, but in my understanding those tasks are all part of the 802.1x spec: secure exchange of authentication information handed to and from a RADIUS server, with the AP acting as a relay instead of an authenticator itself.

[80211b News]

CIO: The Meter is Running… but CIOs are saying “STOP THE CAB!”

Microsoft’s wildly unpopular Licensing 6.0 and Software Assurance plan unleashed outrage from CIOs and forced the company to make major concessions. Licensing 6.0 replaces confusing upgrade rules and options with a yearly subscription plan known as Software Assurance. Customers pay for the original license and a yearly fee, and are covered for all upgrades. But CIOs were enraged to find that Software Assurance would raise software costs 25 percent to 29 percent over the cost of the original license every year companies use the software. Not signing up for Software Assurance by Microsoft’s deadline would cost companies two to three times more than it did under the old licensing rules because they would be forced to buy the new license to get upgrades. Microsoft claims the plan won’t cost most customers any extra, and it conceded two deadline extensions and waived some hard-line requirements. But organizations ranging from the $10 billion Burlington Northern railway to the hamlet of Murray, Utah, say they want no part of Software Assurance, and polls indicate they are in the majority.

Apache XML project releases Xerces 2.0.0. Xerces 2 for Java, the Apache XML Project’s second generation XML parser, has now finished its beta phase and is considered production quality. [xmlhack]

Jakob Nielsen, Useit.Com: Avoiding Commodity Status. However, industrial design is not the main road ahead for computers. Improved software design is much more important. This does require some thinking, and it’s not Steve Job’s strategy, but I believe that software innovations are the main way to differentiate both high-tech products and websites. [Tomalak’s Realm]

E-business edgy after hackers shutter firm. CNN Feb 3 2002 11:16AM ET [Moreover – Computer security news]