Apache Archives - Tristan Louis (TNL.net)

Modular by Design — Software

So far, we’ve talked about the impact of a modular approach on existing business models outside of the software industry. Today, we delve in on the industry most associated with modular design: software. Certain software companies have been suffering from the advance of modularity in software design. The main one, to date, has been Microsoft with its Windows software platform. In the mid-nineties, Microsoft decided to integrate a number of Internet components tightly with its operating systems offering. The two most critical ones of those components have been a web server (IIS) and a web browser (Internet Explorer). Leaving aside discussions relating to the antitrust issues this kind of integration has raised, the integration of those tools with the operating system have left openings for alternative approaches that were more modular. On the server end, IIS has been the subject of many attacks by hackers. Because it is hooked deeply into the operating system, an attack against the web server can have an impact that goes much further that the web front-end. In most cases, the attacks succeeded not only in taking machines down but also turning them into zombie armies that could then turn around and attack other servers.…

E-voting and the Open Source community

Could the open-source community create an e-voting system that works?

TNL.net moves off Windows

Over the past year, it has seemed like TNL.net had gone quiet. Few updates were made to the site and fewer newsletters were being published. Behind the scene, however, I was busy rebuilding the site from the ground up. The new TNL.net was relaunched in late January 2003, about a month behind the schedule I had originally set. In this newsletter, I will explain why I relaunched it and how I went about it. The Genesis Since 1995, TNL.net was running on Microsoft Windows. Initially, the site was running on Windows NT, using Microsoft IIS to serve pages on the web. Prior to that, TNL.net had been running on a shared Linux box but none of the administration of that server was in my control. When it moved to its own environment, I looked at a number of options that would allow me to spend time developing the site, not necessarily administering the box. In late 2000, the site was upgraded to Windows 2000 and continued to run on this until recently. So why did I decided to change things? Unhappy with Microsoft The world in 1995 was very different from today’s world. In those days, administration of unix system…

Seeing Red

Last week, for the second week in a row, IIS administrators have had to face Code Red. More than a simple virus, Code Red could represent a new acceleration in the online virus war and shows that we may not be ready, as an industry, for the era of web services. A Rapid Epidemic Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s take a quick look at how Code Red spread. First of all, there was a simple buffer overflow problem in Microsoft Index Server, for which the company produced a patch. A month later, Code Red starting showing up. However, its rate of growth was relatively slow at the beginning. The true epidemic did not start until July 19th, when Code Red exploded onto the scene, increasing the number of infected servers from just around 300 at 00:15am to 2994 by 7:30am, over 30,000 by 14:40pm and over 300,000 in the 6 hours after that. In other words, in less than a day, Code Red went from a relatively small annoyance to a full blown attack on the net infrastructure. Had no one rung the bell on it, it would have taken only a couple of days for it to…

MS-DOJ Talks Falter: So What?

Microsoft and the Department of Justice fail to come to an agreement, insuring that Microsoft will be seen as a monopoly.

Modular by Design — Software

E-voting and the Open Source community

TNL.net moves off Windows

Seeing Red

MS-DOJ Talks Falter: So What?

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