Cody Taylor

An anonymous reader writes “I do my own Web design and have a few websites — MySQL, PHP, CSS, HTML, that kind of thing. It’s simple, amateur stuff, but I would love to have some reasonable ways to assess their security myself and patch the big holes, or possibly enlist someone to do ‘white hat’ work to assist me. I have absolutely no idea how to proceed. I don’t want to get mired in a never-ending paranoia-fueled race to patch holes before the hackers find them, but on the other hand, I don’t want my websites to look like Swiss cheese. Right now, I wouldn’t know what kind of cheese they look like: Swiss, Havarti, or hard as Parmesan. How can I take reasonable steps to protect these websites myself? What books has the community found useful? What groups (if any) can offer me inexpensive white-hat hacking that won’t end up costing me a first-born child? Or am I better off just waiting until a problem arises and then fixing it?”

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volume4 writes “With two MySQL execs leaving Sun in the last week, the internet is buzzing about what is going on at Sun, what is the future of MySQL and what lies ahead for Michael Widenius. Over at Open Source Release Feed, Widenius spoke candidly regarding his split from Sun, the future of MySQL, Monty Program AB and the open source ecosystem in general.”

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snydeq writes “The center of gravity is shifting away from the traditional, massive operating systems of the past, as even the major OSes are slimming their footprint to make code bases easier to manage and secure, and to increase the variety of devices on which they can run, InfoWorld reports. Microsoft, for one, is cutting down the number of services that run at boot to ensure Windows 7 will run across a spectrum of hardware. Linux distros such as Ubuntu are stripping out functionality, including MySQL, CUPS, and LDAP, to cut footprints in half. And Apple appears headed for a slimmed-down OS X that will enable future iPhones or tablet devices to run the same OS as the Mac. Though these developments don’t necessarily mean that the browser will supplant the OS, they do show that OS vendors realize they must adapt as virtualization, cloud computing, netbooks, and power concerns drive business users toward smaller, less costly, more efficient operating environments.”

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Michael Widenius, the original creator of the MySQL database system, has left Sun and is starting his own company that will work on an experimental storage engine. He also intends to open a restaurant that will use database technology to improve the customer experience.