Linux News from O'Reilly Network

Happy December, everyone. Whether you're celebrating Hanukkah (which starts today), Christmas, Kwanzaa, Eid al-Adha, or another holiday (or none at all), I hope that you're able to stay warm and safe, unless you're south of the equator, in which case you should stay cool and safe.

We had our first major snowfall of the year yesterday, around six inches of white stuff with freezing rain and sleet. Thankfully, the lights at Casa Turner didn't go out, as is typical when we get this kind of weather. We typically lose power several times a month during the winter season and lost it for two days straight in January 2007. Thus the reason we've got a 16 kW generator going in a few weeks from now. I've gotten to be an expert on the physical properties of propane, as it relates to generator fueling. Did you know that propane boils at -44 degrees Fahrenheit?

Building Mashups in Rails
Something else that was cool this week: Jack Herrington's introduction to developing mashup-friendly sites using Ruby or Rails. Mashups have been the hot thing recently, so if you want to be able to take the valuable data that lives on your site and mash it up with Google Maps, or something similar, you need to read this article.

A Highly Animated Adventure
Philip's still guest starring on Comedy Central, in this week's "Watering Hole."

Verizon Opens Up: "Any Apps, Any Device" in '08
Bloggishly, Brian DeLacy had a report this week on Verizon's decision to open up their network to third-party wireless devices.

Android and Mobile Computing
Matthew McCool had some thoughts on Google's Android interface, and how it may affect mobile computing.

Does It Work? Is It Right? Are We Done?
If you've been watching, chromatic has been tracking the pursuit of quality in software engineering. He had a pointer to an interesting talk by Jim Shore.

2008 Election Correctly Predicted
Jonathan Wellons took note of a unique application of MD5 checksums.

TPT (Tiny Python Tip): Debug
Sometimes quality of blog entries is more important than quantity. Witness Noah Gift's Tiny Python Tip.

TNT (Tiny *NIX Tip): snpdf
He followed it up with a Tiny *NIX (Linux, Unix, etc.) Tip. Good things do come in small packages.

PyMOTW: socketserver
Doug Hellman wants to socket to you with this week's Python Module of the Week, SocketServer.

New Survey: What Problems Do You Have When Searching for Information
Andy Oram must be a spy, he asks so many questions. This time around, he wants to know what problems you have finding information.

Aspect-Oriented Programming for Web Pages
He also has some musing from XML 2007, including aspect-oriented web pages (?!!)

Linux Networking Cookbook, At Last!
The Linux Networking Cookbook is out, and Carla Schroeder likes the recipes.

Musings on Support
Juliet Kemp has discovered that next-day support may not be as next-day as you think it is.

Good Read: Password Hashing
As if the MD5 blog wasn't crypto-geeky enough, Timothy O'Brien looks at some useful information on password hashing.

Anton Securit Tip of the Week #13
Logmeister Anton Chuvakin is taking an expedition this week into the deepest darkest world of binary audit logs.

Top Versus Prstat
And Chris Josephes has some tips about how to choose between top and pstat.

Next week, a killer series starts on how to write games under Ruby, just the thing for all of you frustrated game designers out there. Trollishness abounds in the Watering Hole. And I'll have my Propane Storage Tip O' The Week (or maybe not…)

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James M. Turner
Site Editor, ONLamp.com
turner@oreilly.com