2010-08-31 00:00:00
Over the past fifteen years the product we've come to know and love has changed names on numerous occasions. BoKS has changed hands a few times and with each move came a new name. All of this has led to a rather muddled position in the market, with many people confused about what to call the software.
Is it "BoKS"? Is it "FoxT Access Control", or "Keon", or even "UnixControl"? And is the company called FoxT or is it Fox Technologies?! And this confusion isn't alleviated by the fact that both resumés and job postings refer to the software by any of these names.
Now we are told that FoxT are seriously considering a rigorous change to their naming convention, one that they will stick with for the coming years. All we can say is that it'd better be good! Because most of the names tossed about so far have both up and downsides.
Things like Access Control, Unix Control, or Server Control all have the problem that they are names consisting of two very generic words. Run them through Google and you'll get oodles of results. Words like FoxT and BoKS are certainly far from generic, but even those give pretty bad results in Google ("Did you mean books?"). BoKS is certainly a memorable term and most people still refer to the software in that way, despite the fact that neither the FoxT documentation nor their website even still mentions the name.
So far the only past name that ticks all the boxes (unique, memorable, great with SEO) is "Keon". But unfortunately that can't be used, because the name is still owned by RSA. :(
So, what do you think?! Any suggestions with regards to a new product name? Any emotional attachment to the name "BoKS" (I'll admit to having that flaw)? Pipe in and let us know!
kilala.nl tags: boks, sysadmin,
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2010-08-30 21:50:00
Today, after weeks and months of waiting, debating and back-and-forth between tests and doctors the final decision came in: Marlijne has been cleared for her gastric bypass operation.
The final remarks and "if"s have been struck from her record. The light in green and the sign says "GO!". The way things look now, it'll happen in the first half of October.
Now things get real for me as well. It's a bit of a scary though.
kilala.nl tags: family, health, body,
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2010-08-22 07:51:00
I'll need to get Dana out of bed in a few minutes, but I thought I'd first write this little post because the blog's gone so quiet. So, with Dana singing over the baby monitor I groggily sit here in our otherwise very quiet home.
Last Thursday (or was it wednesday?) I'd decided that I'd let our gardens go by themselves too long. Despite the cocoa pods all manner of creepers and weeds have started to popup and the front yard looks a real mess. Enough was enough :) I put Dana in the car and drove to our favourite gardening center for extra cocoa pods. Taking our time, Dana really loves riding on top of the shopping trolleys at the gardening center (which are three-tiered affairs unlike what you see in the supermarkets).
Then, last Friday, we spent 1.5 hours in the backyard enjoying the sun and gardening. Mowing the lawn, weeding&raking the borders, trimming the brambles and adding new cocoa shells. Dana happily puttered about and got more and more daring in her attempts to "help" daddy out. I -really- needed to get used to the idea that my daughter can and will get dirty playing in our yard and that it's alright. My first instinctive reaction was to pull her up, brush off all the sand and then move her away. Luckily Marli corrected me in this and after that I just let her play in the sand.
She got filthy! So we took a bath together ^_^
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2010-08-20 00:00:00
The year 2038 is still a long time away, but we may already be feeling its effects!
As any Unix administrator will know Unix systems count their time and date in the amount of seconds passed since "Epoch" (01/01/1970). On 32-bit architectures this means that we're bound to "run out of time" on the 19th of January of 2038 because after that the Unix clock will roll-over from 1111111.11111111.1111111.11111110 to 10000000.00000000.00000000.00000000.
While you might not expect it, BoKS administrators may already be feeling the effects of the Year 2038 problem way ahead of time.
One commonly used trick for applicative user accounts is to set their "pswvalidtime" to a very large number. This means that the user account in question will never be bugged to change its password, which tends to keep application support people happy. The account will never be locked automatically because they forgot to change the password and thus their applications will not crash unexpectedly.
It's common to use the figure "9999" as this huge number for "pswvalidtime". This roughly corresponds to 27,3 years. Do the rough math: 2010,8 + 27,3 = 2038,1. Combine that with the "pswgracetime" setting and BINGO! The password validity for the user in question has now rolled over to some day in January of 1970! The odd thing is that the BoKS "lsbks" command will not show this fact, but instead translate the date to the relating date in 2038, which puts you off the track of the real problem.
So... If you happen to rely on huge "pswvalidtime" settings, you'd better tone it down a little bit. Thanks to the guys at FoxT for quickly pinpointing our "problem". It seems that there's a 9999-epidemic going round :)
EDIT: Thank you to Wilfrid for pointing out two small mistakes :)
kilala.nl tags: boks, sysadmin,
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2010-08-10 21:14:00
Last weekend we spent four days in Canterbury, Kent, England. Aside from fun times and less-than-fun times we also found a plaque in Canterbury cathedral that reminded me of a certain someone :D
We traveled to the UK by Eurotunnel which IMNSHO is friggin' awesome if you need to be in the south of England. It's very, very cheap, it's fast and it's efficient. We stayed at Clare Ellen guest house (Trip Advisor), which really was worth the money! A good room, a nice house and absolutely great service. The people who work there are very helpful and friendly!
Oh! And I'm uber-proud of both of my girls. Marli drove in England all weekend and she put up with some stressful crap. Dana on the other hand was a perfect angel and handled all the car rides and the sightseeing quietly and friendly.
The high point for me was taking Dana to the Rare Breeds Centre farm near Ashford. Dana got introduced to more farm animals, I got to see some cool raptors and Dana spent at least an hour running around their play barn. The aforementioned cathedral was lovely in all of its churchy glory and I've always been a fan of attractions like Canterbury Tales.
Our first international trip with Dana certainly was a learning experience! We need to plan our days in more detail, that's one. Now that she's still young we also need to keep her daily nap into account. And when going on long drives we know she'll be fine, but we must certainly also keep in mind that we -must- take breaks (which we neglected on the way home).
A short vacation of many highs, a few lows, stress and relaxation.
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2010-08-10 20:34:00
EDIT: So yeah, this is confirmed to be a partial fake. How I wish some of this was real!
Holy carp, the spring 2011 anime line-up contains some awesome titles! I am -so- looking forward to this!
* Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko is getting a TV remake
* So is Sailor Moon!
* Tengen toppa Gurren Lagann is getting a prequel
* The left hand of darkness looks interesting, art-wise
* Kaijuu will most definitely be pleased about Ghost in the Shell: SAC 3
* Oh, and Saint young men might be sacrilegiously funny!
See here for the full listing original fake.
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2010-08-08 20:55:00
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2010-08-03 21:50:00
Today I learned that Inception is very similar to a 2002 Don Rosa Scrooge McDuck story called The dream of a lifetime (more info at INDUCKS).
Reading the story page by page it really is spectacularly funny. I love Don Rosa :)
EDIT:
Today I learned something else as well! From the same Reddit thread:
"Don Rosa writes about the story behind this in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: Companion, where he says that this is the only time he's accepted a plot from a fan. (I found the quote from a Norwegian Duck universe forum.)
However, a few months after writing it, he saw a movie (The Cell) with the same basic plot, and feared that the fan had taken the idea from the movie, so it's not clear-cut that The Dream of a Lifetime inspired Inception, they could for example both have been inspired by a different movie."
And while we're on the subject... Here's an Ian McKellan (Gandalf, Magneto, etc, etc) impersonator reciting the Ducktales theme. Convincing? Yes. Hilarious? YES!
(Woo... Hoo!)
kilala.nl tags: reading,
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2010-08-03 21:12:00
As Menno remarked in an SMS today: I've been terribly quiet on my blog because I've been terribly busy. The past few weeks every day has been: wake, work, dana, household, study, sleep. Between the studying and online courses for my CISSP examination, my daily job and my family I just haven't been busy with anything else at all. Due to scheduling conflicts and such I've even had to cancel my presentation at the ETH0 conference...
Today was very stressful. Yesterday I made a big change to the IT admin landscape at $CLIENT, which led to a rather tempestuous day today. Harsh words, a flurry of emails and misunderstandings and a few hours of overtime. Ahhh, fun times. Either way... *shrug*
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
