Archive for January, 2007
January 29, 2007 at 5:52 am
· Filed under GSPCA, Linux, OS, SPCA5xx, Web Cam, howto, ubuntu
I was tasked to setup a web cam on Linux. After looking around a bit on NewEgg, I was led to believe by one of the reviewers that Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX would work with Ubuntu 6.10 out-of-box. So, I got the web cam and plugged it in. My system only recognized a USB mic, no web cam. I went on-line searching for an answer. After dealing with various howto docs/forums on spca5xx and pwc drivers unsuccessfully, I came across this driver page, downloaded the driver, extracted the bundle, make, sudo make install, plug-in the web-cam, ran camorama, and it WORKED!
If you already have a web cam or wish to buy a different one, see this list before you attempt to install the driver.
After getting the web cam to work, I set up Ekiga, a SIP/H.323 client, and got a SIP from ekiga.net. You can also get a SIP account from Free World Dialup (FWD), which provides similar service to Skype, with an added ability to connect to other networks. You can use this help page to setup Ekiga. If you would like to try other SIP clients, here are a few: SIP Communicator (Java, appears video is still in progress), FWD Communicator (Windows), NetMeeting (Windows, see here and here), and for more clients, see this list.
(Update) Here is another HowTo on a related topic.
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January 22, 2007 at 11:40 pm
· Filed under ID-FF, ID-SIS, ID-WSF, Open Source, OpenLiberty, Project Liberty, Technology, The Higgins Project, security
Project Liberty hosted an Idenity Web services workshop and here are my notes:
- Project Liberty announced OpenLiberty, an open source initiative focusing on “a wide range of new relying party (identity-consuming) applications”. This effort certainly looks like an attempt expand potential addressable market for identity enabled services.
- Beyond the basic Circle of Trust (CoT), there are other more interesting models of CoT, such as CoT Peering (Roaming user/services) and Hierarchies of CoT. These new features will certainly allow better modeling of the real-world identity in digital identity.
- Identity Federation Framework (ID-FF) “Focused on human-to-application interaction”
- Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF) “Focused on application-to-application interaction”
- Identity Service Interface Specs (ID-SIS) “Defines particular useful services”, such as personal profile, geolocation, etc.
- Web Service Consumer (WSC) “is the requester endpoint, and a Web Service Provider (WSP) is the responder endpoint.”
- ID-SIS Personal Profile (PP) provides web services on attributes associated to an identity.
- Discovery Service (DS) is “a hub for locating, and possibly getting coarse-grained authorization to use, various identity services of yours”.
- Interaction Service (IS) A PP service can check your DS to find an IS that agrees with “your own policy preferences for what’s important enough to bother you with”.
- Throughout an user’s interaction among different identity enabled services, “the user might be known only by a pseudonym” instead of a global unique user ID, such as a Social Security Number.
- Open source implementations: OpenSSO, LaSSO, ZXID, Conor’s stuff, OpenSAML, Shibboleth, Lasso
- Google Earth + Fboweb: A mash-up of Google Earth and real-time flight information from FAA. This is possible because there isn’t access information. If authentication is required, the user might have to provide two separate identity credentials, which can lower usability. Identity technologies such as ID-WSF can simplify the access model with Single Sign-on.
- Layered Web Apps (composite web app built from individual web services), all components within need to be aware about identity.
- Context translation – Invoker’s identity might be different from the reponder’s identity.
- Vendor (and Social) Relationship Management (VASRM) using People Service. VASRM is also known as Customer to Business (C2B), Customer-Managed Interactions (CMI), Customer Managed Relationships (CMR). See also People Service Whitepaper.
- A RFP consists two parts:
- What (i.e. HD plasma screen, plane tickets, etc.)
- Conditions (i.e. style, specs, price, etc)
- In VRM, an user specifies both.
- In VASRM, the two pieces are divided. For example, a bride might specify what she want on her wedding registry and guests decide at what price the bride will receive the gift.
- Advanced Client (aka Intelligent Client)
- Trusted Module (TM) allows the client to function without an IdP in a protected environment.
- Local manufacture of Assertions by TM (Minting Assertion)
- IdP authorizes TM to create assertions
- Relying Party (RP) can verify delegation against the assertions
- Unique keys for each RP can enable privacy protection
- Long term storage IdP issued assertions (Hoarding)
- IdP issues assertion to TM and TM have the option on when to use the assertion.
- Client Service Instance (CSI) is a locally running service, which can be profile, calendar, payments, etc. It may not be in a trusted environment, and may have privacy, availability, and connectivity issues.
- Service Hosting/Proxying Service (SHPS) provides remote instance of the service that synchronizes with CSI. WSCs calls SHPS instead of CSI. SHPS serves as a proxy for CSI by forwarding invocations to CSI.
- See Conor’s blog.
- The Higgins Project
- An open source project that provides identity interoperability framework using card-based UI Metaphor.
- Supports many protocols/standards, such as WS-Trust, CardSpace, LDAP, OpenID, XRI, RSS, and possibly Liberty.
- Supports Windows, Suse Linux, etc.
- Eclipse plugin and non-Eclipse based tools available for developers.
- Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)
- See John’s blog.
- Public IdPs: openidp.org, protectnetwork.org.
Special thanks to Project Liberty for hosting the event and thanks to all speakers for their educational speeches. All quotes sources are either from associated link (included in the same paragraph/bullet point branch) or from the presentation slides.
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January 21, 2007 at 6:54 pm
· Filed under Math
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January 21, 2007 at 6:31 pm
· Filed under Photography, Reviews
A friend recently told me that he wanted an ultra compact camera that has 28mm wide angle lens. While browsing on the net, I found Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01. It has 28mm – 102mm zoom lens, OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), 4.7 oz (empty) and costs about $239.99. If you search reviews or read user opinions, you might find people love everything about this camera except noise in low-light situations. If you have concern about it, this user opinion might help to set your expectations in a constructive way. If you want to spend a little more money, there are two newer models: DMC-FX50 and DMC-FX07.
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January 19, 2007 at 4:02 pm
· Filed under Solaris 10, Sun, SunRay Server, Technology, howto
- Do not use space character in the path where you are running the install script.
- Follow the installation steps documented in the installation guide.
- You don’t really need to have Apache HTTP server running. The installation bundle has all it needs.
- Review the install log to check no errors occur during installation.
- After completed the installation steps in chapter 3, fill the configuration worksheet in chapter 6 on Page 29 on the document or Page 43 according to your favorite PDF reader.
- Use default values when possible. For production use, you should not use the default value.
- Do configure fail-over group even if you do not plan to do so. If you ever want to install a second instance, you don’t have to re-install of you already responded yes to configure fail-over group. If you don’t have a second instance, you can skip configuration steps related to second instance when configuring fail-over.
- This note was written for an install of SunRay software configuration in LAN network configuration. So, SunRay software’s network configuration was tweaked for this deployment.
- If you plan to configure SunRay server to connect to a Windows Terminal Service (i.e. in CAM mode), you need to configure a Windows connector before you finish configuring SunRay.
- Follow the configuration instructions stated in chapter 7.
- Add interface to RunRay Server: utadm -a e1000g0 if you want to create a private net deployment model
- Depending on which model you want, use the the associated instruction in the chapter.
- Install patches needed for SunRay Server software.
- For CAM configuration, please refer to Administration Guide for more details. For example, how to allow users to access applications.
Special thanks to Steve N. for showing me how this is done.
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January 18, 2007 at 1:45 am
· Filed under Scripting, Solaris 10, Sun
Many years ago, one Unix interviewer told me that Bourne shell should be used for best compatibility across different UNIXs. That certainly is still true today. For example, only Bourne shell (sh) is accepted in init scripts for Solaris. Here is one explanation that I heard so far: During the bootstrap process, /usr isn’t mounted. Therefore shells such as Bash (/usr/bin/bash) won’t work. Bourne shell (/sbin/sh) will work. So be aware of this difference when you work across different UNIXs and Bourne shell is a good bet for compatibility.
Special thanks to Hans N. for the explanation.
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January 18, 2007 at 1:32 am
· Filed under Partition, Solaris 10, Sun, howto, vmware-unix
I had to add additional swap space in Solaris 10 under VMWare. So, I added additional space in VMWare. Next, I followed the instructions stated at the following link. Then I ran a command similar to the following to add the new disk as swap: swap -a /dev/dsk/c0d1s1 If you want the swap space to persist over reboot, you should add a swap entry to /etc/vfstab file. Use the existing swap entry as a template.
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January 16, 2007 at 11:24 pm
· Filed under OS, Solaris 10, howto
While working with Solaris 10 x64, there isn’t an easy way to enter OK prompt to pass in OK prompt boot parameters. So, I run the following command:
reboot -- -m verbose
“–” dash-dash enabled me to pass in OK prompt boot parameters. In this case, the OK prompt boot parameters above is “-m verbose” This will show additional verbose messages during boot if I choose the transient option in the Grub menu.
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January 12, 2007 at 6:30 am
· Filed under Word Of The Day
equanimity • \E-kw&-'ni-m&-tE\ • noun
1 : evenness of mind especially under stress <nothing could disturb his equanimity>
2 : right disposition : balance <physical equanimity>
Source: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/equanimity
Example sentence:
“When one is happy, one can look at both comedy and tragedy with equanimity.”
– Phillip Lopate, Totally, Tenderly, Tragically
Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2006/12/28.html
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January 12, 2007 at 12:02 am
· Filed under OS, Solaris 10
export http_proxy=http://username:password@proxyserver.net:port/
export ftp_proxy=http://username:password@proxyserver.netport/
Source: link
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