Category: Technology

Finally Samba has released a preview of the next generation of their software. It has many interesting stuff starting from Active Directory-like working environment with its own small LDAP and Kerberos server included. Integrated SWAT (web-based administration interface to Samba) and many more. Even a one-click migration from Windows 2003 AD-based PDC to samba with all the machines/users and other stuff.

I am waiting for the stable release a lot, since I really like this topic and spend a lot of time around it. So far I have a couple of places where Samba (3) is acting as PDC for Win XP clients and I am happy, but there are some limitations and uncomfortabilities which I hope will be solved in the 4th branch of Samba.

I have seen many companies which try to track all IT fixed assets and do a huge (from my point of view) mistake when on each IT asset a label (with some number as a serial number) is set. Such labels are a headache since they usually get lost (fall away) and it is impossible to tell something from this label without contacting accounts department which usually do not know much of a particular asset.

From my view, IT assets should be tracked by Vendor + Vendor serial number (each vendor of hardware equipment puts its own serial numbers). This solves a big number of problems starting from that labels with SN from vendors are very well fixed and it is almost impossible to loose them. Second is that accounts do not need to generate some new ID numbers all the time and finally, you can get a lot of information from the serial number of the particular vendor in most of the cases including the type of the equipment, when it was produced and so on.

I am having a some problems with internet connection of my web-server today. Hopefully I will upgrade the line from 1mb/128kb to 1.5mb/256kb and change the ISP as well somewhere in the near future.

Sorry if you failed to reach the site sometime today, but I really couldn\’t do anything about it :(

Have just returned from the second (and last) day of the Digital Ship Cyprus 2006 conference. I\’ve been attending both days and have seen many interesting stuff. I am not much familiar with ship communication, but I found many interesting things there, and also learned a lot.

There were a lot of speeches and presentations from many companies. The most bright ones are from Inmarsat (no doubt) and Connexion by Boeing. All other presentations were very good as well, but there too many of them and they all will be published at Digital Ship web site.

I have also attended a small Inmarsat training (2 hours) where they made an introduction to the satellite communication including the history of Inmarsat and the packages they offered and still offer. Specifications of those as well as current projects and future possibilities. We also had a chance to try some of their new equipment from the mobile series and I would tell it was quite nice.

Also I would like to mention the PrimeTel company whom I communicate a lot with and I got some nice ideas (as well as a couple of presents) from. Nice people.

Anyway, I\’ve met a lot of interesting people and learned a lot and I hope that will get more into the topic since there are some interesting points in it and it can be useful for me.