Leo's Updates Articles about Technology, Cycling and Politics

Linux LDAP Authentication

If you have a decent number of Linux machines and you want them all to share the same authentication scheme (allow a user to login on each of the machines), what do you do?

One of the best solutions is LDAP.  LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and it is basically a database of user information. You can use LDAP as a global address book of sorts, and you can also use it to store user information, such as usernames and password. Getting LDAP configured on Linux can be challenging, and I have been looking for a good guide on how to do it. The problem is that setting it up is slightly different on every Linux distro, because of differences in how each distro has PAM set up. However, I have found a great guide, that makes setting up LDAP far easier. If you get authentication with LDAP working, you'll never look back.

Computer Programmer Job Security 101: Write Unmaintainable Code

You always hear news of tech companies having lay offs and firing thousands of workers. Don't want to be one of them? You have to make it so that you are irreplacable at your job. How do you do that? Make yourself the only person that can maintain your code. Here is a great guide on how to do this.The guide has some great suggestions, such as "Make sure that every method does a little bit more (or less) than its name suggests. As a simple example, a method named isValid(x) should as a side effect convert x to binary and store the result in a database."When I did a lot of C++ programming in High School, I often made my code difficult, if not impossible to follow, because if my teacher didn't know what the code did, but knew it worked, he wouldn't bother grading it in great depth, but instead would give me a quick A. 

Zooomr – Like Flickr but better

I just recently found Zooomr, a photo sharing website that is like Flickr, but it uses the Google Maps API so you can 'geotag' your photos and search for photos taken in a specific area. Sadly New Jersey doesn't have a lot of great photos taken in it.

James Bond uses Macs!

This Macworld UK article descibes how the latest James Bond DVD Collection has been digitally remastered using G5s. Apparently, they are the most economical and reliable option when it comes to video editing. Also interesting was how they scanned in each frame of every James Bond movie at 4000x3000 resolution, for possible future use with HD versions of the movies. DVDs only support 720x576.

It is exciting that Casino Royale, the new Bond movie is coming out soon, and that it actually looks like it is going to be a good film.

I am heavily considering diverting 007's Domain here, and posting James Bond news here from now on. I don't have the time anymore to maintain a full James Bond website (unless someone wants to help me out), but I do have the time to post some news and articles when I find something interesting, and this would bring some more traffic here.

Pick a Good Seat on a Flight!

Today I discovered lovemyseat.com, which has seating charts for how all the major airlines have their planes configured. It also rates all the seats, so next time you book a flight you can get the most comfortable seat. I'll be sure to use it on my next flight and get back on how accurate the ratings are.