Joomla! (punctuation included) is a fairly well known open source content management system (CMS). For those who are not familiar with web development, a content management system is essentially an interface designed to allow a user to manage a website. In the case of Joomla!, that interface is entirely web based and intends to allow the user to create a dynamic PHP based website. Chances are, if you follow technology news, you are aware of the origin of Joomla! In August, 2005, the development team bolted from the Mambo project, due to concern over the governance of Mambo by the Miro Corporation, and creating OpenSourceMatters, a development community for the new Joomla! (the phonetic spelling of the Swahili word meaning “as a whole” with extra punctuation to give reviewers syntax related headaches) project, a continuation of Mambo. This event stirred up some interesting questions as to the commercialization of open source. Today we will be reviewing this project in its sixth version so far.
[more] A firewall is one of the more basic ways to protect a computer from the insecurities of connecting to a public network, namely, the internet. Like a firewall in construction, a computing firewall controls the flow of data in and out of a network. A firewall carries out its function by blocking connections destined to and coming from certain numbered network ports. Programs use doorways or subaddresses called ports to communicate over a network; a program will send and listen for communications over a set of specific, but not always unique ports. Hence, the port number used will often indicate the nature of the data being sent. By controlling the ports that are communicated between a public and a private network, the number of exploitable security holes is greatly reduced.
Today, we will be examining m0n0wall, a free operating system designed by Manuel Kasper which allows any x86 based computer to become an embedded network firewall with a web based configuration. There are many Linux based distributions which seek to fill this task, among them Ebox, Devil Linux, IPCop, LEAF, and Smoothwall. What separates m0n0wall from these other options is its FreeBSD base. FreeBSD is a Unix-like operating system which descends from the Berkley Software Distribution and carries a BSD derived license, allowing broad use of the source code and it's derivatives.
[more] New screenshots, possibly from the latest builds of 10.4.4, have surfaced proving that Apple will be releasing the Intel machines at MacWorld. In the pictures, binaries are now classified as “PowerPC” or “Universal”. This means that we may see Intel machines as early as sometime in January after they are announced at MacWorld. This would follow the previous pattern of the Mac mini being announced, then released a few weeks after MacWorld 2005.
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