[digital:meditation]

While getting my diploma thesis done, I spent quite some time dealing with various implementations (both open-source and “proprietary”) of the LDAP protocol in order to get a unified naming and directory structure introduced to our environment. These days, dealing with many of the tools available so far basically was about spending quite some time on getting infrastructure set up and running, just to figure out the application doesn’t meet the requirements in one point or another, which was quite annoying at times.

A few years later (now…), I have just stumbled across OpenDS, an open-source LDAP implementation project mainly lead by Sun Microsystems it seems, and got interested by reading through the QuickSetupTool description which seemed rather straightforward and quite promising. And, indeed: Downloading and installing OpenDS was as easy as downloading and starting a Java Web Start application on your local machine, and, following that (given internet connection, of course), a couple of questions later, OpenDS was installed on my machine. For convenience’s sake, OpenDS comes with a simple status panel to monitor / start / stop the directory server:

Once having it running, indeed it was available to local clients, including e-mail clients with LDAP integration I used for testing, as well as my so far favorite Unix based LDAP client gq (the only thing worth mentioning of course is to eventually configure your applications to connect to LDAP using port 1398 as, given OpenDS is not running ‘root’, binding to the “standard” LDAP port is not allowed to the server):

Well, what to say, before I am about to do some more test-driving using OpenDS: Haven’t had a working LDAP server up, basically configured and running in a time as short as this. Overally, OpenDS, at the very least talking about installation and “getting-started”, has proven how easily even server software could be deployed if just someone spent some time on getting this done right.

And, asides that: I am in no way employed or paid by Sun Microsystems, and yet I have to say that, looking at open-source development and infrastructure projects started or somehow pushed forth by Sun folks, we’re talking rather good quality at the moment: No matter whether the NetBeans IDE, the Glassfish Java EE application server, the oncoming new portal platform still known as Project WebSynergy, the OpenSolaris operating system, or OpenDS: Most of these do provide rather stable, usable, feature-laden code, in most cases exceptionally well-documented (especially OpenSolaris and Glassfish), and seem to be supported by a still small yet friendly and helpful crowd of people on mailing lists and in web forums. The tools added to ones everyday working toolbox surely could be worse than that…

Well, what to say: The kind souls of Klub Moozak did it again: Following “[de:construction]“ used for the KM #05 flyer, by now a picture of mine even older has made it to the recent flyer for KM#11:

Thanks guys, glad to see some comin’ back and looking through these doings of mine even given that my flickr photostream has almost been abandoned (same as with fotolog, I am still too lazy to move out all the old content and close down things altogether). Given I’ll have a chance of getting to Vienna someday however, KM definitely is on my list.

Wie war das nochmal? Weswegen wird es (auf europäischem Boden) wohl die nächste größere Diktatur geben? Weswegen werden Reglements allenorts verschärft, hin zu mehr Überwachung, zu rigiderer Kontrolle, zu weniger Rechten für den Bürger? Weswegen werden Verhandlungen in solchen Themen von ‘”gleichgesinnten” Staaten’ hinter verschlossenen Türen vorangetrieben und nicht dort, wo sie eigentlich stattfinden sollten – unter den wachen Augen der Öffentlichkeit? Weswegen lassen sich auch die Regierungen der europäischen Staaten nicht zweimal bitten, eindeutig Stellung zu beziehen für eine Position, die die Mehrheit ihrer Bürger, umfassend erklärt, mit Sicherheit nicht teilen würde? Richtig: Wegen der Durchsetzung der Rechte an “geistigem Eigentum” (Einzelner). Irritierend.

Hurra, endlich wieder ‘mal etwas für die Rubrik “Bizarres”: “Macht das Internet doof?” ist die Frage, die dieser Tage den Besucher einschlägiger Zeitungs-Kioske von der Titelseite einer prominenten deutschen Zeitschrift anspringt. Nun ja. “Vernetzt, verquatscht, verloren.” Wird wohl so sein. Macht uns eigentlich auch das private Fernsehen dumm, mit seinen alltäglichen Low-Level-Nachmittags-Talkshows? Oder die tägliche Yellow-Press, die interessanterweise auch zuhauf aus demselben Verlagshaus kommt? Oh well…

Introduced a new category to [pictorial] today: “lost in moments”, mainly being an experiment: Been running around with a camera-equipped cell phone for quite a while now, my hard drives are slowly filling up with wagonloads of snapshots taken then and now, capturing various situations and moods, sometimes trying to really get hold of a “worthy” image, but sometimes just merely been taken for the sake of it, out of a certain mood, and preserved because, well, they seemed to after all capture that mood rather well. As you might expect, cell phone camera quality is highly questionable, and overally this is more of an experiment than anything else, nevertheless I decided to randomly dump some of them to the “lost in moments” category, allowing others (and myself, of course…) to, well, get “lost in moments” once in a while. The pictures come in rather small size and (well, almost…) completely without any postprocessing being done, just “taken off the camera”. So much for authenticity. ;)

Title inspired, by the way, by Ulvers incredible “Lost In Moments” off the “Perdition City” album. Enjoy, or not, whatever. :)