FTP is the de-facto standard for transferring files over the Internet. Although file transfers via HTTP and RSYNC are becoming more popular, these are typically for downloading files to your local system, whereas FTP is often used to transfer files to and from a remote system, or even remotely move and manipulate files.However, FTP is extremely insecure in that it is a completely plain-text protocol; everything from password credentials to file transfer data is sent in the clear.

SSH provides a means to transfer files securely using the SCP (Secure Copy Protocol) and SFTP programs. SCP is simply an SSH-aware “cp”. You must know the name of the file to copy prior to the transfer, and it sends files to or from a remote system over SSH.

SFTP, however, is an interactive FTP-like protocol that also uses SSH as a transport medium. This means that the entire FTP conversation is encrypted and you can use SSH keys with SFTP to allow for password-less FTP logins. Most FTP clients today support SFTP natively which means there is very little prep-work.

The fact that it runs over SSH remains a problem with SCP and SFTP, however, because a user can snoop outside of their home directory and could download sensitive files in the /etc directory, for instance. Most FTP servers for Linux have a chroot option that restricts the user to their home directory, and subdirectories, only. With SFTP, this is possible if you use the scponly “shell” which can chroot users to their home directory for SCP, SFTP, and RSYNC over SSH sessions.

You can download scponly from http://www.sublimation.org/scponly/ (be sure to grab the latest version, 4.3, to avoid potential security problems with older versions). Using scponly is extremely straightforward; instead of providing a shell like /bin/sh in your passwd file for a user, simply change the shell to use scponly.

To chroot users to their home directories, you need to do a little prep-work by running the supplied setup_chroot.sh script to create the appropriate chroot environment for the user. Once this is done, the user is effectively jailed in their home directory.

Source ZDnet Asia

Most organizations don’t have a formal apprenticeship program for software developers. There is no journeyman for software development.

However, most software developers today learn as much through their interaction with other developers as they learned during their formal education.

So if your software developers are learning how to be software developers through their experience at your organization, what are you teaching them? It’s time to evaluate what the software developers in your organization are learning.

The need for education
As an industry we still suffer from project failures, cost overruns, poor client satisfaction, and a general malaise. Failure rates for software development projects are wildly different depending upon who you listen to. Publicly reported rates vary from 5 percent at the lowest to over 70 percent. While neither of these numbers is particularly believable they illuminate the fact that there is still a problem. If software development was steadfastly producing quality software all of the numbers would be in the same range.

However, the mere fact that there are failures doesn’t indicate what the causes for failure are. Surely there are a variety of causes for project failures. Just as surely some of those causes are causes that are well understood by those at the forefront of software development.
…click here to read more

Website Gtalkr is a Flash-based web app designed to bring your Google apps (Gmail and Google Talk) together with Flickr, YouTube, and newsfeeds for an all-in-one media and communications mega-package.

Get:Google Talk Chat with your friends online anywhere, anytime. Gtalkr also allows you to search your conversations just like in Gmail. Flickr, YouTube Explore all that Flickr and YouTube have to offer. Watch a slide show of your favorite photos and better yet, watch and share videos right in Gtalkr!

Gtalkr is pretty cool - the integration of Gmail and Google Talk is nice (you can chat directly from Gtalkr), and the YouTube and Flickr integration is also attractive. Of course, there is obvious concern about passing your private information through an unaffiliated third party, though Gtalkr insists that your information is safe with them. There is also a Gtalkr notifier available for download (Windows only).