DevCentral Top5 04/14/2012
Given the time and my unabashed geekery for all things comic related, especially Batman-esque, I feel the burning need to make some sort of "Dark Knight" joke here, but I'll refrain. That kind of thing would drive readers batty, and I just don't have any desire to come off as a Joker. Here's where you groan...all together now. All right, now that that's out of my system...we've got lots of goodness to get to. The ninjas and pirates (we're diverse like that) that keep things running out in DevCentral land have been hard at work putting together a host of content that shouldn't be missed. Let's get right to it with my Top5 picks for the week:
1024 Words: 1000 Posts
https://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2012/04/11/1024-words-1000-posts.aspx
First and foremost, I'd like to take a moment to congratulate a truly prolific contributor to DevCentral. Lori MacVittie has reached the 1000 blog post mark on DevCentral, and to me, that is definitely Top5 worthy. She blew past that number, in fact, but this is the first chance I've had to call it out. Not only is this a DC first, and momentous for that reason, but it's also a showing of a truly massive outpouring of content to continue engaging and bettering the community. Ironically her post is most a big thank you to her readers (spoiler alert...wait, I think I did that wrong), and I want to thank her here...but I can handle a little irony from time to time. Go take a look, browse through some of her old posts, and drop a thank you from all of us to her for doing what she does.
iControl Guru Panel - A "Pi" Day Webcast With iControl Gurus
I've been remiss in mentioning the Guru panels that we've done on DevCentral! So swept up with the other content was I that I forgot to call out this cool new thing that is happening on an internet near you. Available now is the growing series of Guru Panels that we here on the DC team have been cooking up. It started way back when with the iApp Guru panel, then came iRules, and most recently iControl. So what is a Guru panel you ask? A guru panel is where we get together a couple of experts on a given topic, sit down in front of a camera, have a dialog, and ask the community to feed us questions to answer. What usually comes out is a lively discussion that ranges from the kiddy pool with water wings to a half gainer from the high dive, with plenty of history, commentary and anecdotes along the way. These are a great way to get an infusion of knowledge about a particular subject, or to see what the community is up to and curious about. Whatever your reason, they're informational, low key and fully community driven. That's a good combo any way you slice it. Take a look and keep an eye out for future Guru panels. I know there's a security one right around the corner, so keep a sharp watch for more info.
Perl example of deploying an iApp application service
https://devcentral.f5.com/s/wiki/iControl.Perl-example-of-deploying-an-iApp-application-service.ashx
I don't often call out specific CodeShare entries here in the Top5. That's not because there aren't awesome things being added to the CodeShare all the time (hint: there are), it's more because there is usually just so much stuff to go through I can't even get to it all. This week, however, one of the engineers here in one of F5's Skunk Works style teams swung by my desk to ask where to post a particular code sample. He wanted to post an example written in Perl, using iControl, to deploy an iApp. I'm going to repeat that, because that is the kind of thing that bears repeating. Perl -> iControl -> iApp. That's like...a trifecta. If he had told me the iApp was then used to deploy or manage iRules, I think I may have shed a tear of joy and built a shrine in reverence. Regardless, this is a pretty wicked example of combining F5 technologies and making them work for you in an automated fashion. It also happens to touch on some of my favorite bits in the system, which may or may not have played partially into my decision to include this post here. Perhaps. Possibly. It's cool, I promise! Check it out and be impressed, I was.
Freedom vs. Control
https://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/psilva/archive/2012/04/11/freedom-vs.-control.aspx
Pete Silva delivers an interesting read this week in the form of a dilemma of sorts: Freedom vs. Control. We're not talking about political power struggles here, we're talking about corporate security policies and how they are in a pinch when trying to deliver the right balance of both. With an increase in mobile devices, the BYOD trend continuing to rise, and the proliferation of platforms outside of IT's direct control, it would seem that confidence is waning in regards to which devices are actually accessing business resources. If many companies can't even be sure of which devices are accessing apps, then how are they going to balance their security measures appropriately? It's a bit of a vexing question to be sure, and Pete digs into a bit more in this post. Take a look and see what you think. Your guess is as good as mine on this one, but it's definitely something to be thinking about, and the sooner the better, especially for those of you that may be responsible for implementing or tuning such policies.
Stripping EXIF From Images as a Security Measure
Do you know what an Exif tag is? Let me save you the trouble, here's what Wikipedia will tell you: "Exchangeable image file format (Exif) is a standard that specifies the formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital cameras (including smartphones), scanners and other systems handling image and sound files recorded by digital cameras." So what does that mean, and why is that a security risk? Well, digging a little deeper you'll quickly find out that one of the tags included in the Exif info of many pictures these days stores geolocation data. Why do you care about geolocation info on your photos? Well, what about the photos you're taking of your house, car, personal jet-pack or other such sundry goods with your GPS enabled smart phone that all now have the exact GPS coordinates of where said images were taken embedded in them? Those photos you posted to that everyone on the tubes can now see detailing the amazing new widget you bought? Yeah, it also might contain the exact location of said widget, for someone who is looking deep enough. Does this sound like a security issue to you yet? It does to me. Lori digs into it in a lot more detail and depicts a possible solution in this post. This is becoming massively prevalent and could be a serious concern in some cases...this one is definitely worth the time to read.
There you have it my intrepid friends, another 5 goodies from the DevCentral realm to tide you over until next time. Enjoy!
#Colin
P.S. This may be the first Top5 in history without an iRules specific post.
P.P.S. Don't count on that becoming a trend. I haven't given up the faith.
Published Apr 14, 2012
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