There's a Rootkit in the Closet -- lovely explanation of finding and isolating a rootkit, reconstructing how it got there and deconstructing the rootkit to figure out what it did. It's a detective story, no less exciting than when Cliff Stohl wrote The Cuckoo's Egg. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Consistent use of indentation is important in a langauge like Python, where white-space is significant. The tabnanny module provides a scanner to report on "ambiguous" use of indentation. The simplest way to use tabnanny is to run it from the command line, passing the names of files to check. If you pass directory names, the directories are scanned recursively to find .py files to check.

Rapportive -- a simple social CRM built into Gmail. They replace the ads in Gmail with photos, bio, and info from social media sites. (via ReadWrite Web) Best Practices in Web Development with Django and Python -- great set of recommendations. (via Jon Udell's article on checklists) These and more in today's Four Short Links.

Ronald Bradford has been guiding DBAs through key aspects of database integration for years. In this Q&A, he discusses the pros and cons of migrating from Oracle to MySQL (hint: it's not just about cost savings). He also weighs in on how Oracle's acquisition of Sun will shape the future of MySQL and its community.

Editing mp4 files with Final Cut Pro or other Mac based applications What is the best ebook reader these days? Dreamweaver background image about .bash_history file Is it standard practice to give the web user apache full read/write/execute privileges to the files and folders within the webroot? Share knowledge, ask questions on O'Reilly Answers today.

gheat -- add a heatmap layer to a Google Map. For more on its design and implementation, read Chad Whitacre's blog. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Slashdot reviewer Ahmed Al-Saadi gives Learning Python, Fourth Edition, by Mark Lutz, a 9/10 rating, and says, "Like many O'Reilly books, this is a well-written, coherent, and beautifully type-set book. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to, or already does, program using python. It should help the novice in the transition to an excellent programming language or, otherwise, make an already familiar environment more powerful in the hands of veterans." Read more.

Google Ad Preferences -- my defaults look reasonable and tailored to my interest. Creepy but kinda cool: I guess that if I have to have ads, they should be ones I'm not going to hate. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

A recent article discusses trademark issues in open source software, published in the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review. One thing that interested me is how the fuzzy areas in current law are comparable to fuzzy areas in software distribution; that's what I'll discuss in this blog. The main issue driving the article by Harvey Anderson and Tiki Dare is that trademark law was designed for fixed products and services left under the control of the vendor. Let's turn now to free software. People modify and redistribute it all the time, but to be honest about it, they shouldn't do so under the name chosen by the original developers.

Nat Friedman Leaving Novell -- one of the original Ximian founders, with interests in many directions and the coding chops to make them real. He'll found another startup, topic as yet unknown, which will be one to watch. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

mytop -- a MySQL top implementation to show you why your server is so damn slow right now. What Could Kill Elegant High-Value Participatory Project? -- The problem was not that the system was buggy or hard to use, but that it disrupted staff expectations and behavior....

Python's Moratorium -- Python language designers have declared a moratorium on enhancement proposals (feature requests) while the world's Python programmers get used to the last batch of New And Shiny they shipped. I'm reasonably sure that the ALGOL designers went through exactly the same discussions, and I know Perl did too. So, don't be afraid of it - don't think that Python is evolutionarily dead - it's not. We're taking a stability and adoption break, a breather. We're doing this to help users and developers, not to just be able to say 'no' to every random idea sent to python-ideas, and not because we're done. Reminds me of Perl god Jarkko Hietaniemi's signature file: "There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Even those who support and advocate for Linux on the desktop largely believed that Microsoft would retain market dominance. Here we are six months later and the promised ARM powered netbooks have not arrived in any quantity as of yet. Despite this ABI Research published some new data last month and the results may surprise you. They place the 2009 market share for Linux on netbooks at 32% with 11 million units preloaded with Linux shipping this year.

While I'm very positive about the openSUSE team I must say that I am a lot less sanguine about some in their community. Some fans (or really fanatics) came out in force ready to attack the reviewer (me), to question my skills and even my sanity, to attack Ladislav Bodnar for posting the review, to blame the hardware, anything at all but the distro code which is, according to some, "the best release ever".

Red Laser -- "impossibly accurate barcode scanning". Uses Google Product Search to identify products that you scan using the camera on the phone. I remember Rael and I talking to Jeff Bezos about this years ago, before camphones had the resolution to decode barcodes. The future is here and it's $1.99 on the App Store. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers, and I'm inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly). O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing and idea generation, and we want you to join us in changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

Anatomy of SSDs -- A teeth-rattlingly technical Linux Magazine article explaining the different types of SSDs (Solid State Disks--imagine a hard drive made of rapid-access Flash memory). Artur Bergman told me that installing an SSD drive in his MacBook Pro gave the greatest performance increase of any computer upgrade he'd performed since he went from no computer to one. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Toiling in the Data Mines -- Tom Armitage describes the process that Berg calls "material exploration". "Programmers very rarely talk about what their work feels like to do, and that's a shame. Material explorations are something I've really only done since I've joined BERG, and both times have felt very similar - in that they were very, very different to writing production code for an understood product. They demand code to be used as a sculpting tool, rather than as an engineering material..." This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Back in February I wrote about how Linux had gone mainstream as netbooks became ubiquitous. When my Sylvania netbook died last month and the manufacturer took their sweet time responding to me I was offered a refund by the dealer. Suddenly I was surveying the market again for a good buy on a netbook preloaded with Linux. I found a wide variety of systems with Linux available from mainstream outlets and factory direct, at least here in the United States where I live. While I don't have updated market share figures it's clear, despite claims by Microsoft and their supporters, that Linux remains entrenched in the netbook market and is spreading out from there.

Linux Baby Rocker -- Check out this inventive use of a CD drive and the eject command, combined to create an automatic baby rocker. (via Hacker News) This and more in today's Four Short Links.