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13 April 2006
- Google Calendar
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Google Calendar is available. Add an event here.
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25 October 2005
- Things
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Maybe sometime...
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19 January 2002
- Changes
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I am changing some things 'round these here parts...
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2 June 2000
- Cracked! Series
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RootPrompt.org has been running a
series of articles
about one system administrator's dealing with someone who cracked his systems. It
is a good read on what crackers do and how widespread their effects can be felt in
little time.
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2 June 2000
- Top Ten Internet Security Threats
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The SANS Institute has put together an
interesting list of vulnerabilities many crackers use to break into systems. It
is an interesting read on what to look out for. Also watch the
Slashdot
thread for other bits of advice.
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9 May 2000
- Dual-headed action!
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After a lot of struggling, I have finally managed to get two video cards and
monitors to cooperate with XFree86 4.0. I accomplished
it with Matrox G200 AGP and Voodoo3 2000 PCI cards. For some reason, my
TNT2Ultra card just would not cooperate with the other PCI cards I have
lying around. If you look closely at that image, you can see Netscape
spanning the two monitors while running with Xinerama activated. It is
very nice being able to just drag programs back and forth at will. Kudos
have to go to Mandrake for all his work
with that. I may put together a brief HOWTO on the subject, when I get bored.
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8 May 2000
- Keep away from my box!
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Every day hundreds of crazy folks out there are looking to get to your files.
Anytime you go on networks like IRC, ICQ, Napster, Gnutella, etc where there
are thousands of other people, a small percentage of those people are looking to
get at your files. It's a fact. So what does one do to protect them self?
Continued
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8 May 2000
- The ILOVEYOU Solution
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Ah this is grand.
AltaVista
reports that in this week's Time magazine, Bill Gates writes an essay which
explains how viruses of the future will be impossible to detect if Microsoft
is broken up into separate operating system and software companies.
"The front line of defense against such sophisticated viruses
is a continually evolving computer operating system that attracts the efforts of
eager software developers, Gates said."
Well said, Mr. Gates. That is a perfect description of Linux and other open
operating systems and projects. Only when a model is completely open can its
security be scrutinized by everyone and determined "secure." Thus Windows will
never be as secure as Linux, BSDs, etc.
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8 May 2000
- The Orbiten Free Software Survey
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There is a survey up on Free Software,
the authors, who contributes the most, etc. The good news is I'm in
there
for my KSniff project. They credit me with 61,085 bytes of
code, which puts me at number 2,372 of 13,496 authors and 0.005% of the code they
analyzed. They plan on another survey, covering even more projects, this June.
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7 May 2000
- Apache.org gets rooted
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The Register reports
that a couple scoundrels cracked into the FreeBSD machine hosting the
Apache.org web site. They give the details
on how they accomplished it
here. In
short, it was due to errors and shortcuts taken by the administrators of that
site, and certainly not any inherent flaw in Apache, FreeBSD, or any Open Source
program.
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6 May 2000
- Finally updated this place
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I finally got around to fixin up my little corner of the web, touch up the
design a bit and added some items under Projects there on the left.
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5 May 2000
- ILOVEYOU and such crap
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Every time I see another one of these stories, it gives me a tingly feeling down
there. From the folks at Microsoft themselves, they do not have any plans to
issue a patch or security warning[1]. Fact is the consumer Windows line will
always be suceptible to these simple attacks. The primary cause is people are
trained to do what the computer says. So when an email says, "Click this,"
they do. There is such little education about computers, the Internet, email,
etc. put into the product, so people click on these attachments blindly and
*poof* virii are slapped on documents, it is spread to network drives, email
addressbooks, etc.
Why do we who use Linux laugh heartily at the latest security problem with
Windows? Because we have nothing to fear. Here a series of stories on the
subject, what Windows users have to fear and what us Linux folk chuckle over.
[1] - ZDNet, ILOVEYOU Microsoft
[2] - The Standard, First Comes 'Love,' Then Comes 'Joke'
[3] - Linux World, From Redmond with love
[4] - Linux World, Linux Goes Unloved
[5] - Linux Today, VNU Net: Microsoft lambasted over Love Bug
[6] - Linux Planet, There but for the Grace of Bill...
[7] - Linux Today, Playing in the Sandbox: How Linux can continue to avoid ILOVEYOU-type attacks
[8] - ZDNet UK, Experts call on firms to embrace bug free Linux
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10 March 2000
- XFree86 4.0 Released
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The long awaited XFree86 4.0 release has come
upon us. I now have it up and running; it wasn't too much trouble, thankfully.
This is how I did it:
- First, I picked up the Mandrake contrib source RPM for version 3.9.18 from
RpmFind.
- rpm -i that src.rpm.
- Then drop the 3.9.18 to 4.0 patches from a XFree86
mirror into your SOURCES
directory within RPM's build area (often /usr/src/rpm or something). You'll
want the 3.9.18-4.0.diff1.gz and diff2.gz files in the 4.0/patches directory
on the ftp mirror.
- Then drop my updated XFree86-4.spec file into
the SPECS directory. Feel free to diff the two and verify I'm doing any
funny business. ;)
- Finally, execute rpm -ba SPECS/XFree86-4.spec to build the RPMs.
- Then there is the mess of removing old/installing new packs. That's left
up to you. Consult XFree86's documentation.
Naturally, you'll need all the appropriate development packages installed. I can't
help ya there. And I won't offer my RPMs because I'm too lazy to upload 40MB of
stuff through my wimpy modem.
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9 March 2000
- Web Monitoring Software
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Woohoo! Another top scoring
post
on Slashdot. This one's about the possibility of an open and better censor program
than what exists for Windows, following an article that Symantec was blocking many
legitimate sites as well as secretely transmitting some information about your
Windows system. For those interested, check it out. There were some
interesting opinions by others, also.
Also, I put a
follow up
to one of the posts with further details and musings.
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7 March 2000
- OpenSSH Domain Dispute
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Let's get this started. Louis Bertrand of OpenBSD put out a
request
to boycott the openssh.org domain because the owner would not turn
it over to the OpenSSH project. A
simple domain name dispute we've seen many times before, right? Well,
this one is different.
I first found the letter on
Slashdot.
It can also be found on OpenBSD mail lists as the first link points. After
my first bit of research, I wrote up this analysis
with my point of view.
I received a response from Louis Bertrand.
Alex de Joode put his response to all the emails he received
regarding this issue on his
web site.
From the Slashdot forum, it appears the whois.corenic.net was returning
October 15, 1999 for the date Mr. de Joode registered openssh.org. I did
my lookups with the whois.networksolutions.com server, which says November
4, 1999. I have tried doing searches on corenic.net's whois server with
my command line Linux whois utility, but it is just returning:
No Match for "openssh.org". Ah, CoreNIC.net's web page
whois search does return the information, and it give the October 15
"Updated Date" for openssh.org. I don't have experience with CoreNIC,
but if anyone else knows why their date of the last update doesn't sync
with Network Solutions (the registrar for this domain), or why NSI doesn't
display the right dates, let me know. I am curious about this.
Anyway, Mr. de Joode's response contains some details on his motivation
and reasons for registering the domain. He wanted to develop an SSH client
and server for Linux and Solaris. The name OpenSSH is fairly generic,
so it is feasible to me that two people would think to use it. But the
fact is Mr. de Joode registered it first (October 15) and in this game,
that entitles him to do whatever he wants with the domain. Pointing to
his other site, freessh.org, is one
legitimate use of it. Trying to pressure him to turn it over by putting
out a letter like this is not the proper way to resolve domain desputes.
Perhaps this could be the subject of my next paper.
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Thank you, and look for more someday soon...
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