Danny's Weblog

2003 Oct 03 [ Fri ]

2003-10-03 Various links

Interesting audio recording site. Has many tutorials and inoffensive advertising links. I could not find much on pocket recorders. www.studio-central.com [http://www.studio-central.com/]

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The "Deep Hot Biosphere" – the theory that the Victorian-era picture of how hydrocarbon deposits were formed is completely false, that there are vast amounts of hydrocarbons available almost anywhere on earth, not only in countries where Bush's buddies have exclusive drilling contracts. (Thomas Gold)

The links below come from here: www.kuro5hin.org [http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/24/101927/375]

Gold's book on Amazon: www.amazon.co.uk [http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387985468/202-3980772-7281453]

A short explanation of Gold's theory: www.people.cornell.edu [http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/origins.html]

A lengthy but readable crtiique of the accepted "biological hypothesis" theory (which mentions that Russia's hydrocarbon industry no longer operates on it): www.csun.edu [http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Energy.html]

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Do you really control your domain? Your hosting vendor has probably set things up so that you can't transfer your site to a new hosting vendor. (If you don't know how to check whether he has or not, he probably did.) Here's a Slashdot discussion: ask.slashdot.org [http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/03/10/02/2122220.shtml?tid=123&tid=126&tid=95&tid=99]

2003 Jul 10 [ Thu ]

Wired story about antigravity claims based on Biefeld-Brown

www.wired.com [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/pwr_antigravity_pr.html]

2003 Jul 09 [ Wed ]

Don Lancaster's jaundiced view of the benefits of patents for the small inventor

www.commsdesign.com [http://www.commsdesign.com/csdmag/sections/feature_article/OEG20030501S0009]

Perl documentation:

www.perl.com [http://www.perl.com/pub/q/documentation]

2003 Jul 08 [ Tue ]

Slashdot: Documents found on RF ID website raise fears

yro.slashdot.org [http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/07/07/229216.shtml?tid=126&tid=158&tid=172&tid=99]

The cryptome.org [http://cryptome.org/rfid-docs.htm] website shows links to many confidential documents at eh "Auto-ID Center" website.

2003 Jul 07 [ Mon ]

science.slashdot.org [http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/04/2242241&mode=nested&tid=134&tid=158&tid=99]

Discussion of the rights and wrongs of using DNA evidence in criminal cases.

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2003 Jul 04 [ Fri ]

radio.atlantisrising.com [http://radio.atlantisrising.com/HillyRose/165_Kenn_Thomas/165_Kenn_Thomas.shtml]

Conspiracy-theory books by Kenn Thomas, eg on Danny Casolaro.

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From a discussion about why people buy laptops. Go on, laugh:

Re:BAAAAAA (Score:4, Funny) by pyrote (151588) on Thursday July 03, @04:05PM (#6362075) (Last Journal: Thursday March 20, @08:55PM)

> It's amazing what sheep will do when you tell them they should.

This is about laptops, not social reform in wyoming.

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The following Slashdot article was moderated "Funny" but heck, if I think about an orphaned raccon kit I get all mushy. Really.

Raccoon Cubs ... (Score:5, Funny) by Mooncaller (669824) on Thursday July 03, @09:25PM (#6364275) ... sound like failing fans. Two weeks ago, while doing an all night coding session, I heard a failing fan. I at first thought it was my window fan. I turned it off; the sound continued. "Oh no my system is dying." I had just replaced my CPU fan, which I would not have done if I had'nt heard it failing. In a panic (I'm unemployed and don't have the resources to replace my old PPro system) I shut everything down. Fortunatly the sound continued. It was coming from outside. I finally located the source even though it was highly intermitend, fading in and out just like a failing fan. What I found was a days old orphaned raccoon cub right outside my window. It was yelling for its mom. Right now the cub and a sibling are with a Wildlife Rescue raccoon specialist. BTW, a stupid artical like this one desireves OT posts :P

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morphix.sourceforge.net [http://morphix.sourceforge.net/modules/news/]

Another bootable Linux CD. Apparently about 200 MB right now.

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www.rdesktop.org [http://www.rdesktop.org/]

Linux utility which allows a Linux box to connect to Windows Terminal Server.

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Still... (Score:1) by Winjer2k (515635) on Friday July 04, @11:07AM (#6367193) ( homepage.mac.com [http://homepage.mac.com/winjer2k] ) I think a coooler plot for T3 would have been:

1.) John Connor Realizes in the future or present that without Skynet, he can't become the great worshiped leader of the humans. 2.) John either tries to further along Skynet's progress in the past or allies with Skynet in the future to hurry along production. 3.) Rebels within the human resistance send back Arnold to kill John in the past. 4.) John/Skynet send Terminatrix back to kill Arnold. 5.) ??? 6.) Profit!

I'm sure there's some time travel loop-holes there, but I still think that plot would have been cooler. In fact, after seeing the teaser for the first time, I thought that that's maybe what was going to happen. Now I'm a bit disappointed!

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2003 Jul 03 [ Thu ]

www.labmice.net [http://www.labmice.net/networking/ICS.htm]

Good page with links to Inernet Connection Sharing (ICS) setup in Windows 2000 (2003?)

The same site has a good general networking (Microsoft-centric?) page: www.labmice.net [http://www.labmice.net/networking/default.htm]

and a Windows Server 2003 (W2003) pagege: www.labmice.net [http://www.labmice.net/windows2003/default.htm]

This is 2003 networking: www.labmice.net [http://www.labmice.net/windows2003/Network/defaut.htm]

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www.petri.co.il [http://www.petri.co.il/configuring_ics_on_xp.htm]

Enlightening but gloomy article on ICS. Seems to prefer NAT... Hmmm...

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www.practical-tech.com [http://www.practical-tech.com/infrastructure/i04292003.htm]

Server 2003 is incompatible with many MS products including SQL Server and Exchange

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www.activewin.com [http://www.activewin.com/faq/dotnetserv.shtml]

Good overview of 2003 features. Mentions the "Product Activation" issue.

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support.microsoft.com [http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=237254]

Brief intro to setting up ICS. Mentions restrictions on DHCP servers etc.

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An occasional incident can actually help... (Score:5, Interesting) by kstumpf (218897) on Wednesday July 02, @08:54PM (#6354906) Sometimes people have to be burned before they will respect fire extinguishers.

Our main webserver got hacked just last weekend. It was a RedHat 7.2 that was up for about 450 days straight and was kept pretty well patched. Unfortunately, some custom Apache stuff kept us held back on patching httpd. I guess it really does only takes one weak link in the chain. Once they got in, they put in a rootkit called ZK and started setting up a hidden webserver where they were trying to sell web space on MY box. ;)

Lucky for me, I had a couple of cron jobs in place that used a hidden copy of tripwire and chkrootkit to check for intrusion and shutdown the network interfaces after they mucked around with sshd and the known hosts file. A cheap trick, but it worked.

I'm actually glad it happened. My boss and all of upper management are finally taking security seriously, and I'm milking it for all its worth. Its basically a blank check to lock down the fort. We've eliminated 75% of static NATs, shoved things off the LAN and onto the DMZ, closed dozens of ports, sprung for RHN subscriptions, eliminated several old NT4 servers, and generally did away with all the "convenient hacks" our engineers insisted on.

2003 Jul 02 [ Wed ]

yro.slashdot.org [http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/07/01/230238.shtml?tid=111&tid=126]

Discussion of BBC finding hacker/spammer group.

Includes this:

BBC funding (Score:5, Informative) by evilandi (2800) on Wednesday July 02, @06:37AM (#6347784) (www.andrew.oakley.net [http://www.andrew.oakley.net/)] Their satelite channels run adverts as well The channels aimed at British audiences (ie. for those who pay the licence fee) do not carry adverts. These are BBC1, 2, 3, 4, Children's BBC, CXBXeXbXbXiXeXs (for toddlers), News 24 and BBC Parliament. Same goes for audio services Radio 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, Asian Network, BBC Cymru (Welsh language), BBC Local Radio etc. These are almost entirely funded by the licence fee [bbc.co.uk].

In the case of advert-free satellite signals these are quite literally "aimed"; the BBC broadcast advert-free from a satellite with tight coverage [digitalspy.co.uk] of the UK mainland with only very minimal bleed into the rest of Europe.

The channels aimed at international audiences (ie. for those who do not pay the licence fee) are funded by a mixture of foriegn office taxpayer's money, adverts and in some cases subscriptions. These include BBC World, BBC Prime and BBC America and are handled by a slightly seperate commerical company called BBC Worldwide [slashdot.org] and are broadcast on a number of satellites with coverage for most countries.

The international audio stations such as BBC World Service and BBC English By Radio are funded solely by the foreign office [bbc.co.uk] (similar to the funding for the Voice of America).

British viewers can also see BBC programming on non-BBC channels with advertising such as S4C (Welsh language), UK Gold (comedy & soap repeats) and UK History (documentary repeats). Some of these channels are entirely funded by advertising, some also have small injections from various government departments such as the Welsh Office, Scottish Office and European Union, in the case of regional language programming such as Welsh or Scots Gaelic. For instance, the popular Welsh soap opera Pobl Y Cum (Valley People) is made by the BBC but broadcast on independent station S4C supported by both advertising and government funding [PDF, Welsh and English] [s4c.co.uk].

[2004-03-01: There was a reference in the above article to a certain BBC programme for infants which I have had to obfuscate with X's, because an average of *more than one person a a day* was following that link, so desperate must they be! Since they were undoubtedly unhappy to reach my site, and I am unhappy to serve my pearls of wisdom to kine, I have taken the unusual step of editing a file in-place, so that it sinks into the obscurity which it deserves.]

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Extremely interesting, apparently authoritative guide to hijacking a site, also from the Slashdot/BBC article referred to above:

Re:Hooray!: inaccurate though (Score:5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01, @10:39PM (#6345896) First, it was not a "hacked" web server. Second, it appears that Super-Zonda just recently moved the actual host (well, it too was a proxy) to CyberAngels (they had been on servepath.com for a long time, then ev1 [I think it was] for a weekend, then ... The spammer uses network scanning tools to find an open web proxy. A system where, with the proxy located at {PROXY_IP} as its IP address,

telnet {PROXY_IP} 80 GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.nytimes.com

gets the front page of the NY Times.

He then does the following.

He uses something like the following:

telnet {PROXY_IP} 80 GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: [a_hostname_of_his_own]

and looks at his nameserver's records to see whence came a request to resolve his hostname. Now he knows the location of the nameserver/resolver used by the open proxy. He does this a few times (the proxy may use several nameservers - just as in configuring your windows system for the 'net, you enter two nameservers in the settings). He also checks at his web server to see whence comes the connection (the proxy may or may not make its outgoing connections using the same IP address).

Now he sets his nameserver to do the following:

1: It responds to requests to resolve his spam site which come from the nameserver(s) used by the proxy with the correct IP address (of his spam site).

2: It responds to ANYONE else with the IP address of the open web proxy.

He then sets up his web server itself to drop all packets to port 80 (maybe to all other ports as well) EXCEPT packets to his port 80 *which come from the abused proxy*.

The result? Everyone resolves his spamvertized host to the abused, hacked, illegally accessed web proxy and sends HTTP packets thither. That server/proxy attempts to get and serve up the pages by getting the IP address from its resolver which then gets the IP address of the hacker/spammer's actual site and accesses it and gets the page to return to the victim. Even if one happens to guess at the location of the actual spammer's machine, one cannot verify it since it appears dead to anyone except the proxy.

The trick to locating him is to find out what resolver the proxy is using and have your resolver, nslookup or dig in Linux, say, do a lookup, but not via your ISP's nameserver - instead use the proxy's nameserver/resolver. Then you find whence the proxy got what it served up.

[By the way, this is a pro-spam operation and the spammer's site may host some clients' stuff and in some cases, at least, it actually proxies the pages from another site.]

It is not a matter of the spammer "hacking" anything. It is simply his hijacking web servers which serve as proxies but which allow anyone to use them as proxies.

Why "super-zonda"? The names he used for his nameservers were ns1.super-zonda.com, etc. For other spamertized domains he registered different names for the nameservers, but they were located at the same IP addresses/locations.

One of the web servers/open proxies he hijacked was a British Airways travel shop server. He also hijacked a mideast bank web server. A K12 server in Colorado, I think it was. Several in Korea. He would spam for many clients at once, hijacking several web servers (one for every one or two of the hostnames).

The article on the BBC says:

"When Paul and Matt looked up which computer the website was using to host its service, the IP address belonged to British Airways."

Wrong. That was what it appeared to be. The pages were not there. That site was proxying them.

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yro.slashdot.org [http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/07/02/0450247.shtml?tid=158&tid=99]

Good discussion of privacy issues in connection with DARPA plan to install intelligent cameras in cities.

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www.viperlair.com [http://www.viperlair.com/articles/techreport/input/bsmembrane.shtml]

Good article on PC keyboards compared with the old IBM Model M.

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www.washingtonpost.com [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54888-2003Jun30?language=printer]

Discussion of unethical marketing practices where customer identification is sold.

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2003 Jul 01 [ Tue ]

Tue, 1 Jul 2003 15:52:40 -0400 (EDT)

www.sharkyextreme.com [http://www.sharkyextreme.com/]

Good hardware review site. (Better than "Tom's Hardware", anyway.

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www.perl.com [http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2001/01/poe.html]

The Perl Object Environment (POE) module for perl

Interesting approach to setting up persistent services. Basically you just set up a nunch of handlers and then POE provides the main loop which waits for events.

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search.cpan.org [http://search.cpan.org/src/SPOON/WWW-Shorten-1.5.7/INSTALL]

The readme for this perl module includes advice for installing modules as non-root which seems to be quite general, so I'm going to note it here:

The 'make install' (done later) will install the modules and scripts on your system. You may need administrator privileges to perform this task. Alternately you can can install the module to a local directory (see ExtUtils::MakeMaker for full details), e.g.

% perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/home/abw/

Don't forget to update your PERL5LIB environment variable if you do this, or add a line to your script to tell Perl where to find the files, e.g.

use lib qw( /home/abw/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 );

If you're not after a custom location, just do:

% perl Makefile.PL

To install this module into a specific directory (if, for example, you are a non-root user) instead do:

% perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/name/of/the/directory

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www.indigostar.com [http://www.indigostar.com/perl2exe.htm]

It's funny, I had been looking for this utility in a desultory fashion for a long time. It wasn't till I stumbled across it that I could check it out. Maybe that means it's not very good – if it has no "buzz"? Of course real perlers use a Unix server.

Perl2Exe Lite for Win32 $49 US per copy Generates executables for Windows This is a package that supports the following Win32 versions of Perl: IndigoPerl, ActivePerl, Standard Perl, and ActiveState Perl Perl2Exe Pro for Win32 $149 US per copy Generates executables for Windows This is a package that supports the following Win32 versions of Perl: IndigoPerl, ActivePerl, Standard Perl, and ActiveState Perl Support for the -smal & -tiny options for creating smaller exe's Support for the -gui option for creating no-console applications Priority technical support

It's not clear to me if the cheapo $49 version can produce a GUI executable at all; I suspect not. You presumably have to spring for the $149 version.

They have umpteen other packages available, eg executable in Solaris, etc.

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world.std.com [http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/perl/module_mechanics.html#TOC24.5]

Here's another take on installing Perl in a non-standard place (ie because you're a non-root user).

Installing in non-standard places On many systems, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl is owned by root with 0755 permissions. This means that you must su to root in order to install a module there. If you lack root on your system, you can

ask your system administrator to install the module for you install the module somewhere else Somewhere else Here's how to install a Perl module in a non-standard place.

First, create a directory to hold the module. It doesn't strictly matter where the directory is located, but it must be somewhere that

you have write access won't go away Your home directory is probably a good choice; /usr/tmp is probably not. We'll write

/home/uid/ for your home directory. It doesn't matter what you call the directory. I would suggest

/home/uid/lib/perl Then go back to the development directory and type

.../development>perl Makefile.PL LIB=/home/uid/lib/perl .../development>make install This will build the module and install it in your private directory.

PERLLIB Perl doesn't know to look for modules in your private directory; you have to tell it. There are several ways to do this. Perhaps the most appropriate in this context is to set the PERLLIB environment variable. From the perlrun POD

PERLLIB A colon-separated list of directories in which to look for Perl library files before looking in the standard library and the current directory.

...

Testing a module from a Perl program Sometimes, you want to test a module by running a program that actually uses it. If the module is installed, this is easy enough, but what if the module isn't installed? Somehow, you have to get the program to find the .pm file in the development directory.

This used to require playing complicated games with @INC or use lib, but as of Perl 5.004, there's a much simpler way: use blib. blib is (what else?) a Perl module. From the perldelta.pod:

use blib use blib 'dir' Looks for MakeMaker-like 'blib' directory structure starting in dir (or current directory) and working back up to five levels of parent directories.

Intended for use on command line with -M option as a way of testing arbitrary scripts against an uninstalled version of a package.

The following is from the same site, and looks like it has a lot of uses – I think I'd like to do something like this for a lot of editing purposes, eg updating filedates etc:

Web Pages The build procedure for a Perl module does not create a .html version of the POD. It's easy enough to do by hand, but, again, you get tired of all the typing. I put the following in my .bashrc file:

WEB_ROOT='/usr/www/html' PERL_LIB='Perl/Lib'

pmweb () { if [ -z $1 ] then echo No destination; return; fi; pod2html *.pm; chmod 444 *.html; mv -f *.html $WEB_ROOT/$PERL_LIB/$1/ } With these defines, I can type

pmweb Foo in the build directory, and bar.html will be created and moved to the appropriate directory.

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Tue, 1 Jul 2003 09:17:06 -0400 (EDT)

world.casio.com [http://world.casio.com/pacific/qv/w2k/correct_e.htmlhttp://world.casio.com/pacific/qv/w2k/correct_e.html]

Interesting article on how to reload the Windows 2000 USB drivers for use with a Casio camera.

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Re:MAPI is Wrong Choice - use Standards (Score:5, Informative) by neillt (670676) on Monday June 30, @07:59PM (#6335359) And Outlook/Exchange works with *all* of those standards above (except the web forums, the public folders portion of exchange is the answer, and it does have a "dumb" mode). Here is the point that everyone seems to be missing... Outlook integrates it all into a really easy to use, and (suprisingly) intuitive interface. I have been using Outlook 2002 (aka XP) for almost a year now, and I am surpised almost every day how well they have tied my calendar, journal, e-mail, and contacts all together. If you really haven't seen and worked with it, they have really cleaned it up from the last version (2000). It can be a real timesaver when I need to create a meeting for all the people on an e-mail string, even those on outside e-mail systems (iCal), or have to look up someone in the Global Address List (works much better in Exchange than LDAP mode).

Granted, to use most of these really cool features you have to be running Exchange, However, most features are functional on IMAP and LDAP servers. It just doesn't look and work as pretty as a native exchange install. Once you start pulling these functions apart into different programs, you really start losing functionality. I am not saying everything on your computer should be in one huge mega-application, but these are all related functions that give you a one-stop shop with a clean consistent interface.

Like most people here, if there was an OSS replacement, I would consider it, but we are part of a HUGE Exchange site (US Navy), and we have to have replication and so on. Interoperability is a must, and to be honest, there isn't a package out there that even comes close to matching the feature set and manageability of Exchange/Outlook.

Other side notes..... changing permissions on folders you own (such as calendars and what not) is really easy for users. They just right click, choose Properties, and choose who can see, change, add, etc. I haven't seen anything like that in the OSS world, and is a MAJOR thing, at least in my corner of the world.

Excryption, using PKI certs is a piece of cake, public keys are stored in the GAL, so I don't even need to get it ahead of time. Outlook checks every message, warns of bad certs and sigs, the whole deal. User can be brain-dead, but still send mostly secure e-mail.

I can choose the format of my e-mails (plain, RTF, HTML) and base that on the destination, so that I send plain out on the internet, RTF within the exchange site, and HTML to local addressees, etc.

Ties in with Windows messenger and NetMeeting, so I can click the name on en e-mail and talk to and see someone, using all internal servers, no MSN or any of that crap. Shared whiteboard? No problem. Shared Desktop? Ditto.

Exchange hosts IRC conferences, that can be scheduled via Outlook, and accessed by any IRC client out there.

Those are just off the top of my head. IMO Outlook/Exchange is the best software MS has, especially the latest versions. We haven't had a server crash or DB corruption (with 7,000 users and 2 TB info store) in over a year and a half, and when we did, it was because the SAN died, not exchange. If you have people that know what they are doing running exchange on good non-bargain-basement hardware, it works well and just runs. It's managed by *one* MMC snap-in tool to control all the protocols, stores, folders, etc. That's my $.02......

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Re:MAPI is Wrong Choice - use Standards (Score:4, Informative) by Stinking Pig (45860) on Monday June 30, @08:06PM (#6335418) (www.monkeynoodle.org [http://www.monkeynoodle.org/)] You're missing the value-add of Exchange (and therefore the hard part of replacing it) entirely.

The complete integration of calendar, contacts, public folders, and email in Outlook (well copied in Evolution) is not client-side only – it extends into the server. The two most useful and hard to replace parts are:

free/busy scheduler. Calendar, new appointment, select a few co-workers, pick a time. You can see if they're busy at that time or not. Timezone synchronization is automatic. Select some resources as well, like a conference bridge or a video projector – you can see if it's in use at that time. This is the killer app of Exchange.

global address book. LDAP is great, but few Unixy solutions let you use it from the email composer address field, the calendar address field, and the contact editor. Evolution is pretty close, Mozilla does better but lacks the calendar part.

Public folders which include non-file content. Shared filesystem is okay if I want to share a spreadsheet, but a public folder can include an addressbook of people that you don't need in your everyday book, a calendar showing training schedules and the resources committed, all sorts of goodies like that. VB macros too – workflow and virii to your heart's content :-)

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Re:Wireless... (Score:5, Insightful) by Osty (16825) on Tuesday July 01, @01:48AM (#6337217) (www.daishar.com [http://www.daishar.com/)]

If I had something worth protecting, I would agree. But if someone sinister really wants to attack my computer while I'm in the middle of a mad game of scrabble with my Wife...then I'll fix whatever they broke and take the needed security precautions.

Bad call, for two reasons. First, security is not just to protect your stuff worth protecting. Your network itself is a valuable resource to hackers. Second, you can't always just "fix whatever they broke", because you don't know what they left behind. That's why even "white hat" hackers are bad when they go breaking into other people's computers – they really may not have done anything but added a text file saying "You have been hax0red, here's how and what to fix", but you don't know that's all they did.

This lax attitude towards security is why there are so many DDoS networks out there built from the computers of ignorant cable and DSL users.

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www.the-gadgeteer.com [http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/sharp-c700-review.html]

Good page from an enthusiast about Sharp's clamshell PDA running Linux.

sharp-world.com [http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/021112.html]

Official Sharp page for the c700.

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www.linux-magazine.com [http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/29/]

Link to an issue with reviews of various Linux messaging systems (for replacing Microsoft Exchange).

There's also an article about making a CD which will boot multiple floppy images: www.linux-magazine.com [http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/29/MultibootCDs.] pdf (note that it's in PDF).

This site seems to have been radically reorganized.

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www.thinkgeek.com [http://www.thinkgeek.com/index.shtml]

Silly website with cute gift-like products to appeal to geeks

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2003 Jun 30 [ Mon ]

Mon, 30 Jun 2003 13:22:32 -0400 (EDT)

www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/bin/blosxom.cgi]

My blosxom system URL.

You can post messages by sending mail to dannyw with the subject line "Blosxom " followed by the password.

At the moment only I have the password! I plan to add the comments module when I get a round tuit.

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ask.slashdot.org [http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/03/06/28/0020201.shtml?tid=159&tid=185&tid=186]

Article about things you need to have with you when you go to a cybercafe

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www.slimp3.com [http://www.slimp3.com/pi_overview.html]

Cute mp3-playing boxes with a remote control; they grab the mp3s from a central fileserver via 100Tx.

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www.linuxjournal.com [http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6890]

Useful article on using the LNX-BBC 2.1 (why is there no info on their damned website? Grr!)

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www.musiciansfriend.com [http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/sid=030629113043202183214003481349/g=rec/search/c=4762/c=4763/c=5315/c=4867]

4-track and up digital recording workstations at musiciansfriend.com (I wonder if this lengthy search link will still work if I reload it?)

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Re:Problems with newer versions (Score:5, Informative) by larry bagina (561269) on Sunday June 29, @05:15PM (#6326601) (Last Journal: Sunday May 25, @01:21AM) I agree. Even though there are huge differences between version 3 and version 4 (and now version 5), there are also lots of differences between minor versions – stuff like new functions, changes to how functions work (beyond just bug fixes), etc. Nevermind that there are hundreds of optional libraries and setup parameters, making every installation unique. If you're doing a non-trivial php site, and trying to make it work with different versions of php (osCommerce [sourceforge.net], for example), you end up having to rewrite many functions yourself to make sure they work consistently.

I like PHP, but it suffers from an "incrementalism" design approach. Some stuff really needs to be rethought, and I think PHP 5 is on the right track to doing that.

Re:Problems with newer versions (Score:5, Insightful) by Sanity (1431) * on Sunday June 29, @05:24PM (#6326642) (locut.us [http://locut.us/] | Last Journal: Thursday June 26, @12:05AM) If you're doing a non-trivial php site, and trying to make it work with different versions of php (osCommerce, for example), you end up having to rewrite many functions yourself to make sure they work consistently. Absolutely, this is exactly the experience I had. I like PHP, but it suffers from an "incrementalism" design approach. Some stuff really needs to be rethought, and I think PHP 5 is on the right track to doing that. I hope you are right, but right now I am more concerned about how to deal with differences between different PHP4 versions - it is immensely frustrating to inadvertantly use a function only to discover that it doesn't exist on your new ISPs version of PHP (and of-course they won't upgrade for love nor money lest they upset their other users). Someone involved in PHP needs to take a cold hard look at this issue and figure out how to tackle it head-on, or they will find that with each new version, people take longer and longer to take advantage of new features which will cause PHP to stagnate.

With Java, at least I know for a fact that some Java 1.1 code will work with Java 1.4 and as a result most ISPs keep their Java versions quite up-to-date.

Until the PHP team treat lack of backward compatability as a bug, this problem will persist.

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I'm not sure what this suggestion below does, but it looks interesting. I think it's trying to say you can make a tree of .php pages look like a tree of .html pages.

Re:Yeah Yeah... (Score:4, Informative) by Second_Derivative (257815) * on Sunday June 29, @07:23PM (#6327238) Nah, I reckon one could handle it like this...

ServerName www.myhost.com DocumentRoot /home/myhost/engine.php Alias /res /home/myhost/resources ... or something. I tried it on my server and it seems to work a treat. Once again cheers for the tip

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The CAFC is the problem. (Score:2) by ahfoo (223186) on Monday June 30, @05:01AM (#6329214) (Last Journal: Friday April 04, @01:49AM) The CAFC is like a phone home system in an MS Windows software package called tmp.dat. You see the name "Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit" and you assume, oh yeah that's part of our nations justice system. But it's an evil little fucker that got tacked on just a few decades ago by the administration of a vicious bastard named Ronny Raygun. When people complain about the courts being pro-corporate or pro-patents or pro-copyrights, they're generally incorrect, but in the case of this court it's right on the money. The CAFC was created by executive order and we damn well need to elect a president with the balls to get rid of it the same way.

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Re:It's about time (Score:4, Funny) by l0ungeb0y (442022) on Monday June 30, @02:33AM (#6328885) What if someone slaps a EULA on a virus, and then sues anti-virus researchers?

Well, so far M$'s legal department has the first half covered. Rumour has it that they are backing SCO in attempt at the other half.

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*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text: (Score:5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 30, @08:06AM (#6329672) By mid 2004 at the latest Linux will be a serious contender on the average desktop. The downfall of Windows won't be imminent (that will take another couple of years at least) but Linux will begin to take a serious chunk of the market. Kids will be doing their homework with it, Moms and Pops will be doing Internet banking and sending email to Aunt Edna with it, secretaries will be drafting letters with it, accountants will be creating spreadsheets with it.

But will Debian be there?

We all know that Debian is technically one of the most advanced operating systems on the planet, but is it ready to ride the coming shockwave of the desktop Linux juggernaught?

And just as importantly, do we want it to?

Yes, I know the argument that says Debian is created for the benefit of the people who do the creating, and that we shouldn't care if anyone outside the core developer group uses it or not.

I think that argument is bunk.

I say we should want Debian to grow with Linux, because if it doesn't, it's doomed. Doomed to be marginalised in an increasingly Linux-aware market, and doomed to be eclipsed technically by development efforts focused on the high profile commercial distros.

This point was really driven home to me last week when on two consecutive days I was asked for instructions on setting up Apt-cacher under Red Hat. The requests came from people who manage networks of Red Hat boxes using Apt-rpm, and naturally they wanted to cache packages to save some bandwidth. Apt-rpm and Apt-cacher were exactly the solution they needed.

So a Debian initiative saved the day for some Red Hat users. Sweet.

But now the most frequently cited technical advantage of Debian is gone, assimilated by the highest profile commercial distro. Now when people are discussing switching to Linux, there is no longer the argument that Debian is worth the pain of the initial install and the lack of general vendor support in order to reap the benefit of the most advanced package management system in the world. Instead, users can just install Red Hat and still get the benefits of Apt.

Is there anything wrong with that? Absolutely not. It's the way things are meant to work in the Open Source world. Good ideas and good software get around, and a fundamental part of the Debian credo is that we don't restrict who can benefit from it, no matter what their application. That's a principle I firmly believe in.

And of course I'm glossing over the situation a bit here: I can imagine Debian developers all around the world jumping up and down and yelling that Debian is much more than a bunch of packages, or a technical specification for how to create them, or a tool to manage them. But I'm deliberately simplifying things because that's the way the average Joe User is going to see it: Oh, Red Hat has Apt now, cool. I'll use that instead of Debian.

Joe User doesn't know (or care) about the obsessive backporting of security patches to the stable release, or about the technical and social infrastructure and numerous supporting apps built up around Dpkg and Apt, or Debian's devotion to the purity of truly Open Source licences. As far as Joe User is concerned Redhat has Apt, and that's all there is to it. They don't know enough to make the finer distinctions.

Without distinguishing features like Apt, the argument for going with Debian is diminished. Sure, there are still arguments to be made, but they are less obvious. Here's an exercise for you: imagine you are standing at the water cooler chatting with workmates, and a non-technical colleague just said they are thinking of trying Linux at home and were going to install Red Hat but they heard Debian is really good, but has a tricky installer. They think they'll just try Red Hat because that's what they've heard of other people using, but are interested in your opinion because you're in computers. You've got exactly 15 seconds to succinctly explain why Debian may be better for them than Red Hat.

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I've seen the future.. (Score:5, Informative) by Dynamoo (527749) on Monday June 30, @07:34AM (#6329569) (www.dynamoo.com [http://www.dynamoo.com/)] ..and it stinks. Last week there was a massive "joe job" attack on Doxdesk.com [doxdesk.com], a site detailing browser parasites, porn diallers and other nasty plugins. The aim of the joe job was to generate fake spam supposedly advertising the site so it would get shut down. The spam was being generated from multiple locations simultaneously, and from IP addresses that looked like standard ISP subscribers, mostly in the US and Western Europe. It looks suspiciously like the spam was being sent from Trojanised PCs.

Bearing in mind that the people most likely to want to force Doxdesk.com off the web were browser parasite writers, it seems to me that there is a definite link now between these parasites, certain viruses/trojans/worms and spammers. Just another bit of proof that these people have no respect for the law.

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Good although superficial article about IE6 security settings: 216.239.39.100 [http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:cVyqA8z59vgJ:www.usc.edu/hsc/gcrc/IE_Security.pdf+%22internet+explorer%22+%22internet+options%22+explain+%22access+data+sources+across+domains%22&hl=en&start=5&ie=UTF-8]

(Th elink is via Google to get an HTML page from the original pdf)

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www.volny.cz [http://www.volny.cz/eventcorder/ec_moreinfo.htm]

Cute little free utility to create a little sorta batch file from Windows mouseclicks.

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2003 Jun 29 [ Sun ]

Sun, 29 Jun 2003 11:13:06 -0400 (EDT)

www.tburke.net [http://www.tburke.net/info/win2k/win2kinfo.htm] www.tburke.net [http://www.tburke.net/info/]

Many excellent links on W2K admin issues.

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download.microsoft.com [http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/7/5/c750f1af-8940-44b6-b9eb-d74014e552cd/adminpak.exe]

Link to latest version of 2003 adminpak.msi — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

http://www.sala.net

Interesting website for people interestd in Thailand – news stories etc – from Eric 2003-06-27

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www.feyrer.de [http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/]

"g4u ("ghost for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. First is to upload the compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server. Other is to restore that image via FTP, uncompress it and write it back to disk; network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the harddisk is processed as a image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. Easy cloning of local disks is also supported. "

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Has anybody experiences with Bacula [bacula.org]? An NT client is available, the server side is on **ix.

Just found it today, so I can't give any comments, but at least their claim is cool:

"It comes by night and sucks the vital essence from your computers." :-)

Especially interesting would ba a comparison to Amanda [amanda.org].

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ask.slashdot.org [http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/23/2047213]

Good set of postings about setting up a small server – in this case for an educational institution, but applicable to many similar cases.

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Re:Dell C810 – Sometimes you are only a warning. (Score:5, Interesting) by bellings (137948) on Monday June 23, @12:11AM (#6270936) The Dell Latitudes are not marketed to people who want high performance machines. They're marketed to people who want to be certain that if they order multiple machines with identical specifications they'll get multiple identical machines. Not only will you get several identical machines if you order them all at once (which is much more unusual than you may realize), but you'll also be able get identical machines if you order them again three months later (which is a much more common requirement than you may realize). And, you'll still have identical machines after the various warranty replacements you'll inevitably have over the next three years.

If you don't get any value from having multiple identical machines, then you don't want to buy Dell Latitudes. They don't offer anything of value to you. But don't act as if that means they don't offer anything of value to anyone.

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securityfocus.com [http://securityfocus.com/columnists/169]

Good article about RFIDs, with many links.

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Trust vs. Security (Score:5, Interesting) by lynx_user_abroad (323975) on Friday June 27, @11:17AM (#6311452) (slashdot.org [http://slashdot.org/] | Last Journal: Monday January 13, @04:51PM) I guess Gates still doesn't get it, or maybe it get's it and he's just hoping nobody calls him on it. The concepts of trust and security are often used together, but it's important to realize they are at different ends of the spectrum.

If I ask you to trust me, what I'm really doing is asking you to remove some of the security you may have against actions I take.

Security can be a product; you may want to sell it, and I may want to buy it. But trust is a relationship. I will trust you only if I choose to, and no amount of price cuts will have an effect on that. Anyone who tries to sell trust clearly has other intentions in mind.

Also, you can build a fortress of security on top of a foundation of trust, but it makes no sense offer a fortress of security as a replacement for that foundation of trust, which is what many who offer "security" are really trying to sell. The trust has to be there first, or you have nothing to build the security upon.

I don't know if Microsoft will ever recover enough community trust to make any security they offer worthwhile, but I certainly wouldn't want to accept the "security" they offer without a foundation of trust to place it on. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

www.e-smith.org [http://www.e-smith.org/]

Small Linux distribution with firewall, mailserver capabilities etc.

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Re:The devil you know (Score:4, Informative) by xYoni69x (652510) on Friday June 27, @09:13AM (#6310278) (Last Journal: Sunday June 15, @01:27PM) We upgraded from 98SE to XP because I wanted an OS that could walk and chew gum at the same time. Let me tell you, mistake, mistake, mistake. 98SE is a good OS considering it's 16-bit (read: it sucks!). Very simply put, XP = 2K + crap. You should have installed 2K, it's the best Microsoft OS so far (I have yet to try 2K3 so currently have no opinion on it).

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www.masonhq.com [http://www.masonhq.com/]

Embedding perl in HTML

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www.transom.org [http://www.transom.org/tools/basics/200212.production.basics.html]

Good article on field recorders

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www.transom.org [http://www.transom.org/tools/recording_interviewing/200306.minidisc.html]

Good discussion of Minidisc models for field recording (found via the transom.org link above)

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www.internettrafficreport.com [http://www.internettrafficreport.com/main.htm]

(I had to key this in manually as I lost the ssh aftre trying to add the above)

Interesting site with aggregate Internet traffic reports for various areas

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Coming faster and faster (Score:5, Interesting) by anticypher (48312) on Thursday June 26, @07:17PM (#6307274) (127.249.13.127 [http://127.249.13.127/index.html)] IPv6 is picking up steam, another push like this is going to make it appear in all new computers a little bit sooner.

In every installation I've rolled out in the last few years, I've specced IPv6 support. Every network, router, interconnect, carrier and transit has had IPv6 working. Not always working very well, but enough that people didn't notice whether their traffic went over IPv6 or v4.

Solaris has had IPv6 for several years, and the current release its on by default, plug it into a network with an IPv6 router and it works. M$ is playing catch up by including it natively in XP, but it still takes some tweaking. The linux distros will have to start making it enabled by default (no more kernel recompiles), but that may be happening as I type this. More and more applications are being written as fully IPv6 aware, and most of the traditional apps like ping, FTP, traceroute and SSH are now re-written to use IPv6 when a AAAA record is returned from a DNS lookup. There still is a lot of work to be done, like fully working dynamic DNS updates, and DHCPng, route servers, and a free (as in everything) certificate system for IPSec. Every new release of every browser should check for IPv6 and use it whenever possible, M$ claims that will happen starting with their next desktop releases.

Where I've seen the most far-sighted development is in the newest generation of GSM mobile phones. All the big players are including IPv6 in their current handset designs, and the carriers are now developing value added services to sell. So its not just each phone is individually addressable, but can roam onto competing carriers networks and still have a globally accessible address. Internally, every carrier in Europe with 2.5G/3G services is running IPv6 for everything (except for a few dinosaurs about to be extinct). The other big area is giving each credit card with a smart chip (anti-fraud and verification chip) a range of IPv6 addresses. When the card is put into a reader or used for an online purchase, the chip will actively participate in the verification step by being uniquely addressable and requesting end-to-end encryption. There were several card manufacturers showing off their tiny IPv6 stacks at a recent smartcard trade show.

As I've pointed out in a post months ago, many ISPs here in Europe are making IPv6 available for early adopters, in the hopes of riding the next wave to some higher margins. I've had clients ask me for advice on getting onto the "new internet", because they didn't want to get left behind on the "old and obsolete internet". Then I point out how they are already on it, and my installations use the "new internet" whenever possible.

IPv6 is here, it works, and soon consumers will make it a "must-have" item when buying a new computer. When that starts happening, then techies with a few years of solid IPv6 experience will be sought after for their skills.

the AC working with IPng/IPv6 since 1994 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I can't wait (Score:5, Insightful) by theCat (36907) on Thursday June 26, @07:53PM (#6307493) (Last Journal: Thursday February 27, @04:22PM) OK, this is very funny. IP addys for every bullet. But listen gang, the ISPs have been tight fisted with IP addresses for so long that most of you young-uns don't even remember the day when anyone with a router could count on a Class-C or even B to themselves. Those days are LONG gone; now you get DSL and you pay for ONE frigging static IP address, and if you want anything like a big chunk of a Class-C you have to pay serious cash. Monthly. And upgrade? You want more? Well all the IPs on either side of your teeny tiny block were sold to other shmoes already, so if you want more you get a whole new block. So you better get more than you think you will need...ever...or else everytime you run over your public IP space you will need to reconfig your entire public facing Internet presence to a new block.

But you know what, that's not really a technology limit, that's a BUSINESS MODEL.

Watch this. When they finally go over to IPv6 and later install your new DSL, know what the knee-biting bastards will do? First, they will charge you MORE for a basic DSL with dynamic IP because now it is the new-fangled IPv6 (new=$$$). Then they will assign you a SINGLE IP addy from their store of 128 trillion. And they will assign IP addresses this way in SEQUENCE to all subscribers so that as soon as you get yours you are boxed in by other subscribers just getting theirs. You know they will, it will be a strategic decision to completely undermine the freedom you SHOULD have when there are about 1 billion IP addresses for every human alive on earth.

The only way around this would be to issue IP blocks to physical locations on the earth, so no matter where you are you have all the IP addresses reservered for that square meter of dirt, and if you have a large home/office/company then you have a big block indeed. ISPs would be forced to backbone their entire geographic area, including the whole planet if they are big enough.

As a business model it sucks big wind. But I like it as an end user.

Wire the planet. Freedom to connect! No more IP address space tyranny!! — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — –

download.microsoft.com [http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/6/a/e6a04295-d2a8-40d0-a0c5-241bfecd095e/w2ksp4_en.exe]

Link to service pack 4 for W2000 (allegedly bypassing the damned upgrade system)

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Re:Just Curious (Score:5, Interesting) by dasmegabyte (267018) on Thursday June 26, @05:53PM (#6306699) (www.dasmegabyte.org [http://www.dasmegabyte.org/] | Last Journal: Tuesday August 20, @12:23PM) I think it's telling that even though XP's been out for at least a year, 2000 is still available as an option on new Dells. I asked for it 'special when they ordered my new PC for work.

2000 is, in my opinion, the peak windows OS. It works, plays well with hardware, and doesn't try and mess with the concept of the UI too much. It adds transparency but doesn't mutilate it, and you can turn off the one dumb feature (menu sliding and fading).

XP...well, XP moves shit around on me. Nothing's where I expect it to be. There are all these words...and real estate on menus is sucked up by these complicated sentences that have nothing to do with what I use my computer for.

In short, XP fights my productivity. Every time I try to do something, it slows me down in a way that I only need the first time I do that thing. It's like a tutorial you can't skip past. Whereas Win2k gets things out of my way and only tells me what I need to know. If I need more, it gives me that option.

Even "classic" mode is a bear, because the control panel is all munged up. Erg!

I like Office 2000 better than XP as well...2000 was a good year for MS, maybe it's because it was the last cycle before Balmer came in as Lord of the Sith.

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Re:Just Curious (Score:5, Funny) by Loki_1929 (550940) * on Thursday June 26, @06:25PM (#6306935) (Last Journal: Sunday December 08, @07:09AM) "Any operating system can be made stable if you know what you're doing."

Alright, I'll bite - WINDOWS ME! :P

Christ Almighty couldn't make WinME stable with the help of a dozen M$ software engineers and Gates himself. A stable WinME box? Heh. If such an animal existed, up would be down, black would be white, and I'd be able to get a tan. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Re:Just Curious (Score:5, Informative) by winmonster (515415) on Thursday June 26, @04:27PM (#6305963) Well my laptop and two of my desktops at work haven't crapped out since installing it this morning. I just got done streamlining CDs for Pro, Server and Advanced server. Something to watch out for - SP4 re-enabled the Background Intelligent Transfer and Automatic Update Services. It doesn't re-enable Automatic Updates if you had that disabled, though.

BTW, the md5sums for the service pack linked to by OSNews (I assume it's the same one that Neowin found.) and the one on the official Microsoft download page are identical.

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Re:EULA changes (Score:5, Informative) by greentree (682982) on Thursday June 26, @04:35PM (#6306055) yes. for the automatic updates you simply disable the windows service by going to 'adminstrative tools' in the control panel and opening up 'services'. i do it everytime i do a clean install, as well as a few other services... such as "remote registry access" and useless things like that.

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www.neowin.net [http://www.neowin.net/staff/creamhackered/articles/SP4list.htm]

Change Log (Score:5, Informative) by Jack Comics (631233) * on Thursday June 26, @04:19PM (#6305878) (www.apparition.org [http://www.apparition.org/)] Go here [neowin.net] for the change log to Windows 2000 Service Pack Four. Some of the changes are quite amusing.

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Re:Change Log (Score:5, Informative) by MikeD83 (529104) on Thursday June 26, @04:42PM (#6306144) Here are a couple of the more amusing fixes for the time constrained (read: lazy).

- DHCP Service Uses a Default TTL Value of 900 Seconds - Unexpected Delay When You Log Off - Spooler CPU Usage Remains Above 50 Percent If an LPR Port Has a DNS Name That Is Not Valid for the LPD Server - First Character of Each Line Is Missing When You Print with the Generic Printer Driver - Computer Displays a Blank Screen When You Resume from an S1 or S3 Power State After You Remove an IEEE 1394 Storage Device - Windows Critical Update Notification 3.0 May Cause a "Dirty" Shutdown - A Laptop Computer Has No IP Address After Hibernating - The "Look In" and "Save As" Boxes in Common Dialog Boxes Are Slow - The "Eject PC" Command May Not Work Intermittently - The Computer Hangs If You Call LockWorkstation() While a Screen Saver Is Running - Performance of Microsoft Commerce Server-based Programs May Degrade Over Time Gee, what a suprise... - Paged Pool Memory Decreases as You Add RAM - Multimedia Device Does Not Work After You Update Its Driver - File Server Stops Responding (Hangs) When You Rename a File - No Audio on a Web Camera When You Resume from Hibernation - Computer with Multiple Processors and an AGP Video Adapter Hangs During Startup - Disk Performance May Degrade Over Time It does? — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — –

www.securityfocus.com [http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/326873/2003-06-23/2003-06-29/0]

Security (Score:5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26, @04:20PM (#6305886) And here [securityfocus.com] you can read about the newest security leak which is not patched by this servicepack ;) That guy who analysed the buffer overflow also found a funny easteregg in the buggy dll file. :)

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www.microsoft.com [http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/support/issues/SP4faq.asp] support.microsoft.com [http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=327194]

Helpful Links (Score:5, Informative) by Davak (526912) on Thursday June 26, @04:22PM (#6305904) (Last Journal: Friday May 23, @01:46AM) As always, please read before blindly updating...

SP4 FAQ [microsoft.com] Lists of fixed bugs [microsoft.com]

DavaK

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Re:This problem is solved by redundancy (Score:5, Funny) by YU Nicks NE Way (129084) on Friday June 27, @06:56PM (#6315630) Please put your tin-foil hat away. The incorrect use of humor will not flag anyone for review as a potential terrorist. There is no reason to be concerned that we will interfere with any humor-related deviance. It is only in those cases where individuals with perverted senses of so-called humor that pose a threat to our national security (as determined by our objective and reproducible criteria), and who aver themselves unwilling to participate in our voluntary humor-retraining camps, who will be marked for review. In order to reduce the number of individuals whose privacy will be sacrificed to review, we will use only publicly available data. In order to incentivize those who will be encouraged to attend humor-improvement camps, we intend to locate them in tropical locations near to the ocean, but not on US territory.

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Not a surprise (Score:4, Insightful) by Henry V .009 (518000) on Friday June 27, @06:27PM (#6315460) (thrasymachus.blogspot.com [http://thrasymachus.blogspot.com/] | Last Journal: Monday January 06, @02:06PM) Anyone who has done work on computer vision would have guessed this to be so. What would interest me is in how it would be possible to exploit the algorithms, i.e., how bad of a picture can you get away with? Certain images that might not look anything like a face to you or me will quite possibly be able to fool the system.

The passport angle is probably a red herring though. The unreliability of photo identification is already known. Identity theft is simple and easy. Hell, here in New Mexico, we've already been the first state to accept 'Matricula Consular' cards as valid ID for driver's licenses. Matricula Consular cards, of course, are given out by Mexican embassies to undocumented Mexicans living in the US. By 'undocumented,' I mean illegal, of course. Check out the immigration reform site www.vdare.com for some more information on the subject.

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Cheit's Lament: If you help a friend in need, he is sure to remember you – the next time he's in need.

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Uh-huhn. Now let's look at the IRS' real numbers (Score:4, Interesting) by MickLinux (579158) on Saturday June 28, @01:22AM (#6317780) (Last Journal: Friday June 06, @05:29AM) You can make your statistics say what you want them to say, as long as you read them correctly.

As of 2000 [cnn.com] [it takes a while to compile data], the IRS says otherwise.

Let's try looking at things slightly differently.

Let's suppose that each of us was a slave. If each of us was a slave, then our masters would have to pay for our upkeep. So when you talk about real tax rates, you have to first take the poverty-level upkeep, and then see how much disposable income is paid by each group.

Do that, and you'll quickly see that things are just as the wealthy want it to be: the poor pay for everything, there is a significant fraction of people who are worse off than slaves and working very hard, and the wealthy have both the time and assets to buy the laws. [Rush limbough asks "how can the poor pay for everything"? They pay just as the Egyptian slaves did: with their labor. Let's remember that real wealth is things, not money, and most of that is manufactured by the poor, not the wealthy. Go to a grocery store, and it's a poor person stocking the shelves. Go to a farm, and it's poor people producing the food. Nor is the quantity of food significantly improved by the machinery. I'm writing from an area that has very limited machinery, and much greater food production efficiency than America, with correspondingly lower prices for food.]

I would contend that under this viewpoint, America is very corrupt. But I'd also contend that if your viewpoint makes Daschle look bad, my viewpoint makes him look worse.

But it also makes Bush look much worse.

Things are worse than you see, not better.

(Bible quote with one interpretation: "You say that your sins are as scarlet [like a sore or wound]? I shall make them as white as snow! [look again, that's not a sore, that's leprosy!]". Actually, that's not too far off. Zechariah 11, the people get the masters they deserve. But what you deserve is based on your own individual sins. You want to get out of this, start voluntarily living rightly by your family and neighbors. Which includs no porn, no abortion, and so on.) — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

www.lpt.com [http://www.lpt.com/windowsnetworking/regusers/browse.htm]

Excellent discussion of how a Windows network decides on the "browse master" which provides the "Network NEighborhood" view.

Several other very good pages about setting up W98, NT etc (but haven't found anything about 2003)

>From a guy called Johannes Helmig — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — –

www.metaproducts.com [http://www.metaproducts.com/mp/mpProducts_Detail.asp?id=22]

MetaProducts Links Organizer – edits and handles all kinds of links including Start menu, desktop and internet. $25 download v1.3 build 78.

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www.mathworks.com [http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/]

Version 6.5. Also look for Simulink.

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www.corel.com [http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel/Products/productInfo&id=1042551234521]

Corel Bryce v5

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https://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/newstore/index.jsp

VMWare Workstation v4 $299 online

www.vmware.com [http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop/ws_features.html]

VMWare Workstation 4 features

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www.corel.com [http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel/Products/productInfo&id=1047021764853&content=FAQ#2]

Corel Painter 8 faq $299 (upgrade available for Photoshop full version)

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www.lnx-bbc.org [http://www.lnx-bbc.org/download.html]

"Linux business card" – bootable rescue utilities. Downloadable ISO is 47.6 MB.

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2003 May 20 [ Tue ]

Another shot at posting

link Lots ofc oll text. Line 2.

2003 May 18 [ Sun ]

Sun, 18 May 2003 16:52:15 -0400 (EDT)

This is another test.

Lots and lots of text ccccccccccccccccccccccc dddddddddddddddddd ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Sun, 18 May 2003 16:43:27 -0400 (EDT)

A whole bunch of testing thingies.

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