Author Archive

Rights

The following quote from this article applies to so many things, but particularly I think every day about how it applies to our privacy. Every time we send an email or visit a web site we do so in plain sight. We are sitting in our homes or offices inside the comforts which that provides but such a sense of security is misapplied if you expect the things you do online enjoy the same. I wonder how many people are aware of the absolute insecurity and lack of privacy inherent in their online activities. Many will say “I have nothing to hide”. Perhaps, but this is an abdication of your right to an expectation of privacy. If you dont use it, it will be taken away from you. So, as a technology user and admirer and being concerned about the exersise of our rights, please look into what is available to you to practice onlne privacy. You can start by reading up on the topic (I’ll post some links below) and then doing something about it. My primary recommendation would be some sort of email encryption, and making sure you have secure (SSLor TLS) type connections to your email service provider.

Relevant links:
Schneier article.
Privacy Tools.
CDT Guide.
Wikipedia article.
EFF (see #12).

“It astonishes me to find… [that so many] of our countrymen… should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty… which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries.”–Thomas Jefferson, 1788

And if you are so inclined, my GnuPG key data.
A7BC8236
4A47 A3D5 C4D9 7262 3515 2722 04C4 5A7D A7BC 8236

Interesting state of affairs…

From this article:

“It took Michael from 2003 to 2008 to go from 1:46 to 1:42.9 and this guy’s done it in 11 months. That’s an amazing training program. I would love to know how that works.”

So…. dont smoke weed = go faster faster?

Hmmmm.

Oh boy!

This looks like it could be awesome. I can’t wait.
http://www.flynnlives.com/media/video/0xendgame.aspx

lshw…

“lshw” is a great way to get your machine specs, but it’s output is ugly. So the following command will spruce it up a bit. It is self explanatory.

Do as root:
$lshw -html > ~/machinespecs.html

Here is what mine looks like: zavalla

Cheers

Quote for today…

“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

A Linux rant:

I got Open SuSE 11.1 in a magazine. I tried it. It sucked. It is broken from the start and has been that way for many versions. I felt compelled to try it. SuSE was one of the first distro’s I ever used and it helped me to get into Linux when I first started. Occasionally I get the urge to try it and see how it works. It has a good reputation and every couple of years I cant help myself and I give it a shot. The sad fact of the matter (besides their evil alliance with MSFT) if that this distro is terrible. As soon as I started the install, I received errors that the repositories could not be authenticated and that if I proceeded that I was doing so at some chance of peril. I continued, then towards the end some package could not be downloaded and the installation failed to finish. Ridiculous. This is the current version and there is just no excuse for that. This basically sums up my experience with SuSE for every version since the early 7s. Additionally. any SuSE user I have encountered personally in the last 5 years has had some technical issues that could not be solved due to the fact that SuSE’s management tools are defective, they have been the type of issues that the Debian based distros just don’t have. So, as far as picking distro’s go the the only thing I recommend besides using a Debian based version is that you dont even bother with SuSE. Its likely that no matter what you try you will eventually end up with Debian anyway. Save yourself the waste of time.

Something worthwhile…

documentfreedom

SCOTTEVEST…

I just got an email requesting that I review this product that I purchased from them back in the fall of ’08, and it occurred to me that I should make a post about it here since it is something I have thoroughly enjoyed. There are few things that I buy for myself that I end up truly happy with and this has been one. It’s really the perfect jacket for any gadget carrying freak, geek or nerd. It is well made and fits great. The website tells more about it than I can so look there for all the details. I can say it has been worth every penny. I got mine during a promotional and I think I paid around $250.00 for the combo set.

Uptimes.

There is a pattern here. One is evidence of an UPS failure.

19:29:57 up 137 days, 4:01, 2 users, load average: 1.08, 1.05, 1.01
19:30:38 up 232 days, 20:35, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
19:31:05 up 57 days, 13:23, 1 user, load average: 1.00, 1.01, 1.00
19:31:23 up 138 days, 6:13, 1 user, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
19:31:58 up 78 days, 15:54, 1 user, load average: 5.36, 5.44, 5.49
19:32:37 up 79 days, 1:31, 3 users, load average: 6.18, 6.45, 6.52
7:32pm up 15 days, 6:33, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
18:50:11 up 232 days, 19:52, 2 users, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
04:30:26 up 38 days, 4:59, 1 user, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00

Some of my geekness…

photo.jpg

This is what I call the “ricrack”. It is our rack at work that runs the IT stuff for our business, this blog, a LUG meeting server and some other stuff. Below is a listing of the hardware I have in there.

1 XO 1.1Mb DSL line with 32 IP addresses.
1 Broadvoice T1 line with 6 IP addresses.
1 24 Port Cisco 3800XL managed switch with POE.
1 52 Port Netgear FSM7352S managed layer 3 switch running 4 vlans.
1 Sonic Wall SOHO 50 firewall.
1 SOEKRIS 4501 running Monowall as a firewall.
1 Dlink 8port KVM
1 1U Cobalt Raq3 as a web and mail server.
1 Cisco CSU/DSU/IAD Router
1 USR V.Everything serial modem for the Hylafax server.
1 Dell SC400 as an outgoing mail server, fax server and smap/virus scanner.
1 Dell 15in flat panel monitor
1 2U Supermicro SuperServer w/ 2x Quad Core 1.6Ghz Xeon’s with 4GB ram and U320 SCSI drives.
1 2U Supermicro SuperServer w/ 2x Quad Core 2.33Ghz Xeon’s with 8GB ram and SAS/SATA drives.
1 1U Dell 1420 server as a SMB/CIFS and secondary DNS server.
1 2U custom built Duron based server as an Asterisk PBX for Roebling Investment Company.
1 1U Tripp Lite UPS.
1 1U IBM NetFinity dual Xeon server for the LUG.
1 custom built 4way AMD tower running BSD as a DNS primary… (hosted for MO)
1 2U Tripp Lite UPS.
Behind the rack is a backup backup server in hot-stand-by mode in case of a primary failure.

This is a culmination over the last 6 years or so. There is no proprietary software at all running on any of these devices that I installed (the Cisco, Sonic Wall and I presume the Netgear devices run proprietary firmwares).