Ted's Radio Weblog

Friday, July 28, 2006

Happy SysAdmin Day "If you can read this, thank your sysadmin" 3:50:54 PM    comment []

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Byte: Six Ways To Protect Your Wireless Network Byte has a great article on Six Ways To Protect Your Wireless Network. "It doesn't take a whole lot of work -- or any extra money -- to make your network secure. Follow these steps, and you'll go a long way to keeping your network, PCs, and data safe." 10:17:32 AM    comment []

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Mighty Mouse, now available without a tail Computerworld Breaking News reports Apple cuts the cord on the Mighty Mouse. "Just days after online reports pointed to a new Bluetooth-enabled wireless mouse from Apple Computer, the company today unveiled the device. It sells for $69." Nice looking mouse. 10:13:17 PM    comment []

Friday, July 21, 2006

The Ajaxifiation Of Yahoo Jeremy Zawodny blogs about "The Ajaxifiation Of Yahoo" and points to the YUI Library, a promising AJAX library, licensed under the BSD library, free in cost and licensing. I've been looking forward to testing out an AJAX library, and this looks like a well-documented one to try out. 4:48:27 PM    comment []

Python Special Interest Group: July 27th, Cole Tuininga on Myghty On the Python-Talk mailing list, Bill Sconce of the GNHLUG PySIG announces the July meeting: "The next meeting of the New Hampshire PySIG will be one week from tonight -- the 27th of July, 7:00 PM at the usual fine place, the Amoskeag Business Incubator." "Our topics will be everything that's fair game to Python, including a report by Bill on the Northeast Linux Symposium, where Python RULED, and a remarkable development sprint by Jeff Elkner's students." "Our featured speaker will be Cole Tuininga, a founding member of PySIG, who knows a lot about "other languages" as well as Python, and who will tell us about Myghty." 9:28:17 AM    comment []

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 released Ars Technica reports SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Released. "Utah software vendor Novell has officially released much-anticipated SUSE Linux Enterprise 10. By segphault@sbcglobal.net (Ryan Paul)." SuSE is one distribution I have yet to get around to testing. I've got a number of machines running in the office and at client sites using RedHat and related Fedora or CentOS distributions. I've been enjoying Ubuntu on several laptops as a small and relatively efficient distribution (especially with the xfce-based desktop Xubuntu), but there's a lot of positive comments on SuSE and I'm going to give it a try. 7:40:30 PM    comment []

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

MerriLUG, 20 July, SELinux The Nashua Linux User Group meets this Tursday, and will feature a great presentation on SELinux. Hope to see you there! MerriLUG announcement follows: Who : Daniel J Walsh, Lead SELinux Engineer, Redhat What : SELinux for Dummies Where: Martha's Exchange Day : Thur 20 July Time : 6:00 PM for grub, 7:30 PM for workshop :: Overview Dan starts with an overview of SELinux: How is it different? Who should use it? What are the benefits for home users, small businesses, and non-server installations? Is installation and maintenance comparable with regular Linux distributions? After establishing the application scope and benefits, Dan will cover the utilities, commands, administration, and general use of SELinux. You will learn how to use it, not just turn it off! Driving directions: http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/PlaceMarthasExchange 2:13:44 PM    comment []

Web site disasters made easy... InfoWorld: Application development relays a delightful tale of classic bungling in replacing an app in no need of replacement: Web site disasters made easy. "In 1997, I was working in the IT department at a midsize consumer products company in the San Francisco Bay Area. My job was mainly to keep the network up; the company had no Web presence. But as our competitors ate more and more of our lunch, it gradually dawned on management that we ought to be selling online. So I built a LAMP (Linux, Apache, and Perl/Python/PHP) sales portal that handled online ordering and a corporate Web site. It generated revenue from the outset." I think most software developers have seen similar tales. This one's told well. 1:52:39 PM    comment []

Monday, July 17, 2006

Macintosh web browsers compared Macintalk is running an interesting story comparing the four popular browsers on the Mac: Safari, FireFox, OmniWeb and Camino. The results surprised me. 7:13:24 PM    comment []

Sunday, July 16, 2006

PowerPoint Zero-Day Vulnerability in the Wild Slashdot post PowerPoint ZeroDay Vulnerability Exploited. "whitehatlurker writes to mention a WashingtonPost.com article about another unpatched flaw with Microsoft Office. The bug, part of the PowerPoint software, has already been used in the wild, and may be connected to an industrial espionage case." 1. Never EVER open an untrusted document, whether it is Word or PowerPoint or a PDF or a video. 2. There are no trusted documents. What #2 means is that you should always confirm that, whenever a document arrives appearing to be from a friend or a co-worker, it really is from them. Most of the time, you've had a conversation in advance. Social engineering works by making you think that a document is part of a normal exchange. If Bob in accounting send a message with some non-descript "check this out" message and an attachment that appears to be a spreadsheet, it's worth taking a couple seconds to verify it's really from him. Malware steals other people's email addressbooks, so the mail could appear quite legitimate. 4:35:53 PM    comment []

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Nashua Telegraph reports on Northeast Linux Symposium Dave Brooks of the Nashua Telegraph reports on the recent Northeast Linux Symposium held at Gould Academy in Maine. NLS is focused on bringing Free and Open Source software into the schools, something that is increasing in popularity around here. I thought Dave's reaction to FOSS and its zealots was promising: FOSS is no panacea, but an alternative worthy of consideration. 9:49:13 PM    comment []

How Google Works Baseline Magazine has an interesting article entitled, "How Google Works," containing some history, interesting links, rumors and speculation. 9:39:07 PM    comment []

Microsoft Monthly Patch: 7 Patches, 5 Critical, Remote Code Execution - patch now! OSNews also notes Microsoft Patches Seven Vulnerabilities. "Microsoft alerted us this time about seven vulnerabilities of which five were rated critical and two important. There are vulnerabilities in the Server service, the DHCP Client service, Excel and Office that could allow remote code execution." Seven patches, 5 Critical with Remote Code Execution possibilities, 2 Important, which includes Remote Code Execution within IIS. Bulletins MS06-033 through MS06-039 issued on the 28th week of the year. It looks like this kind of velocity, more than one per week, has been steady at Microsoft for nearly three years now. I would have expected the more secure IIS6 and Windows Server 2003 to stem the flow a bit. But these product continue to be listed in the affected systems list. Hmm. MS06-033: Vulnerability in ASP.NET Could Allow Information Disclosure (917283) MS06-034: Vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services using Active Server Pages Could Allow Remote Code Execution (917537) MS06-035: Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (917159) MS06-036: Vulnerability in DHCP Client Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (914388) MS06-037: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution (917285) MS06-038: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Could Allow Remote Code Execution (917284) MS06-039: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Filters Could Allow Remote Code Execution (915384) Security is not a feature, it's a process. Patch now to avoid more problems later. 5:42:05 PM    comment []

Parallels virtualization software for Macs reviewed OSNews points out that "Ars reviews Parallels Desktop for MacOS X, and concludes: "People pondering the switch to a MacBook can rest assured that with the exception of USB device support and hardware accelerated 3-D applications, their needs will be well met by this little workhorse of a program. Between the networking that just works, the impressive speed and the inability of the client operating systems to know they are running within a 'virtual machine', I think you'll be hard-pressed to find software for any x86 OS that doesn't work within a Parallels VM." It's hard to imagine a more desirable machine than a laptop or desktop with dual-core processors and the ability to run Windows, OS X and Linux in separate virtual machines. 4:26:24 PM    comment []

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

ODF gains a new member: Google Computerworld Breaking News reports Google backs OpenDocument Format. "The ODF Alliance, which backs the expanded use of the OpenDocument file format, gained a new member over the weekend: search engine company Google Inc." Cool! The more the merrier! 10:02:04 PM    comment []

Sunday, July 9, 2006

New front-end tool to manage SELinux OSNews reports SELinux Policy Editor 2.0 Released. "In the past, SELinux has been critized for being too dificult to configure. To solve this, the SELinux policy editor was created: A GUI-oriented editor with a simplified policy description language (ala Apparmor). According to the announcement, this new version includes a much improved user interface and some improvements to the "Policy description language". Very cool. Security-Enhanced Linux is the next-generation security implementation beyond UNIX users and groups, individual file permissions and general security policies of firewalling unwanted traffic and requiring logins. However, I've found it difficult to grasp at first, and surely difficult to master. A friendly front-end GUI tool to manage SELinux is welcomed. 10:10:58 AM    comment []

Thursday, July 6, 2006

Sophos says you should Switch Jeremy Reimer at Ars Technica notes that Antivirus company suggests home users switch to Macs. "The Antivirus firm Sophos has done an about-face, suggesting in their latest report on the state of malware threats that many home users should consider switching to the Macintosh platform. Are they serious?" 10:13:19 PM    comment []

Making RSS Pretty Sean Burke has some great notes and code on "Making RSS Pretty," a nice solution to the problem of people clicking on the XML link and getting an ugly page of XML. 8:02:58 PM    comment []

OpenOffice.org 1.1.x and 2.0.x vulnerabilities - get patching! InfoWorld: Application development reports OpenOffice.org warns of three vulnerabilities. "OpenOffice.org is warning users of security vulnerabilities that can crash the OpenOffice.org productivity software and give malicious hackers access to full system resources." "The company is urging OpenOffice.org 2.0.x users to upgrade to version 2.0.3, released last week. A patch for OpenOffice.org 1.1.x will be available soon, the company said." 10:46:55 AM    comment []

Saturday, July 1, 2006

Hardware upgrades at TR&A... I upgraded Laura's laptop's hard drive capacity from 30 Gb to 80 Gb in an overnight operation using FOSS. I used the System Rescue CD to boot into a LiveCD version of Linux, amazingly quickly. (Hint: use the framebuffer options when working on laptops.) Using an external Western Digital 250 Gb hard drive we picked up on sale at Staples, I made a mount point and mounted the external drive there: mkdir /mnt/external mount -w /dev/sda1 /mnt/external I copied the hard drive contents (with compression) from the internal to external hard drive using partimage, following the onscreen prompts. Before removing the old hard drive, I copied the Master Boot Record from the internal drive to a file on the external drive using a tip I picked up from Knoppix Hacks, using the 'dd' command to copy the sector. Removing the old hard drive and installing the new was easy: one screw hold the hard drive carriage in place, and four screws the hard drive to the carriage. Booting into System Rescue CD again, I used QtParted to create a partition matching the old one in size. (Yes, real men can partition the drive using the command-line parted, but since I had the GUI available, I took advantage of it.) Then, I ran partimage again to copy the external image back to the new hard drive, the dd command to restore the MBR and qtparted to activate and resize the partition to the full capacity of the drive. When the machine rebooted, Windows 2000 forced a CHKDSK as the partition size wasn't what it last saw, and it completed without error. Whew! Up and running! About six hours clock time elapsed, but only ten minutes of keyboarding or so. I wish all the hardware upgrades went this smoothly! 11:05:18 AM    comment []