MikeM - Current Events
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Monday, March 29, 2004
The guys at FlashMobComputing are trying to get thousands of people to bring their laptops or desktop computers to a single place and have them participate in creating a supercomputer! Nice idea, but I'm not sure what actual good it will do - merely to make the top 500 list is nice, but the power isn't realy usable as it won't be around long enough! But this is a good proof-of-concept sorta thing, I suppose. Anyone with a dozen computers can currently boot ClusterKnoppix CDs and make their own supercomputer at home, so this is just an extension of that concept. Friday, March 26, 2004
Hilarious! Ever want to translate a website into shizzle-speak? This link from Snoop Doggie Dogg's website will do it for you! (Warning: Crude language and occasional vulgarities ahead!) .: Snoop Dogg - Tha Shizzolator :. I recently found a decent streamed radio online - free! At Virgin Radio in the UK, they have four channels of streamed music goodness available to anyone with a music player. You can play them in Microsoft Media Player if you wish. (The MP3 stream) Of course, I had to go that one step further, using the OGG streamer to listen to them in my latest favorite music player, the very simple and effective Foobar 2000 music player. This player can play all of the normal music types and OGG format as well! I just made a playlist that includes these four addresses, and then I can click on any of them I wish and listen to that channel. Very nice! Notice that these addresses are for the higb-bandwidth versions of the streams, and the modem-bandwidth streams all have different filenames (vr32.ogg, etc). Groove : http://ogg.smgradio.com/gr96.ogg - Soul Liquid : http://ogg/smgradio.com/lq96.ogg - Alternative/Pop Classic : http://ogg/smgradio.com/vc96.ogg - Classic Rock Radio : http://ogg/smgradio.com/vr96.ogg - Todays Favorite Music Note that all of these are in London, so the songs are UK-flavoured, and most of the artists I have never heard of - but are quite good. I like this cartoon - and the ones that follow it! Very fitting! (Warning, AD&D jokes/content ahead, non-players might not uinderstand them, but should enjoy them anyway) Real Life - The Online Comic Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Another column from Fred, that outspoken individual. This week he discourses on automated law enforcement in a missive entitled Nowhere to Hide. Here's a warning to all of you that still use MS Internet Explorer as a browser: IE flaw exposes weakness in Yahoo! filtering. Lesson: if you must use MSIE, don't read your online email with it! A better idea would be to switch to netscape or even better, FireFox, and use that for all of your browsing. I switched a few weeks ago, and haven't found anything that MSIE does better than FireFox. Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Monday, March 22, 2004
Catch-up time! Friday we watched '28 Days Later'. Save your money. Good premise, but some seriously huge plot holes, poor acting, and sorry excuses for effects reduce this to a B-movie at best. We also watched Freddy vs. Jason - which I loved and Patty disliked. ;) Then Saturday we shopped, dined, relaxed, and watched hockey. Yesterday Patty & Sara saw 'Hidalgo' - I stayed home and worked on my latest project : Converting an old AD&D 2nd ed module to the new 3.5 rules. Of course it will be nearly unrecognizeable by the time I'm finished! Even the plot is contorted beyond recognition. Hopefully I'll end up with a vastly superior piece of workmanship. After they got back from the movie, we went to Chevys and ate far too much. Love that Chevys food! Mexican as it should be! Thursday, March 18, 2004
Oh dear. Something else to worry about - eBay and Paypal admit user accounts compromise. Be sure to check your accounts regularly, and make very sure that your passwords and SECRET QUESTIONS are hard to guess! I make it a policy to always have the answer to my secret question have nothing to do with the question. You should also use different passwords for each online account you have. And never ever click on a link in an email and enter your information! Wednesday, March 17, 2004
History : I originally installed gentoo using hdb1 for the root file system and hda2 for the boot folder, including grub. It worked fine. I moved the /boot folder to /dev/hdb1 and changed the grub.conf file to conform. I reformatted the hda drive to only have a 2gb swap partition as hda1 and a 4.5gb ext2 partition as hda2. It is currently empty. I edited fstab to remove the mount of /boot on hda2 I edited grub.conf to change the kernel location from hd0,1 to hd1,0 (hd0,1 = hda2 and hd1,0 = hdb1) I rebooted to be greeted with the Error 15 noted below. Using the grub boot diskette I had handy I got into the system with the following: root (hd1,0) kernel (hd1,0)/boot/kernel-2.6.3 boot worked fine to boot into gentoo. I then ran grub: root (hd1,0) setup (hd1,0)/boot/kernel-2.6.3 it claimed to have written the mbr correctly. rebooted to the same error 15. Ran through the grub-install issues below, finally got that working, and now reboot to the same error 15. Still looking into it. UPDATE: 3/18/04 - Grub will not work if loaded onto the slave drive and not the master drive. Doh! I even went so far as to booting to a Win98 boot diskette and reloading the mbr with fdisk. Same results. Upgraded Grub to the new .94 beta version and reinstalled from scratch - no good. Finally Brian mentioned that 'oh yeah, Grub requires that it be installed to the mbr of the master drive.' Argh. Oh well - at least I know now. Plus I learned a lot about grub. ;) I'll eventually install something else on that drive, at which time I will make it the grub master and add the gentoo installation to it. Why don't I physically switch drives? Because there is a padlock on the case and we can't seem to find the key. Still not working. I keep getting errors when I run grub-install: grub-install /dev/hdb /dev/hdb1 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive Not good. Then I used the other name for the drive, hd1, and got the following messages: grub-install '(hd1)' sed: -e expression #1, char 12: Invalid reference \1 on 's' command's RHS sed: -e expression #1, char 12: Invalid reference \1 on 's' command's RHS Unrecognized ls output: Not found or not a block device. After a bit of googling, I came up with this link: grub-install bug Which has a patch by the author of grub himself. This is over a year old, and the new gentoo installation of grub does not include it yet? Oh well. I manually changed the grub-install script and ran it again, and it ran without the error! Fixed, right? Not quite. I still can't get into the grub menu when I reboot. GRUB Loading stage 1.5. GRUB loading, please wait... Error 15 *sigh* Experimenting with Linux? Having problems with GRUB? Grub is a boot loader, and a very nice one at that, but even the best tools need sharpening occasionally. I have been having problems with grub since moving the boot files to another drive - something is keeping grub from seeing them correctly, even though when I boot grub manually it works fine. I assumed it had something to do with getting grub installed into the correct mbr. I had performed the setup step inside grub, but didn't know about the grub-install step! This web site was a great help - GRUB HOWTO. Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Monday, March 15, 2004
We rented "Highlander: Endgame" over the weekend. This featured both Christopher Lambert from the movie series and Adrian Paul from the TV series, and from the back cover promised to be fairly good. Unfortunately, great swordsmanship sequences could not save the film from interminable flashbacks and insane scene changes. From one step to the next during a fight they would go from a gothic hallway with high arches along both sides to an underground steam-pipe ridden industrial complex, to the top of a bridge power station. The editing was more than sloppy, it looked as though they were getting paid by the job, and nobody would be checking the work. The plot was pretty much the same as nearly all of the TV series : A rogue immortal, using a pack of immortal gang-bangers to kill off the other immortals. Whee. Wasted money on this one. Yesterday we went to see 'Starsky & Hutch', and while it likely won't be on the top ten greatest movies of all time, it was definitely funny and worth the ticket price. Snoop Dogg was the saving grace of the movie - playing Huggy Bear. I had always thought that Huggy and Snoop looked and acted a great deal alike at times, and this was a great role for Snoop. The script was funny, but I think they should have stuck a bit closer to the original. Seeing Hutch portrayed as a dirty cop that was out to make money, either by robbing bookies or dealing with the underground for protection, was not one of my favorite parts of the movie. Starsky was portrayed as a tight-ass by-the-book cop that all of the other cops hated or at minimum thought poorly of and made fun of at every turn. In the original series these two cops were excellent examples of great cops - kindhearted, non-judgemental, but extremely focused on upholding justice. Overall, a good movie. Friday, March 12, 2004
Quite a while ago, Eric Raymond and some others created an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto. This document is very eloquent in explaining exactly why we are in Iraq and why we must pursue terrorists and their allies wherever they may go. WMD notwithstanding, Pres. Bush is doing the right thing. I do not believe that he has to explain himself or make excuses. Thursday, March 11, 2004
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
There is another scam out now - be alert for emails pretending to be from AOL regarding your account! Click for more details : AOL - Activate Your Account !! Scam Tuesday, March 09, 2004
I know I mentioned it at the beginning of February, but I thought I would once more: Firefox 0.8 is out, and it is incredible. It is way better than Netscape and a completely new realm of goodness from MS Internet Explorer. Faster, more options, more secure - FAR MORE SECURE THAN MSIE. Popup and Popunder blocking, cookie control, etc. No email client, but that is part of why it is good! I do not believe that a browser should include an email component. I prefer several small, fast applications that work together rather than one huge multifaceted application that tries to do everything and usually fails. 
I installed the Noia theme for FireFox and several of the Extensions for FireFox. If you want it, there is also a Noia theme for KDE. I have this installed (with the above stuff as well) on my new gentoo test unit at work. Looks like Microsoft, SCO have a lot more explaining to do, according to this article on NewsForge. Apparently the SEC is looking into several aspects of the SCO case. Hopefully they will prosecute a the racketeering of a true criminal like Darl McBride just as doggedly as they perscuted the poor judgement of Martha Stewart. Monday, March 08, 2004
About the Martha Stewart case - I think she should be immediately released, all charges dropped, and the people that abused their powers by arranging this little witch hunt should all be thrown in the cell they were reserving for her. She got a hot tip, sold some stock, saved $30k. Not MADE $30k, saved it from being lost. Her acting on the tip was NOT illegal, and she is not being charged for that. No - she is being charged with LYING about it to SEC investigators. For this heinous act she is facing up to 20 years in prison. "How is it that OJ Simpson was found innocent of murder, and Martha Stewart was found guilty of lying about a crime she was not even charged with?" John Small, Editor of SaveMartha, in the Sunday Telegraph A good resource for information on new viruses - the official website of the computer security division of Homeland Security. US-CERT Security Update Friday, March 05, 2004
After a bit of fun, some hardware work, and a few reboots, I finally got one of our Solaris 8 Sun Sparc 20 units to work again. I had been using it for a guinea pig as it was merely important, not critical. I successfully installed half a dozen programs on it, some of which were quite complex! Then I changed the default shell for the root user to bash. Worked great! Except... The path got mangled. Hmmm. Let's try to make that root user default to an interactive bash shell that retains the full path of a standard user. Adding the -i parameter to the passwd file line for root was NOT a good idea. Seems that while it knows what /bin/bash is, it simply cannot deal with /bin/bash -i Thus, the next time I tried to test it by logging into root, it failed! Su: No shell found. oops and darn. So - boot to the install CD to get a clean environment, mount the hard drive, edit the passwd file, and reboot! Simple, eh? It would have been if the CD drive hadn't been bad. :( This morning we swapped the CD Drive for another one, rebooted to the CD, made the fix, exited, and all was well with the world! I'll not be tinkering with root's default shell anymore,either! OK - more information on the scam email I got wed - the one pretending to be from an ebay seller replying to an ebay buyer, but sent to you 'by mistake'. In the real email, there is a link to 'view this item' - DON'T CLICK IT. This will redirect you to a server in North Carolina (most times) that is very likely infected with a trojan or two and could infect you as well. They may also be collecting IP addresses or other information, especially if you go there and they ask for your ebay ID and password. Nassty folkses. Sample email : Hi, please add another $17 for shipping to MICHIGAN. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, what is the shipping cost to SOUTH CAROLINA? -------------------- Question from: stjqeys Title of item: SIEMENS S46 OEM PHONE MOBILE HOLDER- HOT/NEW Seller: uewhusc Starts: Jan-29-03 19:51:23 PDT Ends: Feb-05-03 19:51:23 PDT Price: Starts at $82.49 To view the item, go to: [link removed for safety] Visit eBay, The World's Online Marketplace TM at http://www.ebay.com Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SitejBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site desjign software Thursday, March 04, 2004
Remember the Penguin Baseball game I linked to a little while ago? There is a new version available now - a bit more violent, but still fun! Penguin Bashing Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Broke a tooth yesterday evening, so now I get to go to the dentist. Since it's a wisdom tooth I expect the worst. *sigh* SCO sues DaimlerChrysler, AutoZone. What idiots. Trying to scare people into paying up for a product that they cannot even prove they own the rights to. I hope everyone they litigate against files countersuits for extortion. I just got an email with the subject RE: Question for seller -- Item #180346979 Hmmmm. I didn't ask any sellers any questions. My first thought was that my ebay account had been compromised, and that someone was running roughshod over my reputation, bidding on everything and causing major problems. On the email was a handy-dandy link to ebay to view the item! This is a sneaky bastard of a phishing email. They are (ph)fishing for information - like, if I click on the handy link (which LOOKS like a real ebay link, but is actually NOT - it goes to some owned users machine in NC), I get prompted for my ebay username and password on a screen which looks exactly like the real ebay screen. But it isn't on an ebay server. Someone copied the ebay screen look, made a page that looks just like it but funnels the information you enter into a private database that they can then use or sell to other nasty people. Don't fall for this, people! If you get any emails from ebay or paypal, or any visa company, or any other vendor, company, or other place on the web with intructions to 'verify' your account or view your status or check your settings - it could be a fake email designed to get you to enter your passwords into someone else's website! NEVER click on links in emails unless you are positive that they lead to the right place. Even then, why not open up a browser and go to the site manually? Takes a bit longer, but is pretty much foolproof. This mail in particular is scary because it ALMOST got me. If I hadn't had html disabled in my outlook email, I would have seen only the ebay link address that they wanted me to see, not the fact that that was just a text label for the false link to their website. Disabling HTML is the single most important thing you can do (besides applying all security patches) to protect yourself against viruses and this sort of phishing email. How do you do that? I can tell you, but be warned that it involved making direct changes to the registry and works for Windows 2000 - I do not know if it works for Windows 95/98 or any other flavor of Windows. This website has the instructions for how to do this. If you don't know how to edit the registry, you shouldn't be doing this - find someone who can do it safely. Tuesday, March 02, 2004
I began a gentoo installation, using the latest release. It installed, and with a little tweakage it booted and everything looked fine. Then I strarted to get i/o errors, problems compiling, and even problems editing files. Seems that perhaps the latest release isn't quite up to snuff. I blew it all away, then installed the prior version. It is currently compiling the kernel, and should be done at some point tmorrow morning. Gentoo is a great linux distribution, even if it is slightly more challenging to install than the 'one-click' installs some other distributions have. I especially like the emerge system - instead of hunting around for the source, downloading and copiling it, tinkering with other files needed, etc - you just type 'emerge vim' and vim is downloaded and installed for you, with all dependencies checked. Other distributions have this as well, but I haven't seen any work as well as emerge exept perhaps debian's 'apt-get', and even that has given me a few problems. Win a computer system - this raffle is for a good cause! Read the article and then if you think it worthy, enter the raffle! [H]ard|OCP Well, I got the LFS installation to boot, then decided to install Gentoo onto another part of the hard drive. After unzipping the gentoo installation stuff, I decided to delete it and put it somewhere else. Thus, in the gentoo folder (not the root), I carefully typed rm -rf /bin /usr /proc /dev /opt /boot Which are the folders created when you unzip the gentoo installation. You see, I had unzipped it into /mnt/hda3, which is the third partition on the hard drive. I was in that folder. Unfortunately, when you use /bin or name the folder with a / in front of it, it defaults to the ROOT of the system you are on, not the drive. Ugh. I know this, and was careful, I just should have left the / off of those folder names. So I blew away my new LFS installation in about 15 seconds by my carelessness. But hey, learning is good. I went ahead and installed Gentoo Linux on the system I had just killed. ;) So far so good... |
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