Personal Made Public

Our beloved PowerBook suffered another friggin' hard drive failure. I could send it back to Maxtor for replacement, but I'm wary of sending away a drive with my financial data on it.

In any case, we couldn't wait the weeks it would take to get it repaired, so we bit the bullet and bought a new MacBook.

Side note: Some of you that know me as a Sysadmin might be surprised by that fact that we're a Mac family. What would really surprise you is the number of people that work on Windows professionally that won't touch the thing at home. OS X just has more functionality for the power user (like built-in ssh, perl, apache, bash, ftpd, and on and on and on) along with a great user interface and application suite that just work.

Anyway, my review after the jump...

Continue reading "Review: Apple MacBook" »

Posted by Kevin at 07:13 PM | Permalink

Good news! Fedora Core 5 is NICE.
Bad news! Getting my wireless connection to work was a pain.

The IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T43 uses an Atheros chipset in the built-in wireless card (WARNING: I understand that this is not the only card they used). Fedora Core 5 installs smoothly (just set your LCD screen and resolution during setup) with the hitch being an inability to detect/install the wifi card. Here's what I did to get it running.

1. Add the Livna RPM repository to your yum configuration. The easiest way to do this is using the configuration RPM provided by Livna. Install the RPM and yum will now see Livna as a valid repository.

2. Use yum to install MadWifi (drivers for Atheros chipsets available from the MadWifi Project):

yum install madwifi

You probably need to reboot at this point to make sure everything gets installed properly (but maybe not).

3. You now should have an ath0 network device. HOWEVER, if you try to manage this via System | Administration | Networking or NetworkManager you'll find that it identifies itself as an ethernet device instead of wireless. If you try to add a device under Networking you'll get an Ethernet device instead of wifi. That's no good, so create it by hand:

#Atheros Communications, Inc. |AR5212 802.11abg
NICDEVICE=ath0
ONBOOT=no
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
TYPE=wireless
ESSID=***********
KEY=************
MODE=Managed
RATE=AUTO

You have to change this to match your environment. For UNC-CH you can look up the settings on the UNC Help Page (not published here for security). The asterisks are blocking out the UNC ESSID and KEY. Don't put asterisks there!!!

4. Save the above file as "ifcfg-ath0" in the following locations:

/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/

5. Bring up the connection:

ifup ath0

You should now be up and running!

I can't promise this will work for you or even that everything was done the "right" way. In fact, I know that there are still some problems to iron out (networking control panel can't edit the device). What I can say is that I can now connect to our campus network with a simply "ifup ath0". I hope this helps someone else out there!

Posted by Kevin at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Ever needed to submit a valid email address to register for access to a website or make an online purchase? Ever wondered if in doing so your address wouldn't end up sold to or stolen by some spammer. Ever wondered who your address gets shared with?

I came across a great way of using Google's GMail to create disposable/sortable email addresses that let you duck spam and find out who is sharing your address and with whom.

If you have a GMail address named johndoe@gmail.com you obviously know that email sent to johndoe@gmail.com will reach you. The interesting feature that we're going to use is this: email to johndoe+amazon@gmail.com and johndoe+ebay@gmail.com will also reach you!

Need a valid address with eBay? Just stick "+ebay" immediately after your GMail username. Same for Amazon or your cable company or mailing lists to which you subscribe.

For the sake of this example, let's say you need to sign up for a mailing list that interests you, but you're afraid spammers might get your address. We'll call the list "exoticflowers". Sign up with the list using the address "johndoe+exoticflowers@gmail.com". Email to that address will still come to your "johndoe@gmail.com" address even though the "To:" will include that "+exoticflowers" in it. Don't add ANY spaces: those are not allowed in email addresses.

Okay, here's where it gets useful!

Click on "Settings" at the top of the page and then click on "Filters". Choose "Create a new filter". The ONLY piece you need to fill out in the little form that appears is the "To:" line. Type in "johndoe+exoticflowers@gmail.com" and click "Next Step".

On this screen, click on the little drop-down menu next to "Apply the Label" and choose "New Label". Type in "Exotic Flowers" and hit "okay".

So what have we done? We have created a filter so that every message to "johndoe+exoticflowers@gmail.com" will be labeled with "Exotic Flowers". Instead of showing up in your main mailbox, these will now automatically appear under the label "Exotic Flowers". You'll see a list of labels on you Inbox screen along with how many new messages have come in with that label. Just click on the label name to see the messages.

This does several great things for you. First, if you get lots of mail you can now sort it into categories that are useful to you. Second, if you have trouble getting off a mailing list you can simply filter that address straight to your Trash so that you never have to deal with it. Finally, if you start getting spammed you'll know which company or list let the spammers get you address: those spams will contain the modified address, so they'll end up in the same folder as the company or list that let the spammers (or "affiliated company") get your address.

GMail is an incredible application that will let you do LOTS of cool stuff with your email. This is just one example: search the web and the GMail site for more clever tricks!

If you don't have a GMail account and want one (they're free, but invitation only), just leave a comment for me and I'll send you an invitation (I currently have 100 to give away).

Posted by Kevin at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (100)

Most of the country is still using Internet Explorer with their Windows computers. I'm going to make a quick pitch for replacing Internet Explorer with Firefox (another web browser). It's easy and there are several good reasons you should do so:

1 - Using Internet Explorer (IE) to surf the web is risky.

Some years back Microsoft integrated IE with Windows. This lets you effectively use one program to access your computer, programs, important files AND the internet. Most people don't even know that's what their doing. Prove it to yourself. Open "My Documents" -- that's where you normally store your documents (if you don't just dump them on the desktop like many people do!). See the "address bar" at the top of the window? Next to the word "address" you see a blank filled in with "My Documents". Replace "My Documents" with "cnn.com" and hit enter.

Okay, so you now know that you are accessing your private files the internet with the same program if you are using IE. If you have anything important on your computer and are at all concerned about protecting it THIS IS A BAD THING. If you're letting IE loose on the internet you are letting the program to which you are entrusting your data play with websites whose owners you probably don't know. Any security error in IE can give that website control over your computer and access to your data. Don't risk it!

Firefox is NOT the control system for your computer and is not used to access your files, so a failure in Firefox's security is unlikely to put all your files at risk. Using a different web browser is not unlike using a second television in your house. In this case, though, the original television (IE) also has access to all your financial files. Firefox isn't bug-free, but (unlike IE) poses little risk to your private files.

2 - Internet Explorer is badly outdated. Very little effort has been made by Microsoft to really improve Internet Explorer for several years now. Firefox works hard to stay up-to-date with the latest web standards to give you fast and accurate web pages.

3 - Firefox does more! You can change the look of Firefox or add extra free tools (extensions) that make Firefox work the way YOU want to work rather than making you work like someone at Microsoft thought you should. Just select Tools | Extensions from the Firefox menu to see all the great stuff that's available. You just CAN'T get IE to do half the stuff that Firefox does.

Firefox is FAST. Firefox is FREE. Firefox is SAFER. Firefox is up-to-date for today's internet. Firefox does more. Firefox is easy to install! Just go get it!!!

Available free from the Mozilla Foundation: Firefox

Posted by Kevin at 07:02 PM | Permalink

Mostly to see what it's all about and how it's implemented, I have added Google Adsense to my site. I don't know if I'll ever make a nickel off of them since I think I may never get enough traffic (and too few click-throughs from that) to ever hit the $100.00 mark (at which time they mail you your first check). Still, even if it takes five years to get check I could make use of $100!

Besides that, I'm really curious to see what kind of ads Google might deem relevant to my blog. I also replaced my blog's built-in search with a Google search bar (which is also useful as a jumping-off point to the rest of the world for me).

Posted by Kevin at 02:03 PM | Permalink

Someone recently posted a comment to my recent post entitled "Cool Site of the Day: Understanding Evolution".

Here is the comment:

The problem here is that Darwinists care about what's scientific over what's true and the Creationists care about what's true over what's scientific.

I don't think ID belongs in science curricula because it is not science. In other words disproving Darwin hardly is a proof for the existence of God. However, I do believe that some of the criticisms of evolutionary theory proffered by Creationists like Charles Johnson deserve at least a mention in science classes (even if only to be rebutted) since many of these criticisms are logical and therefore valid.

Charles Johnson?

Is this Darwin's midshipman on the HMS Beagle? I doubt that is the right Johnson since he could offer little of merit to current understanding of evolution and natural selection.

Could it be a reference to Charles Johnson, president of the Flat Earth Society? The guy that argued that the Earth is flat and that the space program is faked? The arguments of the Flat Earthers against the Spherical Earth Theory are very much like those of the Intelligent Design movement, but it appears that Charles Johnson spent little effort on the subject of Evolution.

I suspect the comment meant Phillip Johnson, auhor of Darwin on Trial, so I'd like to talk just a little today about the rebuttals raised by Johnson in Darwin on Trial.

Darwin on Trial is a criticism evolutionary theory with laypeople as its target audience. Much like The Case for A Creator (by Lee Strobel) it strays far afield from the actual scientific body of knowledge in its attempts to disprove evolution. For example, Johnson claims that the fossil record fails to reveal transitional organisms. This is a widely circulated complaint in popular rebuttals to evolution. However, a cursory investigation of the scientific body of knowledge quickly reveals this claim to be specious. In fact, the Evolution site at Berkeley covers exactly this topic. While arguments such as these concerning "gaps in the fossil record" are repeated by numerous organizations and individuals voicing opposition to the Theory of Evolution, these arguments are only found in non-scientific publications intended for a lay audience because they directly contradict the accumulated body of evidence that is widely known in biology, anthropology and paleontology. The arguments are therefore only persuasive to individuals outside the scientific community.

I have chosen to address a single misrepresentation of the facts in Darwin on Trial, but the egregious nature of the misdirection (egregious in that anyone with knowledge of the scientific data could not in good consience portray this argument as evidence undermining evolution) brings the validity of the entire book into question. I can't begin to address all the problems in the book, but for anyone interested, I suggest reading this article concerning it.

None of this addresses the many fundamental problems with Intelligent Design. However, Intelligent Design is often promulgated a a valid alternative to Evolution by its proponents because of numerous flaws they cite in the Theory of Evolution. These flaws, however, are only considered valid outside the scientific community due to the fact that any examination of the body of accumulated data readily rebutts the claims of lack of evidence or contradiction of fact. A good explanation of some of these claims and the actual science supporting evolution is covered in the portion of the Berkeley site dealing with misconceptions about evolution and the evidence for it.

Evolution is considered to be an incredibly strong theory. This is theory in the scientific sense of the word, NOT the lay sense. The distinction is critical for anyone that wishes to understand how strong the support for evolution is among scientists that understand the field. I have written previously on the difference in meaning of "theory" in science as opposed to daily speech. I strongly suggest that anyone that does not know the differences in the use of the term read that entry before evaluating the Theory of Evolution and the support for it.

Posted by Kevin at 08:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to this article on The Register, Microsoft is looking for Black Hat hackers to work for them. In case you don't know a Black Hat is someone that specializes in illegal computer break-ins, i.e.: the Bad Guys. The job appears to consist of having access to the source code for new products before they ship. The "former" Bad Guy will then get paid to tell Microsoft about all the security flaws they find. Of course you can trust your for-hire Black Hat to honestly and completely reveal every single flaw to their corporate masters, right? Right?

It used to be that the Black Hat community had to run long grueling tests against Microsoft products with no "inside" knowledge of the code. Now they're being invited to just browse right through it.

I am flummoxed by this one. So much so that I went back to The Register to make sure I wasn't looking at a post on April 1 (I wasn't). This has to be one of the craziest notions I've come across for securing your products -- it's the equivalent of having burglars review your home security for you.

I'll be in the corner stuttering in disbelief if anyone needs me...

Posted by Kevin at 02:16 PM | Permalink

One of the rovers on Mars has become stuck after attempting to climb a slope in the area of Mars it was exploring. Although the rover has impressive abilities to handle the Martian terrain, it appears that engineers became overly confident of the rover's "4x4" capabilities. Engineers believe that the lander can be rescued via NASA's first-ever OSRO ("On Site Rescue Operation). The OSRO equipment was purchased "off-the-shelf" from a private vendor under the "faster, better, cheaper" NASA initiative. NASA estimates that an in-house attempt to build the equipment would have cost in excess of $500,000. Using off-the-shelf equipment the OSRO unit was purchased for approximately $20,000.

A really cool image of the rescue operation can be found
here . Great technology: Go NASA!

Posted by Kevin at 06:15 PM | Permalink

The Good: The case cover is detachable and contains a pocket for your earbuds. A detachable belt clip and an armband are both included. A bottom "hatch" exists so that you can plug in your iPod without removing it from the case. The case has substantial rubbery padding around the sides so as to offer good impact resistance.

The Bad: The cover is a little too small, so the scroll wheel does not line up well with the opening. The tightness of the sleeve will also tend to scratch your iPod if you remove it from the case often. I've also found that when running on warm days using the armband the Sportsuit can cause your iPod to overheat and lock up so that you cannot reboot or shut down (remove it from the case and put it in a cool place for 10 minutes to get control again). I also find the armband to be a bit large. I'm a small, but fairly muscular, guy. I have to tighten the armband to just about its limit. Women are likely to find the armband too loose for them to use, especially when active.

The Verdict: Great idea and great features are marred by poor manufacturing. Runners should beware of the problems with heat dissipation. Overall, the Sportsuit Convertible is overpriced. I'm shopping for a better case that will meet my needs.

Posted by Kevin at 05:15 PM | Permalink

Like many people, I spend too much time fighting spam.
Unlike many people, I fight it for 350 other folks at the same time.

Our mailserver receives thousands of spam messages every day. I constantly train our filters to keep up with the changes the spammers make to get their messages through.

Today I decided to try a new tactic. I created a new email account which has only one purpose: attracting spam. If I can draw spammers to it, I can use those spams to keep the filters trained in a very up-to-date fashion.

The address is published NO WHERE. First thing I've done is to have my spamtrap address "unsubcribe" to a bunch of the spammers whose messages are in our "recent spam" collection that I use for training the system. Many of the spams seem to go back to the same points of origin, so I probably unsubscribed from no more than six or eight discreet spammers. If they're good to their words, my spamtrap won't receive any spam. If the unsubscribe buttons are (as I believe) just a method of verifying your address to send even MORE SPAM, then my spamtrap should start getting hit within the next few days. Stay tuned...

Continue reading "Spam" »

Posted by Kevin at 03:38 PM | Permalink