Gulp! This photo isn’t quite the smile you’d expect!
Author Archives: Donncha
A warning about PayPal
This story is frightening if you use PayPal. There’s a long thread to go with the story so some useful information may come up. (I’m on dial-up, can’t afford to read through the whole lot!)
Linux 2.6 again!
Yay! I’m in Linux 2.6 land again. I couldn’t use it on my last PC as it would freeze for some reason (the machine wouldn’t shut down properly either when using 2.4 so blame the h/w somewhere!) Anyway, this article apparently is all about how fast 2.6 is, I haven’t read it, but it’s an excuse to post this!
NZ – the source of your news?
It seems that when Americans want breaking news coverage they go east, all the way to New Zealand. (Of course it could be west as well, but run with it and humour me!)
When Janet Jackson revealed (almost) all, Internet traffic to some of New Zealand’s online newspapers increased rapidly, the majority of it coming from the USA!
Don’t suppose those newspapers would report on “I’m a celebrity..” or other UK/Irish goings on?
Computer Science, what is it?
A long thread on Computer Science was started by Niall O Broin earlier today. It went through the usual arguments about what constituted CS and what was important. Some argued that low lever languages were a waste of time as most developers won’t ever touch that aspect of programming, but I tend to agree with Kenn Humborg and say that ASM is important, and anyway, it’s fun and logical and more interesting in many ways than high level coding!
*grrr* more on hard disk failures
This timely /. article discusses a reason why several Fujitsu drives broke down in the last year. They used a different flame retardent compound in the controller chips! Doesn’t make the loss of my photos any easier to take however. 🙁
Taming OpenOffice.org
A visit from the FBI
A visit from the FBI – to a school to give a talk on security. Good entertaining read!
Well, it finally happened. Right before Christmas, I had a little visit from the FBI, writes SecurityFocus columnist Scott Granneman. That’s right: an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation came to see me. He had some things he wanted to talk about. He stayed a couple of hours, and then went on his way. Hopefully he got what he wanted. I know I did.
Let me explain. I teach technology classes at Washington University in St. Louis, a fact that I mentioned in a column from 22 October 2003 titled, “Joe Average User Is In Trouble”. In that column, I talked about the fact that most ordinary computer users have no idea about what security means. They don’t practice secure computing because they don’t understand what that means. After that column came out, I received a lot of email. One of those emails was from Dave Thomas, former chief of computer intrusion investigations at FBI headquarters, and current Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the St. Louis Division of the FBI.
Dave had this to say: “I have spent a considerable amount in the computer underground and have seen many ways in which clever individuals trick unsuspecting users. I don’t think most people have a clue just how bad things are.” He then offered to come speak to my students about his experiences.
Bad, bad Apple!
My apologies to the owners of this site but it’s going under “Humour” here. Read the following extract and you’ll see why!
Take for example Apple Computers, makers of the popular Macintosh line of computers. The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called… Darwin! That’s right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don’t advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an “Open Source” license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, “lickable” buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism.
(via jofny_ on #LUNI in Chicago)
My Settop Box – Easy Linux PVR
This project looks promising. It’s an attempt to make MythTV easier to install by supplying it with Knoppix. AFAICT you install the backend on your server and it’s even possible to run the frontend from the Knoppix CD on a different machine. Unfortunately the recommended hardware spec is well beyond any of the machines I own. That said, I’ve downloaded the ISO so I’ll certainly give it a go!