Samuel's Blog

Record SmoothWall uptime

Well, it became time to apply an update to my SmoothWall and reboot it. It has created a record uptime of 84 days, 16 hours and 42 minutes.

Samuel

Add comment June 16th, 2005 at 12:02am

Samuel takes an axe to Microsoft

What a wonderful day Microsoft have just had.

To start with, Microsoft have reminded everyone that Windows 2000 support will end on 30 June 2005. Windows 2000 is probably the most widely used OS in corporate environments and cutting support for it isn’t going to win them any friends. Sure, MS want companies to move to their newer, nicer & stranger Windows XP, which will cost money. Australian government agencies would not be happy with spending money on upgrading, so which option do they take:
1) Stay with unsupported an eventually highly unsafe Windows 2000 (see http://www.greymagic.com/security/advisories/gm015-ie/ for proof of unpatched and probably never to be patched security issues in Windows 2000). Cost: Short-term $0, Long-term potentially costly investment in fixing all the issues that will arise. Future versions of Windows Apps (and some current ones) not supporting 2000 will also add to the cost through lost productivity and profits.
2) Upgrade to Windows XP and deal with the new quirks it brings, as well as the interesting upgrades of various programs that simply won’t run under XP. Cost: High, could cost a very large sum of money with the gazillion upgrades and re-training of staff…even if only Windows needs to be upgraded it will still be costly.
3) Move to Linux. Depending on the applications required in the company, probably a good idea, even if only part of the company changes. The cost is anywhere from $0 to low/medium depending on which distro is chosen and whether training is required. Regardless of the overall cost, it is still worthwile considering…good to be informed, you may need the information when it comes time to avoid Windows Longhorn.

Second axe grinding issue, Microsoft have censored MSN blogs in China. If you are chinese and want to talk about anything remotely political, Microsoft will give you a nice little warning saying “This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them.”

Among the censorings are:

• Freedom
• Democracy
• Human Rights
• Communism
• Socialism
• Capitalism
• Taiwanese Independence
• Tibet
• Dalai Lama
• Falun Gong
• Terrorism
• Massacre
• Demonstration
• The name of the chinese president, Hu Jintao
• Tiananmen

If you’re chinese and want a blog, use blogger.com or something useful, because Microsoft & Yahoo want to censor you, Microsoft being more censor filled than Yahoo.

And while I’m at it, lets have a look at AOL and Microsoft.
AOL users reportedly make up the majority of zombie computers on the internet, which is hardly suprising with the way AOL operate.

For those of you who don’t know, AOL internet connections work with proprieatary AOL software (Including their own bizzare version of the clattering rubbish machine that is commonly known as Microsoft Internet Explorer). AOL also do everything in their power to prevent users from understanding the way their computer or the internet works, at the same time, not providing any anti-virus, anti-spyware or other anti-malware software. Congratualtions AOL, it is thanks to you that the rest of us have to ensure that we keep all our anti-malware software up to date consistently and ensure we have good firewalls. Thankyou AOL, you have successfully slowed down the Internet with your constant stream of zombie generated junk, and thankyou so much for never letting any of your users know about any problems that could occur. It is thanks to you AOL that non-computer savvy people have absolutely no idea that they are spreading useless junk and will never know or suspect that such stuff even travels to and from their computers. Thankyou AOL, thankyou sooooo much.

If you are an AOL user, please do a few things, firstly, change ISP. Secondly, install, run, and keep up-to-date anti-malware software (use the search box on the right of the page if it helps). Third, Install Mozilla Firefox (web browser) and Mozilla Thunderbird (email client).

Samuel

1 comment June 15th, 2005 at 08:45pm

A very busy day

Ah yes, a very busy day indeed.

I got to Dickson College just after 9am and had Maths, at 10am I started on the organisational stuff I had to do for the open night, then went and fixed up the screensaver script on a Linux computer in the library.

The Linux computer runs a screensaver which receives text input from an application (in this case a simple echoing script) and displays it on the screen with effects. The script it runs is called screensaver.sh and contains a number of messages about the library and the college. It was considered to be a good idea to have a special set of messages running on open night, so I made a backup copy of screensaver.sh which I named screensaver_old.sh
I then went and wrote a set of open night messages and named it screensaver_open_night.sh
I also needed a screensaver script that didn’t advertise the open night, which would become the script after the open night, this was named screensaver_normal.sh

A cron job was then used to automatically copy screensaver_open_night.sh to screensaver.sh at 6pm (This made the open night script the active screensaver script) and another line in the crontab file copied screensaver_new.sh to screensaver.sh at 9:30pm so that the new normal screensaver would be back in operation when people come in tommorow. I still have to clean off the excess files by hand, but I felt it was better to leave them all there just in case something went wrong…which it didn’t.
Having all of this automated not only impressed and excited the library staff, it also meant that I didn’t have to change scripts before and after the open night.

After this I went and checked in with my boss to remind him that I was busy with open night preparations, he understood and spent a few minutes outlining the work he wants us to do over the next few weeks.

I then went to find one of the deputy principals to confirm what time he wanted the laptop and projector setup in the hall…he was however on class at the time, so I went back down to the library where I was informed that the screensaver was spitting out “Unexpected EOF” messages…It then occured to me that I forgot to fix the missing quotation marks I had spotted earlier, five minutes later it was fixed.

I then went around to media to arrange a time to set all their wallpaper to the same one (preferably a custom made Dickson College Media wallpaper), we arranged to do that after I had finished in the hall with setting up and having a practice run of the speeches.

Then I had class for an hour and then went and saw one of the deputy principals and arranged to do the hall setup and practice after Lunch. After this I was about to have lunch when an occasional colleague showed up, this took up half an hour after which I was able to have Lunch.

At 2pm it was time to setup the hall, a laptop, a projector, and couple extension leads and…whoops, another extension lead to make the required length, then some audio problems and finally the pratice run of the speeches.

By the time this was over it was close to 4pm and I felt that it was a good idea to have my afternoon tea, and then have an early dinner as I wouldn’t have time later…so I sat down outside with my thermos, my mug and my radio and had afternoon tea, and then walked to Dickson and had an early dinner.
By this stage I felt like calling 2CC’s Mike Frame and voicing my objections to this new arboretum that is planned for Canberra (see www.the-riotact.com for more details…or stay tuned, I’ll have more details in a future post), rather than wasting mobile credit, I fed a pay phone and found that Telstra have made it possible to send text messages from them, not that I cared, I just wanted to make a call, which I did.

After this I went back to the college (It was around 5pm) and found a job I could do…I sat down and answered the numerous phone calls regarding what time the open night begins, one of these callers seemed to recognise me, perhaps as a 2CC caller, or perhaps from here…I don’t know, it is a mystery. I also had other receptionist duties during this time.

At 6:30pm (after having a cup of Milo) I went around to the Hall and turned on the projector and laptop, I then started the first slideshow, which was a looping set of various pictures of the college and it’s events. I then went back to the front office and continued my phone answering and receptionist duties.

At 7pm I went back to the hall and took my seat at the table with the laptop and projector (I also unofficially declared myself to be the “Technical Producer” of the speeches). I spent the next 10 minutes looking through the script for the main speech, and pretending to cross reference it with the other papers I had, which I thought made me look much more busy and important. At about 7:10 I was quite annoyed with the loud music from the Jazz band playing in my ear, they were good, but they were far to close to me, so I pretended to find a note on the desk, busily and frantically checked other papers, got up, took some paper with me and escaped the hall for a couple minutes and then came back in and continued to examine the papers.
By this stage I was doing plenty of watch checks as we were supposed to start the speeches at 7:15pm, and eventually got the nod from one of the deputy principals and changed to the main overhead presentation, which I ran as the speeches went on.

After the speeches (and a public thankyou from one of the deputy prinicpals) I packed up the laptop and projector and took them back to their locations, I also moved a TV & DVD on a trolley which were playing some footage from a dance class into the main congregation area. I spent the rest of the night assisting in various places (and confirming that my screensaver scripts were behaving…which they were…It’s Linux, it just works). I then got a lift home with a teacher who lives near me (hooray, no Action FlexiChaos), checked my email, got a cup of coffee, sat down and watched Stargate Atlantis.

Unfortunately, Steppy the pedometer is slightly clunky and I really didn’t have time or space to take him with me today, and as such, there is no stepometer for today….it would have been right off the scale anyway, their was barely any time when I wasn’t walking today.

Samuel

Add comment June 9th, 2005 at 11:38pm

Microsoft Betas? Yuck!!

I received an email from a friend and colleague today, here is a “most of email” extract:

I applied for BETA testing for MS, which is pretty good, coz then i get free stuff (good thing number 1), they accepted my application, and will be sending me stuff when ever the next beta thing is out.

I also got my hands on a copy of Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2, Billy Gates is sending that to me soon…….

finally ms are doing something half decent lol

Now, I’m confused, Most Microsoft software is annoying enough, and most Beta software has a few bizzare quirks, but put these together as Microsoft Beta’s…Yuck!
I can’t share my colleague’s entusiasm on this topic, and certainly will not be using any beta Microsoft software from him unless I am certain it doesn’t have the usual mix of bugs, quirks and crashy bits that come from that horrid combination.

Samuel

2 comments June 1st, 2005 at 05:23pm

My fastest Tux Racer speed.

Can penguins get booked for speeding? Maybe, but I don’t know how anybody could catch them!

Samuel

Add comment May 21st, 2005 at 12:23am

Tux Racer is addictive

I keep finding myself returning to Tux Racer for a bit of mindless penguin guiding, seeing good old Tux reaching speeds of 190KM/H is quite fun, if you haven’t tried Tux Racer yet then I would reccomend that you do…it is great fun.

The even better news is that, like Firefox and Open Office, the open source goodness isn’t limited to the world of Linux, and does in fact work on Windows, Macintosh OS X & Macintosh OS 9 and earlier.

Tux Racer can be downloaded from http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/

Samuel

Add comment May 18th, 2005 at 11:49pm

Really???

According to two bits of identical spam I received, my eBay account has been suspended….Oh well, never mind, it’s not as if I ever used it….I didn’t even know I had it!

The spammers did get one thing right though, my account was suspended because I omitted my name, address & phone number (including phone numbers which have been disconnected).

They didn’t think the email through though…They wanted me to verify a suspended account…In most cases the spammers try to hide the real URL to some extent, but not this one, I hovered on it and found that it would send me to bioclass.cs.ntou.edu.tw/chat/home/index.html (I’m not making a link out of it for obvious reasons).

Samuel

Add comment May 17th, 2005 at 10:07pm

More lunatics claiming IE superiority.

Just because Mozilla Firefox had a little security issue during the week, all these strange people have come out of their little boxes to enlighten us all to the benefits of Internet Explorer. So now I am going to settle the argument by saying this
“Every browser will have it’s own security issues from time to time, they will vary in severity, and in some cases, will be downright dreadful. However, the difference between browsers is the amount of issues, and the time it takes to fix them. Internet Explorer has a long track history of having many many security issues at any given time, and Microsoft tend to release updates once per month, on the other hand you have Mozilla, they usually have no issues, and occasionally have one or two, and in most cases, a fix is available within a few days. The other fact is that IE integrates into Windows very very closely, which effectively gives exploits access to your data if they so desire, Firefox (and just about every other browser on the face of the planet) has little to no integration with the OS, meaning that exploits have much less access to data…Now do you see why Firefox is better from a security point of view?”

Samuel

Add comment May 15th, 2005 at 07:00pm

Linux printing

There was one minor problem with my Linux-to-Windows printing exercise, it was printing at 75%ish size and cutting off a little bit of the left side of the page. I did a google search for "mpc400 cups" (without the quotes) and quickly discovered that my printer works better with the drivers for the Canon S630, so I went to System–>Administration–>Printing, right clicked on my printer and chose properties, driver tab, and changed the printer type to S630, clicked "Print Test Page" and kablingo, I got a full page quality printout.

I’m Happy 🙂

Samuel

Add comment May 13th, 2005 at 11:08pm

I can print to a windows printer from Linux!!!!!!!!!!

Yay!!!!!
At long long last I have managed to get a Linux installation to print to a windows printer, amazingly the printer is a “windows only” printer.
I have a Canon MPC400 printer, which only has drivers for Windows, I have tried connecting to it from Linux with drivers as close as possible before, but it hasn’t worked…until now. Forget Samba printing, hooray for CUPS (Common Unix Printing System).

After a failed attempt at using SMB printing earlier tonight, I started thinking “Maybe I can download a program the intercepts print jobs sent to a certain compatible printer and redirects them to the windows-only printer.” This was fairly pointless, and lead me to a heap of $100+ shareware apps that didn’t do what I needed…then it struck me “I’ve seen CUPS in Windows before, but where?” I had a look throught the printer properties, nope, not there…hang on, it’s in Windows Setup…

So I went to Control Panel, Add Or Remove Programs, Add/Remove Windows Components. I scrolled down to “Other Network File & Print Services”, had a look inside and found “Print Services For Unix”. Needless to say, I was getting excited by this stage, but the description once I clicked on it was even better “Enables UNIX clients to print to any printer available to this computer” (Linux, for those of you who don’t know, is a UNIX derivative). Naturally, I installed this instantly, I watched it install as well.

After the installation I went back to the printer properties, but there was no change, and I thought “OK…..how does this work then…..”, suddenly I remembered seeing it install IIS stuff (IIS being the built-in Windows web server), and I remembered that CUPS is an extension of HTTP. So, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, IIS, delve through the tree of servers, and I found printers at address http://server/printers/

So, back to my Linux machine, bring up firefox and go to http://192.168.0.5/printers/ (192.168.0.5 being the IP address of the computer with the printer), it asked me for a username and password, I entered numerous different ones, but that didn’t work, so I hit cancel and got an IIS message telling me that webserver ACL’s (Access Control List’s) required me to login. Back to the Windows machine, try accessing the printer site using Internet Explorer and hey presto, it worked…this probably means Micorsoft did some nasty “Nothing but Internet Explorer” trick, which would be silly considering that it is supposed to give UNIX access to printers. Check authentication settings and (suprise suprise) discover that it is waiting for Internet Explorer to provide encrypted Windows style login details…well that’s just stupid, Linux/Unix/The entire non-microsoft world (except for some old versions of Macintosh) don’t use rubbish like Internet Explorer, we use good stuff, like Mozilla Firefox. I quickly changed it to anonymous access, but before hitting OK I realised the security implications, the rest of the world can now use my printer….oh, hang on, no they can’t, I’m safe behind my firewall…hit OK.

Back to my Linux machine and Mozilla Firefox, yay, I can now access the printer site, but I need the printer address, click on the printer and I now see the address is http://192.168.0.5/printers/Printer/.printer tell Linux this and it asks me what sort of printer I have…Canon, naturally it didn’t have my MPC400, so I chose the closest thing, the MPC5000 (which happens to use bjc600 drivers). For the first time ever, I didn’t get a “can’t connect to server” message. I sent a test page to the printer…..the printer started making noise, my excitement shot through the roof, the printer was PRINTING FROM LINUX, yes, my windows-only printer was PRINTING FROM LINUX, I saw the test page emerge from the printer, I deliberately collapsed, got up, picked up the test page, danced around the room for a bit, put down the test page and, in excitement, started typing this…yes, I repeat, my windows-only printer was PRINTING FROM LINUX.

EDIT: Due to the number of people who are landing on my blog for information on Linux and the Canon MPC400, I have decided to add this note, as per the Linux Printing post I have discovered that the MPC400 works best with the Canon S630 drivers. END EDIT

In case you’re wondering, the reason I did all this is because I had two web pages to print, and was too lazy to walk to another computer and print them from there!!

I thought you might like to see my first ever Linux to Windows test page…no not particularly??? Well here it is anyway!!

Samuel

Add comment May 13th, 2005 at 12:42am

Mind reading computers?

This story is just plain scary, researchers have found that the brain reacts differently to different stimuli, and have developed software that can say which stimuli the person was subjected to, even when they don’t know it themselves. The scientists have plans to make it possible for the software to know what kind of mood a person is in, even if they are mentally stable, perhaps even "reading" your thoughts.

Surely this invades any sense of privacy that anybody could have. It really doesn’t matter what I think, what matters is how I act on it.

For example, if I became extremely annoyed at someone and felt like murdering them, this would only be a passing thought, and as long as I didn’t act on it, it would have no relevance, but if my mind were read while I was thinking this, surely I could then be charged for conspiring to murder, even if I had no intention of carrying out such action. For that matter, what right does anybody have to find out what I am thinking, unless I inform them. I have to wonder how anybody can create such technology and think it is a good idea.

Samuel

Add comment April 28th, 2005 at 11:49pm

NEWS FLASH: Tridge describes bitkeeper at lca

This morning at Linux.conf.au tridge described how he worked out the bitkeeper protocol.
Connect to a bitkeeper server with telnet and type "?" (without the quotes of course).

Tridge also refuted being a wizard…

On a slightly related note, Linus & Linus have new quotes today, and the lca vikings are preventing people from taking white mugs outside (pictures coming soon)

As for my seminar video, well I played with the audio last night, there are still large chunks of non-understandable speech, but it would probably do as an interim release…please note that the interim release will not have any presentation slides editied in, as I can’t really tell when I brought them up. Once I have the microphone audio I will then be able to edit in the slides and use the camera audio as background noise. I will also be able at that stage to add titles and other important stuff, including creating a DVD and placing the iso online, which, thanks to the lovely people at ibiblio.org, will be available for download at a decent speed…

According to google alerts, this blog has now been indexed and is appearing in search results, googlebot has also visited the photo gallery, so hopefully that will appear on google shortly as well. Last night while editing the audio, I was watching my webserver spitting logs, and was glad to see that people are using the ubuntu cd’s available from the registration desk at lca.

Samuel Gordon-Stewart reporting for Samuel’s lcaLIVE

Add comment April 21st, 2005 at 12:17pm