LinkDump
NASA Cassini Probe Poised to Sling Around Saturn
There is no anti-spyware silver bullet
Malware attacks IE users via pop-ups
Sun axes core support professionals
Can A Bounty System Cure Spam?
NASA Considers Mobile Lunar Base
Metisse - New Looking Glass Alternative
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Posted by chunkybacon at 1:36 pm
Friendster goes PHP
Friendster site redone - was formerly a JSP/Tomcat site.
Posted by chunkybacon at 10:29 am
It's time to dump Internet Explorer
Netcraft - Hackers manipulating Internet Explorer add ons
Quote: "Hackers have found yet another way to compromise Internet Explorer, adding Browser Helper Objects to their toolkit in mounting ever-more sophisticated phishing attacks. A series of recent exploits have penetrated security holes in fully-patched versions of Microsoft's browser to steal users' online banking passwords, adding to a growing crisis of confidence in Internet Explorer, and perhaps online banking as well. "
"It ultimately installs its keylogger trojan, which scans for https sessions connecting to URLs of popular banks (including Citibank, WestPac, Barcklays and HSBC) and then intercepts outbound data from IE before it is encrypted using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol."
SANS - "New scam targets bank customers"
Quote: "When an outbound HTTPS connection is made to such a URL, the BHO then grabs any outbound POST/GET data from within IE before it is encrypted by SSL." - in other words, your bank details are stolen.
Posted by chunkybacon at 9:52 am
Konsole - logging into multiple boxen the lazy way
Tired of opening up multiple konsole tabs every morning in order to ssh into your various boxen? Here's a way of doing it automatically.
In Konsole , select Settings > Configure Konsole > Session
Create the various ssh sessions you make have to your boxen - in the Execute section you would type in ssh username@ipaddress. Where username is the user name you normally log into that box as, and ip address being the ip of that particular box. Name the session and save it - do this for the rest of the boxes you normally log into.
Now open up the new sessions as tabs in your konsole window (Session menu). Once you have all your ssh sessions opened , select Settings > Save Sessions Profile - type in a name for the profile , in my case "my_herd_of_boxen"
Right click on the Konsole icon on your desktop if you have one and change the Application>Command to:
konsole --vt_sz 90x25 --profile my_herd_of_boxen
Launching the konsole app from your desktop will now open up ssh connections to your multiple boxen.
Posted by chunkybacon at 8:59 am
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
1 Day to Cassini orbital insertion
Cassini is due to go into orbit around Saturn in 1 day , 7 hours and 19 minutes as I write this.
June 30, 9:30 p.m. EDT - NASA TV Coverage begins.
June 30, 10:36 p.m. PDT - Engine fires for 96 minutes to slow down.
July 1, 12:12 a.m. PDT - Engine burn complete; spacecraft in orbit.
Nasa also have a full guide to the orbital insertion
The BBC mention this story as well giving the UK times as follows:
"The burn starts at 0336BST on 1 July, with the probe's main engine turned towards the direction of travel. The braking manoeuvre ends at 0512BST, with Cassini in an elliptical orbit."
The Slashdot crowd are discussing it here , with a mention to join #cassini on irc.freenode.net
Posted by chunkybacon at 8:14 pm
LinkDump
US-Russian Spacewalk Reset for Early July 1 (Reuters)
Cassini Participation a Boon for ESA (SPACE.com)
ITNet in Cabinet contract blow
419ers score football lottery winner
Cassini runs rings round Saturn
Cassini-Huygens Saturn Orbit Insertion Imminent
Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1 Released
The March Towards Micropayments
Posted by chunkybacon at 5:45 pm
Allied Irish Bank to roll out JDS
Sun's Java Desktop system (a Linux distro variant) to be rolled out on 7,500 desktops at the Irish bank.
Posted by chunkybacon at 4:30 pm
Leafnode & Knode
Extensive article on how to configure Leafnode and Knode so that you can do offline Usenet posting and browsing.
Posted by chunkybacon at 2:39 pm
PHP Open Directory
Interesting PHP script that grabs Dmoz.org data so that you can have displayed on your site.
Posted by chunkybacon at 2:27 pm
Monday, June 28, 2004
2 Days to Cassini orbital insertion around Saturn
As i write , Cassini is only 2 million kilometers away from Saturn
Posted by chunkybacon at 9:30 pm
CERT recommends anything but IE
Web virus may be stealing financial data
IE Flaw prompts warning
Note that the flaw only affects Microsoft IIS web servers, and people who use IE to browse IIS powered sites.
Linux and Mac users are, as usual , immune.
Posted by chunkybacon at 3:01 pm
IIS Malware is a phishing scam
Netcraft are reporting that malicious code downloaded from compromised IIS servers onto users machines includes a trojan that records keystrokes in an attempt to steal e-commerce login information. There are potentially serious ramifications for Microsoft as well, since the exploit used to spread the trojan appears to have infected end users with fully-patched web browsers. Several accounts suggest some compromised IIS servers were also fully patched.
Lurhq have a full analysis of the trojan here
Posted by chunkybacon at 9:18 am
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Kite photography
360 degree panorama kite photos
Scott Haefner has taken superb 360 degree landscape shots taken from a kite - he explains how he did them here
Posted by chunkybacon at 7:43 pm
Friday, June 25, 2004
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Thursday linkdump
KDE 3.2 In depth overview
Excellent in depth article on the architecture of KDE 3.2
Web email - the new hard drive?
Jeremy Zadwodny muses on whether we're seeing the beginnings of the web as a platform in itself..
When spyware crosses the line
If that story doesnt convince you to dump IE, nothing will.
The Importance of Being Linux
Despite the erroneous statement of open source development speeds being 'glacial' (huh? it seems like every 3 months there's a new version of KDE out for example - not to mention manic release schedule of Mandrake), the rest of the article is rather good. And considering it's posted on ABC News, this really does show that Linux is starting to appear on CEO and CIOs radar screens big time. There is also a forum discussion about the article is
here.
Posted by chunkybacon at 1:12 pm
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
New Phoebe Cassini pics
The Cassini team have posted have some seriously cool pictures of Phoebe showing mineral distribution, a temperature map, in ultraviolet , and mosaic.
Posted by chunkybacon at 11:26 pm
I've got more Gmail invites
Leave your name and email address in the comments box.
You HAVE to answer the following question:
If you had a billion dollars, what would you do with it.
The best answers will get an invite - my decision is final...
IMPORTANT NOTE: There are rumours that Hotmail are blocking Gmail invites outright. Yahoo is ok - but i've heard that the invites are going into the bulk folder instead.
Posted by chunkybacon at 10:47 pm
Bag o'links
File traders put an end to Lollapalooza
64 Bit Linux - Just for Geeks?
Google demotes Coca Cola jingle
Skype for Linux Beta
Posted by chunkybacon at 11:01 am
South Australian Democrats go with PHP Nuke
After rejecting an alternative $50,000 content management system.
Posted by chunkybacon at 9:26 am
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Linux cable TV decoder
For educational and research purposes only...
Posted by chunkybacon at 1:39 pm
Slashdot: Confessions of a spammer
Slashdot discussion on an in-depth article describing the details of how a spammer works and operates.
Posted by chunkybacon at 10:50 am
Monday, June 21, 2004
No more Gmail invites
I've given out all of my Gmail invites. Thanks to those of you that expressed an interest - I hope the lucky few that got invites will enjoy gmail.
Posted by chunkybacon at 10:15 pm
SpaceShipOne returns to earth
First sub-orbital flight by private company. Reached altitude of 62 miles.
Posted by chunkybacon at 4:28 pm
SpaceShipOne takes off
The first private manned spacecraft has blasted off.
Posted by chunkybacon at 4:09 pm
Gmail Invites
I've got some gmail invites to give away. please leave your name and mail address in the comments section of this post. thanks.
UPDATE
Hotmail blocks Gmail invites and Yahoo moves invites into the "bulk" i.e. spam, folder.
Posted by chunkybacon at 1:37 pm
French govt eyes open source savings
France's conservative government is trying to cut costs as it seeks to rein in a public sector deficit, which is set in 2004 to bust the European Union limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for the third year running.
Open-source software such as Linux, OpenOffice, Mozilla, Apache, MySQL and Evolution is "very credible," Dutreil said.
Posted by chunkybacon at 10:49 am
Hyperfast browsing
If you are looking for a super-fast browser, why not try out Dillo. On Mandrake you can grab it by doing a urpmi dillo from the konsole (or by using rpmdrake - install software). It can't render css yet, and doesn't handle javascript and flash too well, but if you just want to browse the news or look up documentation, it's quite handy (and extremely fast).
Posted by chunkybacon at 9:28 am
Friday, June 18, 2004
Speed up Firefox
Speed up Firefox
Great thread on webmasterworld about tweaking Firefox settings to make your browsing experience go a heck of lot faster.
I had to link to the google search because Webmasterworld prompts you for a login if I direct link to a forum thread. You will see the thread as option 1 of the search results.
Posted by chunkybacon at 10:48 pm
CIA commit database
No, it's nothing to do with a certain spook outfit, but rather it's a realtime website that monitors cvs commit messages in the open source world.
A fascinating source of info about the bleeding edge of open source development.
Posted by chunkybacon at 8:51 pm
Latest Cassini photos
Gallery here of the latest Cassini pictures including close ups of Phoebe, a long range shot of Titan, and an infra-red picture of the southern hemisphere of Saturn.
Posted by chunkybacon at 8:37 pm
Thursday, June 17, 2004
History of Programming Languages
O'Reilly have produced a fascinating poster showing the history of programming languages since the 1950s. Over 2,500 programming languages are covered, and of course, the Slashdot crowd are busy talking about this here
Posted by chunkybacon at 7:33 pm
Bergen's CTO : Why we moved to Linux
ZDNet interview with the CTO of the Norweigian city of Bergen, on why they are making the move to Suse Linux
Posted by chunkybacon at 12:39 pm
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
BugMeNot
Handy website , which gives out communal logins for those annoying registration-required newspaper websites.
Posted by chunkybacon at 9:14 am
Friday, June 11, 2004
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Linux bloat
Great article here on the bloatedness of Gnome and KDE.
The author , quite rightly , points out that there are millions of Win98 machines out there - probably with no more than 64mb of ram at most.
He just points out that we can't move them to KDE 3.2 or the latest Gnome because of the ram and processor requirements. And if they need to get new hardware, they'll just stick with the pre-installed Win XP anyway...
Food for thought... but then i'm rather partial to Xfce anyway.
Posted by chunkybacon at 10:05 pm
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Democracy and the internet in action
Came across this superb UK site - They Work For You - which allows UK people to keep tabs on their elected representatives.
You can find out what an MP voted on, what they said in parliament, what their registered interests are and lots lots more.
Posted by chunkybacon at 7:14 pm
Open Transport Tycoon
Open sourced version of my favourite game of all time.
Posted by chunkybacon at 3:09 pm
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Monday, June 07, 2004
Saturday, June 05, 2004
GoboLinux
Interesting new distro out of Brazil, with a new directory structure (the old /usr/bin and /lib are gone). In the words of GoboLinux, the filesystem itself IS the package manager. They also have their version of Gentoo's Portage,called Compile.
Slashdot are discussing this here
One wonders if this distro is a direct or indirect result of the Brazilian governments pro-Linux stance.
Posted by chunkybacon at 9:48 pm
Friday, June 04, 2004
Cassini Countdown - 26 days left
Cassini will encounter Phoebe on June 11th. Orbital insertion around Saturn timed for July 1st.
Related stuff:
Where is Cassini now?
Two Pairs of Storms on Saturn
Colorful Saturn - new Cassini photos of the ringed planet
Posted by chunkybacon at 9:15 pm
Fear and Loathing
The Anti-virus Industry scam
"One has to wonder how the anti-virus industry sleeps well at night. On one hand, it purports to serve the world by defending our computers and networks from any number of electronic critters and malicious code. On the other hand, sometimes its "cure" is worse than the problem its companies and products allegedly treat."
Over at Lindows/Linspire , Mike Robertson muses on the fear and loathing of computers that Windows users are currently experiencing. In his words "It's reminiscent of Hal from Space Odyssey. Computer owners fear that if they launch the wrong program, visit a 'bad' website or simply view an email, they will trigger an unstoppable torrent of emails and virus spewing from their computer."
Of course ,we Linux users are completely immune from this.
Posted by chunkybacon at 9:02 pm
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Brew your own fuel for 41 cents a gallon
"After a few months of driving 10 miles to a biodiesel fuel station he decided it was time to start brewing his own. It didn't take him long to find a recipe for biodiesel, and with used cooking oil that he gets for free from a nearby restaurant, he figures he's now getting 44 miles per gallon out of his diesel powered VW Golf and only paying 41 cents a gallon."
Posted by chunkybacon at 8:55 pm