Most of the time when I need to do a Dig or whois or traceroute I’m at a machine that I can use a good command line version of these essential network utilities. However, there are always times when you’re at a PC or situation that is either missing some of those, or you’d rather not run the utility on the machine for other reasons. Fortunately, many of these can be found online. For a long time, I’ve kept SamSpade.org in the back of my mind as a good utility address. There you’ll find Whois lookups, reverse IP -> domain lookups, traceroutes, etc. One thing I didn’t find though on the page was Dig…
Month: December 2005
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Zoneminder for a linux based home security DVR system
This is filed under security, but a slightly different angle than the usual computer security articles. I just ran across a link I’ve kept to Zoneminder. Zoneminder is a neat linux application to help you setup your very own DVR (digital video recorder) for a security camera type (CCTV ?) setup. I originally came across the page by way of a livecd that uses the mklivecd tools that I was working with for a couple projects. Typically a CCTV type security camera system can involve some expensive software for the monitoring of cameras.
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EFF gives up on DMCA exemption process
There’s a story over at PC Pro, that says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has given up on the process for obtaining exemptions from the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). They claim that the three year exemption period is meaningless. All of their requests for exemptions have been declined. Including requests to allow DVD purchasers to be able to play DVD’s purchased from any region, to allow CD purchasers to play copy protected discs on a PC, and to allow skipping of “unskippable” ads at the beginning of DVDs.
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Another entry on DBAN (boot disk to securely wipe a hard drive)
This kind of get’s glommed into hardware, software and security categories all…. I’ve mentioned DBAN a couple times already (Darik’s Boot and Nuke). I had a chance to sit down this afternoon to nuke a few disks I’ve collected over the last little while and thought I’d pass along some points on the DBAN for securely wiping the contents of hard drives. First, no matter what you do to a drive, there may be a data recovery center that can get something from it. I’m talking clean rooms, 1000’s of dollars and some good forensic recovery techniques. Why?
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MySQL setting up database replication
Database replication is one of those useful things that can really make your life simpler. It’s not really a way of backing up the data in a MySQL database, because if you inadvertently issue a command to delete the entire database, it won’t save you from yourself…. it will faithfully replicate the change to the slave servers. However, in the event of hardware failure or other abrupt disruption of connectivity, the concept of replicating from a master to a slave server is ideal.
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The ideal Mandriva 2006 setup (for ISP’s and hosters)
How-to forge has what they describe as a copy and paste how-to up on the Perfect setup for Mandriva 2006 to meet the needs of ISP’s and hosters. It’s copy-paste because they suggest copying the commands and pasting them into the putty/xterm/console window on the machine that you’re setting up. It’s welcome to see this kind of “handholding” so people can see that it really is quite straightforward to get up and running with a linux server.
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Risk using Google Maps shut down.
I’m afraid it was something I expected would happen, *(although you always hope a company will look on such imitation as a form of flattery and be cooperative/excited about the new application of an old game idea…), but the implementation of the strategy game Risk using Google Maps has been shut down by a cease and desist letter from lawyers retained by Hasbro.
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Great online educational Games
One of the great things about computers is their potential to help teach/ help us learn. One of my favorite categories of software is that of educational. I remember spending long hours going through a states and capitals game back on the atari 400 years ago. I have also been fond of language vocabulary drilling games more recently. The nature of the web is that now many good tools like this are available online, finding them is the problem.
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Microsoft Office tips to annoying little problems
PCMag has an article on a number of little puzzling “how do I”‘s in Microsoft Office. It looks like a great listing and worth adding to anyone’s battery of MS Office tips.