It went un-noticed by most people for a few years. After all, the ones that were affected were just those that were “asking for it”. Where to start. Let’s see, back in the day there were some that sent out messages to other peoples computers and even when people tried to stop getting the messages they kept coming, so a few sites decided that if they could “blacklist” the places that these messages were coming from, they could help people deal with the mass of messages. So they did, and the people sending the unwanted messages were a bit frustrated and improved their distribution a bit, taking over virus infected pcs for sending their messages. The defenders matched and started blacklisting dialup addresses as mail sources. It was frustrating for those doing legitimate mail servers on a dynamic internet address, but there were legitimate ways to fix the problem. But the senders of the messages got mad.
Tag: time
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2,000 year old computer?
The Register had an interesting article on the analysis of what may get classified as the worlds oldest computer (2000 years old – Greek.) Apparently it’s been known for a while (discovered in an old shipwreck around 1900). It’s been called the “Antikythera Mechanism” and has more than 30 dials and wheels. Anyway, it’s currently been undergoing detailed imaging analysis which has uncovered some new clues which may reinforce a theory that it was designed to track/predict planetary locations (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known to the ancient Greeks.)
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Microsoft should use a /home partition….
I saw this yesterday or day before… George Ou has said that Microsoft should move user data to it’s own volume (or partition). He is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. I think these days the default install for any modern operating system ought to assume you care enough about your data to seperate it from the main OS. I find myself slightly annoyed at linux distributions that DON’T do this by default, although most will at least let you make changes to the partitioning in the install process. I had got to just assume this was the way things were since Mandrake always defaulted to seperate home and root partitions.
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Qemu 0.8.1 (with kqemu 1.3.0pre7)
While I was testing out the “single cut and paste” linux vnc remote desktop sharing script and x11vnc binary…. I spent a fair amount of time booting up livecd’s n qemu to test various distributions/ages of linux setups to see how compatible things were. I had not checked in at the qemu site in quite a while (a few months), but there was a new version out… in fact, I think 0.7.1 is what I was running previously, so I missed 0.7.2 and 0.8.0… Anyway, I’m running 0.8.1 now and I compiled kqemu as well (now at 1.3.0pre7)…. wow qemu has made great strides (with kqemu) since 0.7.1 ….
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Remote tech support with anything – would I do it?
I’ve tried to ask myself if I’d trust someone enough to let them run a remote session on my own desktop to solve a problem. I think the answer is “it depends”. If you think about it, I do tech support for home users quite a bit and they let me come into their homes. If I were weighing someone coming into my house, or onto my computer desktop, I think I’d choose my desktop. …
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A closer look at x11vnc
I’ve got to say, one of the things I really like about linux are the myriad of options for remotely administering a system. SSH is the one I use the most, but for the graphical you have x (especially on the LAN), nxserver (which is a compressed and optionally encrypted wrapper of the X protocol….), vnc can be used, although as I’ve noted in the prior articles one problem with either nxserver, X or vnc is that you can’t by default connect to a running X session. x0rfbserver CAN, but only if a user is logged in (as far as I know….) I found an interesting trick with x11vnc that let’s you run it even if the system is at the greeter. (the login screen for X).
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Day of a thousand posts…
It’s funny, some days there seems to be nothing happen that really is outstanding or different, or noteworthy. I don’t know, you see the same news stories, feel like you fix the same problems, etc….. Yesterday though, I worked on a couple of things which will find their way here in the form of posts soon (if time allows). It won’t quite be a thousand posts, but ….
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Knoppix 5
It’s hard to believe it’s time for a version 5 of knoppix, but … I guess it is. I was just booting up Knoppix 4 in a qemu session last night and already several days behind 5… Anyway, Knoppix 5 was released on June 2nd. I saw the note the day after the Ubuntu dapper release, but never got to do a post. (It’s actually 5.0.1 available for download – the 5.0 release was released at CeBiT). Anyway, there are DVD and CD iso’s and bittorrent downloads are available. You might look here for a list of torrent download links.
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20 things you won’t like about Vista
I don’t know, it seems excessively wine-y to gripe about an operating system that isn’t released yet, but I’ve seen people do that about linux quite a bit…. (why doesn’t xyz work in beta 1 of _____ distribution….) It’s a beta, there will be many things that aren’t likable, report it where they’re looking for feedback… That much said, there was an article out at Computer world detailing the 20 things you’ll dislike with Vista. Of course, given that it’s a beta things will likely change (yeah – there’ll be 30 things you don’t like by the full release…. sorry had to be said.) Seriously, hopefully Microsoft is listening to this feedback. I’ve heard that they are aware they need to make the UAP less “in your face all the time…”
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Realtime weather data integrated with Google Earth
This looks neat…. Noaa has started releasing kml files which are compatible of course, with Google Earth, to mesh the satellite imagery of Google earth with real-time weather information. It’s covered a few places…. The Map Room… and Google Earth Blog… Now you have the graphics necessary to do your own local weather report…