Classic Tech Tips Archive

If you're upgrading to Vista and use an ipod (true Apple branded iPod)... you might want to refrain from hooking the ipod up to the Vista pc. theregister has reported that Apple is sounding the alarm…

Microsoft Vista is now out, the next version of Windows, successor to XP. While Windows XP will continue to receive updates into 2014 there are many that might be eager to upgrade and move to the lat…

Shocking bit of news here.... (sorry, I couldn't help it.) This is a serious piece though. Apparently the Dell models listed above (Inspiron) and their other 17" cousins may be affected by a rather p…

Here's a followup to one of the first big stories that I posted on... the Sony rootkit - there has been a settlement with the FTC (Federal Trade Commision). It has yet to be approved but, affected cu…

I've spent much of my time the last few years looking at windows support from the linux side of the fence. Certainly linux boot disks and the like are among the most useful utilities that I've used. …

Of course, you shouldn't be using Windows 98 anymore, it's unsupported (i.e. no security updates.) However the reality is that there are quite a few Win 98 installs out there perking away. But, with …

It seems silly with multiple machines to download the same file multiple times. At some level it's not THAT inconvenient. It really depends on your connection speed and the size of the files in quest…

I want to make a note of this here... Microsoft has announced that XP Home and Media center editions will get extended support on par with that of XP Pro. Essentially this means security updates for …

There are some tools that I make use of almost daily. Either because something strikes my curiousity or because of necessity to find out a bit more about a computer issue. DNS lookup tools fall into …

In the past when installing an upgrade version of Windows it meant having your original disk handy to prove that you were REALLY eligible for an upgrade license. What this meant is that if you wanted…

In the US and Europe and many more developed parts of the world we take our internet connectivity these days for granted. (And some go into panic attacks when it's not available...) In some parts of …

I heard on the local news last night that the North Carolina Department of Revenue has lost a laptop that had ~30,000 state taxpayers information on it. Social Security numbers/etc... The report I sa…

Well... there was a news story a few days back about a pilot that had seen a strange orange light in the night sky near Chicago I think and claimed that the light was "not of this world". It was late…

Openvpn has been one of the tools of choice this week, so as I was tinkering on my ubuntu boxen.... I thought why don't I install openvpn there as well for a little broader testing. So, I did, but wa…

This is a good quick reference for some command line linux commands.... pixelbeat.org - linux command line tips. Nice reference. (of course you can also make use of man/apropos and -h to find out mor…

I found a peculiar problem while I was setting up an openvpn link the other day. The goal was a simple shared key setup and I started with the sample configuration and modified it a bit to fit the ci…

I saw yesterday that Dell has a page advertising computers with NO preinstalled OS. Dimension line... n series and they are targetted towards people that want to install an Open Source operating syst…

Spam spam spam spam.... the last couple days have been busy for the akismet spam plugin for my sites. They've been catching a lot of spam comments it appears. Many of them (the comments) seem to be f…

This isn't tech related except for the mail merge side of things. We got a letter in the mail day before yesterday from Discovercard. It had my name and address on the outside just as it's on record …

I wanted to make a note here about a recent news story related to a topic that's fascinated me for the ~10 years or so since I first heard of such things.... For some time there have been 3d printers…

One of the slickest video editing tools I've used in linux is kino. The only problem is that it's geared towards dv files which comes straight from a camcorder (using the dv format.) Most of my video…

One of the utilities under Linux I've made use of in the last few months is Dvdstyler. It essentially will take your dvd ready video and make the DVD filesystem (as well as menus). Simple menus are v…

A long time ago I had found how easy it was to reject messages outright with Postfix that came from non-existent domains. You know... junk from asdflkjuasdlfkjh@imadethisupmyselfanditsnotregisteredan…

I almost forgot to pass along a link to a more comprehensive detailing of postfix's anti-uce controls.... here. Also, in the last article I briefly mentioned whitelisting. IF you intend to have sever…

Postfix has a NUMBER of tools for rejecting unwanted messages before they get in the door and waste your CPU time on deciding "hey this mail is spam". Up until recently I've mostly used the relays.or…