Recent Posts

11626

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« Last post by 40hz on July 24, 2008, 09:32 PM »

You can find the results of a very good firewall challenge at the following link:

http://www.matousec....hallenge/results.php

The site tested 33 products. Complete details of the testing criteria and scoring system are given along with recommendations. Links are provided to all products tested.

The complete test suite they used for the challenge is also available for download. Handy if you want to check up on a product they didn't cover:

http://www.matousec....tware-testing-suite/

Two free products made it into the top 5: Commodo and Online Armor.

Top 5 Protection Level Scores:

1. Outpost Firewall Pro 2009 6.5.2355.316.0597

2. Online Armor Personal Firewall 2.1.0.131

3. Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.22.349 (free)

4. ProSecurity 1.43

5. Online Armor Personal Firewall 2.1.0.131 (Free)

11627

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« Last post by 40hz on July 24, 2008, 04:49 PM »

Hello all.
I'm the author of Writemonkey. ...

-iztoks (July 24, 2008, 04:15 AM)

Just wanted to say thank you ever so much.

11628

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« Last post by 40hz on July 24, 2008, 04:47 PM »

Its software with 'personality', I can easily imagine it being on the Mac.

-MrCrispy (July 22, 2008, 07:51 PM)

I haven't tried it, not having a mac, but I believe Writeroom is the same idea.

-allen (July 23, 2008, 07:56 PM)

I'm running Writemonkey under Windows.

11629

General Software Discussion / Re: Comodo, Webroot and ZoneLabs bundle Ask Toolbar and Search Assistant

« Last post by 40hz on July 23, 2008, 09:52 PM »

Rant: Enough with the toolbars!

What would happen if you install the bundled toolbars...
 (see attachment in previous post)

-PhilB66 (July 23, 2008, 08:40 PM)

That is truly awesome! Kind of reminds me of Picasso's Guernica...something that fascinates and horrifies at the same time.

Thanks for posting that!

11630

Living Room / Re: Anyone Here Using a Drobo?

« Last post by 40hz on July 23, 2008, 09:25 PM »

40hz,

Sorry, I'm not quite ready for Linux just yet.  If I drop Windows it is not going to be for another platform that requires full-time tweaking!  At least on a Mac I wouldn't have to tweak very much, if anything.

Jim

-J-Mac (July 23, 2008, 03:30 PM)

That hasn't been my experience with OSX. Hope your Mac experience offers smoother sailing than mine. My first Mac (SE30) ran System 6.0.4. That wasn't exactly maintenance free. Nor have any of the other iterations (from 7.0.1 right up through OSX-Leopard) been what I'd consider set & forget systems. Ditto for their hardware. I do tech support and service on Apple products, and I use one, so I'm not basing my opinion on propaganda from Bill-G or Tux. Apple makes a fine product. But Macs can be skittish. Like all Thoroughbreds.

I'm also not sure what you mean by full-time tweaking. Linux updates are available for download via a system updater just like you have on a Windows or Mac box. You're not required to do anything if you don't want to. Many Linux users install their distro and use it "as is" without ever changing anything. That's the beauty of the beast. You do as much or as little system work as you're comfortable doing. Tux keeps on chugging either way.

There's also a thing called WUBI that lets you install Ubuntu almost as if it were an application. If you don't like it, you can just go to your Add/Remove Program control panel and uninstall it like any other app. Doesn't touch your Windows environment at all! Great if you just want to get your feet wet, or make up your own mind instead of listening to what the rumor mills (and me for that matter  ) have to say about NIX.

Either way, whenever (or if ever) you're ready, Tux is waiting with open arms.

Good luck!

11631

Living Room / Re: Anyone Here Using a Drobo?

« Last post by 40hz on July 23, 2008, 02:59 PM »

Don't tempt me, Tom!  I am already 90% convinced that my next desktop computer will be a Mac.  I don't need anymore incentive...

What would you like to smack today?

You could always download a live Linux distro from Distrowatch and try that.

www.distrowatch.com

Just a thought.

11632

Living Room / Re: The Long Tail and it's Doubters

« Last post by 40hz on July 23, 2008, 02:22 PM »

Once again, somebody from Wired has put old wine in a new bottle and called it something cute in order for it to be the perfect soundbite. (Charlie Rose - are you listening?)

The long tail's basic premise is that the key to future business profitability is to "find a small enough pond to be a big fish in" as the saying goes.

Where have we heard that before?

11633

Living Room / Re: Latest Bit of Insanity in the World of Patent Law

« Last post by 40hz on July 23, 2008, 11:16 AM »

Hopefully there's hope?

Just read an interesting article that offers new hope that the nonsense will someday stop.

The Death of Google's Patents

By John F. Duffy* [PDF Version (42 KB)]

The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc.

In a series of cases including In re Nuijten, In re Comiskey and In re Bilski, the Patent and Trademark Office has argued in favor of imposing new restrictions on the scope of patentable subject matter set forth by Congress in § 101 of the Patent Act.  In the most recent of these three—the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal—the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they “result in a physical transformation of an article” or are “tied to a particular machine.”[1] Perhaps, the agency has conceded, some “new, unforeseen technology” might warrant an “exception” to this formalistic test, but in the agency’s view, no such technology has yet emerged so there is no reason currently to use a more inclusive standard.[2]

Link at: http://www.patentlyo...the-death-of-go.html

11634

Living Room / Re: Linux needs more haters

« Last post by 40hz on July 23, 2008, 10:25 AM »

The Unix Haters even have a handbook...

-Lashiec (July 22, 2008, 07:15 PM)

Well...that's certainly a lot more documentation than most Linux distros provide. 

P.S. Thanks for that link! I just gave it a skim. Priceless! (And funny!)

11635

General Software Discussion / Re: Let go of your bookmarks!

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 06:17 PM »

I rarely bookmark anything anymore since I got used to using a feed reader.

For things I need to keep for reference, I use a note manager and just include the URL along with any other data I want to keep.

For "read later" type things i use the Scrapbook FF add-on.

11636

Living Room / Re: Linux needs more haters

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 03:25 PM »

But yea, kinda surprised... no one ever b*tches about *nix...

-wreckedcarzz (July 22, 2008, 01:59 AM)

I don't think there's a lack of pith in the Linux camp. Spend some time on the IRC channels or at a local LUG meeting and you'll see plenty of fur flying. (And that's before the drinking starts!) Or better yet, take a look at some of the "debate" raging around KDE 4.0 if you want to see just how ugly the Linux crowd can sometimes get. That one goes beyond anything I've ever seen directed at Redmond.

Still, it does seem that there is an unspoken agreement among The Anointed that "family business" should not be discussed in the presence of the Un-churched. So maybe there's a point to LinuxHaters after all. After I visited LH and looked around I have come to the conclusion that most of the snarling is done with tongue placed firmly in cheek. Fun to read at any rate. What can I say - I bookmarked it!

11637

General Software Discussion / Re: The great free screen capture shootout for Windows! (Screenshot Captor gets nod)

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 03:06 PM »

I actually bought Snag-It before I started coming to DC.

Care to guess what I use now?

Bravo Mouser - and congratulations! Superb bit of code. Hands down the best for "gettin' it done." 

11638

General Software Discussion / Re: Leveraging Aamzon's Servers for your own Website

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 02:43 PM »

For some reason I do not find Amazon service to be cheap. If you have couple gb to backup sure it is cheap. For people like me who like to back up more than couple gb it is not that cheap. And their pricing scheme just makes it more confusing. For example I may need to transfer between 1 to 20 gb of data (mainly upload). So not knowing how much I need to pay monthly makes it unusable for me. I personally prefer fixed price.

Maybe someone can explain  better why I should use s3 over others for me

-kartal (July 22, 2008, 01:32 PM)

The S3 service is more geared towards storing and serving files rather than acting as backup solution - although it can be used for that as well. If you are hosting large media files (photos, videos, ISO images, etc.) on your webhost account you can run up a lot of byte traffic.

You can also easily exceed your allowed bandwidth if anything on your site gets popular or you're pwned by one of the social sites. Happened to an acquaintance of mine after a shareware product she created got a glowing write up on three ultra-popular blogs.

If you're lucky, you'll get shut down by your ISP for exceeding your bandwidth allowance. If you're unlucky, you'll stay up and then get hit with high surcharges. If you have your own server and T1, you run a very good chance of crashing. S3 lets you run your site like you always do - but it serves selected objects from Amazon's infrastructure instead of your own host.

There's a very good example scenario if you'll take a look at the second link in the original post. I've repeated it here:

http://nerdbusiness....th-machine-amazon-s3

I can't really say much about price since everybody's purse is a different size. From my perspective (i.e. US-based prices + no kids in school  ) their pricing structure seems reasonable. But that's just me.

Hope that helps

11639

Living Room / Re: Latest Bit of Insanity in the World of Patent Law

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 01:06 PM »

BTW: Was that Lamb Chop as in Sherri Lewis?

-40hz (July 21, 2008, 12:19 AM)

The website says Mally (Mallory) Lewis & Lamb Chop.

-Deozaan (July 21, 2008, 01:42 PM)

Ah. Her daughter! Another cute redhead. (Just like Mom.)

Here's Mom: http://www.youtube.c...&feature=related

-40hz (July 21, 2008, 04:17 PM)

That's right! It's been so long since I've seen it that I forgot what she looked like. I guess that Mally doing the show solves my confusion about having heard that the lady had passed away some years ago and wondering why there was still a dedicated website to the show..

-Deozaan (July 21, 2008, 07:16 PM)

Now if Diana Rigg (aka Emma Peel ) could just find a way to clone herself I'd really be all set. 

11640

Living Room / Re: Anyone Here Using a Drobo?

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 12:20 PM »

This word just in!

Microsoft promises data corruption fix in final Home Server Power Pack
By Nate Mook, BetaNews
July 21, 2008, 4:13 PM

7 months of beta testing later, Microsoft is finally ready to say it has squashed the data corruption bug that has plagued Windows Home Server since its launch last year, releasing the final build of Power Pack 1 to existing customers and OEMs.

11641

General Software Discussion / Re: Leveraging Aamzon's Servers for your own Website

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 10:52 AM »

Didn't S3 have a pretty large outage last week?

This is something I have been meaning to do.  I wanted to create an article on how to create a simple, free, backup system using an online storage service for mom and pop home user.

-Veign (July 22, 2008, 10:38 AM)

Yes they did. About six hours to get everything fully back to normal. Here's what Amazon had to say about it:

Here’s some additional detail about the problem we experienced earlier today.

Early this morning, at 3:30am PST, we started seeing elevated levels of authenticated requests from multiple users in one of our locations.  While we carefully monitor our overall request volumes and these remained within normal ranges, we had not been monitoring the proportion of authenticated requests.  Importantly, these cryptographic requests consume more resources per call than other request types.

Shortly before 4:00am PST, we began to see several other users significantly increase their volume of authenticated calls.  The last of these pushed the authentication service over its maximum capacity before we could complete putting new capacity in place.  In addition to processing authenticated requests, the authentication service also performs account validation on every request Amazon S3 handles.  This caused Amazon S3 to be unable to process any requests in that location, beginning at 4:31am PST.  By 6:48am PST, we had moved enough capacity online to resolve the issue.

As we said earlier today, though we're proud of our uptime track record over the past two years with this service, any amount of downtime is unacceptable.  As part of the post mortem for this event, we have identified a set of short-term actions as well as longer term improvements.  We are taking immediate action on the following:  (a) improving our monitoring of the proportion of authenticated requests; (b) further increasing our authentication service capacity; and (c) adding additional defensive measures around the authenticated calls.  Additionally, we’ve begun work on a service health dashboard, and expect to release that shortly.

Sincerely,
The Amazon Web Services Team

Nothing is perfect, alas! But I thought the candor displayed by Amazon regarding the problem was refreshing to say the least. The first step in preventing future problems is to be honest about the problem you're currently fixing. There's a lesson in there somewhere...

11642

General Software Discussion / Leveraging Aamzon's Servers for your own Website

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 10:20 AM »

If you generate a lot of traffic; host large files; or you're running into bandwidth caps, you need to know about Amazon S3 storage services.

Never heard of S3?  From Amazon's FAQ:

Q: What is Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It's a simple storage service that offers software developers a highly-scalable, reliable, and low-latency data storage infrastructure at very low costs.

Q: What can I do with Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that you can use to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. Using this web service, developers can easily build applications that make use of Internet storage. Since Amazon S3 is highly scalable and you only pay for what you use, developers can start small and grow their application as they wish, with no compromise on performance or reliability. It is designed to be highly flexible: Store any type and amount of data that you want; read the same piece of data a million times or only for emergency disaster recovery; build a simple FTP application, or a sophisticated web application such as the Amazon.com retail web site. Amazon S3 frees developers to focus on innovation, not figuring out how to store their data.

Link: www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261


This article provides a decent how-to to get you started.

http://nerdbusiness....th-machine-amazon-s3

How to Create an Infinite Bandwidth Machine with Amazon S3

April 15, 2008 By Schwabe

3 comments

We have entered a new era of the internet. An era of infinite bandwidth! Now you can take advantage of Amazon's vast network of servers to allow your website to survive even the most extreme spikes in bandwidth. Here's a tutorial on how to to access S3 like an FTP server to host your bandwidth sucking media files (pictures, videos, mp3's, zips or any other type of file).

And in this article, I'll show you how you can integrate your existing website on any typical hosting platform to "tap in" to this infinite bandwidth supply and leverage the power of the Amazon S3 infrastructure.

I've been working with a few people that are using this technology. I was so impressed at how well S3 worked out that I have been meaning to do an article about it for some time. Then I ran into the above link purely by chance and figured it was quicker and easier to share that. 

11643

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 09:54 AM »

I was sitting around commiserating with a few of my local tech chums about how dull and boring my desktop was (2 monitors, 1 laptop, vanilla desk w/kbd shelf, etc.). After about the third drink, one of the women present mentioned the following link.

"If you really want to feel bad about your workspace, go check out some of these setups," she said.

I did.

And now I really do.

Top 96 Kick Ass Home Office Setups
http://nerdbusiness....s-home-office-setups

11644

Living Room / Re: Wordle: Create Beautiful Word Clouds

« Last post by 40hz on July 22, 2008, 05:52 AM »

you know what would be cool is if we added a mod for the forum so you could ask it to generate a cloud (or just the raw text for the cloud) of all the post text by a given user.  suitable for a teeshirt as app says.

-mouser (July 22, 2008, 05:37 AM)

Or how about generating a cloud for a speech (or speeches) given by the politico of your choice?
Or a series of official statments on a hot topic?

If you did it over time you could see how the "slant" was changing.

Elections coming in the US.  Just a thought.

11645

Living Room / Re: Latest Bit of Insanity in the World of Patent Law

« Last post by 40hz on July 21, 2008, 04:17 PM »

BTW: Was that Lamb Chop as in Sherri Lewis?

-40hz (July 21, 2008, 12:19 AM)

The website says Mally (Mallory) Lewis & Lamb Chop.

-Deozaan (July 21, 2008, 01:42 PM)

Ah. Her daughter! Another cute redhead. (Just like Mom.)

Here's Mom: http://www.youtube.c...&feature=related

11646

Living Room / Re: Latest Bit of Insanity in the World of Patent Law

« Last post by 40hz on July 21, 2008, 12:19 AM »

Eider that or it'd be their swan song. 

To cranioscopial: I'm down with that! 
(Observation - I think we're gonna get into trouble if this goes on much longer.)

To Deozaan:
1. I'd suggest redoing line #1 to read: while (it never ends)
2. Add :

define procedure: TWIT
          where user is (cranioscopical,40hz,Shades)
               do while (offtopic=true)
                   delpost
               end
end: TWIT

BTW: Was that Lamb Chop as in Sherri Lewis?
             

11647

Living Room / Re: Latest Bit of Insanity in the World of Patent Law

« Last post by 40hz on July 20, 2008, 07:12 PM »

Who would cry fowl, unless there were Private Investigations?

INS might. They're the ones who deal with Illegal Avians. 

-40hz

 
Now you're just egging me on. Many illegal avians are just fleeing the yolk of oppression. A sympathetic INS agent may have a gun but he won't pullet until he sees the whites of their eyes.

-cranioscopical (July 20, 2008, 03:07 PM)

Then at least they have a Flicker of hope. Otherwise they'd have to duck.

11648

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by 40hz on July 20, 2008, 04:34 PM »

You forget (if you're me!)

This is something like 104.

11649

General Software Discussion / Is Whole Disk Encryption Just Wishful Thinking?

« Last post by 40hz on July 20, 2008, 04:32 PM »

A little while ago, there was quite a bit of discussion in the TrueCrypt 6.0 thread on the issue of encrypted drives. I've always been a big promoter of encrypted file systems. I never thought they were completely bulletproof (since nothing ever is) but I just read an article over at ghacks that has got me wondering if they're really worth the trouble at all:

Software to defeat Disk Encryption released
www.ghacks.net/2008/07/20/software-to-defeat-disk-encryption-released

Looks like some researchers over at Princeton U have a workable crack for several disk encryption techniques. They have published their study (available for download), along with the tools they used to pull it off.

Here's the abstract from the Princeton website: http://citp.princeton.edu/memory

Abstract

Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAMs become less reliable when they are not refreshed, they are not immediately erased, and their contents persist sufficiently for malicious (or forensic) acquisition of usable full-system memory images. We show that this phenomenon limits the ability of an operating system to protect cryptographic key material from an attacker with physical access. We use cold reboots to mount attacks on popular disk encryption systems — BitLocker, FileVault, dm-crypt, and TrueCrypt — using no special devices or materials. We experimentally characterize the extent and predictability of memory remanence and report that remanence times can be increased dramatically with simple techniques. We offer new algorithms for finding cryptographic keys in memory images and for correcting errors caused by bit decay. Though we discuss several strategies for partially mitigating these risks, we know of no simple remedy that would eliminate them.

Very interesting. And very sobering! Can't wait to try this one out at home...

11650

Living Room / Re: Anyone Here Using a Drobo?

« Last post by 40hz on July 20, 2008, 04:10 PM »

SNAFU has always seemed like a fine comment on the world in general at just about all times and places.

-Grorgy (July 19, 2008, 06:23 PM)

SNAFUs frequently turn out to be JOOTTs.

From the Information Security Glossary:

JOOTT

Pronounced 'Jute'; it stands for 'Just One Of Those Things'. Sooner or later every organisation/user will run into problems which are not amenable to logical or technical solutions, or even plain common sense. JOOTT is used to describe those inexplicable computer problems which fix themselves, or are fixed by turning off the machine and restarting, or in more persistent cases, reinstalling the software.

[If] Nobody knows what caused the problem, or why it went away, it was JOOTT!

edit by jgpaiva: fixed color tag