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Look here. Metanet

I know that many of you do check it out, even seem interested. Contact me if you're not in the USA, for an immediate invitation, and be prepared to install openvpn.

Why you would want to put a webserver on your phone is beyond me though, the bandwidth technology is still a long way from usable for this kind of thing. Maybe in the future though, but still... what do you want to serve? A live stream from your phone that sitting in your pocket? Wow... a dark screen... that would be cool to watch.

IMHO, BSD's jail() is one of the more interesting developments in recent versions -- at least for an internet service provider.

For those of you unfamiliar, check it out. It's very much like User Mode Linux and allows running virtual servers within a larger server. Many colocation/virtual server providers (e.g. take, your, pick) use FreeBSD jails to provide low-cost root-access hosts for customers. This really has revolutionized cost effectiveness of large scale hosting!

There have been various limitations with FreeBSD jails when they first appeared. There were glitches with information leaking across jails. There's a limit to a single IP address, inability to do raw socket operations or even ping/traceroute, and some glitches with a couple system calls used by major applications like Postfix.

But my understanding is that 5.x seriously improves jail support, especially from a resource efficiency perspective. One of my BSD developer buddies also tells me that he's fixing raw socket support. Keep an eye on the jail feature...

We're writing programs, not poetry!

The Zaurus is a tiny linux box. A powerful, tiny linux box. The first thing you should do when you get a Z is wipe the OS and instead install the excellent OpenZaurus (OZ). OZ is better than the original Linux install in nearly every respect. Don't think of your Z as a PDA, it's more like a tiny laptop. Some of the things I do with mine:

email: I recently compiled Mutt with a IMAP header cache patch. One of the most powerful email clients in the palm of my hand :-)

wireless sniffing: As you know, Kismet rules the land of wireless sniffers. Pop a wireless card in your Z (or get a 6000 :-) and your neighbours will never be safe again :-)

mp3/ogg playing: Using either Opie-Player2 or the excellent tkcplayer. Unfortunatly, I can't use the tkcplayer on the very latest version of OpenZaurus, not because it won't run (because it DOES almost start up when using "runcompat" but then tells me it can't run on this platform-- which it CAN otherwise it wouldn't be able to tell me that :-) TKC are you listening? Remove the check please :-)

Video playing: using a port of the best linux movie player mplayer. I've encoded a bunch of movies down to ~200MB with great results. You can pop a couple of these on a 512MB card for those long flights :-)

Coding: Of course, I've got gcc and perl loaded on the puppy. Hell, without perl I wouldn't be able to run Chaosreader, makes those long hotel stays much more interesting :-)

Exploit testing :-) Since perl and gcc work fine, I really haven't run into any common exploits I can't compile or run properly.

A couple of hints and tricks:

1) If you want to extend your battery life while doing things like mp3 playing or wardriving, grab something like Qoverclock and use it to UNDERCLOCK your Z. Turn down (or off) the display as well. Poke at it a bit and realize you can easily make a shell script to do without the GUI.

2) To maximize your space on root, ram, sd and cf, the single best thing to use is UCLX which works just like UPX. UCLX/UPX are executeable file compressors-- you compress your executable and when you run it it decompresses (to ram) on the fly. The compression it uses is AT LEAST as good as gzip (or better) and the decompression is very fast. When using slower media like SD (or even CF) you'll find that executables will run FASTER compressed then they would uncompressed-- the CPU can decompress much smaller exe faster than the much larger uncompressed exe could be loaded from media and run.

3) When choosing a root/ram disk size for OpenZaurus, it's a good idea to pick a small root with a much larger ram disk. If (when) you need more ram, you can simply make some ramdisk swap files.

4) While you can run gcc right on the Z, it's also nice to us a cross compiler on your (much faster) desktop and then just cp the binary over. If you're too lazy to do cross compiles (or don't want to set up a ton of additional packages like ncurses, etc), you can also just ssh into the IPAQ development cluster and compile your code there. Typically it will run without issue-- sometimes you may want/need to statically link your programs or just grab the libraries from the ipaq and throw 'em on your Z. I haven't found a single thing yet I couldn't get to run.

5) Assuming you grab the required libraries, you can run basically all of the sw in th

Considering Microsoft have recently released stuff under open source licenses recently they can hardly go creating FUD about open source .
Methink this employee should have the sack!

/greger

and to continue with the plugs:

you can get your old Nintendo powerpad and use it under linux, the modules are here

My big question is why would you rather donate to a large commercial organization well funded from it's previous Shreck flick -- rather than donate the cycles to a project like the IMP works themselves?

I'm not sure if the Microsoft management can really imagine a community organized around anything other than accumulation of money-they really believe that is all there is to the world. History is full of examples of decadent financial empires that get militarily overrun by forces they didn't take . IMHO the eventual destiny of Microsoft is to encounter software that simple subsumes and contains them. Linux has been an important first step. Xen,Bocks,Plex86,Wine are other important steps here--combined with Linux/BSD they give Windows much needed adult supervision. I suspect the stuff that Chuck Moore is doing with ColorForth and his hardware designs could eventually obsolesce both Intel and Microsoft.

Lob all you want, but dont forget that that same inept government developed the internet or at least what became the internet, and without it, you would still be posting comments like yours on dial up BBS's...

man, always these false claims. this for the net. ant btw, the phone was invented by p. reis.

false claims can be very unpleasant ;)

They came with an binary only driver that only works with two specific kernel versions. They don't have a working wrapper for different kernels, which other vendors managed for some time.

And even with the right kernel version, the driver didn't work with my cards.

But I got it working with ndiswrapper.

Apparently on my couch in my apt. Consequently, this is also my G-spot, as that's where I'm using my new laptop to write this over 802.11g. (btw, wifi-box will rock your world if you've got a Linksys WRT54G router)

Lest we forget, Microsoft has at least one OpenSource project. While copyright, and restricted use, microsoft has many, many example source programs on MSDN as well. Not GPL, but certainly open (as in viewable and modifiable) source.

Isn't it ironic that Microsoft has allowed two projects, WTL and WiX, to be released under the CPL? Evidently these have little value to the company (and by extension, the developer's are not valued.)

This is more FUD coming out of Microsoft, but that is stating the redundant.

Isn't it ironic that Microsoft has allowed two projects, WTL and WiX, to be released under the CPL? Evidently these have little value to the company (and by extension, the developer's are not valued.)

This is more FUD coming out of Microsoft, but that is stating the redundant.

I'd recommend building yourself a simple "run from RAM" setup using Knoppix (or something similar)

Then you have you operating system, and photos all on the CD. Very low power and if you have enought memory to hold all the photos in ram it will run cool.

Isn't part of the bloat that Windows is so often (and appropriately) accused of directly attributable to having to support a nearly infinite number of hardware / software configurations?

Aren't you complaining about the converse of that - that Linux [can't|doesn't currently] support every possible software / hardware configuration?

I am really not trying to troll here, but in all honesty, you are quite a bit closer to the bleeding edge than most (and I'm a little jealous) so you have to expect that the edge is, well, farther from the center.

I would imagine that its not the end of your world that you can't use Real / Flash on your machine - if you're like me, you probably question the worth of most media in those formats. On the other hand, we hear all the time that one of the principal strengths of Linux is what it does that nothing else does as well or as easily / cheaply. Anyone can install the Flash player on a Win98 box - I would guess that you probably have more specialized uses for your machines that a Win98 box wouldn't address. Just as my (imaginary and probably faulty as an analogy) Porsche can't pull my (equally imaginary) boat as well as a truck could.

That said, when you get your OOS Real / Flash player written, feel free to post it here. Otherwise, wait 6 months, and I'm sure someone will come up with something. :)

The project to create an open source version of Delphi Forums is called Project Beehive Forum.

I wonder if this is going to spark a fight for the base name?

It is right annoying. We did have an ArcGIS developer drop by to let us know exactly what was happening on the server versus client front. They seemed awfully schizophrenia -- they'd just sold out to COM with ArcGIS in a big way, but everything about ArcIMS (ActiveX connector dev freezing, cross-platform server installs and new Linux support, Java "MapObjects") pointed everywhere but Microsoft. They pretty obviously have two sides of the house -- and you wonder sometimes if either is really communicating with Jack (the CEO/pres/owner/whatever/rich balding white guy at the top).

A little more O[n]T, I tried to get them to open source their ArcIMS Author application, which was (iirc) written in Java. After they released their MapObjects for Java, every function Author had (display map content to show the state of an XML file you were authoring, no less) was out there. Even though they had no real industry secret -- and though I got an ESRI developer to admit the Author app was only "60% feature complete", no open sourcing.

Just to say I wouldn't read into any one annoucement's effects on the entire company too broadly. Linux on server doesn't mean they aren't selling out 100% to COM on the client. And Linux support and now Python on the client doesn't mean they're getting any friendlier to open source in any meaningful way. As others have pointed out, support isn't job one, nor is returning the favor open source software's given them.

(Fwiw, I support a soon to be unmothballed open source ActiveX ArcIMS template. Not sure if that helps or -- due to disuse -- hurts my claims to expertise here!)

K-meleon's got a top-notch button scroll. It's based on Mozilla, so she'll get that added benefit. Since it doesn't use XUL, none of the extensions will work on it though.

open4free ©

But if you get a Proxim a/b/g card it comes with Atheros and you need madwifi to use it.

Or maybe their Thinkpads would do a better job of supporting linux - read through the linux-thinkpad list and see how much work is needed to configure linux for a recent TPad and how much stuff (like power management) still won't work as well as it does under Windows.

At the very least IBM could patch their broken DSDT

So, Mozilla 1.8 is going to include basic FTP upload support. I've always wondered how Filezilla fits into the mix. To me, it seems that it's just tailing on the 'zilla name, and no real relation. FileZilla is really a pretty good FTP program - but it is windows-only. I'd like to see the FileZilla team hook up with the Moz team though, maybe add it to the suite and/or make a linux/Mac branch.

U9 isn't "classic", correct =)

The one with the "thou hast lost an eighth" was U4. Not played much U5 or U6, don't know if they're there.

Personally, I don't like U4 that much, but it's clearly one of the best in the series. It suffers from same problems as the NES-era RPGs, namely, you can't cram that Epic Stuff into such small space. Dialogues are rather... brief. I can only hope the U4 remakes some day flesh out complete (un U7 sense) dialogues for every NPC.

As they say in nitpicking, bugs don't count as nitpicks. U7 is a wonderful game if you get it working. People tend to agree that U9 isn't a wonderful game if you get it working. =)

The (fully patched) U7's only sin is that it's nearly impossible to run these days without external utilities. They can be easily arranged. And once you get going, it's The Best Damn CRPG Ever. It's brilliant, it's beautiful.

I haven't yet played much into U7 Part 2: Serpent Isle, but I can safely say that it's just as rulesome - even though it's far more linear.

Can't say much about U8.

I started using Thunderbird a long time ago, much like you did, and found myself in a similar situation to yours.

In the beginning, the included spam filtering worked wonders, but after time more and more spam began to leak through no matter how much "training" I did.

Instead of moving to a different email program as you did, however, I simply kept Thunderbird and used POPFile as a spam-filtering proxy. Because of this, I can actually directly compare the in-program filtering of Thunderbird to an outside bayesian client. Right now, according to the built-in statistics of POPFile, it's at a 99.36% accuracy rate, even with the large number of random-word spam attacks I get daily, yet Thunderbird only catches about half of them.

So I have no doubt that you are correct in your argument that SpamBayes isn't being caught by the same random-word techniques that are currently ruining the effectiveness of Spamassassin or Thunderbird's built in filtering.

Try DC++

No spyware, no adware - pure bliss of peer-peer networking. Kiss Kazaa, Limewire good bye.

improved junk mail filtering

I really don't understand why this is still a live issue. When I used to use Outlook I used SpamBayes to filter my spam and within a few days it was catching 99.99% of my spam. That's obviously a made-up figure, but that's how it felt. I never missed a single real mail, and after a few weeks I don't think a single spam ended up in my inbox.

Then I moved to Thunderbird, and suddenly obvious spam is regularly ending up in my inbox, despite several weeks' training. Don't get me wrong, it's a great mail client, but I don't see why it's so hard to implement something that's already been done perfectly in more than one open-source project?

A solution that works for many is PasswordSafe. This is a small application that keeps all passwords encrypted (using the Blowfish algorithm). Entries are presented either as a flat list or tree, and double-clicking an entry decrypts the password and copies it to the clipboard. The project originally came from Counterpane, Bruce Schneier's company, and is regarded as a useful and secure application.
PasswordSafe has random password generation that can be customized rather nicely.
Of course, the PasswordSafe database itself needs to protected by a passphrase...

[Disclaimer: I'm currently the project admin for PasswordSafe.]

Ultima VII is an RPG benchmark.

Richard Garriott's masterwork, easily. I still give it a whirl every now and again, 10 plus years on. And I still find new and interesting content, conversations and books.

Give me an RPG at least one tenth as ambitious and one eighth as interesting as Ultima VII and I'd be happy.

Thusfar we've gotten by kind of merging FTP and Apache with directory listings enabled, with custom host names for each "server". It's stone-axe simple to set up, but lacks reasonable authentication and that "branding" experience the suits are looking for, and FTP for uploads bites.

I've been looking for a piece of blogging software that doesn't require a SQL server. I've been using MovableType, storing its data in a BerkleyDB file. However, I'd like to move away from MovableType (for licensing issues, as well as usability issues)

Bloxsom and Blojsom both use the filesystem to store blog entries, and require no database.

If you run a phpBB forum, you can grab my add-on phpBB Blog to turn a forum into a blog. Also, I have a beta available of the next release. I'd love input.

Also, since this is the Open Source world where cooperation is welcomed, I thought I'd mention that phpBB Fetch All is a blog system that I didn't know about when I made phpBB Blog. phpBB Fetch All is superior to my system, although it is also bigger and more complicated. But it sure looks good.

Reducing eye strain and mental fatigue when reading from an electronic display can involve changing the size and style of text font used, the foreground and background colors, the average number of words displayed per line, and the average number of lines displayed per page. I've found the use of small portable devices such as a Palm PDA places limitations on the amount of flexibility I have adjusting one or more of the above at the same time. Viewing etexts on the high resolution display of a laptop or desktop computer using an appropriate reading program allows me to fully customize the display, but trades off some of the convenience factors.

On my Palm PDA I use the already mentioned Weasel Reader program. Nice because it's zTxt file format supports adding bookmarks and annotations to a copy of the etext for later referral. On a desktop or laptop, I use the PyGERS reader from the PyGE project. It also uses the same zTxt format as Weasel Reader, while allowing full control over fonts, colors, line length, and pagination while reading.

Reducing eye strain and mental fatigue when reading from an electronic display can involve changing the size and style of text font used, the foreground and background colors, the average number of words displayed per line, and the average number of lines displayed per page. I've found the use of small portable devices such as a Palm PDA places limitations on the amount of flexibility I have adjusting one or more of the above at the same time. Viewing etexts on the high resolution display of a laptop or desktop computer using an appropriate reading program allows me to fully customize the display, but trades off some of the convenience factors.

On my Palm PDA I use the already mentioned Weasel Reader program. Nice because it's zTxt file format supports adding bookmarks and annotations to a copy of the etext for later referral. On a desktop or laptop, I use the PyGERS reader from the PyGE project. It also uses the same zTxt format as Weasel Reader, while allowing full control over fonts, colors, line length, and pagination while reading.

Since you're already familiar with wxPython, the PyGE project may interest you. Among the applications is an etext reader program which includes text-to-speech capabilities for both Windows platforms (using SAPI) and Unix/Linux platforms (using Festival). The Python modules for generating speech from text could be easily adapted for generating .wav files, which could then easily be converted to the compressed format of your choice.

You seem to be a Tcl wizard. Have you looked at Sguil, another Tcl tool? If you're interested in contributing, I know the project would be glad to have your assistance.

Helevius

How do I fully take advantage of QuIDScor if I'm not a Qualys customer ?

"To try QualysGuard with QuIDScor and Snort, visit http://qualys.com/quidscor and sign up for a free trial."

Great.

Helevius

If you are interested, read more about how Swatch and syslog are used in a large production environment.

Most IDS vendors focus on ever more accurate alerts, but once they trigger they wash their hands of the problem. The end user must decide if the alert is truly significant to their situation and priorities. It's like having an anti-virus product cry wolf but never give any reasons for its identification of malware or background on its findings.

An alternative to the "alert-centric" point of view is "Network Security Monitoring," which concentrates on giving analysts information to conduct at least rudimentary network-based investigation. Where most IDS care only about alerts, NSM-centric operations combine alert, session, full-content, and statistical data to give analysts a chance to identify and escalate incidents.

A tool which uses Snort to generate alert data, combined with session and full content data from other sources, is Sguil.

The April 2004 Sys Admin magazine features Sguil and a few other NSM tools.

A book due in July, The Tao of Network Security Monitoring (also at Amazon.com) is all about NSM.

Anything vendors can do, like Sourcefire's work with Snort, helps with more accurate identification. Just remember creating alerts is only the first step.

All of the IPS fans out there should remember that their "prevention" depends on correctly identifying intrusions. All IDS and IPS products can be bypassed, which drives the need for audit-centric tools (especially using session data) which are content neutral and don't care about triggers, encryption, and so on.

Helevius

The OSS app known as Hank was pretty much written as a reponse to the short-comings of Snort.

It supports XML based network rules, and has really advanced things like an ACBM implementation

Sunny Dubey

Some of what Martin says regarding minimizing false positives by correlating an attack with the correct platform, etc. is already being done by the open source IDS correlation project QuidScore:

http://quidscor.sourceforge.net/

Well, you could always set up MySQL and read/write from a Calc (openoffice) spreadsheet.
Then you can use somthing like PhpCodeGenie to create some simple webforms for view/change/delete etc.
Maybe tinker with them a little so that they do the job...
But obviously, this is far from trivial (although not at all difficult for a Geek).

What's a public key?
A key you make public so that others can send messages to you. Likewise, others make their own public key known to you (or to the public in general) so you can encrypt messages to them.

A private key?
The key you need in order to decode the messages others have encrypted using your public key.

What do I do if my private key is compromised?
Generate a new private and public key. Send a revocation notice to the public keys server(s) you use and notify all your correspondents of your public key change.

I use an older version of a free program called Password Safe and keep lots of backup copies of it's data file on floppies, etc. With the (ugly) newer version you can also print out a hardcopy.

Archive them with the FLAC lossless format, and you can later re-encode them to any lossy format you want. Archive them with a lossy format (MP3), and be stuck forever in that format.

I've archived my entire CD collection in FLAC format (almost 200 discs, about 60GB), and I normally play them right off the hard disk. But, I also have scripts to automaticlly convert to MP3 or OGG whenever the need arises (for portable CD player, etc).

Myself, I don't really like reading off a static CRT, but I guess sitting on the couch with a notebook could work. If you have a notebook, you may want to try yBook.

PDAs usually come with their own readers, or reader programs are easy to get for them. I prefer Weasel on my Palm Zire, but also have the Plucker HTML viewer installed, for content that more or less requires it.

You can easily generate mnemonic passwords using pwgen.

It's definitely easy to remember mnemonic passwords. I've been able to not log into a machine for months, come back to it and remember the mnemonic password unique to that machine.

Earlier posted about here on Slashdot, I think Freemind may be just what the poster needs.

If you have a palm pilot, i can recommend Weasel Reader.
I've been using it for a couple of years on my Palm V, and despite its small screen size it works perfectly for reading ebooks.