My MiniDisc is Back
Back in 1995, I started working for a mobile DJ company in Denver & Colorado Springs, Colorado. We used 3 MiniDisc decks with each set of equipment for all our music. MiniDisc is an awesome...
View ArticleBody Armour for Children
In the UK, some parents are buying body armour for their children. This seems to be mostly into response to a couple of recent murders of London teenagers. I can understand parents wanting to protect...
View ArticleDHS Wants DNSSEC keys
You might not know what DNSSEC is. That’s fine, most people don’t know either. The basic idea is to implement a replacement for the horribly flawed security model of standard DNS while not breaking...
View ArticleMassive Flight Cancellations
Flight cancellations are never fun, but when they force over a dozen other people’s plans to change, a canceled flight can spell real trouble for a business traveler. When I arrived at the airport on...
View ArticleWhy Terrorism Doesn’t Work
This article is in reference to “Correspondent Inference Theory” by Bruce Schneier. I have previously written about terrorism and the true goals & motivations of terrorists (see my article, “What...
View ArticleOpenID Enabled
Thanks go to Christer Edwards for encouraging me to deploy OpenID support on this blog. If you have an OpenID account, you can now use it to comment and to register on this blog, without having to...
View ArticleHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (year 7) – Available Today
The last book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, today. My wife and I picked up a copy in Ontario, Oregon on our way back from a month spent with my parents...
View ArticleWordPress 2.2.1
Well, I’ve been running with WrodPress 2.2.1 for a while now. This was another update that screwed up the blogroll (I patched this in my code for 2.1 and 2.2). But a new problem has surfaced with 2.2.1...
View ArticleHaiku
I wrote this Haiku earlier this evening: It’s not very good And, most certainly, is not Quality Haiku It was a piece of testing text that I placed in a text editor for an admin piece of a webapp I’m...
View ArticleNo More Comments?
After reading Dave Winer’s comments on blogging, in particular the parts where he discusses comments and their negative effects on a blog, I’ve decided to disable commenting in this blog. TrackBacks...
View ArticleTurning Off the System Hardware Beep
For those who might balk at the configuration work found in Christer’s recent post, Turning Off The System (hardware) Beep : Linux Tutorial, I have a solution for you. You can order this simple device...
View ArticleCommercial eVoting Security Problems Abound
Recently, California’s Secretary of State was required to perform a security screening of the eVoting systems that the State of California is thinking of/planning to use. The California Secretary of...
View ArticleIRS Security Troubles
Simply, un-excusably Amazing. The recent MSNBC story, “Computer security problems found at IRS,” discusses security problems found at the IRS. One of the more interesting items: Sixty-one of the 102...
View ArticlePost Election Auditing Report
The Brennan Center for Justice has published a report titled, “Post-Election Audits: Restoring Trust in Elections,” which is well worth a read to anyone who cares about liberty and election security.
View ArticleGun Shapped Notebook Battery
Poor Ben Forta. The fact that he’s actually struggled to get through airports for a while before figuring this out seems rather strange to me. How could he be the only one? Why have none of my...
View ArticleNew U.S. Wiretapping Law
On August 5th, 2007, President Bush signed S.1927 into law, after it passed a Senate vote (60 for, 28 against, 12 present but not voting) on the 3rd, and a House vote (227 for, 183 against, 23 present...
View ArticleLinux on an HP Compaq 6715b Notebook
Last week, some IBM ThinkPad T61p notebooks showed up at Guru Labs offices. There were 2 of them on Monday and another on Tuesday. I also know that there are 2 more coming and perhaps a couple of other...
View Articlesign-lots-o-keys
On the last day of the Utah Open Source Conference 2007 (UTOSC), there was a PGP/GPG key signing party, hosted by Scott Paul Robertson. It was good to be able to get set up to properly sign so many...
View ArticlePetrov Day
I’ll thank Tene for pointing me at this one: Take a look at http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/09/926-is-petrov-d.html. This was probably one of the most important moments and one of the best decisions...
View ArticleEve Online for Linux and Mac
I’ve been playing Eve Online, a space MMO for many months now. Today, they released their Linux and MacOS X clients as part of the version 2.3 update. Though I haven’t had a chance to try it out, yet,...
View ArticleInstalling Fedora 8 on the HP Compaq 6715b Notebook
Last night, while flying from Salt Lake (SLC) to Kansas City (MCI), I used a Fedora 8 x86_64 DVD I had burned earlier in the day to reinstall my notebook. Probably not the smartest way (that is, on an...
View ArticleATI Driver Trouble Under Fedora 8
So, is anyone else experiencing troubles with the proprietary ATI driver on Fedora 8? How about on an updated F7 system? My HP Compaq 6715b notebook comes with ATI Radeon X1270 video 128MB RAM...
View ArticleYUM Irritations in F7 and F8
The fact that Fedora (and by extension, RHEL, CentOS, etc.), supports bi-arch platforms is a great thing. However, it does get to be very irritating when YUM decides that it should just pull in 32bit...
View ArticleEasy Bluetooth Mouse Setup in KDE
A few minutes ago, I installed the kdebluetooth package. I was already logged in, so I had to launch the kbluetooth applet myself. I then clicked K Menu -> System -> KInputWizard, pressed the...
View ArticleLivna: Please, Keep Drivers in the Repo
In dealing with nVidia and ATI drivers for Linux (both a kernel and X driver are needed), I’ve been using the Livna YUM repositories for Fedora to easily install them as RPMs using YUM. I’ve run into...
View ArticleWordPress 2.3.1 Upgrade
I finally got all of the blogs I manage updated to WordPress 2.3.1, today. Several friends who also use WordPress had experienced some difficulties upgrading to 2.3.0, so I had held off on the updates...
View ArticleEve Continues Where Others Fail
I just read an article from The New York Times website about Eve Online. I have been a player of Eve since March, 2007. Obligatory quote: At the strategic level, coalitions involving tens of thousands...
View ArticleAirlines Scaling Back U.S. Capcity
USA Today carried this story on the front page, Tuesday, (2007/12/04). It’s interesting that the headline for this story in the print edition and the online version are not identical. The crux of the...
View ArticleBlock SSH Cracking Bot-Nets with Netfilter
A few weeks ago, I was looking through some Netfilter documentation, just poking around, looking at some modules I’ve never seen/played-with/hear-of and I came across the recent module. I decided to...
View ArticleDropping XFS from My Workstation
My dual Opteron workstation has been around for nearly 5 years now. It’s had some bumps and bruises along the way (some of which were due to my own actions), but has been a great machine. It still has...
View ArticleStone Patrolmen Podcast
We have published the first episode of the Stone Patrolmen podcast. The website is at [ http://stonepatrolmen.com/ ].
View ArticleWordPress 2.8.4 Upgrade
This blog was running under WordPress 2.3.2 for far too long. I had put in some patches, and there were security announcements about problems that wouldn’t affect this blog, since I didn’t use or...
View ArticleUtah Open Source Conference 2009
Visit [ http://www.utosc.com/ ] for the details. This year, I’m not doing any presentation. I have some ideas for next year. I will be running the keysigning party on Friday, October 9 at 7:15pm at the...
View ArticleSQL Is Not SEQUEL
One thing that has bothered me for years is when people refer to SQL but pronounce it as “sequel.” There is a different database language called SEQUEL. They are not the same thing. They are both...
View ArticleUTOSC 2009 Keysigning non-Party
Oh, well. That was mostly a bust. There were only twelve people in the room at the peak of it and only 7-8 traded keys. With all the last minute work going on, the Utah Open Source Conference 2009...
View ArticleWordPress 2.8.5 Upgrade
It’s been only 3.5 weeks since I upgraded this blog to released just a few days ago. This one is “simply” a hardening release, as they are now preparing for 2.9. This time, I decided to see if I could...
View ArticleopenSUSE 11.1, Konqueror and Flash
It’s been bugging me for months that I had Adobe Flash in Konqueror (my favorite browser on Linux) working just fine under openSUSE 10.3 and 11.0, but with 11.1 it just couldn’t find the plug-in. I’ve...
View ArticleStar Trek: TNG Movies on BD
On Wednesday evening, I bought the Blu-ray (BD) box set of Star Trek Generations, Star Trek First Contact, Star Trek Insurrection and Star Trek Nemesis at Target (in Centerville) for US$70. The next...
View ArticleHappy 234th Birthday, US Marine Corps
The date was November 10, 1775. The place was Tun Tavern, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Second Continental Congress had decreed: That two battalions of Marines be raised consisting of one Colonel,...
View ArticleStar Trek: Online Release Date
Get ready; on February 2, 2010, Star Trek: Online arrives in North America and February 5, 2010 is the big day in Europe, according to game developer Cryptic Studios. Also, system requirements were...
View ArticleWhen Maildrop Keeps Filling a Log File
Earlier tonight, Some friends told me that they saw a couple of emails they sent to me bounced back at them. I wrote about what happens “When Maildrop Fills a Log File” on one of my other blogs. Well,...
View ArticleNetflix PS3 Video Streaming
A couple of hours ago, I had my first taste of streaming Netflix on my PS3. We’ve been getting movies and TV shows from Netflix for over a year. It’s been a great experience for us. We have the 3 discs...
View ArticleHow Many of Me
I first saw [ http://howmanyofme.com/ ] a few years ago. There was a conversation the other day that made me think of it again, so I decided to look it up, again. HowManyOfMe.com There are people with...
View ArticleopenSUSE 11.2 Upgrade
I upgraded my HP Compaq 6715b from openSUSE 11.1 to openSUSE 11.2 on Tuesday. There have been a couple of minor bumps since, but all-in-all, I’m pretty happy with the upgrade. Here are some of the...
View ArticleWordPress 2.8.6 Upgrade
I did this upgrade almost right when it came out. I simply followed my “normal” upgrade process: Backup the DB ($ mysqldump -p dbname | gzip >~/backups/$(date -I)-dbname.sql.gz). Backup the existing...
View ArticleMySQL Error 121 During CREATE TABLE
I’m using MySQL to track a pile of data for a project at work. This is a one-off kind of thing that will probably be thrown away after I finish this project, but, I still try to make sure that I have a...
View ArticleCentral Spell-Checking Dictionary
Today, I found out that the spell-check system within Microsoft’s .NET framework does not support adding entries to the dictionary. Supposedly, .NET 4.0 will add such support. Come on! Are you kidding...
View ArticleBarracuda Networks Details Security Breach
Barracuda Networks website suffered a breach on April 8, 2011. It appears that all the crackers got were some people’s names and email addresses from a Marketing database used to send event...
View ArticleRHEL6 RHCE Passed
This past weekend, I flew to Dallas, Texas in order to take the exams necessary for the RHEL6 version of the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certification. I found out Monday morning (when I looked...
View ArticleRobot One – In the Beginning
I’m finally getting into robotics. At this point, I’m most certainly an amateur, beginner Roboticist. However, it’s a subject that I’ve been very interested in for about as long as I can remember. So,...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....