Have Laptop Will Travel

Why Linux Won’t Make It : KISS

Originally posted on June 5, 2007 @ 12:56 am

Over the weekend I installed *Nix on the laptop of a friend. He had just bought a new laptop, complete with preinstalled Windows Vista Home Premium and wanted to try out what all the fuzz about was.
He asked me to install any distro for him, because he was scared to mess with his Vista install.

Where personally I’d prefer OpenSuse 10, for his limited usage Ubuntu is more than way too much already.

At first I was worried : another Dell, Wireless and and a series of multimedia buttons on the laptop casing. Hopefully it would all go right and I wouldn’t have to spend hours searching the web and compiling drivers for the Dell specific hardware.
I was impressed: Ubuntu was installed in less than half an hour and except for the wireless chip and graphics driver, every hardware was corrected recognized and had it’s own driver. Wifi worked and the maximum display settings were recognized properly too. Again less than 30 minutes later, all standard packages were updated and the notebook was ready for the road.

Highly impressed I must admit.
My friend, when he came to collect his notebook, a happy camper. A new laptop, dual boot Vista and Ubuntu and most of all, working hardware. He hit the road with the Ubuntu Dell. But not for long.
Within an hour someone called me. On my land line! This had to be serious, no one calls me on my land line.

It was him. He asked me about the wonderful cross-platform Synergy mouse and keyboard sharing software.
I briefly explained him that it was listed under the packages and how to install it. I made myself a Gin&Tonic, to enjoy my Saturday evening. Everything was set for a quiet evening, without any disturbances.

But plans got screwed up. Someone called me. Only 3 minutes after I had made my drink. It was him again.

Where do I find the shortcut to Synergy? How do I open it?

Sigh.
Tuxers, KISS if you’re really going to conquer the world.

Sorry for the anecdotal intermezzo. :)

Passport RFID Chips

Originally posted on March 4, 2007 @ 9:33 pm

Did you know that all passports issued by the US State Department after January 1, 2007 have always-on radio frequency identification chips, making it easy for officials and hackers to grab your personal stats?

If you’re worried about strangers slurping up your identity or your privacy in general, here’s what you can do about it.

Disclaimer: Tampering with a passport is punishable by 25 years in prison, not to mention the “special” customs search with rubber gloves.

I am not instructing you to try these methods, only discussing possible solutions.

The RFID-tagged passports have a distinctive logo on the front cover. The chip is embedded in the back.

Accidentally leaving your passport in the jeans you just put in the washer won’t work to disable the RFID chip. You’re more likely to ruin the passport itself than the chip.

Forget about nuking it in the microwave as the chip could burst into flames, which wouldn’t be good. It would probably leave telltale scorch marks, besides a burnt passport probably wouldn’t smell to nice.

So what is the best approach you might be asking yourself?

Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a blunt, hard object should disable it.

To the best of my knowledge, a nonworking RFID doesn’t invalidate the passport, so you can still use it.

I bet right about now you’re wondering what information is stored on the RFID chips. I’ll tell you… your name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and a digitized photograph of you, the passport holder.

Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as fingerprints or iris scans.

According to a document I found, the State Department claims it has addressed privacy concerns. The chipped passports “will not permit ‘tracking’ of individuals,” the department said.

I don’t buy it for one second. How about you?

The document goes on to say that the RFID chip “will only permit governmental authorities to know that an individual has arrived at a port of entry, which governmental authorities already know from presentation of non-electronic passports with greater assurance that the person who presents the passport is the legitimate holder of the passport.”

If you have any more information about this exciting violation of our privacy, let me know. Feel free to comment or contact me in private.

Do Scrapers Steal Your Content Too?

Originally posted on February 19, 2007 @ 7:45 pm

Editor’s note: Upon requests by MR. Elliott Back and out of a strong sense of propriety, we have edited this post to remove the strong accusations of scraping against Mr. Back. While the automatic RSS-pulling WordPress plugin was a creation of Mr. Back, the scraper sites are, in fact, not his own, but are run by unscrupulous individuals using what is considered an abuse of the aforementioned software. Phrases in brackets are edited.

While checking my moderated comments and Akismet section today, I noticed that [certain scraper sites are] using my content and earning money on [t]his site with Google Ad Sense. I think that’s called theft.

What gets me is on his own site footer in huge letters, it reads “Don’t steal”.

Another funny thing is he’s even copying my legal disclaimer which reads “If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement.”

Be sure to check his various blogs as he might be stealing from you too.

This is not the first time [content scrapers have] done this to me… but I am not going to just sit and watch anymore.

If this guy is doing the same to you, I’d like to hear about it. This crap needs to stop.

Lack Of Communication

Originally posted on December 31, 2006 @ 5:25 pm

Lack of communication. That’s a powerful phrase. One that can either help you succeed or fail in life and in business.

I’ve never claimed to be perfect, and at various times in my life, I too have lacked in my communication skills with friends, family and in business…

However, there is a silver lining because over the years, I’ve become much better at communication, so good that people have called me an ass or a jerk at times for being so blunt.

This brings me to the next part of this rant.

In email, sometimes proper communication doesn’t come through as we might have intended.

With text there isn’t any tone or real mood set which can make emails that were meant to be light hearted sound really bad or promote the wrong message.

I always try to put a little smile face like this :) in my emails or posts if I’m messing around or intend for my email to be taken lightly or with a grain of salt.

Reasons like this is why I like communicating via voice on the telephone, Skype or even in person. It really helps solve so many communication glitches this way.

For the record, I like to mess with people. If I like you, I mess with you. If it bothers you, tell me… communicate to me that my words or actions are upsetting you.

Believe it or not, I do have respect for people and never want to hurt someone on purpose or make them feel bad.

Anyway, to bring this post to a close, here are some of the lyrics from a song titled “Lack Of Communication” by one of my favorite 1980’s metal bands Ratt off their album “Out Of The Cellar”:

Too many problems, the world can’t solve
Too many people, no-one wants to be involved
(Lack of communication, back off)

Keep rearranging, it’s all the same
Always saying, someone else is to blame
(Lack of communication, back off)

Look all around me, who’s standing tall
Hold tight, no-one’s gonna answer your call
(Lack of communication, back off)

Put up our boundaries, we build our walls
It’s alright, no-one’s gonna change us at all
(Lack of communication, back off)

Time’s passing us by, we have our reason
No-one wants to try, we have our reason
Questions asking why, we have our reason
Problems still arise, we have our reason…

Artist: Ratt
Album: Out Of The Cellar
Original Release Date: 1984

Tis The Season For Holiday Spammers

Originally posted on December 13, 2006 @ 3:06 am

Can of SPAMAnti spam specialists and companies predict an average of 78 billion peaces of spam to be sent daily as we get closer to Christmas.

Anti spam software and mail servers have to work hard to process more and more loads of emails to fight this onslaught of spam but as we all know, this is a cat-and-mouse game.

Sophisticated spammers design and test their spam messages against the current spam definitions. Spam filters will not be able to catch 100% the spam.

Say, a spam filter catches 99% of the spam, there is still that 1% that will be missed. That is 1 out of 100 spam sent. Not a big number. But 1% of 78 billion is certainly a very big number.

The server statistics for Have Laptop Will Travel show that my mail servers are hit with more than a million peaces of spam each day, which is close to quadruple the hits in the previous month… but I don’t like spam!

Mail servers are designed to handle large number of emails, but with the sudden influxes, even the most powerful mail server requires time to digest all the emails. Hence, mail delivery is delayed.

It is unfortunate that my mail server has to work so much harder to process the large load of emails, a large percentage of which is junk mail. Thanks spammers. Lumps of coal for you this year.

And it’s not just spam that is a concern to me, there is also the email viruses and other email-borne threats that inundate our in boxes.

So what am I doing to help prevent this nightmare of spam-tastic per portions from hammering on my servers?

  1. Implemented new measures and procedures to monitor and ensure the effects of spam are kept to the lowest.
  2. Employed more mail servers to alleviate the load of my existing mail servers.
  3. Installed a Barracuda Spam Firewall.

and some other behind the scenes secret sauce which I won’t disclose because the spammers subscribe to my RSS feed.

I’ve also made sure that my personal and work machines are all patched with the latest security updates, all my anti virus products are up-to-date and I’ve done some serious house cleaning on all my hard drives, done a ton of registry fixes and cleaning and triple checked for spy ware and male ware on all my machines.

At this point all is well on the Island of Misfit Toys but it will still require daily monitoring and tweaks but with what I have in place now, I’m better prepared for the storm of spam coming my way this holiday season… are you prepared?