After a break of a year I’m now once more a regular attendee of St Mellion International Golf and Country Club. I don’t play golf but they have the nicest gym, swimming and leisure facilities that I know of. It’s also a nice friendly place with polite staff and a relaxed atmosphere. It helps that… Continue reading Parking Theory
Pseudonymous Mixmaster
I’ve been thinking a bit over the last few days about why a Mixmaster user cannot receive replies to messages. Obviously the repies cannot be delivered to an email address as Mixmaster contains no Reply-Block functionality, but there’s no reason I can think of why replies can’t be encrypted and dropped into a global message… Continue reading Pseudonymous Mixmaster
Registering with Technorati
Posting the following link appears to be the best way to register my blog on Technorati The other option is to tell them my username and password. Hmm….. Technorati Profile
Last Rites
Today has been a long time coming, but the inevitable happened in the end; Layered Technologies shut me down. It started off with just the usual abuse complaint. This time it seems that someone used Tor to run code stored as a phony JPEG at freeimagehosting.net. The complainant had already fixed their vulnerability by the… Continue reading Last Rites
Windows XP Product Keys
I woke up with a stiff neck this morning, probably caused by my new gym programme. That combined with a seriously irritating laptop forces me to sit very still and write another rant. Trevor, my local landlord wants a laptop. In fact since moving to St Mellion about 3 months ago, three people have approached… Continue reading Windows XP Product Keys
Debian Performance Monitoring
The title really should read system or resource monitoring, but performance monitoring seems to be the industry buzzword for checking up on what’s using what resource. First on the list has to be top. This is a great tool for monitoring CPU and Memory utilization by process. As its name suggests, the highest resource users… Continue reading Debian Performance Monitoring
Microsoft Operating System Rant
I posted this to alt.hacker this morning and thought I’d post it here as well so I can refer back to it when I discover that MS Vista does nothing I want it to do. I bit Bill’s hand off when he offered W2K because it was the first NT based OS with USB support.… Continue reading Microsoft Operating System Rant
Our wish list
Lou and I moved to St Mellion about 11 weeks ago now. Since then we’ve thought of lots of things we’d love to do with our house and garden. This is the list so far, in order of priority. Log Cabin Strange as it may seem, the Log Cabin is top of our list of… Continue reading Our wish list
Linksys AG241 – QoS issue
Linksys have done a nice job with the AG241 I’ve been running it in a non-NAT mode for a few months now and so far it’s performed very reliably. The only thing that prevents it from exactly meeting my needs is the rather crappy QoS support it has. The WRT54G and WRT54GS models include QoS… Continue reading Linksys AG241 – QoS issue
RIAA rejoice in killing another service
Take a trip over to www.edonkey.com today and you’ll be greeted with the following:- The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available. If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law. Courts around the world — including the United States Supreme Court — have ruled that businesses and individuals can be prosecuted for illegal… Continue reading RIAA rejoice in killing another service
More calls for censorship
This article on the BBC website highlights the latest attempt at Net censorship. This time the “good cause” is banning sites that provide information on suicide as kids are killing themselves. I could take the opportunity to rant on about suicides being the result of our draconian laws on euthanasia but that’s another story. I’m… Continue reading More calls for censorship
More WRT54G woes
In a previous blog entry I described Linksys as my preferred source of SOHO router, then went on to rant about them changing specifications whilst retaining the same model number. Today I’ve uncovered yet another example of the mess they made of the WRT54G model. I’ve been suffering issues with SSH disconnects on just one… Continue reading More WRT54G woes
Ban on violent porn
The BBC reported today that a woman has successfully won her campaign to make it illegal to posses images of violent pornography. Liz Longhurst (the campaigner) probably did this with the best possible intentions but probably has no idea of how a law like this can be manipulated to take away an innocent person’s individual… Continue reading Ban on violent porn
Freenigma (The cost of user-friendliness)
Ben Laurie’s Blog drew my attention again this morning when I read his posting about Freenigma, a PGP/GnuPG plug-in for Firefox. This plug-in raises the question as to whether increased user-friendliness justifies a relaxation in security. In my opinion, this is an absolute no no. The objective of such a system must be security with… Continue reading Freenigma (The cost of user-friendliness)
Layered Technologies reconnect me!
Well it came as a surprise to me that LayeredTech not only accepted my proposal to block the complainants address, but they did it politely and without any additional conditions. My communications were with someone called Logan and it was a refreshing change to not be treated as a criminal. My personal thanks to him.… Continue reading Layered Technologies reconnect me!
LayeredTech shut me down
It’s finally happened, LayeredTech have disconnected my server. They did this because I failed to respond in 12 hours to an email they sent me at 2334 last night. Like I sit up all night waiting for LayeredTech to contact me! Below is the content of the shutdown message: To: Server ID: Base IP: NOTE… Continue reading LayeredTech shut me down
Say what you like, but don’t offend a religion
We Westerners are very proud of our “Freedom of Speech” claims. We live in a democratic society where everyone is entitled to their point of view. That is until religion becomes the topic of debate. This article written on a Right-wing website earned the author Indigo Wilson a suspenson from his employment, The Register reports.… Continue reading Say what you like, but don’t offend a religion
Anonymity and Identity
I’ve been a reader of Ben Laurie’s Blog for some time now. I guess anyone with an interest in anonymity or identity management is going to end up there eventually. Ben recently started a blog exchange on the topic of Anonymity is the Substrate which highlights a concept I had previously not considered, that anonymity… Continue reading Anonymity and Identity
Broadband Access
“We’re sorry, all of our operators are currently busy. You are at queue postition 13.” When you lose broadband access, operate lots of services and need the Internet to do your job, queue postition 13 clearly is not a good place to be, and I seem to have spent a lot of time in this… Continue reading Broadband Access
DLink DSL-G604T SNMP
I’ve been trying to use SNMP to monitor throughput on my DSL-G604T router. Since moving house I’m interested to know how much bandwidth the kids are eating with MS(bloody)N Messenger. The DSL-G604T supports SNMP, it says so in all the sales blurb. The reality is that whilst it has the functionality built in, it’s not… Continue reading DLink DSL-G604T SNMP