Windows XP - Insecure out of the box

Windows XP - Insecure out of the box
Last night I installed Windows XP on a newly-formatted PC, installed my ADSL drivers and software, and went online to download Kerio Personal Firewall, to help keep the nasties at bay. In the short amount of time it took to download it and disconnect again, I managed to get infected with a virus. I had not yet done any emailing and the only website I visited was that of the firewall provider.

Bloody Windows!!!!!

I'm the Supervisor

I'm the Supervisor
Got the new Infected Mushroom album this morning, and it kicks ass! Nice to see the boys go back to their more familiar style for this album. I got it from the wonderful Chaos Unlimited for a very good price

[Listening to: Infected Mushroom - Stretched ]

A personal experience of Hurrican Ivan

A personal experience of Hurricane Ivan
I'm going to share with you a copy of an email I received from a friend in Gulf Shores, Alabama - the place where Hurricane Ivan hit the USA the hardest. I have edited any personal details that shouldn't be shared on the web, but the salient points remain intact. I'm sure the original sender won't mind my recording this on the blog for posterity (he's got too much on his plate to catch up on emails right now so I won't ask permission til later.

Thank you all for your messages of concern and requests for information as to how things are. Only last night (Tuesday Sept. 21) was power and water restored to our area so we have been unable to receive or send e-mails. Also please excuse the generic reply but there are just too many to be able to handle them individually. Some friends and family were kept up to date by our daughter and my brother so some of you will know some or all of this.

Very briefly here is what happened to us personally.

Hurricane preparations commence on weekend of 9/11 &12. Mandatory evacuations from area ordered by Gov. of Alabama, Bob Riley. We secure home and Beach Cottage and leave area on Tuesday afternoon, with our precious dogs, heading for Tuscaloosa, the only place where we could find a room. En route we go through Jackson, Alabama and find motel with a room. Decide to stay there. Watch the eye of one of the largest hurricanes to hit the USA heading straight for our home. Difficult to be upbeat.

Wednesday. Spend time glued to TV with only break taking dogs for walks. Bob Riley orders main evacuation route north, I65, to be one way traffic on entire freeway. Eye passes overhead our area that night.

Thursday. Hurricane follows us to Jackson and during early morning destroys entire power and water system. Town is paralyzed as nothing works. We have no idea what is happening anywhere but with cell phones find out from family members and friends. Spend that day in Jackson hoping some services will be restored. Vain hope. We spend time collecting water with our dog bowls from gutter down pipes to fill the toilet in our room. Another long night with no electricity or water.

Friday. Derry finds a hotel for us in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We leave early and it takes us a hundred miles before we find something that is open and working. We now have not washed for two whole days but who cares. There was a Burger King which had coffee and something to eat. Closest thing to Cheeseburger in paradise. We reach hotel and they let us in before check in time. Wow, a TV for news, water, which means shower. Amazing. Gulf Shores, Fort Morgan and Orange Beach closed to everyone while emergency crews clear and check for hazardous situations. We hear first news (from friend in the Fire department) that our home appears to be OK but beach cottage is gone. National guard activated to patrol and prevent looting. Maintenance crews from all over the country heading to the area to assist in clearing and restoring services.

Saturday. Stay in Hattiesburg spending much time on the phone. Area remains closed to everyone except emergency crews.

Sunday noon we receive word that our area is open. Within minutes we are on our way. The incredible wrath of this mighty storm becomes more and more evident as we get closer to home. We are allowed through the checkpoints after verifying we are residents.

Arrive home to find it untouched except for a yard filled with small broken twigs, leaves and pine needles everywhere. There had been water in our lower level but only a few inches and it had already dried. Everything else was fine, except no power, water or sewer. Déjà vu.

Went to beach. Mainstay cottage completely gone, not a trace. Beaches totally destroyed as were all the lovely dunes in our area. Sand levels some 4 to 6 feet below what they were. Trillions of tons just washed away.

We begin cleanup and taking care of administration stuff, insurance etc.

Power and water returns Tuesday night, an absolutely amazing effort by the service companies. The guys fixing the power in our area were from Illinois. We read e-mail for first time in a week. Too much to read before going to bed.

Things will never be quite the same here but we have no idea which direction that will take. Many thousands of people have lost everything, much has been destroyed, but much also survived. Que sera, sera.

Obviously I could have written many pages worth, but thought I would give you all a brief synopsis.

Again apologies for the generic reply.

Bandwidth rawr!

Bandwidth rawr!
One day's net usage at work

Back online

Back online
Got my ADSL at home reconnected. w00t!

[Listening to: FractalGee - Split Brain ]

404 : Financial Audit Information not found

404: Financial Audit Information not found
With a note of irony, the new Sarbanes-Oxley Act has a section 404 relating to handling of financial documents. Anyone else spot that 404 is the HTTP code for "Document Not Found" ?

[Listening to: Scorpik - Abient1 1 ]

Is your OS genuine?

Is your OS genuine?
Those folks over at Microsoft have launched a new initiative and associated tool to check if your copy of Windows is genuine (ie, not a pirate copy). Aside from the fact that on machines that I know have non-genuine copies, the test passed, I thought a Linux version of the test was in order :-

• Is your OS stable, achieving uptime of months on end?


• Can you see the source code to your OS and all its applications?


• Did you get it for no cost (or at the very least, the cost of the install media only)?


• Does a cute, overweight penguin feature on your machine quite heavily?

Chances are, if you answer these questions in the affirmative, you have a genuine Linux system. Answer the first three correctly, you could probably include OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD too

[Listening to: Underfoot - Infinite Wellspring]

Robo hacking

Robo hacking
Take one cool programmable robot toy, a Pocket PC and a webcam, tinker around with them long enough, and what do you get? An autonomous programmable robot with eyes (and an embedded C++ API)

[Listening to: Instant remedy - Ocean loader ]

Stuff v1.0

Stuff v1.0
Not to be outdone wiht the recent release of Firefox 1.0PR, the guys n girls over at the GAIM project have hit version 1.0 too. This is a good week for open source software!

Whoosh!
God I love work bandwidth

Direction                    Actual Speed                            True Speed (estimated)
Downstream            5312 Kbps (664.0 KB/sec)        5736 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream                6174 Kbps (771.8 KB/sec)        6667 Kbps (inc. overheads)

[Listening to: Big Alec - When colors are going, Bang! Bang! ]

Serve your monarch - kill Batman!

Serve your monarch - kill Batman!
That silly arse Batman has scaled the walls of Buckingham Palace again - armed with only a mouse, its up to you to shoot the bugger down!

Go get Firefox - now!

Go get Firefox - now!

15 Year old kid scams thousands of dollars

15 Year old kid scams thousands of dollars
From Fark :- 15-year-old boy gets misaddressed ATM card, sets up fake business, rakes in the cash (full article). Best part is the victim's quote :- "I felt like he was in my pants for about two months," Finger said (Note to American readers :- in the UK, pants are underpants)

Work day remaining calculator

Work day remaining calculator
I just wrote a little application for Starbuck that he asked for. It calculates the percentage of your working day that has elapsed, with configurable start and end times. It defaults to a 9am to 5pm workday and doesn't skip lunchbreaks. You can download the app here



[Note]
You'll need the Microsoft .Net Framework to run it (but Windows Update should have that covered by now).

[Updated]
Now made sure the window remains on top. Oh, and I'm working on porting it to Linux using Mono/GTK#

[Listening to: Purple Motion and Logick - Mosaic Days ]

Linux for Windows

Linux for Windows
Managed to get a version of Gentoo working within Windows, thanks to the very clever coLinux which lets you run Linux on a native Win32 thread. All clever stuff. I did a screenshot of the setup doing an emerge sync as proof....

[Listening to: Dj Tiesto - In search of sunrise 2]