December 13, 2005

Have You Been Blacklisted Yet?

Back in 1995 who got blacklisted on the internet? Not many people on the internet back in 1995... hmmm...

Well I see an increasing trend, especially on IRC where IP's are getting blacklisted. Recently my IP changed on one of my dynamic connections. I noticed that the IP was already blacklisted in several abuse databases. If our solution is to just blacklist ip's whenever someone does something wrong with it, then where does this lead us to? Network and system administrators need to come up with a better solution, or else we are going to create more problems for our ourselves at the expense of people who don't have malicious intentions.

Tor is an open source anonymous network that's a path in the right direction.

http://tor.eff.org/;

Maybe we can create an open public network that is trusted. But already I'm seeing abuse with Tor on irc.freenode.net, and ops are banning Tor users from channels and even from connecting to the network.

Maybe the only way is to have some kind of account based network that authenticates the user and would keep the level of abuse at a minium. No one is truly anonymous anyway, and this may keep the weenies at bay. The reality is that Tor is a great idea and I highly recommend that you check it out.

It will be a hard battle along the way... better get some popcorn because this is going to be one hell of a ride...

I'm out...

Posted by lexton at 06:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2005

Property List Editor Saves The Day

I recently did a clean install of Mac OS X and I wanted to copy over plist files from a backup in order to get all of my preferences back for each application.

I use Transmit, a FTP program and it looked like it's plist file had persmissions problems and wasn't working right. I was unable to add, edit or delete any of my favorites.

So I opened up the plist file in Propert List Editor and deleted the entries that I needed to and then saved the file. After that I haven't had a problem.

More info about plist files can be found at Apple's Developer Site

Posted by lexton at 05:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 18, 2004

Quotes to Ponder When You Can't Sleep And It's 3 A.M.

The lesson? It seems you can either be free to do anything you want, to create anything you dream of without answering to anyone, or you can be rich. You're not likely to be both.
Cabel Sasser

It is far more honest to be undeservedly ignored than to be honoured without merit.
Denis Fonvizin

Freedom without obligation is anarchy. Freedom with obligation is democracy.
Earl Riney

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke

General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.
Edmuns Burke

Only the educated are free.
Epictetus

He who allows oppression, shares the crime.
Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin

Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.
Eugene V. Debs

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
F.A. Hayek

It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.
Frederick Douglass

In free countries, every man is entitled to express his opinions and every other man is entitled not to listen.
G. Norman Collie

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw

The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast - is choice.
H.G. Wells

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement -- that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it -- that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.
Walter Lippmann

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.
E.M. Cioran

Posted by lexton at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 04, 2004

Linux Kernel Removal and Upgrading Through Yum

I'm in the process of updating to Fedora Core 2 with the excellent package management utility --> yum. This is the first time that I have updated to a new version with a package management utility. I'm crossing my fingers...

The How To I used to upgrade is at Brad Hutchinson's site:

--Upgrading Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core with yum--

I've been running and updating Core 1 for quite sometime now... and I have collected a few kernel upgrades along the way. So here's a simple way to remove all the excess baggage.

perform this in the shell (as root):

[root@localhost root]# rpm -q kernel

this will list all the kernels that are installed on your system. such as:

kernel-2.4.22-1.2174.nptl
kernel-2.4.22-1.2188.nptl
kernel-2.4.22-1.2197.nptl

now use rpm again to remove them.

[root@localhost root]# rpm -e kernel-2.4.22-1.2197.nptl

this will remove the 2.4.22-1.2197 from the system and also remove it's entry in the grub.conf file -- so that the next time you reboot - it will not appear in the boot list options

Posted by lexton at 07:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 03, 2004

Post It! - Bookmarklet for Safari

Looking for a bookmarklet for MT that works in Apple's Safari web browser?

well then.... head over to pixeldecor.com and try out MT2Safari 1.2. There's also some nice desktop images that can be downloaded at this site

Posted by lexton at 11:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Testing for Spam Relays

I found two great services that test for spam relays on mail hosts.

They are:

abuse.net

ordb.org

abuse.net allows the user to perform anonymous tests or you can register through an email address. abuse.net is intended to help the Internet community to report and control network abuse and abusive users. Since the best place to report abusive activity varies from one system to another, they're trying to keep a master database of reporting addresses for users throughout the net to use.

ordb.org requires that you register in order to perform the relay tests and they also maintain a blacklist database for mail hosts that have open relays.

Posted by lexton at 02:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 29, 2004

VNC Client and Server Goodies

I've been testing out a few of the freely available VNC software packages that are available and the results have been pleasant. This type of software allows a user to administer a system remotely through a GUI. The setup is easy and the software is stable.

RealVNC has downloadable versions for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, etc... There's even a Java client. I've used the Windows 2000 RealVNC server with great results.

I use OSXVnc on Mac OS X and it works well. I was able to install the software through ssh and configure and run it without a hitch.

A great Mac OS X VNC client is Chicken of the VNC. It has a simple interface and can be downloaded from sourceforge.net

I have also discovered another VNC server variant called ChromiVNC that works well on Classic Mac OS. Visit their site for more info.

Posted by lexton at 11:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 28, 2004

HTML Code Examples in the Extended Body Field

OK, I want to be able to use HTML code examples in my entries with Movable Type. However I noticed that the following characters '<' and '>' are not being properly encoded when I submit them in an entry. So I came up with a basic modification to the code that allows for them to be encoded properly.

This hack will allow for HTML code examples in the Extended Entry field only.

First open the file --> /mt/lib/MT/App/CMS.pm

Then find the subroutine -- > save_entry

within that subroutine look for this block of code below and replace with the block below it.

-----------Find This Code Block-------------------------

my %values = map { $_ => scalar $q->param($_) } @$names;
## Strip linefeed characters.
for my $col (qw( text excerpt text_more keywords )) {
$values{$col} =~ tr/\r//d if $values{$col};
}

-----------Replace Above Code with Code Below-----------

my %values = map { $_ => scalar $q->param($_) } @$names;
## Strip linefeed characters.
# removing text_more and adding different filter below
for my $col (qw( text excerpt keywords )) {
$values{$col} =~ tr/\r//d if $values{$col};
}

# Hack-mod
# separated text_more out so that code can be pasted
# into this field. encodes '<' and '>' characters
for my $col (qw( text_more )) {
$values{$col} =~ tr/\r//d if $values{$col};
$values{$col} =~ s/</</gs;
$values{$col} =~ s/>/>/gs;
}

--------------------------------------------------------

With the above code an additional -- > for - statement was included that provided a separate encoding instruction just for the 'text_more' field that takes all '<'and '>' characters and encodes them so that browsers will display them properly.

So here is the extended entry field and I have included a HTML code example in it.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>test</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
HTML code example!
</BODY>
</HTML>

The HTML code example only works in the Extended Entry.

Posted by lexton at 08:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 16, 2004

CLI and Domino's Pizza

Yes, it's true - you can now order pizza from the command line

Linux.com - CLI and Pizza

hmmm... I'm hungry now...

Posted by lexton at 03:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 09, 2004

Display Code in Entries

found this link --> Display Code In Entries

It describes ways in which you can display code examples in your code. This is something I've been looking for since installing movable type.

I have also come up with my own version that requires small modifications to the code base. It will be posted shortly.

Posted by lexton at 08:27 PM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2004

Welcome

I installed movable type the other day and I am pleased with it's flexibility. I also like the fact that is generates html files. Dynamic database driven sites need to call upon mod_rewrite to create .html file references.

I have also installed David Raynes Sub Categories plugin. It will prove to be useful.

I downloaded the plugin and had it installed easily. --> just 2 files to install. I created some sub categories using the mt-sc.cgi script.
Then I tried to get the Sub Categories to list by inserting the following code into the Main Index:

<MTSubCategories>
<MTSubCatIsFirst><ul></MTSubCatIsFirst>
<li>
<a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a><br>
<MTSubCatsRecurse>
</li>
<MTSubCatIsLast></ul></MTSubCatIsLast>
</MTSubCategories>

----------------------------------

The code produced the category listings nicely but created empty links --> $MTCategoryArchiveLink$ had no value. Being new to Movable Type - I didn't realize that I had to enable the Category Archive. When I did this everything worked fine.

To enable the Category Archive go to:

WebLog Config --> Archiving

Make sure Category Archive is checked under 'Archive Type' and then save your settings and rebuild the site.

I'm using Sub Categories for my Lots Ah Links Blog

Posted by lexton at 03:46 AM | Comments (0)