Just Uber

What follows in an light introduction aimed at new users wanting to run their own home servers. Please feel free to contribute.

To host or not to host, that is the question!

Whether or not to host your web site from a home Linux server depends on why you actually want to do this.

If you want to host from home to save money, or because you think it’d be easier than hosting elsewhere then it’s probably not the way to go. If you’re going down this route because you’d like to learn more about Linux and/or hosting then I’d wholeheartedly recommend it!

VMWare – Server Virtualisation

If you are not familiar with Linux, then you might want to give VMWare (free from www.vmware.com) a try. VMWare emulates another computer sitting on top of your Windows operating system. You could install Linux on this virtual computer without having to reformat your machine. Run a search on “server virtualisation” (or “server virtualization” if you prefer the American spelling) on your favourite search engine to find out more.

VMWare has some pre-built Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP web servers available for download which you can run using VMWare Player (free) or VMWare Server (also free). There’s one called Grandmas LAMP which is designed for beginners, and runs Ubuntu (an easy to use Linux OS). You can get it from the VMWare appliances directory

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Most businesses don’t seem to be that enthused about upgrading to Vista, at least until the first service pack is released. That’s a bugger for Microsoft, what can they do?

Behold Windows Vista Service Pack 1 due for release second half of this year !

But what pray tell is addressed in this service pack… New super power toys? Features? Little tweaks to the desktop appearance? Erm nah. Microsoft tells us that:

“regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues as are the primary focus for the Service Pack.”

What? I hear you ask… Microsoft has released Vista before fixing these ‘high impact issues’, and it goes live with all of these problems, and it costs more than XP?

Erm yeah…. Sorry!

Additionally worryingly is this statement from the article:

“Issues will surface from the deployments as well as throughout the program as end users test its limits thought their day-to-day activities.”

Disregarding the confusion between thought and through, it’s slightly worrying that the limits of Windows Vista SP1 are expected to be reached during the performance of ‘day-to-day activities’…

Ooooh bugger… If I where you I’d stick with XP, or better migrate to a Linux desktop.

Wanna know more? check out APC magazine

It is with more than a little amusement I read today about plans to introduce robotic nurses to the wards within the next three years.

Scientists from the universities of Warwick, Cardiff, Dublin and Newcastle are among the various boffins taking part in the EU sponsored “IWARD” project which aims to create robonurses able to distribute medication, clean the wards, show visitors to patients and take temperatures.

Although this seems like a great technological revolution, I personally believe that the money would be better spent on employing more nurses to bail out the failing NHS. Read more at the scotsman.com

Sweet, looks like another series of the most excellent IT Crowd is to air on Channel 4 sometime after summer.

John Hoare of the Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews fansite ‘Standard Nerds’ has picked over Graham Linehan’s blog to divulge the information. Given the uberness of the last series I hope series two will continue along the same vain!

Groklaw has a nice little article about the EU Commission’s report into the costs of migrating to Open Source software.

“Costs to migrate to an open solution are relevant and an organization needs to consider an extra effort for this. However these costs are temporary and mainly are budgeted in less than one year.”

Of special interest to me was the commission’s recommendations on migrating from Microsoft Office to Open Office.

Notably this advice is given to businesses considering upgrading their Office software:

1. Before buying, upgrading proprietary office software one needs consider that:

OpenOffice.org is free, extremely stable, and supports the ISO Open Document Standard.

You can grab a PDF of the report from this link. Roll on the inevitable march of FLOSS into the mainstream!

Just a quick post today. I found that dns resolution was awfully slow on my girlfriends Ubuntu Edgy laptop. Here’s a quick fix that worked for me – hopefully it’ll work for you.

Open up /etc/resolv.conf – it may look like this…

search localnet
nameserver 192.168.20.1
nameserver 212.50.12.2
nameserver 213.249.3.22

Remove the nameserver line that corresponds to your router (in my case it’s 192.18.20.1)

I haven’t got a clue why, but although the router’s dns works fine on windows, it’s dodgy on linux. Any suggestions why it might be then please leave a comment.

The black helicopters are circling silently overhead again…

MI5, the UK security service have announced that they will be creating an email service to alert subscribers to changes in the national threat level.

From Moneypenny herself:

“E-mail alerts of changes to the national Threat Level and updates on the Security Service website will be available in the near future. This will enable subscribers to keep informed of major developments in national security affairs. You will be able to subscribe via a form on the Security Service website. We will publish an update shortly giving the address of the subscription form.”

When you consider MI5 told MPs a day before the July 7 bombings in London that the country faced no imminent terror threat however the email alerts seem a little pointless….

-------------------------------------
Mr Bond to Me
09/01/2007 20:00

Dear Subscriber,

Everything is fine, chill out.
--------------------------------------
Mr Bond to Me
09/01/2007 20:02

Shit, ignore previous email!
--------------------------------------


Security researchers at the University of Cambridge have created a proof of concept hack showing the potential insecurity of supposedly un-hackable chip and pin terminals.

Saar Drimer and Steven Murdoch of the Security Research Laboratory managed to get a workable version of Tetris going on the machine.

Saar writes:

“Many discussions over the security of Chip & PIN have focused on the tamper-resistance of terminals (for example in the aftermath of the Shell Chip & PIN fraud).

It is important to remember, however, that even perfect tamper resistance only ensures that the terminal will no longer be able to communicate with the bank once opened. It does not prevent anyone from replacing most of the terminal’s hardware and presenting it to customers as legitimate, so freely collecting card details and PINs.”

Scary!

After learning about Scott Weston’s fun and games with the usb-missile-launcher, I begged Father Christmas for one. Lo and Behold it came!

The suggested method of unleashing said missiles at co-workers seemed to require the ‘missile controller’ to sit at the computer connected to the missile launcher. This method does however have the slightly undesirable effect of making the person doing the firing immediately identifiable to the large bloke who’s eye he has just taken out.

I decided that it’d be a good idea to be able to control my missiles from afar, and of course – the web seemed the only way.

Delving into Scott’s code, it seems he laid the groundwork for net control of the launcher. I’ve therefore had a bash at creating the rest of the code, and I’ve included it here.

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Well Chris has done it, in fact he has done it every where he can slip it in.
“Oh er missus” i hear you say, but no, put that thought back where it should be, i am talking about Ubuntu (or Kubuntu).

Chris has been an advocate for Linux for some while now, in fact it was while we were researching for our free wifi setup that Chris caught the Linux bug. I developed it earlier, a long time ago I went to Uni and gained (its hard to fail!) a degree in Software Engineering, this opened my eyes to many forms of operating system, with many a discussion to the pros and cons. Linux was used at Uni for a basis of many of the units (shell scripting, inter-process communication, PERL etc etc) all interesting stuff but of no use when hitting the big world

It seemed that all that was required was a understanding of how to combat the BSOD and talk nicely to users (grrrrrr). Since leaving Uni my Linux skills have slowly been lost to the dark recesses of my mind (not a nice place!), but it was after watching Chris start enjoying computing again that i realised it was time… Time to ditch Windows and move to Linux…

Chris and I have had this discussion for some time, why we have to stay with windows etc.. etc.. mostly it geared around other members of the family having to cope with what at heart is a nerds delight

But looking at the Kubuntu site and checking out Chris’s laptop where he had it installed i realised that there were no arguments left in my way. I had used many live cds (including the very good backtrack but never felt inclined to actually stick with Linux.

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