Just Uber

This ain’t no technological breakdown, this is the road to Hull.

KC is naughty, very naughty indeed. Not only will KC not share its toys with the other ISPs like it’s supposed to - it hasn’t been looking after its things either…

Telling tales out of school, one cheeky chappie chips in with the news that KC are using special wire so that any companies trying to connect their kit to KCs network (like they’d have to, to sell internet in Hull and area) will find it won’t fit, and that buying compatible gear will cost them a small fortune. Mooowahahahaha!

As if that wasn’t enough KC then went and broke its connection to the rest of the world. Yup, that’s right - Unless you’re interested in browsing websites residing upon the KC network (members of the Hull UFO Society breath easy), you’ll find that your internet connectivity is flakey at best. Don’t worry though, the network only went tits up four days ago, so it should be fixed soon. Honest.

This has all been too much for Hull MEP Diana Wallis, who’s now gone and told the European Commission how naughty KC have been in the hope that they won’t be afraid to give KC the good spanking that the British government never would….

Here’s hoping!

Update: After being approached by a fellow Karoo user for help, Just Uber was happy to give a home to The Unofficial Karoo User Forums. They’re run by a nice chap called Dylan who is trying to build a place where Karoo users can talk about their experiences. You can find me in there under the name lefty

Hey folks, the first episode of the second series of the IT Crowd airs tonight on Channel 4 at 21:30 - Be there, or be square!

The Work Outing

When the dashing Philip from the sixth floor pops in to ask Jen to the theatre, she accepts right away. But, to her annoyance, so do Moss and Roy, turning what could have been a date into a work outing. As the evening spirals towards disaster, she wonders whether Philip is everything he claims to be…

Hi folks,

I’ve been bashing this idea around on the marketing mailing list for a bit, but thought I’d come and shout about it here in case I’d missed anyone

The idea is to raise the brand awareness of Ubuntu by using the power of viral marketing. We’d like to create something like the www.firefoxflicks.com project, but for Ubuntu.

Contributors will be able to submit short films advertising Ubuntu which will then be voted upon by site visitors.

Are you interested in helping?

At the moment, we’re not looking for people who want to make videos (that’ll come when the project is up and running). Just now it’d be nice to get people involved in getting something together which allows other people submit their videos to us.

So, what can you do?

At the moment we have an offer from a couple of youtube.com like video sites who will help us to host the videos, so hosting is pretty much covered. What we need is

1) Techies. A front end which we can use to showcase the videos on like ubuntuvideo.com, and to display info to people on how they can get involved.

2) Ambassadors. Liasing with organisations like Universities and Colleges to invite them to create and submit videos.

3) Advocates. Are you a social networking ubermeister? As we get up and running we’ll need help spreading the word.

4) Marketing wizards. We need help creating guidance for project submissions.

5) Anything else. If you’ve thought of something I’ve missed, then please tell me!

Get in touch!

Please add your name to the wiki page (displayed below) if you are involved in/want to be involved in the ubuntu viral videos project. You can also get in touch via the marketing mailing list, #ubuntu-viral-videos on IRC (freenode.net) and of course by using the wiki.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/UbuntuViralVideos

I believe that if this idea is executed properly, that it can definately make a difference. We need you!

Cheers

Chris

Kingston Communications ‘aka’ Karoo are at it again.

Welcome the horrors of a monopoly! I’m on the Karoo Max package and I’m currently having my connection shaped down to just under 1000 Kbps (as shown on Karoo’s own test page). My ADSL connection is synchronised at 8128kbps so I thought I’d give tech support a call.

The nice chap I spoke to explained that my connection was being shaped as I’m on a contended service. After suggesting to him that I pay extra to ensure that I’m traffic shaped to a minimum he explained that it didn’t make any difference. Neither apparantly does the fact that I never breach my ‘Option 3′ 40GB of traffic a month.

As the ‘Option 3′ info box describes, this package is for…

“Families who regularly use the internet (especially in the evenings) for homework, music and movie downloads, and emailing family photos.”

This means then that Karoo’s fair usage policy is total rubbish and that when you buy the package advertised for usage ‘especially in the evenings’ you still get traffic shaped heavily in the ‘erm’ evenings!

So, there you have it folks. Paying extra to Karoo does not effect the level of contention you will receive on your connection. This beggars the question - Why pay more? What is KC spending all of my hard earned money on. Rebranding perhaps?

I’d switch if I could, but unfortunately there are no other broadband providers selling service over the Kingston Communications network. Why? Because KC will only resell broadband connectivity to them at the same price they’ll sell it to residential customers.

Makes selling service in Hull and area a little pointless doesn’t it….

Oh, and just as a footnote, to prove it’s not only me having issues, check out the Karoo User Group. I think together we need a little help here!

Update: After being approached by a fellow Karoo user for help, Just Uber was happy to give a home to The Unofficial Karoo User Forums. They’re run by a nice chap called Dylan who is trying to build a place where Karoo users can talk about their experiences. You can find me in there under the name lefty

The more I use Debian and Ubuntu, the more I love it!

I’ve just finished creating a Debian package for Wifidog after a conversation on the Ubuntu-UK mailing list, and some help and advice from Kirrus and Neil Greenwood (thanks guys).

The thing that surprised me more than anything, is that it wasn’t that hard. The future is bright, the future is Debian

If you want the package by the way, you can get it here

Note, this package is for the wifidog gateway and not the auth server, I may release an auth server package in the future however so watch this space

Given the current fun and games with the community managed Ubuntu LoCo servers I’ve been thinking recently about server security.

Personally, any web servers that I’d ever run in my ‘day job’ would never have remote administration services like SSH/FTP etc open to the web (and more often than not, not at all), and would only ever have the minimum necessary port/s open on the firewall anyway.

Unfortunately, I realise that in a community effort it’s probably impossible to aspire to the ‘access at the server room only’ ideal. Volunteers need to remote admin servers from many different locations, so we need to keep those vulnerable services facing the web. The question really is ‘how do we secure our servers against attack?’

Given the seriousness of the matter, protection against attack often seems to be pretty far down in the pecking order when people go down the ‘teach yourself to be a linux sysadmin’ route, and it doesn’t seem to get that much discussion.

So - What sort of tools do you recommend for toughening your linux server?

By tools, I mean something in addition to the usual default install. For instance, I use denyhosts to stop SSH dictionary attacks on hobby/volunteer servers I run.

I’d be really interested to learn what works for you, and any interesting stories you have about security.

Don’t be shy

Hoorah! Friday 24th August marks the return of The IT Crowd - Channel 4’s scarily accurate comedy portrayal of life working in IT.

Cue another few months of salesmen commenting on how similar our office is to ‘that IT show thing of the telly…’.

That’s right, Dell PCs with Ubuntu will be available in Europe from August 8th.

Excellent