I searchin’ every week day away

Except on Ebay, just trying to find a badge maker, badge making machinery etc.  and the search function seems to be broken, anyone else having problems with it ?

Hi, My names Google and i’ve gone mad

Google, NSA may team up over cyberattacks: report – Yahoo! News

“Google is finalizing a deal that would let the National Security Agency help it investigate a corporate espionage attack that may have originated in China”
Now that’s interesting, Google are getting a lot of flak over privacy issues for sharing our data, either willingly (marketing) or unwillingly (cracking), so to put our minds at rest they have teamed up with “the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization” um, makes me feel much better, anybody tried Yauba ? apart from all the returned results that reference documents that are all in proprietory formats, it’s an interesting way to have your resuls displayed, give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: Google, NSA, cyberattacks, china, yauba, privacy

Faster than Light Computing or “here’s the Dope on germanium”

First germanium laser

MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication.
So out with the fibre optic wires peeps and get building.

Technorati Tags: germanium, laser, fibre, optic, dope, light

Faster than Light Computing or “here’s the Dope on germanium”

First germanium laser

MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication.
So out with the fibre optic wires peeps and get building.

Technorati Tags: germanium, laser, fibre, optic, dope, light

Symbolic logic – dont you just love it

Symbolic logic – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“For example, the exclusive disjunction can be symbolized as an inclusive disjunction conjoined with the negation of the conjoint elements.”
I’m glad that means something to somebody, I ran it through my brain a couple of times and then took a little lie down with a herbal tea and a cool breeze on my forehead.

Technorati Tags: Symbolic logic, disjunction, herbal tea

Early Warning System, no, don’t take cover, pay attention.

“New viruses pose the greatest threat during the time between the discovery and the availability of corresponding checks in commonly used antivirus software” says http://www.outpost24.com
Possibly worth considering if stakes are high or you run MS Windows.
Technorati Tags: virus, warning, outpost24

Is it worth reading – FREE/Open Source reviews on the Web vs Buying a good old Book

I some times think i’d be better off buying all the books and magazines I need to read as opposed to trying to read the online versions which seem to suffer from “txt spk”, poor writing and content, all right I appreciate mine isn’t exactly skilled but I do try, most of the time

I don’t want to read “fanbwoi” articles, I don’t want to read, “linux command line suck” I don’t want to read “we just got given a load of expensive kit you could never afford and isn’t even anything to do with Linux or FREE/Open Source (Read iPod, iPhone reviews, ,m, cough, ahem)

So would anybody like to recommend some printed books ? Yes, pretty revolutionary I know but lets try and think “old school” for a minute.
I’ll start by recommending “Linux Pocket Guide” by Daniel J Barrett (yup same guy, and whats more for all you old hippies out there,  he worked with “Gentle Giant” man….) and produced by O’reilly publishers (who seem to produce all the best geeky books), small, pocket sized and comprehensive, a good reference with plenty of working examples. £3.99 off Ebay, what a bargain.Technorati Tags: book, linux, reading

In one hand and out the other or more to the point “More than 8,300 bank account login credentials were stolen from a small New York bank”

8,300 Online Banking Logins Stolen |Security News | Outpost24

“More than 8,300 bank account login credentials were stolen from a small New York bank after hackers breached its security and gained access to a server hosting its online banking system.”
According to a press release issued by Suffolk County National Bank, “they hacked us but we were on it straight away and none of our customers lost any money, at all, what so ever, honestly”,
nah, but that’s my interpretation of it
But it gets better, in fact this bit is brill’ (as they say “oop north”)
“Adding, “Investors and shareholders should be advised that a provision of approximately $351,000, net of taxes, or about $0.04 per share, was booked during the fourth quarter of 2009 to account for expenses which may or may not be incurred in responding to this incident.”
My underlining by the way but it was pure pythonesque
All this retrieved from http://www.outpost24.com “The Technology Leader in Vulnerability Assessment and Management” alledgedly, as they say. And how did I arrive there? well i’ll tell you;
BBC News then France in fresh explorer warning then then, well I don’t know… i’ve just searched through my history and can’t make the connection now. I did a search for the initials CPNI or “Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure” but I can’t for the life of me work out which article had sent me there, , hey, ho, as my mate “Mister” would say.
Anyway CPNI is the “Government authority that provides protective security advice to businesses and organisations across the national infrastructure.” according to Google, so I was wondering whether they would talk about “Operating System” security, particularly where Linux might be involved, i’m actually still on the site at the mo’ but felt compelled to share it with you straight away. Anything else of note and i’ll add it here but if you have anything to add, feel free as usual.

“Threatening to pull out of China is like threatening to spit on a whale” and other ludicrous statements

I must admit working for the BBC or the Guardian would be kind of cool but I would need to hang on to my roots and not ignore the poor folk who have no media contacts or exciting media related jobs where we call each other luvvy and pat each other on the back.

Take this from Bill Thompson, “an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet. ” who had written an article on the BBC’s website.
In it he wrote “ (Google) Threatening to pull out of China is like threatening to spit on a whale ” - What ? what does that actually mean ?
People in privileged positions need to think carefully about what they write and report, you are paid a fair amount of money and we don’t want to read nonsense, of which that statement obviously is. So I decided to read more of his articles;
“I booted in FireWire mode and tried to seee (sic) the disk” - What, What are you talking about ? what is Firewire mode ?
Well i’ll tell you, as Bill failed to do so (he assumes we are all tech. aware Mac owners) it refers to booting from a different device, normally a computer will boot from your Hard Disk/Drive but there are times your computer may need to boot from other Media, a rescue disk etc. So now you’ve mentioned it Bill how do we do it ? no, don’t think he’s going to tell you, so I will, the command you require is “Press T during startup – Start up in FireWire Target Disk mode ” you can visit the website were I picked up that tip, plus loads of other usefull advice.
What else does he write about, well there is “how good Microsoft are” and “how good Apple are” and “what you can buy for your Apple Ipod” and how he’s a busy man doing, well, I would say, selling Apple and Microsoft products, both of which are closed source, so to then read his tale of Security woes where he praises an open system and the sharing of information but then fails to mention free/open source software as being integral to this model suggests to me its just about consumerism.
So Bill, we don’t care about your iPod but we do care what “Firewire mode” might be and we do care about security and secure software, but we don’t care that it took a you a while to log into Facebook one morning because your laptop took ages to boot, sigh…. What we do care about is that you are supposed to be independant and techno literate, so please start tailoring your articles accordingly.

FAIL – IPv6 support – Fedora, Ubuntu et al

OK just switched from Ubuntu to Fedora and as has happened many times before Web browsing has ground to a halt. Now i’m pretty sure its anIPv6 problem but most people will deny it, there is no bug they say, turning off IPv6 won’t help, etc. etc.
Well LET ME TELL YOU LOT – There is a problem – To get to the google homepage and load it so that it reads done in the status bar took one minute and, oh, wait it still hasn’t finished.
So in Ubuntu web browsing fast – In Fedora web browsing slow. Now don’t get me wrong I believe I had to disable IPv6 in Firefox for Ubuntu but as my settings have not changed ( I copied my .mozilla settings from my HOME folder) why would it not work in Fedora.
So what advice do we get;
Well i’m still waiting, i,ve got 4 tabs open and none have resolved yet, oh, yes, here we go, no, my mistake still going 1 minute later.
“A common mistake is an incorrect MTU setting in your DSL router, PPPoE or PPP settings” – No don’t be daft
“Other common mistakes are a bad DNS server configuration and a broken local network configuration” – No don’t be daft
“which DNS servers are you using ?” – Same as before don’t be daft
“it might be fedora 10 use of ipv6 as default . that your isp is having trouble with it
or just your isp’s dns have you looked into “openDNS” http://www.opendns.com
”
Ah, “it might be fedora 10 use of ipv6 as default” yes aint that the truth but the “openDNS”, nah, don’t be daft, my DNS servers are same as they were. Next….

“The “ideal” way to disable IPv6 in a Fedora system is apparently to place
this line in /etc/sysconfig/network:

      NETWORKING_IPV6=no
” Yes tried that one, FAIL !
So I went to Fedorasolved

su -c 'echo "install ipv6 /bin/true
blacklist ipv6" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ipv6.conf'

then

su -c 'service ip6tables stop && chkconfig ip6tables off'

1. After making these changes a system reboot will be required.
2. If you find that anything is actually fixed by disabling IPv6, then you have found a bug. Make sure you report it at http://bugzilla.redhat.com. What ! are you kidding ! disabling IPv6 makes things work !

So I headed over to How To Disable IPv6 on Fedora / Linux & Why

---

Rest of pages have timed out or blank… OK, I’m gonna swing for the next person who says there is not a problem with IPv6 support. Does ANYBODY at all have any idea what the problem is really ?