Digital Choke Daynotes |
What's a Daynote?"Daynotes" are daily (usually) journal entries of interesting happening and discussions. They are not 'blogs', which are often just a collection of links to other information (although we do include links occasionally). Daynotes are much more interesting (we hope). These "Digital Choke Daynotes" were inspired by the collection of daily journals of the "Daynotes Gang" (see sites at .com, .org, .net), a collection of daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals. If you have comments, send us an email. A bit more about me is here. You might also enjoy our little story about the death of the 'net. |
Reports |
No major changes to the 'look'. And not a whole lot of interesting things to tell you about. (Although some would say that that statement is always true.)
I washed the truck in the morning, and did some cleaning inside, since it was too hot outside. The usual: vacuumed the entire house (which takes a while), cleaned the upstairs bathroom (including the toilets, which always impresses my wife), did a couple of loads of laundry, and cleaned the tile floors. Pam had to work, so I don't mind helping out a bit.
There doesn't seem to be much new on the information security front. I did spend some time this weekend updating my mother-in-laws' computer. She's not too computer literate, and also doesn't seem to be interested in it much. Her late husband bought it for her, but it was mostly a 'doorstop' to her. She's been doing some minor remodeling of her house (new carpet, paint all around, and a minor overhaul of the kitchen). So it may be that her computer will say here at the house. If so, I might use it as a hacker test system, or perhaps as a hardware firewall. It's just a P4-500MHz with only a 12GB hard drive, so a hardware firewall system, perhaps Linux-based, might be it's best use.
And the minor blisters on my feet are getting better. (That sounds worse than it is; they were just red a slightly sore.). But I can report that I didn't go to the mailbox yesterday.
I came across a good resource for fighting spyware/adware ("scumware"). It's the Spyware Warrior pages. There is much good information there. I sent a copy of this off to Jerry Pournelle, since he was fighting a scumware problem last weekend, but you get an advance look.
Among the good information there is a list of bogus spyware removal tools (some are worse than the problem), a recommended list of anti-spyware tools, and a '"what to do if you get hijacked" (all of this on the same extensive page). There are also some good discussion forums.
The "What to do" section is good, and includes a reference to a volunteer group that will help with spyware removal:
"HijackThis! (HJT) is a free program that will scan key system settings on your PC and generate a plain text log that you can copy and paste into a post. The volunteers at the above forums will examine that HJT log and recommend a course of action to fix your PC."
I've used HJT on a couple of systems. It includes info on startup programs, browser 'helpers', and more. Some of the reported info is about valid programs that should not be removed. It seems like a good tool; the site seems like a good resource. You might want to give the HJT program a try on your system; download it at the Spyware Warrior pages.
I found a program today that scans a wired network for wireless access points. It's called "Air Patrol Sentinel", from Cirond. I've used their "PocketWinc" program on my iPaq to find wireless networks. It works pretty well. (I haven't been able to get MiniStumbler to work on the iPaq.)
Finding WAPs can be difficult and expensive. One way is to wander around your company with a PDA or laptop running something like NetStumbler. Sort of like "war driving", but walking. That technique works, but it's a lot of work, and not entirely accurate. You have to be war walking when the AP is active, and perhaps it's not active all the time.
Another version of war walking is those inexpensive thumb-sized WAP detectors. They aren't very accurate, but there is an interesting technique that you can use. Give one to the internal mail person. They wander around the entire company, and aren't expected to have such a device. Bribe them with a dinner for two if they find a WAP (and you verify it). That will keep their war walking confidential.
But war walking isn't very efficient -- you'll miss the occasional WAP, like the guy with the laptop that turns on his wireless card while connected to the network with a cable.
Or you can install wireless sensors in the building, which look for WAP signals. This can get quite expensive if you have lots of buildings. Both options can also find WAPs that aren't connected to your network, such as from the company next door.
So this new program does continuous scanning of the wired network, looking for responses from devices that match a database of known WAP 'signatures'. It's an interesting concept, one that I've been waiting for. The price is reasonable ($995 for 1 year licenses), which is much less than installing wireless sensors throughout the company.
I just started using it this afternoon. I had an installation problem on the desktop computer, which their tech support guys are trying to duplicate. But the install on the laptop worked fine. I haven't used it enough to form an opinion on it's effectiveness. They do offer a 30-day demo download. I'm going to set it up on another system and set if for scanning of the network over the next several days. The results might be interesting.
Tomorrow is 'meeting day'. Some might be interesting. Possibly.
As we continue in the election season, I note this:
"A vulnerability was reported in Diebold's Global Election Management System (GEMS). A local or remote authenticated user can modify votes.
"BlackBoxVoting.org reported that the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains an undocumented backdoor account that can be exploited to modify votes recorded on the system. A local or remote authenticated user can enter a two-digit code in a certain "hidden" location to cause a second set of votes to be created on the system. This second set of votes can be modified by the user and then read by the voting system as legitimate votes, the report said."
Report available at www.blackboxvoting.org , along with other scary voting stuff.
If I lived in an area with electronic voting without paper trail (and paper trail stored on the voting box, not on a receipt that the voter takes with them), I would seriously consider voting via absentee ballot.
I see serious problems with e-voting....especially in areas with very close races (think Florida, 2000...).
"Vote early ... and often" -- William Hale Thompson, Chicago Mayor, 195-1923 and 1931-1935. (Also attributed to Al Capone, and Richard J Daley, Chicago Mayor, 1955-1976. )
The start (almost) of a three-day weekend here in the States. Monday is the "Labor Day" holiday. Which seems like an oxymoron -- on Labor Day, you don't go to work.
Brings to mind an observation from Gallagher (famed watermelon-smashing comedian):
Why do we drive on a parkway, but park on a driveway?
And a reader notes that he has difficulty reading the above text (the indented text with the light yellow background). It's a Courier font, normal weight, 'x-small' (which is about 10 px, I think), blue text.
This is the same text as above, but with black as the text color.
Why do we drive on a parkway, but park on a driveway?
Is that better or worse? Anyone else having problems with either one? Vote early and often.
Have you seen anything unusual in the night sky? There are reports that a brightly-lit triangle-shaped aircraft is hovering around cities and interstate highways here in the States.
" Huge, silent-running "Flying Triangles" have been seen by ground observers creeping through the sky low and slow near cities, and quietly cruising over highways." ... from a story on MSNBC.
A map of sightings is here on the space.com site.
Any of those dots on that map in your neighborhood?
After work yesterday, Pam and I went over to Christine's house for a short babysitting job. Jared was off at the Old Sacramento "Gold Rush Days" (he plays James Marshall in a short outdoor exhibition), and Christine had a pre-school meeting. So we brought in Golden Arches for all, and then took a walk to their neighborhood park after dinner while Christine was at her meeting. Fun was had by all, and we were home by 9pm.
This morning, we both slept in a bit, then worked on the Saturday morning cleaning. I hosed off the patio furniture and the plastic venetian outdoor blinds on the patio while Pam uses the hard floor scrubber machine on the kitchen floor. I also did a spray and wash of the outside windows, using the Windex cleaner that you attach to the water hose. I only did the back, since they were still shaded from the morning sun. That worked pretty good, especially since those second story windows are a bit hard to reach. Then I cleaned off the workbench in the garage. I didn't find the tape measure. I'm sure I have three or four of them around this place, but they are all hiding.
Then it was time to go to the local US Bank. They had opened up a branch inside the local Safeway grocery store, and had a contest for $10K. Pam was one of the finalists, but the game was slightly rigged to be difficult to win. There was a list of seven grocery items. To win, you had to put them in the same order as the contest judge. It was just a random order, so you only had a 1 in 10,040 chance. So we didn't win the big prize (and nobody else did), but all ten finalists did get a $100 grocery credit at the store. Pam made short work of that prize, but it did pay for a bit of the groceries for the weekend.
Other than the usual Sunday dinner with the grandkids, we don't have anything special planned for the weekend. Perhaps a movie tonight. We live such an exciting life.
A minor change to the 'quote highlight'. I set the font size to be 14 px, still with the Courier font, but less bold. But I took away the binary background, which might help the highlighted text to be a bit more readable.
The binary background is still on the rest of the page. I figure it is appropriate, given the name of this place.
... more later ...
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