Category Archives: Technology

Lov’n gift cards

Technology

It’s been a while since I’ve had a new gadget and with gift cards to spend from christmas seemed like the time was right for something new. Since 2002 my Zaurus SL5500 has served me well but it has been five years, battery life is minimal and internet acces is only practical plugged in. So I ordered the replacement the other day, Nokia’s N810.

When Nokia came out with the N800 at the beginning of the year I was tempted but with no keyboard I couldn’t do it. One of the coolest features of the Zaurus was the slide out keyboard, it had one on screen you could use with the stylist but it was slow and cut the display by a third. When the 810 was announced in November and I saw it with the one feature I’d been waiting for it was only a matter of time…. oh and the GPS didn’t hurt either. It should arrive just after the new year and in time for a long weeked in Breckenridge, CO.

Dual booting easier than I thought

Technology, ,

Yesterday was a long day filled mosting with testing applicaions for work. Not what I had envisioned for a Saturday but time is a premium these days. So what does that have to do with dual booting…. well a few weeks ago two of the three DIMM slots on the desktop I use for work went bad which cut the memory to 256mb. To be more efficient I loaded XP on a spare laptop drive and started using it. Yesterday for some reason I got tired of swaping out the drives, as this is my personal laptop that runs Ubuntu, and decided I should just setup a dual boot system if I’m not going to replace the desktop any time soon. So I did and it was easier than I thought.

A quick google pointed me to an endless number of posts on how to set up a dual boot system. What was a little different for my situation was I wanted to put XP on the drive Ubuntu was already on and I didn’t want to reload XP but copy the partition. Wouldn’t you know on the first page of my search results pointed me to this post which was exactly what I was looking for. The key would be resizing and moving the partitions, the artical suggested using GParted which turned out to be the perfect tool. In the past I have not had much need for using a partition manager so doing this type of process was a little new.

Moving and resizing partitions on the 60GB drive Ubuntu was on was the first order of business so I downloaded and burned the GParted Live CD. I put the CD in the drive and booted, following the instructions, and I was in business. Making space was nothing more than dragging the mouse on a bar graph to set the new size of an existing partion, making room for Windows. So were /home on Ubuntu was 40GB it’s now 20, with the other 20 being for XP. Setting the new partition to be ntfs was just a couple clicks. The article commented about creating one formatted as FAT32, for sharing data, but for me that is all on a usb drive and not necessary. Once that was done copying the (c:\) partition from the Windows drive, connected to the laptop via usb, was a simple as copy and paste, All that took about 5 minutes of clicks and checks and 15 minutes of the application working, and me waiting.

So far with a total of about 20 – 30 minutes worth of work it came down to booting both partitions. The Ubuntu partition loaded as usual, Grub was not changed so their was really no reason that would be a problem. The trick would be to get XP to boot. First would be to fix boot.ini on the XP partition so it knew where the OS was on the new drive, that’s where using the XP CD to “Repair” an installation would fix the problem. This page on Microsofts support site told me everything I needed. Including pointing me to how to fix the boot.ini. All in all my total time was about 45 minutes, needless to say I am pleased.

Kudos to James Bannan and APCMag for posting an excellent article. The pics were a great reference and even though I didn’t follow it to a T it was just what I needed to get the job done.

My email is spam

Technology,

While replying to a fellow hockey players email this evening I ran across a strange mail delivery failed message.

    550-x.x.x.x blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=bellsouth,dc=net
550 Blocked for abuse.  See http://www.att.net/bls_rbl/ for information.

Thought that was rather strange, never been accused of sending spam before and keep a pretty close eye on what’s coming from my machines.

Following the link took me to three resources for third party spam detection databases. They were.
http://www.spamhaus.org/index.lasso
http://www.mail-abuse.com/index.html
http://ipremoval.sms.symantec.com/
When looking up my domain none reported the IP as being on any blacklist but when looking up my routers IP I got some interesting information. This is from mail-abuse.com.

January 20, 2003: If you are a COMCAST customer and are seeing messages that your IP address is on the MAPS DUL, please contact COMCAST directly. You may also want to review this page as well.

If you are a mail user with a standard mail client (such as Eudora, Pegasus Mail, Netscape Mail, or Outlook Express) and you can’t send mail because your IP address appears on the MAPS DUL, it is probably because your mail program is set to use a mail server other than the one your current Internet access provider provides you. Most ISPs usually prevent this type mail relay with their own anti-relay software, but depending on their configuration they may check the MAPS DUL before they check for unauthorized relay.

If you use a mail (SMTP) server on your own computer, or you share your Internet connection with several other people on a local network with a proxy server such as Whistle’s InterJet, and you can’t send mail because of this list, it is because your recipients cannot tell the difference between your legitimate mail delivery and a spammer’s trespassing on their equipment. However, there is a very easy way to work around the MAPS DUL and get your mail through, and it may even speed up your mail in the process.

How about that a message can be seen as spam if the smtp server sending the message is not in the domain of the source IP, i.e. an open mail relay. I guess that would make sense. I may have to start pushing mail through Comcast or switch to imap if this continues.

Back to Ubuntu

Technology

Earlier this year, after the motherboard went bad in the laptop (v2000), I reverted back to the I200 that I loaded Debian on. Since 2005 I’d been using Ubuntu and before that it was Red Hat all the way back to the 6.0 days. So switching distros was no big deal and in a way I was looking forward to it after getting the motherboard replaced. Ubuntu is based on Debian too so it wasn’t a big switch just more raw and makes the experience different. So when the latest version was released seemed reasonable I give it a try, and earlier this week I did,

From a user perspective the biggest change is the polish on the UI, with Compiz direct integration it has come a long way in a short time. So far I’m pleased….. and why I didn’t partition /home by itself all these years I’ll never know. Live an learn I guess. Oh and no special configuration after the fact audio, video, networking, all worked out of the box. At this pace interesting times are ahead.

Your SSN and the web

Technology,

Commerce on the internet is booming, 25 billion and growing. Every company offering their own membership card or some other kind of service to give you discounts, buy more, and get you in their database. Unfortunately to get “that card” or be a member they’ll perform a credit check, just as if you were purchasing a car or getting a loan. The internet is different this way since it is impersonal as you fill in blanks on a web page not interacting with a company representative face to face. Years ago when this type of commerce was in more of a learning stage companies were still trying to get a handle on what is sensitive information and what is not. We are reminded every once in a while big business can still overlook important details.

Today we know to look for the “lock” at the bottom of the screen, the https in the url line, these are signs that information is secure. One should always do that when purchasing anything on the internet. Even though coffee shops, hotels, book stores, and trendy bistro’s offer internet access I would be careful where there. Surfing is good but checking mail unencrypted, making purchases, signing up for promotions, anytime you’d be entering personal information … do it some place else, like at home or work. Believe it or not every character that is sent from the machine to the site when the url starts with http or the lock is unlocked can be read with the right software. A password here or a username there, it doesn’t take much for a person “with time on their hands” and an enterprizing mind to cause trouble.

So what’s the point you say ??? Today I thought it was a good time to switch wireless carriers so I could free my phone when the production model comes out. Currently I’m on a carrier that uses CDMA, the Neo will use GSM. So after checking coverage I went to that carriers web site and started the process. Picking a plan, then a phone .. just a “free” one cause in the end it’s the SIM card that I’ll need, and then transfering my number. This is where I stopped. Part of the sign up process required credit card and SSN information be entered. First time I’ve had to enter both but can certainly understand now days a credit check might be in order if your spending hundereds of dollars a month. My bill would never be that much but the site doesn’t know that so I can’t blame them. So after entering that info I get to the page that needs information about my existing carrier. As I fill in the blanks it’s asking for account info, password, and SSN. But the page is unencrypted !!!!, no lock, no https. I paused for a moment and thought a multi-billion dollar company asking for my most personal information and they don’t respect me enough to protect it when signing up. I don’t think so.

Although I’m excited about a truly open source phone I’m disapointed about what I’d have to do to get it. I’ll need to think about this since their’s only one GSM carrier that would be “worth” switching to … I may be waiting longer that I’d prefer to.