Nero for Linux

December 17th, 2005

The news is that Nero has announced NeroLinux a version of their cd burning software that will run under the linux operating system. The software is available in either rpm or deb binary (for either debian based or red-hat based package managed systems.) I’ve noticed that Nero install under wine with no real problems. I’ve never tried to use it for cd burning under wine as I’ve preferred either (command line) cdrecord/growisofs or (gui) k3b for cd burning.

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Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 5 – Update your software

December 17th, 2005

Okay – so after the last article you’ve inventoried what software you use on a PC and you know what services (server’s) the pc runs that you’ve told it to. You even know what passes as “normal” startup programs. Now it’s time to put that to use. It’s time to keep up with updates for the operating system, any of the programs you use form time to time, and any programs that listen as a service (actively listen for incoming network connections.)

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Disinfecting a PC… part 4

December 17th, 2005

So, AVG has been scanning away finding things we’ve really got a foothold on the system and the malware has a fight on it’s hands. It’s good to see progress. Up to this point we’ve had multiple Spool32 errors (printer related). These errors are what prompted the system to be brought in initially. There’s a lexmark system tray item that loads on boot. No time to investigate that yet. Here’s the log of the AVG antivirus scan…

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Google adsense unavailable

December 17th, 2005

Just noticed that for the last (hour?) the main adsense login site has been down with an interesting multi-language error message page. Ads seem to be served still, but the login is offline at the moment. And back up by 1AM EST 12/17/05.

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Google Adsense changes

December 16th, 2005

I see a couple changes mentioned over at the official adsense blog. It looks as though there are new ways to customize search boxes for google adsense. Also it looks like there’s more assistance for those sufferers from Google adsense disorder.

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Lyrics might not be illegal after all….

December 16th, 2005

It looks like at least one label is not as concerned that freely available lyrics online are a threat…

The push to make song lyric sites and programs illegal has cooled — at least on one front. Walter Ritter, creator of the popular PearLyrics lyrics program, and Warner/Chappell announced that they would work together to allow the program to continue being offered.

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Sendmail mail queue backed up

December 16th, 2005

Sendmail is not my favorite MTA. I really prefer Postfix, but… I have to use sendmail in a few situations. I’ve run a little script on the web server for a good while to monitor the mail queue. I was running into a problem where I had LOTS of messages backed up. I suspected I had been hit originally by a spam onslaught which had flooded the server and it had been throttled (VPS) to prevent causing problems for the other users and things got backed up.

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The 2nd journey begins… Mandriva 2006 upgrade 2 – Part 3

December 16th, 2005

Mirrors are added, now it’s time to start the process. OK, everything up until now has been preparatory and hasn’t REALLY upgraded anything. I’ve skimmed over the errata and release notes (again) at http://qa.mandriva.com to make sure there isn’t anything hardware specific or urpmi –auto-select from Mandrake 10.1 specific that I need to be aware of.

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Challenging javascript game

December 16th, 2005

Just found this fairly challenging javascript game escape. You control a square and try to avoid touching 4 moving blocks (and the walls). It’s fairly tricky – I made it to 32.something seconds after a couple tries though. Just what I needed for a few moments this afternoon.

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Takedown phishing sites

December 16th, 2005

Sunbeltblog has a good post on a group that helps “take bad guys out”. The Internet Crime Provention and Control Institute (Link expired). Basically, they will take submissions of complaints and assist in getting sites taken down. A good example would be phishing sites, maybe servers hosting illegal content, stolen information, etc. etc.

Or, perhaps a machine is spewing out viral, nigerian 419 scam or other material. That’s what the ICPCI is there to receive complaints on and coordinate “takedowns”. According to the sunbelt entry (a tip from a reader), they’re pretty effective at the takedowns (even when the site is hosted in places you would think makes it tougher.)

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