Archive for the 'tip' Category

[FSF]: Stand up for your freedom to install free software

Stand up for your freedom to install free software — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software.

When done correctly, “Secure Boot” is designed to protect against malware by preventing computers from loading unauthorized binary programs when booting. In practice, this means that computers implementing it won’t boot unauthorized operating systems — including initially authorized systems that have been modified without being re-approved.

The biggest issue with the “Secure Boot” system, is that it’ll create a vendor-lockin. This has been seen with the android system as well, but it’ll be Microsft pulling the strings on this one.

Some other interesting reads on Secure Boot:

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/09/windows-8-secure-boot-will-complicate-linux-installs.ars

http://www.osnews.com/story/25180

Time Wasters – Part2

Well, this is part 2 of a series of time wasting websites I started here.

In what year will the earth seize to exist? – Pick a date.

You know them, the movies and books about the end of time…
But do you know all references? This website lists them out for you so you can just pick a date as you please :)

http://web.me.com/lorenmadsen/endings/pick_a_year.html

Play Rock-Paper-Scissors against AI

Ever wondered how good you are in the game rock-paper-scissors?
Test your skills and go against a well trained computer-bot (Artificial Intelligence)

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/rock-paper-scissors.html

Barbie gone bad!

Barbie has always been the perfect blonde… Or that’s what the company wanted you to believe.
Here are the unseen and uncensored pictures of this young blonde girl gone wrong. Well I wonder how much hit’s I get on this previous sentence. :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marielclayton/

Do nothing for 2 minutes

Would you want/need to spend 2 minutes doing nothing?
This site can be used as a relaxing tool to help you succeed doing absolutely nothing.

http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/

Stuff On My Cat

A website full of images from cats with stuff on them.
No, not a cheeseburger…
Be careful… there are quite a lot of times you can press “next”.

http://www.stuffonmycat.com

YouTube – You need to get off facebook‬‏

Although I think this clip is wonderful, I would like quite a lot of people to stay on Facebook… That’ll keep the internet cleaner I guess.

Time Wasters – Part1

We all know how easy it is to lose track of time while surfing the awesome internet.
During the last months, I’ve been bookmarking some of the most useless sites that I came across. (Without a reason at that time)
Now I have this folder full of time-wasting websites sitting in my toolbar and wondered whether to delete it or keep it…
So I came up with the brilliant idea of putting the list up here for later referral whilst sharing it with you :) That’s double karma!
Here we go.

Uncomfotable Moments With Putin

Although I think there could be wound up a lot more of pictures, it’s already an awesome concept.

http://uncomfortablemomentswithputin.tumblr.com/

 

What’s Osama Bin Watchin’?

On this page you can enter any youtube video and make Osama Bin Laden watch it.
You can make the old man watch Justin Bieber for over a few hours if you’d like :)

http://www.tomscott.com/osama/

 

Kim Jong-Il looking at things

No need to explain the content of this page.
It’s better populated than the Putin page and has a higher rofl count.

http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

 

Your Mom Was Hot

Have you ever seen the hot-or-not page’s? Well, this is like one of them, but with an extra requirement…

Was your Mom hot? Or your kid’s mom, or your grandmom, or your friend’s mom, etc…Click submit to send us a photo because let’s face it, before your Mom was just your Mom… Your Mom Was Hot!

http://www.yourmomwashot.com/

 

 Just Add Balls

Not sure whether I should call this funny or 200% wasted time… But anyhow, the title itself made me lol at least a bit.

Everything is better with balls in it!

http://justaddballs.tumblr.com/

 

Those were the first five links,
keep an eye open for the upcoming stuff.

If you have some awesome time wasting links yourself, share them in the comment section.

Must see documentary on Privacy [Dutch]

Yesterday there was this documentary on the state of the internet, privacy and security (in Belgium).
The  idea was based on David Bond‘s movie/experiment “Erasing David“.

Dirk Leestmans (journalist) hired a private security audit and asked him to hack Freek Braeckman‘s computer and bank account within the next three days.

Dirk also goes deeper on the different used technologies applied by the Belgian Police force to track people.

Watch the video:

http://www.deredactie.be/permalink/1.1014456

Who’s there? – Invalid ssh user

So, It’s been a while since I’ve set up my home server to use it as a swiss army knife at home and on the road.
Now I was wondering on the system’s integrity.
First step was checking /var/log/auth.log
To do some quick’n'dirty check I’ve ran the following command

grep “Invalid user” /var/log/auth.log | less

Read the rest of this entry »

New items on my wishlist

Thanks to Zhann, whom pointed out to these 2 fine books, my wishlist got (even) longer.

1. Time management

This collection of time management tools addresses the very specific needs of embattled system administrators everywhere. Bestselling author Thomas Limoncelli shows you how to manage interruptions, eliminate timewasters, prioritize based on customer expectations, automate processes for faster execution, and much more. It’s the first step to a more productive, happier you.

Time management

2. UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook!

This twentieth anniversary edition of the world’s best-selling UNIX system administration book has been made even better by adding coverage of the leading Linux distributions: Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

This book approaches system administration from a practical perspective and is an invaluable reference for both new administrators and experienced professionals. It details best practices for every facet of system administration, including storage management, network design and administration, email, web hosting, scripting, software configuration management, performance analysis, Windows interoperability, virtualization, DNS, security, management of IT service organizations, and much more.

UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook!

So, mom if you read this and you’d like to surprise me with something… This is it!!! You know I love you! ;)

Check out: The upcoming events at Whitespace

Don’t forget to check out the Whitespace’s upcoming events page.
There’ll be quite a lot of nice talks in the upcoming weeks.

http://0×20.be

Twirssi error: Timestamp out of bounds

I just found my twirssi inactive. 
When loading the script and authenticating with oath enabled, I got the error:

-!- Irssi: Error in script twirssi:
Timestamp out of bounds

This is (most likely) the result of a wrong system date/time.
Quite easy to solve, just sync it to an NTP server.
Open a terminal and enter:

ntpdate pool.ntp.org

Try to load the script again and login.
All should be fine now.

Wrong time in Windows on Dual Boot system.

When you have a dual boot with Windows and Ubuntu you might experience some time travelling when rebooting to windows.
To solve this, simply boot into Ubuntu and edit the /etc/default/rcS file as sudo and change the UTC value from yes to no.
It should look like this

TMPTIME=0
SULOGIN=no
DELAYLOGIN=no
UTC=no #Set according to your system (BIOS) clock.
VERBOSE=no
EDITMOTD=yes
FSCKFIX=no

These values are being used by the scripts at /etc/rcS.d/ that get invoked during boot (even in single user mode)

To be clear, this is not an Ubuntu error. It is simply the Windows that never assumes the system-clock to be in UTC.

If you wish to adjust this in the Windows installation execute regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation

Change the RealTimeIsUniversal value to 1.

If you’re simply looking for a wach to change your hardwareclock on linux you can check my other article on Changing date and/or time on Linux.