Geek Stuff category archive

I mean this article here, which attempts to equate the development of social networks to a Darwinian process of evolution.

Rant below the fold

Here.

Via Linux Basement.

Like I care.

Following the lead of the NFL and NBA, the NHL said it was close to making recommendations that will prohibit players from using communicational devices for social media activity — including Twitter and Facebook — 30 minutes before and after games, practices, meetings and media access periods.

. . . then make a back up.

From time to time I scan for viruses and other malware with AVG for Linux. I decided to automate the process, so I wrote a script to scan my home folder and save the results of the scan to my home folder. If this works, I’ll see about automating a weekly scan for the entire computer (a complete scan takes several hours, because it also scans my 250 GB external hard drive).

Here’s what the script does:

1. Declare a variable (“$NOW”) to give the report file a unique name and store it in a unique location.

2. Make a directory to hold the report.

3. Start the scan.

4. Save the report to the selected directory.

The scan command parses as follows:

avgscan=scan

-r/home/[username]l/AVG/$NOW/scan$NOW.txt=save the report to this directory with this file name.

/home/[username]=scan this directory (folder)

“Echo” means to display a line of text in a terminal.

Here’s the script:

#!/bin/bash

#Set the variable NOW

NOW=1

#Define now as today’s year-month-date-hour-minute.

NOW=$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M)

echo “Now = $NOW”

#Make the directory to hold the backup file.

mkdir /home/[username]/AVG/$NOW

echo “Making the directory ~/AVG/$NOW for the backup.”

#run scan home folder

echo “Scanning your home folder”

avgscan -r/home/[username]/AVG/$NOW/scan$NOW.txt /home/[username]/

echo “Scan completed and report saved.”

The script works. Then I put this line in my crontab file

* 2 * * * /home/[username]/scripts/vscan.sh

so that the scan will run automatically at 2 a. m. every morning.

I also put a line in my root crontab to update the virus scanner every morning at 1 a. m.

* 1 * * * /usr/bin/avgupdate

We’ll find out tomorrow whether the cron job runs.

Addendum:

I have some trouble to shoot.

The cron job ran. And ran. And ran. There were multiple instances of the script still running this morning. I’ve added “exit” to the end of the script and will see what happens the next time it runs.

Beware of Facebook messages asking whether you are in a video and purporting to link to a video; you aren’t and it doesn’t.

They may take you to a fake Facebook page that tries to pwn your computer.

I wrote about my investigation at Geekazine.

I’ve removed some RSS feeds from my sidebar, mostly big feeds such as Reuters and MarketWatch, for which the content is readily available elsewhere.

I’ve also removed a couple of blogs that have become relatively quiescent of late. And I’ve added the food recall feed from FoodSafety dog gov, which I learned about from somewhere I forget where I’m trying to remember.

Had to reinitialize the modem.

That means unplug it and plug it back in.

The end of Eden?

Twitter, the fast-growing microblogging site now seeking ways to make money, expanded its terms for users on Thursday to allow advertisers to reach the Internet site’s more than 45 million monthly visitors.

I have published a tour of Opera v. 10 at Geekazine in two parts. Check it out ahd discover the ultimate Internet experience.

Part One.

Part Two.

Gag me with a spoon.

I think I’ll download the Live CD just for grins and giggles.

But they have to march in formation.

A South African IT outfit has shamed telecoms operator Telkom by sending 4GB of data 60 miles by pigeon in two hours – faster than it arrived by the ISP’s broadband service.

According to the BBC, Unlimited IT dispatched 11-month-old Winston from its call centre in the town of Howick to its Durban office. The bird carried its data payload stored on a memory stick, and in fact made the trip in just one hour and eight minutes.

All joking aside, an hour to download the equivalent of a standard DVD is not so bad. In the States.

Elsewhere, it’s lousy:

The United States lags behind many other developed countries in Internet download speeds. As of October 2007, according to an article at Ars Technica, the average advertised speed in Japan was 93.7 Mbps, compared with 8.9 Mbps for the United States. This is mainly because Japan provides hefty tax subsidies to high-speed fiber-optic networks. Average residential Internet speeds in the United States are even lower than 8.9 Mbps — more like 2.3 Mbps, according to a 2008 survey by the Communications Workers of America.

Updated to the current version of WordPress and doing server maintenance (backups and the like). It things are a little slow, it’s because the network connection is really busy right now.

I found a neat free and open source ebook reader. It’s not big on eye candy, but it is quite functional.

It was designed for Android, but has been ported to both Windows XP and Linux desktop versions. I reviewed it at Geekazine.

I decided to mention it here because I know that my two or three regular readers also read books.

. . . you see an automobile commercial talking about RPMs and you think of “Redhat Package Management.”

I’ve been working on a website for a friend of mine and, as I have tried to clean up the last couple of things so I can invoice so it can go live, I haven’t had a lot of luck.

Then I found Opera Developer Tools. They come with Opera. I just never stumbled over them before.

It shows the css, the rendered page code, and the scripts, as well as lists page errors and all sorts of other neat stuff.

Click the image for a larger picture.

Afterthought: I’m hardly a web developer. But I’m a pretty good editor.

Twitter passes My Space in the UKofGBandNI.

I logged into my bank tonight and was informed that it wants me to use a new browser.

What a list.

Internet Explorer, which has never met a back door it didn’t leave open; Safari, the walled-garden Mac thingee that rivals IE for security; Firefox, which is okay except for the clunkiness; and AOL (there’s still an AOL browser?).

Since I use the current version of one of the most consistently secure browsers available, I must assume that they are promoting insecurity.

And that they wish to lose a customer.

(Yes, I would change banks over this. Not because of the browser. Because of the stupid.)

Afterthought:

Browser upgrade, my anatomy.

Afterafterthought:

I tried clicking the “Feedback” link at the website. It didn’t work in Opera or in (drumroll) Firefox.

Words fail me.

Afterafterafterthought:

If you are a competent webdesigner, the browser doesn’t matter. What matters is what your website serves up to the browser.

If spamming is so lucrative, why can’t spammers hire competent translators?

Received in my spam trap account:

Geeky ramble follows

I was looking for a defunct website at the Internet Archive and stumbled across a place that had squatted on the name of the site.

That page redirected to one of those fraudulent sites that pretends to scan your computer for malware so it can trick you into buying their anti-malware product. Most of the time, their product is actually more malware.

I clicked “Cancel” scan and it pretended to scan anyway while popups cascaded. One give away was that the phony scan’s progess bar moved faster than a scan from a local disk would have allowed, let alone a scan over the net (and I have used internet AV scans from reputable vendors such as Trend Micro and Symantec. It then told me that I had oodles of trojans, viruses, and other assorted baddies on my C:\ and D:\ drives.

This box runs Ubuntu Linux with Fluxbox. I don’t have C:\ and D:\ drives; I have sda1* (a very small boot drive) and sda3* (everything else). I don’t have a “My Documents” folder.

Here’s what it claimed to see:

Here’s what’s actually there:

__________________

*sda1 means “SCSI (or SATA) Disk A, Partition One.” sda3 means “SCSI (or SATA) Disk A, Partition Three.” There is no sda2. You’ll have to ask Ubuntu about that.