Just noticed today that Certification Magazine is a free subscription. Also, Sys Admin magazine isn’t distributed to retail stores any longer; you have to subscribe and get it mailed to you.
Entries from April 2007
Certification Magazine
April 27th, 2007 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
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Internet Appliance
April 27th, 2007 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Internet Appliances haven’t hit the mainstream yet, and I don’t know why. The constraints are simple: I want a web browser that has no moving parts and makes no noise, so it can go in the bedroom and not annoy me. Back in the day, I had great hopes for the BeOS-based [...]
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Funetik alfabet for tek support
April 24th, 2007 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
When you get bored talking to tech support and have to read off serial numbers….
A again
B back
C champagne
D double
E eye
F finally
G gnaw
H heiress
I ink
J Jose
K knife
L line
M mnemonic
N number
O over
P phantom
Q quiche
R repeat
S skip
T triple
U unreadable
V verbose
W wrong
X Xerox
Y yes
Z zed
“F” was “five,” but I reconsidered that cheating and changed it. The basic guide is [...]
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Choco and the Holy Grail
April 24th, 2007 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
As stated in Choco’s User Guide, “Constraint programming represents one of the closest approaches computer science has yet made to the Holy Grail of programming: the user states the problem, the computer solves it. (E. Freuder)” Constraints are limits on something: you must be at least 48 inches tall to ride the roller coaster; [...]
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Self-Sufficiency and Optimization
April 22nd, 2007 · Comments Off · Main
See the Rocky Mountain Institute’s “Home Energy Briefs” (nine PDF’s) for information on making your home more energy efficient. No tree-hugging, weak-minded, stark-raving-mad, nonsense.
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Admin On The Cheap
April 18th, 2007 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
I’m considering doing some independent contracting, and am looking at lowering the upfront costs for software. As an exercise, given quality commercial software, what are the most viable free (beer) alternatives?
General Productivity: Microsoft Office (Office 2007 rocks) -> OpenOffice (note from OpenBSD portathon - “many stupid bugs fixed, amazing it works on linux (as usual, by luck).”
Diagramming: [...]
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Keep Your DNS Functions Separate
April 18th, 2007 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Authoritative nameservers should never be recursive (caching). Never run both types on the same IP.
See:
djb : http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/separation.html
http://www.squish.net/dnscheck/
US-CERT publication “The Continuing Denial of Service Threat Posed by DNS Recursion (PDF)”
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The Pursuit of Happyness
April 16th, 2007 · Comments Off · Main, Subtitle Goofs
An inspiring story, to be sure. Wikipedia has everything. It would have been better, though, if Will Smith had one of those memory-loss-inducing lights like he had in Men in Black. This should be, “Were you in the street….”
This is something of a strange pasttime, I admit, but I get disappointed when I watch a [...]
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Decoding Borderware MXtreme archive Subject: lines
April 5th, 2007 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Alvin Fernald lives! Get thee to an order form and pick up Alvin’s Secret Code, by Clifford B. Hicks. Fond childhood memories, there. All the Alvin books rock.
Well, here’s a quick Perl script to decode the Subject: lines in archived maillogs from Borderware MXtreme mail firewalls. Simple substitution. Nothing fancy. Adjust to taste. Doesn’t do [...]
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