Divx Xvid Player

Just a recommendation. You guys that long for a descent Divx Xvid player that's worth the money, check out Phillips Divx Certified DVD players. I have had mine for 3 years and it works like a charm. Instead of going thru the hazzle with Media Centers or using a S-video cable from your laptop to your TV, (which is fun btw) you can simply burn your Divx, Xvid files and play them in your DVD player. The player is upgradeable, so you can download the latest firmware from philips.com when ever there is a new release. Just burn down the firmware file as an iso file and boot up your DVD player with the disc inserted. The new firmware will then be flashed into the DVD players memory, and you will be ready in a few minutes.

Christmas 2006 almost over. Back to hacking Unix.

Soon there will be no more sleeping on the couch stuffed with delicious Christmas food.
The kids has gotten their Christmas presents, and the trash bins are full of trash.
After New Year, work is going back to normal, and 2007 with all it's daunting
tasks is knocking on the door.

Will Perl release version 6 this year? Is Ruby going to be the hottest language in 2007?
What new attack vectors will be released? Which key note speakers will we see at Black Hat in 2007? Lot's of things to look foward to, that's for sure.

Happy coding in 2007!

Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel (Addison-Wesley Software Security Series)

Save Earth from asteroid threat

Considering there is a lot of smart people out there reading blogs, I will post a link to this off topic article. Who knows, maybe you can be the key to save our little planet Earth. The Planetary Society is donating a big sum of US dollars in prize money to the person who designs a system for tagging and tracking this asteroid. So don't ask what Earth can do for you, ask yourself instead what you can do for our beloved Earth. I will start chrunching ideas as of this moment.

Apophis is 300-400m big rock, (read asteroid) that has a slim chance colliding and hitting Earth in 2036, which of course would put us back to the cave era or worse.

Read the article here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/14/asteroids_competition/

Hacking and coding the night away

I am a headphone freak, and I use my headphones as much as I can, while working, resting, travelling and sleeping. They have to be big and cover your ears, so you can isolate yourself from the rest of the office. :-) Koss and Philips makes my favourite headphones. If I am up to a hole day just doing system administration I might need some fuel in the form of metal music. My choice for Metal is the Koss headphones. If I am in the mood for a security audit, I use my Philips to pump up the base. Anyway, just a quick post to give my fella Unix Linux admins and users an idea of howto stimulate both sides of your brain while at work. And oh, don't forget the active noise reduction if you are buying headphones. Filters out any boss!! :-)

Nokia E61

E61


I bought the E61 which is a piece of email queen 3 months ago, after drooling over my friends E61 for over 2 months. Nokia has delivered a beast for email and SMS. My expectations were high that day in septmember when I reached the disk at the phone shop. I remember thinking, "don't be sold out, please don't be sold out". The assistant in the shop could see my worried face turn into a huge smile when he laid the precious shiny smartphone on the desk. If you have the habit of always staying online, this is the phone.

• WCDMA provides fast, wide-area connectivity
• WLAN provides fast, local-area connectivity

If you read and send emails constantly, this is the phone.
You can check out the reviews here.
E61

• Support for a choice of email solutions
  • Native email client
  • Intellisync Wireless Email
• Supports push email solutions that provide immediate notification when a new email is received (Intellisync Wireless Email, BlackBerry Connect, Good Mobile Messaging, Seven Always-On Mail, Visto email technology)¹
• Works with security and collaboration solutions (Nokia mVPN, Symantec Firewall and Anti-Virus, Pointsec Data Protection, IBM Tivoli, Nokia configurator)
• Mail for Exchange²
• POP3/IMAP supported in native email client
• Contacts and calendar compatible with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes

If you use MSN, Skype, VOIP you can use this phone.

If you want to watch your DVD's on a bigger than normal screen. This is the phone.
See smartmovie for Symbian and you'll know.

If you belive in smartphone security, this is a phone with a bunch of security features.

• Internal security: device lock and device wipe
• Additional security solutions separately available, such as Pointsec Data Protection and Symantec Firewall and Anti-virus

Spring time cold, Unix Linux hacking food rant.

Day 7 of a stubborn cold and I am going to go bezerk on my soar throat and thick nose.
It's just so frustrating have a high fever. You can't read, eat, walk, talk. Just lay down and
sweat for days. Nothing productive in that!! I always get seriously mad at myself for getting a cold
or the flue, because I'm usually an expert in avoiding it. Avoiding it you might think to yourself.
Well, actually, just being pro-active with vitamines, garlic, chili, ginger and good hand hygiene.
This has worked for years for me, but not this spring. And I am in the middle of changing jobs, and
having tons of documenation to do, people to meet, meetings to be held etc...

So after taking a combination of pain killers and some fresh ginger, I'm good for a couple of hours of work.

To be very pro-active, I think I am going to stay at home all easter, doing nothing but some reading and watching TV with my family. A real Homer weekend. Dooo! :-)

And only eat very spicy food, to nuke the flue.

Monkey UP your FF

Firefox is an outstanding browser as many of you already know, but more people should know about the AWESOME scripts that brilliant users provide to enhance this fab browser even more.

http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/

Read the docs before you install, as usual. :-)

Java java java

This week I'll be picking up my Java books again to refresh my knowledge of the platform independent language. Finally I have the time, at least until the Christmas chaos break loose. But at work, things will slow down considerably the few weeks we have left of 2005. Went to a snoring doctor 2 days ago. I had to sleep with monitors and record my sleep for a night, which I thought would be impossible to do with tubes up my nostrils. Guess, what, I haven't slept better in years!

I got to sleep in "my" office at home, right on the floor with only a madrass, me, the snoring device recorders/monitors and my machines.


When me and the doctor checked the spectra from my nights sleep, the pattern looked pretty good, alot better than I thought. I have a sleeping disorder for sure, because of apne, but It's very mild, the confident doctor told me. So I rest assured, that just loosing a few kilos, will increase
the quaility of my and my families sleep. :-)


For now,

Keep those blogs up and running fella bloggers, they help
someone people in urgent need of anti boring kicks.

Off topic. yahoo amazon msn cnn domains how much ?

I wonder what domains like yahoo.com amazon.com hotmail.com msn.com would cost to buy today, compared to 1995, when Í started surfing the web. I remember search engines like lycos, altavista which are still around, but who seems to have lost market shares. I have owned a bunch of domains myself, and as I used to work for a couple for Internet Service Providers, I had no problem hosting them. One of the benefits working for an ISP. Today you can buy a domain very cheap, and get a huge variety of support for your backend. SQL, PHP, CGI, DNS records automagically etc.. This is fantastic, as noone needs to be an expert of all the different techniques, to becoma an owner of a dynamic and technically advanced website.

Any suggestions on what a domain like yahoo.com amazon.com cnn.com would cost today, let me know!

A billion dollars ?

About this blog

First of all, I'd like to thank you for showing interest in Unix/Linux. You might be everything from an old school System V syadmin to a complete newbie, but I have some odd experience from administrating *nix systems, that I'd like to share here.

However, feel free to contribute with any tips/ideas you might have concerning the topic. It won't go to /dev/null before I've read and considerit it.

BrB

Alex

#!/usr/bin/please -w

[salt@mimir ~]$ cat /proc/sys/cpu_rest/drink_coke/and/watch_tv &

Binaries and scripts, welcome welcome

I'll post every bits and byte I know about the amazing operating systems in the Unix world.