Joshie.com

I know I said the iPad was a dud for me. I based that on my hopes and dreams that the iPad would be running OS X rather than just being a giant iPod Touch. As time has passed, and any hope of a full OS X tablet has gone away, I have thought more about the whole thing. I'm not as negative about the iPad any more. I love my iPhone. I could never replace my iPhone with an iPad, but I definately could see myself keeping an iPad on the coffee table instead of my MacBook Pro to read news and email. I am not sure how many people will find that the iPad fills a need. It's more like an extra device to have around the house to quickly look something up. For those that have said it's perfect for cooking I really have to disagree. I'm not putting a $500 - $900 device on the counter with my mess I make when cooking. My standard practice is to print out recipies because then the paper can get all nasty without my computer getting nasty. I still can't see the 3G model being worthwhile. Partially because it is AT&T and partially because of the $15 - $30 monthly data fee. Just get a MiFi so your laptop or your iPad could both get online anywhere. No point in paying AT&T for service you can't even share out beyond the iPad.

So I think I'll use the iPad. I probably won't read books on it. I still love my Kindle for that. I don't want a backlit screen shining in my eyes when I read. I don't want to have to constantly remember to charge the iPad to read a book on the ferry to work when my Kindle lasts 2 weeks. I'm not going to use the iPad for music because honestly I have my iPhone for that. It really is just a device to post on my blog, read my email, and check out news. I'll never agree that the thing is magical or revolutionary. The iPhone was revolutionary. The iPad is evolutionary. Maybe if the iPad had a camera for Skype, could sync wirelessly like AppleTV, allowed background applications, and cost about $200 less I would say it was revolutionary. Hopefully it won't become another hobby project for Apple like the AppleTV has become. AppleTV is a sad little device that could have been so much more. My TiVO fills all my needs with Netflix, Amazon Video, Rhapsody, Blockbuster, and that it's a full DVR supporting Cable Cards. If only Apple had the wisdom to build out something as nice as TiVO.

So if you are going to buy an iPad go for the 64Gb WiFi model. I believe that's the best option of them all. Stay away from AT&T's 3G and get a Verizon or Sprint MiFi for your data service.

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Apple TV,

iPad,

iPhone in

Apple,

Technology

Tuesday

Feb162010

Microsoft Security update MS10-015 broke your computer

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 12:17PM |

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2B6F1631-973A-45C7-A4EC-4928FA173266&displaylang=en

If your Windows computer stopped working in the past week or so then you may have had a type of virus called a Rootkit on your system. Microsoft released a security update this month that unintentionally made a machine stop booting if you were infected. Your best bet if you are not technical is to have someone come copy your data off and setup your machine fresh. There are articles about removing the patch that breaks your machine but if you do that you will simply have a virus infected machine.

One reason to remove the patch would be to then use Microsoft Easy Transfer to move your data to a new machine. If you want to do that then you need to boot from the Windows CD/DVD/USB and start the recovery console. Once the recovery console is launched, type: CHDIR $NtUninstallKB977165 $\spuninst and hit Enter. Then use the following command: BATCH spuninst.txt, hit Enter again, and type: systemroot, and again Enter. At the end customers will need to type: exit. Simply trying to startup Windows without the recovery console will not work, no matter the boot options selected, as the computer will not reboot and Windows will always end up displaying the BSOD.

Once your machine is up and running you can install Windows Easy Transfer;

And that will let you make a good backup of your data so you can wipe your machine out and re-install Windows. Note that any applications like Microsoft Office will need to be re-installed after. Only your files and settings will be backed up.

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tagged

Virus,

Windows in

Security

Tuesday

Feb162010

Hack attempts from Afghanistan

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 10:13AM |

I have a couple of servers that sit out on the Internet, and every day I get a little report on how they are doing, and if someone is trying to break in to them. Today I got this report;

sshd:
   Authentication Failures:
      root (121.100.48.130): 1353 Time(s)
      unknown (121.100.48.130): 1148 Time(s)
      root (61.168.227.12): 582 Time(s)
      root (125.141.237.100): 165 Time(s)
      root (180.68.206.31): 99 Time(s)
      unknown (125.141.237.100): 93 Time(s)
      unknown (61.168.227.12): 60 Time(s)
      unknown (180.68.206.31): 42 Time(s)
      root (222.211.78.20): 23 Time(s)
      adm (121.100.48.130): 6 Time(s)
      bin (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      dbus (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      ftp (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      games (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      gopher (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      halt (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      lp (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      mail (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      mailnull (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      mysql (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      mysql (125.141.237.100): 3 Time(s)
      named (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      news (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      nobody (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      nscd (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      operator (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      pcap (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      root (123.30.98.50): 3 Time(s)
      rpc (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      shutdown (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      smmsp (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      sshd (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      sync (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      unknown (222.211.78.20): 3 Time(s)
      uucp (121.100.48.130): 3 Time(s)
      nfsnobody (121.100.48.130): 2 Time(s)
      rpcuser (121.100.48.130): 2 Time(s)
      haldaemon (121.100.48.130): 1 Time(s)
      unknown (123.30.98.50): 1 Time(s)

The biggest offender is of course 121.100.48.130 which I was surprised to see was Afghan Wireless. Nothing like being hacked from some jerkoff halfway around the world where my tax dollars are most likely feeding his family. The other joker is 61.168.227.12 from China Unicom Henan province network. Did you guys not learn from hacking Google? If I wasn't so extremely tired from work I'd care more about this. 1347 attempted breakins in a single day. The lesson of the day is to use secure passwords and also to use automatic lockout systems so that pretty much none of their attempts would have worked out.

The tool for today is DenyHosts which is an opensource python script that can watch for SSH attacks and block the IPs for a period of time or forever. It allows you to sync your blocks with their server, and receive a list of blocked hosts from other DenyHosts users. Definately worth checking out. They work on CentOS, but also OS X, Fedora, Mandrake, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and SuSE.

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tagged

JNux Consulting in

Internet,

Security

Tuesday

Feb022010

Sikuli picture-driven scripting language

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 1:43PM |

I found the coolest new scripting language called Sikuli, and it's an MIT project so it's bound to get even better. Sikuli does something called Picture-driven computing. Below is a screenshot of a script that can answer a Skype call from one person and ignore a call from another person. This is a fancy example. You can get much more simple with just the click() or rightclick() functions and not put any logic in. This is a free language and works on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. I can think of tons of uses for this where there is no API to do something behind the scenes but one of these scripts could click all the right things to configure a program how you want. Automation of software testing could work as well as long as you throw in error dialogs that your script would look for to know it had a failure. They have a bunch of demo videos posted you should check out.