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why I joined the Australian Greens

In 2004 I was browsing the web sites of the various political parties to see how they met my needs. The only party that stood out was the Greens. The reason for this is that they had some material on their web site that was positive towards free software and made mention of helping members […]

the next feature for a spy movie

I have noticed that motion sensors on burglar alarms don’t detect small movements. Presumably they are also less effective at detecting small objects that move (otherwise they couldn’t be used if there were mice).

For an adult to move slowly enough to avoid detection by the typical cheap burglar alarms is quite difficult, and probably […]

sendmail – the MTA for insecure systems

Sendmail is the most prevalent Unix MTA. It is the oldest MTA and is still one of the most powerful ones that are available. However it has never been known for being secure.

http://lwn.net/Articles/176596/

Most of it’s bad reputation comes from regularly having serious security holes. The above URL has the most recent one. Neither […]

mailing list culture

There is currently a big debate in progress in Debian. I am not going to mention any specifics because too much of it has already been blogged (maybe in the same syndication in which you read my blog).

I think that the way things are going is more an illustration of the failings of mailing […]

IT companies and toxic waste

Greenpeace has an interesting article about how IT companies rank in toxic waste problems.

Dell rates quite well, I feel happier about my recent purchase of a large Dell TFT monitor now. HP does reasonably well, that’s fortunate as the Green party in Victoria has recently purchased a HP server. But next time we discuss […]

blogging software

Previously I asked for advice about running an Intranet blog, and running an Internet blog with hosting for friends.

In response to the question about running a small Intranet blog the recommendations were strongly for WordPress, with a mention of Ikiwiki as well. One of the features that I consider desirable is for software to […]

C – the suit and tie of programming

I was watching some music videos recently and was amazed by how badly dressed most performers were by today’s standards. As far as I can recall the only musician from the 80’s who still looks good in their videos is Robert Palmer, a suit and tie doesn’t go out of fashion.

I started thinking about […]

what’s a good blog server for serious blogging?

I’m getting sick of blogger. The main thing is that I’m simply not a user. Taking what someone else gives me and just putting up with any failings doesn’t suit me at all. I can deal with bugs in things I control (such as Linux distributions) because I can fix the bugs I consider important […]

SE Linux is like a moat filled with sharks with laser attached head gear

Here’s an interesting blog entry comparing SE Linux and AppArmor. It has some amusing comments, one of which I used for the title of this entry.

There are two things I don’t like about AppArmor. One is that it doesn’t label Inodes but instead bases it’s access control on file names. This means that renaming […]

communism and ticket “scalping”

In the USSR the government fixed prices on all commodities, how desirable an item was merely determined the length of the queue not the price. Today in the same manner when purchasing tickets for concerts and sporting events the desirability of a ticket determines the length of the queue not the price.

It seems to […]