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Interesting Ideas from George Monbiot

Here is a transcript of a lecture by George Monbiot about climate change and what we need to do. The latest scientific evidence suggests that we need to cut emissions to zero by 2030 to avoid significant increases in the sea level over the next century, George describes some options that will form part of […]

Is SE Linux only for Linux?

I have just been asked for advice on whether SE Linux is Linux specific, and therefore whether code related to SE Linux should always be stored with other Linux specific code instead of being in the main branch of certain free software projects.

One example of SE Linux access controls being implemented on a different […]

Identifying the Distribution of a Linux System

I just needed to test something so I mounted the filesystem of one of my Xen domains in the Dom0 and chroot’d into it (I didn’t need the overhead of running a DomU for a quick test). Then strangely I found that my chroot environment had no apt-get and no dpkg installed.

After a small […]

The Silly BMW 745h

BMW has released a new prototype hydrogen powered car. The bmwworld.com web page about it claims the cruising range is 190 miles. Added to the 400-mile range of the normal fuel tank, the 745h can go 600 miles between fill-ups. The first issue is that 10 miles are not accounted for (maybe it finishes the […]

A Strange Attempt to Trick Google

I just noticed that my post about LED Headlights in an Audi Sports Car was linked from audi.host4blogs.com. Strangely they took some of the words from my post, added some other apparently random words to make it look like a response, and then linked to my post.

Having summaries of my blog posts appear on […]

Hydrogen Powered Cars Will Never Work

One of the most important issues for a commodity fuel for vehicles is that it be convenient and safe to transport. For quite a while LP Gas has been available as a cheaper car fuel. Even with increasing petrol prices it’s acceptance is well below 100% due to extra expense in storing the fuel (high […]

Writing a CV for a Contract Position

There is a lot of career advice related to writing CVs in books and floating around the net. Unfortunately almost all of it is tailored to permanent positions.

Some advice that I have seen includes researching the company you are applying for and emphasising your experience in related fields. This probably makes some sense if […]

Never IRC as Root

Ben Fowler blogs about the issues related to running IRC as root. Google searches for (irc client exploit) and (irc client “buffer overflow”) give a number of interesting web pages. Many of the exploits require the user to perform an action that’s slightly unusual, but why take a chance?

The advice to not run as […]

Solar Hot Water – Not Expensive

The Australian has a new Environment writer named Matthew Warren who has a history of doing PR work for the coal industry. This has the potential for insightful articles based on knowledge of what the industry is doing or for PR work for the coal industry masquerading as journalism. Unfortunately it seems like the latter […]

Does Having Fewer Rules Inspire Hard Work?

I was recently talking to a client about the lack of guidelines for acceptable personal use of office resources in his company. He rejected the suggestion that he provide any real rules or guidelines (apart from some old rules that most employees were not aware of and of which there was no procedure to remind […]