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Fail2ban

I’ve recently setup fail2ban [1] on a bunch of my servers. It’s purpose is to ban IP addresses associated with password guessing – or whatever other criteria for badness you configure. It supports Linux, OpenBSD [2] and probably most Unix type OSs too. I run Debian so I’ve been using the Debian packages of fail2ban.

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Serious Begging

This evening I was driving through one of the inner suburbs of Melbourne when a man flagged me down. He said that his mother was dying and he needed a taxi ride to some hospital far away and needed to borrow $200. He was saying something about his phone, I wasn’t sure if he was […]

It’s Election Time Again

Linux People and Voting

Chris Samuel (a member of LUV who’s known for his work on high performance computers and the “vacation” program) has described why he’s voting for the Greens [1]. His main reasons are the Greens strong support of human rights and for science-based policy.

Paul Dwerryhouse (a member of the Australian Linux […]

Tidal River

Tim (a member of my local LUG) writes about some observations he has made of a nearby river and speculates on a tidal bore-like phenomenon [1].

One thing that surprised me was how short the list was on the Tidal Bore Wikipedia page [2], and the fact that is it missing an entry for Tidal […]

TED – Defining Words

I recently joined the community based around the TED conference [1]. The TED conference is expensive ($6000US) and has a long waiting list (the 2009 conference is sold out) so it seems quite unlikely that I will ever attend one. But signing up to the web site is easy and might offer some benefit.

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What is Appropriate Advertising?

Colin Charles writes about a woman who is selling advertising space on herself [1]. Like Colin I haven’t bought a t-shirt in about 9 years (apart from some Cafepress ones I designed myself). So it seems that the price for getting some significant advertising at a computer conference is to buy a few hundred t-shirts […]

Wyndham Resorts is a Persistent Spammer

Over the last week I have received five phone calls from Wyndham Resorts asking if I would like to be surveyed. Every time I tell them that I am not going to do their survey, on all but one call I had to repeatedly state that I would not do the survey for more than […]

Offensive Blog Posts

There has been ongoing debate in the Debian community for a number of years about what standards of behavior should be expected. Matthew Garrett sets a new low by making a joke about Jesus being molested as a child [1]. While I believe that debate and discussion about religion is a good thing, such comments […]

Solar Powered PC

I’ve just read an interesting post on TomsHardware.com about a solar powered PC [1]. It describes all the steps involved in creating a modern high-performance low-power computer.

They have a lot of interesting information. One surprising fact (from page 3) is that the PSUs tested (both for AC and DC input) were more efficient when […]

Buying Old PCs

I install quite a number of internet gateway machines for one of my clients. While eventually he will probably move to using an ASUS EeePC [1] or something similar, the current plan is to keep using desktop PCs (unfortunately server-class machines make too much noise).

P4 machines use an unreasonable amount of power and don’t […]