Category: Software and Programming

Yep. it’s back to boring geek stuff again.

This guy has incorporated an impressive HTML Rich edit box (HTMLArea, coded by Mihai Bazon) into his Blosxom set-up. I’ve tried to do something similar with my comments page, but I’ve run into problems with Movable Type sanitizing the HTML in comments (a security feature).

Elsewhere on his site, Bazon has a rant about free software and being a starving developer, echoing a similar sentiment from Garrett Smith of the excellent DHTMLKitchen. His good point is that nothing is really free – and the developer shouldn’t be the one paying for his own work when everyone else just copy-pastes it.

Since I’m looking at my corky.net email from 4(!) computers these days (2 work machines, 2 home machines), I’ve decided it’s time to set-up all my handy-dandy email filters on the server, rather than re-creating them in each mail program. So it’s time to look into configuring procmail, which I’m using anyway for SpamAssassin: Procmail How-To Page and Procmail Tutorial.

this is what hit me.

Suzie (well, I) bought me a new laptop for my birthday, a Dell Latitude C540. Strongest machine I’ve ever had, and a big step up from my previous machine.

I spent the last week or two fiddling with it, setting up XP (important hint: if you install the OS by yourself, don’t forget to install all the manufacturer’s drivers as well…). So far, in addition to games and DVDs refusing to play without the proper graphic drivers, I’ve also had the usual networking woes. First the network card was disabled, then I stumbled with setting up the ADSL connection (Modem was much easier), until my brother in law pointed me towards
Bezeq’s guide to setting up ADSL on Windows XP, which turns out to be a very different procedure than it is on Windows 2000.

Today I found the machine kept shutting down with a message that RPC service terminated unexpectedly. The cause of the problem seemed to be the ADSL connection, but reading up on it on the web, I believe it was someone actually hitting my machine with a Windows security expoloit. Another hint: Run Windows Update!

The Apache error log on my older machine show that someone port-scanned or tried to hack the server today. I have to set up the Apache configuration to block access from any machine but the localhost.

My girlfriend’s Windows 98 is in a much worse state, though. Viri and trojans and spyware run free. Only today did I realize that Anti-virus software, spyware catchers etc. aren’t a substitute for Windows Update there too.

Mark’s entry of last week was very timely, in any case. And if I thought of perhaps installing Linux instead, Hixie provides the complementing tale of woe. So XP. Quite nice, I must say. Although the new TweakUI (mentioned by Mark) seems a lot less fun, with gazillion customized preferences and nothing that looks cool and grabs you.