I also need a Mac Mini, so I can manage my Mini with my Newton. How’s that for a retro hack?
Category: Geekdom
iPod Shuffle Raid
This guy has far too much time (and money) on his hands. He’s taken four iPod Shuffles and wired them together into a striped four-disk RAID array.
DNS For Idiots
Anytime anybody asks me how our domain name system works, I’m just going to send them to this easy to follow slide show.
Major Server Cleaning and Securing
I don’t know about you, but I hate getting a crapload of comment spam and referral spam. I’ve been able to block much of the former with MT-Blacklist, but the referral log spam is getting out of control and clogging up my AWStats results with a pile of useless links. So when I saw this post that linked to a script that used the blacklist to eliminate referral spam, I was intrigued. After reading some of the comments on the entry, I found this AWStats patch that will also remove them from the AWStats calculations.
Then looking through my flagged entries in my RSS reader, I noticed this mod_security post on Movalog which reminded me about some discussions that were happening on the MT Pronet mailing list regarding using mod_security to block even more at the server level (more info on mod_security here). So after looking through a ProNet entry about mod_security, I came across this introduction to mod_security. Once I found out how to get mod_security installed in cPanel/WHM (and where the configuration files were), I set upon implementing this mod_security hack that will import the information from the master blacklist file and create rules for use with mod_security.
I’m just about through all the hacks and tweaks above, and so far I haven’t blown anything up (learning a lot on this type of stuff in the process). Hopefully this will keep some of the other sites on this server from getting a pile of referral spam as well. If you do notice the site being down at all today, just try again in a few minutes, as I’m probably restarting Apache.
LazyWeb Request: Googlebar Disappeared From Firefox
OK, I can’t find a solution for this anywhere. My Googlebar disappeared off my toolbars in Firefox 1.0. It shows up as an installed extension in the extension window, I’ve removed/reinstalled it, even tried replacing it with the PRGoogleBar variant, and it still does not show up as an option when I right-click on the toolbar — the only ones there are my Navigation Toolbar, Bookmarks Toolbar, and Web Developer Toolbars. I’ve updated all my extensions, just to make sure there’s not something going wonky (conflict, etc…).
I use my GoogleBar a ton every day. Anybody have any idea how to get this thing back?
Update: I’m an idiot. Read the comments below….
Microsoft Rules The HyperText Transfer Protocol?
More by accident (and thanks to Firefox’s autosearch if it can’t find the URL), I accidently typed “http” (and that’s it) into my URL field. Firefox, by default, goes to Google, and then directs you to the first result it finds. What I thought was interesting is that first site when you search for http is Microsoft, followed by Yahoo, Altavista, World Wide Web Consortium, CNN, Excite, Lycos, Amazon, Adobe, and Mapquest (rounding out the top 10). Google shows up on page two, along with The New York Times, Netscape, Real, the World Health Organization, Mozilla.org, Ask.com, IMDB, Winzip, and PHP.net.
Similar results for other protocols aren’t happening because, generally, other protocols are used in product/site names (FTP, Gopher, NNTP, etc…).
I do find it interesting the variety of types of links that are showing up. For the most part, this is a “Who’s Who” of the Web. Anybody have any theories on why certain sites are showing up here versus others?
Useless Image Captcha
You’ve probably seen those image captchas that make it so that you have to type in a code from an image before you can submit information on a form. For example, some people have implemented this MovableType plugin to block bots from submitting comment forms. It’s effective against comment spam, but screws with accessibility.
Anyhow, I generally don’t have a problem with them, but this one I saw on Register.com’s Whois Page (you have to put a URL in the field before you can see it) is nearly impossible to translate:
Am I the only one that has a hard time reading that? I couldn’t actually get through that one, so I had to cancel and try it again with a more readable captcha. The rest of them looked a bit better (and the only reason I was using Register.com’s Whois is because the domain was registered there and I wanted to get as much info as I could), but they’re still much harder to read than the typical captcha.
McAfee Automates Google Hacking
I mentioned before how easy it is to do some damage to networks and printers with Google. McAfee is releasing a tool that will make it easier.
McAfee has released an update to its tool that uses Google to automatically search for security holes in Web sites.
SiteDigger 2.0, delivered on Monday, looks for information about a Web site’s security by sending specific queries to Google’s Web database. Known as Google hacking, such searches can turn up easily exploitable flaws and sensitive information, including credit card numbers and user account information.
While this tool is supposed to be for Webmasters looking for holes in their servers, this could also easily be used for folks looking to do something nefarious. Link via SEW Blog.
The Rumors Are True
As I mentioned yesterday, there were rumors about SixApart buying LiveJournal. The rumors are true, confirmed by SixApart. Here’s their press release, and some FAQs. Mena Trott has posted a bit about it, as has Brad over at LiveJournal. If you want a more technical explanation about everything, MT’s ProNet site has a good article on it. Here’s a Merc-News interview of Ben and Mena.