Tag: internet

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As a Debian user, you may choose to adopt the distro-managed rebuild of the world’s greatest web browser.  But, by doing so, you may not be able to use G+.  Don’t worry, the answer is at hand.

Visit the Firefox add-on page for User Agent Switcher:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user–agent–switcher/

Install the add-on and restart your browser.

Now, go to Tools > User Agent Switcher > User Agent Switcher > Options…

Add a new User Agent, call it Firefox 11.

Add the following text in the fields:

  • Description: Firefox 11
  • User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0
  • App Code Name: Mozilla
  • App Name: Netscape
  • App Version: 5.0 (X11
  • Platform: Linux i686

If you’re running an amd64 build, plonk that in the Platform field instead (it’ll probably already be populated).

Make sure there is no reference to Iceweasel in the User Agent field.

Make sure this user agent is active, and then browse to Google+.

Have fun! 🙂

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So, from time to time (read: most of the time) when I’m working I listen to music.  More often than not, it’s electronic in one form or another.

The point of this post is simply to list a few stations I like listening to, to build up my collection.  If it grows over time, I’ll probably divide into genres or something.

Here’s a few to get started with.

Radio Schizoid : http://78.46.73.237:8000/schizoid

PsyRadio.fm : http://streamer.psyradio.org:8010/

Chromanova : http://85.25.86.69:8000/

Digitally Imported Goa-Psy Trance :

After Hours – Trance : http://fr3.ah.fm:9000

PsyMusic UK : http://www.psymusic.co.uk:8010/

Bassdrive :

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Google is undoubtedly suffering from some adverse PR in respect of its new privacy policy.  While it may have considered itself on to a PR “winner” with its “privacy made simple” approach, there has been considerable backlash in opinion and re-consideration of the use of its services.

So, what could Google do to demonstrate that it still takes on-line security seriously?

How about setting up its own Certificate Authority, and issuing free SSL certificates?

Google has the infrastructure, manpower and, I’d argue, interest in doing such a thing.  In fact, in many ways, it already offers the flesh around this missing skeleton.

Perhaps it could support the CACert effort with funding and enough energy to get it through the audits required to have their root certificate included in Mozilla’s Firefox, as-shipped?  And, while Google are at it (restoring their image of benevolence, that is), they could include that root certificate in Chrome too.

Just saying…

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Strong headline maybe, but if you’re not on Google+ then you might consider your stance after reading this.

Jeri Ryan, best known as borg escapee “Seven of Nine” in Star Trek:Voyager, hosted a Hangout today on Google+, in celebration of having over 1 million fans subscribing to her feed.

Someone lucky enough to participate
in Jeri Ryan’s hangout!

There was a lot of buzz around it, with hundreds of comments flying around under the Hangout post, updating in real time.  It was pretty hard to get a video stream from Google, such were the number of simultaneous subscriptions.

In many ways, this reminded me of the excitement of the early internet, where we learned about things such as bandwidth… The kids today, they have everything!

Still, the excitement wasn’t only in the new broadcast/interaction (intercast?!) method through G+ hangouts, it was the realisation that, should they choose, celebs can now use a nice, safe way of engaging with their fan base.  Directly.  Over time, this may disarm broadcast controllers and empower people, be they celebrities or fans, into collaboration through constructive, enriching dialogue.

Wil Wheaton, self-confessed geek and well-known actor likewise, was notably impressed with hangouts.  It was refreshing to see people observing great netiquette while chatting with Jeri.  How much more enjoyable, this, than suffering typically mundane updates as you might in another social networking system.

As Google measures and expands upon functionality in G+, I hope they’ll see fit to bring more interactive tools to the table.  I get the feeling that hangouts are just the start of the next revolution.  As Android gathers increasing momentum and Google+ apps appear on both major mobile platforms, we could see real-time social networking emerge as the number one communication method.

People, known and unknown to each other, will communicate, partly in mimicry, utilising all tools at their disposal.  And, with open source platforms gathering adoption, they will inevitably add both their biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. 

Resistance, my friends, is futile.

UPDATE – here’s the recording:

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Fedora 16 is here.  With all GNU/Linux distributions, newer versions generally mean better hardware support, usability and so on.  Unfortunately, for users of netbooks, laptops and basically any hardware that contains Realtek’s 8192e wireless chip, things can still be problematic.

I posted, previously, a rather kludgy solution to fixing this in Fedora 14.  Then 15 came along, and the fix I was using then no longer worked.  This is because my previous solution installed the Linux kernel staging drivers for a kernel version very similar to that running in Fedora 14 (but actually built for Ubuntu).

Now that we are 2 versions of Fedora down the road (12 months, then), is the situation better for the humble RTL8192e_PCI ?  Sadly, no.  The main problem is that the 8192e driver is still in the Linux driver staging tree rather than in the main code line.  In the respected opinion of the Linux kernel developers and testers, this means the code isn’t good enough to be enabled by default.  Quite when it will be “ready” to hit the trunk, I’m not sure. 

In the meantime, this means you have to install the kernel’s development modules (staging drivers).

This is quite simple in Fedora:

  1. Enable the RPMFusion repository by following instructions here:
    http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
  2. Then, as root, install the kmod-staging package:
    # yum install kmod-staging

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Scammers rely on your ignorance in order to fool you into clicking on their link and typically entering your bank details.

Don’t let them! 

DISCLAIMER:  DO NOT TRY TO VISIT THE EXAMPLE SCAM LINK GIVEN IN THIS POST.  YOU ALONE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS.

When you receive a link in an email, you should analyse that link to determine the authenticity and legitimacy of that link, before you click on it.

I was recently forwarded a scam email to analyse.  If you have recently received a suspicious email with a link, here’s how to analyse that link.

Firstly, hover the mouse pointer over that link.  At the bottom of your email window (commonly called the status bar), you should see a web address appear.

In this example, a link was received purporting to be from the UK bank Cahoot.  But the link address is suspicious – so let’s analyse it…

http://ip270-c6.gi.digl.pl:8887/securebank.cahoot.com/servlet/com.aquariussecurity.bks.security.authentication.servlet.LoginEntryServletBKS/

… the bit in bold is what you’re interested in.  The rest is not really of interest.  However, when you come to inspect a link in the future, it’s worth knowing the following:

How to analyse a link in Thunderbird
(click for larger image)
  • http://

    This means the protocol that your browser will use.  A secure, encrypted browser connection begins https:// ; therefore, the link above will be unencrypted (not secure) between your computer and the server.  This is a tell-tale sign that it’s trouble.

  • ip270-c6.gl.digl.pl

    This is the domain name, like “bbc.co.uk“, “fedoraproject.org” and “google.com“.  This is the most important bit.  The best way to read this is actually from right to left.  The most right hand part, “pl“, is the top-level domain (TLD).  pl is the TLD for Poland.  tw is the TLD for Taiwan.  ru = Russia.  And so on.  For reference, you can find a list of TLDs here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

    The next two bits should really indicate the organisation of the originating email.  digl is meaningless; it’s been made up by a scammer to probably infer “digital” or something like that.  Likewise, gl is also meaningless.

    A meaningful alternative would be cahoot.co.uk, as it is registered with a UK TLD and represents the claimed originator of the message.

  • :8887

    The last bit of this link is what’s called a port number.  The (optional) use of this by scammers is again a visual distraction which makes it harder to read the real web address.  Apart from the fact that no bank would ever request your details by email anyway, if they were credible they most certainly wouldn’t use a web address with a non-standard port number.

    The best thing to do when reading an address is to ignore the port number but be aware of the fact that it’s been used. 

For more information, check out this PDF on avoiding email scams.

And for those who were paying attention and spotted the deliberate mistake, well done! 🙂

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Mozilla Firefox word mark. Guestimated clear s...
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Stupid Firefox 7!  It doesn’t recognise my plug-ins!  But they did work in FF3.5.  What gives?!!!

Ok, perhaps I’m overreacting.  In fact, I am.  Sorry.

I use #CentOS for my daily work which includes the rather antiquated Firefox v3.5.  Ouch.  As a web developer, it’s good to test on legacy browsers but it’s also important to use the latest – so I updated to the latest Firefox (v7, at time of writing).

Because my desktop machine (HP Opteron ML115) has 6GB of RAM, I typically use the x86_64 (64-bit) edition of #Firefox.  However, unlike Firefox v3.5, v7 doesn’t seem to pick up my plug-ins automatically from /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins.

To fix this, I had to open a shell and navigate into my home directory‘s mozilla plugins directory (I didn’t even know this existed until now!).

cd ~/mozilla/plugins
Then, just fix up all the missing symlinks:

ln -s /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/* .

No problemo!  They’re now all back again at about:plugins  🙂

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Ok, so I check my email first thing on Wed 16 Feb to find a message from a close friend.

“What’s that email all about then mate?”, he asks.  “No idea – which email?” I reply.

Turns out, it was this email (I have removed private email addresses, etc):

Join me on Ecademy

Connect to the right people
Market your business
Grow revenue

photoSteve Dowe
@dot.com>
Upgrade to PowerNetworker
7 day FREE Trial
ps. Join today and receive a free trial PowerNetworker subscription>

This email was sent to
To avoid receiving these emails in the future go to
http://www.ecademy.com/blockinvites.php?e=
The Ecademy Limited. Registered in England and Wales. Company Registration:3651083 VAT:718037736@dotcom>@domain.com>

So, from a contact list I’d imported probably 2 years ago, since which I’d downgraded from a PowerNetworker to a Free member, suddenly is sent a whole load of invites to people I’ve not spoken to.  This is not good.

Now, before the critics chime in, yes I know that the terms of importing the contact list are that ecademy will send out invites on my behalf.  This is not an issue – I agreed to that…2+ years ago.  A lot changes in that time.

Miffed as I was that this had happened, I considered blogging about it and finally let it lie … until the same message was again dispatched, early this morning (24 Feb), to the 180-odd contacts who had not yet responded or read their email.  This, in my book, is tantamount to spamming.  “Oh, you didn’t buy my product?  Here, try again…”.  Ad infinitum.  This, a happy member does not make (especially since finding out that a customer of mine has received 3!).

So, sorry to all the contacts past and present who have endured these messages.  At least I was able to obtain the list of contact data back out of ecademy so that I could message everyone separately and invite them personally to LinkedIn.

Let me just say, however, that despite this I have otherwise been happy using ecademy.  Support has been good and the web site is useful in connecting people.  But this method of increasing memberships is a little too covert for my liking, and the time is coming for one or more new platforms in business/social networking, with open, user-controlled features and content.

In the meantime, I await with interest, the outcome of my correspondance with ecademy’s support team:

Sent 24 Feb 2011

Hello,

I wish to close my account.

Can you also promise that the details of people who are in my contact list, but who are not members of ecademy, will be removed from your database?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Many thanks,
Steve

Update – 24 Deb 2011

Well, an automaton can do that for me too! I quote:

Delete Your Account

Deleting an account is a major step. Once the account has been deleted, you will not be able to re-join using the same email address. All your records, contacts, posts, comments and messages will also be deleted. Deleted records cannot be recovered.

This process is irreversible.
Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?
As an alternative, Click on ‘No. Just hide my profile’ to hide your profile and turn off all email messages, leaving your account intact.
If you definitely want to be permanently removed from Ecademy, type in your password, check the confirmation box and choose the ‘Yes. Please delete my account’ button below.

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/lib/ld-linux.so.2 missing? libXext.so.6 can’t be found?

I recently [at the original time of writing] installed Fedora 11 [x86_64] on a test machine, to see how the development desktop build of my favourite Linux distribution is doing – and it’s very nice indeed.

I tried to install Zend Studio 5.5 and soon came across problems, which I found out related to not having 32-bit versions of Xorg and glibc installed. To remedy this, ensure you follow these steps:

su -c 'yum groupinstall Java'
su -c 'yum install glibc.i686 libXext.i586'

Once installed, I was able to fire up the Zend Development Environment:

/usr/local/Zend/ZendStudio-5.5.1/bin/ZDE

.. and it was running on the native (OpenJDK) 64-bit JAVA runtime! How’s that for progress!