Mike’s Technology Blog

I’ve been using the subster rejuvenation plugin a.k.a. subdomain plugin for quite some time now and it has always worked perfectly.  Basically, what it does is map subdomains into my wordpress categories.  Recently I noticed that my subdomains no longer point to their proper categories and so I tried investigating.  The culprit?  Well, it’s the wp-cache plugin.  For some reason, these two plugins are not compatible with each other.

Funny thing is that I have wp-cache activated for quite some time already and I didn’t notice this problem.  I just hope that the search engines didn’t flag my blog’s categories for duplicate content.

Anyway, what I did now is disable the wp-cache plugin and all works fine again.  I do however wish to have some caching capability for my blog since I don’t want to overwork my server so I either peek into the code and fix it myself or look for another solution…

I got bored with XFCE4 + the inner voice in me that longs to look for some nice and working features coupled with a nice GUI kicked in. Result? I installed KDE again. I just installed it via Debian’s (unstable) apt-get tool and there it is. To free space, I totally got rid of XFCE4.

What about experience? I find KDE 3.5.5 (the one I’m using now) to be faster than it used to be and I didn’t upgrade my laptop and I’m using the same applications as before so I guess the KDE guys did something cool with the code.  Konqueror loads in 2 to 4 seconds, Firefox loads in 6 seconds (which means that KDE is not using that much memory at all), the desktop loads in as little as 15 seconds after logging in - well I’m satisfied.

But why KDE? Why not Gnome? Well, honestly, I don’t like the looks of Gnome - it’s too heavy for my eyes. On the other hand, KDE’s interface looks a lot better for me.

And oh, those GTK applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, and Gaim. At first they didn’t blend well enough with KDE so I did a search on good ol’ google and guess what I found? I found MetaTheme!  Here’s a quote from the MetaTheme website:

MetaTheme is a project dedicated to unification of appearance between different graphics toolkits (currently GTK2, QT and Java).

The program is designed as a thin layer between toolkits and theme engines, creating unified API by which each theme engine can draw. The result is that every application uses the same code for drawing, making the appearance same across different applications. MetaTheme also adjusts behaviour a bit, so the overall effect of unification is impressive.

And guess what?  MetaTheme does exactly as it says.  Now Firefox, Thunderbird, and even Gaim blends beautifully with KDE!  Nice work MetaTheme people!

Lastly, why not Kopete?  Well, though Kopete supports webcams which I really like, it still crashes a lot so I’ll be using Gaim for now.

Now, if only I can make Openoffice load faster - and please don’t tell me to install the quickstarter.  It’s just unacceptable when its MS Office counterpart loads way faster.

Yes, they do. Hackers manage to attack computers every 39 seconds and still manage to live a life. In contrast to what you see on TV and movies, hackers will not attack a computer on a one-on-one basis nor will they do it manually. Instead, most hackers would employ the use of an script that scans computers for vulnerabilities.

The hackers used a type of software called a “dictionary script” that runs through lists of common usernames and passwords to break into the computer. Some of the most commonly guessed usernames in the study were “root,” “admin,” “test,” “guest,” and “user.”

When guessing passwords, the software tries to reenter or guess variations of the username. Following the password with the numbers “123,” guessing “password” or “123456″ were also common guesses.

A recent study, which investigated how exactly hackers crack computers, confirms those regularly issued warnings about password vulnerability. Experts advise longer passwords, regularly changed and not based on users’ biographies, that mix letters and numerals and are hard to guess.

“Our data provide quantifiable evidence that attacks are happening all the time to computers with Internet connections,” study author Michel Cukier of the University of Maryland said. “The computers in our study were attacked, on average, 2,244 times a day.”

To test how hackers break into computers, Michel Cukier’s team set up weak security on four Linux computers connected to the Internet and monitored hacker attacks.

After gaining access to the computers, hackers usually quickly changed passwords, checked hardware and software configurations, and downloaded, installed and ran a program. These programs established the computer as part of a botnet, a collection of hacked computers that can be run by the hacker remotely to perpetrate fraud or identity theft, disrupt other computer networks, or damage computer files.

“The scripts return a list of ‘most likely prospect’ computers to the hacker, who then attempts to access and compromise as many as possible,” Cukier said. “Often they set up ‘back doors’– undetected entrances into the computer that they control– so they can create ‘botnets,’ for profit or disreputable purposes.”

To protect against hackers, security experts advise choosing longer, more difficult passwords with combinations of upper and lowercase letters.

Don’t be hacked! Read books and learn how to keep your computer safe from hackers.

Just about any person or company selling a product delves into the world of advertising whether it be an ad on the newspaper, on TV, radio or the internet.  Furthermore, these advertisers always want their ads to be placed above the fold - in areas that can easily be seen by the viewer, in places that would capture the attention of people.

So, one company thought… “What about putting ads in space?”  And that’s just what JP Aerospace is doing right now.  They’re currently lining up interested advertisers for their next flight in April to put their ads 100,000 feet above earth - just at the edge of space.

Here’s a sample of such an ad.

JP Aerospace ads at the edge of space. Credit: JP Aerospace

While the ad does look enormous, it is actually only the size of a business card photographed properly so don’t expect to see ads floating in the sky anytime soon.  Disappointed?  Don’t be.  After all putting a supersized billboard in space would be more hazardous than helpful so business-card size ads photographed to look big would be fine.

Now, makes me think… I think any good photo editing software such as Photoshop or Gimp can do such a trick.