Yes! For the first time ever, folks, I now have a Linux system that actually does everything I want it to do. (At least, until I think of something else hehe)

Today, I managed to install the 2.6.7 kernel, with only a couple of minor hitches. Feeling emboldened by my success, I took the next step and began wrangling once again with the ATI drivers.

These proved a little more difficult, as they required a patch to be installed before they would install. Things finally installed correctly, but still weren’t working – until I remembered that X.org uses a different name for the configuration file. A quick rename of the file, and I am now cooking with the full use of my rather expensive video card :)

Now to go play some games!

There’s been alot of updates coming out lately for Linux users, and SuSE has been really good about keeping up with everything. Their YOU program (Yast On-line Update) checks a local mirror for updates and lets you know when one is due, or it can be configured to do everything on it’s own.

Saturday night, I ran into a problem. A new update was indicated – a kernel update to handle some security issues. Everything looked to be fine, and I rebooted as instructed. Only it never came back. What I got instead was “waiting for device /dev/302…not found.” At which point it locked up. Same thing in the ‘failsafe’ boot option.

Not good, sez I.

Continue Reading →

As a cable guy, I’ve seen some pretty odd arrangements in apartments. Most people don’t realize this, but most of the apartment towers downtown were constructed before cable tv was invented, so they had to retrofit it into those buildings in any way they could.

In most of them, it was a simple matter of running the cable down an elevator shaft and branching off at each floor. Others were forced to bring it up in a column through each apartment from the basement all the way to the penthouse. Many have their cable outlets in starnge places – not out of choice, but out of necessity. There’s only so much you can do with concrete construction.

One of these buildings can come slightly back into fashion now. You see, the only place they could get a cable outlet was in the kitchen, roughly behind the refridgerator. Well, LG Electronics has the perfect solution for them now: a ‘fridge with a built-in LCD TV. This device serves mainly as the display for the built-in internet capability of the unit, but you can hook a DVD player up to it and watch movies instead of streaming something from the cooking channel.

The device hosts a slew of other functions as well. It has a photo album, capable of storing images downloaded from your digital camera. I suppose you no longer have to worry about what to do with your child’s lovely fingerpaintings – now you can scan them into the fridge and display them as a screensaver. It can take memos, shopping lists, etc. etc.

Not a bad implementation of tech, but I know how bad I get sucked into the tv when I’m in the living room. Do I really want that to happen while standing next to a hot burner? And what happens when I drop the remote into the stew?

Yahoo! News – U.S. Steers Consumers Away From IE

The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer.

The Microsoft browser, the government warned, cannot protect against vulnerabilities in its Internet Information Services (IIS) 5 server programs, which a team of hackers allegedly based in Russia has exploited with a Java script that is appended to Web sites.

There ya have it folks.

The SANS – Internet Storm Center reports that a new Browser Helper Object has been seen in the wild that, if installed, will monitor and capture login and password information before encryption / SSL and deliver this information elsewhere for capturing.

A “Browser Helper Object” is a DLL that allows developers to customize and control Internet Explorer. When IE 4.x and higher starts, it reads the registry to locate installed BHO’s and then loads them into the memory space for IE. Created BHO’s then have access to all the events and properties of that browsing session. This particular BHO watches for HTTPS (secure) access to URLs of several dozen banking and financial sites in multiple countries.

When an outbound HTTPS connection is made to such a URL, the BHO then grabs any outbound POST/GET data from within IE before it is encrypted by SSL. When it captures data, it creates an outbound HTTP connection to [web address deleted] and feeds the captured data to the script found at that location.

Folks, I’ve spent the last week and a half doing non-specific telephone computer support, and fully 80% of my calls have been virus or malware issues. I cannot stress how important it is to NOT use Internet Explorer due to the security issues and ease-of-compromise inherent in that product.

I highly recommend The Mozilla Foundation’s offerings, both the full suite and Firefox. If you feel that free software just can’t meet your needs and you absolutely must pay for something to get any value out of it, then go buy a copy of Opera. The differences between the two products are small enough you won’t really notice, and both are fully standards-compliant and secure.

I’ll get off my soapbox now.