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GRAFFITI -- May 16, 2011 thru May 22, 2011>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
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May 16, 2011
Wait for it ....
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May 17, 2011
Keep waiting...
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May 18, 2011
2141 -The main reason behind short shrift this week is Security Warrior, by Cyrus Peikari and Anton Chuvakin, from O'Reilly. This book came my way courtesy of our local LOPSA chapter, which is sponsored by O'Reilly, among others. I selected this book to read and review from the stack at our April meeting, because the topic interests me.
The authors of Security Warrior have a laudable, but difficult-to-satisfy, goal: to help infrastructure professionals (often known as system and network administrators) learn how to defend their systems and networks by learning how the attackers work. Clearly the topic outpaces an actual shelf full of books, but Peikari and Chuvakin do a fair job at touching all the important bases, from reverse engineering on multiple platforms to network-based attacks to application-layer and social engineering attacks.
The organization of the book could stand a little tuning in a future edition: I'd probably not open with reverse engineering and assembly language, but push that towards the middle or end of the book, where it won't scare off the less experienced security professional. The fact is, even though I've done assembly language programming (decades ago, but both PC and mainframe), I still wondered what I was getting into when I'm running debuggers and hex editors in chapter one. Generally, the rest of the book is a wee bit softer, but with plenty of useful nuggets selected from the zillions of attack profiles available to black hats today. Choices had to be made, so there's a section on SQL injection, but nothing on cross-site scripting, for example. Overall, I'm impressed with the balance of breadth versus depth that the authors managed in Security Warrior, and I'll be keeping it on my shelf for further reading as well as recommending it to my cow-orkers, and y'all, too.
Greg and I got the rest of the notifications out today about the pending demise of our server, Zidane, and the resulting forced migration of our hostees onto their new vendor of choice. I've got this site and my main email moved over to Dreamhost/Google. I've still got a stack of stuff to do for Marcia and I, as well as assisting Pournelle in his migrations.
Now it's time to unwind a bit. Ciao!
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May 19, 2011
No Post....
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May 20, 2011
2107 - Some commentary ensues:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Dreamhost
Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 13:49:30 -0400
From: Richard MickoBrian:
I am curious if there were any reasons you chose dreamhost instead of
returning to pair.com for your sites, Mr. Thompson's and/or Mr.
Pournelle's? I would be interested in any comments you have on
dreamhost also.I enjoy reading your daynotes. I greatly appreciate you remembering our
soldiers sacrifices every Sunday.Thanks,
rich
Hi, Rich.
Thanks for the kind words.
I've actually been self-hosting in one form or another since the beginning; I was never a customer of Pair networks, although Bob and Jerry both were. I started hosting my sites on a home Linux box connected to the 'net via static IP provisioned by Speakeasy. Greg and I migrated to a jointly administered server when I had grave difficulties getting Verizon to play nice with Speakeasy out here in Maryland.
Bob moved onto the server that Greg and I stood up around this time of year, 9 years ago, and Bob had already been Jerry's hosting technical rep (interfacing between Jerry and Pair) for a number of years, I believe. So when Bob asked if he could move his sites onto Rocket, he also asked on Jerry's behalf, since Jerry's bandwidth costs were about to bump his account up to about $130 a month. We were considerably cheaper than that, but provided a much more personalized service, as I'm sure all and sundry already know.
Why not Pair? Well, Pair still costs more, although I'm sure the level of service they provide is stellar. I don't need that. Jerry may want to go back to Pair. I went to Dreamhost for the domains I run because Greg recommended them (as does a guy I work with around here, who knows the folks who run the joint). Unlimited everything, 10 bucks a month to host all seven domains ... Seems reasonable to me. I could do my hosting here, but the monthly bump to get a business grade connection for FiOS would be about $50 bucks over our current bill. I don't see a need. I could also have hosted at work, but I prefer a bit of separation between church and state.
So far, Dreamhost is working out fine. More when I know more.
Have a great spring and summer!
best,
.brian
Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention. Having my domain email hit Google rocks! My inbox spam is ... zero, over the first week. I haven't found any false positives yet, either (though I have to keep an eye out). The evening, it flies by. Ciao!
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May 21, 2011
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2145 - A busy day. I was at the nursery shortly after they opened at 9:00 AM, and back home with six flats of annuals by ten. That was followed by six hours of planting - the front beds and hanging baskets are all fettled now, and I populated much of the veggie gardens with the stuff I started from seed a few weeks back. Now we'll see how well they all do over the next few days. Until I get my watering setup running again, there's that to be done every day, front and back. And tomorrow is mowing day, as soon as I get back from the shopping, since it's supposed to rain in the late afternoon or evening. Not much other than a few aches and pains to report. Ciao!
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May 22, 2011
2102 - Hullo. Working backwards, Linda Rose and her new Mike just left, after enjoying the first steaks grilled on our new-ish Weber. The grilling went fine, once I replaced the propane bottle. A late store run, late in the afternoon, because I didn't find out that Mike was joining us until after I'd shopped. Most of the day was in the yard again, mowing and edging, along with bedding 6 fairly mature tomato plants I picked up at BJ's - I got three each of Better Boy and Early Girl varieties. The shopping was fine, as were the early Sunday morning production system updates I executed. All of that followed a very sound night's sleep after yesterday's yardwork. And now you're caught up with the happenings around here.
Our condolences to the families and units of these fallen warriors:
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
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