Wednesday, March 5, 2003

Happy Birthday to Me -- 3:56 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

Somehow another year has gone by in the blink of an eye. My wife and boys were very good to me this year: they gave me a DVD player, along with "Die Hard" and "True Lies". And a big box of Godiva chocolates--yumma yumma. I think I'll head off to the video store and get my free birthday video rental, and settle in later with that bottle of Old Nick's I've been saving. Dull birthday? Nah--NICE birthday.

A.T. Hun comments: And on Ash Wednesday, no less! Remember, you're always older than me. I would have thought you'd be celebrating with Salvator, but Old Nick is a fine substitute. Shalom, ya old fart!

J.t.Qbe comments: w'shalom 'alechem, young whippersnapper. I'd gladly have gone for the Salvator but, ahem, western Michigan is heavily Calvinist so Old Nick's is much easier to find. I mean, Old Nick--there's no "'s" at the end, but I'm a Michigander at heart and add "'s" to everything.

Tuesday, March 4, 2003

Mozilla Update -- 10:13 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I discovered today that the nightly build of Mozilla that I downloaded was actually from the 1.4 alpha branch, not the 1.3 beta/final branch that I thought. The proper directory for those builds is here. I began to notice when the browser seemed to be doing some, um, alpha stuff. For example, the cache didn't seem to be working quite right. This should fix it while still giving me the mail fixes I was looking for.

Hun-Speak: Is It Time? -- 9:35 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As I was pondering a potential upgrade to Mandrake Linux 9.1 when the final version is released, I thought to myself, "Is it time for me to dump Windows from my box altogether?" I think I came up with some good reasons to answer that question "Yes!" Read my article and see if you agree.

UT2K3 Updates -- 1:21 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Planet Unreal posted an email from Epic's Steve Polge about an upcoming mod competition that they are planning. They also linked to the Infogrames forums which contain a Polge post about the forthcoming bonus pack. It could be released within a few days if Infogrames' testers don't find any problems. Thanks Shacknews.

Sendmail Buffer Overflow -- 12:13 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A rather nasty buffer overflow has been discovered in Sendmail, the program used to carry the vast majority of email. It is possible for a malformed email to give a cracker root access. Patches are available from all the standard Linux distributions. Apparently even the Office of Homeland Security got involved in keeping everything quiet and coordinating efforts to produce a patch. No exploits have been seen in the wild, but you can bet that there will be some. Get patching!

Is it just me or is Sendmail the Outlook of the free software world?

The Master comments: This patch was finally my reason to learn the m4 configuration system for sendmail. While it is all rather obtuse, in the end it works very well for configuring sendmail; which is more than I can say for the tools I was using.

The Master comments: I should probably also comment on sendmail security issues A.T. is alluding to. I think much of the trouble with sendmail spawns from the administrators of sendmail. This is EXACTLY equivalent to the problems in the Microsoft world with IIS and Exchange. Some of the problems with mail-relay that existed in sendmail were equivalent to the problems with Exchange 5.0 allowing relay. The configuration of sendmail is EXTREMELY difficult, and any small mistake can make you the preferred relay of choice for spammers everywhere. Then, there are those who run sendmail or IIS or whatever on their home PCs, because they are ignorant of the repercussions. It all comes down to the people who own the systems that are exposed to the internet.

Freelancer Demo Finished -- 12:00 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

It appears that I finished the Freelancer demo just now. I completed a trade, it showed me the teaser screen for the full version, and dropped me back to the desktop. I think the trading part of the game could really add to the replayability (is that a word?).

My only gripe with the trading is that there is no law of supply and demand. If you are getting a good price at one station, you'll keep getting that price no matter how many loads of it you bring. Also, if you are buying at a low price, you'll keep getting that price no matter how much you buy. I don't know if that will change in the full version. That's not a huge deal though.

J.t.Qbe comments: Well, you can find out today since this is the official release date. Personally, I plan to wait.

Past Two Days' News

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