To reiterate, this was done all without GPS services and without Spitz requesting his movements be tracked — it was automatically generated simply by his mobile phone communicating with cell phone towers.  It very much goes to show the importance of regulations that limit retention periods for this kind of data, given how detailed a reconstruction can be made of an individual’s life.

If this move leaves you high and dry then perhaps something like Cabbage Texter will work instead?

Thanks for using TextBuddy!

Assuming you’re running a current version of Debian or a derivative then iptables will already be present on your system. One of the first things to take note is that iptables won’t hold its ruleset during a reboot so to start off this tutorial the first thing I ensured was that the ruleset will be restored when the machine is rebooted. So, as root I edited /etc/rc.local and before the exit line i added /etc/iptables-init. Because this was a fresh install my rc.local ended up looking like this:

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#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

# Setup iptables
/etc/iptables-init
exit 0

Next, I created the script which we’ve setup to be executed from rc.local:

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#!/bin/sh
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# simple but secure iptables initialization script
# DateCreated: Thu 12 Jan 2012 00:37:04 GMT
# Author: Jerry Walsh
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Put your trusted hosts/ranges here:
TRUSTED_HOSTS="1.2.3.4 8.8.8.8/24 \
  4.3.2.1 1.2.2.2 3.3.3.4 "

# flush rules
iptables -F

# Log dropped connections
#iptables -N LOGDROP

# allow localhost connections to the loopback interface 
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT ! -i lo -d 127.0.0.0/8 -j REJECT

# allow connections which are already established
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

# allow all outbound connections
iptables -A OUTPUT -j ACCEPT

# allow tcp to port 22 (ssh daemon) from trusted hosts
for GOODIE in $TRUSTED_HOSTS; do
  iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW -s $GOODIE --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
done
# or you could just allow ssh access from all hosts
# NOTE: if you're going to allow ssh access from all hosts then
# it's always a good idea to put sshd on a non-standard port
# - this keeps the majority of script kid trawlers out
#iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 22 -j ACCEPT

#other optional extras:
# allow inbound http access
#iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
# allow inbound https access
#iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 443 -j ACCEPT

# drop all other inbound traffic (including ICMP, UDP etc.)
iptables -A INPUT -j DROP
# you could also just block tcp connections..
#iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -j DROP

Finally, I set the script executable and executed the script now to load the new rules in to iptables:

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chmod 0700 /etc/iptables-init
!$

And that’s it! Remember - it’s always good to test your configuration from a remote host or better still from a ‘bad’ remote host and a ‘good’ (whitelisted) host.

REMEMBER: The above script is just an example! You should modify the script to meet YOUR needs (as it stands this met mine) but it still serves as a useful starting point. It should also be noted that ICMP ping replies will be blocked using the above setup - this may not be desirable but in my case it was!

I’ll leave you with ‘Another Day’ from Album Leaf:

To know how good you are at something requires the same skills as it does to be good at those things. Which means if you’re absolutely hopeless at something, you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you’re absolutely hopeless at it. And this is a profound discovery - that most people who have absolutely no idea what they’re doing, have absolutely no idea that they have no idea what they’re doing.

It explains a great deal of life.

…

It also explains why so many people in charge of so many organisations have no idea what they’re doing, they have a terrible blind spot.

Watch the video here:

I’ve decided that it’ll now be customary to sign off each post with a bit of music. In this case, given that it’s the weekend it’ll be some uplifting vocal trance from Andain, the Myon and Shane 54 remix of ‘Promises’. Enjoy! (and sorry if this doesn’t float your boat :P):

I plan to post again soon, this time with something more substantial until then I’ll leave you with my “tune of the trip”, “Black Ash Veil” by Apparat:

I recently upgraded to the latest version of Chromium (aka Google Chrome) and noticed that the folks at Google have decided to drop the http:// prefix from the “omnibox”:

CNet reported this back when the feature first appeared in the developer beta’s but I must say I’m surprised at the results I found in the following article:

Really?  You’d prefer to see the http:// stay?

In my opinion, dropping it is one of the best damn things they have ever done because in this day and age, it’s no longer necessary. It just doesn’t matter anymore because the web is all about http:// now. It’s implicit and the UI should mirror this - people don’t need to know about it. I recall what my good friend anto once said…

This is just one of the things which makes Chrome stand out from all the others, Jeff Atwood recently wrote that

Chrome was a completely respectable browser in V1 and V2. The entire project has moved forward so fast that it now is, at least in my humble opinion, the best browser on the planet. Google went from nothing, no web browser at all, to best-of-breed in under two years.

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#!/bin/sh
# Download the PDFLib Lite Linux source from here first:
# http://www.pdflib.com/download/pdflib-family/pdflib-lite-7/
# put the download in the same location as this script
# NOTE: you will be prompted by the pecl installation at the end
# of the process for a path - you'll need to enter /usr/local/ here
#
# Author: jbw
# DateCreated: Mon, 22 Mar 2010

# We need root privileges ..
if [ "$USER" != "root" ]; then
  chmod +x "$0"
  gksudo "$0"
  exit
fi

dpkg -l | grep -q build-essential || \
  apt-get install build-essential

tar zxvf PDFlib-Lite-7*.tar.gz && \
  cd PDFlib-Lite-7*/ && \
  ./configure && \
  make && \
  make install

dpkg -l | grep -q php-pear || \
  apt-get install php-pear

dpkg -l | grep -q php5-dev || \
  apt-get install php5-dev

pecl install pdflib

If you don’t plan on using the dl() method to load this module dynamically then you may need to modify the php configuration so it autoloads the pdf.so extension.

I’m using a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 which has a synaptics based touchpad. This fix only works if you’re using a synaptics based touchpad! If you’re not using a synaptic touchpad then this fix probably won’t work for you.

First off, we need to edit our xorg.conf at /etc/X11/xorg.conf. I appended the following to my file since I had not Mouse based input device section:

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Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection

if you have an input device section then you’ll need to ensure it features the same Option and Driver lines as above.

Once you’ve made these changes you’ll need to restart the X server. You can do this using

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/etc/init.d/gdm restart

or alternatively kill the X server using ctrl+alt+backspace and let gdm bring it back up. BEFORE we restart the X server, let’s setup a tapping delay. I created a xinitrc file at ~/.xinitrc and put the following in it:

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pgrep syndaemon > /dev/null && killall syndaemon
syndaemon -i 0.5 -d

You can experiment with different delays once you’ve restarted your X server by executing the two lines above from within your .xinitrc (or simply re-execute ~/.xinitrc). Half a second turned out to be the perfect delay for me but it’s entirely down to your own preferences.

Have fun!

What happens if you remove Pulseaudio on Karmic Koala?

Removing Pulseaudio in Karmic means you lose some sound related gnome goodness. You lose the volume control applet (aka speaker icon) and the hardware keyboard volume control keys stop working too. The OSD that normally displays when you volume up/down/mute also disappears. Really, I didn’t care about this loss, since I never use the graphical mixer anyway - that’s kinda the point of having the hardware volume keys, isn’t it ? The OSD is just bling, and I could live without it as long as I could just get the hardware keys working.

Instructions for removing Pulseaudio from Karmic Koala

And so here’s what I ended up with - hardware keys work and the increment/decrement of the up/down buttons is now configurable. I don’t have an OSD and I don’t have gnome sound volume control applet anymore. If like me, you want to remove Pulseaudio no matter what, then follow these very gratifying steps:

Step 1.Uninstall PulseAudio

Use Synaptic via System » Administration » Synaptic Package Manager or sudo apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio from the shell

Step 2. Disable the gnome keyboard volume related shortcuts

Disable the gnome keyboard volume related shortcuts since they are pulseaudio dependent and will no longer work. Go to System »Preferences » Keyboard Shortcuts and disable the three volume shortcuts (up, down and mute). You can disable a shortcut by clicking on the line and then pressing the backspace key (i.e. backspace, NOT the key on your keyboard labeled ‘delete’)

Step 3. Configure your own keybindings to control the hardware volume keys.

I use compiz, so I opted to setup custom commands with custom keyboard bindings using the compizconfig settings manager. If you don’t use compiz, then you’ll need to configure the keybindings in whatever you use. If you are using compiz go to System » Preferences » CompizConfig Settings Manager. Then go to Commands and setup your keybindings like this:

Keep in mind you can easily attach these commands to edge or button bindings too. Keyboard bindings is all I wanted thou:

The jbw-mute-audio is a small shell script which uses amixer to check whether the audio is muted or not and then mutes/unmutes accordingly:

#!/bin/sh
# Mute or unmute
# jbw Mon, 08 Feb 2010
(amixer sget Master  | grep '\[off\]'  && amixer sset Master unmute) \
    || amixer sset Master mute

Save the above script and customize it accordingly (man amixer). Don’t forget to chmod the script so it’s executable.

That’s it! Enjoy life without Pulseaudio woes!

Have fun!

What kind of maintenance lasts 96 hours anyway? Couldn’t they leave the old site in place until they’re ready to launch the updated version? It bamboozles me how companies of this size can get away with this kind of thing.

Having used this configuration for the last few weeks, things have now evolved a little further.  The folder layout on *nix machine “feels right” compared with Windows. All of “your stuff” is stored in your home directory – which means that there’s less emphasis on “the desktop”, giving me the opportunity to easily keep it organised.  Grouping all current desktop icons into logical groups (directories), I arranged them around my screenlets. I figured this is the best approach since all the useful bits (screenlets and icons) are all in one place. I disabled the nautilus (using gconf -> apps > nautilus > desktop preferences) desktop trash icon since I have a screenlet taking its place instead.

My only regret now is that when I built this machine I went with an ATI graphics card. ATI’s Linux support sucks, the official proprietary drivers (the dreaded “fglrx”) suck and the opensource radeon/radeonhd drivers aren’t much better.  Video performance is now the only major bottleneck on this machine and to “solve it” I decided I’d live with some high quality albeit closed-source drivers from nVidia – an nVidia GTS 250 is on its way to me as I type.

Many things have changed under the hood, in addition, it handles larger multiline texts much more gracefully, and also remembers the last window size and position. I discovered that Vodafone support was broken for quite sometime (as a result of a recent vodafone.ie update) this is now working again.

Get it while it’s hot - you can download it here.

The big thorn in the heel for WebDevelopers, Internet Explorer still remains at large with a 60% holding while Opera, Chrome and Safari are all below 5%.

If you receive this error then it’s most likely that you’ve built subversion with the STATIC make option. Building a static version means that no shared libraries will be built and this is the reason you get the svn_client-1 does not exist error. The solution is to:

cd /usr/ports/devel/subversion && make config

Ensure you untick the STATIC option then rebuild and reinstall the subversion port. Once you’ve done this you can return to your trac build and live in happiness once again.

For the last 5-6 months I have been sitting in something quite like this:

This is my upgrade:

It’s early days yet as I’m still getting used to all the adjustable bits.. but it’s very, very comfortable.

Considering all the changes, we consider this the most important Nmap release since 1997, and we recommend that all current users upgrade.