An Awesome Custom Help Screen

 Computing, Linux, Working Notes  No Responses »
Mar 072015
 

So there I was, wandering down the street thinking about :-

  1. Sometimes being unable to remember custom key sequences that I've configured.
  2. That my "Help" button on my keyboard was unused.

And I thought that it would be fun to knock up a little application that would pop up a window and show a file. Then I got real, and realised that the application was already written and allowed fancy formatting of the help file(s) – it's called a browser.

Now for a whole bunch of reasons, you probably don't want to use a full blown browser, but something a little simpler and without any fancy controls, and I plumped for dillo. Turns out that the "-f" flag turns off the fancy menu and toolbar, so what I needed was to persuade my window manager (Awesome) to run it when I pressed "Help" :- 

	awful.key({ }, "Help", function () awful.util.spawn("dillo -f /home/mike/lib/help-files/index.html") end))

If you need help adding that to your Awesome configuration file, you're in the wrong place!

And of course it works :-

2015-03-07_1457

(And now of course I need to spend some time writing some help files!)

Too Offensive For Nashville?

 Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Mar 032015
 

(Click on the banner for a link to the source story). Turns out this advertising banner was too "offensive" to be put up in Nashville. In the same country that allowed this :-

The acid test for freedom of speech is to allow speech that you do not agree with; looks like America fails.

My Triangle Is More Secure Than Your Penny Whistle

 Computing, Security  No Responses »
Feb 282015
 

This is a little rant about those people who feel the need to jump on every announcement of a security issue with Linux or Windows, and claim their favourite operating system is more secure. These days such rants are little more than fanboyism, and childish at that. 

I'm an old Unix guy (and thus am into Linux rather than Windows), and in the past did used to ramble on about how insecure Windows was. And Windows used to be a complete disaster area when it came to security.

But that has changed. Whilst I'm still not a big Windows fan, the security of Windows itself has improved to the point where it's not too bad.

Of course there are plenty of software vendors out there who are completely clueless when it comes to security, so any time you add some piece of cool corporate software to a Linux or Windows server you're running a big risk. 

But back to the haters. 

The most irritating thing about the whole 'my operating system is more secure than your operating system' is a simplistic comparison of Linux and Windows. They are not directly comparible. – simply counting the number of security vulnerabilities in "Linux" and "Windows" is an overly simplistic comparson.

First of all, Linux has many more components than Windows; partally because Linux tends to throw in the kitchen sink, and partially because of a different philosophy – the "Unix way" is to build many small tools rather than one big tool. But just because Linux includes tons of stuff, doesn't make insecurities in all that stuff a problem on your server – for example, none of my web servers have a web browser installed so all those hundreds of web browser bugs are irrelevant to my servers. 

Windows itself has caught onto the trick that has been standard practice for decades – only install the stuff you actually need. Whilst there are popular Linux distributions that do the same thing (Debian, and Ubuntu amonst others), there are still some that tend to install far too much (RedHat, SLES, etc.).

Secondly the number of vulnerabliities does not take into account how serious each vulnerability is. Ten privilege escalation vulnerabilities comes nowhere close to a shellshock. 

When you come down to it, the choice of which operating system to run has less of an effect on how vulmerable your server is than who runs your server. A tightly controlled Windows server that is patched often and well configured is far more secure than a Linux server that is patched when installed (if then!) and then left alone by an administrator who assumes that "out of the box" configurations are suitable.

Not Everything On The Internet Is True

 General  No Responses »
Feb 152015
 

Wandering through Youtube as you do, I happened to come across :-

.. and was immediately struck by how dumb the selection of "facts" were :-

  1. Antibiotics attack bacteria not viruses. In fact the belief that they attack anything nasty smaller than the eye can see is contributing to the issue mentioned as the fact – that antibiotics are becoming less and less effective as antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria evolve. So whilst the video is right in the broadest possible terms, the explanation is full of shit.
  2. Shellac has nothing whatsoever to do with bug shit. It's produced by collecting a different bodily fluid, but obviously the narrator was confused between the two words secrete and excrete.
  3. The fact about Caesar was nearly right except that old Julius asked for his ransom to be raised from 20 silver talents to 50 silver talents (an increase of 2.5 times not double which is quite a big difference), and whilst Julius did crucify the pirates, he also had their throats cut first.
  4. The sixth exictintion (us humans causing an extinction event) is treated as a fact whereas it is currently a plausible hypothesis, but by no means a fact. Not that we shouldn't improve our behaviour to our fellow planet dwellers!
  5. We all eat 12 pubic hairs a year, The narrator even admits nobody knows of a source for this "fact". Well guess what? If you don't have a source, all you have is an entertaining story. 
  6. I couldn't be bothered to check, but I suspect the "fact" of big agriculture breeding huge workforces of children to work farms because there are US labour law loopholes is a bit far off base.

Out of a list of 15 so-called "facts" at least 50% were horse-shit and in the case of the remainder, there's a fair few I've not bothered checking. Best bet is when you look at a video claimimg to have a top 10 list of something is to take the whole thing with a pinch of salt. 

Remember The Tories Cheered When They Caused Misery?

 Politics  No Responses »
Feb 102015
 

A while back, I commented on the Tories cheering the cuts bringing in a new era of austerity. I said at the time we should remember their cheers, and now we should do the remembering.

Whether or not the austerity cuts were necessary, the cheering by the Tories showed their true colours – they would rather cut benefits to the poor and working classes to reduce taxes for their rich friends.

Remember the cheering when you listen to their wheedling speaches to get your votes.

Remember the cheering when they claim to be on the side of ordinary workers.

Remember the cheering when you go into vote. And vote for anybody else (except UKIP).

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