chattr +a -V

The New Scientist article Early dinosaurs crawled before they ran quotes Robert Reisz, of the University of Toronto: 'I can't think of any living vertebrate that does this, except possibly us, and we are terribly awkward as hatchlings.' (What an odd turn of phrase, to specify vertebrates and qualifying 'us'.)

Reisz led the research team investigating dinosaur eggs discovered in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, South Africa in 1978. They used 'the latest archaeological tools - including miniature jack-hammers and fine dental drills - to crack open two' of the six eggs from the South African discovery. From the article:

Today's edition of the New York Times reports on the Worcester [Massachusetts] Art Museum's exhibition Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague, 1500-1800. The article (Desperately Painting the Plague by Holland Cotter) is good enough, extending over two pages, but when both eyeballing the pages for a link and searching the source code for 'worcesterart', you see that there is no link to the museum's site or to that site's pages on the exhibition.

It's not difficult either to insert the links or to find; googling "Worcester Art Museum" (even without the quotes) has the institution's main page as the first item returned.

On the other hand, the bottom of the article's pages has a link to 'Worcester Art Museum', but no, that doesn't provide a link to the museum. It displays pages where the Times referred to the Museum. Talk about insularity.

In addition, the Times's narrow, provincial point of view shows in this quote about how Americans view religious themes in art:If we substitute 'this New York Times art critic' for 'Americans' in the first sentence and 'I am' for 'we are' in the second, the comments may be more accurate.

The Times's stock of clues ran out a long time ago. Does Holland Cotter really think 'Americans [have trouble seeing art] ... through the eyes of a believer'?

Marcel Gagné at Marcel's Linux App of the Month : streamtuner on unixreview.com plays around with streamtuner, which, along with streamripper, lets you grab internet radio streams and save them to disk for later listening (or listen live, of course).


streamtuner running here in fvwm
Right mouse click and 'view image' to see full size

Installing here was as simple as an `apt-get install streamtuner streamripper`, and I'm listening now to Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson.

One fewer reason to run XP.

v0.16.0 pre-release is available. There are new settings options:

new settings screen for ScrapBook v0.16.0



ScrapBook v0.15 settings screen

Many items in the changelog, some of which are:

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, all twelve episodes, is available at archive.org. The thumbnails are great.

  

fail2ban v0.5.1 has been released. From the announcement on the Linux-Announce mailing list for Sat, July 23, 2005:.debs are available here.

Here is the Changelog section for v0.5.1:v0.5.0 has been running fine on my linode.com machine (on which this weblog and my other servers run), and I did the wget and `dpkg -i` for the v0.5.1 .deb today. Install appeared to go without a hitch and fail2ban stopped and restarted.

Quoting the fail2ban 'About' section on the site 'Fail2Ban scans log files like /var/log/pwdfail or /var/log/apache/error_log and bans IP that makes too many password failures. It updates firewall rules to reject the IP address. It needs log4py.' I have it running to drop the IP address, not do an `iptables [blahblah] REJECT`.

It's only been 100 years since Einstein's papers strongly supporting the atomic theory of matter, and scientists are investigating materials which are one atom thick. That's investigating their properties, as in examining such existing materials, not speculating about their properties.

The University of Manchester has a press release, One-atom-thick materials promise a 'new industrial revolution' (18 July, 2005) about the research by a joint British-Russian team lead by Professor Andre Geim, Director of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology, and who discovered the first example of such two-dimensional materials.

Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends blog has some pictures of such materials at One-atom-thick materials?.

This is strange enough for me to become interested in nanotechnology.

There are some references to recent science fiction works which include such materials, but I haven't seen Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions mentioned yet. The version at Flatland, by E.A. Abbott, 1884 has the illustrations and 'next' links at the bottom of each page.

A Square's house seen from Sphereland

As the Huygens probe descended through Titan's atmosphere, it sent data on the chemical make-up of the atmosphere. The data stream is being analyzed to break out readings on the hydrogen and acetylene concentrations.

New Scientist reports in Has Huygens found life on Titan? that Chris McKay and Heather Smith, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California and the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, respectively, 'have worked out the likely diet of such organisms on Titan.'No timeframe is given for when results will appear.

Here's the winner of the British Antarctic Survey design competition, and a link to the announcement: Faber Maunsell and Hugh Broughton win Halley VI Design Competition



There's an interview of lead architect Hugh Broughton on the U.S. News and World Report web site at Science News: Antarctic architecture. From the interview:Apparently, retractable legs are a current feature of Antarctic research facilities, since the firm's announcement says 'The modules' mechanical legs will significantly ease the task of raising the station. Our design will enable three workers to carry out the task in on one week. At present, it takes six specialist steel workers an entire season to do the job.'

An update on July 19th's Trying fail2ban: iptables DROPs IPs with multiple authentication failures:I haven't yet done an `iptables -L INPUT|grep DROP|head` while fail2ban has banned an IP, so I haven't confirmed that the IP actually does get 'banned', but fail2ban looks to be doing its job so far.

These IPs match those returned by `grep llegal /var/log/auth.log|grep "Jul 21"|grep -v grep`, so fail2ban is reporting that it's acting on those IPs and presumably, only on those IPs.

Mozillazine blog has the announcement of 1.0.6 (Linux en-US version via ftp here). 1.0.5 broke some extensions.

I guess the Session Saver, Scrapbook and Enhanced History Manager extensions weren't affected by 1.0.5's bug(s), since they continued to work here in 1.0.5. In any event, I grabbed 1.0.6, and for the last ten hours or so, it seems to be doing fine with ScrapBook and Enhanced History Manager. All my ScrapBook entries show up in the left-hand column, and ditto for the Enhanced History Manager entries. But, closing Firefox when multiple windows with multiple tabs are open crashes the startup. Restarting, what gets saved is one window with multiple tabs. The other windows with their multiple tabs are lost.

After it crashes, and I restart again, I select the profile to use and a Session Saver window pops up asking me if I want to coninue restarting, as the restart 'seems to be crashing'. Clicking on 'continue' brings up the first window started, with all of its tabs, but other windows with their tabs are lost, even if the only open tab is Firefox start.

Reported this to the extension author and in the comments to the 1.0.6 announcement.

One of the most annoying emails logcheck produces includes massive numbers of lines such as ... and so on for some 220 lines.

Those failed sshd authentications get logged in /var/log/auth.log, one of the files fail2ban (I suppose from 'if it fails, send it to ban') reads. There's a Debian package, so I wgetted it into /var/cache/archives/ and first ran `dpkg --simulate -i fail2ban_0.5.0-1_all.deb`, got no errors, so I ditched --simulate, and it installed and started. Unlike (many? most?) packages, it doesn't put its .conf in /etc/[package name]/. Instead, it writes a sane /etc/fail2ban.conf file. (Sane, as in looking it over, it won't do anything insane.) Running, it(from the description in the .deb) by doing, for example `iptables -I INPUT 1 -i eth0 -s -j DROP`.

Most of the machines perpetrating this crap are from China, Korea or European addresses, and I never even bothered emailing abuse@. Occasionally, I'd email folks in the U.S., but at least half the time, it's not worth the effort. Let's see how it performs.

Back in Jan's Strawberries, U.S. 70 east of Smithfield, I posted how much I enjoyed the strawberries there. Now, every two weeks or so, I go to church down in Goldsboro, and the last two times, I've stopped at Jans' Corner Market and picked up peaches from their orchards.

Both times, they weren't quite ripe enough to eat that day, but the next day and for a few afterwards, they are excellent.

The fellow behind the counter says they'll have peaches until October, since every ten days or so, some of the fruit is ready for picking. No pick your own, unfortunately. Too much damamge was done to the trees when they permitted that.

It's been a while since I posted anything on North Korea, though I've been preparing something on the imminent famine and responses to it from the ROK, UN and US, this story deserves mention. There are articles on Kim (his name, according to Yonhap at (LEAD) N.K. defector probably linked to arms trade with Taiwan: NIS and a later article, (2nd LD) Recent N.K. defector linked to arms trade with Taiwan: NIS) at North Korean parliamentarian defects to South Korea: Report (by India's Zeenews), North Korean legislator seeking asylum in South (by Reuters of India) and North Korean parliamentarian defects to South Korea: report (AFP via Khaleej Times).

Information from the defector appearing in the articles so far is limited to the DPRK's nuclear weapons, and possible Taiwanese-DPRK arms trade.(from the Reuters article.)(from the Zeenews report.)

Chosun Ilbo's article is 'N.K. Deputy Seeks Asylum in South' says 'Kim Il-do' is an alias, and

On todays' Brainy History:This wasn't Murray's only run in with lightning. Five years earlier, here's what happened:Source: the excellent Baseball library article on Bill Murray.

Only needing the Beyond Appliance Network Card, the essential Beyond Smart Coffee Maker frees you to change brewing schedules via your browser: 'a simple point-and-click web interface'.

From Smart coffee at The Red Ferret Journal.

Last Thursday, July 7, I was up in Wake Forest and my car lost all its coolant. Trying to add it, whatever I poured in the reservoir wound up on the ground. I live in Raleigh, had neglected to renew my AAA membership (the first time I would have used it in years, dumb, dumb), and didn't have a regular mechanic.

Now, I work very near the Firestone dealer on Wake Forest Rd (map here) and know a few of the mechanics there (they stop in often), and decided to have them work on the car.

Paul (last name Morton?) is the manager and Will was my mechanic for this job. They fixed my car and got me on the road the next day, Friday, July 8.

In the meantime, I needed a rental, and had no experience with different local agencies or franchises. A supervisor had a few suggestions, and since Enterprise picks you up and had a competitive rate, I chose them and the Glenwood Ave location. The fellow arrived at my home on time as scheduled, brought me to the Glenwood Ave location and Jack Gallagher there got me on the road quickly. I only needed the car for a day, and when I returned it on Friday, they dropped me off at the Firestone dealer.

I wanted to recognize these two local merchants for their honest, fast work, and I recommend them to ohers if they're in the same boat as I was.

The Charlotte Business Journal reports on the Federal Communications Commission Local Telephone Competition report: as of December 31, 2004, cellphone subscribers totalled 5.36 million, and landlines were 4.99 million.

pdf and zip copies of the FCC report are at Local Telephone Competition and Broadband Deployment. pdf is here and zip is here.

Competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) increased their market share from 9% to 13% in 2004, compared with a nationwide increase from 15% to 18%.

Source: N.C. wireless phones outnumber wire lines.

Cheat Sheets From Ilovejackdaniels and Threadwatch, in Great Cheat Sheets for Web Devs links to the list of Cheat Sheets, including CSS, php, MySQL, mod_rewrite and RGB Hex Colors at ilovejackdaniels.com.

Joachim Breitner has made it possible to follow Debian bugs list traffic for one specific bug. Very helpful, since the bugs lists tend to be high volume. From Debian Bug Subscription Feature:l.d.o. is lists.debian.org, of course.

Digitalglobe.com has made available satellite images in .jpg format, of London (an overview) and the locales where yesterday's terrorist bombings took place:

• London overview image (4.14MB)
• Edgware Road Detail (3.01 MB)
• King's Cross - Russell Square - Woburn Place Detail (3.08MB)
• Liverpool Street - Aldgate Detail (3.20MB)

Found these via Satellite Imagery: London Media Gallery on ResourceShelf, though the site's not loading at the moment.

In Security Problems seem to be solved, Martin 'Joey' Schulze posts good news: at first look, the problems with the security infrastructure (including updates for woody/oldstable ending up in sarge/stable and updates not being built on all architectures) have been resolved.

Steve Langasek's post at 6 Jul 2005 is worth reading as well.

nosemonkey has an entry: London tube explosions. He's headed home from work now.

No need to link to the coverage of the terrorists' latest, but it's ironic that on the same day, PCmag.co.uk puts up an article, British bloggers lead the world, Most advanced and media savvy. Most of the blogs MS refers to in the article are tech related, not personal or commentary on events.

Only three days ago, the Definitive London PodCast site went live. In a brief search on technorati, I didn't see any podcasts yet on the 'bomb', 'bombs', 'explosions' and 'London'.

Presentations at the New York City BSD Users Group meetings are archived at Audio recordings of NYC*BUG meetings.

• October 16, 2004. Special Meeting: Marshall Kirk McKusick.
• January 5, 2005. Manos Megagiannis: Anatomy of a Hack.
• February 2, 2005. Jan Schaumann: The NetBSD Packages Collection (pkgsrc).
• March 2, 2005. Michael Shalayeff: OpenBSD on PA-RISC.
• May 4, 2005. Roland Dowdeswell: Heimdal Kerberos on NetBSD.
• June 1, 2005. Phillip Moore: Open Source Software.
• July 6, 2005. Angelos Keromytis: OpenBSD IPsec stack.

Dave Winer drove through North Carolina on July 4th, on Highway 17, and he's posted some nice images of Washington, NC and the Great Dismal Swamp at US-17 on July 4 in North Carolina. The plaque to NavSec Josephus ('cup of Joe') Daniels is a giveaway.

It's impossible to tell, but the canal images might be from the Welcome Center. I stopped there a few times when driving from New Jersey to New Bern, North Carolina, and always wanted to paddle or row, but haven't yet.

This year is the 200th anniversary of the Canal.

tabo comments on the problems Debian has with keeping up-to-date on security, at Debian Security and some comparisons.There's an interesting table comparing how quickly different distros fixed security vulnerabilities in three packages:

	ClamAV	SpamAssassin	sudo
(fixed)	2005-06-23	2005-06-06	2005-06-19
CENTOS 4	(1)	2005-06-23	2005-06-29
Debian Sarge	2005-07-06	2005-07-01	2005-07-01
FreeBSD	2005-06-24	2005-06-08	2005-06-21
RHEL4	(1)	2005-06-23	2005-06-29
SLES9	2005-06-29	2005-06-22 (2)	2005-06-24
FC4	(1)	2005-06-16	2005-06-21
Gentoo	2005-06-27	2005-06-21	2005-06-23
Mandriva	(3)	2005-06-28	2005-06-21

1) The distribution does not include this package, there is nothing to patch
(2) SLES9 includes an old version of spamassassin that is immune to the vulnerability. The published date is for the suse9.3 patch and is for reference only.
(3) There is no patch published yet.


It would have been interesting, though probably not too informative, to include Ubuntu wiht the other distros, since Canonical has hired a number of core Deb developers.

I've used Debian on this site for a year now, and for a little longer on my desktop. What attracted me initially was apt, having started in Linux back in 1995 or so with Slackware an 3.5" floppies and then migrating to nine years or so of varying degrees of rpm hell. But a public site needs security patches, and they're much more important with a public site than with a desktop.

Listening to a Geek News Central podcast this morning (I think it was #77 2005-06-28, but there's nothing in the show notes there with these), Todd Cochrane referenced a scripting podcast (link is to the mp3, the shownotes have no individual URL, AFAICT, serach for 'scip' on the linked page) by Chuck Tomasai, who also uses vi to create his site.

Todd also referred to perlcast.com. More things to burn and listen to.

wget will download files using http, https or ftp, but it doesn't support wildcards or other regular expressions. What to use, if you want, say, all the .jpg files on a page, or at a site? Today, I tried out Sirobot. It uses perl regexps to exclude or include files, and the man page gives a brief explanation of frequently used perl regular expressions. Unfortunately, the man page refers to an EXAMPLES file, which isn't in the tarball.

It runs, like wget, from the command line, but there's also a Gtk frontend. The front end allows you to specify the download location, creating a directory if it doesn't exist, specify the URL to grab, and which files to include or exclude, or, rather, which files to exclude and which to include.

Sirofront
right mouse click and 'view image' to see fullsize

By default, it grabs all the files on a site.

in hocExcelsior!