We have been talking to our neighbors about Linux for the last several weeks as they are less than happy with their Windows boxes. It seems that they are tired with the viruses and trojans that keep trying to get on to their machines and the effort they have to take removing them. Last night they came over to see a quick demo of Linux on our home network and a copy of Linux for their machines. We explained what it is and the packages and what a 'distro' was. They were suprised at what they could get free and that it looked almost like Windows with the KDE window manager running. They were also impressed with OpenOffice and the fact that it can read/write Word and XLS files.
We explained to them that not everything for hardware may work and we gave them PCLINUXOS and KNOPPIX on live CDs to try out. We also pointed out that they could make their two machines 'dual boot' and keep Windows, but, use Linux as their main O/S. That way any special programs they can keep and run. I suspect that they will probably be over soon to get our help with setting them up with Linux on their home network.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
State of spam - August 2007
It has now been two months since the spam king Soloway was arrested in the U.S. For a bit my spam volume went down, but, that was only temporary. Other spammers have picked up the slack and the volume is almost back to 'normal' levels. It goes to show that sutting down the spammers won't work, the government should also be going after the ones purchasing the services... follow the dollars and it may help reduce the spam load!
The big trend now is the phony 'greeting card'. It appears that it now is used to insert the payload of the spammers into your machine. When you get one delete it, don't even open it. Part of the spam I have been getting is these and I don't even open them. One good article about it is in the Washington post (July 21st, you can search for the article at www.washingtonpost.com).
Again I will stress don't open the cards and keep on patching your system, updating your AV software, run a firewall and if something doesn't sound right delete the email without opening it and send the person a short note asking to send it again.
Current stats for my spam:
2007 ---> SPAM = 67.4%, LEGIT = 32.6%
2006 ---> SPAM = 78.0% LEGIT = 22.0%
2005 ---> SPAM = 49.9% LEGIT = 50.1%
TOTAL ---> SPAM = 70.9% LEGIT = 29.1%
The big trend now is the phony 'greeting card'. It appears that it now is used to insert the payload of the spammers into your machine. When you get one delete it, don't even open it. Part of the spam I have been getting is these and I don't even open them. One good article about it is in the Washington post (July 21st, you can search for the article at www.washingtonpost.com).
Again I will stress don't open the cards and keep on patching your system, updating your AV software, run a firewall and if something doesn't sound right delete the email without opening it and send the person a short note asking to send it again.
Current stats for my spam:
2007 ---> SPAM = 67.4%, LEGIT = 32.6%
2006 ---> SPAM = 78.0% LEGIT = 22.0%
2005 ---> SPAM = 49.9% LEGIT = 50.1%
TOTAL ---> SPAM = 70.9% LEGIT = 29.1%
Saturday, June 23, 2007
PCLINUX 2007
It has been over a month now that I have been using PCLINUXOS 2007 on my machine. My daughter has been running TR4, but, I left here there until I was comfortable with the new version. It has been running solidly on this machine without a glitch, almost.
The only problem I had was with the Palm M130. The application JPILOT would not make a connection to /dev/ttyUSB1 or /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/pilot no matter what I did. I checked out the forums at PCLINUXOS, but, everyone who were posting didn't have a fix at that time. Two days ago I did a google search on the problem along with the error message and I found a message on the UBUNTU forum where a person had the same problem, and the solution! The fix was to change the preferences serial rate for both jpilot and the PALM itself to 57600. Shut down jpilot and then you then initiate the sync on the palm first and then press sync on jpilot. The fix worked and all of my hardware is working. As long as you start the sync on the Pilot first jpilot will work properly.
I also found a note in the forums about SYNAPTIC and go into settings, repositories and add 'KDE' to the sections. Basically the sections should contain 'main extra nonfree kde'. I did this and KlamAV was there and I installed it on my system. I use KlamAV as I do bring work home and I like to scan the documents on a regular basis.
My next job this weekend is to update my daughter's machine and then my wife's machine will be upgraded. My wife also wants me to install SCRIBUS on her machine so she can play with it. The only application in Windows on her machine is MSPUBLISHER and she is looking for a good replacement for that application so she can be running everything from Linux.
The only problem I had was with the Palm M130. The application JPILOT would not make a connection to /dev/ttyUSB1 or /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/pilot no matter what I did. I checked out the forums at PCLINUXOS, but, everyone who were posting didn't have a fix at that time. Two days ago I did a google search on the problem along with the error message and I found a message on the UBUNTU forum where a person had the same problem, and the solution! The fix was to change the preferences serial rate for both jpilot and the PALM itself to 57600. Shut down jpilot and then you then initiate the sync on the palm first and then press sync on jpilot. The fix worked and all of my hardware is working. As long as you start the sync on the Pilot first jpilot will work properly.
I also found a note in the forums about SYNAPTIC and go into settings, repositories and add 'KDE' to the sections. Basically the sections should contain 'main extra nonfree kde'. I did this and KlamAV was there and I installed it on my system. I use KlamAV as I do bring work home and I like to scan the documents on a regular basis.
My next job this weekend is to update my daughter's machine and then my wife's machine will be upgraded. My wife also wants me to install SCRIBUS on her machine so she can play with it. The only application in Windows on her machine is MSPUBLISHER and she is looking for a good replacement for that application so she can be running everything from Linux.
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