CompuBlab

If it's computer related, we'll blab about it!

Author: Peter Lee Page 4 of 7

Email Server Follies!

By

On September 25, 2011

In Software

Over the last two weeks I have been embarking on quite an adventure (or perhaps “misadventure” would be a better word) trying to get a small email server up and running on my Linux computer at home. Why would I want such a thing, you ask? Well, I have been setting up automated services on this machine…and I want those programs to be able to email me should something go wrong. That way, I don’t have to keep checking the computer…I know it will contact me if something is amiss.

Given my needs, I only need the ability to send email…not receive it.

So first I tried to configure SendMail, a well known Linux/Unix emailing program, to send emails through to my internet service provider (ISP) for final delivery. WHAT A MESS! I’ve had root canals that hurt less than trying to configure SendMail!

After countless hours of frustration, I deleted sendmail from the computer and installed Exim…a full-featured (and more recent) email server. The configuration for this software is much better documented…but I am still having a lot of problems with the setup. I have not invested anywhere near the amount of time in Exim that I did in SendMail…so there is still lots of exploring to do. I think in time I *will* be able to get Exim to do what I want…with an added bonus.

Also on my home computer network is a DLink NAS: a “network attached storage” device that provides all of the computers in our home with a place to store, backup, and share files on the network (without having to have a dedicated computer handling the traffic…the NAS has all the smarts necessary to make the hard drives available to users on the network). This NAS has features such that I can have it run diagnostics on a nightly basis and then email me the results. Sadly, the firmware on this device ONLY sends email on port 25…a port that is blocked by my ISP. Since there is no way to change this setting (I’ve checked with the manufacturer), I am stuck. However, once I get Exim up and running, I could configure the NAS to send its email to Exim running on my Linux computer, and then have my Linux computer forward the email to my ISP on the special port required.

All of this is fun, and more than just a little bit frustrating! However, I look forward to getting all of this working.

If you are curious as to why it is so complex and difficult to set up an email server, it has to do with the fact that email spam has gotten so bad over the years, that more and more rules and protocols have been instituted to try to cut down on all of that junk email. As such, more and more is required of modern day email servers in order to satisfy these growing requirements. There really won’t be any relief in the future for all of these”anti-spam” kludges until the email protocols themselves (designed way back in the early days of the internet…and with no knowledge of today’s hostile Internet environment) get reworked. However, since SO much software today relies upon the old email protocols, making such a change is difficult.

Until next time…

 

 

A Great O/S for Older Computers

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On September 8, 2011

In Software

I was putting together a computer for a friend of mine and was trying to figure out what operating system (O/S) I could/should use. The computer is an older laptop using an AMD K6 processor (equivalent in power to roughly a Pentium II processor). The machine still worked (I take good care of my computers), but it runs the venerable Windows 98.

Now, I wasn’t so worried about the Windows 98 O/S except for the fact that when I finished getting everything set up I had a serious problem with the web browser. For one, the computer came loaded with Internet Explorer 5!!! After playing with this version of IE I discovered that:

  1. Facebook would not even let me log in because the version of the browser was so old
  2. IE 5 was crashing left and right
  3. IE 5 couldn’t deal with wide web pages very well at all.

To make matters worse, I had a very difficult time finding a version of ANY browser that ran with any level of decency on Windows 98. Ultimately I decided to use Firefox 2…which works okay…but was plagued with poor memory management problems (which is to say in layman’s terms, it was a memory HOG!). Thus, I was not able to get very good performance out of it (which translates to: It runs very slowly).

Finally, I decided to find out if an alternative operating system might not work better than Windows 98. My search ultimately lead me to a distribution of Linux called “Puppy Linux” (http:\\puppylinux.org). I have to say, I was mighty impressed.

First of all, you should know that puppy linux comes as a “live CD”. What does that mean? It means that you can insert the CD into your computer’s CD drive and boot the operating system directly from the CD without having to disturb what is on your hard disk. In fact, if your older computer supports it, you can also boot puppy linux from a flash drive.

Second, puppy linux was DESIGNED for older computers. It boots a very small footprint (which means, it takes up a very small amount of memory), but yet packs a lot of powerful apps. I was very impressed.

From a selection of top flight browsers, to a spreadsheet program, a database program, a document creation/editing program, and a ton of other useful applications, this O/S is just right for making use out of those older computers that may not have a powerful processor or a lot of memory.

I have always been annoyed at the fact that as we progress with later versions of Windows, the memory and hardware requirements just keep going up and up and up at an insane rate. I’m sorry, but unless you have some specialty application such as video editing, or major league photo editing, or sound editing, I just can’t see why I should buy an entirely new computer just to run the latest version of Windows. Within a certain limit, yes…it makes sense to periodically upgrade your hardware. But it seems like each new version just requires more and more and more.

Perhaps the best part about puppy linux is that it is 100% free!

Now, from time to time (and perhaps more often as of late) you will see me make posts on this site regarding what I feel to be the evils of this country’s patent system. One of the big reasons I oppose the current patent system is that large corporations are trying to use the patent system to prevent people from giving away free software such as puppy linux! I don’t want to go into that right now (there are already a wealth of other posts on CompuBlab.com that address this issue…and no doubt there will be more in the future). Just know that when I post regarding the problems with the US Patent system, THIS is what I am talking about.

At any rate, the point of this post is to point out that if you have an older computer that you don’t want to junk (maybe you want to allow your kids to use it for their own purposes, or perhaps you want to give it to someone who just wants basic email/web surfing/and letter writing), you have an operating system alternative that you can try out without even disturbing whatever is already on the hard drive.

I should point out that in the case of the computer I was configuring for my friend, I ultimately had to leave Windows 98 on the computer. The problem was that:

  1. The bios of the laptop did not support booting from a flash drive (it was too old)
  2. I couldn’t burn a CD that the CD-ROM drive on that machine could read (know that in the early days of computing with CD-ROM drives, many of those older drives cannot read the CD-RW discs that you can burn in a computer’s CD drive today).

I was looking for a solution to these problems so my friend could use puppy linux, but I ran out of time (he drove in from out of town) and he decided he would take it as is with Windows 98 loaded on it. I will most likely continue to dabble with puppy linux until I figure out how to get it running on that computer.

Anyway, now you know that thanks to Puppy Linux, you have options for what to run on those older computers.

For Secure Computing, the US Dept of Defense Promotes a Bootable Linux O/S

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On September 6, 2011

In Computer Security, Translated Tech News

I have to say, this was an idea I had thought about years ago. If you want to be free of viruses and trojan horses and other malicious software while surfing the internet, the BEST way to go about it is to boot your operating system from a non-writable CD-ROM disk. The US Department of Defense so believes in this technique that they have created their own version of Linux specifically for this purpose!
(click here for the original article that inspired this post)

So technically, how does this work? Well, when you start your computer, the usual steps involved include your computer starting your operating system (like some variant of Microsoft Windows) from your hard disk. Once that is started, you are free to go about your computing business. But malicious software that makes its way onto your computer wants to be run every time you turn on your computer. So how does it do this? It modifies the startup files to your operating system on your hard disk so that every time you turn on your computer, the malicious software becomes active each time.

Well, the folks from the Department of Defense are suggestion that instead of booting your computer from a hard drive, you insert something called a “live CD”, which is an operating system (perhaps like windows) that starts up from a CD ROM disk (or DVD), rather than the hard drive. The key here is that the disk used to start the operating system is NOT WRITABLE. Since CD ROM and DVD-ROM discs cannot be written to after they have been created (assuming here that you have correctly created the CD-ROM disc, closed the writing session, etc.). It then becomes much more difficult for the malicious software to get “entrenched” onto your computer such that it will activate each time you start your machine.

Of course, in the world of technology there are few (if any) “absolutes”, but this method *IS* a powerful one to prevent having one’s computer from being infected by malicious software.

I don’t know if there are any “live CDs” of Windows operating systems. I don’t know because I personally don’t use Windows in that manner. However, there are many Linux “live CDs” out there in the world. Linux is a different operating system from Windows, but for simple surfing the internet and similar tasks, it is fairly easy to get running (indeed, in most cases you just insert the live CD and power up the machine).

Anyway, I just thought I would comment on this story as I felt it was worth understanding how and why booting from a CD or DVD was a good idea under the right circumstances.

Misnamed Congressional Bill to Track Your Every Move on the Internet

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On September 6, 2011

In Privacy, Translated Tech News

I have noticed that when a major political topic is talked about in the news for some time (such as the debt crisis right now), some lawmakers see it as an opportunity to ram through legislation that any literate American would object too. Now they have done it again. Using a bill named Protecting Children from Internet Pornographer’s Act of 2011,  congress wants to force Internet Service Providers (ISP) to track your every move on the internet, and to keep such logs for at least 12 months (click here for the original story).

I personally cannot think of anyone who would be against a bill that was aimed at protecting children from internet pornography. However, to track every American’s move on the internet, including exposing their credit card numbers and bank account numbers, is going so far past the mark that it is even laughable that they might try to pull this one over on the American people.

Today, ISP’s already track enough information to match up a user with a temporarily assigned internet address, which is what law enforcement officials need when trying to track down someone on the internet who is trying to be anonymous. However, this new bill wants to FORCE the ISP’s to expose all of the following personal information into their logs:

  1. Name
  2. Address
  3. Phone number
  4. Credit Card Number
  5. Bank Account number
  6. Temporarily assigned network (IP) address
  7. EVERY site visited on the internet

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digitally focused civil liberties group, summed it up nicely as follows (click here for the complete EFF statement):

The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized. Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans’ expressive activities is simply un-American. Such a scheme would be as objectionable to our Founders as the requiring of licenses for printing presses or the banning of anonymous pamphlets.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to try to make available a layman’s description to those whose career were not in technology of issues that would effect them. I have found over the years that organizations, including governments, prey upon people’s lack of knowledge in order to manipulate them. I am very sorry to say that this is what is going on here.

Most ISP’s (this could be your cable company, AT&T UVerse, etc.) provide you with an internet connection that assigns a dynamic IP address, a network address that is not specific to you, but can change every time you log into the Internet (okay, so technically it is a bit more involved than that, but for the lay person the thing to understand is that your network address could change at nearly any moment). The difficulties that law enforcement officials have had in the past was trying to track down a specific individual’s actions on the Internet.

Let’s say that a person sends as threatening email to the President…which happens to be illegal. Law enforcement officials would want to know who it was that sent that message. With a network address that can change over time, it might be difficult to track down who it was. However, most (if not all) ISP’s keep a log of which network addresses are assigned to which of their customers at any given moment. This gives law enforcement officials the ability to back-track to a specific computer should they need to.

What ISP’s most often DO NOT DO is track/log EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DO ONLINE. There is no need for this with respect to law enforcement. At least none that anyone has been able to explain to me. I certainly invite law enforcement officials to make it clear to me as to why this information is insufficient for their needs.

If you are getting the technical gist but are not understanding the reason for my concern at this point, pick up a copy of George Orwell’s book entitled 1984.

 

You Should All Know Better!

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On September 6, 2011

In Administrative

Greetings All!

I cannot believe that I let an entire month go by with not so much as a single post. The day job got very crazy for a while there and I just never had a moment to formulate my thoughts on the many subjects that came flying by. In fact, I started 4 or 5 posts and now they don’t make any sense to finish as they are on topics that are too out of date with respect to the news.

But in the intervening time, something HAS come up which will never go out of date…and that is some basic courtesy from those who join this blog.

I am going to amend the general rules here to point out something you should already know…if you wish to create an account and contribute to the discussion…that’s great! However, if you want to promote your own websites and nothing else, you are not welcome here.

Therefore, effectively immediately, user logins whose emails look like they are computer or randomly generated, or log in names that appear to be simply advertisements, will result in the deletion of the account without any notice. Period.

This blog is here for a number of reasons:

  1. A place for me to pontificate
  2. A place for people to exchange ideas (preferably technology oriented, but anything interesting is free game)
  3. A place to try to help less tech-savvy people understand and effectively use technology

If your interest in CompuBlab is nothing more than trying to boost your search ranking in Google, may I suggest you check out this really good book about Search Engine Optimization:

It Was Only A Matter of Time – Angry Birds Game Hit With Patent Lawsuit

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On August 1, 2011

In Legal, Translated Tech News

Sadly, another illustration as to all that is wrong with the US Patent system. Today we talk about the story of Patent Trolls.

Once upon a time there was a country who loved to build things. They had manufacturing plants all over the place, with plenty of proud families who for generations worked in the plants. Day after day, these people toiled to produce some of the best products in the land. Sure, they ran into various problems when trying to manufacture new products, but these workers were so skilled and so experienced, nothing could hold them back for long.

Then one day someone in this country got the idea that manufacturing was a job best left for others. It was too hard to try to run manufacturing plants in the United States, and cheap labor could be had abroad. So in a stampede that would have dwarfed any stampede ever seen out west, most manufacturers moved their facilities over seas.

Now, this worked reasonably well for the manufacturers, who no longer had to pay for things such as worker’s benefits, health care, plant safety, livable salaries, etc. If you ignored the fact that they were turning their backs on the workers who had for generations toiled in their plants and made them what they are, and the fact that the owners were  selling their souls to the devil, things would look pretty rosy for the manufacturers.

Once this great country abandoned its ability to make things, a new economics market was necessary. Of course, the old market of:

  • make something
  • sell it to consumers
  • reinvest in your business
  • repeat

had to be replaced, since almost no one had the ability to make things any more.

Well, it took some searching, but then some unnamed group of people decided that since they didn’t want to make money by MAKING stuff, they would look for a way to make money by simply THINKING of stuff. Now the problem became how to get people to pay them for merely THINKING stuff.

Well, an old method that had always worked in the past was to get laws enacted that could FORCE people to pay them for their thoughts. However, after looking around for a while, these “new” entrepreneurs settled on the US Patent system.

You see, the Patent system was originally designed to allow a small-time, simple inventor to take his new inventions to a larger company to partner with in order to bring his ideas to market…without having to worry about that big company simply stealing his idea and doing it themselves.  It was supposed to encourage the independent inventor to go ahead and invent without fear that the big bad corporations would steal all of his hard work. The inventor would obtain a patent, and the US Government would protect that inventor such that no one else could financially benefit from his invention for some amount of time, after which the idea would be released into the public domain.

But this band of lazy men thought that perhaps they could subvert this very patent system to FORCE people to pay them for their ideas. Sadly, they did indeed find a way.

Today we have a totally broken patent system awarding patents on just about any idea…no matter how obvious and no matter how much the idea has been USED in the past.

So now we have patents for things like:

  1. On a computer screen, putting a box around an input field
  2. On a check-out screen for a website, have a single click complete the transaction
  3. Using a computer system for generating messages electronically instead of physically
  4. Using a computer to print out a report
  5. Using a digital method of delivering music (think mp3 downloads)

So now we have all of these patents floating around…and along comes the Patent Troll (sorry it took me so long to finally get to this point)!

The Patent Troll is a new breed of business…though in my opinion it is not a business…it is a blight on business. You see, a Patent Troll produces NOTHING of value to the community. They don’t “make” anything (indeed, “making” something would be a liability for a patent troll…but that is a tale for another time). They simply scour the earth looking for patents that other people have registered and are looking to sell. These could be the most SILLY patents in creation. The only thing the Patent Troll cares about is whether or not they can sue someone with it.

Oh! I forgot! I hadn’t told you the other side to the broken patent system! You see, it can cost between $1 million and $5 million dollars to legally defend yourself against the most stupid/silly/asinine patent. Therefore, a lot of people who get sued over patent issues simply settle out of court because in the end it is a lot cheaper than battling it. In effect, what we now have in the US Patent system is a government sponsored extortion racket.

So why are my hackles up on patents right now? You may not have known it, but those <sarcasm> shifty, greedy folks that made the popular game Angry Birds (which I proudly state I have NEVER played)</sarcasm> have just been sued by a “patent troll.” Yes, you got that right. Apparently the folks that made Angry Birds infringed on someone’s “invention,” and now the Patent Troll is coming to try and get his “cut” (click here to read the original article that inspired this post).

Oh…but the story gets ohhhhhh so much better…

You see, this particular lawsuit opens up a HUGE can of worms because Lodsys, the Patent Troll…errrr…the company filing the suit…is claiming that they hold a patent that was violated in Apple’s Software Development Kit (SDK) that it gives to software developers to use to create programs such as Angry Birds. Now you need to know that Apple “bit the bullet” and signed a licensing agreement with Lodsys over this for the expressed purpose of protecting developers that use Apple’s SDK. Apparently Lodsys was just waiting for a few big-revenue games to be released so that they could assert that Apple’s license agreement DOES NOT protect user’s of the SDK (click here to read the other article that inspired this post).

Anyway, you now get a taste of why it is that I am so against patents in software, and with a lot of other technology fields. I believe that patents have their place, but that the system has been so incredibly perverted, especially in the area of software patents, that it is now used primarily by large corporations to prevent smaller organizations from encroaching on their markets. The solution to this problem certainly IS NOT to ram 1.2 million patent applications through an already broken system, which would only compound the problems.

Hackers Claim They Stole 1 Gigbyte of Data From NATO

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On July 26, 2011

In Computer Security, Translated Tech News

This happened a few days ago, but I thought I would comment briefly on the story that hackers from the group “Anonymous” are claiming not only to have stolen about 1 gigabyte of data from NATO computer systems, but they have already released two documents that they claim came from this data incursion (click here to see the original article that inspired this post).

I wanted to include this bit of information to continue the discussion I have had for a while that most people simply do not understand the nature of computer security. I myself have been in the computer field for over 30 years, and through I am not a specialist in the area of security, I know enough to understand just how secure your online data is…and basically it just isn’t that secure.

Again I will repeat the analogy that I have used in the past that the security measures that you often hear being touted by online vendors (encryption, firewalls, and my personal favorite “the latest in security measures”) is a lot like what my mother taught me about locking the doors on our car when I was growing up. Locking your doors discourages the amateurs, the pranksters, and those perpetrators of opportunity who want to make off with your car. However, a professional car thief will indeed make off with your car if he or she wants it.

And so it is similar in the world of computer security.

There are just too many ways that data can be compromised…and that’s when you are talking about simply breaking into a computer system (guessing weak passwords, exploiting vulnerabilities in operating systems, exploiting vulnerabilities in applications, etc.). This is before you get into such areas as:

  • attacks on data that prey on people’s psychology
  • mistakes that are made by companies that accidentally expose their customer’s information
  • unscrupulous employees of companies who hold your information
  • and more

I certainly do not condone the unauthorized intrusion into computer systems. However, with such intrusions occurring so often, I sincerely hope that the general public is beginning to get a better understanding about the true state of computer security at the current time.

Supressed Study that Shows That Movie Piracy Can Actually IMPROVE Movie Sales?

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On July 25, 2011

In Legal, Translated Tech News

As you probably know, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), with their HUGE lobbying power in DC, has for years been telling us about the billions (or was that trillions?) of dollars lost each year due to piracy. Even with the inflated numbers, these two organizations have been pushing congress for years to enact legislation such as the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to give power to law enforcement officials to crack down on music and movie piracy.

Never mind that the legal power they seem to be garnering against copyright infringement is getting to be downright frightening (think about the RIAA suing grandmothers, 11-year olds, and the estates of people who have died just because someone…not necessarily them…downloaded a music or video file from their house), and never mind that they are having to come up with a “cutesie” name for their legislation so that you don’t realize exactly what it is that they are doing (think “The Patriot Act”…a piece of legislation that stripped more rights from Americans than…well…I digress…). Never mind all of that…and ponder this: Research shows that those who pirate a movie are MORE likely to buy a movie than those who don’t!

Yep! That’s right! All this time when the MPAA has been complaining about the lawlessness of the standard human being who would steal from a fine organization such as the MPAA by downloading movies illegally…they’ve really been talking about some of their best customers!

It turns out that a study performed by one of the largest research companies in the world (click here to read the original article that inspired this post) concluded that those who pirate movies are MORE likely to buy DVDs and MORE likely to attend the release of a new movie at the theater (when the ticket prices are the highest).

Man, I’d LOVE to read such a study…wouldn’t you? Too bad, we won’t be able to. It seems that the un-named person or persons who requested and funded the study decided to “bury” the study…because they found the results to be “unpleasant.”

Well then, I wonder why the MPAA continues to lobby for even more powerful (some might say “outlandish”) powers to be given to law enforcement officials to be used…apparently…against some of their best customers?

Bloggers Note: When you get past the tongue-and-cheek style of my writing for this article, I hope you’ll remember that despite all the antics of the MPAA and the RIAA, downloading movies and recordings illegally is still exactly that…illegal! Please don’t sell your personal integrity for such a small price. More specifically, please do not sell your personal integrity at all. If you want to stick it to the MPAA and RIAA…do it legally. Vote with your dollars! Don’t buy their stuff! Contrary to popular belief, not downloading the latest recording of your favorite artist, or not downloading the latest movie of your favorite actor will NOT immediately turn you into dust! Just some food for thought…

Laptop Rental Company Takes Secret Pictures via the Web Cam

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On July 25, 2011

In Legal, Privacy, Translated Tech News

A somewhat sobering article appeared over on TechGoblin (click here to see the original story) regarding a Laptop Rental Company that installed software to take pictures using the computer’s built-in webcam and to transmit them back to the rental company. Of course, they never DISCLOSED this minor detail to their customers.

Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that such behavior is well outside of what one would consider proper conduct with respect to a customer’s privacy. Apparently, a lot of customers agreed with my opinion as they opened up a class-action lawsuit against the company.

Well, the surprising part of this little story is that the judge recently decided not to issue an injunction against the laptop rental company (that is, the judge did not order them to stop). You’ll have to read the article yourself  (see the link to the original article I listed previously) to try to understand why it is the judge decided the way he did. I for one seem to have too much common sense to be able to understand the twisted nature of our legal system.

The best that I can come up with is that the judge did not necessarily disagree with the plaintiffs that what this laptop rental company was going was despicable, but that he was saying that the WAY the plaintiff’s attorney was trying to argue the case was not going to be very strong.

No matter what the reason, apparently the judge did not feel it necessary to put an end to this invasion of privacy.

iPhone Survives Fall Out of Skydiver’s Pocket

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On July 23, 2011

In Mobile Technologies, Off Topic

I just had to comment about this story I read over on CNN about a skydiver who lost his iPhone 4 sometime after he jumped out of the plane (click here for original iphone 4 skydiving article).

It seems that our intrepid skydiver’s son once knocked this same phone off of a bathroom shelf, causing the phone to crack. Well, this time the phone  fell out of the skydiver’s pocket somewhere between 13,500 feet and the ground. Never expecting the phone to work, our skydiver managed to retrieve the phone with the help of a GPS application, where he was then dumbfounded when he was able to receive a call with it.

Of course, the phone was completely shattered, bit it is quite impressive that it worked at all.

While I don’t recommend tossing your phone out of the window (especially from 13,500 feet), this story will no doubt end up in an iPhone ad sometime in the near future. Maybe they’ll find a way to make it into an “I’m a mac…I’m a PC” commercial. Or would that be “I’m a iphone…I’m an android” commercial?

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