Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
– Dr. Seuss

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
– Aleister Crowley

Recently, Cryptednets.org lost the AC in the server room. I assumed the evaporator coil was filthy, and had frozen. I began to dis-assemble the plenum of the furnace, to remove the A-coil asembly for cleaning, and saw that it was spotless.
(We must do a pretty good job of replacing the filters ;) ) This realisation, however, did not make it any cooler in here.
Anyway, long story short, here’s what happened. The coil *had* frozen, after a 95-degree day, and the high-pressure limiter switch on the compressor had tripped. I went outside to the condenser unit, took off the access panel, and pushed the reset button on the compressor inside the unit. (after turning off the breaker, of course.)** Replaced cover, closed up the furnace, reset the breaker, and viola! Arctic-ness.

All without the $250 service call.

**IMPORTANT NOTE: 240v AC at ~60 amps can kill you rather quickly. Consider yourself warned.)

Maybe they could use some DNS help… Sorry, guys, I noticed that the whois of apple.com is *much* cleaner, as is openbsd.org, redhat.com, etc… (obscenities, obvious ads and commercial entity references conveniently censored for your viewing pleasure.)

$ whois microsoft.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

MICROSOFT.COM.ZZZ.IS.0WNED.AND.HAX0RED.BY.*****.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.LIVE.FOREVER.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.SLAPPED.IN.THE.FACE.BY.MY.BLUE.VEINED.SPANNER.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.BEATEN.WITH.MY.SPANNER.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.WAREZ.AT.TOPLIST.*****.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.SMELLS.*****.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.SHOULD.GIVE.UP.BECAUSE.LINUXISGOD.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.RAWKZ.MUH.WERLD.*****.CA
MICROSOFT.COM.OHMYGODITBURNS.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.LIVES.AT.****.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.POWERED.BY.*******.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.*****.ORG
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.HOSTED.BY.**********.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.AS.COOL.AS.*******.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.IN.BED.WITH.***.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.GOD.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF.F**KING-BULLS**T.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.MESS.****.CO.UK
MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.ITS.OWN.CRACKLAB.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.A.PRESENT.COMING.FROM.****.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.GO.F**K.ITSELF.AT.*****.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.ARE.GODD**N.PIGF**KERS.NET.NS-NOT-IN-SERVICE.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.AND.MINDSUCK.BOTH.SUCK.HUGE.ONES.AT.****.NET
MICROSOFT.COM
To single out one record, look it up with “xxx”, where xxx is one of the
of the records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up
with “=xxx” to receive a full display for each record.

>>> Last update of whois database: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:28:32 EDT <<<

Are you L337? Need to find the latest 0-day 3xpl0it?
Try google L337.
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

I got a new toy for Christmas. It’s a Samsung SC-D353 Digital Video camera. It has a 1gb 40x memory stick, takes Mini-DV tapes, and has S-video, DV, and USB outs. So, I shot a few seconds of video, plugged the USB cable into the trusty powerbook, and… nothing.
Not even an error sound.
Odd… The powerbook can do *anything*. (can’t it?) hmm….
Ok, the first thing that I noticed was the camera was set to use USB 2. I changed the USB setting to use 1.1 with the camera’s setup menu, and now I can mount the memory stick as USB storage. COOL!!!! (told ya they can do anything…) There’s my .avi files, ready to view. Copied them down to the desktop, and double clicked on one. OK, now we have sound, but no video. Just white screen.
After some research, I found that Samsung wrote their own AVI codecs. (SMP4) You can download it here:
http://www.samsung.com/download/
Ok, but if we want to send this video to someone, (grandma), she’s not going to be able to grep google for the proper codecs, now will she?
So, we need to convert this video to something other than Samsung’s best guess at encoding. How about WMV? Most newbie users can see those without too much trouble, right?
Back to grepping google, I found a freeware video conversion utility for windows called VideoPak.
You can dowload a copy here:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/340342
This utility will allow the conversion of Samsung’s AVI format to everyday, normal WMV.
You can also specify the intended target for distribution, (broadband web video, email, streaming, etc)
I ran VideoPak on a 6mb AVI, and compressed it to 768k video for broadband, and it came out as a 1.9mb WMV.

Crackers (*not hackers, people… Crackers.) have penetrated(?) the *un-encrypted* customer information database of a large security software company.
US Government agency credit card and personnel info may be at risk.
Read the Washington Post article here.

You may now register for this site here.
Or, scroll down to the bottom and click on “Register”

See that? nice and simple.

addresses will be held in strictest confidence.
(I probably won’t even look at them. ;)

Taken directly from the OpenBSD FAQ

The standard OpenBSD kernel configuration (GENERIC) is designed to be suitable for most people. More people have broken their system by trying to tweak their kernel than have improved system operation. There are some people that believe that you must customize your kernel and system for optimum performance, but this is not true for OpenBSD. Only the most advanced and knowledgeable users with the most demanding applications need to worry about a customized kernel or system.

Some reasons you might want or need to build a custom kernel:

Nice bit of writing, guys. Keep up the good work! (and thanks for the help)

5.11.3 – My IPv6-less system doesn’t work!

Yes.
Please do not make modifications to the base system that you don’t
understand the implications of.
One “little” change in the kernel can have very large impact to the
entire rest of the system.
Please re-read this.