Year: 2006
Links Of The Week
In this weeks bag of link like goodness online mags, cycling rage and photo resources.
.citycycling – http://www.citycycling.co.uk/
Online cycling mag dedicated to cycling in the city, based in the UK as well to boot. Well worth reading if like me your commute is more interesting than sitting in a metal box.
Raging Bike – http://www.ragingbike.co.uk/
Bike riders get road rage too, normally after almost being killed by a silly car driver. Some of the incidents scare me to death and some are quite funny. Don’t start a fight post it here.
Morguefile – http://www.morguefile.com/
Free and mostly royalty free stock photography, like iStockphoto but without the painful payment options. Just keep an eye on the quality of the stuff you download.
Thats it for this week, go to it.
Fog! Oh How I Hate Fog
When I managed to rouse myself this morning I looked out the window to see the cyclists nightmare, FOG. Motorists don’t look where they are going in good visability, let alone when they can’t see very far. I tooled up with no less that four blinky lights to try and improve my chances of survival.
When I first started spinning out around 200 miles a week on the bike, I was quite positive but now I realise that the odds are against me and It’s not so much a case of if I get hit by a car but when, I currently reckon about once every two months for a minor bump of knock down and I’m yet to have a major accident. Funny how I spend my breakfast pondering my chances of making it to work alive while other people watch the news and talk to their kids.
First Post (From My PDA)
This is the first post from my PDA, I’ve had the thing a while but never really used it to post. Mostly because it takes ages to type anything in. I managed to find a stowaway keyboard on Expansys for £4.50, these things are normally at least £50 mind you I did have to hack the thing to get it to fit my newer iPaq.
Oh well, now I’ve got to fix the PDA templates for my blog so that I can view the thing properly.
Internet Security (And The Masses)
Computer security seems to be one of those hot subjects at the moment, the BBC ran a story about how Internet crime is a big worry for britons at the moment. They also decided to open a comments page inviting everyone a chance to put in their 2 pence worth. The comments page for the BBC article can be found here.
I have read through quite a few of the responses and they range from the quite insightful to the downright stupid, I tend to steer away from commenting on these sort of boards as they just annoy me, the noise defintitly outways the signal.
User Types
In true internet form, I have done some sort of vaugely scientific analysis and there seems to be a big variation in responses and you can break them down into the follwing groups of people.
The Anti Virus Firewalling Firefox User
This group of users routinely update their antivirus profiles, user a router rather than the free usb modem that came with the broadband. They even use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. They think they are safe because the router has a hardware firewall and they have Anti Virus protection.
Heres the kicker, the firewall on your router is worth nothing, NOTHING when you leave the password set to the default, in fact that port you opened so that your file sharing network would work ok, thats clever, ever heard of a DMZ. Guess not. In some networks including some I have designed for large secondary schools, multiple firewalls and screening services for mail have been involved.
The Mac User
Mac users think they are safe either because “nobody writes viruses for Macs” or because it’s based on that “Unix thing”. Yeh ok, in the real world when your stealing your credit card numbers it’s normally because you didn’t check the credentials of the site you stuck them in.
The Linux Geek
They have Linux therefore they are one of the so called Elite, maybe they actually understand what they are up too but maybe not. Just because you got a free CD and slapped it on dosn’t mean that you are now totally secure. Did you set up the system firewall, did you install all of the latest patches and fixes from a trusted repositry.
My Top Tips
All the bull aside here are my top tips,
- Whatever Operating System you use, make sure you install the latest updates. It dosn’t matter if you use Windows, Mac or Linux if the machines software is two weeks out of date.
- Never install P2P or file sharing software onto the machine you use for your important bits and pieces. This type of software nails a big backdoor into your machine.
- Never AND I MEAN NEVER use a beta version of an operating system as the computer you use for all of your important things, beta means unfinished. Unfinished operating systems in a production situation (that means in daily use) is a bad idea they are insecure and usually not supported.
- Install good Anti Virus and update it daily.
- Backup your documents. Eventually your machine will die / get hacked / get a virus, how will your firewall save your documents.
- Use a credit card for internet purchases, an interesting loop in the consumer credit act is if you don’t get the services or items you paid (or someone else paid) for, you don’t have to pay.
- Be careful.
I think the most important bit is to backup the important documents, several times and regulary and then storing them away from the computer. No amount of firewalls / anti virus / routers / Macs / Linux, will protect your stuff forever and don’t you belive it for a moment.
As soon as you connect a machine to the internet it’s vunerable, need to secure it why not just unplug the internet connection?
In case you where wondering i’ve been a Network Administrator / Developer for 10 years now, built several secure networks, restored files from crushed backup tapes, and brought back network servers from the dead with my strange mix of voodoo and command prompt wizadry. Nowadays I design web interfaces and write code (and occasionally build servers).
To The Tune Of Summer Holiday
We’re all off to Sunny Essex!!!!!!
We’re all going on a Scout Jamboree
No more working for a week or three
Fun and laughter on a Scout Jamboree
No more worries for me and thee.
For a week or three.
Originally by FTZ