Wednesday, February 06. 2008
A major update to TrueCrypt (the free open source on-the-fly encryption software) has been released with the following juicy updates:
- Ability to encrypt a windows system partition/drive with pre-boot authentication (anyone who wants to gain access and use the system, read and write files, etc., needs to enter the correct password each time before the system starts).
- Pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100% (Windows)
- Mac OS X version
I'm gonna give the system drive encryption a go and see what the performance/battery life impact is like!
Wednesday, January 23. 2008
Dell are slashing a shed-load off of their low-end servers, we picked up an Opteron with raid1 for £228 exVAT saving us £261 (the base unit starts at just £99!) The offer expires in two days though.
Ourselves and JJC Design recently collaborated on another web project, and launched www.audisouthwest.com last week. The clients (a collection of Audi dealerships across the south west region) love the self-managing site, we got to write a funky backend (which automagically pulls car data and car images from other systems) and also got to use a nice google maps implementation (see the contact page and click on a marker!)
We're investigating using openVPN to create a fully meshed VPN network across 4 sites. We'll post our findings up on the blog once we've setup the test environment!
Saturday, January 12. 2008
Security "guru" Bruce Schneier writes on Wired about how he runs a completely open wireless network. He thinks this is a good idea. Others disagree.
I for one, think he misses the most fundamental flaws in running an open network - the fact that strangers have access to your local network. From there, they can easily scan/exploit your local computers, brute-force your router login credentials, or poisen the ARP cache on your machines to perform man-in-the-middle attacks (to capture passwords, SSL sessions, voip phonecalls, http sessions) and so on.
Similar to the way Jeremy Clarkson didn't think anyone could do anything malicious when he posted his bank account numer and sort code in his newpaper column (he was proved wrong when monies were taken out of his account via a fraudulent direct debit), journalists quite often miss the point completely.
Tuesday, January 08. 2008
Our wifi hotspot has been upgraded and now is using openDNS for content filtering, ensuring our users a safer browsing experience.
Continue reading "Public Wifi Upgraded"
Friday, January 04. 2008
A new amendment to the UK Computer Misuse Act could outlaw developing and distributing tools which could be used for hacking, according to The Register. Sysadmins look out!
Burnout Paradise is getting some people hot under the collar. Criterion's responses don't do much in their favour. Maybe they shouldn't have released this under the Burnout name?

Doom89 has been released for the TI89, 92+, and V200 graphical calculators. Awesome.
Thursday, January 03. 2008
Happy new year to everyone!
2008 has got off to a busy start for Switch - some new projects we'll be revealing on the website soon, but for now here is a roundup of the news:
IPv6 - coming to a root server near you... icann are adding ipv6 addresses to the root servers, which now means that ipv6 hosts will now be able to communicate without having to rely on any IPv4 architecture.
27 billion gigabytes of data to be archived by 2010 (in the private sector alone), with email accounting for a large proportion - according to a survey of IT managers carried out by Computerworld.
Windows Home Server corrupts files if edited with certain programs, those programs being MS Money, Outlook, OneNote and others...
Google Apps slow to replace competition is an article saying that not many businesses have switched over to using google's web-based applications for office use (I thought this was something everyone would have realised...)
Friday, December 21. 2007

Switch Systems office hours:
Christmas Eve: Closed
Christmas Day: Closed
Boxing Day: Closed
Dec 27th: Closed
Dec 28th: Open as Usual
-- weekend --
Dec 31st: Closed in Afternoon
Jan 1st: Closed
Jan 2nd: Open as Usual
Phones will be re-directed during closure days to a 24 hour engineer, so you will always be able to get through for urgent enquiries!
Wishing you all the best for the holiday period!
Kris & Ruairi
Monday, December 17. 2007
Without even realising, you and the companies you work for are benefitting directly from free software. Free software is often misunderstood, as it is more than just receiving software without monetary cost.
Free software, by definition is software that grants you rights to modify and redistribute the software as long as you publish your modifications in kind. This method of distribution is behind the majority of infrastructure that powers the entire internet, and can be found in anything from Set Top boxes used to record television programs, to your wireless router at home sharing your internet bandwidth.
The Free Software Foundation works on protecting these freedoms granted to software developers. Often there are legal issues that entangle free software developers, ranging from Intellectual Property claims (often predatory and false!) and also targetting legal proceedings at people who try to modify free software without releasing their changes. They also sponsor some key projects, and provide online information on free software practices and also advise on predatory software practises like consumer-hostile digital rights management and anti-competitive measures taken by some proprietary software vendors.
Learn more about free software here, read the Free Software Definition:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Join the Free Software Foundation:
https://www.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/join_fsf?referrer=6008
Friday, December 14. 2007
Yesterday evening saw the 2nd ever Microsoft "CoffeeTalk", a new informal and intimate event designed at getting closer to us admins who don't have time to travel across the country to go to larger events! Exeter's QueenStreet Starbucks filled up quite nicely, and we got to meet a wide spectrum of industry attendees.
Martin Parry and Viral Tarpara presented on Sharepoint for Developers and Microsoft Sharepoint Search respectively. Despite the limited time we had, a lot of ground was covered and I now know a bit more about all of the tools and programs that are sitting unused in our Microsoft Action Pack folder! Many thanks to Viral and Martin for an information stuffed evening. And the free coffee
I hope Microsoft continue these smaller get-togethers, it's great oppertunity to demo new technologies and to see how other organisations are putting MS software to work. I'd love to see a whole host of topics such as windows server 2008, administering windows vista for business etc.
Viral used the ZoomIt presentation tool aid, something which I will be putting to use in my University presentations soon!
Thursday, December 13. 2007
Some of you may have had D-Link routers in the past, known for their clunky silver / grey boxes, the aquamarine logo and awful looking administration interfaces. Luckily, they've had a visit from the taste brigade and managed to update all the shortcomings in their market approach. The boxes are now cheaper, smaller, and much better presented. I bought a DIR-100 Ethernet Broadband Router to see what it was about and I'm quite impressed!
The new firmware has had its control panel redesigned in an attractive black and green theme, more facilities including Game Mode and QoS (Quality of Service) prioritising. It's much much better and snappier than its existing incarnations.
Shipping versions currently have the 1.00 firmware - a 1.01 firmware has been released which addresses issues with Application Rules amongst other minor things.
The box itself is a small black and silver number, well presented considering the cost (under £20 from ebuyer). For cable modems, this may potentially be the router to shift me from my favourite, the Netgear 624.
Wednesday, December 05. 2007
Grisoft has bought Exploit Prevention Labs and their software "LinkScanner", which checks the safety of websites before allowing access to them. This is going to be part of AVG's internet suite, and will also be bundled with AVG's Free Edition
I only just noticed,but the Hospital Records podcast is back to full strength, with two new releases (#46 and #47) from the Coleman himself.
I finally got Lego Star Wars for the Wii (I had to get Game to refund my pre-order, and then I purchased the game from GameStation in town) - the Wii controls don't add anything to the game, as all they do is replicate button presses! It looks pretty much the same as other games, there is a bit of slowdown in places, but it's a good timewaster.
Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii is excellent. You don't need the gun attachment (i think it would probably make playing the game harder!), two player is great fun, and the graphics are simply gorgeous. Lots of people are slating it, but they don't realise that it was never intended to be anything more than an on-rails shooter.
Wednesday, November 28. 2007
...so my old webhost for kquery.com is pulling the plug at the end of the year on all of their hosting services. It makes me wonder if I should keep kquery.com going by hosting it myself.
Kquery is still a great server browser - people are using it (i have no idea how) for Call of Duty 4 - someone must have hacked together their own master server menu file for it! The stats page on kquery.com still shows over 1000 downloads of the software every week, and between 1000-2000 game connections registered per day.
It makes me wonder if I should start developing Kquery again, but I can see it taking up a large amount of my time ...
I've just been playing about with an "expose clone" for vista called 'switcher' - check it out (it's multiple monitor safe too!).
Wednesday, November 21. 2007
This has got to be the funniest thing I've seen all day...

That's right, it's a USB powered vacuum cleaner!.
In other news, Mr T and William Shatner have been signed up to promote World of Warcraft.. check out the vids on kotaku!.
Thursday, November 15. 2007
Microsoft's new campaigns are rolling out over the next few days, we got a taster of this in a foil padded envelope arriving on our desk:

The jellybeans have all been eaten now
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