Entries by Kris Sum

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!

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!

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.

Our wifi hotspot has been upgraded and now is using openDNS for content filtering, ensuring our users a safer browsing experience.

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.

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...)

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

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!

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.

...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!).

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!.

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

There is a fair amount of chatter (slashdot, The Reg comments) about an Animal Rights activist being told to hand over encryption keys for data that was found on her PC [The Register] [IndyMedia]. The new Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) that came into force in October 2007 is being used to persuade people to part with their keys, at the risk of up to 5 years in prison for non co-operation.

We just took delivery of a new toy in the office - a portable LCD digital TV tuner which has AV and VGA inputs... so what did we do with it?

We plugged it straight into our new PowerEdge 2900 which has a VGA port on the front! It's a nifty little unit, it'll interlace any resolutions it can't cope with and has full OSD menu control. It also comes with a car adapter and composite input cables.