Jul 23 2005
Just been reading about this on a couple of tech blogs – notably John Howard’s – Windows Longhorn has now been renamed to what will be it’s official release name, Windows Vista. The name is supposed to give thoughts of clarity and connectivity…
Jul 02 2005
I’ve just purchased a new wireless/router/4-port switch for home. It’s a Linksys WRT54G and it has: wireless capabilities for both B and G access; a 4-port 100MB switch; and router/firewall functions. The reason for buying it was two-fold: firstly, I wanted to buy a 100Mbps switch as I’m currently using a crappy, old 10Mbps hub; secondly: I had purchased (and waiting for delivery) a new notebook that had built-in wireless capability.
I was at first going to buy a Linksys 8 port switch and then compare prices on a wireless access point. However, I stumbled across the WRT54G and this device was cheaper than some of the regular access points, and it had a built-in 4 port switch. The added functionality of the firewall/router meant that I could use my existing SonicWall SOHO 3 as the internet firewall and then use the Linksys as a second firewall, creating a DMZ where I could keep my web/mail server. This worked out way better than just using the one firewall and port forwarding web and mail traffic to the server on my LAN. This also caused another problem, but I’ll get to that later.
With the two firewalls in place, I now had two local subnets – one designated as a DMZ using the 10Mb hub, and the other as my LAN with my two computers, and network printer plugged into the switch – leaving one port spare. I now had no direct access to my LAN from the internet and only had the minimal ports opened on both firewalls. The increased network performance from going from a 10Mb hub to a 100Mb switch was (as expected) incredible and as I use my Windows PC as a pseudo-file-server storing videos and music, I could easily stream music across the network without any jumping or stuttering.
The only problem I encountered with my new setup, is that I’m no longer able to use the VPN functionality of the SonicWall effectively. Before, I connect remotely to my LAN using the SonicWall Global VPN Client. The SonicWall would terminate the connection and assign me an IP address on my LAN using DHCP, and I would have full access to my network from anywhere with an internet connection. But now, if my SonicWall gives me an IP address it’s going to be in the DMZ – so I’ll have full access to my web/mail server but nothing on the LAN because of the extra firewall. So I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this – for the meantime I’ve just stopped using the VPN because I it’s a ‘nice-to-have’ but not essential. I may try to do some fancy configuring of the firewalls to get it all working but haven’t got around to it yet.
As for the wireless setup on the Linksys, I didn’t really know what the best way to set it up would be so I did a bit of research. I headed straight to Google and starting digging up all sorts of info about what levels of protection would be best. Obviously, I wanted it to be as secure as possible, but I also didn’t want it to be so secure that it would be a hassle to maintain. I soon worked out that the latest, greatest wireless security was WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) – an update to WPA. Windows XP doesn’t support this out of the box, but if you’re running Service Pack 2 (which you should be!) then you can download an update to get support – I read about it here: www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0505.mspx. The other update I had to install was to the Linksys router itself. The firmware that it shipped with didn’t have support for WPA2 but a quick look on their website (www.linksys.co.nz for NZ) and I found an updated firmware that was a few clicks away from installing. With this firmware in place, setting up the security was a breeze. I ended up configuring the security using WPA2 with PSK (pre-shared key) as I didn’t have a RADIUS server in place. I also chose not to use MAC address filtering because it would have meant that I would need to edit the router everytime I wanted to allow someone access to my network. The MAC address filtering can also easily be hacked, and I was quite happy that my long, complex pre-shared key would keep hackers guessing for a long time.
Now I just need my laptop to arrive to test that it all works….
Jun 25 2005
I’ve been playing around with Ubuntu recently and have just discovered that if you insert an Ubuntu Live CD in a Windows machine (with Autoplay enabled), a browser window opens with a selection of Windows open source software. This functionality is taken from The Open CD, and you can read more about it on the Ubuntu Wiki. This quote is from the Ubuntu website:
The Ubuntu Live CD contains a small collection of open source applications for Windows.
Inserting the Live CD while running Windows brings up a browser with some information about each application and the option to install it. The browser uses technology and content from TheOpenCD project, with a custom Ubuntu skin. There is also a brief introduction to Ubuntu with screenshots.
May 18 2005
Playstation-3/
Sony has finally released details and photos of the new Playstation 3 at the E3 Expo 2005. By all accounts the machine is going to be super-powerful with a new 3.2GHz Cell processor from IBM based on a PowerPC chip core. The controllers are connected through Bluetooth and can last on a single charge for about 24 hours, you can also connect up to 7 through Bluetooth. You can also use wired controllers which connect through USB2, or you can connect to the PS3 through Wi-Fi and use your PSP as a controller too. The console also has three Gigabit ethernet ports on the back of it to hook up to the LAN.
Sony has also promised that the machine will be backward compatible with all of the older games – something that Microsoft is lacking with the Xbox 360 (they have said that only some of the highest selling games will be compatible!) The Playstation 3 will use the new Bluray disc format but will be compatible with all of the following formats: PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side), PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, Blu-ray Disc, PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE.
Photos have been released of the console and controllers and in my opinion it looks awesome. The controller looks a bit odd but seems like it will fit the hand easily. The console will be released in three colours – silver, black and white. The photos that have been released are in the photo gallery – this is my new WordPress-wrapped Gallery2 installation.
Release date is tentatively set for Spring 2006 (USA I think) but I can’t wait. Hopefully the price won’t be too high when it first comes out – but it will be a whole heap of computing power in a small package.
May 11 2005
Hot off the press… WordPress 1.5.1 has been relased with some bug/security fixes as well as many other improvements. I’ve already upgraded and the only problem was that I experienced this bug: http://mosquito.wordpress.org/view.php?id=1323.
That apart it all looks good – you can read more in the following links:
Apr 20 2005
Found an interesting new Google feature that’s being tested at the moment. It’s called Google Suggest and it ‘auto-completes’ search phrases as you type them. If that doesn’t make sense, visit the website – http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&complete=1 – and test it yourself.
Here’s a screenshot of how it works:
Apr 19 2005
More exciting news from the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 camp – Microsoft have released a gui that taps into the new Access Based Enumeration (ABE) features in Service Pack 1. Novell admins will scoff at this as they have had this feature since the early days of Netware, but Windows admins will definitely be looking forward to further securing file shares by only allowing users to see what they have permission to see. This from the link below…
Windows Server 2003 Access-based Enumeration makes visible only those files or folders that the user has the rights to access. When Access-based Enumeration is enabled, Windows will not display files or folders that the user does not have the rights to access. This download provides a GUI and a CLI that enables this feature.
Apr 18 2005
Microsoft have now posted an interesting knowledge base article detailing common server applications that work/don’t work with Service Pack 1 on Windows Server 2003. The Windows Application Experience test teams tested 127 server applications on computers that were running Windows Server 2003 with SP1.
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 application compatibility
Mar 31 2005
I’ve added a new link for the Wikipedia in the sidebar. From the Wikipedia site:
Wikipedia is a free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by people from all around the world. The site is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the edit this page link. It runs on MediaWiki software.
Jan 13 2005
I’ve started using some software called Skype – it’s free internet, telephone software which enables you to make free phone calls over the internet to other Skype users or really low-cost calls to land-lines around the world.
If you’re already a Skype user, you can call me using this button 
or by adding my username – stuart.maxwell – to your contacts list.
If you haven’t got the free software yet, you can download it and learn more about it from the Skype website: www.skype.com. It’s really easy to use and it seems to be catching on, so this could be the next big thing!