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Netbook question(s)
by Chris G 07 May '09

07 May '09

I'm thinking of getting a cheap netbook to take on a (motorbike) holiday next month. It'll be Linux based of course and my requirements are pretty simple. All the basic, cheap netbooks will fulfil my basic requirements I think - i.e. they have a browser, can connect to the internet by WiFi, etc. However I have a couple of specific things which aren't always addresses in the advertising blurb:- How easy is it to add software? I really have to have ssh as that is how I access my E-Mail and that's one of the major reasons for getting the netbook. Are the "as supplied" Linux distributions sort of cast in stone or can one add things? I don't want to have to do a complete installation of a new distribution just to get ssh. Do any of the netbooks have a trackball rather than a pad? I really don't know why trackballs aren't more popular, I use one on my desktop and we now have a wireless keyboard with a trackball and it's magic, no separate mouse to lose/drop and the trackball is much nicer than a pad. -- Chris Green

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"Hacked to Pieces"
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 06 May '09

06 May '09

Hi again, folks. This is a sort fo follow-up to the Syleham gathering, since as I started to drive home after the meeting a programme "Hacked to Pieces" had just started on Radio 4. It is about computer crime, and how vulnerable most people are because of naivety about security. The programme can be found at 17:00 on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/programmes/schedules/fm for today Sunday 3 May (in case you're reading this later). If you click on the link "N days left to listen" you can hear it. The bit that raised my eyebrows starts at 5min 30sec into the programme, where the presenter (Jolyon Jenkins) takes his laptop to be hacked into by Peter Wood of First Base Technologies (who provide a "hack your computer, guv?" service to companies who want to check their security). It lasts to 7min 40sec into the programme. In particular, I transcribed the following short extract: JJ: I was genuinely suprised by, in fact, how vulnerable I turned out to be. PW: The first thing I'll do is an easy check to see whether I can get a nice little automated tool to cough up your password straight away so I can log on as you. JJ: I'm fairly confident you're not going the get my password, because it's not a natural language word. PW: This isn't dependent on any dictionary-based word, it's just trying every permutation of letters and numbers up to 14 characters long. JJ: Ah, I'm feeling less confident because ... PW: Ah! There's your password JJ: Oh! PW: That took two hundred and ninety seconds of computational time. Well, my jaw would drop if I believed it! Even if the password is case-insensitive, that's 36 letters+numbers to try every "permutation" of. There are 36^14 different 14-character strings where each character can independently be any letter or number. And that's just the full 14-character string -- there's also all the shorter strings as well. Now, 36^14 is about 10^22, or 10^13 billion, or 10,000 billion billion. A 1-GHz CPU would take 10,000 billion seconds to execute that number of CPU cycles, or about 300,000 years. So there's no way the guy's password hacker is going to do what he said it would do. It's not too plausible when it comes to searching for shorter passwords either. An 8-character password (case-insensitive) still potentially requires 36^8 or about 3*10^12 tries; so (based on the previous calculation) that's 3,000 seconds or 0.83hr to execute 3*10^12 CPU cycles. Then you have to multiply that by the number of CPU cycles needed to work through each try, which is presumably not a small number. And it's worse if passwords are case-insensitive, since then there are 46^8 approx = 2*10^13, or 20,000 billion tries for an 8-character password, and it's 5.6 hours to execute that number of CPU cycles on a 1 GHz CPU. So the "outcome" of that little experiment strikes me a implausible, and I susepct that it was "rigged" in order to sex up the story. (Maybe JJ used a shortish password -- 46^6 is only 9.5 billion). This sort of thing is supposed to take place in the context of people (e.g. attending meetings/conferences) leaving their laptops unattended for say half an hour, thus allowing the hacker physical access. (And, by the way, it seems they're thinking of Windows machines). I'd be interested to hear if any of you folks have comments on the above! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-May-09 Time: 22:41:30 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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ALUG 10.0 kit meet Sunday 3rd
by John Woodard 04 May '09

04 May '09

Directions to the venue have been posted if you do have difficulty finding Syleham Village Hall, those who have been before can confirm it can be a little difficult to find, I will have my mobile turned on so you can call to be guided in. The signal for my network is flaky inside the hall but I will pop outside from time to time at the beginning to check for voice mail or text and will call you back. 07908 222428 Looking forward to seeing old friends and some new faces. Cheers, BJ

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Mountain Rescue
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 04 May '09

04 May '09

The majority of us fenny amphibians don't normally have to worry about such things, but people who venture out on the Cambridgeshire Alps do have to worry. These are a chain of mountains running North from Huntingdon/St Ives out to Warboys and thereabouts. The Pidley Mountain Rescue Team seems to have changed its website: http://www.pidleymountainrescue.org.uk/ I can no longer view what they've been up to, since I'm now told that "additionaql plugins are required to display all the media on this page". When I click to install the missing plugins, it announces "Java Runtime Environment", but when I try to comtinue it says "No plugins were installed. Java Runtime Environment Not Available." Then taking the option for "Manual Install" I get shown a choice of RPM (jre-6u13-linux-i586-rpm.bin) or self-extracting binary file (jre-6u13-linux-i586.bin). I'm running Debian Etch with Iceweasel browswer. I've looked into what synaptic comes up with when I search on "java" or "runtime" or "java runtime". Up comes a lot of stuff, of which one is Java runtime environment using GIJ java-gcj-compat is a collection of wrapper scripts, symlinks and jar files. It is meant to provide a Java-RTE-like interface to the GIJ/GCJ tool set. (and it says version 1.0.65-10, whereas the java runtime offered by the "Manual install" is "version 6, update 13"). I'm hesitating, because I don't want to do the wrong thing here, nor mess things up by installing incomplete or incompatible things. I'd be grateful for advice about installing java runtime in a proper way in my setup. Maybe I'm suffering the effects of altitude sickness, after the trek over the passes between here & Syleham yesterday! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 04-May-09 Time: 13:28:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Syleham photos
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 03 May '09

03 May '09

Greetings all! A very agreeable gathering at Syleham today, and it was good to meet up with people again. Thanks to BJ for making the arrangements, and for assiduous bar duties. (There's a sign on one of the doors which says "Push Bar to Open" and I thought of trying that, but BJ got there first). I took a couple of photos at the end. Not everyone is well portrayed (unless a couple of folks are keen on the backs of their heads), maybe not everyone still present was included (and certainly a nice pair of tiny persons got omitted), but I think they capture the atmosphere. They can be viewed at http://www.zen89632.zen.co.uk/ALUG/ This is just a directory, and contains sylehamALUG_2009.05.03A.jpg sylehamALUG_2009.05.03B.jpg which can be viewed directly by the usual right-click procedure, or downloaded (1.8MB each). Till next time! Ted. PS (taking up on a topic of conversation at the time) in case anyone hasn't come across it yet: Help-Desk sagas go back much longer than most people think. Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-May-09 Time: 20:25:36 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Announce: ALUG 10.0
by John Woodard 02 May '09

02 May '09

It's our 10th birthday! On Sunday 2nd May 1999 we got together for the first time at a hotel in Woodbridge. To celebrate on Sunday 3rd May ALUG holds it 10th birthday bash at the Mid Suffolk Venue, Syleham and Wingfield Village Hall IP21 4LT http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings?highlight=(suffolk)#Syleham You are all welcome and the bar will of course be open for beer and soft drinks. If you are a member of the ALUG Facebook group you can let us know if you are coming http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=73983173855 especially if you are one of the firestarters who were there at the start. Kit is welcome if you need some advice on fixing something or require a demo of anything Linux, post to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk for requests. If you are coming and are driving please post to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk so those without transport can attend, the same goes for requests for a lift. If there is anyone out there in ALUG land who is competent to make a birthday cake.... Any questions post to the list and if you get lost traveling to the venue (this is not unusual) phone BJ 07908222428 and I'll try and talk you in. Cheers, BJ

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Re: [ALUG] [ALUG Announce] Announce: ALUG 10.0
by Kevin Ridgeon 02 May '09

02 May '09

Will be attending the meet on Sunday grandchild/dog emergencies permitting. Driving from Thetford and will have one seat available. Entertainment will probably be catching up on Linux Outlaws on my Zune.

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG 10.0
by Wayne Stallwood 02 May '09

02 May '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Just a little reminder that this Sunday (3rd of May) is our ALUG 10th anniversary meet. 2PM-6PM at Syleham and Wingfield Village Hall IP21 4LT http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings?highlight=(suffolk)#Syleham The Bar will be open and there is a strong rumour circulating about some cake. Kit is welcome, either broken kit or something you want to show off. If anybody wants help with something specific then I'd suggest posting to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk with a request for help. All being well there should also be a "period" Red Hat 6.0 machine to play with. If you are coming and are driving please post to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk so those without transport can attend, the same goes for requests for a lift. So far the facebook event page is a little quiet 4 confirmed and 6 "maybes" but we have also had word on IRC about some other confirmed guests so it should be a good afternoon. Hope to see you there Regards Wayne ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Syleham Lift
by Ted.Hardinge＠manchester.ac.uk 02 May '09

02 May '09

Final call! As I indicated before, I shall be driving to Syleham from near Littleport (NE Cambs), and my route would be either: A: Feltwell, Brandon, Thetford or: B: Mildenhall, Thetford and then: Garboldisham, Diss, Scole, Syleham which can be bent a bit if needs be. So if anyone roughly along either of these would like to be picked up, please drop me a line during today. In any case, looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Hardinge(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 02-May-09 Time: 10:17:29 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Sunday Kit Meet
by Bellphegore 02 May '09

02 May '09

I want to know if a) Anybody can offer a lift to me. b) If anybody needs a life from me. As I'm unwilling burn the carbon driving down there alone and would prefer to share a ride, either in somebody else's car or in mine. Bellphegore bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com montmorency(a)ukfsn.org

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