Shawn Powers's blog

As Linux sysadmins, many of us still need to deal with Windows worms and how they affect our networks. Tomorrow is April 1st, and the Conficker worm will be activating on vulnerable computers everywhere. Here's a quick HOW-TO showing how you can detect compromised and/or vulnerable computers on your network:

UPDATE #2: The contest is now over. Thanks to everyone for participating. We'll be notifying winners early the week of March 16th. (BTW, the answer was "Kernel Panic")

No, my hand really isn't as big as my head.  It's called perspective, people.  If my hand WAS that big, it'd be kinda cool.  But only at first.  Glove buying would suck.UPDATE: Now with hot clue action! (See the bottom of this post)

No really, I do. I want everyone to have a subscription to Linux Journal. Well, you can get a year subscription to the digital version absolutely free. FREE. No strings attached. All you have to do is solve a puzzle and fill out a form. And puzzles are fun, so it's like 2 gifts in one. :)

Nearly Free Speech

January 30th, 2009 by Shawn Powers

A friend of mine suggested I try hosting with www.nearlyfreespeech.net for my website -- because instead of a set monthly rate, they charge you based on usage. Low traffic sites (like mine) would cost very little to maintain. About that time, I was starting a private website, so I gave it a go. As it turns out, I'm quite happy.

It’s no secret that I’m a Linux fan. I love it. I use it. I tell of its goodness far and wide. It’s also true, however, that I administer and use a variety of operating systems throughout any given day. I like to think that makes me more objective than some, and I like to think more people will pay attention to me if I don’t bash every other operating system out there.

I Twitter. I Dent. I Blog (duh, you're reading it now). At times I've Plurked, Facebooked, Skyped, and Gtalked. The big problem is that each socialization protocol has its own client. I currently have 2 monitors on my desk and one is almost full of widgets and applications to keep up. I have:

Remember back in August, when there was all the hoopla regarding me in a "Hot Blogger" calendar? Well, your votes paid off, and indeed I grace the eleventh page of the calendar as Mr. November. Seeing myself as a calendar model immediately made me think of cows. (Well, OK, not really -- but bear with me)

Endless September 2.0

December 17th, 2008 by Shawn Powers

Back in January of 1994, Dave Fischer coined the idea of the "September that never ended." Basically, it referred to the influx of new Usenet users that came to college every September, and had to acclimate to how one conducts themselves on the 'net.

Mounting Miss Piggy

November 25th, 2008 by Shawn Powers

I was in Houston last week, and I found myself doing some remote tech support over the phone. Everyone in the Houston office patiently waited for me to finish, but gave me the strangest look when I told my assistant back in Michigan, "You're going to have to reboot Gonzo and Fozzie, because they need to mount Miss Piggy."

As a Linux evangelist, I find myself in an interesting quandary. There are many new netbooks being sold with Linux pre-installed, but often the way Linux is installed is not what I’m used to seeing. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I understand the reasoning for custom interfaces, but it has some disadvantages.

In my video last week, I really hammered on Hewlett Packard. It's important to realize, however, that they are merely the vendor that happened to irk me at just the right time. My video could easily have been pointed at any number of tier one computer hardware vendors, and it would have been just as heartfelt.

Computer virtualization is all the rage these days. Heck, in the video I shot last week, I installed about 12 Linux distributions on a VM, because it made recording a lot simpler.

Tuesday was an insane amount of fun here at BeOS Linux Journal. If you missed the shenanigans, don't worry, most of the silliness is still here, just not on the front page. Here's a quick list of the stories. I think my personal favorite was the rumor about Sony buying BeOS. :) Enjoy:

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July 2009, #183

News Flash: Linux Kernel 3.0 to include an on-the-go Expresso machine interface! Ok, maybe not, but Linux is definitely going mobile, from phones to e-readers. Find out more inside about Android, the Kindle 2, the Western Digital MyBook II, The Bug, and Indamixx (a portable recording studio). And if you've gone mobile and you been wanting more Emacs in your life then check out Conkeror.


To compliment the mobile we've got the stationary: parsing command line options with getopt, checking your Ruby code with metric_fu, and building a secure Squid proxy. How is this stationary you ask? What can we say? It's not. We just wanted to see if anybody actually read this part of the page :) .


All this and more, and all you have to do is get your hot sweaty hands on the latest copy of Linux Journal.





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