The Quote Database -- a collection of humourous IRC interchanges -- doesn't appear to have been updated for some time. Still, it's a repository of some utter gems ...

<xterm> The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

<Khassaki> HI EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!! <Judge-Mental> try pressing the the Caps Lock key <Khassaki> O THANKS!!! ITS SO MUCH EASIER TO WRITE NOW!!!!!!!

Once upon a midnight dreary, While i pron surfed, weak and weary, Over many a strange and spurious site of ' hot  xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, Suddenly there came a warning, And my heart was filled with mourning, Mourning for my dear amour, "Tis not possible!", I muttered, "Give me back my free hardcore!"..... Quoth the server, 404.

<WiLdSeXyPrInCeSs> i luv guyz where would they be wifout us gals??? <XeNoX> Still in the Garden Of Eden you gullible #$%@.

Mike3285: wtf is a palindrome MaroonSand: no its not dude

<MasterG> ....................................................................................................... <judas> where's pacman when you need him?

(morganj): 0 is false and 1 is true, correct? (alec_eso): 1, morganj (morganj): bastard.

<Beeth> Girls are like internet domain names, the ones I like are already taken. <honx> well, you can still get one from a strange country :-P

You'll find more, (and, CAUTION, somewhat seedier postings), on the site.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

Suffering from antivirus or malware problems, flaky network connections, mysterious slowdowns, odd application crashes, lack of troubleshooting, networking nightmares or disappearing resources? You could need Linux -- at least according to Ten ways Windows fails but Linux does not.

"Think about the last time your Windows computer mysteriously slowed down. Were you ever even able to get to the bottom of the problem?"

One of Linux's killer features for me has always been multiple desktops. (Windows' failure number nine on the above list.) If you've never tried it, you simply can't imagine how useful (and productive) it is. I currently use six -- out of a possible 20. Desktop one is for word processing -- full screen. Desktop two, browser -- full screen. Desktop three ... but you're getting the idea. Switching is simply a matter of Ctrl+F1, Ctrl+F2, etc. And oh, that glorious graphical switching ...



Yes, I know, some graphics card makers have drivers to enable this in Windows, but we're talking about standard OS features straight out of the box. Linux has done this since year dot, literally. Even terminals allow multiple sessions with Ctrl+Alt+F1, etc. (Ctrl+Alt+F7 takes you back to the GUI.)

And while we're speaking of Windows' failures, check out these 25 very public ones.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 )

Tiger is a collection of scripts, code and data files for tracking down security problems. It scans file systems and configuration files, checking for possible security issues. It's built around several dozen modules that check everything from guessable passwords to the presence of a rootkit.

To install and run it:

# sudo apt-get install tiger # sudo tiger

The report is written to /var/log/tiger and named security.report.hostname.YYMMDD-hh:mm. You can simply cat this, (note that only root can view it):

# sudo cat /var/log/tiger/security.report.hostname.YYMMDD-hh:mm

but it's a big report and you're really only interested in failed items. Try this instead:

# sudo grep FAIL /var/log/tiger/security.report.hostname.YYMMDD-hh:mm

Failures are logged against an explanatory code, like this:

--FAIL-- [ftp007f] Anonymous FTP directory owned and writable by 'ftp'. --FAIL-- [lin016f] The system permits source routing from incoming packets --FAIL-- [lin019f] The system does not have any local firewall rules

You can obtain more details by appending the code to the Tiger Explanation Generator. For example:

# tigexp ftp007f

yields:

The indicated file is owned by the 'ftp' account and is writable. This may allow unauthorized access to the machine.  The indicated file should be owned by 'root' and not writable by group or world. See CERT advisory CA-93:10 for information on setting up an anonymous FTP server.

Tiger's well-commented configuration file resides in /etc/tiger/tigerrc.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )