Management Through SSH

SSH (Secure Shell) is a secure alternative to the ancient Telnet program/protocol. Telnet (and SSH) allows a user to connect to a remote server, and enables the users to use a command line interface to execute commands (manage the server).

Where Telnet is relatively limited in its functionality, SSH has a bunch of features which enables the user to do much more. The SSH protocol has the possibility to tunnel traffic through an SSH connection (read: tunnel). The big advantage is that everything going through the tunnel is heavily encrypted (which is good).

The tool best known to use SSH is SFTP (FTP over SSH). A secure alternative of the 'old' (in plaintext communicating) File Transfer protocol.

Posted on October 12, 2009 and filed under Security, Tips'n Tricks.

Buma/Stemra Changes Licensing Fees 2010

The all knowing, and all wise Dutch music copyright organisation BUMA/Stemra (BS, and yes, pun intended) decides to charge €130 (for copyright infringement) euros per embedded copyrighted file (do your own math). You are allowed 6 embedding violations/files for €130,00 (original pdf).
No need to mention that this caused a massive uproar in the (worldwide) blogosphere, news and politics.
Posted on October 10, 2009 and filed under Annoying, Copyrights, News.

Windows 8 & 9 in 128bit mode

Yes, you're reading it correct. Microsoft intends to deliver a 128bit kernel in the next Windows versions. A bit ambitious if you ask me. The 'current' 32bit operating systems run fine, because the drivers for those operating systems are widely available.
Have you ever tried to get your hands on 64bit drivers for hardware not older than two years? I tried, but failed eventually, since there's still one unknown device in my Vista x64 install.

I'm sure that Microsoft will use some layered model with the 128bit OS. That way you can use 128, 64, 32, and maybe even 16 and 8 bit drivers and applications. This way everythin will run, but don't expect stability.

What's wrong with going full 64bit first? No 32bit (hardware) drivers, the only 32bit that's allowed are 32bit applictions (which run in a special 32bit mode). From there forward you you start with 128bit OS (with 128bit drivers only) and minimum 64 bit applications. You need 32bit? -> VMWare (or MS own HyperVisor thinghy).

 I still run into incompatibility issues with my <2 year old Fujitsu laptop running Vista Business x64. They should fix that first, and move on after that.

Posted on October 8, 2009 and filed under Microsoft, Operating Systems.

New MacBook Memory

After having some trouble [1] with my first replacement RAM, I ordered a new set of SoDIMM's for my unibody MacBook. These seem to do the trick. No crashes, freezes so far.

The new RAM is from Kingston and carries the following partnumber: KTA-MB1066K2/4G

Posted on October 8, 2009 .

Unibody MacBook Crashes Solved

At least with a 99.9% certainty.

It seemed that the memory upgrade I bought when I bought the MacBook is having trouble. Weird, because under Leopard it worked just fine. Snow Leopard crashes (system freeze), and sometimes even with weird flashing lines on the screen.

I guess that Snow Leopard is a bit more sensitive about the memory that's installed.

Ordered a set of Kingston KTA-MB1066K2/4G @ Informatique. Let's see if that's more stable.

The old RAM I had was OCZ So-Dimm DDR3 PC3-8500, 1066MHz (P/N: OCZ3M10664GK). Let's see if I can put it in another laptop. A less picky one.

Posted on October 1, 2009 and filed under Apple, Hardware.

Moved Hosting Provider

Some of you might have noticed that some things have changed on my website. For one, the website was down/inaccessible, and two, the interface is different (eventhough I try it not to be).

The first part had to do with some articles I posted. These postings resulted in some attention. So much attention that my website drowned. The hosting provider at the time was not capable of dealing with this, so I had to leave. Since I run this website for fun I don't want to be bothered with 'these things'.

Some of the services I had (like the certificate import tool for mobile phones) also suffered from this inconvenience. The symcaimport tool is now reachable under http://symcaimport.redelijkheid.com.

Posted on September 30, 2009 .

Apple Snow Leopard and Filevault

Ran into one of the most annoying bugs in OSX evah.... The earlier versions of OSX had a problem with Filevault and remembering certain default application preferences. This issue is resolved in Snow Leopard, but I ran into another (new) feature.

Whenever I put my MacBook to sleep it closes all running programs and documents (without any save option), and logs me off....
Waking the MacBook back up leaves me with the default log in screen. After the log in, it's like I rebooted the machine...

Need to remember to save before putting it to sleep, or to wander of for a couple of minutes.......

UPDATE: I fixed it. Yesterday I saw a flash of the error reporting tool of OSX while I opened the lid of my MacBook, and before it logged me out on the fly. This meant that there might be some info in the console application.
It turned out there were two applications generating lots of errors. Namely PGP and EyeConnect (some part of EyeTV). Somehow both had come over with the data migration.


After uninstalling PGP manually (because the regular interface didn't work any more) and removing all references to the EyeConnect application everything worked as it should (so far).

UPDATE 2: Never mind the previous cheerful update. LoginWindow keeps crashing. I even reinstalled the compleet OS on a seperate disk and with virtual no apps installed it keeps crashing. So the sleep mode is essentially unusable. I've been thinking of removing the Snow from the Leopard....

Posted on September 16, 2009 and filed under Annoying, Apple.