The Blog of Lucien Stals

When I first got my PDA, I looked forward to enjoying being able to do stuff while roaming around campus. The unfortunate reality was that no reliable VPN client was available for the PDA (The university uses a Cisco wireless network requiring VPN login), and I've found the networking on the PDA (both WiFi and Bluetooth) cause it to misbehave. Basically I have to soft boot the thing every time I've been using either. Don't know what's up with that, but it's bloody annoying.

Then I bought my laptop. My lovely little (incendiary) Apple.

The WiFi in this thing works like a charm. A VPN client was readily available and it works every time. I did find that the automatic network detection doesn't work well. It’s keeps forgetting about the web proxy at work, so I have to manually switch networks between home and work, but I can live wit!
h that.

The sour taste I had in my mouth from the PDA has been forgotten in favour of the laptop.

Why am I thinking about this now?

Because I left my keys at home today and am looked out of my office until somebody else shows up. But I have sat myself down in Haddon’s cafe with a mediocre coffee and my laptop and have managed to download everything I need to run my lecture today. I don't need to get into my office until after the lecture.

Another nice trick (almost) was last week when I saw Star Wars. I got to the theatre early and sat down in the lovely big theatre 1 in the Rivoli, and started up the laptop to do some reading, and it found and connected to some local wireless network straight away. Unfortunately the bandwidth was almost non existent, and I'm not even sure I the network was meant to be open, but I just loved the fact that I could just jump right on and start browsing the internet, no matter ho!
w slowly.

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So I've been to the apple web site and put in a request for a new battery. If only they would send a free copy of Tiger to say sorry for the inconvenience. Now I have to wait a week for the new, cooler, battery to arrive.

The other part of this blog is about security.

The ByteClub wiki was hit yesterday by… a hack? I noticed last night that a lot of new content had been added. When I looked, it was filled with bogus entries. Russel says they were ads, but I didn't click through to see what they were. What I also noticed was that when I tried to delete them, they started re-posting themselves. In the time it took me to delete the 6 bogus pages, two of them had respawned!

I noticed that several new users had appeared as well, all with 6 digit random usernames.

I guess it's my own fault for letting people set up their own user accounts on the wiki. I know that the wiki way (freedom to all!) but there is a practical issue here. I open the front door, and anyone can, and will, walk in and leave muddy footprints everywhere.

So we are back to having to set-up wiki accounts manually. Nobody gets to create their own accounts anymore.

I also was reminded that the mediawiki engine doesn't have a very nice user management system. I had to manually edit one of the php files so people couldn't set up their own accounts (shouldn’t there be an admin panel somewhere that can do all this stuff?), and then manually remove the users from the database. Then delete the pages that had respawned while I was doing all that.

But it seems to have done the trick. No more bogus pages posted in the last 4 hours si
nce I fixed it.

After reading an article about how computer crime and hacking is changing (incidents are down, but costs are up), I realise I need to pay more and more attention to the ByteClub site. This is the second incident we have suffered.

It was recently pointed out to me how well the site in general is rating on google. Having the site hosted under the Swinburne network is obviously paying off for us. But with good ratings comes a higher profile, and I suspect this has got a lot to do with why we are seeing an escalation of attacks. After being online for a little over a year, we are starting to attract “the wrong crowd”

The sooner we get Xaraya up and running, the happier I will be. I just spend too long setting up accounts and managing things. Time to work smarter, not harder.

I took the morning off and went to see the first session for the day, figuring I could get to work and at least get an afternoons work done.

For what it's worth, I'm at work right now catching up. Yes, working on a Saturday once again.

But when I was going in to see the movie, the girl who took my ticket was one of my students. One who hasn't been attending tutorials lately. To busy working? So who busted who? Guess we're even.

But I loved the film.]]>

Well done.

The briefing was interesting enough, but the highlight was the “technical problems” that meant the whole thing was an hour late getting underway. Good thing the bar was free

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java.sun blog) about… blogs

One about IBM, and the other about Sun's blogging policy

It seems that the bloggers are getting some clout

It's been interesting trying to develop this ByteClub site. I can honestly say that I never anticipated the popularity of the blog here. The forum has it's place, and still gets used, but nowhere near as much as I expected it would. The wiki is almost entirley neglected. But the blogs are going off.

Clinton and I are currently looking at deploying a CMS system. I know we've been talking about it forever, !
but lately we have had a little more time on our hands and we are inching closer and closer. It will be nice to everything together under a single site.

But last time we talked about that, some people said they were quite happy to have a seperate login to their own blogs. And with the popularity of the blogs, I can't help wonder if it isn't time to upgrade the blogging engine to something new. Wordpress would be at the top of my list, but I'm open to suggestions.

“Rich Site Summary feeds, better known as RSS, are a great example of how XML is making a major impact…” (from http://www.developer.com/lang/php/article.php/3113931)

What the..? I thought RSS was suposed to stand for Realy Simple Syndication. Can people just make up their minds what this stuff means?!? ]]>

Just a stupid question: GA means General Availability?! The point is

that last December James Gosling wrote in his blog that 1.5 is in FCS

that would mean Final Candidate Status, if I understand correctly.

Conceptually this would make it safe to conclude that 1.5 is not yet an

official release. Hence the delay on Mac platform is not that

essential.

If I got the acronyms wrong, the conclusions are of course invalid and

I must flog myself!

To which the reply was …

I've always used FCS = First Customer Ship (i.e., it's out the

door/available for download).

So does FCS mean the product isn't ready for release? Or that it has already shipped? ]]>

Or put another way…

I'm still waiting for Java 1.5 (aka Tiger) on OSX 10.4 (aka Tiger)

And having just paid our cats registration fees, I am inspired to call my next software project “Domestic Short Hair Ginger”.]]>

For any student

Anxiety over exams is common at the moment (with the exam period only a few weeks away). The SD1 exam was the first exam I ever did. The more I think about it, the stranger it seems, especially now when there aren't many alternative avenues into higher Ed. But alternative were available back in the days (those dim, dark days) when I was in high school. Thanks to a now defunct “alternative education” high school, I was able to complete my HSC (that's what VCE was called back then) without sitting a single exam. Then I went on to do an arts degree and managed t!
o get through that without a single exam. Lots of essays and course work, but no exams. I did manage to fail third year and had to repeat it. Did much better second time around.

When I undertook my Masters at Swinburne, I found myself sitting my very first exam ever. SD1.

So I think I can empathise with any student who may be feeling anxious about exams.

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Companies get on the blog bandwagon ]]>