Don't Mind Me

If any of you could click my Kings of Chaos recruiting link, I'd be very grateful.

Its a painless process, just click the link and then answer the simple "What number is in the box below?" question, and then I gain power!

Power! muhahhahaha!!1!!one!

With thanks to Monty Python

Some things in life are bad, they can really make you mad -
other things can make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on life's gristle, don't grumble - give a whistle -
and this'll help things turn out for the best, and -

Always look on the bright side of life
always look on the bright side of life

If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten -
and that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps, don't be silly chumps -
just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing, and -

Always look on the bright side of life
always look on the bright side of life

Life is quite absurd, and death's the final word -
we must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin, give the audience a grin -
enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow, so -

Always look on the bright side of death
just before you draw your terminal breath

Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it -
life's a laugh and death's a joke - it's true.
You can see it's all a show, keep 'em laughing as you go -
just remember that the last laugh is on you, and -

Always look on the bright side of life
always look on the bright side of life...

Best Update Notes Ever!

Star Wars Galaxies
*** Mar 05, 2004 Test Center Update ***

• Misc: Gave Mon Mothma some clothes

Don't mess around with Jim!

And they say, "You don't tug on Superman's cape,
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off that ol' Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim."

Some great stuff for Londoners

A couple of great things to look at for Londoners (for those who live there, those just passing through and those like me who just work there).

From the LRB, Peter Campbell's : Why does it take so long to mend an escalator?

Also The Open Guide to London a new Wiki dedicated to London (and especially its bars and restaurants).

SWG Pets

Excerpt from chat log from Stratics chat with SWG developers Official SWGHoC Log - from SWG Stratics:

"(Csavin) with mounts coming in game, are there any plans to skew the game back to star wars and away from pokemon? CH's being so prevelant is starting to ruin the 'starwarsiness' of it all
(oodBnar) oohh..
(Q-3PO) Actually I hear George is going back and adding CG pets behind all the main characters in the special special edition of the original films... I'm kidding (don't kill me Ronda)
(oodBnar) We are actively working on vehicles.
(ronda_lucasarts) sigh @ Q3PO"

Extensions I have browsed

A follow up to a previous post on my favourite Mozilla (and other Gecko browser) extensions.

Just put Mozilla Firebird 0.7 on my laptop, and I've noticed that the style sheet switcher that I used to add in as an extension is now included by default. Excellent! Hopefully this will encourage a few more web sites to take advantage of alternative styles, and show us what they can do.

So now that I don't have to install that any more, what extensions should I use? Well I took a quick trip over to the Mozilla Firebird Extensions page to have a look around.

So what have I installed now?

• Well first had to be the Link Toolbar that restores (and enhances) the link toolbar found in the main Mozilla suite.
• Second, the Live HTTP Headers, a great tool for anyone who writes server side web applications, because they don't always work perfectly and this is just the best and easiest way to debug so many problems.
• I've been getting into RSS quite a bit lately, and until I get around to writing my own web-based RSS reader, then the RSS Reader Panel is simply the most convenient way to keep up with events.
• Text Links is great for extracting URLS from so many different places where people don't bother linking them, or mess it up (a couple of forums I visit and a couple of email newsletters I get).

And I think that's my lot for the moment, all installed and ready for action!

Potential Poo

Q: How much potential poo am I in at the moment?

A: An awful lot!

Do I look like a construction industry recruitment specialist?

No?

Well stop sending me your CVs.

Further to my earlier email concerning the above, I attach my 
CV for your evaluation.
I have five years East Africa experience and several years 
experience with overseas water utilities. My experience has 
covered Zoning , Water meters, bye-laws , water legislation 
and related activities.
I am currently in Thailand on holiday.I can be reached 
through this email.

Regards,

or

Dear  Mr.Xxxxxx  Xxxxxxxx,
      I  write in response to your recent advertisement for "chief operating officer" in Tanzania.
      I would like to be considered for the employment and would welcome an early interview.
      I have attached my recent c.v. and look forward to an early and favorable reply.
      I wish to highlight my broad experience in Tanzania and Africa in general as seen in my c.v..
      Thankful and grateful for your kind cooperation and response,hoping you would kindly consider my c.v. for any other position would fit me in future.
      Thank you for your time.
      Kind  regards. 

(The above reproduced complete with all spelling and grammatical errors. "X"s inserted to protect the [mostly] innocent)

And quite a few more in the same vein.

After a little investigation found out that there is a company called Jared (nasty colour scheme, pointless Flash menu, massively invalid code). They publish some of their jobs on a site called "Careers in Construction", they even have their own special page, the problem is that page links to lots of pages full of jobs, many of which have the wrong contact details: remember "Jared" is only one letter different from "jard".

Well being the good netizen that I am, I've replied to each of the applicants letting them know about their mistakes, and sent a letter to one of the HR people asking them to update their contact details, but, given that this is the middle of a double bank holiday weekend (wahoo, four day weekend!) I'm expecting that I'll be receiving these until at least Wednesday.

Ho, hum, guess I'd better have ago at exercising Mozilla Mail's rules filters.

Thoughts on default and recommended security modes and what it reveals about the people expected to use the systems.

When you have a large network, with a large number of servers, and a number of network/server administrators there essentially two different ways to set up the supervisor/administrative rights and which route you go down reveals a lot about your overall philosophy.

Method 1: Restrict each person's network rights to exactly what they need for day-to-day work and precisely no more. If they do need to do anything else they can use a specific administrative account (or supervisor account, or superuser depending what world you inhabit) to carry out their business.

Method 2: Give all of your administrator's network accounts full administrative privileges to each resource that they might need (or even everything depending on the size of the network, and the person's role).

There are definite advantages and disadvantages to each approach.

Method one means that your admin's own network accounts only have limited rights, this means that they are a less worrying vector for viruses, they're less likely to cause catastrophic problems by accidentally clicking the wrong thing and you can control who needs the passwords for various resources.

The downside is that you can't control who knows the passwords, someone extra will always need it for some reason, or will notice it whilst it is used for some othert reason and you can only control it by regularly changing your admin passwords, and keeping a (secure) database of them all.

Method two means that you can audit who did what, every admin level action on the network will have an actual person's own ID against it, it means that work for admins is less of a hassle: less passwords, less logging in and out all over the place with 30 different passwords, less time spent performing quick and easy tasks.

The downside is that if any of your admins happen to become infected by a virus, or are simply having a bad day and making an awful lot of mistakes, then they can wreak havoc on an unparalleled scale.

From what I've seen experienced, method one is the method that pretty much every network admin training course reccomends, and most Linux/Unix networks actually carry out ("su" is your friend) whereas despite the official guidelines most Microsoft based shops tend to either be configured as method two (or a mixture of the two).