What Happened
Well, over the past day, I've come to understand a lot more about what happened to Open for Business yesterday. Unfortunately, the same cracker hit my friend and colleague Dennis Powell's Linux and Main site today. While I'd like to post more about what happened, I'm still gathering a few things that I don't want to mess up by saying too much, so I will probably need to wait until tomorrow before I can say exactly what happened (or at least what I think happened).
It's a good day overall, though, I've figured out WAY more than I expected concerning the issue. I hope to have the issues on the site resolved in the next few days rather than a few weeks. That's very good news to say the least.
Cracked.
Open for Business was cracked (hacked is a more commonly used but incorrect term for what happened) today. I might post more on this later. Right now I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Trying OneBase Linux
I've been meaning to try a source-based Linux distribution for some time. For those of you who aren't sure what that is, it's a distribution where you build all of the software from the source (and thus it is all optimized for your hardware). Josiah is a big fan of Gentoo, which is one such distribution.
My problem with Gentoo and other previous source based distributions is that they leave all of the configuration work for you to do yourself. I never have that much time. I'll admit it — I like my operating system to do most of the work for me. I'll tweak things when and if I have time, thank-you very much. Thus, up until today, I never even bothered trying a source-based distribution.
Then I started reading about OneBase Linux. OneBase is a source-based distribution that autodetects most of your hardware for you. It allows you to choose between source and binary packages at any time. This sounds pretty nice, I think. So, I fired up my test box (the Shuttle XPC I mentioned last fall) and gave it a freshly burned OneBase 2004-R2 CD. I booted the system up just about three and a half hours ago. The initial installation and compilation process took about two and a half hours. A few minutes ago I told it to start the next set of compilations (insanely simple to do — I want GNOME, so I typed olm -s gnome, and it does the rest).
At any rate, I'm anxiously awaiting the finish of these compiling tasks to see how usable this system turns out to be.
Count+Stat Remote
The referer script is finished. Only it isn't just a referer script anymore. And to represent that, it has become heir of the name that I gave my first published CGI script. Count+Stat is hopelessly outdated these days, so bring on Count+Stat Remote!
Here's what this puppy can do:- Show a list of referers.
- Adjustable minimum to display (one referral, two referrals, etc.)
- Adjust whether the information just comes out as one referer per line or as a nicely formatted HTML list.
- Choose whether to show non-referred hits in the list or not.
- Hide referrals coming from your own page and/or site.
- Keep a separate count and list of referrals for each page or unify all of the information on a per-domain basis.
- Show a text counter of hits and visits.
- Show both at once.
- Be an almost invisible little box that just tracks the stats for your private perusal.
- Turn all of this information into an interesting statistics page.
- And even more… This is the kitchen sink of referer list tools.
Thoughts? Problems? Successes? Please post 'em below. If you have suggestions for improvements I will try to implement them if they are feasible within my time limitations.
Update: I forgot to mention that you can find a sample of the script in action at the bottom of my blog pages. I have it set to show two days worth of referrals formatted as a list, without self-referrals, with non-referred hits, a two-referral minimum and the counter.
Referer System
Yesterday was one of those days. I spent most of the day answering phones (I think I was in phone central) so inbetween, rather than start some important project I'd keep getting interrupted on, I decided to write a JavaScript referer system like I has said I would do over on Michael's site. After I started I noticed someone posted a URL to an existing replacement script, but I was undeterred — instead of stopping I just added more functionality to my script.
For the moment I'm setting it up so that you can use it just by inserting a little JavaScript (like the old system). I'm also contemplating releasing the backendcode under the GPL for anyone who might want to install the entire system on their own server (as opposed to using JavaScript), but I'll worry about that later on.
I'll post more information about it soon for anyone interested.
Server Migration Moves Slowly
Well, I got asisaid moved over to the new server, as I noted a few posts ago, but I haven't gotten much further. I made a copy of the rest of my sites last weekend, but this past week was so busy that I didn't make the switch over. Now the copy of the sites I made is outdated. sigh
I'm hoping to get OfB and company moved early this week so that posting can resume (and I can stop be billed from two web hosts). It appears that OfB operated mailing lists have quit working, so the sooner the move the better.
SMS
The phone I got back in December is suppose to support SMS messaging (and I don't doubt it does, really), but I ran into a rather peculiar problem. When a internet service tried to send me an SMS yesterday via the e-mail gateway Cingular provides, the arrival of those messages appeared in my phone's log but not in my phone's message inbox. Odd.
I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I actually like to read messages that are sent to me rather than being just told they arrived. Maybe my phone took care of them for me or something.
Seriously, has anyone else run into a problem like this?
Hosting Control Panel
I'm just curious — what control panel does your web host use? CPanel? Plesk? Ensim? DirectAdmin? Webmin? Something else?
There's a lot out there, but virtually everyone I know uses CPanel. That's the one I've used the most, having enjoyed it at the last two hosts I've been at. Prior to that, my two other hosts I stayed at for anytime used their own proprietary control panels. I also signed up for (and quickly canceled for another reason) an account with an Alabanza reseller, who, of course, was using the rather dated looking Alabanza control panel.
Right now, I still like CPanel the best I think. However, I must say I'm really impressed with the new Plesk 7 interface that SW-Soft just released (I don't know any shared hosts using Plesk 7 yet). It looks like it offers many of the features that CPanel does, but in a much cleaner interface.
Blogger Idol Week 2: Freedom
It isn't. Microsoft just filed for such a patent.
Computers are suppose to bring freedom, but unfortunately, they can also take it away. As we become more dependent on computers to access our information, it should concern everyone that a few corporations control your identity. That certainly is not freedom. As one interviewee on Open for Business noted a few years back, this gives companies like Microsoft the opportunity to lock you in a proprietary prison, requiring you to agree to more and more aggressive licensing terms just to keep access to your documents.
Proprietary software companies, especially, thoses like Microsoft that frown on not only Open Source but even open standards, are basically trying to get people “addicted” to their software. Once you have your project information, financial information, personal letters, meeting presentations and everything else in their software, you are addicted. What are you going to do? Give up all of your data and start over?
Right now, there's another choice. If you switch to a Free Software platform (such as GNU/Linux) or even a semi-free platform (such as Mac OS X, which as a Free Software core now), you are moving in the right direction. The second step is simply to switch away from proprietary productivity software — instead of MS Office, try OpenOffice. Yes, it's not quite as nice, but isn't your freedom worth it? Soon, however, OpenOffice might not be allowed to load Microsoft Office files. Then, your only choice will be start over at whatever point you decide Microsoft's EULA's are too restrictive.
MacFor.Biz Goes Live
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Apple Macintosh computer.While the original Mac is certainly meager by today's standards, thereare few that would argue against its revolutionary status in the earlyyears of personal computing. In commemoration of that event, today alsomarks the launch of OfB MacFor.Biz, the new section of Open for Businessthat will cover the Mac in much the same way OfB covers GNU/Linux andBSD. In this premier piece, we will examine the latest Mac OS X, 10.3”Panther,” on two separate generations of Macintosh systems. Read more at MacFor.Biz.Not much there yet, but more will be coming. Traditional OfB content will be moving to LinuxFor.Biz, and OfB.biz will have everything that gets posted to both sites.
