brandondawson.org

A little tip here: If you’re getting this message when trying to log into Plesk Billing via Plesk:

Warning: fopen(/var/log/sso/sso.log) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /usr/local/sso/lib/Log.php on line 24 FATAL ERROR: Can not open log file ‘/var/log/sso/sso.log’ (CWD is /usr/local/sso)

This would seem to be being caused by changing the hostname, for which Plesk Billing generates an automatic self-signed SSL certificate for. Attempting to re-register the hostname using the /usr/local/psa/bin/sso utility is useless in this context, as it keeps beating up against the entrenched cert.

To remedy, simply:
1.) Back up your Plesk Billing database
2.) command: yum remove plesk-billing
3.) Re-add Plesk Billing via the Plesk Updater

I’m not blind to the benefits of drones, and I’m not blind to the sobering realities of aerial survivability in the early moments of a conflict with a modern military. But, as this Wired article demonstrates, we can’t let ourselves think that we can rely entirely on joystick-wielding Nintendo jockeys either.

I think this will be revealed as only the tip of the iceberg with regards to the way these drones can be exploited. Security pro-tip, kids: if you can access and control something from remote, so can the other guy, it’s just a matter of how long it takes him to figure out how to do it.

So, it seems to me that maybe drones are like anti-biotics: the more you use them, and the more the enemy gets to learn about them, the less effective and more dangerous they become.

So, I recently got a DVD from Netflix that wouldn’t play. Of course, I immediately flagged it as such on the Netflix website, which as everyone knows is phenomenally well-designed with a very high degree of thought placed into every widget, button, and tab. And Netflix delivered the replacement DVD just a day later. No surprises there.

I decided to hold onto the damaged DVD until the replacement came, because I like to hoard the occasional Netflix envelope as a hedge against ones that come damaged in the mail. I’m always afraid that one of them will get torn out of their little red envelopes by an unscrupulous mail handler or by sheer accident.

When I went to send the replacement and the damaged DVD back in the same red envelope, I put little Post-It notes on them describing which DVD was damaged, and which was not. And then I pretty much forgot about it.

But Netflix didn’t. Continue reading…

I was downloading a series of free add-ons for a particular piece of software, when I was forced into downloading it from one of those “file hosting” services. This got me thinking, because it was mildly annoying to have to use such a service for a file that was only 1.8 megabytes in size, after a sixty-second wait due to my not being a “Premium” member.

Of course, hosts like RapidHost and their kind derive a large amount of their traffic from, shall we say, less than fully legal data. But to see something that was 100% legal, and 100% free, being offered on such a service….well, suffice it to say I spent the 60 seconds thinking, I hope, somewhat productively.

Because this is a market that “old-school” traditional web hosts can handle, as well. The people putting files like these on download services do not need privacy; in my specific case, they actually had it linked from their online profile. And they probably have an account on that service, which means they’re willing to pay for the service. Continue reading…

Oddly enough, this actually is a feature and not a bug. It hinges on the Single Sign-on feature linking Plesk Billing and Plesk itself. Plesk is trying to redirect to the Billing side to take login credentials.

Just open ports 11443/11444 on your firewall, and you’re good to go.

More info here.

I’ve seen a couple articles today where the Republicans are trying to politicize the concept of network neutrality, comparing it in one case to “a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet“.

Well, it’s not that. And I could spend several paragraphs excoriating Republicans for yet-another weak attempt to convince uninformed voters that Obama’s going to [fill-in-the-blank], but I won’t. Instead, I will simply present you with What Net Neutrality Is, and What Net Neutrality Isn’t. Continue reading…

Just a quick note here to reflect that I will be attending the 2009 Spring BR Conference at Ohio University’s Baker Center on June 9th.

I look forward to seeing those folks whom I’ve seen at other conferences or events there!

I’ve been trying to get MPlayer installed on my server, and I finally had some success at it. So, I’ll share what I’ve learned:

The problem would seem to be some glitches in the various repositories that prevent MPlayer from compiling properly. You can have the libcaca, caca-utils, and libcaca-devel RPM’s installed, and it STILL fails to resolve the dependency.

The libcucul.so.0 dependency error was solved, in my case, by enabling the RPMFusion repos and THEN installing MPlayer via yum. I did, and managed to FINALLY get mplayer working.

I hope this helps somebody else avoid the four hours I spent researching this.

Here’s 12 Fun Facts about RFID and Biometric Passports, from the Wiki: (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport)

Note: I’ve boldfaced parts of the individual snippets I found particularly relevant.

1.) RFID was actually invented –by the Soviet Union– specifically as an espionage technology.

In 1946 Léon Theremin invented an espionage tool for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves with audio information. Sound waves vibrated a diaphragm which slightly altered the shape of the resonator, which modulated the reflected radio frequency. Even though this device was a passive covert listening device, not an identification tag, it has been attributed as a predecessor to RFID technology. The technology used in RFID has been around since the early 1920s according to one source (although the same source states that RFID systems have been around just since the late 1960s).

Continue reading…