Author: Dave Farquhar

Getting out of a sticky BIND

Dave Farquhar Linux , , ,

Setting up DNS on Linux isn’t supposed to be the easiest thing in the world. But it wasn’t supposed to be this hard either.
I installed Debian (since it’s nice and lean and mean) and BIND 9.2.1 and dutifully entered the named.conf file and the zones files. I checked out their syntax with the included tools (named-checkconf and named-checkzone). It checked out fine. But my Windows PCs wouldn’t resolve against it.
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What am I?

Dave Farquhar Christianity

OK, I’ll share my scores from Belief-O-Matic, the online test that asks you a bunch of questions and tries to guess your religion.
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Let’s be rational when we talk about the War on Terror

Dave Farquhar Society

I guess the War on Terror isn’t progressing fast enough for some people.
I guess you can count me among them, but I’m not going to throw a fit about it. When we act impatient and irrational, we’re giving the enemy exactly what they want. Plus, it’s a very short step from talking tough and dumb to disaster.
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A useful Linux app for your CD-R

Dave Farquhar Linux ,

Quit wasting space on your CD rack with CDs that are only 3/4 full!
C’mon. You know you’ve done it. You’ve got 1.9 gigs worth of stuff to burn to CD. You know it should fit on three CDs. Half an hour later, you’re tired of trying to figure out how to make it fit and you just burn 500 megs’ worth on four CDs.
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Trolling ’round the ‘net

Dave Farquhar Society

I’m not feeling nauseous enough so I’ll go troll some news sites and see what I find.
Foxnews: “I think the value of life has been really reduced when a person who strangles their child gets less time than you would for killing a pet.” This person is surprised that there are people who value the lives of our pets more than the lives of our children? The spoils of our past 30 years are coming home to roost. I hope everyone enjoys them, because it’s only going to get worse.

Remember that homo sapien plot to take over the world? No need to worry about it. Even if they do manage to take over the world, they’ll squander it because all they want to do is kill each other.

London Telegraph: Israel arrests and holds 100 Palestinians. Be glad that’s all they’re doing. History will look back at today’s Palestinians as the 21st century’s answer to the Nazis. (Just another case of the homo sapiens killing each other for fun and profit.)

Bah. That’s enough for people to talk about. I’m going to bed.

Wiping a disk securely

Dave Farquhar Linux , ,

Sometimes in the course of work, it’s necessary to securely wipe a disk. A drive containing confidential information may require replacement. Assuming you caught the problem before the drive died for good, you can wipe it before sending it back to the manufacturer.
Programs to securely wipe a drive cost money. Sometimes big money. Fortunately, it’s easy to do it with Linux.
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Let the teens and 20somethings rise to expectations

Dave Farquhar Society

FoxNews ran an editorial about teenagers. Specifically, it was about teenage sex, but for once, someone seems to realize that sex isn’t always just about sex and that teenagers are human beings just like the rest of us.
Author Glenn Harlan Reynolds argues that since society has infantilized teenagers, they’ve sunk to expectations. Given immature activities and no adult responsibilities, it should be no surprise that teenagers smoke and drink and sleep around. They don’t have anything else to do.
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Klez is nasty!

Dave Farquhar Windows , , ,

If you haven’t ever actually seen Klez in person, count yourself lucky.
I had my first run-in with it last night. I was working on a friend of a friend’s computer and everything about it was goofy.
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Testing a blown AC adapter

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

All too often, people plug the wrong AC adapter into an electronic device. People just plug in the first adapter that fits, and usually when they do this, if the equipment wasn’t blown before, it is now.
They’re known by many names, most of them not affectionate: power bricks, wall warts… But you miss them when they’re gone.
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Guidance in re-installing Windows 98SE

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , ,

Mail from Frank Gross. I don’t know if I’ve ever outlined a process for installing Windows 98 cleanly, at least not here. There’s little need to do a clean install if the system works right, but if a system just won’t play nice, it’s not something one should be afraid of.
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