My expectations on IE 7.0

These are what I expect in IE 7.0

1. support PNG graphics
2. compliance with W3C standards
3. anti-phishing
4. anti-spyware
5. built-in RSS news feed
6. tab-browsing
7. support International Domain Name
8. Anti-popup
9. More .....

Forget all these things that Microsoft has never promised to give us. This is just a dream.

RSS Feeds Toolbar for IE

As far as I can tell, this is the only RSS toolbar for IE. With primitive features offered, it can not be called a full RSS reader. Anyway, as we don't know when Microsoft will release IE 7.0, we still need to use this toolbar to read RSS news in IE environment.

港燈加價 7.2 %

港燈盈利豐厚，還要宣佈來年加價 7.2 %，可恥，這是政府利潤管制之禍害。數云云眾多公用事業機構之中，港燈算得上是最無良。

Hongkong Post e-cert

According to a recent business review conducted by the Government, the operation of the Hongkong Post e-cert is not commerically sustainable. There is a need to transfer the operation to business entities. The Government is now inviting Request for Proposal from the private sector to run this service. If no organization is interested, the e-cert service will be completed stopped by 2008. By that time, we will have to buy our e-cert from overseas Certificate Authority. What a pity then !!

.asia top level domain

ICANN has approved the .asia top level domain for use in Asian countries. In fact, Asian counties such as China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore have jointed together to press ICANN to release this top level domain for 2 years. Their argument is that currently all top level domains (.com, .net. .edu. .org etc) except country code top level domains (.hk, .cn) are perceived as Western-based and yet over 60 % of the world’s population and 90 languages reside in Asia.

Corporations having up their businesses in Asian countries could just use a single domain name abc.com.asia instead of having abc.com.hk, abc.com.cn. abc.com.tw and abc.com.sg registered with the domain name registration bodies of individual countries. I think .asia domain will bring benefits to both SMEs and corporations in this region.

The .asia domain will be opened for registration in the 2^nd quarter of 2006.

爭取普選

12月4日爭取普選大遊行，她終於站了出來，有人說她想撈政治本錢，這又何況，政治本質就是一場 show。

如果香港人真的可以一人一票選行政長官，她大有機會成為第一屆普選特首，以目前形勢，這將會是遙遙無期。算啦，自求多福吧。

.hk Trial Chinese Domain Name

The free trial of Chinese domain name offered by HKDNR will expire by 29 Dec 2005. The official launch of Chinese domain name ending with .hk will be in the 3rd quarter of 2006.

During the 6-month trial period, I had not found any noticeable failure of HKDNR name server. The only disappointment to me is that it can not be used in Firefox. For IE, a plugin is required. For Opera, it already supports such feature.

There is no doubt that Opera is the leading browser to support Chinese domain names.

Alice and Bob

The names Alice and Bob are often used in explaining communications processes and crytopgraphty. The recent example I encounter "Alice" and "Bob" is reading technical documents about the call set up of SIP VoIP phones. Instead of saying "Person A wants to send a message to person B", people rather use "Alice wants to send a message to Bob". This makes writing, explanation and presentation easier to follow.

Apart from matching alphabetical order, the two names also have already represented both genders, male and female. Wooo.... funny indeed ...

Suppressing SSID in WLAN AP

WLAN APs repeatedly emit a beacon signal that contains the service set identifier, or SSID. SSID tells other people that your network is there.

If you know your network is there, why do you need it to announce to other people. If a SSID is not immediately visible then there will be less incentive for people to try and compromise a network.

In WLAN AP config, there is an option to 'suppress' or 'hide' the SSID. If this feature is enabled, you will not be able to see your own SSID over the air. You will have to remeber to enter this in WLAN client card config to make the connection. I find this feature useful in reducing the likelihood of unauthorized access to WLAN.

世貿會議警力

警務處長在一個時事節目上表示會動員9000名警務人員維持 MC6世貿會議，這樣龐大的警力及佈處，比起 1997年回歸時更甚更誇張，還有封路，封海港，灣仔區學校停課，建築地盤要將工具及器材收起等等，全都是駭人聽聞。其實香港這彈丸之地，不適宜舉行這些 容易挑起國際級示威的會議，只此一次，下不為例。

US$100 laptop

This is the laptop developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab which will be offered to children in third world developing countries. The cost is about US$100.

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. This rugged laptop will be WiFi-enabled and have USB ports for other functions.

People might ask why not use desktop computer or a recycled desktop machine? Desktops might be cheaper, but children need to take the computer to school and back to home.

Thanks to Mr Nicholas Negroponte, founding chairman of MIT's Media Laboratory who developed the "One Laptop Per Child" initiative.

dig and nslookup

dig (domain information gropher) is much more powerful than nslookup which is scheduled to be phased out in Unix and Linux distribution. Take an example below. If I want to use the name server 202.81.252.1 to query mx record of yahoo.com.hk, I will issue the following four commands one by one :

$nslookup
>server 202.81.252.1
>set type=mx
>yahoo.com.hk.

In dig, just one single command can complete the whole query process :

$dig 202.81.252.1 yahoo.com.hk. mx

Hmmmmm, I should give up using nslookup and try to use dig in order to prepare myself as a contemporary network administrator.

IP addresses occupied by US Department of Defense

I note from fixedorbit.com that the US Department of Defense (DoD) runs the largest IP network with 53.44 million IP addresses. Excluding Class D and Class E IP addresses, there are 3.7 billion IP addresses available. The US DoD has taken away 1.5 % of all the available resource of the world. Wooooooo.., lets hope such unfair allocation won't happen again in IPv6.

Configure WLAN on HKBN Network

HKBN uses web login. Most WLAN AP do not have a web browser client to log on a broadband network such as HKBN.

One workaround solution is to use a PC to logon first, and then clone the MAC address of the PC’s LAN card to the WLAN AP. Unplug the RJ-45 cable to the WLAN WAN port and the WLAN AP will work. This is is a method successfully tested by one of my colleagues.

With money, you can ...

Here is the Chinese proverb starting with "With money" :

With money, you can buy a house, but not a home.
With money, you can buy a clock, but not time.
With money, you can buy a bed, but not sleep.
With money, you can buy a book, but not knowledge.
With money, you can buy a position, but not respect.
With money, you can buy blood, but not life.
With money, you can buy sex, but not love.

Single Number Network Address

IP address can be written as a single hexadecimal number. For example, www.yahoo.com.hk is 202.43.221.34, it is written as :

202x 256x256x256+43x256x256+221x256+34=3391872290

http://3391872290 will exactly go to the same website.

Increasingly, fraudsters are using single number network address to hide the source of phishing sites.

Maintaining system security is a daunting task

It is an unfortunate reality that most enterprises will suffer a breach of security at some point. To bypass security, an attacker only has to find one vulnerability in any system. But to guarantee security, a network administrator must make sure 100 percent of time that 100 per cent of the systems are invulnerable. Who else would like to be an network administrator ?

花 灑 式 電 熱 水 器 勿 加 裝 水 掣

這是來自蘋果日報的導，非常益智 :



花 灑 式 電 熱 水 器 已 附 設 特 別 開 關 水 掣 ， 若 花 灑 式 電 熱 水 器 的 出 水 喉 管 加 裝 其 他 一 般 使 用 的 開 關 水 掣 ， 或 接 駁 至 洗 手 盆 或 浴 缸 ， 當 水 掣 被 關 上 時 ， 儲 水 缸 通 往 大 氣 的 通 道 便 會 被 阻 塞 ， 在 此 情 況 下 ， 若 行 溫 器 發 生 故 障 ， 儲 水 缸 內 的 水 便 會 不 斷 加 熱 膨 脹 。

由 於 水 掣 被 關 上 ， 壓 力 無 從 釋 放 ， 儲 水 缸 無 法 承 受 不 斷 增 加 的 壓 力 ， 可 能 發 生 爆 炸 。

Harvest Killer

Fight SpamBots!



Webmasters can help fighting spam by giving a URL link to a page that randomly generates 100 bogus email addresses each time it is visited. Email harvesters (also known as spambots) will crawl this page and store all of these hundred bogus email addresses in a database. If more webmsaters can offer assistance, spammers' database could be filled up wiuth a huge number of invalid email addresses. Would that be effective ? Might not be ! But at least, webmasters have joined together to give spammers some trouble !

Cousin domain names

Cousin domain names are registered by fraudsters in creating phishing web sites. Their domain names look essentially very similar to those of banks and other finance companies. "visa-security.com" is one such domain to fool email users to believe it is a web site of visa. "hkhsbc.com" is another trying to mak the domain looks like "hsbc.com.hk". Watch out cousin domain names in the address bar of your browser.

Bon Jovi

近 期有機會回味Bon Jovi 的 rock 歌曲，總覺得 Bon Jovi 是繼 Deep Purple、Led Zepplin 之後最有水準及技術的 rock band，經典之作首選是 blaze of glory，然後是 wanted dead or alive, it’s my life, run away, living on a prayer, one wild night 2001 及 you give love a bad name。

Firefox 100 million download

Congratulation to Mozilla Foundation to have Firefox browser download count reaching 100 million. Let's hope the 1.5 version to be released will give us more features and functions.

Sender Policy Framework

If you are famililar with SMTP protocol, no doubt you realize that spammers can give any valid domains in the "mail from" field as a way of forging the sender email address in spamming. Meng Weng Wong has come up with a solution called Sender Policy Framework (SPF) for sender domain authentication. To this end, the DNS record of every Internet server should be associated with some text strings to denote what IP addresses are allowed to use that domain name in email delivery. Existing DNS software such as Bind 9.X can cope with SPF. Not sure about Microsoft DNS. SMTP servers need to be upgraded to make them SPF-enabled by way of reversing MX lookup.

This new technology could somehow reduce the amount of email spam. Thanks to Meng Weng Wong again.

陳慧琳 Red 新曲+精選

偶然行過一間唱片店，被陳慧琳 "Red 新曲+精選" 吸引，這己是2003年出品的3CD套裝，共收錄38首經典大熱作品。價錢呢，一百元有找，非常超值。

Webmail encryption

Yesterday, a pro-democracy group went to Yahoo ! Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited to protest against the release of important information about an email to the Chinese law enforcement agency, leading to the arrest of a journalist in China. This has aroused attention on encryption on webmail. Basically, Yahoo mail is web-based and it is not possible to use client digital certificate.

As far as I know, the only solution to encrypt webmail is to deploy PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a licesned copy charged at US$30. Once the key pair for an email address is generated, it can be used for the whole life time. In my opinion, it is still cheaper than using client digital certificate which requires renewal on an annual basis.

.hk domain name free for 5 years

HKDNR today announced the "We care We Share" program to waive .hk domain names for charitable organizations for 5 years. It's not much indeed, just a saving of HK$1000 over the period. According to the info in HKDNR web site, applications will still be assessed, based on the nature of the organization, the need of the domain name to the organization and the benefits that will bring to the community in Hong Kong.

As this is to help charity community in Hong Kong, why not consider permanent waiver !

Bering Firewall

Last week, I saw an online video about Bering Firewall. It is based on Shorewall Firewall. Any old PCs with Pentium 100 MHz CPU and 32 MB RAM and 2 NICs could be used as Bering Firewall. The user configuration menu, depsite text-based is easy to follow and understand. The log status page is presented as a web page with lot of clickable links to retrieve more detailed information.

I am greatly impressed by the powers of Bering Firewall.

Promote Opera

I intend to add a button to promote the use of Opera in the Internet community. The display graphic says Opera is the fastest browser on Earth. That's true.

Netcraft Anti-phising Toolbar

I have installed Netcraft anit-phishing toolbar on IE. The toolbar is available for IE and Firefox. Apart from popping up alert windows to give warning of a phished site, the toolbar also display the originating country of the site.

I have heard that anti-phishing is an addded feature in Microsoft IE 7. Just wonder IE 7 will be bundled solely with Windows Vista or can be downloaded for free for Windows XP.

Cerberus FTP Server

Cerberus FTP Server is a fantastic FTP daemon under Windows XP OS. Each user can have a different default root directory. Permission to upload, download, rename files and create directories can be set individually and separately. The log statistics are comprehensive. There is also an IP Manager to block IP addresses or range of IP addresses.

Personal edition of Cerberus FTP Server is licence-free. I can use it to enable hosts in internal network segment to transfer files instead of sharing a directory to the network.

Free Opera 8.5

Opera is now free for download, no more ad banners. Just like Firefox, it supports all the essential functions of a modern day browser such as tab-browsing, RSS news feed and integrated Email client.

The anti-phishing security feature is most attractive. I tried to visit a phishing web site in which the URL returned to Opera's URL bar was :

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run

Opera could display the real URL correctly as :

http://148.235.64.36/manual/mod/mod_perl/paypal/sysdll.php

Woooo, with Opera, I don't need to worry about being fooled by phishing web sites.

Standard Chartered double charged esdlife user

This is the popup message when visiting www.esdlife.com.hk

I can not imagine how system upgrade in Standard Chartered Bank computer facilities would result in doube charging visa card holders. It seems that the upgrade was not well-planned and there might be human errors in the course of planning the upgrade.

Google Blogsearch Engine

I am thrived to learn that Google has launched the Google Blogsearch Engine. With the most powerful Linux cluster system in the world, Google Blogsearch should be much faster than any other blogsearch tools.

There is no doubt that the blogosphere will become the world's second largest information archive on the Internet after the world wide web. Blogsearch engine is an important tool for people to find information from blog.

Using cell phones on airplanes

In Europe, there are now trial tests of onboard cellular base station. Users of mobile phones and other handheld wireless devices with roaming capability will be able to make and receive calls. They will be allowed to turn their phones on after the plane reaches 10,000 feet, when other electronic devices such as portable music players and laptops are permitted.

This service might be rolled out in 2007.

Skype accessories

It is not conveninet to wear headset when making Skype phone calls. The good news is there are Skype accessories that resemble the functions of a desktop telephone and come with USB. Pretty good look :




There are also DECT Skype phones for those that wants to have mobility at home or in office.

Skype

I have just experienced the voice quality of Skype. It is not comparable to POTS but still acceptable. It is good to communicate with friends overseas free of charge if they are all Skyper users. Of course, one needs to wear a headset with a microphone.

If I need to dial PSTN number overseas, I need to buy SkypeOut credit points. SkypeOut is not attarctive when compared with the current low IDD charging rates.

ipod nano

Ipod nano is an incredible product from Apple. The size is so small and yet it can have 4GB storage. The colour display can be used to view pictures. The price is below U$200, a bit cheaper than ipod mini. With ipod nano so sophisticated, ipod mini will soon be phased out in the market.

fping

Ping can only send ICMP packets to one host at a time. If I want to test how many hosts in a Class C network are alive or I want to pick an unassigned IP address for other purpose, ping can not quickly help me.

To overcome the problem, I turn to fping which can send ICMP packets to multiple hosts :

% fping < target_files
(list of holes are stored in target_files)

To ping a Class C network :

%fping -g 192.168.1.0/24

or use

% fping -g 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.255

A handy tool, isn't it ?

USB Extender

Re-thinking thin client computing

Ndiyo is a project to promote thin client network computing which is simple, affordable, open, less environmentally damaging and less dependent on intensive technical support than current networking technology. The client destop device, named as nivo, costs less than 100 pounds, with ports for keyboard, mouse, 100M Ethernet and VGA interface. The next version will come with USB and sound interface.


PCs need to be replaced every 3 years in order to catch up with the latest software. This is an environmentally damaging trend. In a networked computing environment, thin-client will not need to be replaced and only the Server needs to be upgraded. By adopting thin-cleint computing, we are saving the world from electronic waster generated from scrapped old PCs.

HSBC Security Key

After waiting for 3 months, I finally got a security key for accessing my Internet banking account with HSBC. From my observation, the secuiry key generates a code with a validity timing of about 1 minute. If the code is not inputted within the preset time, it will be voided.

With the security key in hand, I can perform Internet banking in public libraries, Internet Cafe, Game Centre or Wifi hotspots without worrying if my account and passowrd will be captured by keyloggers.

電影"太行山上"

電影"太行山上"是紀念抗日戰勝60周年的作品，除了中國，外國都沒有在這時間制作此類 電影。日本是於1949年8月15日投降，國內己將這電影策略地在8月 15日上映，但香港則要到9月1日才上映，老實說，大部份紀念抗戰勝利的活動都在8月中旬進行，亳無疑問，香港的電影商已經錯過了最佳黃金檔期。

Wifi Manager 4

After discoverig Network Stumbler, I find another indispensable WLAN network management tool, Managengine Wifi Manager 4. It can be used to monitor WLAN status, troubleshoot problems, and identify bottlenecks.

The free version can support 3 APs and 10 network devices, quite sufficient for me to use in home WLAN environment.

Wifi World record - coverage up to 129 miles

Accoridng to www.wifiworldrecord.com, with the aid of a 10-ft dish antenna at both ends, the maximum distance Wifi can achieve is 129 miles without the use of amplifier.

The connection at 11 Mbps was attained and kept up for 3 hours. During this time 11,000 successful pings were made. Both ends of the link were using SSH and logged into the other end. VNC was also used successfully WITHOUT frames being dropped. Ping times varied from 0.01 ms to 400 ms, seeming to average around 10 ms. The connection had an astounding signal strength of -37 dBm, bottoming out at around -50 dBm throughout the 3 hours. The noise levels were around -84 dBm.

iTune phone

iTune is the software for transferring songs from Windows/Mac PCs to ipod players where the audio is stored as the AAC (Apple Advanced Coding) format. I have used mp3 players and ipod and I think ipod players offer a much better sound quality. While some mobile phones already have mp3 players built-in, ipod lovers are waiting eagerly for the release of iTune phone. Finally time has come for Motorola to release the Motorola E790 iTune which can be used as an ipod player.

CTRL-ENTER in Firefox

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Netgear RangeMax WPN824 AP

This wireless router, Model Netgear RangeMax WPN824, has recently attracted a great deal of attention in computer malls. The vendor claims that the coverage is 10 times better than 802.11b/g with the use of 7 built-in smart antennas and MIMO architecture. At any time, it will select the antenna which beams the best signal strength to reach the wireless clients.

I can not imagine how this tiny box with a book-size can have up to 7 antennas inside. I guess in the not too distant future, we will soon witness the birth of 10-antenna or 12-antenna wireless routers if more antennas can really improve the performance.

Blogger for Word

Google has developed an add-in to publish blog through Mircosoft Word. After the successful installation, a Blogger toolbar will be added.

Thats sound as an astonishing news to the blogger community. Unfortunately, images and tables appear on Word documents can not be published.

Hey…. Google needs to put more effort to overcome these obstacles.

gwbasic and qbasic

I still need to use basic to do some trivial tasks like generating large amount of HKID numbers for test purpose and intermodulations on frequency channels. Right now, with DOS shell in Windows XP, I can still run basic programs quick and smooth. I can't imagine if I can still do the same in the next version of Windows Vista as people say DOS shell will be removed in the next release.

The world's largest Wifi city

By next year, San Francisco will be the world's largest Wifi city. Free wireless Internet access will be free or at least affordable to citizens all over the 49-square mile areas via the municipal wireless network. The project is estimated to cost 18 million.

The prime objective is to bridge the digital divide which makes lower income people not able to access the Internet. All corporate employees, federal officers, police and fire departments are able to benefit.

Who will be the biggest winners ? My idea that with such a fanatastic wireless infrasturcture being put in place, the sales of notebook PCs will double or triple in San Francisco. Notebook vendors should be asked to sponsor this municpial project.

Who will be the losers ? I can imagine that 2.5G mobile operators will lose a large part of their revenues.

Will such development be extended to Hong Kong. When affordable Wifi hotspots are all over the city, I do not need to subscribe to 2.5 G or perhaps 3G service.

warchalking

These three terms starting with "war" are interesting :

Wardriving - the practice of driving around to detect open Wifi nodes.

Warchalking - the drawing of symbols in public places to advertise an open Wi-Fi wireless network that other people can use to hook up to the Internet.

Wardialing - the practice of dialing many numbers for finding a modem connection.

Certainly, wardialing has almost disappeared nowadays.

For warchalking, a special symbol is to be drawn on a nearby object, such as a wall, the pavement, or a lamp post.


In our office, we have Wifi for visitors to hook up their notebook PCs. Hmmm.... just thinking shall we warchalk the symbol on easily seen locations.

Network Stumbler

I find NetStumbler from www.netstumbler.com. This is an amazing tool for trobleshooting problems in WLAN. It can be used to find locations with poor coverage by reading the S/N ratio and whether other networks nearby might cause interference to your own WLAN. On wireless bridge application, it can help to align the directional antenna in order to get the maximum signal strength.

客機上發短訊

在希臘空難事件後 ，一男子聲稱收到機上一名乘客的手機短訊，指就快凍死。最後該名男子被控以散播虛假資料及引起公眾騷亂罪名。

其實這宗大話很容易被識破，流動電話網絡採用的板面天線向地面傾側，主要集中覆蓋地面。客機在逾萬呎高空飛行，根本沒可能接收到流動電話網絡訊號。

Virtual Server via NAT

My wirless broadband router, model Planet BLW-04EM can support Virtual Server. That is to say, the WAN interface can pass Internet traffic to an internal host 192.168.1.x as if the services residing in 192.168.1.X are on the Internet. I have started IIS and access the WAN real IP address can redirect to my default web page through the internal network. That is to say, the Virtual Server is up and working satisfcatorily. However, if I try to access http:// followed by the WAN IP address from other hosts on the Internet, nothing can be seen. I believe my ISP has barred inbound traffic to port 80 of client IP addresses. Just wonder what good it is to ban port 80 inbound traffic ....

Running Windows and Linux on PSP

Great news to PSP lovers. By using Bochs x86 emulator, Windows and Linux can be ported to PSP. The Bochs packages now include FreeDOS, Linux, DLX Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Windows.

I don't quite understand how these things work !

tcping

Tcping is an alternative to icmp ping as nowadays most network administrators have banned inbound icmp traffic to their Internet hosts for security reason. Tcping does not use icmp, rather it uses tcp sync, ack and nop (no operation) to complete the two way connection sequences. It could be used to determine the round trip time to a host and also testing whether a host is live or not.

Tcping requires a port number in addition to the destination IP address when initiating the command.

Tcping in Linux can be found everywhere on the Internet. It is difficult to find Windows-based tcping. Fortunately, I've got one.

Reborn card

Game centers, Internet cafes and universities all have reborn cards installed in PCs.

Reborn-card will wipe out any installed programs by users at bootup and return to the Day 1 installed configuration. Good for preventing viruses and malicious codes and to ensure all the default configurations are not changed in any way.

For universities, people think that there might be a need to set aside a special partition to store user data where the data will remain intact upon bootup. Hey....man, I rather think that with the emergence of USB memory finger at extremely low cost, it is redundant to consider such a common partition.

USB DECT VoIP Phone

Linksys Model CIT200 is really a fantastic VoIP DECT phone. The phone itself is running skype VoIP and the base unit is connected back to a PC via USB for hooking up to the Internet. The colour display defintely attracts a great deal of attention.

It seems that PSTN DECT phones are being phased out now.

This phone is not available in Hong Kong yet. We may have to wait for several months for this product to come to our place.

Affordable 10GB Network Storage Service

I've got an offer of 10GB network ftp storage from Visicom Media at US$5.95 per month. The login process and file transfer are enhanced with encryption for security reason.

I think not only personal users need the backup storage, cooporate users also need the backup service to protect against the danger of fire in offices. Thought it is affordable to me, I very much hope HK ISP can provide this kind of service. After all, sending 100 MB of encrypted data to an US storage server consume considerable time due to limitation in international bandwidth of my ISP.

Wooo.. finally, the day has come for service providers to roll-out affordable network storage service. Many people have dream about this for a long time.

new gTLDs

The following seven additional gTLDs have been approved by ICANN in November 2000 and are now open for registration:

.aero - for the air transport industry
.biz - for business use, an alternative to .com
.coop - for cooperatives
.info - for informational sites, but unrestricted
.name - for individuals
.museum - of course for museum
.pro - for professionals

The ".name" and ".pro" domains sound not attractive to me. I would prefer to have my personal domain names ending with ".com" or ".idv.hk" or just ".hk".

cygwin

cygwin

Top 10 Most Wanted Offenders

Dshield.org has published the most wanted 10 offenders which are engaged in cracking activities.



The IP address 60.18.168.25 is logged in 1632859 lines of firewall logs/reports submitted by different parties and it is estimated that up to 223286 hosts have been targetted for attack. This IP address 60.18.168.25 is originating from mainland China. Fighting back initiative has been launched by Dshield to ask the corresponding ISP or service provider to take appropriate actions.

chroot environment for name daemon

In Fedora Core series, the DNS daemon "named" is run in a chroot environment. The default directory path is changed to "/var/named/chroot/var/named" instead of "/var/named".

The idea behind chroot is to tighten security. The service is also run by a non-root user. In a chroot jail, the process is unable to access any files outside the jail. This process prevents malicious code to start in the even of buffer overflow.

Congratulations to Redhat Fedora Core team for successfully improving security of DNS service.

IIS bundled with SMTP functionality

Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) is the web sever for Windows platform. However, it is a surprise to know that by default, there is a SMTP server working side by side when IIS is installed. The redundant SMTP server might give rise to security attacks. For those network administrators that are aware of this issue, they have stopped the SMTP from auto-start in the network administration tools.

The reality is that still Many IIS stations which act as web servers still have the useless SMTP daemon not yet removed.

Goodbye to Longhorn

Wooo.. at last, Microsoft finally decided to drop the official name "Longhorn" for the next release of Windows. The new name is "Vista". Frankly, Longhorn is an uninspiring name. Vista is a perfect name indicating the new OS will have a distant view or prospect. However, Vista has been registered by a software company. It is interesting to see how Microsoft could settle the legal issue of stealing other people's registered names.

Take a look at the poorly designed Longhorn logo and compare it with new Windows Vista logo. Vista logo is simple, cystal clear and elegant in design.



Haha.....Microsoft has taken a wise move to abandon Longhorn as the official brand name.

Firefox pdf2html plugin

I find the Firefox pdf2html plugin from rabotat.org. This is one of the most useful plugins I have found for use in Firefox. With this plugin installed, whenever I click to access a pdf file, there are three options offered, (i) save the pdf file, (ii) view the pdf file in a new window or (3) view the html file in a new window.

The reason I want to use this plugin is to copy and paste contents from pdf files to plain text for transfer to other file formats.

New functions in PRTG

PRTG gets new functions now to monitor bandwidth usage by different services such as HTTP, FTP and SMTP. This requires the aid of a packet sniffer to monitor the traffic carried over different port numbers. With this spendid idea, PRTG has more functions than traditional MRTG.

WEEEman

WEEE is the short name of waste electrical electronic equipment.

Presumably, many people in London have seen WEEEman sculpture placed near London Bridge. The WEEE man is built from the amount of electrical and electronic waste the average British person creates in their lifetime. On average, a British citizen produces 3.3 tonnes of WEEE in his/her lifetime. Most countries are running out of landfill to bury WEEE.

One problem identified is that people change their mobile phones frequently in pursuit of updated versions or trendier styling. An average person change his/her mobile phone just 11 months but the phone can have a usable lifetime of 7 years.

Time to considerate the impact to our environment when you want to buy new electrical or electronic products.

Queen of Rock N Roll

Quite some time ago, I mentioned in my blog that I picked "Ronnie James Dio" as the King of Rock N Roll. Now it's time for me to tell who is my Queen of Rock N Roll. Joan Jett is my idol for a long time. I love her voice, the way she plays her guitar and the rock beats in every song she sings. Indeed, she has been my Queen of Rock N Roll for a long time.

These are the great rock songs I chant in this month :

"Long live rock and roll - Ronnie James Dio

For those about to rock, we salute you - AC DC

I love Rock N Roll - Joan Jett and the Blackheart

I haste myself for loving you - Joan Jett and the Blackheart

Highway Star - Deep Purple"

Delete NTFS Partition

Somebody asked me how to delete Win2k or Windows XP NTFS partition. The fact is DOS FDISK command seems not able to detect NTFS partition. I recall that there is a tool "delpart.exe" which could be found in NT Resource Kit. Just wonder why Microsoft does not give Win2k and XP users this useful tool which has been available for quite a long time ???

Support for IPv6

I am a keen supporter for IPv6. Sadly, from time to time, I still hear people saying that there is no need to go for IPv6. These people include telecommunications experts in the ITU.

In the past decade, we all witness how the Internet change the way we do business and the way we live. Internet has bceome an important part of our human civilization. What we need now is a robust, reliable and efficient information foundation. Think it this way, the foundation of a building (brick and steel) determines how high a building can be built. The information foundation (networks) will determine how far our future civilization can reach. If we do not build a good information foundation now, our next generation will defintely suffer.

I notice this slogan from Green Peace in promoting environmental protection:

"只顧現在，那有將來。"

The slogan could equally be used to promote the implementation of IPv6.

Motorola Altair WLAN

As far as I can recall, Motorola is the first vendor to produce WLAN in 1990 and the product was named "Altair". The frequency band in use is 18.82 - 18.87 GHz, running with proprietary proctocol. Of course, the price was prohibitively high and such kinds of products with proprietary standard did not gain wide market acceptance.

The Soldier is the Network

In future warfare, every single solider is a network-connected fighting machine on the battlefield. Accessing a drop-down eyepiece on his helmet, called an Integrated Helmet Assembly Subsystem, he glances at a virtual computer monitor that links him to a GPS system showing his location as well as a live video feed from unmanned aerial vehicles.

He quickly checks computer-generated graphical data, digital maps, intelligence information, troop locations, and imagery fed from his weapon-mounted TWS (Thermal Weapon Sight). By scanning an area with the TWS, the soldier sees enemy positions. His climate controlled, lightweight body armor gives him ease of motion as he positions himself for battle.

Wooo…. each person is a network with routing capability to everyone else and the cascading networks, all IP-based, are dynamic and self-configured as the troops advance.

The “soldier is the network” will become a reality in ten years’ time.

Father of the Internet

Dr. Vinton Cerf is famoulsy known as the Father of the Internet.

In 1973, he invented the transmission-control protocol (TCP). The main idea was to enclose packets in "datagrams." These datagrams were to act something like envelopes containing letters. The content and format of the letter is not important for its delivery. The information on the envelope is standardized to facilitate delivery. TCP allowed networks to be joined into a network of networks, or what we now call the Internet.

In 1978, Dr Cerf and several of his colleagues made a major refinement. They split TCP into two parts. They took the part of TCP that is responsible for routing packages and formed a separate protocol called the Internet Protocol (IP). TCP would remain responsible for dividing messages into datagrams, reassembling messages, detecting errors, putting packets in the right order, and resending lost packets. The new protocol was called TCP/IP. It went on to become the standard for all Internet communication.

In 1997, President Clinton presented Cerf and his partner, Robert Kahn, with the U.S. National Medal of Technology for founding and developing the Internet.

Can US be the leader in IPV6

The US Government has been accused by the IT industry of not doing enough to promote the use of IPv6. In the US IPv6 Summit 2004, Mr Alex Lightman, the Chairman of the 4G Society, gave these words to the Government :

1. If there is no federal mandate for IPv6, the US cannot lead in IPv6 compared to countries that do have or soon will have national mandates with sufficient funding.
2. China, Japan, Korea, India, and the European Union are eager to compete with the US and have trade surpluses with the US to fund their transitions.
3. If the US does not lead in IPv6, the US cannot lead in the Internet.
4. If the US does not lead in the Internet, it cannot lead in Information Technology
5. If the US does not lead in Information Technology, it cannot lead in high technology.
6. If the US does not lead in high technology, it will be difficult to lead the world in anything except for deficits.
7. We will lose opportunities in satellites, automotive, energy, toys, apparel, food, 4G wireless, and a broadbandenable service export boom.
8. If the US does not lead in anything but deficits, its economy will shrink even as its population increases.

Trials of Chinese Domain Names in HK

HKDNR has announced to give free trial of Chinese domain names for 6 months. Without a second thought, I have registered two Chinese domain names.

Actually, the Unicode names shall be converted to punycode strings in order to configure DNS setting. Punycode is the standard coding scheme to convert Unicode strings to limited characters supported by DNS. For instance, my temporary registered domain name is "電信局.暫時.HK" in Unicode will be translated as "XN--VUQ841AX29B.XN--KJVZI.HK" in punycode.

On client browsers, in order to support Chinese domain names, the i-Nav plugin developed by Verisign must be installed. This is for Microsfot IE only. What a pity that there is no such plugin for Firefox and other browsers.

Google Earth

I never realize I have the chance to play with satellite images until I find Google Earth. Google Earth let me see the aerial views of many locations on the planet from satellite images. From the globe, I can locate the building I am living. No doubt, I will use it to find interesting land marks before planning to visit other countries.

This is a very demanding software package. Pentium P4 CPU and 3D graphic cards are required. Of course, high speed Internet connection is a must because when you zoom a location, Google's server will delivered the appropriate satellite images to your PC.

Google always develop new ideas that make all human being surprise. What is the next big project of Google ?

4-port Ethernet Hub

Today, it is very difficult to buy Ethernet hubs in any computer shopping centers in Hong Kong. I have been searching for some time and last Staurday, I saw Arlotto 4-port hub at Golden Shopping Center. The sales guy asked me to pay HK$70. I argued that hubs were being phased out in networking use and he agreed to sell it to me at HK$50.

Hubs create a lot of collision in networking. They should be used as seldom as possible and should only be deployed when the no. of networked stations is small, say below 10. However, an ethernet hub in association with a protocol analyzer is an indispensable tool to troubleshoot network problems.

Portable Firefox on USB Drive

A clever IT guy named John Haller has developed Portable Firefox, a fully functional package of Firefox optimized for use on a USB key drive. He even wants to make Mozilla Thunderbird and OpenOffice as packages in portable devices.

The release of Portable Firefox sounds a great news to me since I do not have the admin rights to install new software for my office PC.

No. of CCIE worldwide

On Cisco web site, it shows that there are 12,212 CCIEs worldwide.

Total of Routing and Switching CCIEs         :  11647
Total of Security CCIEs                      :    482
Total of Service Provider CCIEs              :    210
Total of Storage Networking CCIEs            :      9
Total of Voice CCIEs                         :    152

3706 of these experts are in In Asia Pacific Rim. In our places, 1473 CCIEs are working in China while 159 are working in Hong Kong. Just wonder what kinds of job position should these experts hold ???


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Linksys USB 802.11b client

The left picture shows an old model of 802.11b client designed by Linksys. I like the steerable antenna and the USB extension cord which allows me to place the whole unit in a best transmit and receive position. The performance is much better than that design as USB finger style 802.11b/g WLAN clients. Actually, no matter you plug a little finger client in the front or rear position of a PC's case, the metal case itself either block or absorb a great deal of electrogmagnetic energy.