My thoughts on “Digital Locks” on music..

Honestly, I have no problems with it. If Artists want to lock their content to prevent copying, that is their choice. My only issue with it is when they have ‘hidden’ software installed that gets put on my PC. I think they should be required to advertise if their product has digital locks or other forms of copy protection like Spyware installed on it. Makes it easier for me to simply not buy it. I do not see what the fuss is about it. If I do not like their rules, I can simply not purchase or use their product. Same thing with the flights and ‘pat downs’. My choice if I want to fly. However, I will be all for getting patted down in public. Might even help them by stripping off all my clothes. Make things interesting. Or Scary.. hahah

EFF Releases “HTTPS Everywhere”

When you are normally just surfing the web, the websites you visit and update (most noticeable Facebook) send your information over clear text across the Internet. EFF has released the latest version of HTTPS Everywhere. What this add-on for Firefox does is switch you to an encrypted version of the site where it is available. It does not proxy the site, it only sends you to the encrypted ‘https’ version. If you have Firefox, I highly recommend you get this add-on.

Restricting SSH Login for specific user to specific network/IP

I have a client running an Oracle RAC environment. Logging in via ssh or anything else as a service account (i.e. oracle)is strictly frowned upon. According to the DBAs, some functions of RAC require direct login as this service account. So, we put in a ‘paper’ policy saying that the account could only login as ssh from within the environment itself. No user was to use the account to login. This has mostly worked, but occasionally we notice a login from the ‘oracle’ account directly from a PC and hit the excuse ‘I forgot’. That’s when I searched for something within sshd or PAM that would allow this login from within the environment, but not from outside. The article I found summed this up very nicely. Thanks NixCraft!

The line I added to the /etc/security/access.conf was:

-: oracle : 192.168.100.

Fedora 14 is released!

http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora

Personally, I like the XFCE desktop

Some of the highlights?

Freedom
Features
Friends
First!

Check out more at http://fedoraproject.org/en/about-fedora