Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

One of the students participating at the meeting with Cristian Tudor Popescu today made an interesting remark, highly appreciated both by the other students and by Cristian Tudor Popescu.

I can’t call reform the fact that I learn the same courses as my father had, but in PowerPoint.

Romanian:

Nu pot numi reforma faptul ca invat aceleasi cursuri pe care le-a facut si tatal meu, dar in PowerPoint.

Today it’s been exactly one year since I joined the Psi Forums. For those that don’t know, Psi is probably the best Jabber client living out there, in the Internet.

Q: How’s Psi after one year?
A: Getting better… (as always).

My first post was on May 13th, 2003, probably after getting used with Psi and it features. Psi advanced a lot compared to what I found exactly one year ago. It has now popup support (mentioned in that first post), service discovery, MUC, file transfers (availabe next version)… and many others, that I probably forgetting right now.

Anyway, one of the greatest things about Psi is it’s community - a passioned group of developers, contributors and users, making one of the best (maybe even the best) Jabber Client. On Jan 24, 2004 I’ve been promoted (this word sounds really nice) to Forum Moderator in the Psi Community. This was a good chance for me to start giving more to this wonderful community. I am trying to do my best.

Happy birthday to me & Psi ! I’m a certified one year old Psi user!

IceRAM (Mircea) - a satisfied Jabber consumer

Have you ever wondered how is it like to have Windows running on personal objects? Maybe…
Most of you are probably thinking now of their computers running Windows(r)… and the PDAs running Windows Pocket PC 2003 (or older) or Windows CE.

I have to admit those are not all the Windowses out there. There are more…
Just imagine yourself surfing the web, like I was, and reading the latest information on the Sasser worm - nothing unusual, isn’t it? How about getting to a paragraph where it says it affects Windows XP, 2000 and some NT versions. Still nothing unusual. But wait! There is more.

Wired News: Sasser Plays Havoc Worldwide
“We don’t know yet, for example, if it attacks machines running on Windows XP Embedded, which runs ATM machines and cash registers,” said Raimund Genes, European president of Trend Micro, a security software company. “That would be disastrous for banks and retailers.”

Hmmm.. what?!? Not “what Windows XP Embedded?“, but “ATM machines and cash registers?“. Skipping the fact that I didn’t even know that Windows XP Embedded exists, not that it would surprise me, but… still… ATM Machines and cash registers? I am sure I wouldn’t want to get a blue screen on those machines, or a Sasser-like worm in there (I just hope they don’t share the bugs with the well known Windows OSs). I know that there are other RTOSs (Real Time Operating Systems) well known (such as QNX) that are used in critical activities.

Some resources on Windows XP Embedded:

• Microsoft Windows XP Embedded - the official site.
• Windows for Devices - you will find plenty of devices running Windows, things you have never imagined that can run Windows, from the usual PDAs & SmartPhones to unusual workout bikes.

I was browsing today through my neighbors list… and I remebered that the net also gives me the posibility to see myself from above…

I know that some of my coleagues once downloaded a huge satellite image of Bucharest (~200MB) but I can’t seem to find it right now.

My ISP’s DNS server is not running great these days and I’ve decided to run my own DNS Server, since I’m using Linux. The idea was to cache the DNS entries locally and query the ISP DNS servers only when needed. This way I would prevent the current timeouts. I’m using bind (named - daemon) as a DNS Server.
I’ve used the following page to help me change in my named configuration:
http://www.faqs.org/docs/securing/chap21sec164.html

Another good resource on DNS Servers is: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html

I also plan increasing the ‘time to live’ in the DNS cache (local server) for the entries, since I don’t want to rely too much on the outside DNS Servers. I would special zones for the domains that need regular updating (such as dyndns.org, no-ip.org and others).