A relative recently had a problem with his computer, where any links he clicked from email messages in Outlook popped up the browser, but always to a “Smart Web Search” page. When I initially heard of it, Google Chrome was getting the blame for the problem, but I was pretty sure it was just an issue with some crapware. After he took it to someone in the Milwaukee area who charged $90 for claiming to fix it but did absolutely nothing towards taking care of the problem, I finally managed to get some time carved out to address it. Thankfully I could remotely access the system via UltraVNC and see the problem, and it only took about five minutes to figure it out and get it corrected. This link was the first I clicked when researching the problem, and disabling (and removing) the “Smart Web Search” crapware extension quickly got things back to normal.
Technology Archive
Removing “Smart Web Search” crapware from Firefox
Posted January 20, 2014 By Landis VSimpleInvoices stuff
Posted January 1, 2014 By Landis VI set up Simple Invoices this evening for some basic billing I need to do (and automate). Pretty straightforward for the basic part. I did discover that there was a bug for the recurring invoicing that was reported as fixed, but apparently still exists. Fairly simple fix – assuming your “simpleinvoices” install is in /var/www/simpleinvoices, run:
vim /var/www/simpleinvoices/include/class/cron.php
Issue a “:117” (followed by enter) in vim, then add a closing quote to the line referenced in the link above.
Still working on my invoicing emails, as I don’t run a mail server on the host I run the service on, and need to get it set up to send messages through my gmail – or actually configure a basic mail server. Will see what works the best.
New DDoS malware targets Linux and Windows systems – Network World
Posted December 24, 2013 By Landis Vhttp://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/121813-new-ddos-malware-targets-linux-277059.html
Linux has finally achieved enough market penetration to be worthwhile to attack. Not desktop market penetration per se, but market penetration nonetheless. The particular platforms where it can be found with relative frequency fundamentally contribute to the reasons the attacks are successful – they are home user devices that aren’t likely to be updated. I surmise that within the next three to five years, we’ll see a tipping point where many of these network devices will default to automatically update themselves in much the same manner our operating systems, browsers, and many applications in both the mobile and desktop realm do today.
A few finally find HotSpot 2.0 Wi-Fi connections – Network World
Posted December 9, 2013 By Landis V1-Wire USB Interface – CodeProject
Posted November 27, 2013 By Landis VUSB-Serial CH340
via 1-Wire USB Interface – CodeProject.
I’ve been wanting to do some temperature sensing/tracking for some time, and this looks like the way to do it. I’ve ordered some CH340’s off of eBay for $.99 each and bid on some DS18B20 1-wire sensors at about $1.20 each. My hope is to be able to interface these to a USB port on one of my Pogo E02’s and have a better idea what ambient temperatures are doing in my fermenting area.
Application Aware Triggered Quality of Service – Jared Valentine
Posted November 5, 2013 By Landis Vhttp://user.xmission.com/~hidden/aatqos/
Using tcpdump, Snort, sec, and policing to programatically rate limit connections for the improvement of call (or other delay-sensitive application) traffic.
Tacacs + AD + CentOS = FREE | packetroute
Posted October 21, 2013 By Landis Vhttp://packetroute.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/tacacs-ad-centos-free/
Pretty complete guide to getting Marc Huber’s tac_plus set up on a CentOS box. Need to give this a shot in an LXC container at some point.
