Piratefish Open Source Anti-Spam System

More 3D Printing

2012-01-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

So, as penance to my little project of building a 3D printer, I promised my friend Harout that I'd print him all he needs to build his own Mendel Prusa as well - he was generous enough to provide me with some leftovers from his 3D printer project, and it's taken 2-3 months of experimentation to finally get up to what I'd call "production" level quality - the unfortunate thing is that I'm running out of my best working materiel - the PLA he provided! This PLA stuff melts at a nice temp, cools fast when a fan is pointing at it, and hardens quite well too - making some serious stuff.

Here's a my RepRap in action, printing an endstop holder in PLA:

Now that the quality of the output is way up, I've started getting some parts together - and tonight I actually started printing one of the bigger pieces - what I'd call one of the hardest pieces in fact because it's been printing for over 3 hours thus far, and it has one huge nasty overhang.

For my non-3D printing experienced readers, let me take a moment to explain something about these 3D printers - they use something called additive manufacturing - this means that it prints things out by just adding materiel onto the print surface - and building upwards. Kind of like dropping melted wax onto a table very accurately and making a pyramid.

This sounds simple enough, however, when you're printing without some kind of support materiel, and you need to print out something with holes in it, you may find that you're in a pickle because you can't print in the air... or can you?

I've been fearing printing this part for quite some time, but had to give it a try - and it knocked it right out! Something like this drooping down or falling off after 2.5 hours of printing would really suck!

Anyway, the results were excellent as well - here's the final product once it was done!

Harout, you'd better be ready buddy - I'll have your kit printed soon...

Oh yeah, and I've STILL not gotten that black ABS stuff to print yet - it's EVIL! I'm going to try a different hobbed bolt and combine that with a .75mm printhead and a higher-temperature extruder upgrade next as getting the black stuff to print will give me enough material to print another frame for myself!

Printing in 3D with RepRap Prusa!

2011-12-11T22:29:00.001-07:00

So, things have been a little quiet here lately - the combination of work, Skyrim, and frankly, life, has been a total drag on my reality. Loosing relatives always sucks, no doubt about it - but it's been one hell of a year - and I'm not alone in that I just want 2011 to be OVER!

On the good news side of things, my project for the last 3-4 months has finally produced some real outbound, rather than just being a tinkerers dream. I got my RepRap printer going at last - and I've been now working on the next challenge - actually printing things!

Now this thing has been a challenge - at first I tried using my RAMPS 1.4 with the RepRap firmware - apparently most folks consider this a mistake - the Sprinter firmware is evidently much better - and I'd have to agree. I'm glad I bought my RAMPS from Ultimachine - they're one of the two great American sources for bot parts I've found. Lulzbot is the other, FYI.

As for the software controlling it - Pronterface is also the king of that realm in both PC and Mac - although it's no cakewalk to install - and then there's the entire mess of choosing how to perform your slicing - and it turns out that slic3r is the Mac best option there - the Skeinforge program does look good, but it's got a slew of defaults that just don't seem to count - and the latest versions insist on dragging the printhead around the for a few layers first, why, I have no clue. Perhaps if I ever build a CNC or something...

So, here's the basic gist of what I'm up to - first, using Google Sketchup to create stuff in millimeters - then using a Sketchup plugin to export the models in STL format - then plugging those STL files into Slic3r, then finally loading those into Pronterface and letting the printer try and print.

And what a learning experience this has been - getting the Z-axis aligned is a total pain - and even worse is figuring out how to best adjust the extruder rate! Right now, with the soft ABS that I got from Harout, I'm running the printhead at 240 C (need to recompile for the new printhead, so that temp might be off), and what's more, getting the first layer to stick is a REAL challenge with these.

I'm just glad I got the Budaschnozzle working nicely - it was the most trouble-free thing about this adventure.

So, just to share some experiences with folks, here's my first printhead design - using a 10watt resistor (resistance is too high - never got hot enough) - did melt some stuff with work, but not a good seal to prevent backflow!

As you can see in this pic, the backflow really got in there - no matter what plastic I used - and I clogged it with blue and green ABS as well as PLA.

A common beginners design flaw here - too much standoff between the heat and the output - by the time the hot plastic comes out of the mig welder tip here, it's too cold to stick to the print bed!

I got no decent output from this one - just some lumps of melted plastic.

Design #2 wasn't kept around, but well, it was .5 ohms of nichrome wire wrapped around a mig welder tip - and it lit up like a 40watt bulb for about 5 seconds too.

Design #3 was a pure Radio Shack version of the printhead - while I was waiting on a shipment of appropriate nichrome wire - I started building extruder head #3 - and that produced this one:

Now this one did have a fighting chance - it was six 10ohm 1watt resisters in 3 parallel strings of 2 resistors in series. It heated up very nicely, and the JB Weld kept them on the aluminum heating block nicely too - however, once I tried using this with the green plastic, well, things got bad - the heat was too much for it, and it desoldered the resistors - and shorting out the circuit. Once the resistance was out, it solidified, and then the pressure pushed it out of the teflon retaining tube. On the controller side of things, the 10amp fuse never really protected the circuit so much - as did one of the traces on the RAMP's board! Fortunately, I was able to lay down some wire and solder and bring it back into workable shape!

Design #4 came into play once I got the nichrome wire that worked - it was 7.5 ohms for foot, and had insulation too - so it was perfect. I immediately wrapped this up into a new single MIG tip once again, even put some insulation on it - and this sucker heated up FAST. Once it was warmed up, I was able to get some action out of it - however, there was major backflow in this design too - so much that it even blew through the JB Weld holding it in place on my teflon tube.

I finally bit the bullet and bought the Budaschnozzle from Lulzbot and immediately found out that I needed a couple of 4x30 screws and wingnuts and washers so that I could attach the thing to my printer.

Their design was different, but actually works quite well - kudo's to the Budaschnozzle - I've printed plenty so far, and my biggest problem is Z calibration.

My first real prints were to get more endstop holders - the ones that came with my original printer were not nearly as durable as I'd liked, and so I set out to print more of them - except that the plastic I used at first was hard, and wouldn't flex nicely - I got these, but was still having troubles with lack of stick to the bed - that pesky Z axis..

Eventually I got things to stick better, then started working on the flow rates - and that's looking better now too.

I tried printing one of the BIG prusa sleds, but I gave up - too many parts, and still have not mastered the art of getting the first layer to work perfectly.

Now I'm a few parts in and having some real results. Wowsa!

Thats all for now folks!

Piratefish 4.70 is released

2011-09-10T16:27:00.000-06:00

The latest version of the Piratefish is now version 4.70. This version incorporates updates from the beta version (which shipped out most recently) (and quietly) - and adds in the bug fixes for the startup problems found last May.

I've also decided that it's time to reduce the price - the Piratefish eBook is pretty well refined now - most folks who've purchased never run into problems - at least, they're not emailing me about them if they are - and what's more, as much of that cost was a support charge - it seems unjustified now. My eBook price has dropped to $33, and as before - updates and support will be included.

Hopefully, the PayPal landing pages and such will now work better as well - kinda tough to test their purchase portal without using a second Paypal account.

If you're running the 4.7beta version of Piratefish, then you've already got most of this update already - the 4.65 version is replaced - so if you're using any version of the eBook prior to 4.7beta, please be sure to email me to get the latest version.

Cheers everyone - and thanks for your continuing support.

The Real Truth Behind Android Sales?

2011-08-02T00:56:00.001-06:00

So, if you're like me, you probably see the tug of war between the iPhone and the Android. In the world of telecommunications where I work, this tug of war plays out constantly.

But one thing always gets me - the headlines week after week, month after month, it seems that the market appears fickle, and that sales of this droid or another always seem to surge and release, and then an article comes out about how great iPhones are or how dedicated iPhone users are, or Apple posts their quarterly numbers and people see the real sales totals that result ing the "oh shit" reaction in the press, gushing about how great Apple is.

I think however, there's a factor behind those high droid sales - it's something I've seen at the office with numerous coworkers, and it's something that the Apple world doesn't experience that often. Simply put, it's the phone replacement/upgrade/repair cycle. An extension of the old adage, the grass is always greener in your neighbors yard.

Now in my case, this is really true - my neighbors to water more than I do - I mean, after all, we live in the high plains and Kentucky bluegrass is hardly anything close to native here, so I water the absolute minimum amount - not one iota more than needed. Sure, if it didn't rain for most of July, my yard would already be a brown dustbowl, but even now, my neighbors are probably watering as I edit this, or planning their next foray into yard fixer-upping. But I digress.

A good friend of mine has the Star Wars "R2" Motorola droid - definitely a cool droid phone, but this particular phone doesn't seem to be that mainstream as droids go, but there's plenty of other models to go around. This friend has had some issues with his phone, and I think he got it replaced without issue - a fairly standard expectation given what he paid for it, and it's particular special niche being a specific model of sci-fi fan phone and all. My friend is the sole exception to my theory in this droid sales matter - he's that "static" kind of customer, who's not going to change phones, unless he can retire his R2D2 phone in favor of something cooler - like a pit droid phone, or perhaps a C3PO gold phone - but I seriously doubt that people would want a phone that embodies Sheldon Cooper on their hip. Oh, the humanities!

So what I now theorize is the reason for the droid sales is based on the observation of other folks n my office. Large numbers of them have changed from one droid to another, seemingly often. Now I'll admit, there's some bias in my observation here - I'm an iPhone user - I had a 3GS and enjoy my iPhone 4 now. I also happen to work for a fairly large cellular carrier too - one that carries droid phones too.

What I have noted is that a good number of other folks in my office appear to replace their droids when as often as the opportunity presents itself. One coworker moved away from his iPhone 3GS over battery issues, and has since had a Motorola Palm-clone, the Palm phone, and 3 different droid models, each one moving forward to a different degree, first from a big screen to a bigger screen, and now he's got the 3D phone. Note that I've not even worked 3 years at this job, but this guy's been through more cell phones than anyone should ever consume - and he's the only person I know who's actually cut away from Apple's iPhone. He still loves his Mac though.

Another coworker went through a number of Motorola droids before he finally lowered the boom on Verizon with the quiet ultimatum "Guys, I've been a customer for ages and you can't seem to get me into a reliable phone - we've send this droid model (their best one at the time) back for repair/replacement 3 times, what's next?" only to be awarded with an iPhone and a "Please Be Happy". Funny thing is, he's been through a few phones in the last couple of years too - but he's no longer looking at alternatives because he's realized what other iPhone owners (like myself) have realized. Sometimes it's not the gadget that we seek, but rather, it's the reliability of a portable safe haven that just does the job and doesn't die.

So my realization is a relatively simple one - I think that Droid sales as an overall statistic are generally overstated by the industry that supplies them - if their product was snappier, and it perhaps wasn't so poorly integrated at times, then it's possible that some folks could pick their droids just once, and run with them until they wear out. I think that Droid owners aren't all satisfied, though, some are - and others are just in it to play. With iPhone's, the play is in the device - you don't change them out often, only when the upgrade is out and you're ready (and can afford it - always an Apple factor.)

So that's my rant - droid sales are driven by blind consumers who keep changing phones looking for a good fit, while they avoid the iPhone on principal, not realizing what they're missing.

My R2D2 droid friend finally bought a iPad - he says it's for managing his VMware servers are work, and I believe him. I bet he uses that app twice a week to justify having the iPad, and I'm sure he loves his iPad, though he won't admit it. I'd bet money he's got Angry Birds on it now...

Testing Web Services in Load Balanced Environments

2011-06-11T15:24:00.222-06:00

Since the Internet has emerged, I've found that effectively testing web services is a sort arcane art form restricted to nerds like me - I have profited from this talent, however, I also think it's something that more people should know how to do.

Testing cleartext web services is actually simple - I'm sure a number of you have all done it - some readers may find this information remedially trivial, while others of you might decide that it's helpful. In the past I've used the "open the web page" kind of approach - it either works or it doesn't, but that's not detailed enough if you're really wanting to do the job right. There's a lot of testing that can be done using Telnet that most people just don't know about.

For those of you who do use telnet, please keep in mind that just telneting to the service port isn't good enough - just yesterday I got a call from some colleagues who "tested" a web server by "telneting to it on port 80" - it connected, so we thought it was working. Turns out they were wrong, and it caused a major outage to boot - but it wasn't their fault for not knowing what I know - that's why I get the big bucks.

Basic Remote Testing

Basic remote testing is done two ways - using a web browser and then with Telnet.

Lets start with an example server at 192.168.1.100 - you have a web server running there, so you try browsing to it - so you open the website http://192.168.1.100. Now, if this works and returns a page of any kind from the server, then it's all working. This test is important - I might skip this often enough because folks don't usually call me when this works already - when testing this stuff, it never hurts to ask "Did you try browsing to it?" This could save you quite a bit of time on the phone!

Testing with a web browser does present some problems; what if you get a blank page? that's tough to interpret - and how long does it take to time out? does it time out? different browsers behave differently, so there's a big problem in result interpretation here. Unless you get really good results and know what you're seeing, you should perform more advanced testing.

The telnet test is a little more complicated. Those of you running Windows Vista or Windows 7 will need to actually install the Windows telnet client (it's in Add/Remove Programs, Windows Components) - those of us using Mac's and Linux don't have to worry about this - telnet should be present on our systems already.

Telnet is a command line tool, so you'll have to open a terminal window in Linux or Mac, or start a command prompt in Windows. From this prompt, to test a web server, all you have to do is type this;

telnet 192.168.1.100 80

Breaking this down, the IP address 192.168.1.100 is the server we wish to connect to - this can be an IP address or a name like www.google.com - and the number 80 is the port we wish to connect to. If you don't specify the port, telnet will assume that you want to use port 23, which is the standard telnet port. Port 80 is the standard HTTP port. If you're not familiar with the various ports and what they're used for, you can use google or check Wikipedia to find a common TCP services listing.

Now, if things work right and the server is at least listening on port 80, you will see a "connected" message of some kind - this message is slightly different from one platform to another, but most of the time it will clear the screen if it works. If you get this far, for basic testing, you've done well. Press CTRL+] key and type quit and you are returned to your command prompt.

If things aren't working right, you will see one of two different categories of problem - either a network response failure or a host response failure.

A network response failure will manifest with a long wait following by a connection failure message of some kind. These happen if you are being blocked by a firewall or if your traffic is somehow not getting to the server. Some network failures are fast - like if routing fails and you get a destination unreachable error - however, firewall blockages usually take 15-30 seconds to manifest.

A host response failure will manifest much sooner and usually get a connection refused message - this is a standard RFC-793 response (see pages 33 & 34) telling you that you that the remote service isn't running - if you get a refused message, this rules out interference from firewalls and other things getting in the way in most cases - however, some firewalls can be programmed to send out connection refused messages - so it's a good idea to try doing a traceroute and validate the network path and make sure that none of the firewalls, if any, on the path are messing with things.

HTTP Service Testing

Up to this point, we've done only very simple testing of the remote service - we've determined that's listening, but we've not actually discovered if it's working yet. If a server is broken, or a load balancer is messing with you, then basic testing with Telnet isn't enough to know what's really going on yet.

Service testing means that you don't just connect to the server, but you also must interact with it. There are rules for how the services interact, and each different service is described in it's own RFC. In this case, we're doing to communicate with a web server using HTTP protocol on port 80.

Open a command prompt
Type in the command telnet 192.168.1.100 80

At this point you should see a connected message of some kind.
The next things you type may or may not be visible (depending on the OS you're using)

Type:

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.whatever.com:80
(Press Enter/Return twice)

When this is done, and everything is working right. a web page (in HTML form) should spit back at you - and the connection might even close - or it might stay open waiting for more commands.

Breakdown of the HTTP 1.1 directives used here:

With Step 2, we use the same command from the Basic Remote Testing section of this article above.

Step 3 has two different command directives in it - these are from the HTTP 1.1 protocol. The first line in step 3 is the GET command. It tells the server what HTML page you want - replace the / with something like /about.html and you can change the page you wish to retrieve.

The second line in step 3 is telling the server what website to get that web page from - remember that the HTTP 1.1 standard allows for virtual hosting - where multiple websites live behind a single IP address. When using HTTP 1.1 you have to tell the server what website you're testing with - and it requires you to separate the server portion of the URL from the page portion.

Here's some examples:

Example URL: (a yahoo search result for Open Source Anti-Spam)

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Am8gS8IlXhBaelxqn9B0BGibvZx4?p=open+source+anti-spam&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-701

This URL can be fetched manually with:

telnet search.yahoo.com 80
GET /search;_ylt=Am8gS8IlXhBaelxqn9B0BGibvZx4?p=open+source+anti+spam&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-701
HostL search.yahoo.com:80

Dealing with Load Balancers

Up until now, all that I've illustrated here is basic testing. In a load balanced environment there's another added layer of complexity.

Load balancers are designed to take traffic going to one IP, and distribute it to a bank of servers all doing the same job. In this way, a complex website with large amounts of traffic can be hosted on 10 servers, but all look like the same exact website.

One popular form of cheap and easy load balancing is done using DNS. Someone will setup DNS so that their website results provide multiple IP addresses in their results. A great example of this can be seen by running the command nslookup www.google.com - most people will see 2-10 servers in the results list for this, and these results will be customized depending on your ISP and a number of other factors.

This kind of load balancing isn't perfect however - google spends a lot of time and effort to make sure every one of those servers works right - and they also try to point any any servers you might be hosting for them as well - long story there - but large ISP's actually do host their own google caching servers, and this speeds up things substantially.

One common problem when you use DNS balancing is that if you have two servers in the DNS listing, and one of them is offline, your customers will experience a condition called Every Other Request Works - and when this happens, folks will fail the first time, then refresh and things work fine and keep working until 5 minutes pass and their DNS cache expires.

For the common masses, there are load balancing features in firewalls, and there are custom load balancing systems as well - nginx is a popular open-source load balancer - and F5's are a popular commercial load balancer. Both work very well and can be found in major networks all over the Internet.

A common term used in load balanced IP's is the VIP. A VIP in this context is a Virtual IP address that the load balancer creates for your website. This VIP is used as the destination for all your web traffic.

So lets take my example from before - my web server on http://192.168.1.100 - now imagine that I've actually got ten of these web servers running - http://192.168.1.100 through http://192.168.1.109 are all identical boxes running with the same content.

Using a load balancer, I can create a pool of web servers and in this pool, each of my ten servers will be defined as members of that pool. I then create my VIP so that the IP address 192.168.1.10 maps into my pool of web servers.

When hunting down problems in this environment, you must test all 11 of these IP addresses to make sure things are working. This means performing the testing described in the HTTP Service Testing section on all 11 IP addresses - from 192.168.1.100, 192.168.1.101 192.168.1.102, through 192.168.1.109 and then on 192.168.1.10.

Problems with load balanced websites can be many and weird - so knowing that everything must be tested is very important.

Testing the front end VIP ensures that the load balancer is running correctly; testing the servers on the back end ensures that they're all working properly.

Load Balancer Health Checking

Engineers working in load balanced environments should be aware of is that all load balancers have integrated health checking - and if the person who setup the load balancer didn't setup the health checks properly, then you can experience many nasty weird problems.

If health checks aren't enabled, it's possible that you can access a perfectly good VIP and get nothing back beyond a basic RFC-793 TCP/IP handshake - because it may have forwarded your request to an offline server.

If health checks are setup with simple checks, then the load balancer might just do Basic Remote Testing - and that's it. If a back end server in the pool is responding and connecting on port 80, but isn't actually responding to full GET commands, a load balancer doing Basic Remote Testing will eventually forward traffic to that dead server. Some load balancers may only simply ping your webservers - and responding to a ping has nothing to do with checking a web service.

Health checks, when properly setup, perform full HTTP Service Testing - talking and testing each server, fetching a complete web page. When a server stops responding or doesn't pass the health check tests, then it's disabled in the pool - and the load balancer engineer should be notified by email.

In conclusion, I hope you find this article helpful - it covers a lot of ground, but the processes described here are easy enough to remember and follow - and you may just impress some folks if you can pull these out of your hat and call the right engineers first. If everyone working in NOC or helpdesk environments knew these techniques, they could cut hours off their troubleshooting calls.

Cheers,

-JS

Don't ever list an iPhone for $200

2011-02-20T16:18:00.000-07:00

My wife and I recently upgraded ourselves to new iPhone 4's, and boy were we surprised at the feeding frenzy that ensued when I listed them both on Craigslist for $200 each. What a mistake!

They were listed 90 minutes ago, one picture, and the phones were complete with original headset, cable, box, Etc. Both were 16gb white 3GS's as well. I thought "hey, my new ones cost this much, I'm happy breaking even..."... Right after listing them on Craigslist, I went to make a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids, only to have my phone ring as I was getting ready to put butter on bread for sandwich #2.

The first caller waffled a bit - he was at work, had to take a break, hold them, Etc. During that call, I got another call - this guy learned I had two, wanted them both, was ready to pay cash, was nearby, and on his way, when I flipped back to the original caller, he decided to come as well.

By the time I managed to get the second sandwich onto the pan, I'd handled 10 calls, and the second caller had gotten here with more cash than I was asking to take both phones! While the guy was here I got 5 more calls, and had to deal with 10 text messages too - since I'd taken the ad down off Craigslist, another 10 calls came in.

Holy crap!

I know iPhone's are immensely popular, in spite of what the hypnotized android using masses say, and I must admit, I'm shocked by just how popular these things are. I should have realized this when my wife and I got the last two iPhone4's the AT&T store at the mall had.

I'm not going into the business of selling iPhones, but in case you're considering selling an iPhone, here's what I suggest you do;

The Piratefish Guide to How to Sell Your Old iPhone

Be sure you have a backup of the phone, complete with all your applications backed up and happy on the replacement iPhone.
Don't give the buyer any excuse to bid you down on price. Remove all covers, skins, Etc. from the old phone and wash it up nicely with a little window cleaner. Use a q-tip to get the gunk out of the switch and bottom holes if you prefer. If you have the original box, get all the bits and pieces together, and clean the box with a little window cleaner as well.
Go into the phone, do a complete RESET and WIPE of the phone's data. After it's wiped, plug it into your computer and tell it this is a new phone (don't restore it) - this will allow folks to test it, but whatever you do, don't reload any contacts or anything.
Take a picture of it - just one will do.
List it on CraigsList if you dare, eBay will get a similar price, but take much longer.
Take only cash.
Make them come to you! Don't offer to meet anyone anywhere - these are expensive phones. You're safer in your home.
Be prepared to de-list the Craigslist posting within 30 minutes of listing.
Don't offer to "hold the phone" for anyone - if they're not ready to leave now to get to your place and they don't say that, wait 5 minutes and someone else will be ready to come over and get it. Anyone waffling on the phone should be told this outright. This is rude, but frankly, you're getting rid of a phone here and the act of selling is an inconvenience - they shouldn't call if they're not holding cash and are ready to drive over immediately when they call you.

Now, I don't think I've left anything important out, but there is one more thing I've learned in this process, and that's what a successful buyer did, and what someone should do if they want to buy one.

The Piratefish Guide to How to Buy a Used iPhone

Get the sufficient cash needed to purchase the phone - then get $40 more for the "just in case" scenario.
Gas your car up.
Get your "map" on.
Be ready to drive immediately after you make the phone call. The guy selling the iPhone isn't going to sit around and wait all day - when you call, you want to be first.
Get into Craigslist and start searching for the iPhone you want.
Keep on clicking refresh until you see a listing respond with something you like - plan on doing this for an hour or two. It's worth the effort to take your time and wait - the number of people who contacted me proves this.
Once you see it, call the person if you can - don't text them, don't email them - CALL THEM.
If they have the phone, tell them you're ready to go now - and get directions to where they want to meet and go immediately. If you can, bring a friend, but don't delay or tell them you'll be a "couple of hours" - if you delay, you will loose the sale. If you must delay, offer them more money for it - the "just in case" fund is for this - to get them to wait, you gotta pay.
When examining an iPhone, be sure to look for cracks on the edges, scratches in the metal on the corners, scratches on the Apple Logo on the back and scratches on the screen. Also, check to make sure it works a bit - if the phone is in "itunes" mode (displaying a "plug me in" screen) then you won't be able to test it - I'd request that they plug it into their computer and get it past that screen so that you can test the speaker.

Why bring a friend when buying an iPhone?

Please take note: I'm a security guy by trade, so it's my job to think of worst-case scenarios, and one disturbing one came to mind after this experience.

The reason I advise folks to bring a friend when buying an iPhone is to hold your extra money and sit in your car, and to be ready to call 911 if something goes down. Sounds paranoid, but I've realized that all it takes is one Evil SOB with no morals whatsoever to figure out how to rob potential iPhone buyers.

Cheers!

Spotting Counterfeit Cisco Transceivers

2011-02-10T15:40:00.001-07:00

A co-worker recently brought something interesting over for me to look at - he was getting ready to ship out some 10gig XFP's for one of our sites, went into our store room, grabbed some and got back to his desk, only to find that the two identically labelled models, one from Thailand and one from Malaysia, both X2-10GB-SR modules from Cisco, seemed suspicious given the current scares about bogus Cisco hardware in the wild.

Being paranoid, we've contacted Cisco, but they've been less than helpful in anything other than verifying that both have valid serial numbers so far - but we've escalated the discussion to see if anyone in the community can help!

Here they are:

Of the two XFP's above, the upper one weighs in (unofficially) as about one ounce - very light indeed. The lower unit has substantially more mass to it - it weighs in (unofficially) at 3-4 ounces - it's much heavier and feels more solid - it was this difference that first set off my coworker, and has the rest of us wondering.

The first pic shows the labels on the two units (serial numbers blotted)

Note that the upper label looks great, but this is on the light weight one, so we're scratching our heads even more - Cisco even said the serial was okay, but serials can be copied. What's even weirder is that the logo on the lower one actually looks cheesier when you get really close in.

The next picture is the sides - once the weight made us look, we then started to notice more interesting little things about these:

The light weight XFP has obvious flashing on the sides, on both sides in fact, where you can see it was cast in a large mold, broken, and finished poorly with a cheap foam gasket and a large thick faceplate. The heavy XFP has a beautiful finish on it, the parts fit better, smaller gaps in the case, the faceplate is thinner and the gasket is a higher quality foam with a conductive steel sheath. The plastic components on both are impeccable - nothing obvious, however, there are mold marks (good ones) on the heavyweight XFP which indicate higher quality manufacturing controls. Also note that the lock pins on the light weight model are much sloppier in design when compared to the heavy weight.

Now some folks might call me nit-picky, but screws are something I take notice of as well.

The picture on the left is the light-weight XFP - and it's got phillips head screws on it. The other one has torx head screws - and they're recessed too. Much higher quality on the heavy one here in my opinion.

The last picture to share is the edge connector on the cards:

Now call me picky again, but here if you look close, you'll see on the left-hand side, the circuit card on the light-weight XFP seems to have a glossy epoxy coating on it - the four round solder pads above the last few pings show "dimpling" where the epoxy coating seems to be dented in. On the heavy weight XFP, the board has a consistent, flat non-glossy finish - the leads are clear, the pins appear to etched with better quality, Etc. Etc.

Now here's the question: Until Cisco comes back with an answer on this, there seems to be nobody out there saying definitively "here's how to spot bogus Cisco stuff" - and this is there I'm hoping to hear from you!

Update: 2/22/2011 - So, our Cisco SE was on site today and we brought this to him - as it turns out, the upper logo that appears on the XFP stickers is the newer logo - the darker logo on the bottom (heavy) XFP is actually an older logo design - pre 2005 apparently.

From a design perspective, these are drastically different XFP designs, however, one thing was pointed out by our rep. If you have support, call the TAC, and the XFP's are appearing as Cisco in the IOS, then they're supported and it doesn't matter if they're clone hardware or not.

Another item to note: newer designs generally have lighter heatsinks and less insulation because newer chip designs are less noisy/leaky and generate less waste heat as well.

Why Apple will keep owning the tablet market for now

2011-01-13T20:41:00.006-07:00

Apple shall dominate the tablet market until the next new tech comes along.

This might be a bold statement coming from an apparent Apple fanboy, but lets examine some market paradigms before you dismiss my statement.

Lets start with a few reality bites that can and probably do affect Apple's position: (Note: these are not listed in any particular order.)

Apple's "our way or the highway" approach to Apps has made enemies in some development circles.
Apple acts like a sort of gestapo when it comes to what apps are allowed.
The tech of the iPad isn't remarkable.
No camera, no video conferencing.
It's very expensive, bordering on over priced.
Lack of, or at best, weak, multi-tasking capabilities.
It's a giant iPod.

Each of these points has been discussed at length online, and as much as I'd like to present my own re-hashes of these points, I'm going to refrain this;

They're all correct.

For each of the items listed, a google search on that subject will return you 100's of links discussing that very point - enough crap that I could write 7 entire blog entries, one each for each subject. If you're reading this, then you've likely ready all of that crap already - just like I have.

Note: The fanboys who read this will probably yell blaspheme and point at me like the Evil Monkey if they see me on the street. I can deal with that.

One other thing that I can say for each of those items is that I don't agree with all of them - or perhaps, depending on my own personal rationalizations, I should rather state this:

Don't entirely blame Apple, they're necessary evils - and it's our fault.

Please bear in mind that someone with something to protect can't simply ignore their rules - one bad apple ruins everything for everyone. Don't believe me? How many of you will buy Android apps from Bob's Hack Store using a credit card?

Despite the hoopla, sales say otherwise - people are buying iPad's like crazy, and not knowing the actual retail numbers - I can say that every major retailer I visited was out of stock on all the iPad's they had this season - trips through Target and Walmart showed me empty cases - devoid even of demo units, during the last week before Christmas. Enough that Acer, and probably all the other retailers, are already bitching about lower than estimated PC sales during the 2010 holiday buying season.

Regardless of the Apple's and the iPad's shortcomings, of which there are many, its wide array of applications and its broad appeal are spelling out a marketing and product success that will last for years, defining the standard for tablet computers for some time to come.

Now keep in mind, Apple's iPad isn't the first tablet attempt - there were plenty of other failures along the path over the years - Toshiba has had tablet PC's out for quite some time - and HP likely squandered their opportunity as well when they never made a Windows CE tablet that was either interesting or capable enough. Nobody is brave enough to try entering the OS market with anything visionary except Apple, and their vision is tempered by decades of GUI experience.

There have in fact been a vast array of tablet PC's that came before the iPad, and none of them were cool, slim or dedicated to the simple task of being hand-held and easy to use. Apple's own Newton Tablet (which I also owned long ago) was quite a kicking setup for its time, though its handwriting interface was, in my own opinion, a total failure. Being a terrible cursive writer, I was never able to tap the potential of the Newton.

Apple has certainly cleaned up however - their iPhone/iPod Touch OS, made large, has definitely proven to be a serious contender in the world of computing - and it's not often that so little can do so much.

Certainly, there's plenty of "next generation" tablets out there - the Android forces are definitely gathering for war in this marketplace, but I fear that they will ultimately fail. The reality is that the tablet war is over for now, and the next fight will not be over video conferencing or connectivity options or anything in that realm. Apple has won that war too, and the first shots of the competition are coming, and they will never be heard.

I liken the Tablet Computing Wars to the Video Game Systems wars: There can be only one winner at a time -- Until the next best thing comes along. There is always room for others.

If this is truly an extension of this kind of techno-warefare, then were in for plenty of wannabe's before the "room for others" finally gets filled with the winners circle. Remember, the video game wars had plenty of players before the market finally settled on the dominant players - and the dominant gaming console changed over time - the earliest console worth remembering was the Atari 2600, then Sega dominated for a while, then Nintendo, then Sega Genesis, then Playstation, then Nintendo again, then the PS2, then the XBox, and since then, the XBox 360, the PS3 and the Wii have been socking it out - as far as folks can see, there are no other consoles worth the time or effort - those 3 probably account for 99.9% of all gaming consoles.

Now that the Kinect is out, and based on the demo's I've played, I would say that it will over time dominate Microsofts position and rule the field for quite some time. Well done Microsoft! At least you did something right for a change.

As for Sony's PS3, well, the Blu-Ray player built into the PS3 still helps it enjoy a strong position, but if the movie prices remain offensively high, people will never stop buying DVD's. If Sony doesn't come up with their version of Kinect quick then they're doomed to remain in third place behind both the Wii and Xbox 360. Their "motion" solution, with those horribly stupid looking ball-ended controllers sucks - they screwed the pooch on that one - and the only saving grace for my PS3 is it's media playing abilities - but those are hampered by their self-serving content protection measures that sometimes creep up. Steaming media is killing even that functionality though - my Apple TV with Netflix has ensured that we didn't have any movies under our Christmas tree this year.

Endangering Sony's position even further is their enraging users of the PS3's "3rd party OS" support by removing it. This caused hackers to focus on breaking the PS3, and they didn't just succeed - they did something that Sony fears most - hackers cracked their master encryption key. It's now possible to pirate any software on the PS3 platform, and there's no way for Sony to know you're using illegal copies. Sony has lost all ability to protect their content on the platform, and the only way to fix this is to replace all the PS3's out there with something better, like the PS4. The real rub is that, while the PS3 did have some backwards compatibility with the PS2 games, a new PS4 can not have ANY backwards compatibility with the existing base of PS3 games because they have no way to know which games are legitimate and which are illegal copies. Had Sony not messed with things, their master key could have gone for years longer without exposure or cracking had they not pissed in the wrong people's lunches.

The Wii has dominated in it's segment - it fills in the "discount gamers" niche quite nicely - while the XBox 360 and PS3 gamers fight their holy-war to determine who's the best. It's not a media player. It's got motion, but with limits, and the games focus on group play more than most - and these are big pluses in a world that is increasing isolated by FPS gamer heads - and those segments are filled with XBox and PS3 players anyway.

In the world of tablet computing, we've now reached our first Atari 2600 moment. There's a dominant product in the space - and that product, like the 2600, has dominated the space and defined it. There will be plenty of also-rans, but only one iPad for the foreseeable future. Just like the 2600 dominated during its time - there were alternatives, but they really never had the traction to take over until they hit the "next level". We'll see this trend in tablets too I think - there will be some cool stuff coming, and it will all be Android based, but the field may be filled with plenty of options that just don't seem to take over the top slot from Apple, because they just won't be that far ahead.

I think there will be a time where the iPad is surpassed by someone else's tech, but what puts that tech ahead of the iPad cannot be quantified at this time - we don't know what it will be yet. It's Apple's job to find out what that is, help refine it, and make sure that they're the one's selling it to us - and if they fail at that job then they'll loose the pole position in this field - for a time anyway.

Google is banking on cloud integration, and that may hold true for many things - but then, Apple is also working similar angles. I personally see the education market being the next big corner of the tablet world - my daughter seems to be enamored with the iPad, but her locking brains with Backyardigans on Netflix will only hold out for so long - she likes playing with the educational apps I download on it - and I see her eventually having my iPad and my moving into an Apple Macbook Air 13". I'd love to see a real-world version of Neal Stephensons of the Young Womens Primer from The Diamond Age come to the iPad.

You know you've used the iPad too long when...

2010-10-31T19:49:00.001-06:00

The euphoria of owning an iPad lasts. No, really, when you're using it, you feel a connection - like owning a dragon or something, it's like.. and extension of you, like perhaps I'm part Borg, and have a low bandwidth connection to the collective..

Anyway, I've started to realize some things in my life that have changed, and only 4 days since I've gotten my iPad.

For starters, for the first time, I'm not as worried about being without a power connection nearby. I'm the kind of guy who ALWAYS has extra power cables for my laptops - if they're not plugged into the wall, they're not usable to me. I don't know why I'm like that, but hey, it's just the way I am. If I'm not getting all of the processor, I'm just not satisfied.

With my iPad, I've actually run my battery down to 65% and didn't sweat the current state of charge - even now I'm home and writing my blog, using my new Apple bluetooth keyboard, and my iPads just happily buzzing along at 84%. Nice. Almost amazing really. This thing is a total miser.

So, we're in our usual Monday meeting with my team, and our boss angles his 32" monitor our way to discuss some of the craziness that makes our jobs great, and as I'm sitting closest to his screen and leaning in to see, I actually caught myself reaching out to touch his screen to try and scroll it down! I mean, I didn't touch the boss's screen, but I did pause for a moment in the air, and then I retracted. As my co-workers looked at me curiously, I explained that I had just fought the urge to scroll Ben's screen downwards with my fingertip. The room roared. That moment, I realized, that the iPad has started to change me, and that things will never be the same.

I'm certain that it will be a strange trip, but I can't wait to see where it takes me.

I've always wondered what it would be like when our basic thoughts about how computing works would change, and I like where the iPad ios leading things - I mean, we've always used our computers and thought about how things were stored, and the design of the PC and the Mac all work with buckets - this bucket paradigm, as it were, is the basic concept of the computer as a device of different kinds of storage, and what we do fits into those buckets, and is ultimately, limited by them. Buckets of disk, buckets of RAM, offline buckets, Etc. PC users think of disks as drive letters - and what happens when there's more than 26 disk drives?

At least in the land of Linux (and Mac) the storage-centric bucket paradigm has been broken down a little - instead of buckets, we have mount points, all linked to the big bucket called /. But even so, people still work in folders, and have the inherent need to organize their stuff in folders, which further reinforces the presence of the bucket paradigm.

The need for these buckets was necessitated by the early computer designs that we all grew up with - of course, back when things were on the SS-50 bus the buckets were a lot smaller. Top end video cards come with more than a gigabyte of storage, and 28 years ago, the Atari 2600 video game system was dominating the home gaming market, and it had 127 bytes of video memory. And both of these systems, the new and old, live and die by the bucket paradigm.

I see a future where computer storage becomes ubiquitous with the computer itself. Is that far fetched? I think not - I think the iPad/iPod/iPhone is the best step away from that direction in a great many years. I mean, certainly, one can see the device itself as a bucket, but when it comes to the operational side of things, in an organizational point of view, all you're ever dealing with is just one bucket - and I think that in the bucket paradigm, the computer itself should be exempt, until cloud computing comes into the picture.

When I work on my iPad, I don't have to think about file locations, or cloud my mind with what kind of structure I'll need to solve this problem or that problem - all that concerns me is that I focus on what needs to be done, and I work on it and get it done. I find the freedom of not caring about what I'm doing or where I'm putting it, is something of a welcome release. I do certainly expect that at some point the computer might not be large enough, and I'm certain that I'll need to organize my stuff in folders, but I'm happy knowing that no application I can get won't run on my hardware. It's funny tyo say this now, but it's actual quite a relief to find that I don't have to deal
with hacking together my OS every time starting from an insecure please.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Marshall St,Northeast Jefferson,United States

Piratefish Site Moved, Version 4.6 is out!

2010-08-20T00:28:00.000-06:00

Okay, so it's been a while since any updates here, so there's plenty to talk about. I could rant on about the little things, like my slow conversion to Mac, how much I love my iPad, how mad I am at Tic Tac's dropping the peppermint flavor for the new Freshmint flavor, and sneaking it into stores everywhere. It still amazes me how many times people have to pull the "New Coke" stunt just to try and revive their sales. It's either that, or the owner died and his son wants to pay off his new Ferrari. I hope they bring back the original peppermint flavor soon - I really miss it. Freshmint reminds me of what mints taste like when I'm done puking and want to try and kill the puke flavor that toothbrushing can't reach in the back of my throat, so I eat a mint, and it tastes like Freshmint Tic Tacs. But I digress.

For starters, version 4.6 of the Piratefish is out - for those of you who've been wondering if Ubuntu will EVER update their copy of the MailScanner software, well, it doesn't matter - we have an alternative to their poorly managed update system, and it's documented in the latest version, available to all previous owners of the guide. This solves a major problem folks had been having with mail looping on their fish.

Next: The New Website. The Piratefish site has grown over the years, starting from FrontPage, then going to Dreamweaver, and now finally to WordPress. WordPress, for those not familiar, is a CMS (Content Management System) that handles all the time-consuming website stuff like formatting, graphics, looks, Etc. with a nice point and click web-based management interface. Combining this with a blog-like approach to content, it's now easier than ever to update the site, document new releases, Etc. After spending some time with it, I'm convinced that it's the best way to go when it comes to building websites now - the plugins and widgets make customizing a snap, and the template options are quite nice too. There's still a learning curve for anyone managing it, but there's a lot of power available, even for a guy like me.

On the conversion to Mac front, I had a recent pleasant experience moving the wife's PC into a Parallels Virtual Machine - her old machine was starting to show some stress on the north bridge, plus it had a habit of overheating as it was breathing too much dust. Running the Parallels Migration Tool on it left the machine packing up a copy of itself for 3.5 hours, but the end result was a 100gb file on the machine which I then moved to the Mac. Parallels booted the VM instantly (it was on an AMD system too) and other than loading up some drivers to get the integration to work, it was a piece of cake. Definitely a well rounded tool there.

On a more or less different front than the usual list of rants, I recently completed the Cisco Troubleshoot class. If you're a serious Cisco admin, this class might be worthless do you, but for those of us who've moved on from Cisco and haven't quite kept up with all the little tips and tricks for debugging within IOS, this class can provide you with some excellent growth for your Cisco grey matter.

Speaking grey matter, I'm feeling nauseated once again. Better find something to eat soon that's not Freshmints - otherwise I'll be tasting them again in a very bad way that no amount of burritos could solve. Even the Santiago's Burritos that the boss got us at work the other day were better - and when they say they're "hot green chile" - you'd better believe it. I got one of them and darn near added new holes into my throat. Even the consultant from India who sits next to me had a hard time with his burrito, and he had a medium heat one - this from guys who use ghost chile's as elephant repellent on their fences and in-laws.

As for other headaches, my biggest one now is what to do with all the leftover stuff I have from upgrading two computers to Macs in my house - I mean, I've got two rack-mount servers without jobs, and I've also got a Packeteer Traffic Shaper sitting in my office gathering dust, and I've converted my Acer Aspire Revo into a low power server by adding an external Toshiba 1TB eSATA disk drive. One thing about these eSATA drives - seems that the cables can be somewhat sensitive to direction in some cases - in mine, the Toshiba drive had this nasty curve on the case, which forced me to shave some of the excess plastic off my only eSATA cable. The speed difference is great though with it - beats the pants off USB drives. I figure a trip to the Mile High Flea Market with all my stuff is probably in my future.

Piratefish Site Updated

2010-06-01T20:05:00.000-06:00

So, after ages, I've finally gotten around to updating the Piratefish site a goodly bit - I figure, when I move the site to it's new home in a new CMS system, it would be a good idea to at least have the old version reasonably updated before committing myself to it's new home.

Just so folks know, I'm angling towards hosting Piratefish on a WordPress site - this will provide the web-based access I need to update the site more quickly, plus provide the extras that folks would appreciate - like being able to read it on their iPhones without extensively zooming in on content. More info and links as things get closer to done. The nice folks at GoDaddy, who've been hosting me for years on the cheap, have raised pricing substantially compared to 2007 - $15/year has become $5/month - so it'll be time to move the site one way or another, very soon.

Version 4.5 is now out - it's got updates, a lost chapter has been "found" (at least it's in the table of contents now) and I've managed to test and integrate a lot of goodies into this version. Naturally of course, Ubuntu had to "celebrate" by releasing a new version of Ubuntu Server, but fortunately, not much has changed since the last version.

No new features have been integrated in since the addition of MailWatch - though, the site now has a sample PDF available here in case anyone is interested in seeing what the doc looks like before buying it. MailWatch integration is about 80% complete, with the grunt work of defining all the little bits and pieces still needing to be documented - the most useful feature - the spam quarantine controls - are the hardest to document by a long shot.

iPad Saturday - not so mad after all, but I got out early...

2010-04-03T09:04:00.003-06:00

This morning my wife and I got up, and made tracks down to the Park Meadows Mall to get my iPad. The crowds were definitely present, but it was quite amazing how quickly and efficiently they handled the mobs.

We arrived at 8:40am, Apple said to show at 9am - the store officially opens at 10am (with the rest of the mall). The lucky reservists, like myself, who'd reserved their unit early, got treated to free Starbucks, Smart Water (no kidding) and granola bars. They had built two lines - one for reservists and one for those hoping to get theirs without reserving one. The staff did say that they'd communicate with folks actively as to the condition of their supplies, and would let folks know once they'd run out. When we got there, there was perhaps 45-50 people in line for the reserved units, and that line grew to more than 100 in short order. The unreserved purchase line was much longer. Apparently some folks thought that reserving the unit cost money as well - perhaps not a horrifying mis-understanding, but I think stating "free reservation" is better than "reservation" for future marketing prep.

The transaction went smoothly, and we were in and out of there fast. I got a 64gb unit along with the case. When I asked about the case, another sales rep danced up fast, handed me a unit already in a case, and that was my first time ever holding one. These things definitely have some weight to them, but the case is surprisingly rubbery as well - a definite must have for the iPad owner.

They did not have the keyboard dock - I was quite bummed with that - and much to my dismay, I have a feeling that this won't be able to charge by just being plugged into my computer - the 10watt AC adapter might just be something I'll need an extra of. Once unpacked, the unit was fully charged and just needed to be synced with my iTunes. All my media, music and apps moved over without too much trouble as well.

I've downloaded all the updates, and I'm sure more are coming out as well - I installed iBooks as well as Stanza - Stanza is much better at finding free content, but once I know what I want, I can probably find it in iBooks and get it without paying for it as well. The iBookstore seems a bit like an early release in Apple land to me - it's plenty polished, but seemingly very limited. I'm sure that many new features and options will appear as time goes on.

The movie and audio quality are all what folks thought they'd be - I'm very impressed with the screen and the quality of the multi-touch.

Importing my picture collection was definitely an interesting experience - apparently they don't actually move your pictures, but rather, iTunes runs an optimizer on them first, and then brings them all in. My 16gb of pictures loaded into something like 1.7gb of space! The picture navigation interface is definitely cool stuff.

I tried to do some playing around with Bluetooth on my email station that runs Windows 7, and was plenty entertained by the Bluetooth connection process. Windows recognized it as an Entertainment Device (hilarious!), but failed to load a driver.

Anyway, I'm going to post more updates as I get around to it. Definitely a lot to explore on this thing!

Update: Its official, the default background makes folks think the screen is scratched. Nice move Apple.

Chargers are definitely going to be a necessary extra - turns out the 10 watts these things need isn't available from a standard PC USB port. Apple seems to have anticipated this in their hardware though, as their latest machines provide the correct power. Looks like battery life will be tested - need to test the car charger options to see if they can cut it. Perhaps my old iPod stuff will work...

Update: Sunday

Okay, so I like actually went outside and tested some things. PC users of iPads are going to be bummed until a high-powered USB port somehow. PC's can NOT charge an iPad - they just keep it from dying. My car charger does charge it. The $20 Belkin charger I picked up at Wal-Mart doesn't charge it. My iPhone mini-cube charger DOES charge it! I gave the Belkin to my son for his iPad Mini, er, iTouch, and took my mini-cube back and will leave it in my bag. It probably just barely charges, but slower. No smoke yet either, but I'll be watching.

The screen does show fingerprints badly, however, video quality is definitely top notch. The Netflix app is hot - now I can watch (and actually hear) a movie without blasting out the house while I'm on my treadmill - and I'm not squinting at something I cross-coded for my iPhone anymore either! Booya!

So now the news reports that Apple may have sold more than 700,000 of these on day 1. Wow. I mean, lets put this in perspective - if the average price of an iPad is $599, that means they solve $419 million dollars on day 1. That's $419 MEGA dollars. Avatar pulled in only 232 million on opening weekend, and it wasn't a holiday. Apple released this on EASTER WEEKEND! Like, worst sales date ever - only one buying day, and then everyone takes Sunday off. Even if you correct for Apple's cost per unit, adjusting the $419 down by say... 60% (which is high from what I've seen).

But wait, there's more. At the same time as this. Apple released their office suite for only $30 - and that's the most downloaded item in the iPad store now!

Cheers!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Park Meadows Center Dr,Sedalia,United States

Goodnight, Netbook.

2010-03-13T11:03:00.002-07:00

Goodnight AC Adapter,

Goodnight BIOS Messages,
Goodnight Windows Boot,
Goodnight User Chooser.

Goodnight Windows Update,
Goodnight Windows Genuine Advantage,
Goodnight Updates Complete, Time to Reboot,
Goodnight Reboot.

Goodnight Anti-Virus Scan,
Goodnight Anti-Spyware Program,
Goodnight Internet Explorer, Firefox & Chrome,
Goodnight Mouse.

Goodnight Installation Media,
Goodnight Heavy Lump,
Goodnight Low-Resolution Screen,
Goodnight Over-sized dialog boxes off the bottom of my screen,

Goodnight Outlook,
Goodnight Flash,
Goodnight PDF Reader,
Goodnight Adobe. And don’t come back.

Goodnight Battery life concerns,
Goodnight CPU Cooling Fan,
Goodnight Keyboard,
Goodnight Netbook.

Hello Big Touch Screen,
Hello Always on,

Hello Cheap Apps,

Hello iPad.

And good night to tech support, at least for now.

MailWatch for Piratefish - it's in Beta now...

2010-02-15T22:44:00.000-07:00

So, for those of you who want to live dangerously, I've added a new chapter on setting up MailWatch for the Piratefish. This needs to go through some serious testing, but thus far it looks good. From the sound of things, I've managed to take this further than most of my users - but man, after today my brain is toasted. I need to kill some zombies now! The integration of MailWatch into Ubuntu is definitely not an easy task! This new chapter walks folks through setting up MySQL and PHP, and there's a lot of integration tweaks too! The current write-ups all focus on using PHP4, however I've documented the process to get it burning on PHP5, and it appears to be working great!

MailWatch has some nice visibility into the logs from the look of things, and can draw up some nice graphs and provides the Quarantine management features that many of you have been asking about. As it stands, I need to re-build my SMTP lab, and re-configure my Piratefish to use it - and then expose things to the outside with my test domain to see what comes in. I figure, with some serious abuse, I can get MailWatch to really shine and get some nice pretty pictures for the Piratefish website!

MailWatch also has features that integrate the Bayesian filtering controls and blacklist controls into the SQL database - I've not gotten that part written yet - that'll be another weekend soon I'm sure. First I want the lab operational so I can formally test what's been done so far!

I also added a new section in the appendix providing a walk through to get VMware Tools installed if you're running the Piratefish on a VMware server.

If you're a current owner of the Piratefish and would like a copy of version 4.3beta, please drop me an email! Testing in a live environment should be possible, and this configuration on minimally hooks into the MailScanner conf file (which can be backed up before starting!) - the only requirements are that your Piratefish system has enough extra disk space and RAM to handle running MySQL in addition to it's regular duties, and that you are using a good firewall that blocks MySQL and Port 80 on your Piratefish from the outside world.

Cheers!

ClamAV Permissions Errors? Take a look at...

2010-01-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

One of my users recently ran into some troubles with their Piratefish where MailScanner was having troubles moving messages after scanning them - in particular, one message became locked into place, and MailScanner was unable to extricate it and get it on it's way.

Now tempting as it may seem to just manually go and fix this, I resisted telling my user, and he resisted doing the same, but he did ultimately re-configure his MailScanner conf file, loading an older backup, and that's where we might have found the source of headaches, as the backup of the file fixed things nicely.

This problem might exist as a problem within the MailScanner Webmin plugin itself, but is easily repaired. All one has to do is enter into their MailScanner.conf file, and find the line containing "Incoming Work Group = clamav" and change it to "Incoming Work Group = "

This fix might have deeper implications for other problems I've seen with MailScanner - all telling me I should start looking at MailScanner configuration alternatives - and there are some worthy replacements for that part of things, FYI. Those updates will be coming out later.

For any of your seeing some weirdness in your logs regarding permissions, please do check this line in your MailScanner.conf. I'll be adding this troubleshooting step into the latest book update as well.

What in the world is wrong with Adobe?

2010-01-26T21:43:00.002-07:00

I just don't know how to start this post - I don't think I want to go off on a rage again, but I have to wonder sometimes if anyone human is actually making decisions at Adobe.

The concept of a single document reader is a good one, and they've jammed this down our throat for years - I remember the first time I ever purchased an $8k software package, only to find the book missing, and replaced with CD-ROM with a PDF - at the time I was very pissed - after all, I'd just purchased one of the first Intrusion Detection Systems available - RealSecure, and it was some next level cool stuff during it's time - but I was infuriated with the idea that they could pocket more of that money and take up more of my screen real estate.

Back then, downloading and installing Adobe's reader wasn't a major painful installation - sure, it was an 8mb download, but nobody cared. Nowadays, most people don't even balk at the idea of downloading a 35mb program and installing - there's larger toolbars these days. But what really gets me is the tendency towards these installer packages - sure, okay, I can understand using Microsoft's special downloader when I'm pulling down an ISO, or perhaps using a special installer for some larger things that need updating like Google Earth, but hey, when Adobe's stupid Acrobat reader his 40+mb, and I have to download an installer - yeah, I get a little annoyed. What makes things more annoying is when I go and do something else, with that dog running in the background, and when I return 5 minutes later, it's not even half way done downloading!

I mean, wait a second - I'm paying for 20mb downloads here - and Adobe's stuff is perhaps one of the most downloaded programs on the Internet - so why does it take so long? I mean, Comcast buffers this stuff, but not if their custom downloader is messing with it, but taking more than 5-10 minutes to read a single 2 page PDF is getting excessive.

During my impatience, I explored Adobe's site to see if there was a way to download direct, and then I saw the death bell for Adobe Acrobat Reader - version 9.3 now REQUIRES Adobe Air. For those of you who are less educated about things, Adobe Air is the essential equivalent to Microsoft's Silverlight, and Adobe Flash (formerly known as Macromedia Flash, but I digress.)

Faced with installing Adobe Air on my little Acer Aspire Revo, which is a cool, albeit weak PC, I was disgusted. I'd run Adobe Air before on a Dell D630 Dual-Core laptop with 4gb of ram - and it performed poorly on that system. Very poorly. Poor enough that I aborted the Adobe install completely. My little Intel Atom couldn't take it. If I didn't have the full version of Acrobat on my PC at work, I wouldn't run Adobe's software at all now!

I liken Adobe Air to being more like a nasty fart. I have to wonder why they came up with Air as they already own Flash, but the I've realized that they might "own" Flash, but the fact is, it's grown beyond them and they don't make the money off it like they can if folks want to make Adobe Air apps. At least folks can write and publish Flash code without paying Adobe anything - however, Air being their own proprietary format, pretty much precludes third-party development tools, at least for a while, boosting their tenable bottom line, while leaving the entire room smelling like a flatulent donkey.

Disgusted and still not able to read my 2 page PDF, I decided to see what free alternatives are out there, and yes, I found some - and so I downloaded the Foxit PDF reader, and installed it, and opened my PDF, all within 2 minutes of my Google search. Funny thing is, even after killing the install when it wasn't complete, there were icons on my desktop - who do these bastards think they are? When did leaving icon's strewn all over people's desktops become acceptable software behavior? Does a Microsoft's Help utility need to have an icon on my desktop? No. Does anyone launch the Adobe reader, then use it to find their files? I seriously think not! My parents would find it in Windows then open it - and that's how I've always done it. That's probably how you do it too - that or you click on the link and want it to launch - but cluttering up my desktop, well, that's rude - and it's something I've come to expect with those scumbags. Excess icons on my desktop are akin to someone sending me a gift, and boxing it with 10,000 packing peanuts that explode out of the package when you open it.

It's regrettable that Adobe has deteriorated so far that they have to trick people to distribute their schlocky, unnecessary new "platforms" by stitching them to their own "document standards" that they've been pushing down peoples throats for over a decade now. I have to say this - folks, remember these three letters:

O D F

Open Document Format. It's the future. It's not quite mature yet - but I'll be watching. And if you own any stock in Adobe, well, I'd recommend to watch carefully - their only worthy product is Dreamweaver... what, that's from Macromedia too....

And one last little note to take in - in the time it took me to write this, plus the time it took me to patch my Windows 7 Ultimate and reboot, you could not download Adobe Acrobat 9.3. For some reason, I can download 40mb in seconds - but not Adobe Acrobat. They must think that having their bloated slugware installer on my desktop for 15+ minutes is some kind of free advertising. Man, are they stupid!

Installating Windows 7 and seeing 0x80070570 error...

2010-01-09T01:28:00.004-07:00

If you've recently tried to install Windows 7 on a new hot setup, you might run into the 0x80070570 error, where the installation fails with disk errors during the unpacking process.

After scouring the web for solutions, burning and re-burning the MSDN image, and considering doing the crazy thing - like installing XP, then migrating to 7 via Vista, I was very frustrated. In my desperation to see this machine sing, I tried a different approach and was most pleasantly surprised - I installed the OS from an external USB DVD drive.

It would seem that my brand new ASUS M4A78T-E w/AMD Phenom II X3 with SATA DVD burner, just wasn't getting along with the installation process for Windows 7 - but my USB DVD drive, which is an old IDE DVD burner with an adapter cable and external power supply ($20 at most well stocked computer parts places), worked perfectly.

Now if someone can explain how it is this new setup tells me that 4 cores are activated, when I have a three-core AMD processor, well, I'd just love to know! For those of you out there trying to get Windows 7 installed, just so you know, it appears that SATA DVD drives just may not be the perfect starting point - I'm certain they'll work fine once the OS is installed though.

Cheers!

Piratefish 4.2 Released!

2010-01-05T23:42:00.003-07:00

After long delays and much editing, the newest version of the Piratefish is at last released!

The new version of the Piratefish is now version 4.2. There's a story behind the version number, suffice it to say that between when I started the re-write from version 7.10 to 8.10, everything had changed - and when I picked up where I left off with version 9.04, it changed once again, and once more when Ubuntu 9.10 came out.

This new version includes numerous fixes and re-writes, and is much more up to date with the current version of Ubuntu Linux - version 9.10. I've used a new method of getting screenshots, and unlike previous versions of the Piratefish, this one was built originally in VMware so that I could snapshot, start over, and get screen shots of boot screens and other goodies.

It has come together and has been tested, and with the latest versions of SpamAssassin and MailScanner, it's one of the best versions ever. Ubuntu server 9.10 is also an awesome version of Linux to use as a base, and I've even managed to roll in and test some new tricks to keep spammers on their toes.

I have decided to retire the old eBook format used in the old Piratefish - using PDF's ensures that Mac's and Linux users can also use the Piratefish as well. I've also taken steps to format the document so that it's more book-like - so if any of you wish to have your book printed and bound, that is now an option as well.

This latest version is 118 pages, and because I'm using a more portable format, upgrades can be done more easily than before.

I've not updated the PayPal links for auto-download, but that will come next in the coming days. If you've already purchased the Piratefish eBook, you are entitled to free lifetime updates, so please contact me for the latest version.

Cheers!

SpamAssassin 2010 Bug - Reboot Required...

2010-01-04T14:05:00.002-07:00

For all my users out there, just an FYI, there's "bug" that's been reported in Slashdot and elsewhere that in SpamAssassin, there's a rule that is causing email sent in 2010 to be marked as spam. I've heard reports that this has been experienced by Piratefish users seeing an increase in false-positives, so here's how to fix it:

1) Log in as root
2) Update your system using "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade"
3) Perform an "sa-update"
4) Reboot your system

Once this is done, you should see an improvement right away.

Vans shoe store using bait & rip marketing

2010-01-03T16:22:00.001-07:00

Did you ever go shopping and get confronted with tons of sales signs like this?

This is the Vans shoe store in the Colorado Mills mall not far from my house here in the Rocky Mountains. As I'm sitting here sipping my diet Coke, watching my wife and girls play mini-golf, I decided now was the time to try blogging from my iPhone and have a little rant.

Normally, hunting down sales is a fun adventure for all, but today it was more annoying than usual because of a crappy little bit of marketing misdirection perpetrated by the folks at Vans shoe store. In this case, as you can see in the picture above, there's plenty of 'Buy 1 get 1 half off' signs throughout the store - in fact, those signs are everywhere. However, when my wife handed me a couple of shoeboxes for both herself and my little girl, I was told at the register that the 'buy 1 get 1' doesn't apply because of a little sticker on the box.

Now under less pounding circumstances, I would say 'that sucks' and move on, however, this seems worthy to write about purely because of the annoyance in the store where they pasted one of these 'buy 1 get 1' signs on just about every case and shelf in the place.

Even cheesier is how they camoflaged the sticker by using the same font, coloring and other style elements in the sticker as the sale signs, further disguising the bad news. Believe me, this blog is way edited down from what I wanted to write originally - but opening with a headline like Crooked F'ing B-tards just isn't right...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:County Road 116,Northeast Jefferson,United States

Piratefish 4.0 - Coming soon!

2009-11-24T09:16:00.005-07:00

Forgive me reader, for I have sinned. It's been >2 months since my last blog entry.

At this time, the next version of the Piratefish document has reached chapter 18. So far, the document has grown and changed quite a bit from it's original incarnation - I'm also going to be working hard on consistent formatting throughout the book - there have been slip-ups in the original that have been more than just a little annoying when I find them.

Some of the newer, nicer things I'm taking advantage of in this edition are the building of the system on a VMware ESXi server, and better screen shots using Microsoft OneNote. Apparently OneNote has one of the best screen-shot tools built into it - and once it's icon is riding in the tray, getting a custom shot and storing it in a clipbook, is as easy as Command+s.

In the meanwhile, my last 6 months of consulting for Cricket Communications has turned into a full-time position as a network security engineer for them - quite nice to work in an enterprise with both budget and bandwidth. Free phones are nice too.

Anyway, time permitting, the new version of the Piratefish is coming together. I started the re-write just as Ubuntu 9.04 had come out, and I completed the first 5 chapters - but then life caused delays and now Ubuntu 9.10 has come out - and I've had to update those first 5 chapters and then start moving the rest over. Fortunately, many steps haven't changed much - though, I find myself changing old chapters far too often than I should for the reasons of speed and taste.

As a writer I've realized that re-visiting old work is a bad idea - what I was happy with a couple of years ago doesn't always cut it today - fortunately as this is in it's third re-write, and I've been cutting things down where I can. Hopefully those of you who own the Piratefish will appreciate seeing this updated to work better with Ubuntu 9.10, and as always, if any of my reads want the latest version (even in it's mostly complete form), I'll gladly provide it.

I also went and upgraded my car recently - it never was the same after $14k in repairs, so this time I decided to be a little green and get something with a smaller footprint. I now drive a Nissan Cube and I'm finding it to be quite a pleasant switch from my 2008 Altima.

Expect to see the new Piratefish out before Christmas folks - I plan to have it done very soon!

Bagel Rage

2009-09-10T08:31:00.002-06:00

I love bagels. I'm not supposed to eat them, mind you, but I love them nonetheless. Especially with butter!

These days we're all supposed to watch what we eat, and not just watch ourselves eat - but hey, most of us are guilty of these crimes against ourselves - it's why the corner burger stop thrives while the vegetarian grocers go out of business. This is also why 7-11 stores sell big bite hot dogs, and bigger bites, and four kinds of "tacquito" rolls, and possibly the reason behind the growth and distortion of portion sizes at all the major food joints out there.

Most kiddies don't realize this, but when I was growing up, the small drink was really small, and yesterdays large is now today's medium. I could rant on this crap for hours, but I digress.

Bread and butter are two of the staples in the vast popular food basket of the American diet. Other staples include soda (part of the sugar group), french fries, apple pie, and the stuffing found in Twinkies.

For those of my few readers who really do enjoy food as I do, you'll realize that I've touched on a few culinary hot spots. When Coka-Cola changed the recipe for Coke and called it New Coke, well, they got slapped for it - and slapped hard. When MacDonald's announced they were changing their fats into healthy fats, we all feared that their french fries would change - and they did, but fortunately, they managed to control the change and the result is a slightly healthier, but still indulgent french fry. Burger King didn't fair as well - they messed with their recipe, and their french fries suck. Twinkies have changed too - I used to like putting mine in the fridge to stiffen up the filling - but now the filling has gone "healthy" and now it's just... well, yuck.

MacDonalds even changed their apple pie, but folks who really liked their old style fried one found that Kentucky Fried Chicken still makes them the right way - deep fried sweet apple perfection. The local KFC near me closed last year, and now it seems the "combo" chains have taken over - I may never again know if the the KFC/TacoBell/PizzaHut place sells the apple pies that I miss, but mostly because it's incomprehensible to me that someplace could make all those foods properly in the space of a single MacDonalds.

But now we come down to the last bastions of gastronomic pleasure - bread and butter. Bagels. With butter! Well, the camels back is now broken. I went to Einstein Brothers Bagels recently and I got my usual - an everything bagel with butter. I then quickly scuttled off to work, got my coffee and sat down to get started on another long day, secure in that I can skip lunch now that I have my forbidden pleasure to carry me through the day.

I managed to down my coffee, start on the second cup and at this point I'd opened 2 tickets, been through a morning conference call and debugged some firewall problems, and I was ready to enjoy my bagel. And boy, was I disappointed! Some idiot at the Einstein's Bagel shop had put some butter substitute on my bagel! It wasn't margarine either - it was something else, something akin to smart balance, but with the flavor removed. This was something even my wife wouldn't eat, and trust me, she prefers the "lite" stuff - even cooks with it too, which at times can be somewhat nasty.

Now, let me take you on a side trip here regarding butter substitutes. Lets start with this - I need to use them because I'm getting old and there's multiple good reasons I shouldn't eat butter, and I have, for the most part, removed it from my mainstream diet. Smart Balance, their 50/50, and some other substitutes have found their place in my home, and I tolerate them. Smart Balance lacks flavor however, and the best flavored substitute I have *ever* experienced is something called Canoleo (I found it at the local Sunflower Grocery here in Colorado) and that stuff is about the only thing I've ever used that can truly substitute for butter in both taste and cook-ability - but it's not nearly as healthy as Smart Balance, so it's been relegated to the "I buy it" category and the wife complains when I do because it's so bad compared to Smart Balance. It is still healthier than butter.

But back to my rage. What REALLY burns me is when someone decides that changing butter into something else is justified. Today I returned to the same Einsteins, mostly because a long phone call on the drive into work left me fewer options than normal, and I asked for my usual -and then I asked the gal at the counter for a bagel with butter - and please use real butter this time. What I got was "I'm sorry sir, but that's all we have." Meh.

I decided that a plain bagel was better, so I went that path - and was fortunate enough to see the assistant manager on the way out, and I let him know that they're going to loose business if they don't put butter back on the menu. I seriously doubt this guy's going to say a thing though - I think people in those jobs have learned not to say anything back to management because the old adage "don't kill the messenger" is lost in modern society - and stores like Starbucks and Einsteins probably don't care enough about people to listen to them, but do remember what is said at review time, and then probably dock their pay based on how much compassion they show to customers and to the company.

So now I'm stuck in a dilemma - I've got only a few bagel shops left in Denver that actually use real butter and sell good bagels, and only one near the path to work. I suppose I'll survive, probably even get thinner, but I think now there's a lesson that I hope corporate America can take from this: Don't mess with bread and butter. Einsteins, saying it's butter, calling it butter, referring to it as butter - and then serving simulated butter is just wrong. I hope others read this and consider better mobile dining options on their way to work. I hope our war veterans return and march in outrage to what you've done to the foods they missed while fighting our wars.

You don't see burger joints replacing the meat in their burgers with tofu, you don't see pizza restaurants using turkey pepperoni in place of real pepperoni (and why I don't know - both are great) or converting to part-skim mozzarella, why on God's name would you take it upon yourselves to stop serving butter, while still calling it butter!

I ask the SEC to audit the person at Einsteins who did this and see if they purchased stock in the simulated butter company that supplies Einsteins before they decided to stop using butter. I ask the National Butter Council to arrange a cow-protest at all Einsteins locations on the next Milk Day. I ask that you Americans, stop shopping at Einsteins - there are better bagel shops out there - now find them!

Some Piratefish Updates for Ubuntu 9

2009-07-29T22:46:00.005-06:00

Well, Ubuntu 9 has been out for some time now, and the smoke has cleared - and there's definitely some work to be done on the next version of the Piratefish. I'm going to be developing this on VMware - building a Piratefish this way has some serious promise, but also it offers some nice screen capture abilities as well as advanced scaling options.

Right now as it stands, the old instructions still hold up, however there's indications that Chapter 6 is getting long in the tooth - the permissions structure may have changed quite a bit, so a re-write is in the works. This re-write will be free for all existing users, as usual.

As for the latest updates, instructions on removing AppArmor, correcting ClamAV integration with MailScanner and a little bit about changing where roots email delivers are all included in the latest batch of updates.

As for features in the new version of Piratefish, I'm thinking of including instructions on integrating Splunk into the new Piratefish as a reporting engine and perhaps a dashboard - many of the machines running Piratefish are more powerful than ever, and using this extra power for advanced monitoring and reporting appeals to me.

My experience at the identity management startup Symplified has gotten my brain dipped into the potential of cloud-based computing, and the option of building Piratefish in the cloud is also something to consider - though at Amazon's EC2 pricing, making a Piratefish run there isn't necessarily a feasible way to prevent spam for a network in the long run unless you're a well funded corporate entity. A complete mail server would be an interesting cloud app though - and the EC2 cloud is some pretty cool stuff for new tech.

On a slightly different note, I've also begun work on another book idea - though this will be on an entirely different technical track than the Piratefish, and will hopefully be something more fit for print and binding. More information will be made available when things near completion - right now getting the next Piratefish out for this fall is more important.

iPhone 3.0 to be released on June 19th, 2009

2009-06-08T14:24:00.001-06:00

Today marks the start of my third week with my new iPhone, and boy they are addictive. As of late, I've realized that there's something messed up with my ability to use the 3G network for data - it seemed that all attempts for me to use 3G would result in the message "unable to access the 3G network - not subscribed to cellular data network."

When I first encountered this, it was the first Saturday I had the phone - at home I'd been using the Wifi the entire time wituout a second thought. I didn't pursue it then because it was inconvenient for me.

During that first two weeks, I noticed that I was getting email in clumps after driving to and from work, and then I realized that the phone wasn't always connected. Troubleshooting this on Friday resulted in my getting a replacement phone just this last Saturday at Best Buy. That solved the problem, however, it wasn't until Monday that my phone's number routing showed troubles, and I wasn't able to receive calls!

I called ATT, and they looked at the routing issue - troubleshooting it caused the data side on replacement phone to break so that the "unsubscribed" message reappeared. So then I get bumped up to level 2 support - and this gal answers and I can tell that she's also addicted to her iPhone. The first thing she says is "By the way, the new iPhone 3G with OS 3.0 comes out on the 19th."

All smiles on my end after hearing this, she managed to get my number routed, and then rings off with the data issue escalated to ATT engineering - and by the time I'd finished blogging this, my 3G data network started working again!

Cheers to ATT's timely resolution of this problem! And major kudo's on some good news!

Open Source CD/DVD Burning

2009-05-04T23:21:00.006-06:00

Burning CD's and DVD's in Windows just isn't a cakewalk if you're relatively new at it - and even when you have experience, there's always the problem of what software to use. Sure, some folks love Nero, and there's the old tried and true Roxio software as well - some folks even trust Windows to do the work and expect things to work every time. Well, it's time I have a rant to set some things out on the table.

1) It should not be necessary for a system to be rebooted when adding CD-ROM burning software.

2) The software should be easy on the "dumbed down" menu's. Folks do get the files/folders anology of disk storage management, but there seems to be a conspiracy against showing this stuff in the fear that folks will be confused - and some folks are, but most arent.

To this end, I have a few programs to present:

First, InfraRecorder. Infrarecorder is similar to Nero and Roxio - it can burn ISO images, make ISO images, and it can work with most CD and DVD records - and no reboot is required, and it's open source. I've been using InfraRecorder for years without problems on multiple systems - and you can try it without even uninstalling those other softwares first.

Second, The only place that InfraRecorder comes up short is mastering DVD's for playing on your living room DVD player. To make up for this, look at DVD Flick - it's also open source, but it's not a simple disk maker - it's designed to perform the transcoding needed to master DVD's and burn them. It has some simple DVD menus and chapters features as well. I've been able to assemble different home videos, build menu's, and put everything together quite nicely with this one. It's an excellent free option compared to paying $60 or more for Nero.

Third, if you're the type of doesn't want to burn ever ISO you download, and can utilize them locally on your computer, there's a program called Daemon Tools that deserves a look-see. Daemon Tools permits you to mount ISO images as additional virtual disk drives, and it's quite the useful tool.

Another item worth mentioning, for a while now I've been enjoying the Cool Iris plugin on my Firefox - it makes image searches into slide shows - complete with 3D, youtube and hulu support, and best of all - it works in Mac OSX, Windows and Linux.

For those of you who are video buffs, and want an alternative video player for your Windows setup, and miss the old style video player (that doesn't tell Microsoft what you're watching) then you might want to look at the K-Lite Codec Pack. This package has some nice add-ins that are worth looking at, including something called Media Player Classic.

If you find these tools helpful, perhaps you'll also find the Piratefish Anti-Spam system helpful as well. It's designed specifically to help non-linux users build an anti-spam gateway using Ubuntu Server.

Cheers to you all!