Firefox 1.5.0.2 is OS X Universal
By Daniel Miessler on April 14th, 2006: Tagged as Firefox | OS X
Finally…
If you’ve been using Safari or Camino waiting for Firefox’s universal binary, your wait is over. I’ve been using it since Thursday and it’s working great so far. The only extension I use is the Del.icio.us one, but it works flawlessly.
Seems like a solid release.
Trying The K2 Theme
By Daniel Miessler on April 13th, 2006: Tagged as Blogging
I like my own custom theme too much to keep this for long, but I wanted to see what my site would look like with one of the latest interfaces.
What do you guys think?
Acting Your Race
By Daniel Miessler on April 13th, 2006: Tagged as Culture | Race | Sociology
If you enjoy pondering culture, race relations, and/or sociology, you need to check this article out:
OS X Leopard, a.k.a. OMFG (Fake)
By Daniel Miessler on April 13th, 2006: Tagged as Apple | Google | Microsoft | OS X
** Edit: 9:30a.m. EST — All the features below were part of an April fools joke. Chris Pirillo didn’t know and posted it thinking it was real. I’m so depressed. I just emailed him to give him the bad news. Holy crap — this sucks.
So the rumor mill has begun churning over OS X’s next release. For me, this is the single most anticpated piece of software ever. It’s just that simple.
According to a supposedly secret source, as relayed by Chris Pirillo, OS X Leopard is going to be so unimaginably sick that it’s now pointless to even mention Vista in the same sentence.
Here’s the short, uber-sick list of things that Microsoft hopes it will be able to do sometime in 2014 (but will supposedly be in OS X very soon):
- During the Leopard install, you are given the option to create specific partitioning to accommodate M$ Vista and Linux. Reformatting your HD is not required. Depending on your processor and RAM, all OS’s can run simultaneously & independently. A (minimum) 150 GB HD is required (250 GB is recommended), and 2 GB RAM (minimum) should you wish to run more than one OS. Dual processors are required for optimum performance, though this may change in 10.5.1 or 10.5.2.
- Hooks are built-in to support an Apple PDA, but I can say no more.
- You can have 3 ‘Finder’ windows open simultaneously, much like having 3 displays, all running different applications or OS’s. If networked, any 3 computers can be displayed. Depending on the function/application, you can even Drag & Drop between displays. Password or Admin. privileges are required. (see #2 above).
- Mail, Address Book, iCal, iSight, and iChat will become one integrated application, much like Entourage (but better). Included is a customizable Auto Responder and voice activated dialing via numbers or Address Book names. You will be able to automatically send email & initiate iSight meetings, etc. that are linked/pegged to specific calendar events. This feature is called AutoPilot (see #6 above).
- An across the board speed increase of 35 - 40%. YMMV.
- Airport (Extreme only) will notify you via the airport icon flashing in the menu bar if your signal is being hijacked or used by anyone other than you authorized.
I have never been so enthused with the world of computers as I am right now with what Apple is doing. I just can’t believe the difference between them and Microsoft when it comes to innovation.
It’s like Microsoft isn’t even trying. Apple is doing mult-OS environments and creating what’s probably going to be the PDA to have, and meanwhile Microsoft is contending with most of their own programmers being utterly disenchanted with their new flagship OS.
At this point it’s just getting silly. Apple is just owning Microsoft at every turn. The only places they aren’t is where Google is instead.:
Google Calendar Just Launched
By Daniel Miessler on April 12th, 2006: Tagged as Google

So it’s launched — and it’s sick.
A very short list of incredible features:
- Email integration. You can send people invites when you create events. They can then add/accept them and the events then show up on their calendar.
- You can subscribe to your friends’ calendars, and vice versa.
- Event locations link to Google Maps.
- The inteface is clean and functional. Very polished.
- You can get appointment notifications sent right to your phone. It ties directly to your carrier/phone number.
- You can subscribe to your GCal calendar in iCal (I already have).
- Tons of other calendars to add, and an excellent search feature for finding more.
- You can even discuss calendar events to track input from attendees.
Linux: Filtering Spam And Viruses Without Amavis
By Daniel Miessler on April 12th, 2006: Tagged as Computers | Security | Spam
For anyone who dislikes complex mail configurations on their Linux mail server, I have a solution other than amavis* for filtering your email.
As with most things *nix, there are many ways to go about this; my way uses Maildrop and my .mailfilter file in my home directory. The punchline is that incoming mail to my account gets:
- Scanned by Google (Gmail)
- Scanned by Spamassassin
- Run through ClamAV
- Processed by my filtering rules
Postfix and Courier-Imap. Essentially, all you need is a single apt-get command and some basic configuration of Postfix and Courier-Imap.
apt-get install postfix courier-imap maildrop spamassassin clamav
That’s it for the packages. From there just set up mail as you normally would. Also, don’t forget to add your clamav user:
groupadd clamav
useradd -g clamav -s /bin/false clamav
From there just fire up your editor and edit/create your .mailfilter to include the following content:
---------------------------------------------------
# Run all mail through ClamAV
if (/usr/bin/clamscan --no-summary --stdout - | grep -c 'FOUND' == 1)
{
VSCANNER=/usr/bin/clamscan -V
VIRUSID=/usr/bin/clamscan --no-summary --stdout - | grep FOUND | cut -d" " -f2
xfilter “reformail -A ‘X-Virus-Checker: $VSCANNER’”
xfilter “reformail -A ‘X-Virus-Infected: Yes’”
xfilter “reformail -A ‘X-Virus-Identification: $VIRUSID’”
to “Maildir/.Infected”;
}
else
{
xfilter “reformail -A ‘X-Virus-Checker: $VSCANNER’”
xfilter “reformail -A ‘X-Virus-Infected: No’”
}
# Run all mail through Spamassassin
xfilter “/usr/bin/spamc -u $user”
if ( /^X-Spam-Flag: YES/ ) { to “Maildir/.Junk” }
---------------------------------------------------
So the cool thing about this setup for me is that it doesn’t require you to hack up your /etc/postfix/main.cf file or anything. You keep Postfix processing pretty much as normal (with the exception of the mailbox_command = /usr/bin/maildrop addition).
Once you hand delivered mail off to Maildrop, your .mailfilter file handles the rest. Spam, Viruses, and standard filtering based on content. The bits I added above will add headers to virus infected emails saying the version of clamscan you’re running, what the message was infected with, etc. Cool stuff.
Now, I’m sure there are plenty of advantages to using amavis — large environments, more complex configurations, etc. But for me, with just a few users and the need to sanitize and process mail, using this method is most excellent. For me, simplicity is golden.
Anyway, that’s pretty much it. If you have any questions feel free to drop me an email.:
Music: Matisyahu and Chick Corea
By Daniel Miessler on April 12th, 2006: Tagged as Music
An orthodox Jew doing reggae. It’s decent, and it’s growing on me.
In other news, I’m also digging some Chick Corea as well.
OpenSSH Donation Pledge Drive
By Daniel Miessler on April 12th, 2006: Tagged as Community | Computers | Security
I’ve already blogged about helping this project in the recent past, but my buddies at ATU have come together with a more organized effort. So once again I ask you, my fellow geeks, if you enjoy what OpenSSH offers and have a few bucks to spare, please go ahead and give what you can. This is one of the core projects in the security community and they need our help.
Christians Sue For Right To Judge Others
By Daniel Miessler on April 10th, 2006: Tagged as Culture | Politics | Religion
I keep wishing this were an Onion headline rather than real news. Unfortunately, it isn’t.
Link: Christians Upset Because They Can’t Speak Out Against Gays
