Brielle's Ramblings - Software

Solving the no-upnp on Cisco issue

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:11:45 -0600

So, I've been thinking about this for a while... I really would like a upnp option for cisco, but what about a workaround?

My idea is simple:

A daemon that sits on a linux box or something similar, pretends to be a upnp IGD, and sends console commands to create/delete ports on the actual Cisco device?

Yeah, kinda ugly, but I've seen worse. Anyone got any ideas on how to do this, or how feasable this may be?

Enable RDP on Windows Vista SP1

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:47:31 -0600

Found this great little how-to here (and the vista SP1 update here) on how to enable RDP in Windows Vista.

Concurrent RDP Users in XP SP3

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:24:51 -0600

Found this great little bit of information over here about how to enable concurrent users in XP SP3.

Vista: 6+ months, the good, the bad

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:45:11 -0600

It's been 6+ months since I acquired a laptop with Windows Vista. It's been a rather interesting journey, and anything but an easy one.

Hardware Issues

Visioneer Onetouch 7100 and 8100 series scanners do not work - at all. I have one of each, and Visioneer's solution to the problem is give them your old scanner and they'll give you a slight discount on a new one. I ended up fixing this problem by loading up an old version of Windows in a VMware session and using USB pass-through. The trick on this forum posting did not work.
Nokia DKU-5 data cable does not work. This makes it nearly impossible for me to sync my Nokia 6820 phone to my computer's address book. Bluetooth is great... If you have it built into your laptop (which I don't).
Dell AIO 962 does not work properly when conntacted to a Windows XP box on the LAN and shared to the Vista machine. I'm still not quite sure why, though I'm guessing it has something to do with the custom printer interface it uses.
Laptop can not run XP reliably. The Nforce 630m / Geforce 7150m chipset is pretty much made for Vista, and throws a shit fit under XP. Various things don't work right, from the built in ethernet to the display screen scaling.
USB streaming from older Digital8 Sony Handycam does not work - at all. Firewire/DV streaming does work however, and fairly well at that.
USB internet tether on Blackberry Curve 8300 is flakey, and rarely works right. Hangs at Verifying Username And Password...
WiFi is a hit or miss sometimes. There are times where I will go 3-4 weeks with no problems connecting to known good and working APs. Then there are the days where I have to uninstall the WLAN card and redetect it before I can get connected.

Software Issues

Games crash. Constantly. AirRivals is a perfect example of this. Around 30% of the time, the game will hang during map loading. PerfectWorld seems to work though, if not slightly sluggish. I can't play Myst either, at all.
On close, many apps crash. It doesn't happen all the time, but it is kinda common (and annoying).
Have to turn off UAC or everything that wasn't made strictly for Vista has permission problems. This was a major problem early on with Cygwin, and it fouled up many builds of ClamAV/SOSDG.
Quirks with simple and well programmed applications, such as XNews (which exhibits an annoying 'ding' noise on any clicking).
Yahoo Messenger somehow keeps turning on window animation even after I explicitly turn it off.
Local search interface that is nothing short of annoying, with no way to revert it to XP style searching. Locate32 is a good alternative.
File copying is insanely slow, esp. over a network. Terracopy is a great alternative and highly recommended.
Slow startup and shutdown times. I can sorta understand slow startup... But why the hell would shutdown need to take 2-3 minutes?

Rainy Day Classic Windows XP Theme For Vista Users

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:28:26 -0600

Since MS was being stupid and didn't include the classic Rainy Day theme in Vista, I've gone ahead and made a theme file based on the XP version and uploaded it. All you have to do, is download it, double click it, and the theme will load in your system. RainyDay-Classic.Theme

An amusing bit from a clueless republican about Linux

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:01:57 -0600

Ohhh boy, this is quite amusing. From 'Shelly The Republican' who claims "We are counteracting the liberal war of lies!"

Linux: A European threat to our computers

Quotes worth mentioning:

For example, this rugged IBM laptop I am using was designed and built by an American company. It runs software built by Microsoft, one of Americaâ€™s most productive organizations. My computer does everything I could possibly want: I can do my work, submit my taxes and even search the Bible.

Built by an American company... Wonder if he bothered to read the label on the bottom of his laptop that says "Made in (China/India/Japan/Korea/Hong Kong)"?

Like all the greatest American engineering, itâ€™s an example of innovation that makes a growing group of European and Chinese hackers jealous. They hate our lead in computing technology and will stop at nothing until they have control of all of our computers.

Do I need to say anything?

This would be certainly true were in not for the Linux projectâ€™s seductive Marxist ideology and the effect that it has on â€˜Blue-Stateâ€™ liberals. Indeed, Linux is so pervasive amongst the blue states and many liberal universities that a leading computer expert Steve Balmer (from Microsoft) described Linux as cancer.

Ahh, those damn blue state commies! Thats right, quote Monkey Boy Ballmer (it's two L's, Tristan).

Imagine if the State of the Union address were hacked because the TV station decided to save money by using Linux? Imagine if a stealth-bomber crashed because itâ€™s software was written by anonymous Chinese or European hackers. It would make as much sense as inviting the French to come over and take over the White-House.

Hacking the state of the union address... Geeze, we should be so lucky! I don't know of any anonymous 'Chinese or European hackers' working on Linux - but I do know of quite a few non-anonymous Chinese and European programmers who are paid to work on Linux and various parts. There are many American programmers being paid to work on Linux as well.

And guess what software Osama Bin Laden uses on his laptop?

If you guessed it was Linux you would be 100% right. Osama uses Linux because he knows designed to counterfit DVDs, curcumventing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and defraud companies like Disney.

Hahaha! I almost wet myself reading that.

If you see a company using Linux, it may be that they have not paid for this software. Report them to the Business Software Alliance who have the legal authority to inspect any companyâ€™s computers for illegal programs like Linux.

Please do report to the BSA that the web server hosting my blog runs Linux. I'd be more then happy to show them that my system runs that 'illegal' Linux operating system!

Finally, remember to include Linux users in your prayers tonight. As individuals we may not be able to change peopleâ€™s minds, but the Bible teaches that God can make any sinner repent.

Yup, I think we've just confirmed how far out in right field this individual is. I'm Buddhist, but thank you anyway for your prayers.

How To Fix Java+IPv6 on Windows XP

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 08:22:33 -0700

Well, for those of you who have Windows XP with IPv6 support, you may have noticed after turning on the IPv6 stack, you were no longer able to use alot of applets in your browser with Java 1.5.0.

Well, I have the fix for you (provided you don't intend to use any applets which need IPv6 support):

1. Go to the Java control panel
2. Go to the 'Java' tab and click 'View' under 'Java Applet Runtime Settings'
3. In the 'Java Runtime Parameters' box, paste the following line in:

-Djava.net.preferIPv6Addresses=false -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true

4. Hit 'OK' and hit 'Apply' then 'OK' again, and reboot.

Your java applets should now be working again! Yay!

CheryOS == No more

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Mon, 09 May 2005 14:53:20 -0600

Looks like Maui-X-Stream finally gave up trying to convince people they didn't steal the source code for CherryOS from the Open Source PearPC project. Arben Kryeziu pulled the plug and wrote in his weblog about the issue. The website for CherryOS appears to be down as well.

But, he's not out of the fire yet - this little stunt of his has brought attention to the fact that some of Maui-X-Stream's OTHER software may have stolen code in it as well.

A note to people who think its ok to steal open source/free software code and use it in closed source commercial products:

Make sure that when you shoot yourself in the foot, don't use a bazooka.

Here's an article from BetaNews too.

The never-ending saga of Laura DiDio

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 12:26:30 -0600

Well, I'm happy to report that someone has really started to break down the reports done by the Microsoft shill known as Laura DiDio (aka DiDiot) and the Yankee Group (You know, the ones which said that the Internet's routers should all be replaced by switches?).

Steve Hamm did an excellent article here. Yay for the good guys!

On a side note about routers on the Internet being replaced by switches - my ping times are bad enough already. A 40 min ping time while the damn packet is bouncing all around the net trying to find the arp of the destination machine doesn't impress me one bit.

Note: You can see my other blog posting of Laura DiDio here.

My Workstation OS: Windows 2000 Pro

bruns@2mbit.com (Brielle) — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 08:17:00 -0600

If you haven't seen already, the article I did for OSTG is up.

My Workstation OS: Windows 2000 Pro

And yes, it seems I've managed to drag out the zealots again... So much for trying to do an unbiased article!