A new experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) completely reverses the devastating autoimmune disorder in mice, and might work exactly the same way in humans, say researchers at the Jewish General Hospital Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and McGill University in Montreal.

via Multiple sclerosis successfully reversed in animals.

It’s not often I hear a "new" song and love it straight away -- but this mash-up by DJ Earworm takes the masters of some of Annie Lennox’s catchiest songs and creates something entirely new.

Brilliant.

‘Green Box’ Product Promo (Pizza Box) from Green Box

I’ve filmed a segment with Perth’s A Current Affair on the security nightmare that USB Storage devices can be.

It’s not just the ability for innocuous looking devices like iPods to slip data out of a business -- it’s the ease of hacking a U3 USB Device to automatically run whatever payload you like.

[youtube kAd0aWxs7kQ]

We’ll see if this is a good idea or not … but at the moment yeah I like it.

iKarma allows you to build a reputation online by creating a profile and then having your network of contacts link to you and provide 3rd party feedbacks and comments about you on both a personal and professional level.

As I have little to hide… (apart from the bodies) … I’m happy to give it a go and see if it works.

Check me out at: http://www.ikarma.com/id/106 and join in!

I bought a HP HW6515. It’s a Windows Mobile Based Cellular with inbuilt GPS.

I immediately started pursuing software to allow for realtime tracking via a web page.

I found
Navizon but there are others that I’ll post about soon.

I need one. You need one.

It’s on my Christmas List.

Cool It Systems – USB Beverage Chiller

VoipCheap

Free calls from your PC to any Australian Public Telephone Number.  Very cool.

You can also call the UK, Poland and many other countries.

Can’t see this lasting long.

Technorati Tags: voip, technology, free stuff

It’s here again… v3.0 – have a look.

GotMyVote.com

Yesterday the RCD (residual current device) kept tripping at Casa Del Jordan.

RCD’s are a requirement for all new Western Australian houses as they can help reduce the chances of electrocution. On this occasion, no one was getting shocked, it just kept flicking off and leaving us in the dark.

It started early on in the day but as day progressed it happened more and more often. We tried tracking down what was causing it by switching everything off – to no avail.

No matter what order we brought things back on line – it would trip again at some point.

I eventually managed to get everything except the TVs going – at which point I consulted the Net.

So here’s what I learned.

The Power Switch on a power point only disables the active wire – not the neutral or earth. This means to test properly – you must physically unplug devices from the wall.

Knowing this we were then able to track down the problem to a touch lamp.

Once unplugged – all problems disappeared.

I’ve mainly blogged this in case anyone every has the same issue – hopefully Google will index the page and get you the answer quicker than it did for me.

Slashdot | Intel Adds DRM to New Chips

History teaches that during the 1800′s there were many people who believed that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically just the opposite was true;the industrial revolution demanded a mobile and skilled workforce.

First, they responded by making slavery last forever, and making laws so harsh you couldn’t even teach a person of color how to read. Then they responded by trying to micro-regulate the northern states, then they responded by trying to break off from the Union and fence themselves off from the rest of the world causing all hell to break loose.

Today many in media circles believe that the entire meaning and purpose of the information age is to use inventions like the Internet to leverage their copyright holdings to the far reaches of the Earth for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically, just the opposite is true; the information age demands the unrestricted flow of information.

First, they responded my making copyrights last effectively forever, then they responded by making it so that illegal copying could be punished worse than rape, then they tried to micro-regulate the technology industries with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and now they are trying to fence the information they control off from the rest of the world with Digital Rights Management (DRM). We are now at the point where society must tell them to go to hell.

More amazing optical delights. Who knew she’d scrub up so well?

It really does make you begin to doubt what you see in the media.

I wish I could credit the author but there is no reference… 8(

Continuing the optical illusion theme – although this is a bit more disconcerting.

Ever seen a magazine cover and you can just tell the model has been over air-brushed?

Take a look at this and this.

How’s that for an amazing skill/talent – but a scary way to manipulate imagery?

I could have sworn that first image of the dusky woman was real… but then you move the mouse and ooooh.

So, lesson number one for today… don’t believe anything you see.

Many thanks to those who emailed me about spamslam. The script has been slightly updated and slightly improved.

It’s a little tidier and should work well for almost all versions of perl on almost all versions of Linux.

This is not a cron job script. Take a look at the basic program flow. All it does is tail the maillog and count the instance of 554 messages.

You’ll also notice some hashed out IPTABLES lines in there… these are the beginnings of a basic teergrubing effort. Haven’t been able to get it to work yet, so if you are an IPTABLES wiz, let me know how to get it working!

I’m still looking for someone to help with expiring the entries… any takers?


#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use File::Tail;
use POSIX qw(strftime);
my $IPTABLES = '/sbin/iptables';
die "ERROR: Can't find $IPTABLESn" unless (-f $IPTABLES);
# how many times the spam host can try before they are blocked
my $thresh = 2;
# check the maillog every x seconds
my $interval = 5;
# record lockouts
my $logfile = '/tmp/spamslam.txt';
# set a few default locations for the mail log
my @default_maillog = qw(
/var/log/maillog
/var/log/mail
);
# find the first existing mail log...
my $maillog = '';
logloop:
foreach my $tmplog (@default_maillog) {
if (-f $tmplog) {
$maillog = $tmplog;
last logloop;
}
}
# ... or audibly die.
die "ERROR: Can't find maillog in " . join (', ', @default_maillog) . "n"
unless ($maillog);
# Tail from the mail log
my $file = File::Tail->new(
name => $maillog,
maxinterval => $interval,
);
my $line;
my @slamlist = ();
while (defined($line = $file->read)) {
if ($line =~ m/554 Service unavailable/o
&& $line =~ m/(d{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3})/o) {
push @slamlist, $1;
foreach my $ip (@slamlist) {
# find multiple denials for the same address...
my $attempts = 0;
if ($ip =~ m/$1/) {
my @count = grep(/$ip/, @slamlist);
foreach my $xi (@count) {
$attempts++;
print "$ip: $attemptsn";
}
if ($attempts >= $thresh) {
# ... and lock them out with iptables
# iptables -I INPUT inserts the rules at the top of
# the INPUT ruleset
system("$IPTABLES -I INPUT -p TCP --dport 25 -s $ip -j DROP");
# system("$IPTABLES -I OUTPUT -d $ip -p ICMP -j DROP");
# system("$IPTABLES -I INPUT -s $ip -p TCP --dport 25 -j ACCEPT");
# system("$IPTABLES -I OUTPUT -d $ip -p TCP --syn ! --sport 25 -j REJECT");
my $now = strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", localtime(time));
print "$now - $ip firewalled.n";
my $ok = open(OUTPUT, ">> $logfile");
if ($ok) {
print OUTPUT "$now - $ip firewalled.n";
close OUTPUT;
} else {
print "WARNING: Can't write to $logfile - $!";
}
@slamlist = grep(!/$ip/, @slamlist);
}
}
}
}
}
exit(0);
__END__
# Add pod here
=pod
=head1 NAME
spammer_iplockout.pl - Adjust firewall to lock out persistent spammers
=head1 SYNOPSIS
spammer_iplockout.pl
=head1 VERSION
$Revision: 1.0 $
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Monitor /var/log/maillog for persistent 554 errors and feed results to
iptables to firewall out persistent offenders.
=head1 USAGE
Usage: spammer_iplockout.pl
=head1 DEPENDENCIES
File::Tail
=head1 BUGS
None known.
=head1 TO DO
Fix bugs
=head1 AUTHOR
Jason Jordan
=head1 SEE ALSO
perl(1).
=cut


Once again, you may stead.

Spammers really annoy me.

It’s become a bit of a hobby for me. I recently installed amavisd-new which has been quite excellent. My major concern is that spammers are still connecting to my mail server and wasting my resources – even if they do get rejected or bounced.

Even worse – they’re ignoring the 5xx rejection messages generated by Postifx and it’s RBL list. I’ve had spammers over the last few weeks connecting once a minute even though they recieve a permanent error!

So, I put my Hat of Thought on and came up with a better solution.

Why not monitor the Linux maillog for the “554 Service Unavailable” messages and firewall hosts that keep on trying?

I’m not much of a coder, but I’ve hacked together a little perl script that does just that. What I’d REALLY like now, is for someone with more coding capability than me to polish it up a bit, maybe remove the system call, add a logging mechanism and make the entries such that they expire after a definable period.

Please let me know if you use the script as I’d love to talk to other spam warriors.


#!/usr/bin/perl
$thresh = 2; # how many times the spam host can try before they are blocked
$interval = 1; # check the maillog every x seconds
$logfile = "/tmp/spamslam.txt";
use File::Tail;
$file = File::Tail->new( name => '/var/log/maillog', maxinterval => $interval );
while ( defined( $line = $file->read ) ) {
if (
$line =~ m/554 Service unavailable/
&&
$line =~ m/(d{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3})/
)
{
push @slamlist, $1;
foreach $ip (@slamlist) {
if ( $ip =~ m/$1/ ) {
@count = grep( /$ip/, @slamlist );
foreach $xi (@count) { $attempts++; print "$ip: $attemptsn"; }
if ( $attempts == $thresh ) {
# iptables -I INPUT inserts the rules at the top of the INPUT ruleset
system("/sbin/iptables -I INPUT -s $ip -j DROP");
my ($sec, $min, $hour, $mday, $mon, $year) = localtime(time);
printf "%4d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d",$year+1900,$mon+1,$mday,$hour,$min,$sec;
print " - $ip firewalled.n";
open OUTPUT, ">> $logfile" or die "Unable to open $logfile:$!n";
printf OUTPUT "%4d-%02d-%02d%02d:%02d:%02d",$year+1900,$mon+1,$mday,$hour,$min,$sec;
print OUTPUT " - $ip firewalled.n";
close OUTPUT;
@slamlist = grep( !/$ip/, @slamlist );
}
}
@count = ();
$attempts = 0;
}
}
}


Good Luck!
Download file

Philips 9@9 ++ (stupid name) has 7 hours talk time and 750 hrs or 30 days on standby.

It only weighs 93 grams and uses a 840mAh li-on battery.

Nevertheless, my wife’s will still be flat.

Link: threegmobile.net

This is going to mean nothing to most of you, but for the very few it can help … here ya go.

We have a couple of WindowsXP boxes on the private network. Everything is protected by a lovely Linux firewall/router. This has been a wonderful solution for many years.

Lately, the War Office (wifey) has been wanting to use the full feature set of “Messenger”, Microsoft’s own Instant Messaging client. Part of its functionality include “remote assistance”, whiteboard and audio conferencing. As of the last few days it does webcam too.

This functionality requires uPnP. As this is dynamic it normally means opening a whole bunch of ports on your firewall… unless of course you’re running the WinXP “firewall”.

Not any more!

No, it’s seems some lads at http://linux-igd.sourceforge.net/ have created a uPnP gateway for Linux.

I’ve tested it tonight and it works perfectly. We had a 46.6k video conference. The low speed was because Mom is still on dial-up – but it was still usable.

Now I’m just looking forward to trying it with someone on broadband.

As some readers may be aware, I am employed by a pretty large company in the IT Management field.

We regularly have to deal with new virus issues, new trojans… general IT security related problems.

The last few times we’ve had scares – I’ve gone hunting for web sites with fresh information. There’s a few reasonable ones including slashdot & incidents.org but they’re all US focussed.

I’m thinking about firing up an Australian focussed web site for IT people to exchange info and tips around incidents as and when they occur.

Sometimes it’s just that one tiny but crucial bit of information someone shares that can help resolve potentially catastrophic issues.

I need to think it through a bit more but I reckon I’ve got a good fit with the pcguru.com.au domain and some basic bulletin board software. If we lock down the membership to confirmed IT professionals – we can be pretty sure of the quality of the postings and information.

Interested in your thoughts.