by R.I. Pienaar | Aug 24, 2004 | Usefull Things
I am again spending some time figuring out the workings of IPSec, this time I was interested in how to get it all going on PIX machines. While looking for information I came across 2 great articles about IPSec. They provide a simple introduction and were written by Dr. Peter J. Welcher.
IPsec phobia is caused by confusion. To cure that, we need some background information and terminology. Believe me, with a little orientation, this stuff makes a whole lot more sense! By the way, there’s lots of mathematics theory behind all this, but you won’t see it here. After all, you don’t need to know any of that to use IPsec.
It is split across 2 articles: IPSec Simplified and IPSec Simplified – Part 2.
The authors site has a large number of security and network related articles that seem of a very high quality and well worth checking out.
by R.I. Pienaar | Aug 24, 2004 | Usefull Things
Newsforge is running an article titled Be your own CA that covers the process for building your own CA as well as giving some background information on how it all sticks together, it is well worth a read if you are unsure how certificates, revocation and so forth works.
I usually use a guide and files found at http://sial.org/howto/openssl/ca/, it includes some make files to automate some of the work and to minimize user error, the two sites compliment each other nicely.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 19, 2004 | Usefull Things
I am contemplating blocking all Korean and Chinese IP addresses from my machines using firewall rules. I am just sick of the port scanning, spamming, open proxy probes, virii and other unpleasant things that they do.
I asked on IRC and someone pointed me at this site that contains lists of IP’s in all sorts of formats, next I will hack something up to use a set in ipfw2 to put the rules, and will cron updating of them.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 5, 2004 | Usefull Things
For those who don’t have a copy of Google Hacks there is a nifty page that lists plenty of nifty things you can do with google searches.
You can specify most of the Advanced Search page options in a regular search box query by using advanced operators, i.e., query words that have special meaning to Google. Since the advanced operators are convenient for searching, Google Guide calls them “search operators.” Most users find that making use of the Advanced Search page, instead of using search operators directly, fulfills their specialized search needs. Search operators tend to be used by people who prefer to type commands rather than filling in forms.
Found on Boing Boing.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jun 24, 2004 | Usefull Things
I have now used GMail quite a bit and must say the interface is really fantastic.
The keyboard orientated interface is for me the most appealing, combined with the searching and ease of filtering mails this is going to be my favorite means of reading mailing lists in the future.
Read the full article for some screenshots and description of some of the features I like most.
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by R.I. Pienaar | Jun 23, 2004 | Usefull Things
Thanks to Francois for sending me a GMail invite.
I have been using it for a short while today and must say this is by far the best mail client and web app I have ever come across. If they have any plans to sell this thing as a stand alone APP I would be right there buying it.
A few of my favorite things so far:
- Hotkeys, Hotkeys, Hotkeys. This is fantastic it has hotkeys for just about anything and its very Pine like which means I am comfortable with it immediately since I am a old Pine user and made my mutt also use Pine keys
- It is really fast, the web interface responds like a normal app does, this is mostly due to piles and piles of javascript but surprisingly the experience is exactly the same in IE and Mozilla.
- The labeling of emails while initially striking you as being the same thing as folders has one major advantage, you can put multiple labels on a single message. I often have mails that I am struggling to decide where to put them since they cover 2 catergories of folder.
- Searching is very good and fast – I hope it works as well when they reach hotmails user counts.
- Filtering is good while not as flexible as mail filters found in other mail clients it is adequate, you cannot forward mail in a filter to another account for example
- Something that I think is unique in the free mail world is unique email addresses, you can have username+randombit@gmail.com and the filters support checking for this and lets you classify mail based on that.
So far the Spam filters has been disappointing I think they will hopefully improve on that soon. The ads have not been intrusive at all, in fact much google use has made me not even notice them. There are of course privacy issues around all this but I think no more than with any provider of email that you do not control. The provider can read your email, authorities can demand access to your email, and gmail does give you the option to permanently delete email so I think its a small step forward from hotmail or yahoo to gmail in that sense.
There are a number of tips and tricks type sites out there, here are a few I found useful:
Gmail Gems
Gmail Tips
