The WordPress guys have just announced WordPress 2.0.2, a security release. Upgrading it was quick and easy, and no database changes were required. All WordPress users should upgrade… or act like a PHB and believe that security problems only happen to “others”. 
Monthly Archive for March, 2006Page 2 of 2
The title says it - you can now pre-order OpenBSD 3.9, for $45. I’ve already ordered mine. It’ll be released on May 19.
Highlights from this version are also on the page linked above. I’m still running 3.7 here, having skipped 3.8. As they support old versions for a year, and they release a new version every 6 months, 3.9 will coincide with the time to upgrade 3.7.
OpenBSD may not have all the bells and whistles of Linux, or even FreeBSD, but it’s small, fast, stable, secure, and, most of all, clean - unlike most Unixes, which install everything and the kitchen sink, enabling everything by default, a standard OpenBSD installation is just the OS, with only ssh running.
This is, to me, the right attitude: instead of having to track down what’s running or open, and having to disable / close stuff, with the danger of missing something, here, you enable what you know you want. What a thought.
I apologize in advance: this post is a bit of a rant.
I’m tired of hearing, at work (and not just here, but in my previous jobs as well) the bullshit about “supported versions” - that some piece of software only works (or is “supported”) with some particular older, non-upgradable version of a library, a compiler or interpreter, a Linux distribution, and so on.
To me, that just means that the software is badly programmed, that it was compiled by trial and error, using hacks, compiler/library bugs, and non-documented tricks, by people who don’t really know what they’re doing, until it… “seems to work… mostly”. Then, they took note of the versions of everything around the software - OS version, libraries and so on - and, then, say that only that exact configuration was “supported”.
Sometimes, it gets so bad that you can’t even install security updates - which fix bugs, but don’t upgrade stuff to newer versions - because it’ll become “unsupported”, and, quite often, begin to “crash and burn” often.
The shocking part about this is that everyone around me seems to believe that all this crap is normal, instead of simply refusing to use software which requires Perl 5.8.3 and breaks with 5.8.4, or Java 1.4.2 but not 1.5.x, or that specific, unpatched, insecure version of glibc.
It’s almost as if those people - who, amazingly, work in IT! - still believe that software is some ungraspable, unknowable, “magical” thing, that works (or doesn’t) as if by magic.
People, unless the newer version of a library or interpreter actually has a bug which makes some older app not work, if the app stops working, it’s the app’s fault. Stop putting up with this idiocy.
And yes, in 99% of these cases, it’s proprietary, ultra-expensive software. For some reason, this almost never happens in Open Source…
Eric has an intriguing post called The Single Page AdSense Site. It’s, in a way, an even simpler variant of Making Money with Niche Websites, and it’s something I’d be doing in spades if I wasn’t such a lazy guy.
No, I’m not implying that they read this blog. But their newest article, “Channels are made for changing“, reads a lot like part 23 of the Blogging Tips series: “Change your ads“. 
You can even go a bit further, and randomize your ads, and then use channels to see what variations work better. Not to mention being unpredictable, and working through people’s “mental filters”.
One hundred and fifty million! Niiice!
(source: SpreadFirefox)
And no, they don’t count re-downloads. Nor can they count installations from CDs, or operating systems, such as Linux distros, which include Firefox.
Inside AdSense, the official AdSense blog, has a post called “Advanced site targeting and referrals reporting“, which explains how to see whether any advertisers are targeting your site. Using channels, you can also see which sites.
Apparently two of my blogs have targeted ads: The Tlog and, a bit surprisingly, Cool Stuff.
I also use AdWords to promote some of my sites (just some pocket exchange per day, though), and I may try out targeting some sites for my own ads, soon. Maybe some popular Portuguese or Brazilian blogs, for A Arte de Blogar, for instance.
Seen on TechCrunch first: FeedBurner, which I use for my blogs‘ feeds, has a new feature, called “uncommon uses”, which tracks “suspicious” uses of your feed - that is, not by “normal” feed aggregators. This can be used, for instance, to discover people who are stealing content from you - either creating a blog by aggregating posts from feeds about a particular subject, or even by simply copying your posts - which does happen.
You can then, however, tell FeedBurner about those you know, so they’re not seen by you as potential problems in the future. For instance, for this very blog, Planeta Asterisco was detected as an “uncommon use”, but is now grayed out, as you can see in the screen capture below. I also know what Gregarius is, so I checked it as well.
(NOTE: this is part of the “An Anti-Spam gateway” series)
Go to the amavisd-new site and download the latest version (2.3.3 at the time of writing). Uncompress it somewhere, then copy amavisd to /usr/local/sbin (for instance), and amavisd.conf to /etc.
Edit the /etc/amavisd.conf file. Add the following lines to the end:
$daemon_user = ‘amavis’;
$daemon_group = ‘amavis’;
$mydomain = ‘YOURDOMAIN’; # replace with your own domain, of course
$virus_quarantine_method = ”;
$spam_quarantine_method = ”;
$banned_files_quarantine_method = ”;
$bad_header_quarantine_method = ”;
$sa_tag_level_deflt = -202.0;
$sa_tag2_level_deflt = 8.31;
$sa_kill_level_deflt = 50;
$sa_dsn_cutoff_level = 50;
$mailfrom_notify_admin = “YOUR EMAIL”; # add \ before the @, as in cats\@allyourbase.com
$mailfrom_notify_recip = “YOUR EMAIL”; # add \ before the @, as in cats\@allyourbase.com
$mailfrom_notify_spamadmin = “YOUR EMAIL”;# add \ before the @, as in cats\@allyourbase.com
$final_virus_destiny = D_DISCARD;
$final_banned_destiny = D_DISCARD;
$final_spam_destiny = D_DISCARD;
$final_bad_header_destiny = D_PASS; # many badly configured servers out there
$warnvirusrecip = 1;
$warnbannedrecip = 1;
(a few lines may have wrapped around in the above. They all start with “$“)
Create the following directories, making sure they belong to user and group amavis:
/var/amavis/tmp
/var/amavis/var,
/var/amavis/db
Run amavisd, and check if it’s listening in port 10024. If not, there should be some error message telling you what the problem (in /etc/amavisd.conf) is.
We’re almost done, now. Next: configuring Postfix to work with amavisd-new.
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