BSDCan, a BSD conference held in Ottawa, Canada, has quickly established itself as the technical conference for people working on and with 4.4BSD based operating systems and related projects. The organizers have found a fantastic formula that appeals to a wide range of people from extreme novices to advanced developers. BSDCan 2008 will be held on 16-17 May 2008 at University of Ottawa, and will be preceeded by two days of Tutorials on 14-15 May 2008.

I was just catching up on my reading when I stumbled across this gem of a link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/bb927794.aspx Now, as it doesn’t identify itself via the URL, it is a windows service pack blocking tool. The blurb from the Microsoft web page is as follows: A blocking tool is available for organizations that would like to temporarily prevent installation of Windows Service Pack updates through Windows Update. This tool can be used with:

It seems that chroot has been incorporated into OpenSSH in the latest release, making it much easier to enable sftp-only accounts that are confined to their homedir: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20080220110039 Previously, you had to implement cumbersome patches and hacks to achieve this functionality, which is easily enabled in vsftpd and some other FTP servers.

This Thursday is the monthly meeting. I do remember saying that we could do something techie this time around, so I’m bringing a handful of Watchguard Firebox IIs to turn into monowall security appliances. The process is remarkably simple and they will run embedded BSD internally when we are completed. All materials will be provided (as you only get to keep the completed box). Points for good questions. As this won’t take all night (at least it shouldn’t), think up some good topics for post mods.

Well, it’s always time for stupidity. I was looking through updates on facebook and there it was… A National Post Article on copyright. As I have an interest in the existing provisions of the copyright act as we currently know it, I thought it would be a good read. Reading through it, it appears that our Industry minister is in the middle of fast tracking a DMCA like ammendment or law, contrary to the wishes of the public, the retailers, broadcasters, telcos and ISPs.