Tool for Uncompressing Archives

While personally I am perfectly happy using the command line tools, my wife would probably take my head off if I mention to her that you need to type something in the command line.  In fact her first response would be… what is a command line? 

So to make uncompressing of archives easier I found the program untar that uncompresses the archives, while using a graphical interface. 

Untar is able to uncompress files in .7z, .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz, .tar.z, .z, .gz, .svgz .Z, .tar.Z, .taz, .tar.bz, .tar.bz2, .tbz, .tbz2, .bz, .bz2, .rar, and .zip formats.

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The Brain

A software comes around once in a while that wen originally viewed is looked at as nothing more then a toy, but when fully used and utilized after some time becomes the best software ever.

The Brain Personal (http://www.thebrain.com) is just that kind of software.  I have been using it for at least 6 years now and have gone through the whole evolution of the software.

While looking like a fancy toy this software lets you create links and thoughts for the way you think and work.  No it is not a gimmick  if you actually take the time to learn the software that is exactly what it does (A little more on that later). 

While the software has been around on the Windows platform for ages now and has evolved through out its life, it is now available cross platform due to the company porting it to java.  The Beta version of the 4.0 software is available for download. The software is free for the basic version, but the advance version which gives you a ton of exporting options and other things does cost money.

Now more on some examples to make you understand, and some of the uses that I find for the software.

1. Link Manager  - The software provides the ability to create links for various categories and interlink them together as needed.  If you look at standard link managers or at the browsers bookmarks they are linear, meaning that for each “category” it can only exist in one.  The Brain does not suffer with this limitation giving you the ability to link Yahoo to Finance, Search Engine, Blog, News, etc,. So that you can find this page from multiple locations when you are looking for something particular.

2. Address Book – I use Linked-In Software and other to keep my extensive work and home contacts in place. But once again, Outlook and other contact managers only keep a linear thought process (although with Outlook categories, you can assign multiple categories).  But this software by using multicolored links (Known as Link Types) lets you truly link the categories together so if Bob is a Friend of Jim, but is the brother of Samantha you can see it visually within seconds.  Using it with Linked-In also provides the ability to keep track of the linking process with my business associates as well.
3. To Do List – The new version with its calendaring feature also acts like an amazing To Do Manager.  I use a system called Getting Things Done for my To Do activities.  With The Brain software I can interlink my To-Do Lists not only by categories, but by projects and create hierarchies as well as assign due dates with the calendar feature.  This is probably the best implementation of the principles possible, and when I have time I just have to write about it.

I do more things with the software including keeping track of software installed on each of my systems, and marking things for upgrades easily. I keep track of all my work presentations and files, and easily export it to my PDA from the software. 

I also use it on the Mac and the PC at the same time, while the new licensing is a bit prohibitive, because they make you buy two versions of the software to use. The company does give a discount for secondary software and if you do not want the full functionality you can always use the free version.

More on this software and its use later.

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The New Addition to the Family

No its not as you think, it is not a new human being. Rather it is a baby of a digital persuasion. A new MacBook has joined the ever growing family of computers.

Its a 13″ White Mac Book that I bought for my wife, but when she does not use it (at night) it is mine to enjoy.

After a few days with it I can truly say that what the hell am I doing wasting my time with Windows. I should of bought the Intel Mac as soon as it came out.

In fact in terms of prices the Mac book is way cheaper then other systems if you compare apples to oranges. A small Sony VAIO system with a similar hardware configuration goes for exactly the same price as a Mac Book ($1149), the difference is that with 1GB of memory Microsoft Vista can barely run. With 1 GB of memory the Mac hums along like there is no tomorrow.

So now comes my new adventure in trying software and seeing how I can learn to use the Mac interface.

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GAIM is now PIDGIN (a great Instant Messanging Client)

The GAIM project after a long time of playing Pin the Tail on the Lawyer … I mean a court and Letter writing battle has decided to just let it go.

As of the 2.0.0 version the GAIM project and product is now called PIDGIN. What does it mean to you, nothing as far as the great software is concerned. Same product, new graphics and a new name. This is actually a nice move as far as I can see as this will stop the legal headaches and lets the developers concentrate on making the software even better.

If you are not familiar with GAIM or as it is now known PIDGIN, it is the best Instant Messaging client out there. It is relatively light for a client that has ability to communicate to the following networks: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Groupwise, ICQ. IRC Client, MSN, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Lotus Sametime, XMPP (Google Talk), Yahoo!, Zephyr. It also has ability for great plug-ins to compliment the environment.

The 2.0.0 product is not far away from the 2.0 beta product of GAIM as far as I can see. There are some additions of protocols it now supports, and it will be available for the same platforms as before.

After uninstalling GAIM and installing Pidgin in windows there was very little set-up that needed to be done as Pidgin grabbed GAIM information. Also there are plenty of plug-ins available for pidgin same as for GAIM.

For Gentoo Systems pidgin is available through portage although is currently marked as experimental (~x86)

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Great Firewall for Windows

If you are using Windows then you have a lot of choices for firewalls. The bad choices is the built in windows xp sp2 firewall, there are others as well some good and some not so good (Nothing I tried is worse then Microsoft’s Firewall). But the best firewall in my opinion is Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro:

Agnitum: Outpost Firewall Pro

This is a windows firewall that really is amazing for all skill level, it provides the basic functionality that my wife and kids can use, without asking many questions. But for a seasoned security professional such as myself it gives control options not found in any other firewall.

Lets first start with some of the plug-in applications that are provided by default with the firewall.

• Active Content Plug-in – Provides the ability to block, allow or prompt for various things. All of these things can be selected at a granular level with explanation available on each of the items Plus provide control that is different for Mail and Web.  There is also an ability to add total exclusions to the whole list for sites that are totally trusted. But even those sites that are trusted can still be controlled on a per item basis which is totally unheard off.  So for example your work E-Mail system has a virus that opens up  ActiveX or VBScript, but you being a savvy security person decide that you only want Java Applets or Java Script. No problem you can set-up exactly that on a per site basis. Here is a list of all the things that can be controlled:

• Privacy – Cookies, ActiveX, Java Applets, Referrers can all be controlled
• Page Optimization – Flash, Hidden Frames, Animated GIF, External Active Content
• Scripting – Java Script, VB Script, ActiveX, Pop-Up Windows

Sick of those Adds? No problem, the firewall has AntiAdd feature that allows you to block adds either by content (keywords) or from particular sites. Well this firewall does the Add Blocking for you. If you use the Firefox browser you can probably do something pretty similar by utilizing a plug-in. But you can not do it uniformly across all browsers, and programs that use the web as the content delivery mechanism.  A list of sites automatically is provided for you and can be expended by using different lists from the forums, but I personally like to delete all of them and only block the adds I do not want to see.  For example I do want to see adds from google because I find them unobtrusive and not taking up lots of space and bandwidth.   There is also the ability to block by size of the image, which Agnitum provided the most common add format when you do.  I find this feature actually a bit annoying, because it sometimes blocks images on shopping sites, but it can easily be disabled at a simple click or can be overwritten by using exclusion sites.  The adds list can be exported, and imported at will as well.

Anti Spyware – Yes I know you have a spyware program to do just that, but since it is a plug-in does not take up lots of memory and is updated frequently there is no reason not to add another layer of protection.

Attack Detection – I am not going to speak much on this as it is a simple attack detection theme. Perhaps this is where the firewall lacks a bit of the IDS functionality against other firewalls. It does not mean that it does not identify the problems, or let something through. It just does not provide the rich explanation of exactly what particular attack is being run against your computer.

DNS Cache – is simple DNS caching program which allows you to have totall exclusion for sites that have numerous rotating servers, such as a banking site.

Now lets get to the meat of the program, the program is one of the most flexible rule base firewalls ever. It does have a mode that advises what to do in each lf the categories.  The program gives advise to the beginner and opens up ports if OK is clicked, but for advanced users it gives tremendous options. The options below can be used in any combination that you want to provide very granular rules on a per application basis in any combination that you might want.

• Protocol  – TCP, UDP
• Direction of the connection – Inbound, Outbound, Transient
• Remote Host – Can be Domain Name, Ip Address, IP Subnet, Address Macros (which can be expended)
• Remote Port (Initiating port)
• Local Host
• Local Port (Destination Port)
• Time Interval
• Local Port – Allows connection on local port for remote port.
• Local Port is equal to remote port (automatically set -up)

For each of the actions the following methods are allowed:

• Allow Connection
• Block Connection
• Report it
• Run Application – Can be selected locally
• Do not log activity
• Stateful Inspection
• Ignore Component Control.

With such granularity on a per application, but we are not finished yet. There is also Anti-Leak protection and Component Control.   You can control a number of areas that I will not describe here, but basically this firewall can do everything you want.

I have been using it now for a few years, and every time I re-evaluate the firewalls I always come back to this one.

Take a look for yourself.

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