average admins

I ran across this link on a blog or something the other day and have been waiting to watch them when I had the time.

Well, I had the time last night and I have to say that these are very good.

As the title states, they’re for security awareness so the content won’t be anything highly technical nor do they contain 0day knowledge. However, they are very well done!

See for yourself at http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?bhjs=0&page_id=7103.

As of yesterday 4/27/06, the big N has renamed their “Revolution” gaming console. The new name for this machine is going to be “Wii“, pronounced ‘we’. From the Revolution site:

“Introducing … Wii. As in “we.” While the code-name “Revolution” expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer. Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else. Wii will put people more in touch with their games … and each other. But you’re probably asking: What does the name mean?”

“Wii sounds like ‘we,’ which emphasizes this console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.”

“Wii has a distinctive “ii” spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play. And Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd.”

“So that’s Wii. But now Nintendo needs you. Because, it’s really not about you or me. It’s about Wii. And together, Wii will change everything.”

Like many gamers, I will probably still call this machine Revolution. I don’t think I’ll want to call my friends over so we can play with my Wii.

Has anyone out there formatted a WinXP Tablet?

 I formatted one that was running very clunky and used a CD set of original Microsoft CDs that say WinXP Tablet Edition Volume License on them.  I formatted and reinstalled the OS with these CDs.  The tablet has a nice pristine XP OS on it now, but I can’t find the tablety features like the ink and on screen key board and other functions.

Have any of you done this?  I don’t want to use the restore CDs that came with the machine because of the advertisements and propaganda software that comes with it.

What have I left out or what do I not know?  This is my first real expererience with a tablet mainly because they seem to be very useless; so fill me in on any help you can give.

So hello all. My name is Johnny but I go by indeX here on the intarweb thingy. I draw a comic that is in it’s very infantile stages at the moment not to mention I’m pretty new to the Average Admins site, that is to say I signed up about 2 days ago. So here is a comic about the upcoming X-men 3: The Last Stand movie. The movie is directed by Mr. Brett Ratner who has, lets say a ‘not very large’ repertoire in the movie making biz; and of the movies he has made, he’s cast Chris ‘Korben my man!’ Tucker in several. So I thought it would be funny to see what my characters would do in a situation stipulating that Ratner cast the same two actors in two prominent rolls in the upcoming movie.

Feel free to view it here.

My comic is currently ‘hosted’ by Blogspot, and there are a few other older comics on the same site.  I can’t host them myself yet, but once I get some webspace with more than 2kb of bandwidth I will start hosting them myself. Enjoy!

I figured this would be as good a month as any to post some web site statistics. I think the most interesting are the countries that visit our blog.

I don’t know what the guys from Russia are doing but they account for 19% of our site traffic this far in the month of April. Other countries include (ordered by the number of hits, highest to lowest) the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Italy, Greece, France, Brazil, Portugal, Japan, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Austria, New Zealand, Switzerland, Poland, Norway, Mexico, Finland, and Singapore. All other countries reported by Webalizer are related to the US. These countries listed, and the US, are the top 30 out of 67. I think that’s very impressive. Either there are people in other countries interested in our blog content, or the SPAM cartels of other countries are attempting to harvest e-mail addresses!

So, we have had 90,872 hits so far this month averaging 145 hits per hour, 3495 per day, and 236 average visits. The top two articles that were accessed this month were FreeNX on FreeBSD with 2051 hits and What Not to do With a Video iPod and FreeBSD with 639 hits.

As you can see, our visitors are not (or are potentially not) just from Texarkana and the surrounding areas. There is also no way to tell how many are subscribed to the RSS feed as aggregators only hit the site once per refresh, not once per subscribed user. If you have something you would like to document, a how-to you would like to publish, or anything else you would like to contribute to the blog, please register an account and shoot me an e-mail (jeff[dot]cross[at]averageadmins[dot]com) and I’ll get your account set up to post articles on the blog.

Until next time…

We have talked until we are blue in the face about how we want an IT group in the Texarkana area. We have made attempts to have a thriving community blog, hold monthly meetings (April is slipping by… maybe next month), and have technical or “look what I’m doing” presentations. The TAUG has done the same for many years now and nothing seems to work as one would expect in this area.

I talked to Adrian last night and he was on his way to Seattle to attend a users group meeting geared towards the Ruby programming language. I read all the time on other blogs about so-in-so attending the Linux Users Group here, the FreeBSD Users Group here, or the PHP users group over there. These people drive great distances to attend these meetings. Why?

Here is my question: What makes a good “users group?” What are the groups in Texarkana (Average Admins/TAUG) doing wrong? Are we doing anything right? Before you throw up a complaint, are you doing everything that you can? Are you offering up ideas? Contributing? Spreading the word? Do you think an IT group is even beneficial or needed in this area? Is Texarkana ready for that or should we all drive to Lufkin, TX once a month for the FreeBSD Users Group down there (it’s just an example)?

I think we have a lot of strong talent to pull from here in the Texarkana area. We, and other organizations around us, are using a lot of cool technologies. There are a lot of people out there in this community that know a lot more than me, that do things differently than I do, that may have an interest in what I do or the applications I develop. How do we put it all together and maintain a thriving users group?

If there are viewers from abroad visiting this blog, do you attend users groups where you live? What makes them beneficial to you? What do you look for in an IT group? All comments, local and abroad, are more than welcome! I think we have a lot of potential and talent to pull from within the group currently, and I know there is more to be exploited in the IT community here and elsewhere.

If you or anyone you know would like to contribute to the blog (write technical how-tos, post opinions on related news, write “look what I can do” articles) please let me know. Ask them to register an account on the blog and shoot me an e-mail. I will gladly update their account to have article posting privileges. I know there is a lot going on out there and I want to read about it and offer a place for others to blog their experiences for everyone’s enjoyment and benefit.

The Average Admins group has potential. I think the blogging aspect is beneficial. How do we create and maintain momentum?

This is a very interesting read for programmers. I thought I should share this with you guys.

http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds12-3/paulgraham.html

Jeff and I had the pleasure of watching Dan Kaminsky give a presentation at Black Hat ‘06 in DC. This guy knows his stuff!

Since ShmooCon has released most of their videos, I highly encourage you to at least watch his presentation.

You can find his at this URL:
http://shmoocon.org/2006/videos/Kaminsky-BlackOps.mp4

And you can find the other videos here:
http://shmoocon.org/2006/presentations.html

You can find the BlackHat videos here, though 2006’s haven’t been posted yet.
http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-media-archives/bh-multi-media-archives.html

Hey guys, check this out. Click on one of the screenshots and notice how the screenshot pops up in a new, cleanly centered window. Anyone got any ideas of how they do that?

Josh

Sharing USB devices is about to get a lot simpler thanks to a new hub powered by technology from chip developer SMSC, which will allow two computers to access up to four shared devices without the need to set up a local area network. Called the MultiSwitch hub, this device creates a proprietary behind-the-scenes network, allowing USB-equipped printers, cameras, hard drives, and other peripherals to be accessed by any combination of desktop, laptop, HTPC, or game console — with both machines able to interact with the devices simultaneously, according to the developer.

Hmm…This sounds like something that would be cool to have and EASY to use and setup.  Not sure how much use I would get out of it, but maybe for use at a coffee shop with some friends or traveling with a group or something.