.:justwerks software:.

I recently posted about Sun's great virtualization platform and had some comments about the Mac functionality, mostly to do with networking.

Well, those comments are now moot as the newly released 2.0.2 has Host Interface capabilities which means, to the lay person, that I can have a distinct IP assigned to my Virtual Machines and don't have to use port forwarding tricks! Awesome!

The upgrade was painless - download and install - and after I enabled the Host Interface I rebooted my Linux Test Box. It booted with no problems and now lives on the same sub-network as the rest of the computers on my home network - Happy Day!

So run and get the new update for your Mac box and enjoy free virtualization. It's not as slick as the other alternatives - Parallels or VM Fusion - but it's free and works "Good Enough for me...for now..."

It's the most enjoyable time of the year - ELECTION TIME!

I am currently working on a small Drupal contract and part of the work is to allow files to be attached to content that only a particular user can see (User A); the trick is that the person uploading the files (User B) isn't the person that should be allowed to see them.

This technique requires a few settings and modules to work.
Setup Drupal to serve files privately, not through HTTP in admin/settings/file-system
Ensure you have the following modules installed and enabled: CCK, FileField (a CCK file field), ACL (access control lists) and Content Access.
Create a new CCK content type and in the Access Control tab enable "Enable per node access control settings" for that content type
Enable "administer access control" for the user/role of the person uploading the files
Create a new node using the CCK content type and once published change the access permissions on the node to allow only User A to see the files.

Done!

This seems to be working so far but I have more testing to do.

A bit more than a month ago a DNS attack was reported by Dan Kaminsky that stated there was a fundamental problem with the DNS protocol that could result in web site requests being sent to the wrong location. This is a great opportunity for phishing and other evil doer's to grab personal information without our knowledge.
I decided to use the tool on his web site to test if my ISP (Northwestel) had patched their DNS servers to better protect against this particular attack. I clicked on the button that says "Check My DNS" and was presented with a potential failure notice as follows:

Your name server, at 216.108.8.8, appears vulnerable to DNS Cache Poisoning.
All requests came from the following source port: 50341
...

I wonder when Northwestel will update their DNS servers to protect against this issue?

Check your own ISP at the above link and see if they are doing any better. Leave comments to the failure/success of the test!