Spiders on the Web

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During last weeks there was a lot of talk in Italy about Beppe Grillo, Italy’s most famous comedian, and italian politics, probably more talk will come in the future. But I wanted to point out to one of his article about Open Source titled Adopt a Penguin and written on the 26 September 2006. Yes, I known almost a year ago but I am living in Spain and I always get to know about Italian things in late. Beppe Grillo in his article highlights about the fact that Italian Government don’t look forward to the adoption of Open Source Software in the Public Administration even thought with all advantages that it will bring.

I have to say that here in Spain the situation is better, as an example the local government in the region of Extramadura has gone entirely open source, deciding to move its entire administration to Linux and Open Source Software and making a requirement to all its officials to use the ODF and PDF formats for all documents. Also it promotes the use in the schools of gnuLinex, a Spanish Linux distribution. Unfortunately the things do not go equally well in other regions, like here in Cantabria where the local politicians continue instead signing agreements with Microsoft without realizing of how much money they could save in software licences.

However I try to do my best with Open Source evangelization nearby, but unfortunately in Cantabria companies prefer to use proprietary software and, in the event of the small business, piracy gets very high percentages. In any case I think that the main problem here is the lack of knowledge rather than a clear will to get illegal software, therefore I take every opportunity to make people aware that there is one perfectly legal way of saving money in software.

At last I want to say that Linux is a good alternative also for home computing. I always heard that Linux is too difficult, that is good only for IT people, that it doesn’t have a nice Look and Feel, that there isn’t a good music player, that we cannot watch TV, etc… etc… well, all these arguments could be true until few years ago, but now there are no more excuses. The programs are there, the graphical interface is equally Nice and Easy to use as it is in Windows and if you want there is also the 3D version (created much time before Vista). The important thing is to choose the right Linux distribution, which in this case is Ubuntu Desktop Edition.

About Ubuntu Desktop I am actually preparing a series of articles, which I will publish weekly very soon, where I’ll get into the main topics and I will help you to make a complete migration from Windows to Linux. Stay tuned.

Danilo,
Spiders on the Web

Well,

as you can see I did some changes, the most important one is the new domain name, anyway don’t worry for the old links because I wrote some URL rewriting rules so they get converted automatically.

I have also installed a MultiLingual plugin for WordPress that let me manage the blog in three different languages: English, Italian and Spanish. You can use the flags to change language.

Last thing is about comments, they are open now and you don’t need a registration to send one, but if I will get lot of spam probably get back as it was before.

Danilo,
Spiders on the Web

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When it comes to wireless networking, it is important to use a form of encryption called Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), so that only clients that know the “secret key” can connect to the wireless network.

While configuring a WiFi router we have to provide some WEP keys, the best is to generate random keys using our Linux, or any other Unix like OS.

$ dd if=/dev/random bs=1 count=13 2>/dev/null|xxd -ps

You will get something like:

3cafee64845c2617aa9d1b1411

This is a 104-bit key consist of 26 Hex digit, if you need a different key length just set count as follow:

• 40 bits: count=5
• 64 bits: count=8
• 104 bits: count=13
• 128 bits: count=16
• 152 bits: count=19
• 232 bits: count=29
• 256 bits: count=32

Danilo,
Spiders on the Web

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If you want to check the BIOS date without rebooting your PC, here it is a command that you can use in Linux

$ sudo dmidecode | grep -C 3 -i date
BIOS Information
Vendor: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
Version: 6.00 PG
Release Date: 04/20/2004
Address: 0xE0000
Runtime Size: 128 kB
ROM Size: 256 kB


Danilo,
Spider on the Web

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a.k.a. Dellaquila Benito Franco, simply called Franco, my father.

I knew very well my father, so well that I know what he was thinking when his sickness got worse and I can almost catch his thoughts before dying.

But I didn’t know his alter ego, Bennet Mac Eagle, called Benny by his friends. I only know that he was living in Bali, Indonesia, during several months of the year and when he was back home in Italy he spent many hours studying the Indonesian language.

I already gave my farewell to my father, so now I want to dedicate these few lines to Benny.

Ciao Benny, wherever you are.

In the last two months I didn’t write to much, probably because it’s summer time but mainly because I wanted to give a new look to the blog, so I dedicated my free time more on WordPress Themes rather than writing posts.

Now you can see how it looks like and I hope you like it.

I wanted to give it a red touch even if this is not my favourite colour because I realized that many of the things that I like are red, like the Torino FC football club, Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 team and the Ducati . Actually even my girlfriend Maria wears in red most of the times.

Danilo,
Spiders on the Web

For those that don’t know Turin yet, a video from YouTube.

Danilo