Hard ftp'ing...

When Mandrake installed itself on 'bagger', I chose a "medium security" setup, more from an understanding that "low security" was little better than leaving my keyboard open to the world, and that "high security" probably wouldn't accept any input from any source at all, let alone the root user equipped with the correct password and biometric authentication.

So I hadn't really sweated not being able to ftp into 'bagger' from my desktop Windows box... until I ran across a file that was bigger than what you can stuff onto a floppy disk. After a few minutes poking around the old familiar territory of inetd.conf, it occurred to me that there was no in.ftpd daemon installed on the machine. Without that daemon, ftp'ing into the box would be a challenge for even the most experienced hacker, since there is no ftp server to run to allow access.

The MandrakeSoft web site is useless, unless you want to view marketing slime about version 8.0 of the product. So, I went looking for a suitable ftp server, and I think I found one (at least it works) in proftpd. I couldn't get it to work via inetd, but that's no big deal... I just run it in standalone mode.

And all the files I need to be somewhere are now where they belong.

Cheers...

The results of my "television diet"...

When the kids moved downstairs, they took their satellite dish and television with them. That left Galina and me with a puny little portable, with no antenna.

This basically means we get one Albuquerque station's signal well; two more stations, so-so. In effect, we (or at least I) went on a "TV diet."

I mean, who wants to watch reruns of The X Files?

The other evening, I joined Galina for a night of TV, and I must say: After being away for so long, the content seems even worse than before.

News coverage is the pits. Sure, there's a lot of violence in the world, but it seems to be the only thing the newsies are interested in. I mean, okay, there was a story - just one - along the lines of a Rotary Club in Albuquerque honoring a woman who had spent 18 years with troubled kids, but as for the rest... nothing but murder, rape, suicide, fire.

And they spice it up by trying as best as possible to cover the event "live," often trying to beat the cops to the scene. Yowzah!

The video newsmagazines seem to be following suit. Whatever abomination Dan Rather hosts on CBS appears to have devoted a series of broadcasts devoted to murder. (I caught the tail end of something about a bank robber named "Hollywood.") Sure, it probably ratchets up the ratings, but then why persist in pretending that it's journalism?

What, in the final analysis, is the difference between modern journalists - who love to occasionally trot out the ghost of Edward R. Murrow as they carry on about integrity and truth - and the scribes who penned the lurid "true detective" yarns of the 50s and 60s?

Yeah, I know, newsies have been chasing stories along these lines for ages (e.g., Weegee and my old man, who edited True Detective for Dell for a while), but when you consider the "conventional wisdom" about how important it is to read/watch the news in order to be a better-informed citizen, I wonder what is so important about convenience store stick-ups?

Then again, considering some of the strongly biased political reporting in the media, maybe exposure to a steady stream of crime-related stories isn't so bad.

Just musing... I'll put the soapbox back, now.

Cheers...