So, in other news, pf rocks.

I've got a pf.conf on dax, the FreeBSD-based replacement for starfire, that (w/out counting whitespace or comments) is 20 lines long, compared to a 109 line iptables script on one of my Linux hosts.  Both firewalls are configured more or less identically, right now ...

The logging is nifty, too.  I log all denied packets by default, which include almost everything except ssh, identd, and tunnel stuff, right now.  A /var/log/pflog, which can be viewed w/tcpdump, is generated, along with a special pflog0 interface.  Nice and quick way of watching worm traffic.  I set up MRTG to graph it, but I'm not sure how well it's going to work in the long run.

Oh, yeah ... it's got a REAL IPv6 conntrack.

So, when's pf gonna get ported to Linux?</flamebait>

... if you're going to do it in Linux, remember to turn off the reverse path filter thinger:

echo "net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 0" > /etc/sysctl.conf && sysctl -p

Hopefully that'll save you the headache I just had.  Look here if you want to know the details.

This article is funny.  And ... I updated my network map today!

So, it rained today.  It hasn't really rained in awhile .. so it seemed a little odd.  Unfortunately most people forgot how to drive in the rain (ok, it was only a mist when I was driving home) so I was seeing all sorts of crazy collisions.  I also saw a pretty nifty rainbow, though:

As some of you might have seen on Slashdot, Boston.com is running a story on the top 50 Sci-Fi shows of all time.  As refernce, the Wikipedia defines science fiction as a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology upon society and persons as individuals.  That being stated, some of the shows that appear in this top 50 seem miscategorized.

Here are some highlights I thought were interesting:

• Lois & Clark somehow made the list at #44.  I never really classified any of the Superman shows/movies as Sci-Fi, for some reason.  I guess I'm in the minority, though, since The Adventures of Superman appeared as well, #28.  Does this mean Smallville is Sci-Fi, too?
• Futurama got in at #41.  Funny show, probably should have been ranked a little higher.
• The original Batman series ranked in at #38.  No animated Batman made the list, though ...
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer is at #24.  Bah!
• How did Wonder Woman get in here?  Seriously, wrong list ...
• Andromeda ranks in at #22.  I really enjoyed watching this up until season four, when the plot became seemingly random, and I lost interest.
• Flash Gordon at #16.  I remember watching a couple episodes as a kid (ahem, *reruns*).  Action-packed, I'd say.
• Xena at #12.  No comment.
• Lost at #11.  I'm pretty much addicted to the show, even though the first episode of the new season is somewhat ... out there.  Season one isn't Sci-Fi, but season two might turn out to fit the genre ...
• Babylon 5 at ... #5.
• Star Trek TNG at #3 and TOS at #1!  I think they should be swapped, but that's primarily because I watched TNG while growing up, and only saw a handful of TOS episodes.
• Apparently lots of people like the new Battlestar Galactica.  I don't care for it, partially because I think it's boring, and just seems depressing (at least the first part of season 1).

I don't understand how Knight Rider didn't make that list.  Pfft, even Might Morphin" Power Rangers should have been in that list.  Oh well.

In other news, I've switched browsers.  In light of all the Firefox vulnerabilities that even made IE look good, I figured it would be time for me to switch.  I've settled on Epiphany, the lightweight gecko-based Gnome web browser.  It's missing some features, but is pretty quick and doesn't seem to suffer from the focus issues that plague all of Mozilla's XUL-based software products.

Oh, yeah, so.. I think I have a cold.  I thought it was allergies at first, since I usually get hit this time of year, but I don't have the typical symptoms.  Hopefully I'll be better by Monday.  At least I caught my nose.

Anyway, time for more OJ ...

Yay!

19:42 < i`yyy> pinky:~$ grep SwitchPanel GNUstep/Defaults/WindowMaker
19:42 < i`yyy>   SwitchPanelImages = None;

No more Alt+Tab nonsense in the 0.9x series ...

So, I did some Gentoo Linux updates on my two workstations, my laptop and amd64 desktop, within the past week.  Some of the results were far from stellar:

I also fought with WM decisions, as WindowMaker 0.8x was aging, and having some depencency problems.  I tried out Xfce for a day, and wasn't all that impressed, overall.  Aside from it having keyboard shortcuts for everything under the sun and looking kinda spiffy, I don't think I'm ready for a WM that tries to be a desktop environment.  There were tons of things I would never use, and I ran into all sorts of nasty font problems.  There also lacked the option of turning off the taskbar.  I ended up killing it and then saving my session, but that seemed to break some other functions like setting the desktop background.  I ended up going through a painful upgrade to WindowMaker 0.9x.  It's still lightweight, but has this really annoying alt+tab panel which I can't figure out how to turn off.  It steals focus!  I'll live ...

Oh, yeah.  I'm thinking of getting an overkill network card for my Linux-based router here.  I currently have three packet-forwarding devices (NetScreen, Linksys, Linux box) on the same big fat L2 link, and would eventually like to give each of these devices their own link.  Only problem is that I don't know if the motherboard in this eMachines 333id actually supports PCI 2.2.  It only has 2x PCI slots anyway ... which are both in use (hence the need for a combo card).  I might want to look around for sales, cause that card is like 5x the value of the PC I'm putting it in.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2554466.html#2554466

So that's why it wasn't working.  growisofs is my hero, now.