Ken and Roger,
thanks for reply and sorry about delayed response...
tongue out of cheek here, I have to admit Debian 3.1
is one of the best operating systems I have used and I am impressed even
if it takes a bit of learning.... other OS's remind me of what Bahktin
would call a monologic operating system, better off simply using a
mechanical typewriter or quill pen. I can well understand why GNU/Linux
is popular with many writers. (If you want a blast from the past check
out Scribus, it reminds me of Ready-Set-Go more so then Quark XPress.)
I took the firewall down on Fedora not really convinced that a dialup
internet account would make a good honeypot and in June-July I started
getting port scans and dictionary attacks on the shh port as well as
logs I couldn't account for. So erasing the hard drive afterwards made a
good excuse for installing as many different distros as I could lay my
hands on. (Mandrake failed at the last moment due I suspect to a faulty
CD which was annoying since it takes a long time installing itself.)
While checking out the specs on a new laser printer online with
Slackware I was still getting dictionary attacks in November which is as
good as a denial of service attack on a dial up account so I turned the
shh service off. I have been told that Windows XP takes three days to
bring back from an erased disk and this is the standard practice with
viruses so I wouldn't like to attempt this with XP. I also noticed
another Solaris system and mail server got hit so I am now wondering if
this was some kind of automated worm although after 90 minutes searching
CERT I am none the wiser other then to learn elsewhere that many Unix
and Linux systems reported similar attacks around this time.
Anyways, bored with being a honeypot the Debian setup now has a rather
unfriendly firewall and I am taking six months off, chronic fatigue
syndrome feeling like terminal postmodernist exhaustion. Why didn't I
pick something easy like Deleuze's transcendent poetics as an ontology
of late capitalist colonialism rather then univocal absolute
intransitive identity coupling narrative!
Chris Jones.
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