Smiffa2001 - Slashdot User

Submission + - ask slashdot: tight firewall for brand-new linux user 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05, 2014 @10:45AM

An anonymous reader writes: Hi all,

I am a new Linux user. I'm on 2nd day now. Currently I am trying out Ubuntu, but that could change.

I am looking for a USER FRIENDLY firewall that I can setup that lets me do these things:
(requirement1) set up a default deny rule
(requirement2) carve out exceptions for these programs: browser, email client, chat client, yum and/or apt.
(requirement3) carve out exceptions to the exceptions in requirement2. i.e. I want to be able to then block off IPs and IP ranges known to be used by malware, marketers, etc., and all protocols which aren't needed for requirement2.
(requirement4) it needs to have good enough documentation that a beginner like me can figure it out

Previously, I had done all of the above in AVG firewall on windows, and it was very easy to do...

So far I have tried these things:
(try1) IPTABLES — it looked really easy to screw it up and then not notice that its screwed up and/or not be able to fix it even if I did notice, so I tried other things at that point...
(try2) searched the internet and found various free firewalls such as Firestarter, GUFW, etc., which I weren't able to make meet my requirements.

Can someone either point me to a firewall that meets my needs or else give me some hints on how to make firestarter or GUFW do what I need?

Thank You

Submission + - Five Year Old uncovers XBOX ONE log in flaw. (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Smiffa2001 on Friday April 04, 2014 @10:47AM

Smiffa2001 writes: The BBC are reporting that five-year-old Kristoffer Von Hassel from San Diego has uncovered a (frankly embarrassing) security flaw within the XBOX ONE log in screen. Apparently by entering an incorrect password in the first prompt and then filling the second field with spaces, a user can log in without knowing a password to an account.

Young Kristoffer's Dad has submitted the flaw to Microsoft — who have patched the flaw — and have generously provided four free games, $50, a year-long subscription to Xbox Live and an entry on their list of Security Researcher Acknowledgements.

Comment Re:Half-life (Score 3, Funny) 75

by Smiffa2001 on Wednesday March 26, 2014 @12:10PM (#46584697) Attached to: Physicists Produce Antineutrino Map of the World

Half-life (Score:3)

Half-Life 3, Confirmed.
[Of course this only works if folks mod so that score remains at three...]

Comment Re:Spammy SSD drives (Score 1) 176

by Smiffa2001 on Wednesday August 21, 2013 @06:18PM (#44636621) Attached to: Single Developer Responsible For Over 47k Apps In BlackBerry World

The easy way out of this is not to shop Amazon. Yep, that's the easy thing to say, but for me, a few pounds more with ebuyer or dabs and I know there's no dicking around like this...

Comment Re:Press release in english (Score 1) 347

by Smiffa2001 on Tuesday May 18, 2010 @11:42AM (#32253536) Attached to: The Pirate Bay Sinks And Swims

As opposed to without copyright law where the works would be destroyed in exactly the same way, except this time conditional on them existing in the first place?

Really now... And I suppose the following:

The Mona Lisa The Statue of David Plumbing The Steam Engine ...are all figments of everyone's imagination.

Vast portions of our art and history had NO Patent or Copyright "protection" to speak of and yet they were done. Your premise is, sadly, an old saw- and very, very much wrong.

Unfortunately most folks nowadays are so shit-scared of someone bigger and more powerful coming along and "stealing" their idea, leaving them (the inventor) in ruins, it might be their only perceived way of protecting themselves and their invention.

Comment Re:Night Driver FTW (Score 1) 241

by Smiffa2001 on Thursday April 08, 2010 @06:31AM (#31773532) Attached to: Videogame Driving Skills Don't Apply In Real Life

2) In GTA3 etc who cares about hitting small stuff like traffic cones?

Or pedestrians, other vehicles, buildings, street furniture, pedestrians....

Submission + - Unidentified transmission on 14.250 MHz

Submitted by Smiffa2001 on Friday January 09, 2009 @08:22PM

Smiffa2001 writes: The MAKE: blog is running a story with a YouTube video showing a strange repeating tone over the 20-metre 14.250 MHz band, as recorded by a ham radio enthusiast. One Make: commenter points out a forum thread here but there's not much else there or anywhere else to point to either the source or nature of the transmission, which by all accounts is still active. Given the vast store of knowledge and experience reading these hallowed pages, is there anything that the /. community could add to solving the mystery?

Comment Re:Linux (Score 1) 221

by Smiffa2001 on Saturday September 17, 2005 @08:34AM (#13583911) Attached to: Reducing The Negative Impact of Laptops

I think that if the user can't figure out how to use ctrl+alt+del, it's not a problem with the software.

Why not? If you couldn't work out how to start your car, would it be your fault? It seems to be what you're implying...
There's too much reliance on the "User is always wrong" approach in producing software and interfaces for it and that if they have a problem, they should just "deal with it". Consumer devices that take this approach just generally fail to catch on. If something says "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to begin", they _might_ get pressed together or they might be pressed sequentially. Stuff like this gets missed out time and time again.

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