I've recently been experiencing a problem with some MySQL servers, "Host 'host_name' is blocked because of many connection errors.

Often times you may run across some nasty software that will refuse to run inside a virtual environment.  Usually malware is the biggest culprit here, but some legitimate programs may also refuse to install if a virtual machine environment is detected.  Fortunately VMware has created a work around to prevent software from detecting a virtual machine. 

Streaming live video via Flash over RTMP can be done on FreeBSD with minimal effort.  We will use the FreeBSD operating system, the Red5 RTMP server, and the Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder.

There are many reasons why you'd want to setup secure email communications (aka: encryption), especially given recent freedom of speech, privacy, and censorship issues in Western cultures.  It is useful and now thanks to Mozilla Thunderbird, it's also very easy to configure and use.

Interestingly, at about 3:00 AM on Sunday April 11 (that is when I noticed it), the WHOIS queries for several high profile domains appear to be hacked. GOOGLE.COM, AMAZON.COM, GODADDY.COM, MICROSOFT.COM, YAHOO.COM, FACEBOOK.COM, etc. Yet several smaller domains, such as UNIBIA.COM, PACYWORLD.COM, VIEWSONIC.COM, and BROADBANDREPORTS.COM are un-affected.

If your mail is always ending up in the "Junk" folder (Yahoo is well known for this), take a look at DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). Your email server will sign every outgoing message with a cryptographic private key. Your DNS server is setup with TXT record in the email's domain that contains a matching public key. The receiving end will take the two keys, and determine if they are a match, thus authenticating your email server.

The implementation is very straight forward with Ubuntu Server.

If your mail is always ending up in the "Junk" folder, perhaps it's time to take a look at DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). DKIM is an email authentication framework (or protocol) that tries to minimize the SPAM problem. Your email server will sign every outgoing message with a cryptographic private key. Your DNS server is setup with TXT record in the email's domain that contains a matching public key. The receiving end will take the two keys, and determine if they are a match, thus authenticating your email server.

While trying to setup an FTP server on my FreeBSD 7.2 system, for some reason anything I put into the /etc/ftpd.conf file did not work. I wanted to specify a PASSIVE ports range and according to the FreeBSD documentation, the following line in the ftpd.conf file *should* do it.

A reverse proxy set-up can solve a few problems. For example you can load balance servers, secure a server by hiding it behind a proxy, or load balance an Internet connection. In this HelpFile our goal is to offer access to a server on our private LAN through a higher bandwidth Cable modem connection, but without making changes to our server's network setup.

Microsoft Windows 7 is suppose to undo the Windows Vista failure and make Windows "cool" again. Microsoft has supposedly spent the last 2 years fixing and changing features based on feedback given by it's customers. Now, two years later Windows 7 is ready, and it's being marketed as a "major improvement" over Windows Vista.

Is Windows 7 everything it's hyped up to be?