Myself
My email: karl at karlwilbur dot net
Not much to say here but at least I acknowledge it.
For my 30th birthday, I treated myself to the Mensa Admissions Test and I was accepted.
My hobbies.
Some links that I want to share.
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Decode my geek block.
My Work
I am currently working for myself (Perceivers Custom Computer Services and K & R Software) doing whatever is needed of me. It's fun.
I want to include some nifty tools that I have found useful, both to create one easy place for me to get to them as well as to provide a resource for others.
I have posted a list of my projects.
This Site
I began actual work on this site at about 20:30 on 21 September 2003.
I am working on it in my "free time".
I have posted my GPG Public Key. Feel free to add it to your keyring.
I am attempting to keep this site as standard as possible. I am doing this by comforming to Speech-Friendly Website Design and adherence to W3C standards which by nature are non-browser specific. By doing this I am ensuring that my website is being experienced as intended by all who visit, regardless of the web browser used.
On a side note, completley disrelated, I am working on a speech based Linux distrobution. I am building it from scratch, so if anyone has and helpful ideas, please feel free to fire off an email to me.
HTML
HTML (which stands for HyperText Markup Language) is the language of the internet. There is a standard for this language.(This may be news to some web developers.)
- HTML 2.0 - ('Request-For-Comment' #1866) was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force's HTML Working Group, which closed in 1996.
This set the standard for core HTML features based upon current practice in 1994.
(RFC 1866 was made obsolete by RFC 2854 in June of 2000. Its current status is HISTORIC.) - HTML 3.2 (Code Name Wilbur), announced in May 1996, is a very safe bet to ensure that your site is going to be viewed as intended.
- HTML 4.0, announced in December 1997, put the focus on the seperation of site content and structure.
- HTML 4.01 is the most recent version of HTML which was recommended by W3C in December of 1999.
- XHTML 1.0, announced in January 2000, is the first recommendation for XHTML by W3C. Is basically reformulated HTML which combines all of the pluspoints of HTML 4.01 with the power of XML.
- XHTML 1.1, announced at the end of May 2001, at first, appears to be very similar to XHTML 1.0. This is essentially a new breed of XHTML intended to be the foundation for a new direction in XHTML. While XHTML 1.0 has backwards compability with HTML, XHTML 1.1 is intended to be the next step toward a new standard.
From the Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing or FOLDOC:
hypertext- A term coined by Ted Nelson around 1965 for a collection of documents (or "nodes") containing cross-references or "links" which, with the aid of an interactive browser program, allow the reader to move easily from one document to another. The extension of hypertext to include other media - sound, graphics, and video - has been termed "hypermedia", but is usually just called "hypertext", especially since the advent of the World-Wide Web and HTML. (2000-09-10)
Netiquette
Netiquette in short for Network Ettiquette. It is the agreed upon conduct for network activity such as email, chat, etc..
I have gone some years without proper netiquette and have been developing it over the last year or so. Now, I would like to make a formal apology to those whom I have offended over the past few years with my rude and improper conduct. I didn't know any better, which I understand is no excuse.
I am always looking to imporve my conduct and any helpful criticism is appreciated. So, for those who are also interested in improving their netiquette I have some helpful references:
- The Netiquette Guidlines from the Internet Engineering Task Force's Network Working Group found at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt.
- A bit about netiquette from the LinuxFromScratch.org FAQ found at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/#netiquette.
- A very insightful article entitled "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" by Eric S. Raymond regarding how to ask for help on the internet can be found at http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
- My local Linux Users Group (CLUG).
- ...please contribute to this list.
My Server
What's This Site Running? This server is running Apache Web Server on Linux. It is connected to the Internet via Zoomtown, and is secured from the Internet by a firewall, also running Linux. Both are supplied by power from an APC Back-UPS 1500, which is controlled with apcupsd over USB and automatic shutdown is done on web server and firewall. The web server is currently running Linux 2.6, which has been rock solid.
Linux
- Registered LFS user. ID# 8237.
What is Linux and why is IBM supporting it? Click to see howstuffworks, linux.org and MacInstruct for Mac users.
Find out how to pronounce "Linux" straight from the source.
IBM has decided to move to Linux!! View their current "Windows to Linux Roadmap" which delineates their step-by-step migration to Linux.
I'd like to include some cool technical references here:
- "The Linux Booting Process Unveiled" by Roberto Alsina. http://www.pycs.net/latieral/stories/23.html.
- Here is a "Linux From Scratch: A Tour".
- Linux standards.
Local linux software:
Security
Here I want to point out some things about security with regard to computer networking in general.
To that end, I found an interesting and helpful webpage on the difference between a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and SSH (Secure Shell). This page is at the University of Minnesota's website. It discusses the use of these techniquies as they pertain to the University's network but in that they do a pretty good job of describing these techniques and even provide some easy to understand definitions for common terms. The page is: http://www1.umn.edu/adcs/help/sshvpn.html.
Unfortunately many businesses are still running Microsoft Windows as their Network Operating System, in spite of overwhelming security issues and vast amounts of exploits and vulnerabilities. Here is a little bit of help to those Network Administrators who are struggling with trying to keep Windows secure...NSA Security Recommendation Guides.
Security is an issue with any computer system regardless of the operating system used. One should understand the potential security issues to be able to guard against them. I have looked into some of the more common security issues with Microsoft Windows (since it is by far the most popular desktop operating system and as such the greatest security risk) and have started to present what I have found. You can find is here. I have some data about Microsoft's Internet Explorer extention for Windows. This data can be seen here. If fact, even the US Government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team has recommended against using Microsoft's Internet Explorer. [article here]
Email can also become a security issue. Sending comfidential through plain text email is not really the smartest thing that one could do. There are tools that one can use to create encrypted email which make reading your email much more difficult. And to assure you receipent that your communication is authentic and unaltered, you can use digital signitures. I describe how to go about this process here: Email encryption and digital signitures.
For those that are familiar with TCP/IP, you may have heard of some vulnerability issues concerning TCP. Here is an article which covers some of this in pretty good detail. http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3072.
Here is a list of security tools: http://www.insecure.org/tools.html
Validation and Compatability
This site uses only valid HTML!
- - - -What is validation?/Why validate?
Please send comments/suggestions to:[karl@karlwilbur.net]
Hosting provided by Perceivers Custom Computer Services.
Last updated: 2011-01-12 12:26:53.