May 31

Hello,

I have not being posting as you readers have probably noticed for at least 2 months. The main issue there simply was a lack of time to blog.

What I have been involved with for the last two months were:

(1) Setting up a datacenter for VPS (Virtual Private Server). This is not for Protocol Solutions, this was for a client.
(2) Configuration of the management software for looking after all the containers (of the VPS)
(3) Testing and hardening down of everything

Windows SP3:

We got a test machine to install SP3 onto Windows XP Pro (corporate version). The installation went well, however this is the only thing that actually worked. There were multiple issues with the computer we installed SP3 into after a reboot:

(1) We had intermittant USB connectivity after the install of SP3
(2) Several BsoD

The installation was tested on another computer as well, the only difference between the first computer and this one was that the above testing was running an Intel processor and this computer was using an AMD AM2 chip. Both computers had 1Gb of ram as per standard staff configuration computers.

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Mar 29

Never seen this before! Is this supposed to be the new google Ireland?

Google blackGoogle black

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Mar 05

Google news appears to have sections of it missing. Perhaps they are censoring the news? Or is it a “technical” glitch?

See screenshot:  google news

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Feb 25

An article from an employers and Human Resources point of view, with regards to how social networking can hurt your career.

Available via RSS also at http://feeds.feedburner.com/psarticles

read more | digg story

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Feb 24

A new article has been published a few minutes ago regarding Social Networking and how it can affect your career.

It available via RSS : http://feeds.feedburner.com/psarticles

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Feb 21

Apologies for not blogging for the last few days. Right now I am working on three projects that require a good bit of my time.

However, as always, you can email Protocol Solutions or place comments.

Thank you

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Feb 14

UK Clients:
LanGuard for 4 IP’s with  the first years SMA fee: Buy it here
LanGuard for 8 IP’s with  the first years SMA fee:

EuroZone Clients:
LanGuard for 4 IP’s with  the first years SMA fee: Buy it here
LanGuard for 8 IP’s with  the first years SMA fee:

USA Clients:
LanGuard for 4 IP’s with  the first years SMA fee: 

All the above include:
One years free Software Maintence Agreement (SMA)
The report pack is included free by default (previously this was around £59 per year)

For more pricing please contact Protocol Solutions or use the contact form

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Feb 13

I had to reconfigure the .htaccess for the APACHE server we run a few days ago.

A few system administrators still dont know how to correctly modify the .htaccess and apply it.

I am including a working template that anybody can use, and it is commented too.

For people who want to download get it from here (view it with notepad) : http://www.mediafire.com/?49lxrdqk542

The .htaccess is also posted below for anyone to read also, and perhaps see some ideas that might be useful for their servers, or even see there are a few things that can be done without cluttering up the robots.txt. I for one perfer to put most things into the .htaccess because nobody else can see it, where with the robots.txt, anyone can see it and also because spammers and spam bots / spammer user-agents usally ignore the robots.txt file

## DISABLE HOTLINKING
RewriteEngine on
# Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?PUTyourDomainHERE/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|js|css)$ - [F]

## SITE REFERRER BANNING
RewriteEngine on
# Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} info\.biyad\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
## USER IP BANNING
<Limit GET POST>
 order allow,deny
 deny from 74.54.131.194
 allow from all
</Limit>

## AN EXAMPLE OF A REDIRECT
Options +Indexes
IndexOptions -FancyIndexing
Redirect permanent /www.PUTyourDomainHERE/oldPAGE.html http://www.PUTyourDomainHERE/newPage.html
Redirect permanent /www.PUTyourDomainHERE/OLDPage.html http://www.PUTyourDomainHERE/someNEWdirectory/NewPage.html

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP:IGNORE_INCON846393} !^Yes$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^(GET|POST)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}

!.*\.(css|jpg|ai|doc|bin|ogg|mp3|pdf|rtf|ps|ppt|jpeg|png|gif|rar|zip|bz|bz2|gz|tar|iso|chm|z|cue|deb|rpm|ac3|au|snd|mid|midi|wav|bmp|jpe|psd|avi|mpg|mpeg|mpe|mp4|ico|rdf)$ [NC]

## AN EXAMPLE OF A REDIRECT OF DYNAMIC PAGES TO STATIC PAGES
RewriteCond %{query_string} ^option=com_content&task=view&id=23$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ /page1? [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{query_string} ^option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=36$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ /page2? [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{query_string} ^option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=30$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ /page3? [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{query_string} ^option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=34$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ /page4? [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{query_string} ^option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=29$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ /page5? [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{query_string} ^option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=38$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ /page6? [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{query_string} ^option=com_sefservicemap&Itemid=37$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ /sitemap.html? [R=301,L]

## AN EXAMPLE OF A PERMANENT REDIRECTs AKA 301
redirect 301 /oldpage.html  http://www.yourDOMAIN/newpage.html
redirect 301 /oldpage2.html  http://www.yourDOMAIN/newpage2.html
redirect 301 /oldpage3.html  http://www.yourDOMAIN/newpage3.html
redirect 301 /oldpage4.html  http://www.yourDOMAIN/newpage4.html

## A WORKING EXAMPLE OF BLOCKING BAD BOTS OR USER AGENTS KNOWN TO BE RELATED TO SPAM
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent “^EmailSiphon” bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent “^EmailWolf” bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent “^ExtractorPro” bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent “^CherryPicker” bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent “^NICErsPRO” bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent “^Teleport” bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent “^EmailCollector” bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent “^LinkWalker” bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent “^Zeus” bad_bot

<Limit GET POST>
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot
</Limit>

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Feb 13

I had to do some testing that required a proxy in Ireland. Bascially our IP at the time was not recogised as being Irish based, even though it was…

Anyway it took ages to find a working list of proxies in Ireland.

So the list is here : free Irish based proxies

Some reasons you might want to use a proxy would be: when for example your ip is not recognised by Eircom.net and  you want to login to their webmail. Sure there are other reasons but I am not gonna list them here:-)

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Feb 11

After much consideration, in light of the fact that small and medium business may not be able to afford GFI Lanuguard NSS, Protocol Solutions is going to offer GFI Languard at a 40% discount to companies with less than 150 employees.

Prices will be active from 14th February at this link only:

More details in a few hours will be posted here.

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