Virtual Meanderings

So tonight I had one of my classes, we're studying network security and "anti" or "ethical" hacking. Classes just started, so we haven't gotten too far into the book yet. So far we've covered laws, contracting (get it in writing!!), and TCP/IP. Fun stuff! I'm finding this to be super interesting right now, and since I'm going into network administration, extremely helpful. I'm looking at this class as my ounce of prevention. Tonight we had fun getting some virtual machines installed and installing some services on the virtual server that we've got. We also got to use some FTP software and a we saw a demonstration on how packet sniffing works. Is it just me, or does packet sniffing sound like someone huffing Sweet n' Low? I had a lot of fun when we started doing the installs of various Linux flavors. We installed Mint, and Ubuntu so far, not so sure if we're going to install any more or not but it might be fun to try a few. I've played around a little bit with Kubuntu and I was a little bit disappointed. For all its hype, I tried installing a video driver and it ended up crashing the WHOLE SYSTEM!! I think thats a little ridiculous, I've never had that happen to me on any other platform. Needless to say, that was deleted quickly and I just installed Ubuntu instead. So far pretty impressed with it, and have been using it to practice PHP. Might take a class in that next semester just for the hell of it... maybe. 

Anyway, the actual point of this post was to talk about this awesome new VM software that I found that I've got installed on my Mac! I did a little searching around and while I've heard VMware Fusion was the answer for all things virtual machine related to Mac, I was not about to shell out a bunch of money for it, since I'm rocking the poor college kid thing. The software is called VirtualBox and its free! Best part? Its made by Sun Microsystems, the same people who make Open Office and Java. Pretty neat! So far at home I've got an image of XP installed, Linux Mint, and Ubuntu. Its been a fun night in geekette land!

It's a frickin' Laser!

Short blog tonight, but I just found this article on boeing testing their laser cannon!!! How cool is that! My geek senses are tingling.