Dune + Wine in Ubuntu Jaunty

Trying to play my fave old school circa 1980's game Dune in my Ubuntu box...
wish me luck!

Installing a .tar.gz file

Needed to install IPMSG in my home laptop Ubuntu, and realized that my previous blog wasn't really that descriptive of the steps.

Here are the details after installing the dependencies and the ipmsg tar.gz file.
1. Open a terminal window (Applications - Accessories - Terminal)
2. Go to the folder where the tar.gz is saved (using the cd, dir commands)
3. Then type in the command line: tar zxf {name of tar.gz file} and hit Enter
4. This will create a subfolder named after the tar file. cd to this subfolder.
5. Inside the subfolder, type these series of commands:

./configure
make
sudo make install

If all goes well, you should be able to see your installed application after a restart of the system.

Skype, Firestarter, and port 445

First off, I'm not happy with Skype in my Ubuntu. How our perceptions change with a new OS. I better figure out a way to remove it.

Second, about port 445. Using a firewall in Ubuntu reveals a lot of things that were before hidden but is now cause for earnest concern. By the inherent weakness of Microsoft's security design, hackers use this port to gain access to tens of thousands of computers connected in the Internet.

In my own Firestarter, using Sun's USB Broadband connection, I see a lot of local IP addresses - DHCP-assigned by the Sun ISP - attempting to exploit the 445 port of my computer via the protocol of Windows-DS (directory services).