I'm not a professional interpreter (and my english kinda sucks) so it's likely I made some mistakes: feel free to correct me and suggest a better version. Nonetheless I got Danah's OK to publish it on my blog: probably she doesn't read italian so she can't realize how I ruined her piece, but still :)
Best thing to do would be to have a fast internet connection at home (with simmetric speeds too, upstream and downstream) and some nice opensource software for webmail and for some documents writing and sharing. Mix that with IPV6 and we're all connected with our cloud, powered by us. The final ingredient could be some huge webservice where we could upload our nightly backup of our home server. And those backups should be encrypted too.
When it will be the time of some opensource gmail?
Now nerds sit in the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
"Hacker Jeff Moss, founder of computer security conferences DEFCON and Black Hat, has been sworn in as one of the new members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) of the DHS. Moss, who goes by the handle 'the Dark Tangent' says he was surprised to be asked to join the council and that he was nominated to bring an 'outside perspective' to its meetings. He said, 'I know there is a new-found emphasis on cybersecurity, and they're looking to diversify the members and to have alternative viewpoints. I think they needed a skeptical outsider's view because that has been missing.'"
I know: you keep saving links into del.icio.us (I can't stand the new URL), tagging them as 'DIY', 'Weekend Projects'. And then, when you find the right time to do it, you begin reading the instuctions:
Torcs screwdriver
Welder
PCB Controller
... and you give up. You don't have such things.
Don't worry. In 15 minutes you'll build _yourself_ a stand for your shiny iPod Touch.
Ta daaaa!
Here below the worst, ugliest, feature-less, time-consuming stand
you'll ever see. But it's yours. And it was built by yourself.
The stand will let your iPod work with USB cable and/or earphones (at least with the cable provided by Bose).
The only tools you'll need are:
the original packaging your iPod came with (yes, the plastic box)
adhesive tape
(rock)
paper
scissors
knife
the 2 Apple stickers kindly included in the packaging
In the next days I'll provide PDF to print out and cut the needed tape strips. :)
Maybe I found a good reason to hold with my Nintendo DS (which I tried to sell via this blog some time ago): GTA Chinatown Wars. Yestarday I played it for few minutes and... it rocks. Seems to me the guys at Rockstarhave found a great way to recreate the GTA atmosphere on such a small (and everything but powerfull) device. What do you think? :)
The time for some genuine ultra-violence and gore on the DS has come!
But, since the lack of time to enjoy my DS was the main reason I tried to sell it... will I find the time to play it?
Since I download regularly legit files via torrent, and I don't own an Android phone ;), I created a setup that makes life really simplier.
At home I've a 24/7 server (a fanless epia me6000 with debian) that shares part of its filesystem via NFS and samba. After downloading the .torrent file, I simply put it in a shared directory (say, /data/download on the server's filesystem). The server is configured to check every N seconds to look for .torrent files in that directory and, eventually, start the download. After the download is finished, the torrent client moves the files in a specified directory, always shared trough the network via NFS or samba.
I'll describe below the steps needed for a such setup.
This is the very way I intend "Home Automation" applications :)
To start things rolling, a few days later Androidandme set a
challenge to its readers - create an Android-compatible BitTorrent
application to scan UPC barcodes and find related torrents on the
larger BitTorrent search engines. [...] Users would be able to find and start
torrents remotely, and the music album or movie would be fully
downloaded by the time they got home. Once the product is positively identified, the software should be
able to send the results directly to a BitTorrent search engine, such
as The Pirate Bay or Mininova. After the search results appear, the
user could then choose which torrent to start. Once selected, the .torrent file would be downloaded and sent to the
webUI of uTorrent and the download would begin, hopefully ready for
when the user reaches his or her home machine. No typing input would be
required for the above.
I think it could be even better if the application could recognize the movie (and its metadata) starting from a picture of a poster (read: in front of a cinema) and then start the torrent client at home...
Today I bought a scalped seat in a court of justice for the first time
in my life. The Pirate Bay courtroom was full. But locally famous
Swedish author Sigge Eklund whispered in my ear that he had an offer
for three seats after the intermission. The price would be about $60
each. We met in a corner of the hallway and finalized the transaction
with three young men who were leaving. I was in! This pretty much
captures the rock-star quality of The Pirate Bay trial.
Many could name them "nerds", some would use "geeks"...
The point is both of the following videos are depicting passionate, curious, smart people.
People who, in these days of omnipresent technology, are becoming more and more important. And useful.
So what they did actually? They found a way, using the CPU horsepower of 200 PS3s, to create a "man in the middle attack" tecnique using SSL certificates, breaking the SSL core.
Below a flow chart to better understand how everything could be used against you. :)
My first concern was not to get powned when installing a new system or media application. I was thinking about all "those fancy rating and stars" you put using iTunes or similar software and you'll likely to lose if you change application (for example, the brand new Songbird 1.0).
I chose the "phisical way": along with correct and coherent mp3 tagging, I moved (actually, copied) all my favorited songs in a new directory. So, now I have my "music" dir along with a "music_favorites" dir. I also tagged every favorited track with "Favorites" in the field "Composer": doing that way I didnt lose anything important to me (that field is not relevant for my collection) and I can still use the fancy features of media manager applications. I also noted (later) the iPod let you browse your music using the "Composer" tag field.
I'm done with this task: after listening to my whole mp3 collection, I picked up the best tracks, tagged and copied in that "music_favorites" folder.
Amarok now tells me the "music" directory contains 6110 tracks (2 weeks and 5 days) and the "music_favorites" 1981 tracks (6 days 7 hours).
I was just looking for a tool to monitor directory (and be notified if
something there changes, like a new torrent completed) and...
searching "watch directory" doesnt return any item.
I was already by Uncle_Google and I thought "well, let me try different keywords"
I searched with a "watch folder" and... voila' !
Oh gosh... the old school is dying with that.
