Old style nerdy fetish
[ "Inside DMG", picture by drop1410 ]
I'll be in my bunk. :)
The cloud. again.
Why we should be worried about the cloud
It's not the first time I write about Cloud Computing; I began commenting the ridiculous Terms of Service of some web applications to edit and store online office documents, like Google Documents, Zoho, Acrobat. Then, some months later, after reading the angry as usual comment by Richard Stallman about storing your documents in the Cloud ( the ""It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign" rant :) ), I described my view:
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, Cory Doctorow writes about Cloud Computing again, more from a businness/money perspective for the user than from a technical or ethical point of view.
More after the jump.
Defining Brute Force Attack
You can either find the definition of "Brute Force Attack" on wikipedia or take a look at the video below. Your choice. :)
The revenge of the Nerds
Good ol' time when football players used to humiliate nerds in high school...
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.'"
Great comeback, guys!
[ Via ./ ]
Worst iPod Touch DIY Stand. Ever.
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. :)
Enjoy.
LaFonera2.0: great piece of hardware (and software)!
Wow, La Fonera 2.0 wifi router is available on the FON Shop for 50 Euros.
uh oh
Uh oh.
The Pirate Bay's latest feature lets you share your favorite torrents on Facebook, dumping it directly in your newsfeed.
Meet the dark side of the fb. [via gizmodo]
it is a good reason to keep it? GTA for NDS!
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?
[ some details after the jump ]
bittorrent automation with Linux and rtorrent
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.
Filed under "Home Automation"
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...
[ via AndroidAndMe]
Why people that work with computers seem to have a lot of spare time
Reasons why people who work with computers seem to have a lot of spare time
Since I'm an IT Auditor, I'll file me under "IT Consultant", but I challenge any of my clients to tell me "I have a lot of spare time"... :/
Fingers crossed
Pirate Bay Trial: The Hottest Ticket in Stockholm
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.
Good luck, guys.
Many could name them "nerds"
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.
More info after the break.
How to suck at Information Security
How to suck at Information Security (here the PDF)
Since I'm an IT Auditor, I can't ignore the last point in "Security Policy and Complaince"
Hide from the auditors.
:)
You have a GPS in your phone? Continue reading
Two articles about how cool & scary the location awareness could be.
The cool part of having a GPS on your iphone. The scary part of having a GPS on your iphone. :)
SSL is not enough any more
Apparently, SSL for our website connections is not enough any more.
Guys from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC on wikipedia, here their rocket at the What the Hack 2005 I attended) managed to create a rogue certificate authority, using it to issue valid ssl ceritificates for every website they wanted.
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. :)
Another good reason to wait for Android
Yet another good reason to wait finally for a good looking Android phone (and not an horrible one). Lenovo is sticking its fingers with a new phone, actually oriented just for the chinese market.
Of course, it runs Android.
MP3 Overload [keep your music library organized] Part 2
Remember last time I talked about organizing your (huge) mp3 collection ?
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).
32,42%. cool.
Linux... something is changing
What's going on?
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.
Open Source should matter
Some time ago the NYTimes wrote about Obama's addition to mobile email, powered by his Blackberry. The reporter wrote actually about the issues the Secret Service is going into because of that: the point is that RIM's software for the Blackberry is closed-source and god-only-knows (along with RIM) how does it work.
[ "Addiction", CC-licensed picture by hirefrank ]
Questions like "Who's reading my emails?", "Who can shut off remotely my phone?" or "Am I really sure my emails aren't forwarded to some hidden email account tied to some al-Qaida agent?" are just dumb-paranoid questions for all of us but not for the a President. Well, The President.
That's the only way you can really be sure there is no trap in the software code you're using. Doing this way, you can note if some line states:
if (user == "Barack Obama") send_email_to("Silvio Berlusconi")
:)
And at the end of the day, are you really sure protecting your own private comunications is important just for Obama?
Think about that.
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