CHRISdotTODD

The Ethical Hacker Network runs various competitions to help grow the education of the hacker community [not be confused with unethical "crackers"]. Recently they ran Netcat in the Hat, after an old favorite Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss . You do not have to be a hacker to enjoy and appreciate the humor behind it. Here is an exert from the instructions: The data stood still, And the packets did stay Sitting there in the N.O.C. All that cold, cold wet day. Our connection went down When the phone lines were cut By some dude with a backhoe, Gold tooth and beer gut. Far worse was that we Quite nearly were through With a large data transfer Straight from Kalamazoo more... Three winners were announced. This is from the Creative Category: That Netcat in the Hat he'd showed us his tricks, he'd showed us the what and the what makes it ticks. He'd given us knowledge, he'd given us plans, but he'd left us the work, that t

Microsoft and Secunia reported another ActiveX bug yesterday. Just by visiting a website or viewing email in html mode can provide the means for malicious code to be executed on your computer. Microsoft recommends keeping your virus scanner up-to-date [of course you should] and to use safe browsing habits. The safest way to browse is to use Firefox or another non-Internet Explorer / ActiveX supporting browser. Microsoft provides directions on how to browse safer using their products . I highly recommend that you follow this if you want to continue using Internet Explorer. Here is a brief explanation: Set your Internet Zone security to High When you trust a site, add it to the Trusted Zone. Microsoft recommends you run the Trusted zone at Medium security -- if you do, you will have problems on some sites. You need to move it at least to Medium-Low. Read all email in plain text (not HTML). So you have to ask yourself, do you want to manually manage your browsing security like this or r

A while back I had reported difficulty with the reliability of my wireless connection. I learned that different channels may perform better than others, and by switching, my wireless connection is much more reliable. There are also various tools that can help the educated person with their wireless network. NetStumbler is one such program. With NetStumbler, you can test the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The higher, the better (i.e. a lower number is bad).

Did you know that you could use your Gmail account to store files? With nearly 3 GBs of space, this is an easy way to store files that you may want to access from multiple computers or that you want to make sure get archived off site. Rahul Jonna has created a simple Firefox Extension , making it very easy to store files from Firefox. I made a 1.5 minute how-to movie to demonstrate how this works. [The quality of the movie does not match my desire, but I had to use a program that would output a format that could be accepted by Google.] Be sure to watch the last 3rd of the video as it demonstrates how to write a filter in Gmail, so the files do not show up in your inbox.

I listened to a wonderful podcast yesterday (you can listen online too), provided by Gigavox' IT Conversations . Michael Copps, an FCC Commissioner spoke about Network Neutrality, Broadband and Media Ownership . This guy really gets it. We need to find ways to support Mr. Copps, and find more leaders like him. I highly encourage you to listen to the podcast -- in particular if you do not understand the issues, I think you will once you have listened to Mr. Copps. Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps states that all is not well in Washington when it comes to technology policy. He argues that the continued trend in media consolidation, with fewer organizations owning more and more properties that allow them to control both content and distribution, will be further exacerbated by recent decisions by the FCC.

CNet reported on October 25th that a new spoofing bug has been reported for IE7. The basic issue is that the displayed URL can be coaxed to looking like a legitimate URL when in reality it is hitting an undesirable website, i.e. phishing. CNet's source is Secunia , a security company. Did I tell you that Mozilla released Firefox 2.0 on the 24th ?

I recently posted that I would recommend staying with Windows XP as long as possible. Well if you buy a PC now, it is likely that you will get a coupon for a free upgrade to Vista when it ships. I would be very leery of what "free" really means. As you may also recall from my prior posting, I suggested you should wait as long as possible so that Microsoft can correct all the security issues -- there will be security issues. PC World published on October 24th a good reminder about the new Vista Home Edition -- it will have less features than XP Home. So, for your free version, you can upgrade to an OS with fewer features. Why would you want to do that? PC World makes another good point... upgrading your OS may not be an easy task either. Unless you are very comfortable troubleshooting your PC issues, I would recommend you avoid that chore -- wait until you buy your next PC in 2009. (Average users should be fine getting a new PC every 3 years.)

The November issue of Wired has a great article on " Building a Better Battery ". John Hockenberry begins with a story of a battery that catches fire, and then takes us to the first battery built in the 1800s. Hockenberry quickly takes us through the history to the point of talking about lithium-ion. Today, most Li-ion cells contain at least two – and sometimes three – separate countermeasures to keep the reaction from getting out of control. Finally, we hear a bit about Sony before Hockenberry concludes with the current research in battery technology. CNet reported on October 23rd that Sony has even more battery recalls. Batteries that shipped with laptops sold by Fujitsu, Gateway, Sony and Toshiba comprise this recall... ...worldwide tally... ...more than 3 million... This extends the list to Dell, Lenovo/IBM, Apple, Sharp, Fujitsu, Gateway, Sony, and Toshiba.

If you have been reading my blog, you know that I do not recommend being an early adopter of new software. I let others try it first, and wait to hear the news. For example, I still have not updated to iTunes 7. Likewise, I will wait as long as possible before getting Vista. On a side note, if you are thinking of getting a new PC, I would recommend you get it now before you are forced to take an early version of Vista. You want to wait as long as possible until the majority of the security issues are solved. Anyway, back to Firefox... I have installed version 2 and have used it both at work and home without any problems. I did have to update an extension and removed the anti-phishing, as it is now built into Firefox, but other than that all is good. I do not see a big difference from 1.5 to 2.0. My hope is that it does a better job managing memory -- occasionally in the past, if you surfed a lot and/or had the browser open for a long time, it would begin to slow down as it consumed mor

I figured that I could find all the lithium-ion battery recalls by looking at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council website -- I was wrong. Here is what I found, but it is missing quite a few. Dell, December 2005 and August 2006 Apple, May 2005 and August 2006 Lenovo / IBM, September 2006 HP, October 2005 and April 2006 Battery-Biz, June 2005 It is unfortunate that this website is incomplete. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council also released tips on notebook computer usage in September of this year. Interestingly enough, I found a laptop battery recall as far back as 1994 . For those of you who are interested, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council has new recalls announced each week. You can sign up for an email or even subscribe to a podcast to listen to the recalls.