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This week’s contest at b3ta is to add one word to a movie title. I needed a break and couldn’t resist (Turns out shortly after taking the Harry met Sally picture she bumped into him and he took a swing at her).
Category: Software
I was chatting with Omar over lunch the other day and he was telling me about his latest wireless network setup and his frustration with trying to troubleshoot connection drops. I feel his pain… my wireless network is a combination of one Microsoft base station (naturally) and two Linksys bases (two totally different models, of course). I was unable to connect to the network when in my bedroom for about 6 months. Everything worked everywhere else… but in the bedroom? No. Gah! I think I solved the problem, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to document that later after I’m sure I understand it (no use posting embarrassingly wrong advice… I know I’m an idiot, but why tell others? I’ll keep the illusion up as long as I can. 🙂 ).
So… where am I going with this rambling post with zero useful content thus far? NetStumbler. Omar commented that he wished he has a tool to tell him all the networks in his area and on what channel they communicated (yes, you can change the channel on your wireless base station for better connectivity). There are probably a bunch of tools, the one I’ve found useful is NetStumbler.
Netstumbler is a fun little app that can provide hours of entertainment for geeks. This software will look for WiFi networks in range, document their SSID (essentially the network name), if they are encrypted, their channel, the signal to noise ratio and, if you have a GPS on your laptop, the coordinates. It’s a very useful tool for working out network issues… or for finding open networks (war driving is apparently a popular hobby). Check it out if you have some time to kill or feel like living out your hacker fantasies.
Oh, war driving… Do you remember War Games with Matthew Broderick? If you don’t, rent it, it’s a fun movie. In War Games Matthew’s character was trying to find a game company’s mainframe by having his computer methodically dial every single phone number in a given area code and logging the phone numbers connected to computers – he was war dialing. War driving is the modern equivalent where people put a WiFi-equipped laptop in their car and drive around logging open wireless networks. Using software like NetStumbler you are able to drive around then dump the results to a program like Microsoft MapPoint to graph out all the open networks in your area. Why? Geeky fun, mischief or whatever reason doesn’t really matter, it just reminds you that you shouldn’t assume that because your computer is in your house that your data is safe. My advice: turn on some form of encryption (WEP for most), hide the SSID and enable MAC filtering. If you don’t know how to do that, check your manual, it’s worth learning how.
Here’s a helpful tip that is quite simple but, surprisingly, quite under-used.
When you go to your Start -> All Programs menu to you find it’s difficult to location a particular application? Chances are it’s because your programs menu isn’t sorted alphabetically. To fix this:
- Click Start -> All Programs
- Right-click on any item
- Choose “Sort by name” from the pop up menu
Voilà, your applications and their containing folders are now sorted by name making it much easier to find that calculator program buried 3 levels deep.
Update: obligitory slashdot link
Wow, who’d have thought this would happen?
And before any conspiracies start… no, Microsoft didn’t do it. 😛
The problem is a new worm on the loose is causing a distributed attack on search engines in it’s quest for new e-mail addresses to which it can send itself (my English teacher just rolled over in her grave).
Okay class… repeat after me: “I will update my anti-virus software once a week if not more often.”
Google, other engines hit by worm variant
By Richard Shim and Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
update Major Internet search engines were crippled Monday morning by a variant of the MyDoom worm, rendering Google inaccessible to many users and slowing results from Yahoo.
The attack also affected smaller engines, including Alta Vista, a Yahoo subsidiary, and Lycos.
A Lycos representative said the company is aware of the problem and is working to block the performance obstacles. A Google representative said the company was working to figure out what was happening.
PCWorld has a good write up on PC myths… but read carefully as their ratings seem to contradict the text at times. They rate the responding to Spam myth as a level 4 out of 5 on the bogus meter but then include this quote:
“Knowing who to opt out from is key,” says Schwartz. “Opting out of legitimate companies drops you off their lists, but when you do that with ‘real’ spammers, the results are unclear.”
So, what is it? A myth? If the results are unclear can you be sure?
A summary of the myths (go to the article for full details).
Busting the Biggest PC Myths
We expose the bad advice that wastes your time and money.
- Magnets zap your data.
- Using a cell phone on a plane interferes with the navigation and communications systems of the aircraft.
- If you don’t ‘stop’ a USB device before unplugging it from a PC, you’ll screw things up.
- Cookies track everything you do on the Internet.
- Windows’ Japanese edition uses haiku error messages.
- Terrible things happen if you turn off your PC without shutting down Windows.
- Opting out of spam gets you even more spam.
- Hackers can destroy data on your computer’s hard drive.
- Turning off your PC daily to save power shortens its life.
- The government reads everyone’s e-mail.
- Saddam Hussein bought PlayStation 2 consoles to use in Iraq’s weapons program.
- DOS is dead.
- Only a pricey surge protector can keep your devices safe.
- If you don’t periodically run your laptop batteries down to zero, you’ll lose battery life.
- If you don’t use an antistatic wrist strap while tinkering with a PC, you’ll ruin hardware.
Categories
I stand corrected
So, after being all annoyed and stuff by the overly-complicated error message given to me by the OneNote updater I decided to follow the directions. Guess what? It helped me fix my problem.
Could my Mom have done this? No (i.e. I can maintain some small amount of righteous indignation).
Categories
You’re joking, right?
Ah… a well thought-out dialog is a thing of beauty…
A cool Google feature (and there are many, perhaps I’ll post them later) is the ability to search for sites which link to a particular site. This is cool because searching for the text “little.org” won’t necessarily find me all the sites which link to me. To do a search for your site simply type “link:yourURL” into the Google search. Any site which links to your URL (you can type just the root, e.g. little.org) will be listed. Turns out Omar links to me a lot (Hi Omar!).
So… while stroking my own ego, I came across Mark’s site. I’m not quite sure why he links to me but I’ll have to ask (I hope it’s not someone I know and I’m just being an airhead, how embarrassing). At any rate… there’s a link to my site with the display of “calittleblog” but I wasn’t able to find any other reference to my site in Mark’s blog entries. Oh well, another Internet mystery. I suppose I could just wait for him to find my site…
Hi Mark!
Categories
Proximity-based chat
Trepia™ is an interesting twist on chat clients. Instead of having a buddy list of friends, Trepia™ searches for buddies based on proximity. People in your buddy list won’t be friends you already know, they will be the people logged in who are physically closest to you.
Here’s how Trepia™ describes their technology:
Trepia™ performs a Progressive Proximity search for nearby people using known geographical information about the networks you use. It searches from the inside out, first adding people local to you, then branching out to others.
Sounds cool, right? All I want to know is: how do they plan to make money?
(Thanks Steve for the pointer to the cool software.)
Cool downloads from smart people thinking of future stuff: MS Research Downloads.