The ASUS WL500gP is rock-solid reliable, believe me. I can't say anything about the ASUS firmware, as I've ran it only for about an hour, but with OpenWrt, this IS THE wifi router. Twice the ROM and twice the RAM mean that, you can install more additional software, and run more services simultaneously on it. And the two USB ports mean that you can hook up your printer, USB drive, webcam, audio stuff, whatever you can hook up to USB and OpenWrt has support for, and share them out. I also used it to download torrents and stuff from eDonkey to a hooked up USB HDD all day long (why keep the PC powered up just for downloading). Also, WiFi performance is comparable to the WRT54GL. All in all, the WL500g is a very good deal and I can recommend it to everyone, especially if they want to play around with OpenWrt and the like.
If this router is not stable out of the box, it means that ASUS's firmware is crap. Because the hardware is more than decent.
I second that. ASUS WL500g Premium with OpenWrt, stable like rock. Longest uptime so far was around 40 days, and it's rebooted only when there's a power outage or I power it off for the weekend when I leave the house. I never had to reboot it because of some failure.
Not every cheap consumer router is shit. You don't need a $3K cisco for your home.
Let's suppose I host VPSs on some big iron. While each of my VPS customers has root on their own VPS, I have root on the VPS host. Can I easily snoop on their network traffic, their files on the VPS, etc?
Yes.
Now let's suppose my customer rents the whole big iron as it is, they do whatever they want on it. They have root on it, I don't. Can I snoop on their network traffic? Yes I can, though it's not that trivial like with the VPS. Can I take a look at their files? I could, but not that easily. I guess they would notice.
I'm just saying that a remote VPS (or virtual machine or whatever) is just less secure than a remote server on plain hardware.
For over 2 years I have been encrypting my internet connection using a roll-my-own solution. I trust my ISP implicitly - they are one of the few good guys left in the ISP arena. I don't trust my government.
China or something? Oh, no, wait, you must be from the US!
The sad thing is I don't even have anything to hide. But I detest the idea that someone, somewhere, might be monitoring what I'm doing. I use an anonymous email service with PGP encryption, I do all my browsing over a VPN connection to a (cheap) VPS server in another country. For added protection I can then tunnel using SSH to another server in another country which then uses tor to make my final connection.
Do you fully trust your VPS provider? A VPS is even easier to be snooped onto than a good-ol' iron server in some datacenter, imho.
Nooooo!!! I have 3 monitors in my home which have only VGA input, and will continue to have them for some more years, and I'm fine thanks. Ho HDMI equipment around by the way, and none will be for the next couple of years at least.
If they want to same some space, they could throw in a mini-VGA or mini-DVI like Apple does, and supply an adapter. VGA is still very much around.
It is clear that Apple wants no part in the ultra-cheap computer market. They have never wanted that market.
That's fine with me. They've never sold a cheap computer. What I would like to see from Apple is an UMPC, let it be expensive, it that's the way they like it. A regular ultramobile laptop you know, not the Macbook Air crap. 10" display at most.
That's true. While I'm not very familiar with the SMB/CIFS protocol, my impression is that the hidden '$' shares are just hidden from the listing, and they are still transmitted to the client asking for a list of shares, at least if the client is authenticated.
With the smbtree Samba tool, I can happily get the list of shares, including the $ ones, from an XP machine, even if I connect as a nonadmin user to the server.
Of course, I use truecrypt on it, but mostly for work stuff.
By the way one useful feature of truecrypt on windows is "mount volumes as removable drives". Windows by default creates admin shares (C$, D$ and so on) for each fixed drive. So a network admin can just connect to \\myip\D$ to take a look at my D: drive. If I mount my truecrypt volume as, let's say E:, an E$ share is automatically created and is accessible for any user (domain or local) with admin access to my machine. If I mount my TC volume as removable, no admin share is created.
Of course there could by other ways to access a volume on the computer, but let's not make it obvious with a new share that an additional volume is mounted.
For instance, I don't have admin rights on the computer in my office. So maybe I don't want to trust this computer entirely.
I do have admin rights to my computer at the office, but I don't trust it 100%. Why? Because any network admin in the company also has admin rights on it. And of course it was not installed by me, and runs some of their custom stuff...
While most of the US was celebrating Independence Day, the true fellow geeks over at TrueCrypt released version 6.0 of TrueCrypt over the long weekend.
If you have a decent amount of RAM (and a decent OS), you can disable swap for maximum safety. Disable hibernation and standby also, if data security is more important than convenience.
Even better: there's no hard drive at all.
Take out the hard drive before traveling, fully encrypted, put it in your checked luggage. Leave a Linux live-CD in the laptop, claim that you use the computer only with that. If asked about the hard drive (if they look into your other bag), claim that it belongs to your company, you were asked to bring it with you and hand it to someone, but you have no idea about what's on it and whether it's encrypted or not and so on. If they want to image it, no problem, good luck decrypting it. In the worst case they seize it, you have a backup, don't you?
If your stuff is not too much, you can entirely skip the hard drive, and store all your data online.
Slashdot Mirror
I, for one, welcome our new... oh wait...
Useless, if you can't count your profit.
If this router is not stable out of the box, it means that ASUS's firmware is crap. Because the hardware is more than decent.
+5 Insightful.
Not every cheap consumer router is shit. You don't need a $3K cisco for your home.
Sometimes (when business is slow) i spend 8+ hours at work just browsing and wasting time, and have no problem continuing at home :)
Yes.
Now let's suppose my customer rents the whole big iron as it is, they do whatever they want on it. They have root on it, I don't. Can I snoop on their network traffic? Yes I can, though it's not that trivial like with the VPS. Can I take a look at their files? I could, but not that easily. I guess they would notice.
I'm just saying that a remote VPS (or virtual machine or whatever) is just less secure than a remote server on plain hardware.
For over 2 years I have been encrypting my internet connection using a roll-my-own solution. I trust my ISP implicitly - they are one of the few good guys left in the ISP arena. I don't trust my government.
China or something? Oh, no, wait, you must be from the US!
The sad thing is I don't even have anything to hide. But I detest the idea that someone, somewhere, might be monitoring what I'm doing. I use an anonymous email service with PGP encryption, I do all my browsing over a VPN connection to a (cheap) VPS server in another country. For added protection I can then tunnel using SSH to another server in another country which then uses tor to make my final connection.
Do you fully trust your VPS provider? A VPS is even easier to be snooped onto than a good-ol' iron server in some datacenter, imho.
Intel Mac running PPC Mac code via Rosetta to run an emulation of a 68k Mac. The mind boggles.
That's a feature. So you get the native speed. ;)
If they want to same some space, they could throw in a mini-VGA or mini-DVI like Apple does, and supply an adapter. VGA is still very much around.
... and saying that Jupiter doesn't even have a surface, at least not something like the Earth has, as it is made of gases mainly...
It is clear that Apple wants no part in the ultra-cheap computer market. They have never wanted that market.
That's fine with me. They've never sold a cheap computer. What I would like to see from Apple is an UMPC, let it be expensive, it that's the way they like it. A regular ultramobile laptop you know, not the Macbook Air crap. 10" display at most.
Do you hear me Apple??? I want a 10" MacBook!!!!
Funny, that's what came to my mind also when I first read "cable laying". Never tried it underseas, though.
But don't bother, it will take time before the bad guys find what we fixed...
Oh yeah. They just have to look into one of the patches.
Thanks a lot man, but I think I will just disable the sharing service when I don't need it. ;)
With the smbtree Samba tool, I can happily get the list of shares, including the $ ones, from an XP machine, even if I connect as a nonadmin user to the server.
By the way one useful feature of truecrypt on windows is "mount volumes as removable drives". Windows by default creates admin shares (C$, D$ and so on) for each fixed drive. So a network admin can just connect to \\myip\D$ to take a look at my D: drive. If I mount my truecrypt volume as, let's say E:, an E$ share is automatically created and is accessible for any user (domain or local) with admin access to my machine. If I mount my TC volume as removable, no admin share is created.
Of course there could by other ways to access a volume on the computer, but let's not make it obvious with a new share that an additional volume is mounted.
For instance, I don't have admin rights on the computer in my office. So maybe I don't want to trust this computer entirely.
I do have admin rights to my computer at the office, but I don't trust it 100%. Why? Because any network admin in the company also has admin rights on it. And of course it was not installed by me, and runs some of their custom stuff...
Not possible IMHO, because truecrypt loads a kernel mode driver (truecrypt.sys), what a nonadmin user can't do on Windows.
While most of the US was celebrating Independence Day, the true fellow geeks over at TrueCrypt released version 6.0 of TrueCrypt over the long weekend.
That might not be just a coincidence.
...it was in lost+found.
"Drivecar.exe has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down."
Or...
"Inflate airbags: Cancel or Allow?"
Open Source Onenote?
Yes, one you don't have to download, and one you do.
On Linux: Basket Notepads
I was thinking cat on Linux. You know, like:
Type ">" instead of ">>" by mistake, and you've just hosed all your previous notes.
If you have a decent amount of RAM (and a decent OS), you can disable swap for maximum safety. Disable hibernation and standby also, if data security is more important than convenience.
Even better: there's no hard drive at all. Take out the hard drive before traveling, fully encrypted, put it in your checked luggage. Leave a Linux live-CD in the laptop, claim that you use the computer only with that. If asked about the hard drive (if they look into your other bag), claim that it belongs to your company, you were asked to bring it with you and hand it to someone, but you have no idea about what's on it and whether it's encrypted or not and so on. If they want to image it, no problem, good luck decrypting it. In the worst case they seize it, you have a backup, don't you? If your stuff is not too much, you can entirely skip the hard drive, and store all your data online.