The N95 has a regular phone pad, but I use a folding external bluetooth keyboard if I'm doing a lot of text. and -every- feature of the N95 rocks. Gotta agree! The folding keyboard accessory is really req'd when much text at all is the norm. Even for tricky passwords, really.
My 1st gen. n95 has been much improved in the last year by a steady stream of firmware updates, and other Nokia software, like Maps. It is now twice the phone it was when new, and battery life & (limited) multi-tasking are now realistic. The Nokia n95 (and now n96) are a joy. It is my *only* GPS/video/camera/mobile-www-browser-w-RSS/SIP-client-over-802.11, etc. (operamini browser is best for RSS)
I carry the folding keyboard in my backpack if I think I'll need that too.
Been meaning to get some battery spares. Mine has died too many times while 'Sport Tracking' (Turn on the GPS and go ride a bike, jog, etc.; it saves the ride to a calendar, and you can upload it to a cool Nokia webservice w/ cool GUI and see your ride/history in a gmap. http://sportstracker.nokia.com/
It is soooo cool. And so realistic to SSH, etc. I am afraid I haven't secured the n95 enough to be configured so. A real concern, really. I'm still investigating encryption options, but what I see is light-weight so far. Really light-weight.
As an owner of a nearly 20-year old "Vita Mix Total Nutrition Center", I can attest to this machine's quality, and power. It has a half unit of horsepower, and spins its permanently sharp nickel blade at 36,000 RPM. But I never said it was quiet.
Broccoli, celery, ice, etc. have met their match. And it makes fruit ice cream smoothies too.
I am not a software engineer or hacker, but from what I understand, while it may be likely the vulnerability exists across platforms, typically it is the Microsoft box that often allows elevated access, once the Flash exploit has been used. This isn't so easy to manage for a hacker, with the *nixes, (which includes OSX).
So by not using Windows, users are made more secure by not being such a targeted pool in the first place, (as influenced by marketshare). But the design of the OS helps too.
Lot's of Dutch folks are very upset about the young firebrand politician Wilders, and wish he'd go shut up and go away. So, they are planning a googlebomb, to in the hopes of undermining the exposure the film Fitna receives.
Fitna the Movie We're tired of waiting. So, let's do it ourselves! Sorry!
There is this not-so-intelligent Dutch politician that attracts attention by doing populist provocations. His name is Wilders. Geert Wilders.
He is scared of aliens and especially of muslim aliens. He attracts votes of people that are scared of Islam too. To get more votes, he tries to scare more people. And now he's suggesting to release a movie called "Fitna" that's radically critical towards islam. This hits an open nerve in Dutch media of course. We all remember how our favourite asshole cinematographer Theo was slaughtered like a pig in the street after making "Submission" with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Only by implication, this artificially blonde embarrassment claims death defying heroism! It is sooo embarrassing to be Dutch some times. I'm sorry.
So here's what we do: We all make our own "Fitna" movies. As many as possible. with:
* Geert Wilders,
* Allah,
* Muhammad the Prophet,
* God
Why? Well we can't stop Wilders. He has a right to freedom of expression and he is smart enough to stay within the boundaries of Dutch law. Actually, we do not want to stop his movie because we cherish our freedom of expression. Even stupid populist politicians have fundamental rights. Especially they!
We can compete for attention however. And we can produce disinformation. So we are going to make Movies called "Fitna" in which we apologise for Geert Wilders embarrassing behaviour. We will make so many of them that it will be hard to find the movie by Wilders without finding lots of movies apologising for it.
Just to let the world (and ourselves) know that allowing confused people to speak does not mean that we agree with what they say. Sorry.
So if you want to join in; just make your own Fitna movie and put it on line. Put on a blonde wig, look cross eyed and say you're sorry. Film it with you telephone or camera. Then, publish it on line as many times as you can, Youtube, Hyves, Myspace any place. Call it Fitna by Geert Wilders. Add any statement that you like to. Link to your movie and to other movies you like from your blogs and websites. Sorry!
Let's smother this Wilders in our apologies. If we work hard enough, no one will be able to find his crap among all the noise we produce. And the world knows how we feel about Wilders and his opportunism. WE'RE SORRY! And we're proud to live in a country where we've all inherited freedom of speech. Lets cherish it. Let's defend Wilders' rights to his opinions and to his ways of making politics! Remember that Bento Spinoza, one of earliest of the great thinkers about religion and free speech, was ousted by his community of religious immigrants. His zealot family was tolerated here in the Low Lands and Spinoza was tolerated here too. More than 3 centuries of preciously negotiated tolerance. That is a very big treasure!
Seriously. Such a suggestion is a clear illustration of a security threat to be concerned about and guarded against.
It also makes for a realistic discussion of the risk with a non-technical user.
I don't want to lose sleep over the possibility, do you?
Except, how would you prevent it from happening? I'm not sure you can, but I'll bet the answer is in this book called Extrusion Detection. I haven't (yet) read it, however I have read its sister book (Network Security Monitoring) by the same outstanding expert author, a former US Air Force captain who should know, and that's why I think the answer to prevent such an internal 'exploit' is in that particular book.
From the press release announcing the formation of the unit:
Thank you for your interest in the new MAJCOM; however, we ask that you follow your proper chain of command and use currently provided tools on the AFPC website (i.e. ADP, formerly the T-ODP process) to request your desire to fill an AFCYBER Command position.
Sorta cuts out a lot of folks. I'd consider it myself, if the whole military-age thing wasn't working against me. I'm 45.
Guess I'll have to find another way to be American with my resume, just like a lot of other folks. Slashdotters even!
The fact that pirate networks are more often than not, the easiest way to get what you need, whether you are a paying customer or not.
Easy, sure. But secure?
Well um, I suppose we could run around and find checksums to compare or something, in order to ascertain nothing has been pre-hacked for us in-advance. (Or run linux on the desktop, of course)
seriously? I mean the parent just wants the phone he bought do what he wants after all. And I suppose he doesn't want to give anything up until he sees good reason to *upgrade*.
Does Apple supports his interests? Well, solely no. Apple has several constituents in this space.
Just imagine, if you could only organize the neighbors just a little bit, sorta like a block party, and string all the house lights together, to create a beowolf cluster-formation! Wow! You might even get mentioned in/. it'd be so cool!
The premise is simple: instead of streaming your TV across the 'net to PCs (as with the SlingBox), the SlingCatcher does the opposite by streaming your PC's videos to the TV. The SlingCatcher is expected to retail for under $200 some time in the middle of 2007; it will come with HDMI and component connectors and will feature both WiFi and Ethernet for connectivity.
...and I can tell you that the decision makers rarely have much technical background
Oh please, let me insert my Project Manager joke here (thank you):
So there's a software engineer, a hardware engineer, and a project manager washed up on a desert island. They've been stuck there for years and years, and an interesting bottle washes ashore and someone pulls the cork off, as a genie appears from within.
The genie says, "Thank you for opening the bottle, I've been stuck in there for 4000 years. As a reward for my rescue, you can have anything, and as much of it as you want. Let's just be quick, okay, and get on with our lives."
The software engineer clarified, "Anything, and as much as we want?" And he quickly received a most-positive response from the genie.
So, in short order a wish list followed, "A big house in Miami, a good relationship with a supermodel, who's also a little nerdy, so everything works well between us... money in the bank, liquor in the cabinet, etc., etc." Finally, after requesting everything imaginable, the genie asked, "is that all?" The software engineer requested so much coolness on which to base his life upon, and for the most part, all he could think of was escaping the island, thus he could think of nothing else; so he answered the genie with his request, and immediately disappeared from sight.
The hardware engineer immediately asked why the software engineer vanished completely, and the genie calmly assured her, that all was well, and that the software engineer was now reveling with many drunk women in his new ultra-cool Miami beach house.
So the hardware engineer, throwing caution into the wind as to the imaginable risks, began to create her own fantasy list, which included a Swiss chalet, a Swiss bank account, Swiss chocolate, a snowboard with piezo electronics, etc. etc. etc., and soon enough she disappeared too.
What remained was the project manager who never really contributed much to anyone's survival anyway. All this person did was make grandiose plans and yelled a lot while pointing at a make-shift calendar of 'milestones'. Okay, things got done, but at what cost? And were they really that good, after all?
The PM was extremely unimaginative to begin with, and frankly was stumped as how best to proceed. The PM gave much thought to his future, but struggled so; meanwhile the genie grew more and more visibly impatient; since it has been ~4000 years in the bottle after all.
It didn't take long before the (creative?) pressure broke down the PM, who could only blurt out the following desire upon the Genie...
"Well, alright. Those two did work hard all this time, making life bearable so we at least survived to reach this point. The hydroelectric damn those two built out of coconuts was particularly useful..."
So the Project manager thinks for the longest while, as the genie grew more and more impatient, and finally, under the stress, the PM blurts out, "FINE, those two worked sooo hard, and truly did a wonderful job all these years, and we've finally reached this most-major-milestone. I suppose they do enjoy such rewards as they been endowed with..." The he turns to the genie and explains, "Please let them have their moment of pleasure with the women/men, and the liquor, and the jacuzzi... Clearly they deserve it; but still, I'd really like for both of them to be back here by 2 o'clock".
Me too! Those guys wanted to work with Trixbox devs, and finally gave up and rolled their own, which is the new PBX-in-Flash voip server. The true open-source devs have released a truely wonderful and solid server. They asked for donations to fund a server, and I'm so impressed with my phone server, humming away for a few weeks already, of course I'm donating; I want more good stuff in the future, and want these PBX-in-Flash devs to stay motivated. Great stuff guys!
Note that the PBX-in-a-Flash devs had no choice, Trixbox/Fonality locked them out of the build process completely. So yeah, they went and rolled their own; and did a great job at that.
oh darn. I meant to link to Alfresco, which is more applicable to hosting shared OpenOffice documents than Zimbra's relatively new document sharing feature. (I confuse the two servers frequently. My bad. I love 'em both to bits though.)
OK, I'm not saying Google Docs is right for everyone, but you seem to be completely dismissing the advantages of having your documentsnline and ignoring the disadvantages of having your documents offline.
Agreed, and thank you for pointing out the online functionality/aspect.
As a cake-n-eat-it-too suggestion, maybe one might use OpenOffice for offline use, and the open-source community-edition of Zimbra for hosting your own files online. I have yet to test this model, but I plan to soon. Sounds like a good 2008 resolution to me.
"Point and shoot your camera phone at a mobile code to connect directly to a website, view a message or get a phone number ready for dialing." --from the site.
Ext3cow is an open-source, versioning file system based on ext3. It provides a time-shifting interface that allows a real-time and continuous view of the past. This allows users to access their file system as it appeared at any point in time.
Ext3cow was designed as a platform for regulatory compliance, and has been used to implement secure deletion, authenticated encryption, and incremental authentication. See the publications page for more details.
Some advantages of ext3cow:
1.
It does not pollute the name space with named versions
2.
It has low storage and performance overhead
3.
It is totally modular, requiring no changes to kernel or VFS interfaces
In my office, HP servers are Da Rule, and any other HP peripherals get glows of approval. I brought in a (HP) Compaq nc6320, which seems to be The Preferred HP Laptop for Business (tm), and I gotta say, it is nice for business. I especially like how the monitor is NOT wide-screen. The office likes it too.
I just set it up *nice* with Ubuntu Studio, using the 7.10 LVM full-encrypted disk, installed all the goodies like Skype and Picasa. WPA2-PSK AES wifi works. Sweet. (note: add the www.medibuntu.com repos to get codecs, etc.) I clone each workstation's apps using AptonCD btw.
Everything works swell, except the built-in microphone (useful for Skype) and the fingerprint scanner.
There an application called ThinkFinger, that I couldn't get to work at all. There's 'bioapi-1.2' (from bioapi.org) to hack through as well. To be fair, both say very much in-development.
AES2501 is the actual driver, I think. These are my notes anyway. Authentic.com (an OEM) makes the fingerprint scanner hardware in most modern laptops.
AFAIK, I needed to compile this "TFMESS BioAPI for Linux" http://www.upek.com/support/dl_linux_bsp.asp -- who actually programm the driver?
I googled and labored for ages, this is what worked and what doesn't. This finger scanner seems to be used in most other biz laptops as well.
True, and so easy there's no excuse. Debian 4, and from my understanding Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy due tomorrow, both offer full-disk encryption upon initial installation. It is so easy, why not? Also, because it is so easy and low-cost, I don't understand why enterprise and government don't immediately start a review of laptop OS' and their required client functionality, because of this built-in feature that is a royal pain on Windows.
It seems only that the RIAA has sued 'usenet.com'. Apparently the RIAA thinks this is the end of the matter, and usenet.com, being a private entity, will settle everything, for everyone?
A third party brought in from Ohio's Office of Collective Bargaining investigated the incident and recommended the penalty, Sylvester said.
"The next time the state takes on a project of this scope, we're going to have people on the job whose major responsibility is just data security," he added.
Looks like the Union is staffing IT security now. Someone should apply.
Note: This tutorial is based on an example by Alexander Crugnola, in the example, Flex with AMFPHP. Please note that Alexander Crugnola's example is not specific to Drupal.
Okay, maybe that's not serious enough to be called Drupal lovin', but this is:
Yesterday the Adobe Flex team launched a Drupal powered application that showcases applications built with Adobe Flex. The new Flex Showcase is online now at http://flex.org/showcase_app.
The backend of the application uses Drupal, along with the Services, AMFPHP, Vote up / down and CCK modules. The front end of the application is written in Adobe Flex, with custom components written in Flash.
Drupal was chosen for the application because we needed a PHP framework that supported user registration and management, content management, categorization and tagging, and comments. Drupal was the best choice for these services, and with the work that Scott Nelson had already done with the Services and AMFPHP modules, the choice was easy.
Slashdot Mirror
and -every- feature of the N95 rocks. Gotta agree! The folding keyboard accessory is really req'd when much text at all is the norm. Even for tricky passwords, really.
My 1st gen. n95 has been much improved in the last year by a steady stream of firmware updates, and other Nokia software, like Maps. It is now twice the phone it was when new, and battery life & (limited) multi-tasking are now realistic. The Nokia n95 (and now n96) are a joy. It is my *only* GPS/video/camera/mobile-www-browser-w-RSS/SIP-client-over-802.11, etc. (operamini browser is best for RSS)
I carry the folding keyboard in my backpack if I think I'll need that too.
Been meaning to get some battery spares. Mine has died too many times while 'Sport Tracking' (Turn on the GPS and go ride a bike, jog, etc.; it saves the ride to a calendar, and you can upload it to a cool Nokia webservice w/ cool GUI and see your ride/history in a gmap. http://sportstracker.nokia.com/
It is soooo cool. And so realistic to SSH, etc. I am afraid I haven't secured the n95 enough to be configured so. A real concern, really. I'm still investigating encryption options, but what I see is light-weight so far. Really light-weight.
As an owner of a nearly 20-year old "Vita Mix Total Nutrition Center", I can attest to this machine's quality, and power. It has a half unit of horsepower, and spins its permanently sharp nickel blade at 36,000 RPM. But I never said it was quiet.
Broccoli, celery, ice, etc. have met their match. And it makes fruit ice cream smoothies too.
I am not a software engineer or hacker, but from what I understand, while it may be likely the vulnerability exists across platforms, typically it is the Microsoft box that often allows elevated access, once the Flash exploit has been used. This isn't so easy to manage for a hacker, with the *nixes, (which includes OSX).
So by not using Windows, users are made more secure by not being such a targeted pool in the first place, (as influenced by marketshare). But the design of the OS helps too.
More about the anti-media campaign is linked here, including videos:
http://www.mediamatic.net/article-34157-en.html
Seriously. Such a suggestion is a clear illustration of a security threat to be concerned about and guarded against.
It also makes for a realistic discussion of the risk with a non-technical user.
I don't want to lose sleep over the possibility, do you?
Except, how would you prevent it from happening? I'm not sure you can, but I'll bet the answer is in this book called Extrusion Detection. I haven't (yet) read it, however I have read its sister book (Network Security Monitoring) by the same outstanding expert author, a former US Air Force captain who should know, and that's why I think the answer to prevent such an internal 'exploit' is in that particular book.
Sorta cuts out a lot of folks. I'd consider it myself, if the whole military-age thing wasn't working against me. I'm 45.
Guess I'll have to find another way to be American with my resume, just like a lot of other folks. Slashdotters even!
Easy, sure. But secure?
Well um, I suppose we could run around and find checksums to compare or something, in order to ascertain nothing has been pre-hacked for us in-advance. (Or run linux on the desktop, of course)
seriously? I mean the parent just wants the phone he bought do what he wants after all. And I suppose he doesn't want to give anything up until he sees good reason to *upgrade*.
Does Apple supports his interests? Well, solely no. Apple has several constituents in this space.
Just imagine, if you could only organize the neighbors just a little bit, sorta like a block party, and string all the house lights together, to create a beowolf cluster-formation! Wow! You might even get mentioned in /. it'd be so cool!
I voted at Wired for Slingcatcher, but I guess I'm the only one.
http://us.slingmedia.com/object/io_1168286861787.html -- the original press release is still online.
Thank you so much. This joke was passed on to me by a true veteran; bless him.
Oh please, let me insert my Project Manager joke here (thank you):
So there's a software engineer, a hardware engineer, and a project manager washed up on a desert island. They've been stuck there for years and years, and an interesting bottle washes ashore and someone pulls the cork off, as a genie appears from within.
The genie says, "Thank you for opening the bottle, I've been stuck in there for 4000 years. As a reward for my rescue, you can have anything, and as much of it as you want. Let's just be quick, okay, and get on with our lives."
The software engineer clarified, "Anything, and as much as we want?" And he quickly received a most-positive response from the genie.
So, in short order a wish list followed, "A big house in Miami, a good relationship with a supermodel, who's also a little nerdy, so everything works well between us... money in the bank, liquor in the cabinet, etc., etc." Finally, after requesting everything imaginable, the genie asked, "is that all?" The software engineer requested so much coolness on which to base his life upon, and for the most part, all he could think of was escaping the island, thus he could think of nothing else; so he answered the genie with his request, and immediately disappeared from sight.
The hardware engineer immediately asked why the software engineer vanished completely, and the genie calmly assured her, that all was well, and that the software engineer was now reveling with many drunk women in his new ultra-cool Miami beach house.
So the hardware engineer, throwing caution into the wind as to the imaginable risks, began to create her own fantasy list, which included a Swiss chalet, a Swiss bank account, Swiss chocolate, a snowboard with piezo electronics, etc. etc. etc., and soon enough she disappeared too.
What remained was the project manager who never really contributed much to anyone's survival anyway. All this person did was make grandiose plans and yelled a lot while pointing at a make-shift calendar of 'milestones'. Okay, things got done, but at what cost? And were they really that good, after all?
The PM was extremely unimaginative to begin with, and frankly was stumped as how best to proceed. The PM gave much thought to his future, but struggled so; meanwhile the genie grew more and more visibly impatient; since it has been ~4000 years in the bottle after all.
It didn't take long before the (creative?) pressure broke down the PM, who could only blurt out the following desire upon the Genie...
"Well, alright. Those two did work hard all this time, making life bearable so we at least survived to reach this point. The hydroelectric damn those two built out of coconuts was particularly useful..."
So the Project manager thinks for the longest while, as the genie grew more and more impatient, and finally, under the stress, the PM blurts out, "FINE, those two worked sooo hard, and truly did a wonderful job all these years, and we've finally reached this most-major-milestone. I suppose they do enjoy such rewards as they been endowed with..." The he turns to the genie and explains, "Please let them have their moment of pleasure with the women/men, and the liquor, and the jacuzzi... Clearly they deserve it; but still, I'd really like for both of them to be back here by 2 o'clock".
Me too! Those guys wanted to work with Trixbox devs, and finally gave up and rolled their own, which is the new PBX-in-Flash voip server. The true open-source devs have released a truely wonderful and solid server. They asked for donations to fund a server, and I'm so impressed with my phone server, humming away for a few weeks already, of course I'm donating; I want more good stuff in the future, and want these PBX-in-Flash devs to stay motivated. Great stuff guys!
Note that the PBX-in-a-Flash devs had no choice, Trixbox/Fonality locked them out of the build process completely. So yeah, they went and rolled their own; and did a great job at that.
oh darn. I meant to link to Alfresco, which is more applicable to hosting shared OpenOffice documents than Zimbra's relatively new document sharing feature. (I confuse the two servers frequently. My bad. I love 'em both to bits though.)
Agreed, and thank you for pointing out the online functionality/aspect.
As a cake-n-eat-it-too suggestion, maybe one might use OpenOffice for offline use, and the open-source community-edition of Zimbra for hosting your own files online. I have yet to test this model, but I plan to soon. Sounds like a good 2008 resolution to me.
http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm
"Point and shoot your camera phone at a mobile code to connect directly to a website, view a message or get a phone number ready for dialing." --from the site.
I read about something similar in the slashdot comments awhile back: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=281077&cid=20379125
see Voippong: http://www.enderunix.org/voipong/
for more info: http://www.4devz.com/voipong/
I presented this info to a client for enhanced security funding, to shore up the intranet, (which sort of worked).
from the website:
http://www.ext3cow.com/
Ext3cow is an open-source, versioning file system based on ext3. It provides a time-shifting interface that allows a real-time and continuous view of the past. This allows users to access their file system as it appeared at any point in time.
Ext3cow was designed as a platform for regulatory compliance, and has been used to implement secure deletion, authenticated encryption, and incremental authentication. See the publications page for more details.
Some advantages of ext3cow:
1.
It does not pollute the name space with named versions
2.
It has low storage and performance overhead
3.
It is totally modular, requiring no changes to kernel or VFS interfaces
In my office, HP servers are Da Rule, and any other HP peripherals get glows of approval. I brought in a (HP) Compaq nc6320, which seems to be The Preferred HP Laptop for Business (tm), and I gotta say, it is nice for business. I especially like how the monitor is NOT wide-screen. The office likes it too.
I just set it up *nice* with Ubuntu Studio, using the 7.10 LVM full-encrypted disk, installed all the goodies like Skype and Picasa. WPA2-PSK AES wifi works. Sweet. (note: add the www.medibuntu.com repos to get codecs, etc.) I clone each workstation's apps using AptonCD btw.
Everything works swell, except the built-in microphone (useful for Skype) and the fingerprint scanner.
There an application called ThinkFinger, that I couldn't get to work at all. There's 'bioapi-1.2' (from bioapi.org) to hack through as well. To be fair, both say very much in-development.
AES2501 is the actual driver, I think. These are my notes anyway. Authentic.com (an OEM) makes the fingerprint scanner hardware in most modern laptops.
AFAIK, I needed to compile this "TFMESS BioAPI for Linux" http://www.upek.com/support/dl_linux_bsp.asp -- who actually programm the driver?
I googled and labored for ages, this is what worked and what doesn't. This finger scanner seems to be used in most other biz laptops as well.
True, and so easy there's no excuse. Debian 4, and from my understanding Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy due tomorrow, both offer full-disk encryption upon initial installation. It is so easy, why not? Also, because it is so easy and low-cost, I don't understand why enterprise and government don't immediately start a review of laptop OS' and their required client functionality, because of this built-in feature that is a royal pain on Windows.
It seems only that the RIAA has sued 'usenet.com'. Apparently the RIAA thinks this is the end of the matter, and usenet.com, being a private entity, will settle everything, for everyone?
Looks like the Union is staffing IT security now. Someone should apply.
Okay, maybe that's not serious enough to be called Drupal lovin', but this is:
Adobe is giving Drupal some serious loving too, and that's also of interest for the FLOSS CMS folks, no doubt.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/drupal.html
Canadian dollars or U.S, it doesn't matter; the price is the same.
Have you noticed the value of the U.S. dollar lately? And let's not talk about the Euro, okay?