2008 July

Today I was notified of a good friend of mine who is on his way to Iraq. Recently his company, EDS, gave him the shaft by not paying his vacation time. EDS released this person to another company and EDS waited until the last minute to force his resignation. Over two weeks of vacation time was lost, and now he’s on his way to Iraq in a few weeks. As soon as EDS received a copy of my friends’ orders they expedited his movement to the new company. My friend also informed me that emails were sent to EDS asking what was going to happen to his vacation. EDS kept saying “We’ll get back to you” when finally with two days to go they said “We will not pay for any unused vacation.”.

EDS should be ashamed at what they are doing, especially to soldiers going overseas. If the founder of EDS was still working there, this would have never happened.

(continue reading…)

Somewhere in the years 2001 and 2002, McKinnon hacked into computers belonging to the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, DoD, and NASA. All this done from a bedroom at his girlfriends relatives house. McKinnon was interested in UFOs, and was motivated by the military’s lax network security.

On Wednesday, McKinnon lost his bid to fight extradition. He’ll be coming to the United States to be put on trial.

In a statement, McKinnon’s laywers responded in a statement that he is “neither a terrorist nor a terrorist sympathizer.” They argue that “his case could have been properly dealt with by our own prosecuting authorities.” Case in point, don’t mess around in other countries.

Do I have your attention? Good, because what you are about to hear is pretty dang cool. With a service called Skype you can make free long distance phone calls to other Skype users. Skype isn’t just a voice messenger over the Internet, it’s practically an Internet standard for Voice of Internet. For just $2.95 per month you can call a REAL telephone number anywhere in the United States and Canada. For $9.95 per month you can call to more than 30 countries world wide, and it’s unlimited calling.

Skype can be found on dedicated devices that work just like phones, computers and my favorite, the PSP. The PSP comes with Skype so that you can make calls right from your play station portable. Skype can be installed on Windows, Linux and Apple based computers, you just have to download and install the client.

Imagine, $2.95 to call anywhere in the U.S., and pretty much from any Skype client. If you have Internet at home, this would be a create way to make a virtual land line. Remember, Skype give you a phone number as well, which will never change for as long as you hold the service. This means you can get a land line in your home and not have to pay huge telecom fees.

Below is example code written in C# for a TCP/IP client and server. The TCP server uses what is called a Listener object, which listens for incoming connections. On the client side, the code is instructioned to connect to a specific IP address at which point the server side makes a connection and both client and server can talk to each other.
(continue reading…)

Using a mini access point it is easy to tap a network. If you happen to have access to a wired connection, you can convert that connection to a wireless connection to use at a later date. Tracking down the connection on large networks can be near impossible as well. Be warned, most companies have policies regarding the installation of wireless routers on company networks.

The Flex-301 is the perfect solution as it has only 1 wired ethernet port, which is all you need to convert a wired lan to a wireless lan. Keep in mind the Flex-301 is not a router, it’s simple a wireless hub, getting an ip-address is up to the services on the network.

Whats nice about the Flex-301 is the size, it’s small enough you can hide it almost anywhere. The device seems to be great for travel as well. Some places may only have wired Internet, but some devices may only have Wi-Fi.
(continue reading…)

Larry Mendte, a former anchor for KYW-TV in Philadelphia, accessed Alycia Lane’s accounts about 537 times between January and May alone. In January Lane was fired for a few off-the-job incidents, including a scuffle with a New York City police officer. Mendte also leaked private information about the criminal case to a news agency in Philadelphia. It was obvious Mendte has some unusual inside information.

Authorities found a picture of Ms Lane in a bikini on Mendte’s computer but there are no charges connected to the image. Mendte faces up to 6 months in prison if he is found guilty of unlawfully accessing a computer system.