Computer Tips -Tech Info

Category: General Web/Tech

  • Google Hack honeypot

    I’ve found The Google Hack honeypot thanks to an entry at sans.org in the handlers diary. I’ve looked at it and it’s an interesting idea. The honeypot installs on your website and is invisibly linked to from another page. This way it gets spidered as if it was a real site. Then, it logs hack attempts against itself by monitoring and logging search referrers and ip addresses of those trying to use it.
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  • Bad week for Cisco, security headaches

    For starters, there was this advisory last week in response to a planned talk at a hacker convention on the possibility of a cisco router ipv6 exploit. The advisory detailed a LOCAL exploit and not the remote exploit that the talk was centered around. There was legal action against the speaker and materials detailing it were destroyed (literally ripped out of notebooks) at the convention by Cisco. Apparently this is the kind of vulnerability that could “shut down the internet”. Of course, much of the internet’s backbone runs on Cisco equipment. Next….

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  • Free speech in contrast (or lack of it)

    This article details the Chinese governments tightening of control over what foreign tv, books, newspapers and other media imports. To quote from the article “Import of cultural products contrary to regulations will be punished according to the circumstances, and in serious cases the import license will be revoked,”
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  • Broadband users watch less tv

    According to this report, broadband users watch less tv. Two hours less a week in fact, compared to their non-broadband counterparts (dial up users watch 1.5 hours less than the non connected). It’s understandable, instead of couch potatoes many of us are computer-potatoes. I do have a tendency to “multi-task” though at times and have news tv or radio on while I work.
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  • Court allows blocking of emails by Public University

    This article details a ruling by the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals that finds the University of Texas did not violate any laws (constitutional or otherwise) by blocking what they deemed junk mail from an online dating service. It sounds as though one of the arguments was a 1st amendment (freedom of speech) violation.
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  • New version of Site manager software released Campsite

    According to the Newsforge article, Campsite 2.3 is “the most advanced open-source system for news publishing on the web.” It’s PHP based and more information can be found at the campware website.

  • New competition for Google Adsense in blogs

    This article details an announcement from Yahoo about a new advertising network for small and medium size web publishers. The article compares the service lightly to Googles adsense (more details from Yahoo I’m sure to follow.) Also it mentions that in the 2nd quarter of 2005, Google brought in $630 million in “syndicated search revenue” which is a broad category including adsense.

  • Google News feeds politics and free speech

    One of the topics I plan to steer clear of most of the time here is politics. I don’t want this site (essentially for my business), to be engulfed with national political, conservative, liberal, etc… debates. It doesn’t fit with the structure I have in mind. However, at the intersection of political debate and technology there is room to touch on the topic. I’ve found an article which brings Google News into this mix.
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  • Shuttle astronaut pulls gap filler out in spacewalk

    I waited until I could find a news article with a pretty picture, this wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, as this space walk should have allowed for some excellent views of the shuttle and the earth behind it. The astronaut successfully pulled out the “gap fillers” that were protruding from the underbelly. There was concern that the friction caused by these on re-entry would cause overheating.

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  • 3GB USB bootable Micro Hard drive with Ubuntu Linux

    Just found a reference to this product at barrapunto.com. It’s a 3GB microdrive in a “big usb cracker”kind of form factor. (Not solid state, it does have moving parts I understand.) It comes with Ubuntu linux preinstalled with Office suite/web browser, all the trimings. It will boot on PC’s that support booting from USB. Of course any changes are saved to the micro drive itself, and no touches are made to the computer systems internal drive. It’s about 35 grams, the size of a square lighter and is selling for 135 Euros.
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