I don’t think I could write anything better than what already had written here and is available for you to chew on, and it’s all about the people/organization disguising themselves under the copyright law/intellectual property law (intangible assets) claim that open source promotes piracy. No matter how I look at this, it does sound very wrong to me. The first thought came up in my mind was that if I had came up with anything, it’s always my right and mine alone to allow my intangible assets such as software to be distribute however I wish. For an example, I could distribute my software under open source licenses, or I could charge a fee and slap on an IP license. It’s not right for one group to claim something that everyone does is wrong, and only that group is right. After all, no one group has the right to all intangible assets of all other groups. It’s not like open source has not made any sense, but open source is something that makes sense — even Microsoft has gave in to open source and contributes some of its resources to open source movement (although nothing major but still…).
Not only Google wants a faster America when it comes to broadband, because Cisco does too. It seems as if Google is competing against AT&T, Verizon, and others when it announces that it is building 1Gbps broadband network for consumers, but in my opinion, Google wants to see a faster broadband standard in America. Why? Google is all about the Internet, and a faster Internet could help Google in the long run. Imagine Google could deliver more bandwidth intensive programs over its YouTube such as HD videos, other futuristic applications, and so on.
Cisco is a little different although it’s announcing that 1Gbps broadband network for consumers is also in the work. It seems Cisco wants to provide the 1Gbps broadband capability to its business customers such as AT&T, Verizon, and others. This makes Cisco not a competitor to the major Internet Service Providers, but as a friend. In Google case, it does make Google appears as a competitor to the Internet Service Providers.
Nonetheless, whatever the case, it’s about time that the American people get to experience a faster America in term of broadband. Although it’s not important as the health care topic which has caused ripples throughout America, broadband is still important since it’s powering businesses and homes and creativities and innovations. For your information, America is way behind in broadband speed when America is compared against Europe and Japan. Source.
Don’t take my words for this, but you need to watch this video to see how dangerous it’s for you to surfing the web, taking care important stuffs such as online banking, and doing all of those urgent things over the wireless connection (safer at home but not hacker proof) through the public Wi-Fi (Internet connection from coffee shops, etc.). Although the technical jargon could throw you into a lala land where everything may seem impossible to understand and so far away, but don’t worry, I’m here to make things a little easier to understand for you (believe me, I had to look some of those technical jargon and concept up many times before).
Here is the deal! Someone at a public spot with an evil intention could own you by redirecting you to whatever websites he/she wants to. This means if you try to visit a bank from a public location using public Internet connection, someone evil could create a fake bank look alike website beforehand, and whenever you request for that specific bank’s IP address (website address, URL), the evildoer could redirect you to the fake bank website. Whatever you type into the fake bank website, the evildoer could then capture anything you type for later perusing.
There are many methods of how an evildoer could go about and setup a trap like this. Here we talk about DHCP exhaustion and then inject the man in the middle attack method to own an Internet traffic. What’s DHCP exhaustion? Basically, it’s a way that an evildoer could request a gateway (router) to give out not one, but many IP addresses to a point that there is no more IP address to give out to the next computer user. Most if not all router could provide DHCP server environment where a router gives out the local IP addresses (192.168.x.x) to the computers; for receiving and having a local IP address from a router (access point, gateway, etc.), a computer is able to access the network and browse the Internet. So why an evildoer wants to max out the local IP addresses that a router (gateway, access point) could give? In doing so the router could not reserve any open spot for a computer user who now wants to log onto the Internet but could not since no local IP address is available to give out. At the same time, the evildoer fires up his own DHCP software/hardware (bad router, bad access point, bad gateway) to intercept your computer’s local network request, and eventually the evildoer allows you to use his/her DHCP server to surf the web — which means the evildoer could redirect you to anywhere on the web he or she wants.
Obviously, to carry out such an attack one requires the necessary tools to do so, but there is no doubt that crackers (hackers – a much popular term but lazy) always equip themselves with evil tools that rock your world. Why using a home network and an office network are safer? It’s because strangers need an access key to access your network, otherwise it’s a no go for strangers who want to hack you. After saying that, it’s not a complete truth and a sincere statement. Why? You know those crackers love to mess with your wireless connection, and trust me they have the tools to break into your network — although not easy, but it’s not impossible. To be even more secure, you could use an Ethernet connection at home, turn off the DHCP server capability in your router, and use only static local IP address. Still, even that, if you’re not careful and not updating your router’s firmware to the latest, a cracker could still exploit the old firmware to find a security hole that he/she could eventually break into your network. Also, don’t ever forget to change the router’s admin user name to something that could not be guess easily, and the password for router’s admin account has to be strong too. Other router’s security extra options that you can make a cracker’s life a little harder by disabling uPnP capability, only allowing known computers’ physical addresses (MAC address) to access the router and Internet, turning on HTTPS web access for admin only, and denying known bad websites that could potentially infect your network with trojans and computer viruses and computer worms.
Check out the technology video which talks about DHCP exhaustion and DNS man in the middle attacks after the break!
Does Google make us stupid? This is really an interesting question if one looks at it closely! This question has been a serious thought by Nicholas Carr in which he suggests as we’re becoming more digital-dependent, we might get stupid. People from various fields argue otherwise. What about you?
We can say that nowadays, we humans have access to information easier. Information are plentiful and within reaches as long you have a computer and an Internet connection. Instead of seriously contemplate about the solutions, we just need to log onto the Internet, go to Google’s URL, and there we type in whatever we need to be curious about. Although Google does not provide any answer, it does allow all of us to see various sources that could hold the answers to our questions. Carr argues that the time we use to search for answers and could relatively fast to attain such answers, in all we have abandoned the time of deep thinking and in turn we use our brain less to think but more to sift through information as if we’re the robots.
It depends, don’t you think? Sure, our ways of doing things nowadays are much different from the old days, and this is why we’re asking such a question. I think we’re going to be OK. It depends on each of us really! Although we’re able to attain information easier in which we may encourage to think less deeply, but the potential for the encouragement to think even more deeply since a curious mind has encountered a rather unique information is quite powerful. Source.
Bad news for the people that are using Google Gears to check emails, blog with WordPress, and many other things that could be done offline with Google Gears since Google is announcing that Google Gears will no longer be supported? Not really, Google is making a big change by moving what’s good about Google Gears to HTML5. This means what you like about Google Gears will be standardized when HTML5 comes out. It also means new browsers that support HTML5 will also support the features that you love from Google Gears. In the long run, Google Gears will not be supported, but meanwhile Google is still supporting Google Gears while the transition takes place slowly. Don’t expect any new feature from Google Gears. Source.
It seems that Google needs to be more careful whenever it rolls out new applications, because people will file for lawsuits. A recent feature that Google is pushing for is known as Buzz for Gmail. Unfortunately, the algorithm has weaknesses, and people are complaining about how Buzz exposes some contacts to unwanted prying eyes. Already, someone is filing for a lawsuit against Google for Buzz has done this person wrong.
Accidental flaws and stupid bugs are supposed to be for beta applications, but I guess in this case Google could not argue much for Gmail isn’t beta but Buzz has now married to Gmail. I would like to defense Google, and I would like to tell people to chill out and not to file for lawsuits even though using free products from Google sometimes inherits unwanted risks. Then again, to tell Google not to be careful about its products is not a good thing, because we don’t want to use bad applications even though those are free to use. Bad image for Google too!
In a way though, it could be bad for everyone if Google has to be too careful about its innovations. After all, most products that Google rolls out are free to use, but we have to admit with some purposes that Google has in mind to benefit it greatly in the long run. A balance must be figured out between Google’s users and Google, otherwise stupid lawsuits and careless products could not improve anything! Source.
Users who are using reMail on iPhone may have to find a similar app to fill in reMail’s place! Google has purchased reMail and had removed this app from iPhone store. reMail is convenient because it’s fast and you don’t have to be connected to the Internet to search for a specific email.
How reMail works? It downloads all of your emails and store those on your iPhone. reMail’s search speed is very fast and so even if you have thousands of emails store on your iPhone, using reMail you could still find an email within 2 seconds. Doing all of that without being connected to the Internet since reMail has downloaded all of your emails onto your iPhone when you were connecting to the Internet previously.
We all know that Google has Nexus One and Android for other smart phones. From the purchase of reMail, it could mean Google is planning to release reMail or marrying reMail with Google’s compatible products. Android users may see something similar to reMail, but iPhone users may have to go without reMail in the future. Source.
Buying virtual goods with real money isn’t a new thing since the World of Warcraft, although unintentionally, has been facilitating the business of selling virtual goods. Some WOW’s gamers bought virtual gold with real money to level faster and acquire awesome armors and weapons. WOW is only one example of many virtual communities that either unintentionally or intentionally encourage members to pay for virtual goods.
Facebook may have see the wave of paying for virtual goods as a potential for great income, and so it has partnered up with PayPal to encourage Facebook’s members to spend real money for virtual goods. We all know Facebook has amazing amount of virtual games and applications, and from these that Facebook may generate virtual goods for sales. PayPal could develop a broader reach and may come up with new ways of providing payments in today social environment. The partnership between Facebook and PayPal may result in unexpected but interesting solution.
Security reports are rarely made headlines since people do not care unless they themselves are having the problems. In a way, it’s doesn’t matter if you and I care about security or not, since our current premium security software from well known security vendors aren’t equipped to deal with the real sophisticated threats. Not to undermine the threats of viruses and worms and malware, but the available security software in the market are only capable of weeding out the common security threats; it’s still so important to arm yourself with a well known security software to fight the common security threats since these are everywhere.
Highly sophisticated attacks that target specific organizations and groups of people are many steps ahead where normal security software from well known security vendors render somewhat useless. Just recently, a report from a security firm NetWitness suggests that a new type of bot known as Kneber botnet has been successfully gathering amazing amount of information from various accounts of well known organizations and social network websites and government agencies around the globe. It’s most likely that these big organizations and government agencies are using highly sophisticated and expensive security software, but it seems when come to security, it’s never enough to arm a network with even more security solutions.
For average people like all of us, what could we arm ourselves with to safeguard against major security threats? Probably the best thing we could arm ourselves with is knowledge. The knowledge of how to spot a security hole and how to be paranoid about network security. Without such knowledge, one could be carefree until the compromises made known. The best practices that everyone of us could put into use to guard ourselves against major security threats are not to surf the web carelessly, use good security software, be mindful about downloads, avoid strange emails, learn more about the security from respected security websites, and warn other people about known security threats.
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