A couple of years ago, Cory posted a really interesting story about the mathematics behind seemingly cause-less traffic jams . It’s pretty interesting. Shorter version: The researchers think jams like this are caused by one person braking, and the response to that slow down moves through dense traffic in a way that is mathematically very similar to the shock wave from an explosion. Once you have enough density of cars on a road, jams are inevitable.

Cory’s post included a simulation, showing what the mathematics might look like in the real world. Basically, a computer algorithm figured out how drivers would behave if the mathematical theory were correct and turned that behavior into a little cartoon of cars moving around a track.

But here’s the really cool thing. This effect has actually been demonstrated in meatspace . Yesterday, a friend sent me a video from 2008, showing real life drivers behaving in almost the exact same way as the simulation video from Cory’s post. That’s what you see posted above. Now, these are not exactly real-world conditions. A flat circular track may, or may not, be a good representative for what happens on the highway—I, for one, would be interested in seeing how on/off ramps, hills, and curves change the patterns. Also, the drivers in this case were other students and faculty from the Nakanihon Automotive College, and the study doesn’t say whether they knew why they were driving in circles. Again, these details could affect the outcome.

I’ve not been able to find any studies that test this mathematical model by documenting real-world traffic flows. But if you’ve got links, I’d love to see them! The idea behind this theory certainly makes sense and it would be interesting to know whether it matches up with the reality you and I experience.

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How traffic jams are born

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WZr6fvtEgk

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Shit programmers say

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jaAgAFLtL0

The rest is here:
VIDEO: Dog watching ping pong makes the game seven times more exciting

Microsoft has yet to confirm that there even will be a new console anytime soon, let alone announce a release date, yet the gossip shows no signs of letting up.

Here are five of the best “Xbox 720” rumours we’ve heard so far…

There will be two versions

If you’ve been on your Xbox 360 you will have seen the new dashboard update, which places more emphasis on non-gaming entertainment than ever. One rumour last year suggested that Microsoft will make the most of this by launching two versions of the next Xbox console: one acting as a Kinect set-top box geared for casual gamers and movie fans, and a fully featured console for “hardcore” gamers with a larger hard drive.

It may not be the only new console announced at E3 2012

A new Xbox is enough to get us as excited as a cat after a piece of string, but word is that E3 2012 could see the reveal of the PlayStation 4 alongside it. The Xbox 360 originally launched one year before the PlayStation 3, so if true, we could see Sony compete on more even terms this time round.

Xbox 720 will play Blu-Ray

A more recent rumour believes that the next Xbox will do away with DVDs to go all Blu-Ray on us – great news for those with growing Blu-Ray collections, and a step forward in technological terms, with Blu-Ray discs capable of a lot more storage.

Kinect 2

New console, new Kinect. The current generation of Microsoft Kinect only hit the shops a year ago, yet there is already talk of an upgrade. If rumours are to be believed, Kinect 2 will be fitted with a superior sensor for increased accuracy, and hopefully be able to cope better with smaller rooms.

Six times more power than Xbox 360

We all know that any new Xbox is going to be more powerful than the current generation. How much more powerful? Up to six times more, delivering better performance than the Nintendo Wii U, supposedly.

Have you seen or heard any more Xbox 720 rumours you would like to share?

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Xbox 720: Five hot rumours about the next-gen console

Link:
I really need to start reading my iTunes agreement

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Hackers (according to Stock Photo Sites)

It enables third-party software to do something on your behalf, for a limited time and without giving that software full, permanent access to reserved information. The most common analogy is valet keys.

Let’s delve a little deeper and find out more about OAuth.

Q: So, valet keys. You mean those keys normally handed to parking attendants at hotels?

A: Yes. Those keys make it possible to open, start and drive your car, but only for a very short trip and without opening the trunk. OAuth works like a valet key for your data. It gives temporary and restricted access to something that’s yours, without giving away full control.

Q: Now, I understand what you mean but… is this a real world problem?

A: It became one when online services and social networks in all their forms, from Twitter and Flickr to remote banking, became not only ubiquitous, but inter-connected – they’re much more useful when you can make them work together.

Q: You refer to cases such as publishing a Flickr gallery on Facebook.

A: Yes, exactly. Being able to do that without re-entering everything manually is great. However, doing it without something like OAuth may mean giving those sites full access to all of your stuff (such as files, contact lists or full access to services).

Q: So that’s why you talked about both authentication and authorisation?

A: Correct. Authentication means having a way to prove that you are really you. Please note that, in general, it makes no difference if ‘you’ is a human being or a software program. Whereas authorisation is a separate, equally necessary service. If a person or software program has already proved to Facebook who they are, this doesn’t mean that they have permission to update our status as if they were us.

Q: Couldn’t OpenID have been used for this?

A: OpenID only deals with authentication. OAuth, instead, helps in all those cases in which (using OAuth terminology) some software (client) that would like to access data on behalf of whoever has the right to authorise such access (resource owner) is completely separate from, and unknown to, the software or service that actually stores those resources.

Q: Wait a second! Something like this was possible years before OAuth!

A: Yes, but in most cases it meant either using only one account of a network of already co-operating websites, or giving to at least one of them your usernames and passwords on all the others. OAuth attempts to close this security hole.

Q: You mean authorising access to what’s inside a web account without giving out my password and username?

A: Let’s assume that you made a comment on some blog, and want that blog to post it on Twitter on your behalf, to save typing. When you tell the blog software to do this (for example by clicking a button), it will send a request to Twitter, that includes an identification key and the list of data or services it’d like to access on your behalf. Twitter (not the blog!) will present you a custom authorisation web form hosted on its server. If you log in successfully on Twitter and answer “yes” to that request, you’ll have authorised Twitter to satisfy the request of that blog. Without handing over your password and username.

Q: Cool! Then what?

A: Twitter will tell your browser to go back to the blog, but with a special URL that includes an ‘access token’ or single-use authorisation key. At that point the blog software will be able to present that token to Twitter, as proof that it is the one that just got your permission to do something to, or with, your account.

Q: And this will work with every OAuth compatible website, not just Twitter?

A: That’s correct. As long as those websites don’t reject the initial request, of course. Besides convenience for the end user, another powerful driver for OAuth was the wish to make life harder for spambots and other malicious applications.

Q: How would OAuth do that?

A: Regardless of user authorisation, a software program can work as described only if it has permission to do so from the website it wants to access. OAuth accomplishes this by using several identification keys, or credentials, in parallel.

Q: What are these credentials and who issues them?

A: The one we’ve already mentioned, those used to declare that access from some program is allowed without giving your password to it, are called token credentials. Before getting to that point, however, the client must have sent to the server its valid client credentials. In general, they’re issued by the web server itself. When the developers of some software want to add OAuth capabilities to it, they register with the server to obtain such credentials, or keys. This makes it a bit easier to stop some malware, but also broke lots of existing programs.

Q: You keep speaking of websites. Does this mean that OAuth is unusable by desktop software?

A: Now that’s a trick question. Technically, there is nothing in OAuth that prevents clients from being traditional desktop applications running inside your computer. In practice, doing it (at least with OAuth 1.0) either makes life harder for good faith developers, or the whole client credentials concept almost useless. Especially when using open source software.

Q: Argh! Now that’s bad, but why?

A: Because the scheme I described works perfectly when the client credentials are embedded in source code and/or compiled programs that only run inside some web server, where nobody can read said credentials in the source code or, using hex editors and similar tools, in executable files.

Q: Is this why the problem is even bigger with open source desktop software?

A: Precisely. If you put something that’s supposed to stay private in some source code that everybody has the right to download and study… it’s not private by definition, is it?

Q: Sure, but this only makes the scheme less useful. Why did you also say that OAuth breaks existing software?

A: Because before OAuth 1.0, anybody with a basic knowledge of shell scripting and cUrl (including yours truly!) could, in just a few minutes, wrap up a script that would automatically sign on in Twitter, to read a timeline or post a tweet. OAuth made this impossible without valid, registered client credentials. Even when getting those credentials takes much longer than writing the script in the first place!

Q: Isn’t there any way to patch those scripts?

A: Of course there is: just use one of the many software libraries that have already been registered. However, this still makes those scripts much more complicated to write and maintain than they used to be. Until OAuth 2.0 is released, at least.

Q: You mean there’s a version 2.0 coming? When?

A: The forecast, while we write, is that OAuth 2.0 should be completed by the end of 2011.

Q: What’s new in OAuth 2.0? Will it solve these problems?

A: It could. One of the most important changes is the addition or redefinition of several so-called ‘flows’ to obtain credentials in the most straightforward way, even in scenarios where clients are not web servers but, for example, software running on mobile devices. There’s also a cookie-based flow that should make it possible to resurrect the old cURL-based web automation scripts. There should also be several performance optimisations, because OAuth 1.0 doesn’t scale very well.

Q: Where can I find out more?

A: The official OAuth Introduction .

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Explained: OAuth: what you need to know

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Carnival Cruise Lines might want to rethink its current ad campaign

Continued here:
Squirrel Takedown

Unicode, a massive, sprawling replacement, has room for all sorts of characters and alphabets, and can be extended with “private use areas” that include support for Klingon. But for all that, I never dreamt that Unicode was so vast as to contain a special character for a “pile of poo.” 

Name: PILE OF POO 

Block: Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs Category: 

Symbol, Other [So] Index entries: POO, PILE OF 

Comments: dog dirt 

Version: Unicode 6.0.0 (October 2010) 

HTML Entity: 💩 

Here is “Pile of Poo” in whatever font your browser renders this page in: 💩 Unicode Character ‘PILE OF POO’ (U+1F4A9)

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Unicode’s “Pile of Poo” character

It turns out, though, that Apple actually lets you do that with the split keyboard—you just don't see the keys. Try it: tap and drag the keyboard key in the bottom right corner to split the keyboard, then tap next to the Y key. It should type the letter T. Now the split keyboard is quite a bit more enticing!

Originally posted here:

The iPad’s Split Keyboard Has a Few Hidden Buttons that Make Typing Easier [Ios Tips]

The irony of hearing Bruce utter those words at the beginning of the call is that, no, they were not the only people listening in. Somehow, members of Anonymous managed to tap into the call , record it and then post it online for all to hear. 

The subject of the conversation? Tracking and arresting online activists and hackers, such as those who secretly associate with Anonymous. 

After some casual small talk, the call’s participants share details about progress they’ve made tracking various known hackers, some of whose real names are bleeped out of the audio. Members of so-called hacktivist groups like LulzSec and Anonymous are discussed and updates are given about who’s been arrested. 

It appears that whoever gained unauthorized access to the call was able to do so because they were privy to an email invitation containing the call-in details. Whether somebody forwarded it to the infiltrator or, more likely, they directly intercepted it themselves, that message was all they needed to join the call and quietly listen to the FBI and UK law enforcement discuss sensitive matters. 

Nothing too groundbreaking is revealed in the call, but the mere existence of such a breach suggests that more sensitive information could be exposed, if it hasn’t already been. Not only this is embarrassing for law enforcement, but it ought to send a wake-up call to any other organizations that conduct business via conference call. With many services, all a competitor or other third party would need to get access to the call is a copy of the original email invite. 

Go here to see the original:

Anonymous Shows How Easy it is to Intercept FBI Conference Calls

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School of Fail: They Said It Couldn’t Be Done…

It’s obviously a good thing that the average speed of broadband connections has increased, up from 6.8 to 7.6mbps in a year, but given that those willing to pay for the privilege (and in the right area) can now get 100Mbps it was inevitable that this would tug up the average. 

For me, the fact that Ofcom felt the need to highlight its concerns that people were settling for much worse connections when they could upgrade for little or no extra money, was much more important. “More than 4 in 10 broadband consumers remain on packages with speeds of 10Mbps or less even though many of them would be able to get a higher speed at little or no extra cost if they switched package or provider,” said Ofcom's report. 

Why choose below average? So the question here is why? Why are people forking out for broadband and getting less than 10Mbps? 

First up there’s a huge and very disgruntled group that are geographically disadvantaged; with many rural areas still incapable of achieving anything like 10Mbps. But Ofcom says that ‘many’ would be able to get more bang for their buck, which brings us back to our original question. 

Presumably another big group can be excluded because they get bundled services – meaning that their broadband is part of a package of services for things like television. Within that group you have those that just take broadband because it is there and don’t really need fast connections at all and those that don’t want the inconvenience of finding another provider – even if the service is better. 

And then you have another group – quite possibly the largest within Ofcom’s ‘many’ – those that simply do not upgrade for no good reason. 

Confusion reigns 

And that’s where you hit a major issue; a huge swathe of those people won’t even know that their poor internet connection is costing them the same as a better one. A huge swathe of people that have been left confused and bewildered by the frankly ludicrous misdirection and half-truths in the way companies advertise their broadband speeds. 

A huge swathe of people who feel that switching their broadband over is likely to be a confusing, difficult and lengthy process involving call centres, canned music and often obtuse service. 

A huge swathe of people that should have been helped much more, and much earlier, by the watchdogs that have allowed the ISPs to ride roughshod over what is clearly right and what can be argued in a court of law. 

Fair price, fair product

 For most of the people who read TechRadar things like what a megabit and megabyte are, the differences between fibre to the cabinet and fibre to the home and what the star next to “unlimited” data really signifies allow us to make good decisions on our broadband. 

But for millions of others they just want to pay a fair price for a fair product and not have to worry about the terminology, and that only works when there are safeguards in place. They want to be told the truth without hyperbole or companies hiding behind semantics, they don’t want to be told they could get up to a speed, they want to know speed that will be. 

They think that companies should be fair to them, not sticking small print in fair usage policies. And now, ridiculously belatedly, there are: advertising must be clearer and more accurate, data must be more rigorous and companies will have to give more actual, you know, factual information to people who want to sign up. 

But for many the damage has been done; broadband didn’t need to be confusing or difficult but companies have made it so and many of the ISPs seem to be genuinely miffed that they are finally being brought to task. 

So perhaps the real question is not why people are not getting fair broadband for a fair price, but how they were allowed to reach this state of affairs in the first place.

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Opinion: Years of deliberate broadband confusion are costing UK

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The Expert Mode You Don’t Want To Mess With

Not surprisingly, it’s kind of confusing. In addition to making great looking and super affordable furniture (which don’t last very long, hence why they’re so damn cheap), the Swedes apparently love tech.

Like Much Different , a non-profit that is dedicated to “the development of over-the-top technology” or so says their website. And there’s no better example then Man vs. Machine , which was designed to stress test their new networking capabilities. It allowed 999 human players to all go at it, in one hellacious display of gunfire and explosions…

It’s funny how I can’t figure how what the hell is happening in a regular death-match session, with just 32 players at once, max. Then again, the lack of any architecture helps a lot in that regard. Having each side’s firepower being easily identifiable also plays a good part. So it’s no more confusing than the skirmishes you saw in the old G.I. Joe cartoon.

And no one stays down for long, just like in that as well (though the person playing above is one of the better ones, compared with some of the other YouTube clips going around). Man vs Machine was just a one time deal, though it is hoped that the tech will eventually land in the laps of other developers.

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VIDEO: This is what a 999-person death-match looks like

All they’ve got to do is make sure they’re signed up and have submitted their Android app to BlackBerry’s BB AppWorld by the 13th of February.

If your humble narrator didn’t know any better, it would seem that RIM is desperate not only to get rid of their remaining stock of the PlayBook BlackBerry tablet, but to get Android users interested in working with them, no matter the cost.

For a company whose tablet was once several hundred dollars, giving these tablets away for free to developers might seem like a move of madness. Of course the truth of the matter is that there’s no better way to get people to love your hardware than to get the greatest creators of software on your side. And there’s no greater way to get a developer to work for your platform than to give them free hardware, right?

Incorrect, ladies and gentlemen, the best way to get a developer to work on a particular bit of hardware is to make that hardware popular on your own. If the user base exists, the developers will come and grab the cash they’ve got burning a hole in their pockets.

On the other hand, when you’re in the position that RIM is in right now, the best solution may well be what they’re doing right now. So Android developers, grab yourself a free tablet and play gleefully upon it! You can get all the tools you need for Runtime for Android apps beta over at Blackberry.com and start tapping away at your future market. Look at how easy it is to get into!

Read more here:
PlayBook free per Android App says desperate RIM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIs00QjiJZQ

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Fishing Under Ice

Far from being major, comprehensive attack platforms, these utilities usually do one obscure thing quickly and reliably. Their developers simply keep updating them to add new facilities and, crucially, to make them easier to use.

Some of these utilities are online, while others can be carried on a USB pen drive. The common factor is that they’re available to anyone. While every security researcher and hacker typically carries a small armoury of such tools, they have their own ways of using them to assess security or mount attacks.

Dig services

The first step in mounting an attack or securing an online information resource is to assess what is visible to others over the internet. For large organisations, more than just the mail and web servers will be visible. Sometimes this is a mistake on the part of the network administrator, but sometimes it’s done for misplaced expediency.

However, both these reasons can lead to a full-scale exploit of the internal network. The best and safest way to assess what’s visible is to use a public Dig service.

Dig stands for ‘Domain Information Groper’. Such services interrogate the global DNS system for details about a target. Using a Dig service, you can uncover several classes of information, including the local DNS servers, web servers and mail servers (mail exchangers in DNS speak). It’s sometimes also possible to uncover plenty of addresses of computers that really shouldn’t be online, but which someone has added to DNS in the mistaken belief that others won’t know they’re there.

This goes against the maxim that ’security through obscurity is no security’. One such Dig service is provided here . To get started, enter the name of a domain (without the ‘www.’) and click the button marked ‘Dig’. Depending on how much information DNS holds about a domain, Dig’s output can be very comprehensive, and gives a good overview of the parts of a network that can be seen from the internet.

The most important part of this information begins after the line containing the words ‘ANSWER SECTION’. This gives the fixed IP addresses of any internet-facing servers. For a website hosted by a third-party company, this will be the IP address of the shared server on which the site resides.

You can focus the information returned by selecting the ‘Type’ dropdown menu. ‘Network addresses’ will return only the IP addresses of any server that can be contacted directly. You can also return only information about the mail exchangers and the domain’s authoritative DNS nameservers.

Most Dig services let you try something called a zone transfer. This shouldn’t be possible these days, but back when network administrators were less focused on security than keeping internet connectivity going, zone transfers were possible from many DNS nameservers. A zone transfer is a transfer of authoritative domain information. It’s meant to occur only between nameservers, but poorly configured nameservers will let anyone request one.

A zone transfer contains a long list of computers and their IP addresses, which, while not listed in DNS, have a direct connection to the internet and are vulnerable to attack. This information is ideal for hackers, who need to scan a range of IP addresses to build a list of targets without tripping any intrusion detection systems.

NMap

The next step is knowing which hosts are available on a network, and what ports they have open. The great granddaddy of port mappers is NMap.

It’s grown into an essential tool for anyone interested in online security. NMap was originally a Linux command line tool, but it’s been ported to Windows and given a snazzy GUI front end called Zenmap. The underlying NMap has a huge number of command line options, but Zenmap makes it considerably easier to use. Get the Windows version here .

The installer includes the WinPcap driver software that forms the special packets needed to probe the TCP/IP stacks of remote hosts, and gain information identifying the OS running on that host.

Once installation is complete, run Zenap and the user interface should appear. Enter the IP address of a computer on your own network in the ‘Target’ box, and select ‘Quick scan’ on the ‘Profile’ menu. Click ‘Scan’. This produces an overview of which ports are open and listening on the target PC. This includes the MAC address of the target’s network card, which Zenmap uses to determine the manufacturer.

This is the kind of information that a hacker will use to look up exploits that may grant him access or the ability to create mayhem due to bugs in the firmware on the network card. For a more comprehensive view of the machine, select ‘Intense scan, all TCP ports’ and click ‘Scan’.

This fires a large number of packets at all 65535 ports on the target PC. It also interrogates the machine, revealing clues about its running OS. This information is vital in determining the next course of action to penetrate the system.

One of Zenmap’s particularly useful features is the ability to scan an entire subnet for targets, which it then interrogates for details. Simply substitute the last number in the IP address for an asterisk (‘192.168.0.*’ for example). This is also a great way to see if anything has been connected to your network secretly.

NBTEnum

Once we know what targets are available to a hacker who has penetrated our defences and can see our network, the next task is to try to discover what facilities each machine offers for exploit. This is important because, even if the hacker can’t exploit them directly, they may well be able to interrogate them to produce much more useful information.

NBTEnum, originally written by Reed Arvin, is a very old utility that is now difficult to find, but don’t let its age or obscurity fool you. NBTEnum can uncover shockingly large amounts of information from an unprotected Windows PC just by asking for it. You can currently download NBTEnum from the Packet Storm security website .

Open the ZIP file and move the contents into a new folder. NBTEnum is a command line utility, so open a command prompt and navigate to its directory.

To run enum, enter the command NBTEnum -q , substituting the address of a Windows PC on your network where appropriate. If the target accepts connection requests via its NetBIOS service, NBTEnum will create a web page detailing what this shockingly indiscrete service tells it.

Open this in a browser and you should, at minimum, see that NBTEnum has enumerated the shares (if any) that the target says are available for remote mounting. If you know a username and password on the target computer, you can reveal a huge amount of information.

Enter NBTEnum -s , making the necessary substitutions. NBTEnum generates more verbiage, but the resultant web page can offer masses of detail.

NBTEnum can also recover the open shares, users and groups, whether accounts are enabled, their lockout threshold and on Windows 7, a full list of services including which ones are currently running. This is all still possible because so many people insist on having no password, one that is simply guessed, or one that is the same as their username.

When I was a network security consultant, finding a network populated by targets running older versions of Windows usually meant a day running NBTEnum against them with a username of ‘Guest’ and no password. By default, the guest account was enabled and unprotected – perfect to shock network administrators into disabling such accounts.

InSSIDer

We live in an increasingly wireless world, but the nature of a wireless signal means the information it carries is broadcast over a wide area. There are a large number of tools that can be used to survey the local Wi-Fi landscape, but one of the best is the Windows port of InSSIDder 2 by Metageek. You can download InSSIDer here .

When run, InSSIDer begins discovering and enumerating the Wi-Fi networks in range. The top half of the interface fills with details of the networks, including their security level. Those with ‘none’ are wide open for anyone to log in and look around. Those using the older WEP protection are potentially vulnerable to attack, because the algorithm has weaknesses that can be exploited.

In the average neighbourhood, there could be as many as three dozen networks in range, some without any protection. InSSIDer’s also displays the Wi-Fi channel used by each router within range. Change yours to a channel not used in your area and you could see an improvement in overall data transfer speeds.

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Tutorial: Hacking tools you can use to protect your PC

The Basics: Things Your Router Should Have

You’ll definitely want to make sure the router supports the latest WPA2 security rather than just WPA or, even worse, WEP. Most current routers support WPA2, but free routers from an ISP can sometimes be really outdated.

If you’re building a wired network with clients that have gigabit ethernet adapters, also look for a router that supports that fast gigabit transfer speed.

Also make sure the router supports Wireless-N (802.11n) for fastest transfer speeds; Wireless-N is backwards compatible with Wireless-G (802.11g) and Wireless-B (802.11b) devices, so your older computers and gadgets will still be able to connect to it.

Do You Like to Tinker? Consider Custom Router Firmware

If you’d like to hack your router for more features and customization with free, open-source firmware like Tomato or DD-WRT (both can help you turn a $60 router it into a $600 router ), be sure to check those site’s supported routers before going shopping. Some routers—like Buffalo’s Nfiniti G300NH —actually ship with DD-WRT pre-installed. ( Ed. note: This is the router I use. )

Dual Band or Not?

A dual band router can broadcast wireless signals on the popular 2.4GHz band or the 5GHz one (or both at the same time). This allows for greater compatibility with more wireless devices, and this increased versatility may be worth the slight increase in cost. With a dual band router, you can separate the 5GHz traffic from the more crowded 2.4GHz traffic—so your older Wireless-G devices don’t drag down the rest of the network.

You can get a really cheap (under $40) dual-band router, but, as of this writing, the most highly-rated ones tend to hover around the $100 mark and can sometimes cost almost double their single-band counterparts. The dual band Netgear N600 (WNDR3700) retails for $159.99, while the Netgear N300 (WNR3500L) is $99.99.

In the end, whether or not the extra cost for a dual band router is worth it depends on your network needs. If you want to run your home network like a coffee shop for easier guest access , a dual-band router is key. Look for a router that specifically says it allows guest access—which separates the public Wi-Fi from your private Wi-Fi network.

Also, keep in mind that some routers may be dual band but not support simultaneous operation on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands (i.e., dual-radio broadcasting). If you have a mixed network—some older Wireless-G clients that can’t or won’t be upgraded to Wireless-N (e.g., the Nintendo Wii) and also Wireless-N devices—make sure the router supports simultaneous dual-band.

Other Features to Consider

Routers are offering a lot of added networking features these days. Here are a few that might interest you:

Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) - This reduces the number of steps you might have to take to connect your wireless devices to your router. Push a button on the router or enter a PIN number to network the devices, and the WPA2 security will be set up for you. If you want the most streamlined setup possible, WPS is great, but it can make manual connections harder.

USB Ports – If you’d like to create a shared network drive, some routers enable you to plug in a USB hard drive to the router and share that drive. It’s a useful feature, but can be very slow and/or inconvenient (forcing you to use a FTP or HTTP server to access the drive, for example). If you don’t have a network attached storage (NAS) device, however, and don’t mind the performance compromise, look for this feature in your next router.

Printer Sharing – Some routers also let you plug in a printer to the USB port for network printing. You might need to install printer drivers on all the PCs to use this, but if you don’t have an easily network-able printer you can use your router as a print server (keeping in mind this may also slow the router down).

Firewall and VPN Support – Most routers today say they have the best intrusion detection, firewall, and VPN support. If you need to access a company network over VPN, however, make sure you talk to your company’s IT department before buying the home router. As a former IT admin, I saw some users’ routers just wouldn’t work with our VPN implementation, making it a problem for everyone all around. At the very least, your router should support VPN passthrough (IPSec, PPTP and L2TP) for typical VPN traffic.

Remote Access, 3G/4G and more – The latest routers are adding even more functionality, like being able to remotely access computers on your network through the router or sharing 3G/4G broadband connections. Some are being designed to more easily connect to your TV or media center. There aren’t that many routers that support these newer features, so you’ll have to decide how important this is for your usage scenario.

Which Router to Buy

As for which particular router you should buy, that depends on your budget and needs (above). You might find best performance/compatibility using the same brand for both your router and network cards. Or if you’re used to using Linksys products, upgrading to a newer Linksys model might make sense for you.

SmallNetBuilder is a great source for finding router reviews and recommendations.

Read more here:
Which Wi-Fi Router Should I Buy? [Ask Lifehacker]

Designer Khoi Vinh has discovered that this problem is easily resolved with a little WD-40: 

In my experience, on not just my own iPhone 4 but also on my girlfriend’s, WD-40 restores the responsiveness of the iPhone’s home button to basically like-new condition. I just sprayed a little bit of WD-40 directly on the button, then pressed the button rapidly a few dozen times, tested its responsiveness afterwards, then repeated the process two or three times until it began to improve. Then I used the phone for a day or two to see how well the button did in actual use; I found that after a few days the problem ebbed back slightly, at which point I applied more WD-40. After the second or third application, the responsiveness remained indefinitely.

 Khoi also notes on his blog that spraying WD-40 could possibly void your warranty. If you’re concerned, contact Apple Support or head into an Apple Store before you give this a try. 

See the rest here:
WD-40 Will Loosen Up Your Unresponsive iPhone’s Home Button in Seconds [Macgyver Tips]

What is interesting is how nasty the Internet has become, with increasing attack incidents recorded and changing strategies for hackers looking to exploit systems. “Akamai has seen a 2000% increase in the number of attack incidents recorded on our platform over the last three years, including several recent high-profile Web-based DDoS attacks conducted by both hacktivist groups and more traditional online criminal elements,” says the report. 

Indonesia replaced Myanmar for the quarter’s top attack source, generating 14% of observed attack traffic. Myanmar dropped off the top ten list entirely, suggesting that either hackers have moved their operations or else shut down there. 

More attackers are using telnet port 23 than previously, and fewer of them are using Web ports. Akamai posits that the increase is due to attacks based in Egypt and South Korea. Not surprisingly, Brazil, Italy, and China all experiencing growth of 25% or more in Internet usage. 

Visit link:
Akamai Says The Internet Is a Nastier, and Faster, Place

Despite Redwood’s best efforts to convert users to Windows 7, the decade-old XP OS still had 47.19 per cent of all PC and Mac users in January, up from 46.5 per cent in December. 

Windows 7, which had sold over 400 million licenses as of last summer making it the fastest-selling operating system ever, has 36.4 per cent of the market, according to figures from NetApplications. 

With the next generation Windows 8 OS set to go public this year, it seems unlikely that Windows 7 will be able to overhaul XP before that transition takes place. 

No support for XP beyond 2014 Microsoft is still attempting to convince businesses and home users to upgrade to Windows 7 before Windows 8 arrives, with the company dropping support for XP in just two years time. 

Over 8 per cent of personal computer users are still on Windows Vista and, as bad as Vista proved to be, it still has a bigger market share than Apple’s Mac OS X. 

The Macintosh software has 6.39 per cent of all users, which is actually up an entire percentage point from one year ago.

Read more from the original source:

Windows XP still most used OS

The details were leaked to BGR from a source who claimed to have a prototype iPad 3 and used a debugging tool called iBoot to extract the details. If the A6 processor is going to be used by Apple then it will make the iPad 3 the fastest iOS device to date and this is not the first rumour we have seen which suggests the super quick chip will be used. 

Don’t start counting those chickens 

There are no reports on the rumoured high-res display or thicker/thinner dimensions in this latest leak, which are two of the hot topics doing the iPad 3 rounds at the moment. 

The iPad 3 could well see a February launch according to sources in Japan, which would put it up against Samsung’s rumoured new tablets set to be announced at MWC 2012 . Once again it is easy to get lost in the hype surrounding one of the most anticipated tablets of 2012. 

The source in this latest leak is not named and we have no idea how well connected they are – screens can be easily forged so don’t get too over-excited about this one.

Go here to see the original:
iPad 3 specs leaked ahead of launch

That’s what its come to- when you speak about security of product names, details, and the whole lot, you compare a company to Apple, the mack-daddy of all secured product releasers. 

This week its become apparent that their level of secrecy runs so deep that engineers new to the company are put on projects that will not amount to anything for their first nine or so months of employment. This tidbit was brought up first, it seems, in the book “Inside Apple” by Adam Lashinsky, and was again brought up and “re-confirmed” by a former Apple employee. 

How on earth either of these folks plans on moving through the rest of their lives with the knowledge that Apple now has them on their “do not tell secrets to” list, we may never know. 

 spoke at a Linkdin event this week and it was a question and answer segment that had the former Apple employee step up to the plate: The engineer spoke the following: “A friend of mine who’s a senior engineer at Apple, he works on — or did work on — fake products I’m sure for the first part of his career, and interviewed for 9 months. It’s intense.” 

Certainly that’s no small claim, and certainly if true, we wouldn’t be surprised. Like a school you just have to be a part of, getting accepted into the Apple fold is something not only to strive for, but to work to keep and be proud of for a long, long time. 

Originally posted here:
Apple engineers put on false products until trust is gained