Here's a big old article from Doc Searls in the Linux Journal that's a must read whther you're into Linux or not. Linux Makes Wi-Fi Happen in New York City. Particularly interesting is a discussion with a Verizon Architect about their plans to WiFi enable public telephone boxes. The service is free to Verizon's business and residential DSL customers. This is something that ought to be attractive to Telcos worldwide. BT, are you listening? [from: JB Wifi]

Taking cover. BANG, BANG innit! Is this sad or hilarious? A real life renactment of The Getaway complete with side by side pictures from real life and from the game.

Shame more of them weren't dressed as Reservoir Dogs. Playing a gangster in a white cheese cloth shirt hanging out of your trousers just doesn't cut it. There should have been a gratuitous "White Merc with Fins" as well. [from: JB Ecademy]

A few people have had problems logging in to the site post the move.

If you see "Untitled document" instead of "Ecademy - Connecting business people" in the title bar of the browser window, then you are viewing the site though a redirect page and not direct. This is happening because your ISP has not yet picked up the DNS changes. This apparently causes a problem with IE accepting the login cookie.

The simple answer is to wait until the DNS is picked up correctly. You may be able to solve this temporarily in IE6 by going to Menu | Internet Options | Privacy tab and setting privacy to minimum "Accept all cookies".

If you end up in a state where everything looks ok, you've changed your password and you still can't login, then send a message to webmaster@ecademy.com and I'll reset your password. [from: JB Ecademy]

Unwire Destination Home announces a free wifi day in the USA with participating hotspot providers. Now there's an idea for the UK. How about it BT? [from: JB Wifi]

AOL launches blogging service Just one catch. You have to have an AOL account. So that's Google, AOL, and coming soon Yahoo. Wot? No Microsoft? [from: JB Ecademy]

Danny has a good analysis here. Assuming they can solve the problems this is one of the most amazing things I've heard in months. Here's the key part of Greg Dyke's speech.

We intend to allow parts of our programmes, where we own the rights, to be available to anyone in the UK to download so long as they don't use them for commercial purposes.

Under a simple licensing system, we will allow users to adapt BBC content for their own use.

But then it's not really our content - the people of Britain have paid for it and our role should be to help them use it. [from: JB Ecademy]

Frequently Unanswered Questions about the recent SOBIG.f virus outbreak.

- How did it spread so fast? It was first seen on Tuesday 19th and by Thursday was a huge proportion of the world's emails. It doesn't particularly exploit MS email readers beyond encouraging people to click on it. And it's ability to spread via network shares was broken. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, but was this actually a case of previously exploited machines (perhaps by sobig a-e) being woken up and given new code to run?

- Why do Anti-virus server gateways persist in sending notifications to the sender? The SOBIG series, Klez and several other of the recent email viruses spoof the sender so there's no point in notifying the apparent sender any more. These notifications are nearly as bad as the virus in generating useless email Traffic.

- What was it going to do? At 8pm GMT on Fridays and Sundays until Sept 10, SOBIG.f wakes up and tries to connect to a set of internet machines to collect it's next mission statement. The first event was prevented by removing those servers from the internet. So nobody's worked out yet what that mission was.

- SOBIG, like several other viruses, contains it's own SMTP engine that sends email direct. This could have been blocked by ISPs banning port 25 to anywhere except their own email server. I don't like this because I don't like restrictions on my access but I can see the sense in it. At the same time, many viruses just use the SMTP settings in the machine to send to the ISPs server. So here's the question. We're perfectly happy with using Authentication on POP3. Why don't ISPs use authentication on SMTP? If the email reader can keep athentication ID/passwords secure from code running on the PC, then this combined with blocking port 25 would have stopped viruses propogating.

- One of the few market application segments that Microsoft have stayed away from is AntiVirus tools. Almost every other segment has been embraced and extended usually by MS offering a free minimal app which gets progressively better until the existing encumbents can't compete. Why doesn't MS install a basic anti-virus system in the operating system? They've already got the mechanism to do the automatic updates. They've got the coders. They could get some brownie points from the market for doing it. So why don't they do it?

- The big web based email systems now include hefty anti-spam and anti-virus functions. So it's clearly possible to run hefty filtering systems on high volume email handlers. So why do so few ISPs run antispam and anti-virus functions on all the traffic through their servers? With the spread of "wires only" broadband there's a market niche developing here for boutique "email-only ISPs". These provide a full email service including authenticated SMTP, SSL encryption, anti-spam, anti-virus, web access and have the huge advantage that they are usable from anywhere regardless if you're connected to the net from a WiFi hotspot, hotel room, work, home or whatever. This is a premium service that the big broadband ISPs could provide relatively easily as they already have most of the infrastructure in place.

- After all this time, why is it still so easy to execute code by just clicking on it in Internet Explorer, Outlook and Outlook Express? Every application has bugs in it. And some of these bugs will inevitably lead to exploits. And those exploits will inevitably lead to viruses and trojans. no matter what we say, MS is no more or less guilty of making these mistaes than any other ISV. We expect them to do a bit more quality control, but even that is a little unfair. But we have a situation where the dominant end user applications encourage the naive end user to run bad code insecurely. Simply arranging that the code had to be saved first (as in Mozilla and Firebird) would dramatically reduce the number of accidental infections.

- Klez, Slammer, Blaster, Lovesan, SOBIG.f. What's next? [from: JB Ecademy]

It's the Friday before a bank holiday. Is anyone still working?

While you're waiting to go down to the pub, how about downloading and installing some non-Microsoft software. You could start with Mozilla Firebird as an alternative to Internet Explorer. When that just works and works better, you can start turning your attention to another email client and a complete Office suite. After that there's instant messaging and many others.

Just because it came free with your machine, doesn't mean it's the best solution. [from: JB Ecademy]

Picking the Friday before the August Bank Holiday was a sure-fire winner for www.slackerday.com. Yes! It's National Slacker Day! Turn off the PC, sit back, relax and contemplate the teachings of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs (Praise Bob), the greatest Living Slack Master (True enlightenment or double your money back).



[from: JB Ecademy]

Do you use Outlook Express? You Fool! Oh, sorry, wrong post.

Anyway if you use Outlook Express, go to OE-QuoteFix and install it. This little program add on is highly recommended. I wish there was on of these for Outlook but sadly nobody's done one yet. Any bored MS C# or dotnet programmers out there fancy having a go?

[Edited to add] The Outlook version is at http://flash.to/outlook-quotefix/ [from: JB Ecademy]

Do you use Outlook Express? You Fool! Oh, sorry, wrong post.

Anyway if you use Outlook Express, go to OE-QuoteFix and install it. This little program add on is highly recommended. I wish there was on of these for Outlook but sadly nobody's done one yet. Any bored MS C# or dotnet programmers out there fancy having a go? [from: JB Ecademy]

The Register on Outlook Express : So, farewell, we've always hated you anyway. And if you ask us, people using this malware magnet want their heads examined.

Social Software : Joi says email is officially broken because 17% of messages are rejected as spam. Never mind the false positives, the point is that your average F500 employee spends 3-4 hours per day using email, almost 50% of email is spam and 30% is occupational spam. Email volume is growing at 30% per year, invading our time and effectiveness. Email is no longer a productivity tool.

Outlook is bleak - Where do you want to go today? Anywhere but Outlook! I got back last night from a two-day vacation to over 2000 emails in my inbox. Over 1300 were spams correctly tagged as such by our server's Spam Assassin. Of the remaining mail, several hundred were" real" messages, and another several hundred were debris resulting from the latest round of Outlook viruses. Outlook is a joke. No sane computer user today should use it.

Kevin says the SoBig virus may be the last straw and We have to confront the reality: either email is broken, Microsoft's email software is broken, or those two statements are the same..

This is all quite sad. Email is so good. And right now it's so broken. I wish I knew what the answer is. But right now I don't have any solutions except to keep fighting the bad side with technology and fighting the bad social side with rants like this. [from: JB Ecademy]

In Animal news today, Giant gerbils infest China A.N.Expert writes, "Up to 16" long, the Giant Gerbil communicates with quick, rapid foot thumping and high pitched whistling". Not unlike your average sysadmin then... [from: JB Ecademy]

Do you run a corporate anti-virus or anti-spam firewall that auto-responds to the apparent sender? Do you have an auto-responder "I'm on holiday" message setup? Does your company auto-respond to all incoming emails with "Thank you for your message, we'll get back to you"? Do you have an auto-responder that says "I've got your email, I'll read it later"?

Do you know anyone who has, uses or manages any of these things?

Well, PLEASE TURN THEM OFF.

They're broken. They send messages to the wrong people. They lie. And they add no meaningful value to communication.

All they do is clog up people's email systems and waste their time.

You've probably guessed by now that the combination of managing a bunch of Ecademy addresses and mailing lists, using a long lived private email address, the holiday season , the SOBIG.f and Blaster viruses means that I'm getting more than my fair share of rubbish, useless emails. And I'm sick of it.

See also this report in the Register. [from: JB Ecademy]

This time it's California - Silicon Valley commuters.

Wi-Fi to ride the rails [from: JB Wifi]

Armed with a Mac running some free tools, this guy tested what it would take to break his own WiFi setup. It starts with an AP with SSID turned off, Mac filtering and WEP enabled. Pretty much everything we would tell somebody to do to secure their network.

Here's the conclusion.

.:[ Security-Protocols ]:. : Post Mortem
I hope this little experiment gives you some idea of what you are up against when relying on the built-in security measures of 802.11b. Using inexpensive hardware and freely available tools, a typical Wi-Fi network can be easily cracked in a mere hour and a half (although it will probably take a bit longer on average, depending on how busy the network is, potentially offset by a bit of luck).

What does this mean for wireless security? Should we run screaming to our system administrators and toss the whole lot into the garbage? Of course not. This whole exercise is presented to drive home this point: If you are concerned about wireless security, you must use strong application-layer encryption and authentication. Much of the rest of this chapter details other freely available tools that you can use to protect your network and your wireless users against these attacks.

So if you're concerned, use SSL for your email and a VPN for any corporate access. [from: JB Wifi]

According to Wireless Rides the Rails, GNER is introduing WiFi on it's London to Scotland trains powered by a Satellite broadband connection. So whether Pierre Danon thinks it's necessary or desirable, it's happening anyway. There's no mention of which WISP will be providing billing and authentication services. [from: JB Wifi]

If you haven't yet discovered reading web news with RSS, head on over to Weblogs Compendium - RSS Readers, and try a couple of programs from the list that suit your PC platform. I can recommend Amphetadesk, Newsgator, Netnewswire. [from: JB Ecademy]

I'm usually fairly up beat but On our oncoming future dystopia is quite the most depressing piece I've read in a long while. Tell me the view through the looking glass isn't really like this.

"the former Soviet Union proceeded in the last twenty years from totalitarianism, through a period of kleptocracy and into a semblance of democracy. The US seems to be going in an exact reverse progression. If the Administration's program to concentrate corporate power and rape our natural resources isn't soon reversed, the US will be a kleptocracy." [from: JB Ecademy]

If you're wondering what is RSS, or you've seen the little XML gifs on Ecademy and wondering what they're for, check out Lockergnome's RSS Resource

There's a full list of known RSS readers and lots of other info. Needless to say the news on the site is available in RSS. [from: JB Ecademy]