Comments are switched off for new entries until I can clean up the comment spam.
Spammers suck.
Yesterday, I was able to engage in the pseudo-subversive act of wardriving for the first time. Using an IBM ThinkPad R51 with an on-board Intel PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B network card, I decided to fire up NetStumbler and see what I could find on my way home from work.
It is about a 6 mile drive from work to home, the first 3 miles or so go through a couple smaller towns/neighborhoods while the last 3 miles are primarily residential/suburban. Neither areas are especially on the "cutting edge" of technology, so I was not expecting to find a continuous stream of access points along the route.
In the parking lot, 3 access points immediately showed up. One had a strong signal and was unencrypted, the other two were weaker and/or encrypted. As I pulled out of the parking lot, another two showed up on the display -- both encrypted.
I did take a short 2-block detour to drive past a local school that I happen to know uses a wireless connection. Their computer room is in the basement, so the signal was not great even right outside. However, the SSID was named "linksys" and encryption was not turned on -- indicating that perhaps little if anything was done apart from the default to secure the connection.
Once I entered the second of the "small town" areas, I did not discover any additional access points. This was not altogether unsurprising, since this town was hit especially hard with the recent flooding in the area, and most homes and businesses are likely more concerned with cleanup and repair instead of wireless networking.
The residential areas on my way home did not yield any access points either. I had figured I might run across one or two, but nothing showed up (admittedly, I don't have an external antenna, so there may be some that the laptop couldn't see). I was hoping to discover some in my neighborhood so I could experiment from home, but all was quiet as I pulled into the driveway. Looks like I'm stuck with my old, slow dial-up connection to the Internet.
Overall, I discovered 10 distinct access points within the first 2 or 3 miles of the trip. I was surprised to find that of the ten, 6 had encryption turned on and only 4 had either "linksys" or "netgear" (defaults) as the SSID. I did not get into doing anything fancy like trying to connect to leech bandwidth, or using AirSnort to try to crack the encryption on the secured access points -- this was merely my first experiment with WiFi, and it was pretty neat.
I tend to listen to NPR for news -- I find them to be one of the most balanced and educated news sources out there.
I've been surprised over the past few days to have heard the following quotes in news stories (may not be exactly word-for-word, but you'll get the drift):
"in the blogosphere" -- I suppose this is becoming something closer to being an accepted notion. Sounds odd to hear it spoken, though, instead of reading it on a screen.
"they don't want their country to suck" -- I'm surprised that "not sucking" hasn't been a key issue in this country's upcoming presidential election.
"it's pissing them off" -- I can't even think of a witty comment for this one. :)
As requested, here is a link to an article I wrote for a network security website. The article title (it's not on the page anywhere) is "Building and Using SSH Tunnels":
http://people.etango.com/~wrodina/article.htm
If/when the article is published on the site, I will provide a link to there as well.
UPDATE: Here it is -- http://neworder.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=12498
Since the main page once again looks odd, and since I made a happy discovery the other night, I thought I would post.
When gazing upon a tupperware container filled with left-over pasta noodles, I thought I wanted to do something to make them suitable for consumption besides throwing the same old tomato sauce on them. I came up with this idea for an "oriental noodle sauce", and it turned out pretty well:
- heavy cream
- soy sauce
- peanut butter
- ginger
- curry powder
Naturally, I didn't measure anything, but I can offer this as far as mixing: the cream and soy sauce should be in about a 2:1 ratio (i.e. twice as much cream as soy sauce); a spoonful or two of peanut butter was plenty for a normal soup-bowl sized portion; and the ginger and curry powder can be added to taste (a sprinkle or two of each did it for me). If I make it again, I'll try to pay a bit more attention to actual amounts and portion sizes.
The sauce should be heated until the peanut butter melts, then poured over the noodles and stirred.
Mmmm!