Practical Technology

for practical people.

December 30, 2011
by sjvn01
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Verizon backs off $2 bill payment charge

It must have seemed like just another day for Verizon Wireless executives. “I know,” someone in the CFO’s office said, “We’ll charge people who make one-time credit or debit card payments on the phone or online $2 to pay their bill.” It must have seen like another fine way to nickel and dime their customers and make the bottom line better. Then, the customers got word of it and all hell broke loose. A day later and Verizon announced it would drop this new charge.

In their statement, Verizon said, “Verizon Wireless has decided it will not institute the fee for online or telephone single payments that was announced earlier this week.” Why? “The company made the decision in response to customer feedback about the plan, which was designed to improve the efficiency of those transactions. The company continues to encourage customers to take advantage of the numerous simple and convenient payment methods it provides.”

Dan Mead, Verizon Wireless’ president and CEO added, that, “At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time.” You think?

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December 28, 2011
by sjvn01
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Wi-Fi Protected Setup is Busted

I’ve never trusted Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) on my Wi-Fi access points (AP) and routers. I’ve always thought that anything that was that easy to set up had to be easy to hack. It turns out my gut was right. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) has confirmed that security researcher Stefan Viehböck has found a security hole big enough to drive a network through WPS.

According to Viehböck, he took a look at WPS and found “a few really bad design decisions which enable an efficient brute force attack, thus effectively breaking the security of pretty much all WPS-enabled Wi-Fi routers. As all of the more recent router models come with WPS enabled by default, this affects millions of devices worldwide.” CERT agrees.

How bad is it? CERT states that “An attacker within range of the wireless access point may be able to brute force the WPS PIN and retrieve the password for the wireless network, change the configuration of the access point, or cause a denial of service.”

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December 28, 2011
by sjvn01
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The CIO’s Nightmare: Intellectual Property Lawsuits

u can’t read tech websites these days without seeing news of yet another patent, copyright, design, or trademark lawsuit. You might be distracted by current events, but even long out of date programs such as Microsoft Office 95 are still being fought over in courts today.

You don’t need to be a Google or Motorola to have intellectual property (IP) lawsuit worries. Fortunately, you can you do work to prepare and prevent these issues from giving you a very bad day.

First, get a grip on threats your company might be facing. “The assessment of these type of corporate risks requires a team approach in which the CIO needs to be an integral player,” says Mark F. Radcliffe, a lawyer and partner at DLA Piper. “The most important issue is determining in which suits the goal is receiving the payment of royalties – all patent trolls, such as Intellectual Ventures and Microsoft in the smartphone wars — and which are competitive, with the intention to stop distribution of a product, such as [what] Polaroid did with Kodak on instant cameras.”

You may able to work your away around lawsuits where your attacker’s goal is simply to get a piece of your profits. But, if an IP lawsuit’s target is to put you out of business, get the nastiest IP attorneys you can afford, and prepare to fight it out to the bitter end.

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December 28, 2011
by sjvn01
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The Army goes Android

The U.S. military stands to be stuck in its way when it comes to technologies. For ages the only smartphone you could use in Department of Defense (DOD) operations was a Blackberry. Now, as first reported by Stars and Stripes, you can use your Android phone and tablet on DOD business and with DOD networks.

Don’t get in too much in a hurry to try to connect your new Amazon Kindle Fire or Samsung Galaxy Nexus to your military Wi-Fi network when you get back to base. The DOD’s new Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) only approves Android 2.2 and that only on Dell devices. In other words, you can use it if you have a Dell Venue smartphone or, the now discontinued, Dell Streak tablet line. Sigh!

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December 28, 2011
by sjvn01
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2011’s Five Most Important Networking Stories

At first I thought I’d write a little nothing of a story about the five most popular networking stories of 2011. Then, I looked at the list:

Five Reasons not to “Upgrade” to Windows’ Internet Explorer 9

Chrome 10: Close to a perfect Web Browser 10

Chrome 10 vs. Internet Explorer 9 Reconsidered

Internet BitTorrent Spies

Installing 32-bit IE 9 on 64-bit Windows

Eh, they’re all decent stories, but they’re also already dated. I mean, we’re already up to Chrome 16! While people are always interested in what’s the best browser-Chrome right now–let’s face it: that changes every few months. So, I asked myself: “What are the most significant networking stories of 2011,” and this, from least to most important, is what I came up with.

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December 26, 2011
by sjvn01
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Linux Mint’s Cinnamon: A GNOME 3.x shell fork

GNOME is continuing to lose users and supporters. Its developers can say what they will about this Linux desktop’s advantages, most people, including Linus Torvalds himself, dislike the new GNOME 3.x interface. Many Linux users, like myself, simply find GNOME 3.x to be far more trouble than it’s worth. Now, Clement “Clem” Lefebvre, leader of the popular Linux Mint distribution has also had enough of GNOME 3.x and is creating a more user friendly GNOME shell: Cinnamon.

As Lefebvre explained, “I’m not going to argue whether Gnome Shell is a good or a bad desktop. It’s just not what we’re looking for. The user experience the Gnome team is trying to create isn’t the one we’re interested in providing to our users. There are core features and components we absolutely need, and because they’re not there in Gnome Shell, we had to add them using extensions with MGSE [Linux Mint Shell Extensions for Gnome 3].”

MGSE is not enough though. Lefebvre continued, “The extension system in Gnome Shell is handy but core parts of a desktop need to be able to communicate with each others and be integrated properly. The Gnome development team is not interested in the features we implemented, it’s opposed to adding them to Gnome Shell, and it doesn’t share our vision of a desktop. In other words, our work on Gnome 3 does not influence the development of Gnome Shell, Gnome Shell isn’t going in a direction that is suitable for us, and we’re not interested in shipping Gnome Shell ‘as is,’ or in continuing with multiple hacks and extensions.”

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