Guess who has a myspace? February 22, 2008
Posted by novaaesa in Computers, My Days.3 comments
Yup… I know I know, I’ve spoken out against them in the past, but I’ve decided to give it a go. Being in a new town I need a way to meet some new people. Myspace seems to be a pretty good way of doing that to me.
I know all my Linux friends will be like: tisk tisk Nova, you’ve changed 
On the upside, I’ve learned a bit more HTML and CSS in the process of ‘pimping’ my page out.
Anyone do wardriving? February 19, 2008
Posted by novaaesa in Computers, Linux.Tags: aircrack-ng, Kempsey, Kismet, Linux, Newcastle, vista, wardriving, WEP, wireless, WPA
6 comments
DISCLAIMER: If you happen to be a police dude or equivalent, the content of this post is erm… fictitious. Otherwise, yeah read ahead.
Okay now we have that disclaimer thingy out of the road (even though it most probably holds absolutely no legal power) I will get into the juicy details. So yes, I heard about wardriving a while ago and had always wanted to give it a try. It didn’t really work too well in Kempsey because the houses are too far apart and not many people used wireless routers. After moving to Newcastle, I decided to give it a try again.
I’ve only done it 3 times so far but it’s been pretty awesome so far. I only have one other person so far that I’ve gone with so far (one of my house mates). He’s been driving, and I’ve been in the back with two laptops. I have my new laptop running Linux and one of my housemates laptops running Vista. The setup that we’ve been using is me running a combination of Kismet and aircrack-ng and the Vista laptop being used to actually connect to the network once they have been found.
Surprisingly enough there are heaps and heaps of open networks around. We haven’t even had to bother trying to crack WEP or WPA yet, it’s just easier to get the open ones! We found a few access points with pretty good speeds as well. A few times, I think they might have caught onto what we were doing, because at one of the places where we were accessing a wifi network this lady came out and was walking straight towards us. Needless to say we speed off extremely quickly.
Anyway, the moral of the story is: wardriving = fun, but stay away from angry people. Also, it might be a good idea not to do it in your neighbourhood in case someone recognises your car.
There’s just one bad thing about Linux… February 10, 2008
Posted by novaaesa in Computers, Linux.Tags: ethernet, evil, firewall, propaganda, ubuntu, vista, Windows, XP
11 comments
…When you have used Linux for a while without doing anything in Windows (for me it’s been 6 months) when a situation arises where you are forced to use Windows again it becomes really hard. When I say ‘becomes really hard’ I mean this in two different ways.
1) I feel compelled to stay away from Windows because I feel like I have been taught by everyone on Ubuntu Forums that they are ‘evil.’ Sure, before I started going on that forum I did think they were evil, but I didn’t really dislike Microsoft because of this. It almost seems ‘propaganda-ish’ the amount of Windows bashing that goes on. Now, when I am put in a situation where I am forced to use Windows, I sort of raise my eyebrows a bit and think to myself “OMG I’m gunna die from using this!!” Maybe it’s just me, but I almost feel as though Linux has turned Windows from something that I just put up with, to something that is now ‘evil’.
2) The other thing that I have noticed about using Linux for 6 months is the fact that I now expect soooo much more from Windows when I come to use it. I started a new Vista install on my desktop the other day for gaming and wanted to set up Firefox. It bugged me that I had to use IE to go to the Firefox site, download the .exe file, and then install it. I wanted the simplicity of apt-get! Another thing I have noticed is that I am no longer a power user for Windows XP. Only half an hour ago, my brother wanted to download some files onto his computer so he brought it into my room. He doesn’t have a wireless card and the router is in my room so he had to bring it close enough so the Ethernet cable would reach. He is a bit of a non-tech kinda guy so I had to set it up for him. I got slightly frustrated when it didn’t just work when I plugged in the Ethernet cable. There were 3 separate firewalls that I had to disable first. I have no idea why there were firewalls on his computer if it isn’t normally connected to the net. It still wasn’t working. 4 restarts later, I realised that it wasn’t set to having an IP address dynamically assigned. I truly felt like a Windows n00b again. I have a feeling Linux has erased a lot of my prior Windows knowledge. I really don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
/rant
Internet shaped again ;( February 9, 2008
Posted by novaaesa in Computers.Tags: 28.8kbps, contract, internet, ISP, optus, sad, shaped
6 comments
My Internet has been shaped again. Every single time it happens it makes me sad. I should be getting used to it by now but it still gets to me every time. My ISP is Optus and we’ve got a really crappy contract with them. Our Internet is at 512kbps which seems fine to me, but the problem is with how much data can be downloaded. We get 300MB on-peak (PM hours) and 600MB off-peak (AM hours). If the on peak runs out, then our off peak gets cancelled and we get shaped. If our off peak runs out before the on peak, it just started to cut into the on peak data.
It gets seriously painful when I am shaped. Can you guess what speed we get shaped to? Is it 128kbps…? Nope, that’s far to high. Is it 64 kbps…? No, that is also to high. You would think they would at least shape us only to dial up speed – 54kbps. But no, even that is too fast for them. Instead, we get shaped to….. wait for it – 28.8kbps. It feels like I am back in 1998, not 2008.
And what’s worse is the price. It’s costing us $AU 28 a month. For my American readers, that is $US 25.
Am I getting ripped off or what? Stupid contracts….
