Category: Technology

Nice VPN Service

Since I travel once in a while for my job I find myself in locations where a secure network can’t be ensured. My phone does have tethering software on it so I often use it but it’s slow and has issues getting disconnected at random intervals.

Thankfully this day and age wireless networks are everywhere. Hotels, Starbucks, airports, etc. But these networks are not secure and should be considered hostile at all time. This was the reason I looked into the previously mentioned Wi-Fi device that could connect to 3G cellular data networks. Of course as I previously stated they wanted a contract and honestly the devices are far more expensive than I could justify since I only really need such a device a few times a year.

That meant either continue using my unreliable phone tethering or use hostile wireless networks. Hostile wireless networks can be used securely though through a protocol called Virtual Private Networking (VPN). VPN is a mechanism where you connect to a remote VPN server. The VPN server acts as a proxy which all your traffic is sent to and from there is sent to its actual destination on the Internet. The key here is all VPN traffic is encrypted so other people on the same network can’t see what you’re doing. So even if you’re connected to an insecure wireless network you can encrypt all your traffic by sending it through a VPN connection.

Most companies that send people around the country provide a VPN connection for their employees. Mine is no exception but I thought I’d try an experiment and see what solutions I could find for those traveling and not having a company provided VPN service available to them.

The easiest, cheapest, and most secure (In the form of privacy of your traffic) method of using a VPN is to set a server up at your home. This way you can remotely connect to your home network through the VPN. Unfortunately for me this is impossible since I live in an apartment complex that also provides me service as an ISP (It’s free so I don’t argue). The downside is this ISP also routes all my traffic through their firewall meaning I can’t actually connect to any of my computers there remotely. Due to this fact I decided to look at using Amazon’s EC2 service to setup a VPN server. Overall it would be a good idea but it’s kind of pricey since Amazon charges you for the number of hours your EC2 instance is running.

Finally I looked into a service mentioned by Leo Laporte on This Week in Tech quite a few times call HotSpot VPN. HotSpot VPN is simply a service that sells VPN connections. It’s not a secure as using a server setup at your home since all your traffic does get routed through their VPN server. But it’s a damned side better than being on an insecure network since HotSpot VPN as a reason to maintain your privacy, money (Granted that’s absolutely no guarantee and in the security business the phrase is trust no one. But security is also a balance between having secure systems and convince.).

What I like about HotSpot VPN is you can but a yearly subscription, monthly subscription, or a few days worth if you only travel sporadically like me. For this test I bought a three day pass for something around $5.88. That’s pretty cheap and well worth it in my book. Setup in Mac OS is simple (I’m not sure about other operating systems since I’ve not done much with VPNs in them) and requires you only enter your e-mail address for the user name and the password they e-mail you. It’s working great on this hotel wireless network and isn’t dropping my connection constantly like my phone does. I tested it on my home network before taking it out into a hostile environment and the data is encrypted so other people listening on the network aren’t going to be able to see what you’re doing it. Speed is so-so since all your data has to go to their servers and then to its destination but tethering my phone always yields even slower connections.

Overall I think it’s a good service for those who travel, don’t have a company provided VPN connection, and are unable to setup a VPN server at their home. There isn’t much else to say about it since it’s a pretty straight forward service that performs and straight forward feature.

Also since this is a review I need to give the FCC required disclaimer. The FCC can go sodomize itself with a retractable baton. That is all.

My View of The FCC National Broadband Plan

There has been a lot of talk in the tech community as of late about the FCC’s recent National Broadband Plan. People who don’t understand how government and taxes work are proclaiming this as a great idea since it means FREE INTERNETZ!!!!!!!!!111oneonetwo OMG!!. That’s now how things work. In fact the FCC’s plan also includes a plan for an additional tax.

No thanks. I’m more than happy to give the money that would go to paying even more taxes to a private entity who has a reason for keeping me happy (That being my money.). Economics 101 states you can’t get something for nothing (Unless you are challenge at math and actually believe in Keynesian economics.). When the government provides a service they pay for it with your tax money. Look at the breakdown of your pay check next time. Notice your gross pay is MUCH higher than your actual take home pay? Yeah that’s all tax money taken by your federal and state government to pay for fuck ups services like social security and medicare.

This situation is far more dangerous when it involves free and open communications that the Internet provides. Government is not benevolent, it does not have your best interests in mind. Government is made up by people with power and power corrupts. A private company can not compete with government programs because unlike a company a government doesn’t have to actually make money to continue existing (Look at our deficit.). The scary thing with government provided broadband (Which this National Broadband Plan would eventually turn into.) is it would most likely shut down broadband provided by private industry. At that point our Internet access, like China’s, becomes the whim of our government. This is where censorship and filtering start coming into play ladies and gentlemen.

People shouldn’t be clamoring for free* government provided Internet. Government can’t manage money. Show me a single government program that has succeeded monetarily. Instead people should be demanding the government stay as far away from Internet access as possible. We don’t need to deal with what China has and Australia is getting.

A private company has a reason to ensure its customers are happy, money. You can simply refuse to pay a company money if you don’t like their service. On the other hand you can not simply refuse to pay taxes if you don’t like the government’s service. I wish people would think about that part for a moment before trying to get free* Internet access (Which the FCC plan won’t even initially provide, they call it “affordable” so it’ll probably be a subsidized item.).

* Free until you notice your take home pay becomes even less.

Imitation is The Sincerest Form of Flattery

That’s always been Microsoft’s policy. Unfortunately the parts Microsoft usually imitate are the parts that suck. Take for instance Windows Series 7 Phone 7 Series Phone Phone Series 7 Phone 7 Series. Microsoft it taking some queues from Apple but they’re the bad ones.

Apparently Windows Phone 7 Series will not allow multi-tasking, installation of application not provided by Microsoft’s market place, and will not accept removable storage. These have always been the weak points of Apple’s iPhone in my opinion. I like being able to multi-task. Sure it can drain battery life but hey I’ll deal with that to gain added functionality. So it still looks like I’ll be moving to WebOS or Android when I decide to change out my phone.

End Of An Era

Well I knew this day would come eventually but alas it’s still rather sad. I received the following e-mail today:

Dear Developers,

For more than a year, Palm’s primary focus has been on webOS devices and
development. As development for legacy Palm devices has transitioned to new
development under webOS, we have made the decision to put all of our
resources into webOS development support. To this end, the Palm Developer
Network site (https://pdnet.palm.com), which supported legacy PalmOS and
Windows Mobile development for past-generation Palm devices, will be taken
offline effective April 30th. The PDN developer forums will be taken offline on
March 31st.

If you would like to continue development on a platform similar to PalmOS and
would like assistance, we suggest that you contact ACCESS CO., LTD. at
http://www.access-company.com. ACCESS currently supports its own proprietary
Garnet OS platform, which is a variant of PalmOS 5. ACCESS may be able to
provide you with assistance under one of ACCESS’ own support or developer
programs. Please note, that ACCESS CO., LTD and Palm, Inc. are not related or
affiliated companies, and any assistance you may receive from ACCESS shall be
subject solely to ACCESS’ own terms and conditions.

If you have development support issues for Windows Mobile applications, please
visit the Microsoft Developer Network for Windows Mobile at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsmobile/default.aspx.

We thank all of you for your support of PalmOS devices over the years, and hope
that you are all enjoying developing for webOS. If you haven’t started developing
for webOS, please visit http://developer.palm.com to learn more! We think you’ll
love the new platform.

Best regards,

The Palm Developer Team.

It appears as though Palm OS is officially dead (No longer supported). I’m glad I already have copies of everything I’ve used while developing on Palm OS. I really wish Access (The owners of Palm OS) would open source the aging system but I doubt that will ever happen.

On the upside they are also dropping support for Windows Mobile. Good riddance!

Broadband For Free*

Tam at View From the Porch brings up an article dealing with the recent decision by the United States government to provide broadband for everybody. The article is about a whiny ninny web developer who is crying because she doesn’t have broadband:

Like a photographer without a camera, or a mechanic who doesn’t own a car, Kelli Fields is a webmaster without high-speed Internet access.

By day, the 42-year-old uses a broadband connection at work to update a university’s Web site, which she built and codes from scratch.

But when she goes home at night, the rural Oklahoman struggles with a dial-up Internet connection so slow, she does chores to pass the time while Web sites load. Her high school-age son is so fed up with the glacial pace of their Internet connection that he asks his mom to update his Facebook page from the office.

Let’s look at this shall we. My father is a mechanic and he owns his own shop. I can tell you one thing the government never provided him with a car, tools, hoist, alignment rack, or even a front desk. Likewise I don’t know a single photographer who has a camera purchased for them by the government. But using these examples this story tries to convince you that the government should be providing Ms. Prissy with boradband for her work? Why does a web developer get special treatment?

Oh because she’s in a rural area where she only has dial-up. Let me check if the government will provide tools to an auto shop that’s in a rural area away from any tool shop. Nope. Will the government provide cameras to photographers in locations far away from a camera store? Nope. Hm I guess those situations still remain irrelevant.

Stop running to the government every time you need something. Oh and I love this part:

She could install a satellite and connect to the high-speed Internet, but the installation fee is $300, and she said she can’t afford that right now. She’s been waiting for wired broadband to come to her home for five years, and she holds out some hope that the network will get to her eventually.

She can’t afford $300.00 but wants broadband Internet? How much money does she think it’ll cost to run wired broadband out to her rural house? Here’s a hint, a fucking lot. Of course I’m sure she’s fine with it so long as every tax payer in America is footing the bill and not just her. God this entitlement society pisses me off. And I haven’t even touched on the subject of government provided and therefore controlled Internet access.

* And by free I mean you’re paying for it through your tax dollars.

If Everything is Bigger In Texas What Are Things in The Former Soviet Union

They say everything is bigger in Texas. If that’s the case everything must be positively HUGE in the former Soviet Union. I present for your pondering pleasure the Lun class air craft. Also some massive photographs.

What was the Lun class transport? It was a soviet ground effect craft that could transport two million pounds of Soviet anger. To top it off it was also able to six nuclear warhead equipped surface to surface cruise missiles. The entire craft was powered by the collective rage of the Soviet Union. I believe the idea here was to nuke the shit out of the shoreline, release the peasant conscripts, and laugh manically as they died shortly afterward of radiation poisoning.

Seriously some of the shit thought up during the Cold War amazes me.

Terminator’s .45 Laser Sight

Here is a rather interesting article I stumbled upon. I’m sure everybody here has seen Terminator, if not go watch it. In the movie he uses a .45 with a laser sight attached to it. This day and age that doesn’t sound impressive but back in the ’80’s:

This was the early days of lasers for commercial use. “At that time we were dealing with helium neon laser. All the newer lasers are solid state, about the size of an aspirin or smaller.” HeNe lasers are much larger than that, he explained, and required about 10,000 volts to get started. Once ignited, they take 1,000 volts to keep them running. That makes the power supply a tricky thing to design.

Now consider the movie didn’t have a terribly high budget and this article makes for an interesting read.

Vision, This Man Had It

When it comes to the technology field we get some great predictions and quotations. For instance take this article written in 1995 for Newsweek:

After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

That’s what I call a visionary! Oh and:

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn’t—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Yeah there’s now way that online shopping thing could catch on. Never!

Another Invention That Can Be Used For Good or Evil

Uh oh we have yet another invention on the market that can be used by both good guys and bad guys. Via Bruce Schneier’s blog I learned about this amazing invention.

The device is called the Impressioner. It’s an electronic device that can tell locksmiths how to cut a key for a lock. This would allow a locksmith to easily create a new key for a car lock without the whole trial and error things. Of course the article points out the device can be used by thieves as well.

What the article fails to point out is that car locks are incredibly insecure. With a simple device called a Slim Jim (A flat piece of sheet metal with a notch cut out of it) you can open the lock on almost any car door in a matter of seconds. In fact it’s much faster than trying to make a key. In other words people are getting worried about something that’s already broken.

Back to Firefox For Now

I’ve been using Chrome for Mac for a while now and honestly I really like the browser. But there is one fatal flaw, the inability to extensions to tie deeply into the browser. What am I getting at here? Simple, extensions like NoScript and Flash Blocker can’t work properly in Chrome.

Most of the extensions in Firefox I use revolve around making the browser more secure. To this end one of the first extensions I install is NoScript. NoScript is an extension that allows you to block all scripting on sites you don’t specifically white list. This is useful for blocking malicious behavior on many websites. The extension also prevents cross site scripting attacks. Well I’ve been curious when or even if NoScript will be made available for Chrome. The bottom line is it never will be since there are no hooks in Chrome to allow extensions to selectively interact with scripting elements.

To further compound the issue Chrome’s cookie handling, at least on the Mac version, is unusable. When I hope the cookie browser in Chrome it just hangs there and I get the spinning beach ball of death until I have to force quit Chrome. Of course I’ve been seeing a lot of tracking cookies popping up which has gotten to the point I’m finding absurd. There are no extensions for Chrome that allow me to block all cookies except those I specifically white list and I really want this behavior.

This means I’m forced back to Firefox which I’m not horribly fond of. In Chrome each tab is a separate process which means you close it all the memory is freed properly. Firefox on the other hand never seems to properly free up memory from closed tabs and windows which leads it to eventually consume insane amounts of memory. Hopefully the newly release 3.6 will be better than previous versions. If it’s not you’ll be seeing more browser oriented bitching coming up on this blog.