Categories
Computer Security Computers Terminal

Family Computer Security

I recently came home for Christmas to visit family. From time to time I will help them out with computer advice. I say advice because it is free and can be subject to interpretation and I can be totally wrong sometimes. So, if in this post, you have suggestions or advice yourself, please don’t hesitate to correct me with comments and such.
We visited relatives and they had several connectivity issues for internet. We hooked up the router to their modem and secured the wireless and then ran powerline plugs to the basement and hooked up the second wireless router for their WII and XBox360 and whatever other Gaming systems had internet connectivity. One thing I found interesting was the different security protocols and compatibility issues. It seems the older wireless cards did not even detect the new WPA2 wireless protocol. When that protocol was active, SSID seemed to disappear for the older 11/B wireless card.
I then proceeded to download updates for the antivirus on the laptop. The connections was very slow. I then noticed some strange behavior with the system. I finally determined there were viruses present on the machine. I ran a scan and no viruses were detected. I figured this was due to the anti-virus being installed after the viruses were already present. I then decided to run a linux live CD with antivirus capabilities to remove them. I chose Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3. It worked like a charm. I loaded the live CD and then mounted the internal hard drive. I updated the virus definitions of ClamAV and ran it on the internal HD removing all infected files. The power of linux and the command line really was super handy and this all ran within an hour on 256 mb of ram is what amazed me.

Categories
Computers Mac

Sync me up Scotty

So I was posed an interesting question this morning in email.  My uncle has an ipod and my grandpa has the Ford Sync.  So my uncle wanted to show my grandpa how to use the music play part of the sync.  I wonder if he can put the music on a thumb drive and stick that right into the usb port on the Sync?  This site says that AAC file format works great.  Of course the music would need to be DRM free I would imagine.  But the only inhibitor would be a password protected usb drive.  like the U3 from sandisk i think.  http://www.syncmyride.com/Own/Modules/FaqManagement/FaqList.aspx?tagId=23#question57 this leads me to believe that a USB drive all by itself with just music files on it would work.
At one time I was told that it actually copies the files from the device to the Hard Drive of the Sync.  After looking over the http://Syncmyride.com for a minute, and seeing bluetooth streaming, I think that rules out copying the music over.  The Sync would have to have some sort of hard drive though to store the music information so voice commands could control and use those files on the device.
so the meat and potatoes came in this question i found on the Sync FAQ: http://www.syncmyride.com/Own/Modules/FaqManagement/FaqList.aspx?tagId=131#question26
this question and the next one are the key to all the answers I had.

Categories
Computers Mac

Mac OS X hostname Changing?

For some reason my hostname on my mac keeps changing.  I first noticed it when I loaded bootcamp with windows XP.   I have been bringing my computer to work and log onto their wireless and I start using synergy.  This is when I actually notice that the hostname has changed.  The reason I think it has something to do with windows or bootcamp is because the name of the windows machine name is what the hostname changes to.  I wonder what is going on here?

Categories
iPhone

Iphone mms workaround

This is the page that helped me send picture messages on my AT&T iPhone without a hack. This is just a workaround, but I think I will continue to use this even when AT&T starts supporting mms, because this uses your email which is free.
http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/01/09/iphone-101-email-photo-cell-phone-mms/

Categories
iPhone

iPhone 3G S Exchange Push from sleeping wifi?

Is anybody having issues with Exchange Push when you have wifi connected?  Here is my issue: When I have my data connected (Edge/3G).  When I come to work or I arrive at home I have wifi and so it connects that way, but only when the phone is not in sleep mode (up and running an app or actually using the phone).  When no app is running and I just let it fall asleep after 1 minute or 5 or whatever the time period, it seems to turn wifi off (maybe to save battery) but the exchange seems to still think it is connected and still uses push through the wifi connection. On the other hand, when I turn wifi completely off, and let the phone fall asleep again, instant push from exchange every time.
It turns out I was completely wrong.
If you read this article from apple support:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1868
If you read solution number 2 on that page, this seems to be the problem:
2.  When roaming between home and office networks with Wi-Fi enabled, “push” may stop working if your company’s Exchange ActiveSync server has a different IP address for intranet and Internet clients. Make sure the DNS for your network returns a single, externally-routable address to the Exchange ActiveSync server for both intranet and Internet clients. This is required so the device can use the same IP address for communicating with the server when both types of connections are active. A workaround to avoid this issue is to disable Wi-Fi on the iPhone.
I guess the only reason I came to the sleeping wifi in the first place was because whenever I turn the phone back on after it had been asleep, the icon for wifi only shows up after  a brief 3 seconds like “Oh, I’m on now.”
I really wonder if the wifi turns off to save battery?  Does anyone have any insight on this for me?

Categories
Computers Mac

Boxee, Media, Online TV

An application that will change the network television industry. Am I the only one or are TV’s getting more and more expensive and out of date while media is going more and more online. Boxee is just one implementation of this. ITunesU is another media tool being used and used quite efficiently. We only turn the TV on on time a week. We actually don’t even keep the cable line plugged in to the TV all week except for that one time a week. I wonder if TV is becoming obsolete. How many TV shows or Media Events can you catch online? The LDS general conference is online. BYU TV has a site to broadcast their stuff online without need of a TV. Is this the way we are going? I wonder in this information age if this is where we are going to be in the future.  What do you think?

Categories
Mac Terminal

Curl

So in an effort to further my skills and my pure geekness as a CIT major and a cleanfreak in general I have drastically improved my knowledge by trial and error yet once again.  The trying and erroring was mostly done by me and one question to codekoala and the mystery solved.  So the situation is I sometimes want to download a large file and i don’t want to have use firefox and open the whole browser.  Well I also want to use a completely native application on my mac just for the sake of keeping my mac not clogged up with so much stuff.  I could have installed macports and I actually did to use wget from within the command line but curl is already native and so I started experimenting with it.  At first I just did: curl URL As you very well may know this just spitts the download to standard out and prints I think ASCII to the screen as it is being downloaded. Well, my very limted knowledge of linux and unix told me well just see what happens, maybe the file will show up. So I started checking in the directory, nothing. So then codekoala came online, I asked him and he told me.
So here is the command:
curl -O url
what the -O does: it says instead of spit this out as standard out on the command line put it to the file with the same name as it has on the web server.
Don’t I feel like a smart one. 🙂

Categories
Terminal VMWare

Explore your command line interface

  1. Switch the first virtual terminal by pressing ctrl + alt + f1.  to get the f1 to go i have to press the function button.
    picture-19
  2. switch to second virtual terminal with ctrl + alt + f2
    picture-20
  3. logout by typing exit
    picture-21
Categories
Mac Terminal

SCP

Another great experience with the terminal.  Since I reformatted I lost macfuse and sshfs to mount my server’s drive to my mac os x desktop to transfer files I had to find an alternative.  Yes I could use some FTP client but since I have learned how unsecure ftp can be I have started to used the command line anyways.  So to transfer my files I learned about scp.  Great little utilty.  Here’s the command:
scp file username@server:directory

Categories
Mac

Command Line, Terminal

Sometimes things just don’t have to be hard.  A while back I had this premonition about my newly bought MacBook that I was going to use the Terminal for everything because the shell is just so cool in my geeky major of Comuter Information Technology.  Well I have certainly not held strong with my idea.  But Josh will be glad to know I have used it and gained experience with it so I feel comfortable enough where I can go and do the small things without any hesitation.  So I had made a folder with all these pictures (about 90 pictures) in it.  I wanted to be a little more organized and so I wanted to move all those pictures into another folder.  There were still a few lingering files in the folder as well that I did not want moved.  So the Terminal was much quicker.
mv *.jpg folder/

Instantly the task was done and I didn’t have to worry about scrolling up the screen to grab all the right items and ordering them.  Just take the pictures and put them in the folder.  I know this seems elementary to you all out there, and I am sure in a few years it will to me as well, but in the mean time I will just bask in my geekness.