computer Security Paranoia

I have take a quite a few courses over last two semesters on computer and network security. even a class which helped me understand privacy and legal issues to an extent. all this has given me insight to the security process and loopholes. Of course this has made me from being a cautious user to a over cautious one. I look twice at the link of the websites i open, check three times the kink of my bank site before entering user name and password. earlier my password used to be some thing like 8 -10 characters now more than 15 characters long.
Another thing learned any encryption or security protection can be broken, only difference being the time taken from less tan 30 seconds to 30 years. Any way i would not like to make others paranoid but every one should be concerned. the first thing i will discuss is wi-fi connection. you can find plenty of article online how to make work and work securely so i wont talk about that but point you few of the links.

To mount a attack on 128bit encrypted wireless connection you need to have considerable experience acumen and resources. Well if your connection is unsecured (NOT having even the widely criticized WEP ) then it would be like a open door, even the next door kid has full access to it. but using WEP protection is like a door with a easy to open lock. Cryptanalyst's have been able to break the really bad implementations in less than 30 seconds. few of the Biggest mistakes people make while implementing systems are

• leaving the admin password blank or to default
• for the wireless router
• for your computer
  
• NOT using any protection -- really really stupid
• having key of dictionary word - really stupid
• even if its hard to spell for humans automated computer programs can break them in few minutes using Brute Force attack
• having a key of few letters(less than 8) - stupid
• NOT ever changing their WEP or WPA key. - Not a good Idea
  
• change at least once in 3 months as one of the fundamentals of breaking any encryption is the more data you have using a single encryption key the more easy it is to break that encryption that is the reason the military communications change key almost every day for their communication

Setting UP Wireless connection
The article give steps to set up WEP 128bit security but i would seriously advice to use any higher version of WPA if available. if not then make sure u have pretty long key the best way to create a long key to use a long sentence with few number in front or end as an example.
"289284whathappnesinvegasstaysinnewyork" ---(DONT USE THIS JUST EXAMPLE)
Good Article
Really nice article also talks about setting up a personal honeypot(will talk about what this is in next post). but an advice, i would say don't even think of doing it can act a back fire a blackhat hacker with access to you honeypot can mount a attack on some else and you can beheld liable.

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An efficient handheld generator could help bring computing to the world's poor.

The One Laptop per Child association (OLPC) is an ICT4D non-profit organization, created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab, set up to oversee The Children's Machine project and the construction of the XO-1 "$100 laptop". Both the project and the organization were announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.

The goal of the foundation is to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves. To that end, OLPC is designing a laptop, educational software, manufacturing base, and distribution system to provide children outside of the first-world with otherwise unavailable technological learning opportunities.

OLPC espouses five core principles:^[6]

1. Child ownership
2. Low ages. The hardware and software are designed for elementary school children aged 6-12.
3. Saturation
4. Connection
5. Free and open source

“	It's an education project, not a laptop project.	”
—Nicholas Negroponte

The $100 dollar laptop will include a 7.5-inch screen, a 500 megahertz processor, 500 megabytes of Flash memory, and wireless broadband for forming impromptu networks with other laptops. It will also be a multimedia workstation, supporting the playing and composing of music, for example.

The new generator will make the laptop much easier to power than it would be with a hand crank, in part, because the users will be able to operate the generator in a variety of ways, including holding the device (the size of two hockey pucks) in one hand and pulling the string with the other, or clamping the generator to a desk, attaching the string to one foot, and using leg power. "We wanted something that could take advantage of other muscle groups in the human body that can put out a lot more energy than the muscles that you get when you're just turning a crank," says Colin Bulthaup, a co-founder of Squid Labs.

To reach the project's goal of one minute of power generation for every ten minutes of laptop use, the generator would need to produce 20 watts (the laptop will require less than two watts in a primary application as an electronic textbook replacement). "With a hand-crank system, if you're gung-ho about it, you can get about five watts out of it. But you get tired after about a minute or so," says Geo Homsy, a partner and designer at Squid Labs. With the new system, generating 20 watts is comfortable, and it's possible to generate 10 watts for "as long as you want," the developers say.

The new generator is also quiet -- one of the key design requirements. "If you imagine an entire school room full of kids using this thing, it needs to be as quiet as possible. Otherwise it will drive everyone insane," Homsy says. Typical generators work best at high revolutions per minute, requiring noisy gears to step up the speed. The developers have done away with gears by custom-designing a generator that runs most efficiently at lower RPMs, a move that also makes possible a smaller device.

The $100 laptop developers are also working with several firms on an ambitious, related project: developing a long-lasting battery system to be paired with the generator (or to charge off AC power). This battery system will include "custom chemistry, unique electronics, and complex charge and discharge monitoring algorithms to deliver 2,000 battery cycles -- four times more than normal PCs," Foster says. A long charging session in the morning, for instance, would allow kids to use the laptop throughout the day, with the batteries storing enough energy for eight hours of work -- with enough left over for the computer to serve as a wireless mesh network router for another 16 hours.

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WYSIWYG Open Source website developing Tools

Every body who is in web development knows about the adobe Dreamweaver, recently clubbed with adobe CS3. It is an expensive piece of software to own unless you bread and butter is web development. But here I will mention some relatively less known software's, First one i can think of is Komposer. It is released under the GPL license. It was built as enhancement and bug fixed release to “Nvu”. Nvu is now out of production and not being developed further. The development is also slow on Komposer but still a good tool. Some of the features are:

• Very light as compared to other commercial .
• Built-in FTP .
• CSS Editor.

The version is far from being a professional development tool (as stated on their own site) but if you are working on your on website and have just some thing small and want to maintain it at minimal possible cost the Komposer is the choice of tool. The three tabs at the bottom let you switch between the WYSIWYG view, HTML view, and Tag view.
Another WYSIWYG tool available is "Amaya" from W3C consortium. It is a more feature rich tool. it follows strict XHTML standards. It should be a very good web authoring tool for faculty and researches as it natively supports MathML, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), and collaboration via shared metadata based Web annotations, bookmarks, and their combinations(Annotea). This a step forward in sementic web development and Resource Description Framework(RDF). The CSS support is much more enhanced. This is a really good tool, and helps create sites which are simple, powerfull, and standards compliant. few other tools available are SeaMonkey Composer (Mozilla Composer) and Trellian.

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The New Era of X-ray Imaging

Medical imaging has made vast strides over the past decade. Technologies that were once limited to diagnostic applications are increasingly being used for minimally invasive surgeries, cancer ablations and colonoscopies. Image Guided Interventional techniques(IGI) have not only helped reduce patient recovery duration, but also helped to improve efficiency of treatment.


Modern imaging techniques started with the invention of 2-D X-ray scans. As the popularity of these scans increased, the demand for a more comprehensive coverage of the object also grew. This along with the advances in computing technologies eventually led to 4-slice Computed Tomography(CT) scanners. Today all major players, Philips Medical Systems, GE Medical Systems and Siemens Medical Systems offer multi-slice scanners that can be used in axial mode to quickly scan moving organs or in helical mode to cover the entire human anatomy. Recently Philips has introduced a new 256 slice scanner in its Brilliance iCT series while Toshiba has introduced a 320 slice scanner in its Aquilion series.

As imaging technologies improve and scanners get more intelligent and efficient, the market for diagnostic as well as interventional radiology will continue to grow.

(Note: Image coutesy of Toshiba)

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