Catch Them Red Handed!

There are a few Mac OSX application out there that are specifically designed to alert you that your unattended laptop has just been nabbed when you are looking the other way perhaps when you were sipping down your Caramel Macchiato.

One such application is iAlertU, which uses Apples built in motion sensors to detect when it has been pinched, sounds an alarm and even takes a picture of the dirty rotten scoundrel that made off with your pride and joy! great stuff!?!

Now there is another contender out there. Lockdown is a completely free anti-theft application for Mac OSX that uses motion sensors, keyboard, mouse and MagSafe power adapter to detect when the laptop has been stolen and proceed to sound an alarm and take pictures of the thief and then send them by email to one of your specified email addresses.

Really cool stuff, and all the better that its FREE!! Check it out.

Hacker Gary McKinnon loses extradition appeal

I have been following this story for some time now and I'm quite shocked at its outcome thus far. Gary Mckinnon Is probably one of the most famous grey hat hackers of all time accused and charged of "the biggest military hack of all time".

Garry McKinnon has lost his appeal to the Europe court of human rights and now faces extradition to the US where he will face a very heft prison sentence. He faces a 70 Year sentence as an 'enemy combatant' (a sentence and term that many people, including myself, feel is completely ridiculous).

He successfully executed a very simple hack using largely unsophisticated techniques and simple scripting languages to gather unencrypted passwords or default administration passwords. Reading some of the details surrounding his techniques, it is surprising just how simple his hacks were and I think this trial is more about the US Government covering up their incompetence and embarrassment than anything else.

I think, if anything should happen to him, he should be tried and sentenced in this country under our laws. US laws should not apply to crimes committed in this country.

http://freegary.org.uk/

C|NET article slam's Windows Vista

I must say that I'm not a fan of Windows Vista at all. I have used my friends copy a few times and within the space of 5 minutes I got so frustrated that I had to turn round and walk away for fear that I would toss the laptop out the nearest window. I much prefer Windows XP and would actively seek a computer manufacturer that gave me the option to 'downgrade'.

I am however an Apple user, and have been for many years. Yes, there are annoyances and initially they are a bit more expensive (although in the long run I have found them to be cheaper), but Apple is my platform of choice. I have had many years of joy and lots of found memories using them (sounds sad...but its true, you can become attached to inanimate objects).

I largely agree with this C|NET article saying that for PC manufactures to stand out, and offer their user a 'Mac like experience' they have to completely cut their ties with Windows (and stop waiting for them to get it right) and go with Linux. Waiting for Windows to simply get something right is holding back the PC industry and I think causing irreparable harm. One of the larger PC manufactures needs to take the leap and go for Linux in a big way by offering it as the primary operating system and perhaps offering Windows as an optional extra for those that just cant let go or for people that want to pay over the odds for a shoddy piece of software.

Ubiquity concept for Firefox

So I have just heard about this new concept from Mozilla labs called Ubiquity. I will just start by first of all saying that I am a huge fan of the work that the guys over there in Mozilla are doing. Firefox changed things and each release has been getting progressively better and more stable with each release, and they are constantly thinking, refining and publishing their ideas on making the experience of interacting with the Internet more enjoyable, productive and useful.

I was not a huge fan of their last browser concept however, I felt that was a little too radical and I could not see myself using something like that (that may be just me). It was too slow and looked unintuitive, and the mobile browsing concept was basically a rip off of the safari iPhone browser.

However I think this one has huge potential (along with the Weave browser syncing tool). I'm really excited with the direction they are taking with this specific development. I have been dreaming of something like this for a while now, and never fully understood why someone didn't think of this until now. I, like many other Mac users out there, cannot live without Quicksilver, and I would say that Ubiquity is as close to Quicksilver (for the Internet) as one could possibly come at the moment. Unfortunately It looks like the Quicksilver project has basically dried up and development for it has came to a complete halt. I hope that Ubiquity is one of the projects that Mozilla keeps developing. It has huge potential.

Now If you will excuse me, I'm off to to get my geek on and have a play about with it for a while. I can see myself getting equally addicted to this as I did with Quicksilver.

Update on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 01:20PM by Paul

Ubiquity has already became one of my favorite all time Firefox extensions (Greasemonkey being my second now). It looks to be fully extensible and super powerful, functionality like this should already be built into Firefox. If you are thinking about installing it, the following sources are worth a read:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial#Going_Further

http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/ubiquity-in-depth/

And if you have alrady installed it, then typing 'about:ubiquity' in the Firefox URL bar will give you an introduction tab.