This post has been brought to you By Windows 7, And trying to set it up to work happily with a Gentoo Server & Linux NAS.
Well, Just trying to get it to work in a useful productive way really. Or put simply, in deference to Microsoft, to just not FAIL.
Unless you have been living in a small cave half way up an inhospitable mounting for the last month you would have heard of the News of the World (NotW) Phone Hacking Scandal. It’s especially bad if you live in the UK.
If you are that cave dwelling hermit let me say “How the frak are you reading this post? Did you follow the article on reading blogs on kindles? How have you got internet access? inquiring minds want to know!” *relax* I mean to say, that this scandal is about slime masquerading as reports who accessed a vast (possible 4,000) number of people’s (Celebrity’s, Sports Stars, Politicians, Victims of Crime) answer phone messages. Now there was such an amount of this going on that the paper has closed down after 168years in print.
I have no intention of writing about the incident itself, or any of the fallout, or anything directly in relation to this case. That has been covered in depth all over the Internet & Surviving media. What I would like to address is the term thrown about “Phone Hacking Scandal“. Why must everyone insist on calling it Hacking?
*NOTE: Phone Hacking is referred to as Phreaking
No where in any of the reports is any activity mentioned that even faintly falls into the category of “Hacking” under any definition. Even if you take the original definition of Hacking, as in using some piece of technology or item in a way that was different to the intended use. Or knowing or wanting to learn about the inner working of different things, you still can not fit the term “Hacker” or “Hacking” to what the NotW reporters actually did.
What they did was to access peoples voicemail’s. Yes this is wrong, its an intrusion of privacy, it’s probably illegal as “unauthorised to personal communication” but it is not Hacking. They phoned up the voicemail number, and using the Victims phone number, and the generic default pin number accessed they voice mail system in the way it was intended to, in the way we all access it, they just did it without the Victims permission.
Surely it should be called “illegal phone tapping” or “illegal access to mail” or by whatever legal term it is for the crime they committed. The media like using the term Hacker to scare the public about these faceless super-criminals with secret abilities that let them to do almost anything. I think its time to stop the mass-hysteria and excessive incorrect use of this term.
We do not call someone who sticks a plaster on a small graze a Doctor, We do not call the small child playing with a plastic gun in the street a terrorist, and we should not call someone who phones up a publicised phone number and follows the instructions the recorded message tells them a Hacker.
Come on Media People, Your reputation is tarnished over this NotW incident, don’t make it worse by not doing your homework, and just falling into your old scaremongering ways.
The Three Ninjas saying a few words about the misappropriation of the term “Hacker“. To quote Randal from Clerks II. “I’m taking it back”
Sunday 5th June 2011, I arrived at the campus of NEWI*1 GlynDwr University for Wales Comic Con. This was my first visit to this event since I missed out last year due to Vampiric Eye Disease causing me to be unable to leave the house during the daylight hours.
Upon arriving at the campus I immediately encountered a slight Problem. In an attempt to prevent others for making the same mistake, I tweeted “Note to self: when going to a con, check location before leaving house. #walescomiccon.” Yes, I knew it was on the Campus, but there were dozens of buildings/complexes that could be housing it. Luckily as I was pulling my car into a car-park, I spotted a couple of StormTroopers*2 standing guard at the door to the sports centre. And when a marine walked out of the building followed by an Alien with a dog collar, I KNEW where it was. (more…)
We here at the Ninja Temple love nothing more than finding new ways to use Technology, Or Ways to use it in a different manner to that which it was intended. We also like finding legal ways of doing things for free, that would normally cost money.
So what was the first thing we did when we got our hands on one of Amazons Kindles? We decided it would be nice if we could read our favorite Blogs & News sites directly off the Kindle in weekly digests. Unfortunately Amazon charges for this service, Which is OK I guess since some of the money can go to the Bloggers who write the sites.
No we do not want to cost fellow Bloggers Money, BUT if you think about it, you can use the Kindle’s web browser to read free Blogs for Free, so If you could get it sent directly to your device for free, its only really saving you time.
So heres the procedure we followed to get Weekly Digests of our Favorite blogs sent directly to the Kindle. (NOTE: If you really enjoy someones Blog consider supporting it with some comments, or some other way to show your thanks)
Greetings & Salutations.You may have noticed that there is a new look to the Three Ninjas site. If you have not noticed then I have to ask are you blind or something?
R: “What if they are blind and are using a text reader to speak your site?“
CN: “Well. I guess thats a valid reason, and I feel a bit like a douche now 🙁“
R: “Or what if they are reading it from your own RSS feed?“
CN: “OK. OK. I’m Sorry“
Hi Constant Reader. We here at the Ninja Temple take all feed back seriously, No honestly we do! And as such we had received several reposts that the old theme was a bit dark and could be tricky to read. So we have had a bit of a change.
Please be patient as we switch over to this new look, since there are bound to be technical difficulties. So we apologise in advance for any problems.
Have a look about, and leave any feedback, thoughts, opinions, etc. in the comments section of this post.
If you are a gamer then you are probably aware that the PlayStation Network went down on April 20th. After a few days it was revealed that the reason for the outage was due to Sony checking the system after they discovered the network had been compromised. The original belief was that PSN would be down for a few days while the vulnerability was patched. This caused two large outcries from the gaming community :-
PSN Users: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! What will we do?”
Xbox Live Users: “HAHAHAHAHA”
Now, I am one of the lucky ones who have both. Oh before you ask, no I did not scream NOHAOOHAOOHAOOHA!
A short while later when Sony discovered the full extent of the depth of penetration their system had encountered, They decided (Rightly in my opinion) to use this downtime to do a overhaul on the security of the PSN and related systems. Leading to a much longer downtime for gamers than was originally advertised.
As of the date of publish for this post, PSN has be partially brought back online for most people, Multiplayer gaming is possible, and Sony are doing their best to get all services back online for all players. They are also compensating users for the inconvenience. There will be a list of games that you can pick three from to download, there will be free months use of PSN+, and a lot of other gifts from Sony.
Now I think this is very good of them, they did not have to give away anything to compensate users for the unavailability of what is a free resource. Yes those who pay for PSN+ or other paid for systems deserved a month or two of their subscription back. But for everyone to get a gift, that’s something they did not have to do, and I think its very decent of them.
For those of you in Europe you can read more on what you will be offered here.
