The Author – Bart Busschots
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Sep
13
Trial – Some Interesting Articles I’ve Read
Filed Under Software Development, Polemics & Politics on September 13, 2007 | 3 Comments
A lot of other bloggers do posts where they just list interesting articles they’ve read. It’s not something I’ve really considered before. However, I’ve recently started coming across some excellent articles that I think are worth sharing. So, I’m gonna give it a go. Consider this a trial. If you’re a regular reader let me know whether or not you’d be interested in reading more posts like this one by leaving a comment.
Sep
12
Eircom Security – More Bad News and Some Suggested Solutions
Filed Under Security, Computers & Tech on September 12, 2007 | 35 Comments
This is a follow-up article to my earlier article Eircom Exposes Its Broadband Customers to Serious Security Risks. If you’re following the comments on that article you’ll see that I’m trying to bring these problems to Eircom’s attention. I haven’t gotten very far yet but I’ll keep updating those comments with what ever progress I manage to make. However, there has been another development that I feel I need to bring to people’s attention. This afternoon I was anonymously sent some very interesting information regarding yet another alleged hole in Eircom’s security. I MUST STRESS THAT I HAVE NOT VERIFIED THESE CLAIMS as to do so would involve attempting to break in to someone’s network and that’s illegal. However, should this prove to be true Eircom has yet another problem to fix. In this article I’ll start by explaining the alleged problem, then propose a simple solution, and end with some simple advice for Eircom customers who wish to protect themselves from these security vulnerabilities.
[tags]Eircom, Security[/tags]
Sep
11
Eircom Exposes Its Broadband Customers to Serious Security Risks
Filed Under Security, Computers & Tech on September 11, 2007 | 28 Comments
I had heard complaints from people in the past that Eircom didn’t seem to do the whole security thing properly at all. I guess I just hopped they’d have sorted themselves out by now. They haven’t. I’m not sure if it’s down to incompetence or just not caring about their customers, but, in my book there are no valid excuses for leaving your customers exposed. Eircom have chosen to give their customers a wireless router. This makes things a lot simpler for the customer since it means they don’t have to go messing around with cables and such, but it potentially opens them up to significantly higher security risks. In the relationship between an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a customer, the ISP must be the one on top of security issues. The average broadband customer cannot realistically be expected to be a security expert. Customers can only be expected to follow instructions from their ISP, and they have every right to assume that these instructions will not expose them to serious risks. Having gone through the process of setting up Eircom broadband for my grandfather last weekend I can tell you they are totally failing to protect their users by instructing their customers to set up their networks in a way that is highly insecure.
[tags]Eircom, Broadband, Ireland, Security, WEP[/tags]
Sep
9
A Trip Down Memory Lane – Returning to my Old School to Talk About Science
Filed Under Science & Astronomy on September 9, 2007 | 10 Comments
As part of a program to promote science at second level my Leaving Cert physics teacher asked me back to give a talk. I decided to focus on something that the curriculum certainly never does, the stuff we DON’T know. The curriculum teaches science as a set of laws and equations. It all seems very much set in stone, almost like commandments chiseled into tablets. What the curriculum doesn’t really teach kids is how science evolves or how it is evolving today. Right now scientists are trying to thrash out some really very fundamental questions about the universe we all live in. It’s the continuation of a never-ending epic struggle to better understand our universe. Students generally don’t get to see that, so I dedicated my talk to explaining just two of those very fundamental mysteries which scientists are trying to get to the bottom of right now.
Sep
2
iPhoto 7 – A Closer Look
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Photography on September 2, 2007 | 7 Comments
In a follow up to my initial thoughts on the new iLife I want to have a more detailed look at the new iPhoto now that I’ve had some time to really get to use it. Although my overall impression is that this version of iPhoto offers significant improvements over the previous version, it is not perfect. One part of my work flow has become less intuitive in one sense, yet more intuitive in another. There is also still one very annoying omission from iPhoto.
[tags]iLife, iPhoto, Apple[/tags]