There is no denying the fact that open source software are the prime tools for hacking (and cracking). In this example, see how you can use Linux to eavesdrop on a conversation between someone using a Bluetooth headset and another person.



I wonder how you can make this more secure considering that almost all Bluetooth hands-free headsets use a default PIN.

I have a Jabra headset but I rarely use it anymore since I look like a dork whenever I use one. Besides, my wife hates it! :)

How about you? DO you have a bluetooth headset? Have you been assimilated by the Borg? ha-ha-ha See full article.

Related Entries:

Windows VS. Linux Security Report - 28 August 2006

Linux lags in security - 23 March 2007

Security of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 - 18 April 2007

Bluetooth headset comparison - 03 June 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you'd like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

See our story on this Belmont, Calif., implantable-lens maker in today’s daily briefing at VentureBeat Life Sciences.

If you have not heard of the news about Google using Linux, where have you been? ha-ha-ha. Anyway, it was rumoured that Google will be releasing its own Ubuntu-based Linux distribution and when gOS was previewed, everyone thought that was it. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), it is in no way associated with Google. So what is this gOS and what makes it different? See full article.

Related Entries:

Google + Ubuntu = Goobuntu - 31 Januar 2006

A New Way of Starting Linux - 19 September 2006

Google Linux - 17 June 2007

The Case for Linux Ubuntu: New York Times - 07 October 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you'd like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

By default, most Linux distributions still retain its uber-geekiness by showing each and every detail of the boot process, e.g., what hardware are detected, services that are started, etc. Frankly, I think this is only necessary on first boot, right after you install it or when you first run the installer, so you know that every hardware is detected properly and every service is started. Subsequent boot, however, should be as simple and as elegant as viewing a photo whilst waiting for the system to come up.



If you are sick of seeing the console dump, try this tip of adding "sexy" boot images to replace that screen dump. You can even create your own images. Neat, huh?

Image from Flickr:WhaleSalad. See full article.

Related Entries:

Boot 2007: Steinzeitliches Schilfboot „Abora II" in Düsseldorf - 30 Dezember 2006

Give 'em SUM love - 20 April 2007

How to prioritize your boot sequence - 29 September 2007

Cleaning your grub - 11 October 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you'd like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

A friend of mine just got an office-issued black Macbook and he mentioned dual-booting it with Mac OS X and Ubuntu via ReFiT. Whilst there is nothing wrong doing it, I just do not see the point unless you really hate using the BSD-based Mac OS X and its eye-candy. Ironic, but Linux is being beefed up with more eye-candy as well.



Anyway, if you have a Macbook and wish to run Ubuntu natively, you might want to check out these two documents. Remember that not all features are natively supported, specially if you have the latest Macbooks.

Again, I do not see the point when Linux runs just fast as a guest OS on VMWare Fusion. Oh well, to each his own! :)

Image from Flickr:Galaygobi. See full article.

Related Entries:

Batterieupdate für MacBook/Pro - 29 April 2007

Linux in JavaOne - 13 May 2007

Pimp your Macbook Pro - 09 Oktober 2007

Using Linux on a Macbook - 27 October 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you'd like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

Businessworld has an article on the challenges facing hydelpower projects in India. While India is reeling under a huge power shortage, hydro accounts for just a fourth of the total installed capacity of around 100,000 mega watts (MW). India’s progress on the hydro front has, after the initial spurt, been tepid. Till now, only 21 per cent of the potential hydro capacity is developed. ...

Scott echoes a point I made just a few days ago in my predictions post… email is the ultimate social network but the lack of contact granularity makes it problematic as a social network. I also think that just trying to mimic Facebook feeds through an email UI introduces more problems than benefits. By way of background on this, here’s an interesting post that goes into some detail about what is happening to Gmail.

Not everyone I get email from or send to is a “friend”.

I don’t want more email to inform me of what my email friends are doing.

Email is one-to-one or one-to-many, does making it many-to-many break it?

Google has been quietly rolling out social features across all of its services based on Gmail contacts. While Google still has to overcome some of its social tone-deafness (e.g. automatically adding contacts without asking), this move makes perfect sense. For people over 30 (and probably even over 25) email IS the social graph.

[From Email And Cellphone Contacts Are The Real Social Graph - Publishing 2.0]

TypeMock,   a semi veteran Israel-based startup, raised a first round from Evolution Venture Capital Fund.

TypeMock has developed unit testing softeware that saves users the need to ‘refactor’ and ‘restructure’ code in order to make it testable, self reported to be at “speed times”.

TypeMock was founded by CTO Eli Lopian in 2004 and officially launched its product in 2006. Some of its clients include big cos like Reuters and Wells Fargo. The main difference I’ve spotted between Typemock and other unit testing software is the openness — It appears that TypeMock has a large community of developers and an active support forum, where as competitors such as SourceForge offer more ‘corporate’ solutions.

According to Globes, Evolution Fund was interested in TypeMock because of its business model, which includes online sales and distribution. TypeMock reported several hundred thousand dollars in US and European sales in 2007.

Evolution Fund is a relatively new player in the Israeli VC arena, currently managing four other protfolio companies: Etherwaves , MusicPump, SpendM, and WhiteSmoke.  The fund has $20 million under management and is led by managing partner Ram Vromen. Evolution has made small investments of up to $1.5 million so far and its planning to make four or five more investments next year.Want to give it a ride? A free edition of TypeMock is available for download.  

The Give One, Get One program of the One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) is about to end tomorrow and I have yet to get my hands on one.



My main contention is WHY is it only available in North America? I mean, I may be living in a developing country (aka third world) but there are some people here who can afford to buy one and give one to a child here. Why can't the OLPC devise a way to let those who can afford buying one from the Philippines to give one to a child in the same country? I know that the program prefers hooking up with national governments but at the rate things are going here in the Philippines, I highly doubt if Microsoft will allow a Linux-running XO laptop to invade its turf via the gov't route. Oh well. See full article.

Related Entries:

OLPC Build 2 - 24 January 2007

Using GCompris virtually - 29 April 2007

OLPC Videos - 23 June 2007

DIY Yast-based Distro - 25 June 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you'd like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

I’ve been watching the tragic case of the tiger attack at the SF zoo on Christmas day with a lot of interest. My son loves the zoo and in particular the big cats. Having said that I don’t think we’ll ever go back to this zoo unless the director is replaced, the exhibits meet minimum national standards, they demonstrate renewed interest in better emergency planning, and lastly, they make an apology to the victim’s family.

Zoo Director Manuel Mollinedo, equally tight-lipped at the briefing, announced that the zoo will reopen Thursday. “That will allow us to get everything back in order” so the zoo can once again “provide a wonderful experience” for visitors, he said. [From Police, fire logs in S.F. tiger mauling show scene of chaos, delay]

There’s a lot of blame to go around, but zoo director Mollinedo is living in a fantasy world if he thinks that that opening the zoo is going to get everything back to normal. My first thought after reading this quote was “dude, you just had 3 people attacked, 1 fatally, by a TIGER… getting everything back in order is the least of your worries”. To his comment about “a wonderful experience”, my snarky side came out as I thought “gee, you mean the not-getting-eaten-by-a-TIGER kind of experience?”.

The family of the young man who was killed by this tiger has demonstrated grace and dignity in the face of the ultimate tragedy that parents can face. This is all the more notable considering the zoo’s leadership first suggested the tiger could not have escaped on it’s own because the surrounding the enclosure was 18 feet tall, which we now know it was not, then later suggesting the tiger was provoked by the victims, which we don’t know but should not matter under any circumstances because the enclosure should have been built to protect visitors under any circumstances.

If there is one certainty in all of this, it is that the zoo is ultimately responsible for the safety of visitors and that they had a sub-standard tiger enclosure, no security cameras, a security staff that was in disarray, poor communications, and lastly, seemed more interested in securing the tiger than preventing additional fatalities.

At this point, given the facts that have emerged, it is clear that the victim’s family has a winnable legal case, which is little consolation for losing a son but the only recourse they have available to them. The zoo should cut through the bullshit and just come out and say they are sorry for what happened, what they will be doing to make sure this never happens again, and then come to a quick financial settlement with the family.

After what happened last year with this same tiger, elephant deaths and many other issues, this zoo’s credibility is shot (no pun intended). Now is not the time for incremental measures, at least not if they have any hope of getting families, like my own, to come back.

From Mollinedo’s statements it does not appear that he grasps the gravity of what has happened and that institutions such as the zoo are dependent on a broad base of public support not just for attendance but also for fundraising and necessary political support, but then again I would be very surprised if the SF Zoo does not end up with a new director before this latest episode fades from the news. Indeed, the Board of Directors of the Zoological Society has, at this point, an obligation to act.

Lastly, and it is lost in much of the coverage of this event, but the zoo also has an obligation, moral and legal, to ensure the safety of the tiger. The Siberian tiger is highly endangered, with more living in captivity than in the wild, it’s a tragedy that a young tiger such as this one had to be killed. I do not question the actions of the police, this animal had to be shot and killed in order to prevent additional human injury or death, but the zoo is ultimately responsible for allowing the conditions to exist that enabled the tiger to escape it’s enclosure, therefore the zoo is responsible for the death of the tiger as a result of the inadequacies of it’s enclosure.