Author: Maëlys McArdle

This being my study week, I’ve undertaken a few projects including the Eynto show. For those who missed it, the Eynto show will be my contribution in the “hacking TV” genre. The show will be split in four major sections. The first part will focus on the basics of Internet Security, which will include some demos on wardriving and ARP poisoning as well as IE6 vulnerabilities. The second part will deal with warez and the various methods by which to come across it, such as IRC, Newsgroups, FXP, Bittorrent, ed2k protocol, etc. The third section will be a quick tutorial on DVD Ripping, and the fourth part will show the audience how to install RAM/HDD/Optical Drives/Video Cards etc. as well as some hardware shopping tips.

Yesterday, after spending $15 on donuts and much coffee, I stamped out a 30 page script for the show. Today I began the filming process, and I forsee at least one other day of filming. After that, I will still need to do the voiceover work, the incredible amount of screen capturing in video format, and the copious amount of animations for the show.

It’s a huge undertaking, and unfortunately I only have 2 more days (MAX) to do it in. The rest of the time will have to be consumed preparing for my physics midterm and job searching.

During an extremely dull Geographic Information Systems class, some buddies and I were just poking around having some fun and laughing our asses off at random things. Somehow that de-evolved into sacriligeous humour, and then me verifying to see ifdownwithjesus.com was taken. When I discovered that this popular domain name was in fact, available, I decided in the heat of the moment to go and get it. The site would in itself be a parody, poking fun both at chavs and at the christians that do a very, very, veeery bad job of trying to “act hip” as they market themselves to younger generations.

A week and much coding/photoshopping later, I bring you:
www.downwithjesus.com

…Not making life easier, Robertson has just launched a new music store that doesn’t have songs from any major artists, doesn’t have the DRM infection demanded by the RIAA and doesn’t have serious profit prospects.

“You don’t do an online music store to make money,” he said. “You can’t even think about making money until you have a massive scale and even then it isn’t a high margin business.”

MP3tunes charges 88 cents a song or $8.88 per album and sends 65 cents per song or $6.50 per album back to the artists. Companies like Apple and Napster also manage just a few pennies per song sale from their online stores.

“But I think backing the MP3 format is the right thing to do for consumers,” Robertson said. “Today, desktop Linux is locked out of almost all of the online music stores. That’s because we don’t support DRM, and I think DRM is the biggest threat to open source, no question about it.”

Source:The Register

The online music store in question is MP3tunes.com. In a world where the online stores are being asphyxiated due to the legal idiocy of the RIAA, its nice to finally see a company like this that is not afraid to bring a much needed breath of fresh air to the sector. That said, anyone up for bets as to how long it will take the RIAA to sue MP3tunes for not enforcing a DRM system?

Most of you know about Wardriving, but how many of you know about Warbussing?

Feeling like being a Wifi Pioneer (or just cheap, you pick), I decided to go out and ‘warbus’ today in the city center of my city using a specially outfitted Sony Clié PDA. I used the device to detect local APs (Access Points, ie. Wireless Routers), and initiated scans whilst on the bus during during its route in the city core.

The bus was travelling relatively fast, so every Wifi sweep that I did in search of APs yielded a different set of results every few seconds as I entered and left the zones of each point. I then got off the vehicle and proceeded to backtrack on foot to see what I had initially missed:

Interestingly enough, each scan still yielded different results from any one spot. In one instance it picked up a router that was inside a restaurant a very distant block away (the SSID of the AP was of the same name as the eatery). It should be noted that pretty much all of these APs were WEP enabled.

Those who visit lokitorrent.com will be pleasantly surprised to be informed that the site has been taken over by the MPAA, and all the personal information stored on its server given away to this organization. That’s like me joining Hotmail, Hotmail being sued, and then Hotmail giving away all my information to complete strangers.

Anywho, here’s the “warning” they put on the site:

…and my satirical take on the issue:

I do find it interesting though that the MPAA admits on their manifesto that Lokitorrent themselves carried nothing illegal, and rather that they facilitated illegal actions. I guess the Internet itself is their next target, as it facilitiates illegal actions too! If the person that ran Loki had to pay $1,000,000, I guess that means the people that created the Internet should be charged $1,000,000,000,000? Or would the MPAA still not be satisified?