BAWUG – SF Bay Area
JiWire – General Wi-Fi resource
PracticallyNetworked – Networking, wired and wireless
WiFi NetNews – Weblog format. Part of JiWire.
WiFiFreeSpot – directory of wireless access points — access is free although sometimes it requires a purchase of food or something like that. (added 1/18/2004)

Like every other 3rd party IM app, Miranda was unable to connect with Yahoo once they made their switch-over to the new server (scs.msg.yahoo.com) and authentication mechanism about a week ago. Trillian, GAIM, Easy Message and others all managed to fix their code but the Miranda commuinity is pretty loose-knit and the Yahoo protocol isn’t “owned” by anyone in the core team so it took a little while for someone to grab the latest libyahoo2 and incorporate it into the Yahoo plug-in. Anyway, I’ve downloaded it (pointer to the download location is in this Yahoo plug-in thread in the Miranda forum.

RipOffReport (aka BadBusinessBureau.com) is a pretty good site that lists “bad” companies and the rip-offs they perpetrate on their consumers. It looks a bit sensationalistic and I’m tempted to not trust them because of that. I dunno, decide for yourself.

Yahoo‘s changed something in their Messenger authentication again and it’s knocked my favorite multi-IM client, Miranda, out. Trillian‘s got it working as does GAIM and a new one that I found today — Easy Message Express (can’t remember how I found this one, sorry).

I find Miranda meets my needs better than the others but until they can get get the lastest libyahoo2 incorporated I guess I’ll stick with Trillian.

(Reported in the January 8, 2004 issue of the Windows Client Update, an email newsletter from Windows Network and .NET Magazine)

Looks like Microsoft’s trying to convince everyone that they’re serious about security with this page. I think it’s pretty funny, though, that they’re running ActiveX on even the entry page.

Another security advisory from Secunia, this time it’s a filename buffer overflow in Yahoo’s Messenger. It’s supposedly addressed in V5.6.0.1358.

Secunia reports in this advisory of a way to bypass password protection of Microsoft Word documents. It requires using a hex editor to modify the document but, still, the protection’s broken.

Another reason to use PDF?

I’ve been researching 802.11g rigs for a couple of weeks now. The best as far as distance and speed is supposedly the Netgear WGT624 108Mbps router but the 2nd best is the D-Link DI-624 router. Both products run the Atheros chipset which can bond 2 channels together, effectively doubling the data rate from 54 to 108Mbps. No, you don’t actually get 108Mbps through the router … more like 30+Mbps.

Anyway, D-Link has a $40 rebate if you buy both the DI-624 and the DWL-G650. You have to purchase them by the end of the day today (1/5/2004) and they both have to appear on the same invoice. Well, I’ve been looking at them on Amazon.com for well over a week. This morning they cost a little over $160. This evening they cost around $135. Even if something goes wrong with the rebate, I still feel good about this price.

Should be here in a week or two (I’m too cheap to pay extra for shipping).

One of my favorite utilities, SlickRun has been updated to V3.0.0.1. It’s a utility that only an old command-line jockey like myself could love. Hit a hot-key combination and up pops a little window into which you type a string of characters (autocompletion available). If the combination is recognized it’ll laumch a command that you specify. Fast. And Slick!

Reported here by Secunia. It makes sense but, I mean, c’mon! — scripting vulnerabilities in a webcam?!?