Protect Your Wireless Network with MAC Address Filtering…A Bad Idea

To secure your wireless network, you can use a variety of means, and one of which is by selecting only what MAC addresses are allowed. This is known as MAC filtering, and it can serve as a basic deterrent against most opportunistic attackers.

However, just using MAC filtering alone will probably be a bad idea. It doesn’t take much determination or knowledge at all to spoof a MAC address. In fact, it’s actually quite easy to spoof a MAC address, and can be done within 2 steps.

Step 1. Download and run any freely available security tool, for example Nmap. Set it to listen in on network traffic and pick out the MAC address.
Step 2. Change your MAC address to the one you picked out.

In fact, Nmap even allows you to spoof your MAC address by running the “-spoof-mac” command line option. This was originally intended to hide the true source of Nmap probes.

If you don’t have Nmap, you can just spoof your MAC address with the software that comes with most operating systems.

Here are some examples:

1. Linux: ifconfig eth0 hw ether 02:a1:13:d4:00:12

2. MS Windows: the MAC address is stored in a registry key (location of that key varies from one MS Windows version to the next, but you can easily find that and just edit it yourself). Alternatively, download a free tool such as Macshift to help you change your MAC address.

Now that you know how easy it is to spoof your MAC address, start worrying even more, because these simple steps are run automatically and very, very quickly by malware. This means that if you are using MAC filtering to protect your wireless network, you should seriously consider something a little more robust.

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Edit .htaccess to increase PHP’s max file upload

To increase the upload file size limit on your website, you need to edit PHP’s configuration settings. Unfortunately, not everyone has their own web server, so most of the time people are constrained by the limits of shared hosting. But you can still modify your base php.ini file by creating your own php.ini with the edits that you want.

Your php.ini file needs to be in every folder that’s going to be affected, or at least in the folder where the php script is being called from. Unfortunately if you have dozens of folders that need this edit, then you’ll need dozens of php.ini files.

An alternative is to then use .htaccess. By just placing a.htaccess file in your root folder, all folders beneath it will also have the change. The code to change your PHP max file upload size is:

RewriteEngine On
php_value post_max_size 1000M
php_value upload_max_filesize 1000M
php_value max_execution_time 6000000

You can edit it to suit your needs. 1000M = 1GB, so edit accordingly. Do note that your host will need to allow PHP edits though.

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What is the difference between Hibernate and Standby in Windows XP?

Standby and hibernate are 2 extremely useful functions that you can use because of the time it saves you from booting up your computer. Once you’re done with your work session, and need to leave your desk, simply choose standby or hibernate. These two sleep modes are fantastic for laptops as well.

But what’s the difference? Hibernate saves an image of your current session with all open applications and files. Then it powers down your computer (exactly as if you had turned it off). When you next switch your computer on, you will see exactly the same applications and files open as you had left them. In this state, your computer is exactly as though it’s turned off — no power is needed in hibernate mode.

Standby is a sleep mode that reduces the power that your computer uses to almost nothing. The keyword is “almost”. When you use standby mode, your computer cuts the power to your screen, hard drive, peripheral devices…in fact, anything except your computer’s memory (RAM) is cut. This is because the RAM will maintain a copy of your working session.

I’ve had people tell me that moving your notebook around while it’s in standby mode will shake up the harddrive when it’s spinning and cause hard disk problems. Utter rubbish. The hard drive is powered down during standby, much less in hibernate mode.

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Top Freeware Applications / Software (That’s Right — Entirely Free!)

I think free software is simply awesome. You get so much functionality and power out-of-the-box, and most of the time, these software developers are really passionate about what they do, and even release frequent updates. Here’s a list of my top freeware applications. There are some programs that I just have to pay for, so I’m not including them in this list.

• FileZilla is an open source FTP client with a full set of features. It rivals commercial-grade software in its functionality, and is user-friendly with an attractive UI.
• Audacity is a powerful audio editing software, great for recording music, tweaking sound files and also for podcasts.
• Winamp is a great music player for those looking for a alternative to the relatively bloated and slow “iTunes”. It’s the defacto audio player that supports almost all kinds of audio formats and is extensible through the use of plugins.
• Miranda is a fast and lightweight all-in-one messenger that uses very little resources. It is plugin-driven and you can enable support for MSN, AIM, ICQ, JABBER(G-Mail Chat), YAHOO, and even IRC out-of-the-box. Great piece of software, especially if you are using more than one messenger service.
• Paint.Net is a free image editing software that’s incredibly easy to use and powerful as well. For those of you who don’t have Photoshop and don’t want to use GIMP, this is the best you can get.
• UltraVNC is a remote desktop control software. It comes in 2 parts - a server and a client. You run the server on a computer that you want to control, and run the client anywhere else that you want to control the server computer from. With this freeware, you can remotely do anything with your computer - it’s just like you were there physically.
• TrueCrypt provides industry-standard encryption features that enables encryption of any drive. The cool thing is that you can create hidden volumes, and as you move files to that drive, the files encrypt automatically. TrueCrypt is great for keeping important information away from prying eyes.
• Skype is a voice over IP (VOIP) program. While pc-to-pc calls are usually free, and are supported by many other instant messenging services, Skype actually allows pc-to-landline or landline-to-pc calls at a cheap price.
• Antivir is a powerful anti-virus software that’s lightweight and uses very little resources. The Personal Edition is free, and comparison studies have shown Antivir to perform better than AVG and Avast! in terms of virus detection.
• ImgBurn is the answer to people who find Nero to be a little too overwhelming. Fast and lightweight, this is a great free program for burning CDs/DVDs.
• VLC Player is incredible because it can play almost any video formats that you throw at it, out-of-the-box! It supports subtitles and screenshotting, and also can play files with multiple sound streams.

If I’m looking for a software that doesn’t have a freeware version, I usually check out online software download sites that offer a list of commercial software.

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Why Do People Recommend Alt-Tab For Task Management?

Now this is something that I don’t get — why do people love alt-tab so much? I have tried using alt-tab, and it seems like it’s much faster to click on the open tasks on the taskbar than to cycle through the alt-tab list, looking for the program that you want. This is similar to Expose, or its Windows equivalent of TopDesk…it sure looks pretty, but it isn’t as fast as just clicking on what window you want to reopen. At least, that’s what I think.

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Best Free Windows Calculator Replacement

Moffsoft FreeCalc is a freeware calculator application that is the best Windows calculator alternative. That’s right — you can completely replace the in-built calculator within Windows with this freeware tool because it provides so much more functionality.

Firstly, the calculator is resizable, so gone are the days that you had to carefully click on each number (yes, I know you can type it in on the keyboard as well). With Moffsoft FreeCalc, you can expand the calculator window so that it even fills up the entire screen if you wish! This makes pressing those buttons SO MUCH easier. Just check out a screenshot of it running on my laptop here:

Secondly, you get a useful tape (optional - can be turned off) that is displayed on the right of the main calculator window, and it’ll record down all the operations that you’ve performed.

Just these two additional features alone have made me switch from the calculator in Windows to this great little freeware application. Try it out! Moffsoft FreeCalc can be downloaded here. And if you want a premium version that comes with even more features (and I mean A LOT), then you’ll be pleased to know that Moffsoft offers a premium version of their calculator as well. Want even more calculator software? Then check out this site, because it offers a really wide range of freeware and software downloads.

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How To Edit .htaccess So That SSI Include Code Will Run

If you have tried adding in SSI include codes into your HTML files, but find that it doesn’t work, the problem may be that you might not have enabled SSI yet.

The easier way to do so is to edit your .htaccess file to have these lines of code:

AddHandler server-parsed .html
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes

By setting this, you are telling your server to parse all HTML files. There’s a drawback though — ALL HTML files are parsed — even if they don’t have SSI or include code in them. So, there’s a bit of an overhead. Otherwise, this is fine.

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