Month: July 2005

Is using open Wi-Fi against the law?

Post ImageYou might have heard in the news recently that “wardriving”, or using someone’s open wireless connection from your car, is once again a hot topic. It seems that a man in Florida was arrested for “hacking” into an open network connection from his vehicle. Here’s what the folks an Engadget had to say:

If stories like this one result in more users setting up WEP (and, yes, we know it’s not very secure, but it’ll block “casual” intruders) on their machines, fine. If, however, every time we open a laptop in a public place (some of which, like New York’s City Hall Park, have public WiFi access), we’re tagged as a potential criminal, something truly valuable will have been lost.

I completely agree! The problem is that the law under which the man was charged was written before anyone had considered wireless network connections. Here’s what CNET found out about the topic:

Is it legal to use someone’s Wi-Fi connection to browse the Web if they haven’t put a password on it?
Nobody really knows. “It’s a totally open question in the law,” says Neal Katyal, a professor of criminal law at Georgetown University. “There are arguments on both sides.”

The law in question, of course, is in the United States. I am not sure if Canada has something similar, though I would be willing to bet that we do. I certainly hope the matter is resolved soon, because in two years I think it will be commonplace to have entire cities covered in wireless access – assuming that WiMax equipment is manufactured sometime in the near future.

Read: Wi-Fi Alliance

Batman Begins

Post ImageI finally went and saw Batman Begins last night. I don’t have too much to say, other than if you haven’t seen this movie, you probably should! It was, in a word, amazing. I totally think they should remake every Batman movie ever made.

All of the performances were excellent, with the exception of Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. She just didn’t fit the part, and looked out of place in every scene. I used to think that Michael Keaton was the one and only Batman, but Christian Bale changed my mind about that. He played the character amazingly well, and very convincingly. Morgan Freeman is one of my favorite actors and his character was probably one of the more interesting ones. I was surprised, but I actually liked Liam Neeson as a villain. And finally, probably the best performance in the movie, was Michael Caine as Alfred. Wonderfully cast!

The movie is appropriately dark, and does a nice job of building up the story. In fact, you don’t see any “dark night” action until the second hour of the movie. The Batman gadgetry is pretty cool, even the half-tank, half-Hummer Batmobile (called the “tumbler”). And the city of Gotham finally looks the way it should.

Perhaps the only part of the movie I didn’t like was the very end when a reference is made to The Joker. I would have appreciated a complete and total break from the previous Batman movies a lot more than a 95% break. Though I suppose that is a very small price to pay for such a wonderful movie.

I liked Batman Begins so much, I’d be willing to go see it again!

Read: Batman Begins

Terror in London

Post ImageBy now you’ve heard about the terrible bombings that rocked London earlier today. Instead of recount again what happened, I figured it would be more useful to share some of the interesting images, perspectives and links I have found.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and at times like this, it’s easy to see why. As you might expect, the most popular tags in Flickr for the last 24 hours are blasts, bombings, londonbombblasts, terrorism, and many others, all similar. Here are some of the pictures I found most interesting, scary, and real:

Obviously, there are lots of people blogging about the attacks too. Via Scoble, I came across memeorandum, a site that “presents an automated hourly synopsis of the latest online news and opinion, combining weblog commentary with traditional news reports.” Very interesting to read. The top searches in Technorati all have to do with the London attacks, and as a result they have setup a special site featuring posts and information related to the bombings. BoingBoing has an extensive post covering the attacks, with images and reader comments. Here’s a first-hand account:

A funny thing happened to me on the way to work this morning. My tube blew up. So forgive me if the following isn’t as witty, perspicacious, or just plain hilarious as my usual posts, but I just want to write down what happened as I remember it; partly to get my own head round it, and partly because I think it’s got the makings of an anecdote to rival the time I had sex twice once. So erm, yeah, try to bear with me through the boring bits – you’ll eventually get to a Hollywood-style explosion with a hint of post-apocalyptic fallout.

The BBC is featuring Reporters’ Log, written by their correspondents on the ground, as well as a “Have Your Say” page with tons of comment. WikiNews has some excellent coverage. Across the Atlantic is one of many blogs updating as the news happens.

I have tagged everything with london77 in delicious, and I’ll add new stuff there as I come across it.

Read: BBC News In Depth

Google Maps Pedometer

Post ImageI came across a really cool tool this afternoon (via Penmachine) – Gmaps Pedometer! Basically its a tool that someone named Paul cooked up that lets you draw a route on Google Maps and it will calculate the distance for you.

I started playing with it and found myself getting addicted! So you have been warned, this tool might lower your productivity as you try to figure out the distances of all the little routes you take. For example, the route I take to the office from home is about 14 KM, while the route from the office back home (I go a different way) is about 12 KM. The tool only displays distances in miles, so I converted them using Google’s calculator.

Give it a shot! You might discover that the route you take is longer (or shorter) than you think! I am not entirely certain how accurate the results are, but they seem pretty reasonable to me.

Read: Gmaps Pedometer

Tablet PC Memory Leak Patched!

Post ImageFellow Tablet PC users (yes I realize that of my readers, that’s probably just you Dickson), we can finally rest easy! No more restarting! Microsoft has issued a patch for the memory leak that has plagued the operating system:

A memory leak in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 causes a gradual decrease in available system memory. This loss in available memory causes degradation in system performance. When this behavior occurs, the user must restart the computer. This problem is caused by a memory leak in the tcserver.exe service.

Get it while it’s hot!

Read: Microsoft Download

University of Alberta to buy Bay building

Post ImageThe University of Alberta is gearing up to buy the ancient Hudson’s Bay building in downtown Edmonton. The purchase would solve two major problems – what to do with the aging building in the heart of our downtown, and how to deal with the space crunch for the ever growing university.

If the deal goes through, as many as 1,000 continuing education students would take both day and night classes in the building as early as September 2006.

The university’s research transition facility and its more than 90 academics would also set up shop in the building. They would be joined by 30 workers from TEC Edmonton, a joint partnership between the city and the university, which is associated with the research operation.

I really hope this goes through, and it seems quite likely now. Mayor Mandel has long supported such a deal, and new university president Indira Samarasekera has also placed her support behind the purchase. And the good news is that the university has no plans to make CHUM (which owns A-Channel, and The Bounce) to move out.

I really like the idea – it makes a lot of sense. The LRT directly connects the building to the current university campus, and having a downtown presence will definitely help both businesses and the university. Thank goodness the proposals to turn the building into a parkade were turned down – a downtown University of Alberta location sounds much better for our city.

Read: Edmonton Journal

Halo 2 Map Expansion Released

Post ImageMicrosoft (or Bungie or whatever you want to call the team) has released five new maps for Halo 2:

Included in the pack are: Relic, Gemini, Elongation, Backwash (eww) and Terminal. The maps can be downloaded by all Xbox Live! users at a cost of $11.99 (or £5.99 for Brits). Or if you can wait until August 30th, you can get all five for free. Alternatively you can go to your local games retailer and pick up the $19.99 expansion pack which includes all nine new multiplayer maps, a special cinematic, behind-the-scenes documentary and all prior Halo 2 auto updates.

Sounds cool to me! The writer at Joystiq tried them all (oh such hard work blogging about games) and so far likes Relic the best. Considering I don’t think I have played all the existing maps, I am in no rush to get the new ones 🙂

Read: Joystiq

PGA Celebrities!

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PGA Celebrities!

PGA Celebrities!,
originally uploaded by Dickson Wong.

Second attempt at posting this, hopefully you can see it now! I am trying to get the Flickr “Blog This” feature working with my blog.

Dickson was in Whistler yesterday for the first day of the Telus Skins Game, and he took a bunch of “behind the scenes” photos and posted them up in his brand new Flickr account. Check it out!

Happy Fourth of July!

It just wouldn’t be fair of me to not wish our friends in the red states a Happy Independence Day! And, I am quite surprised, no fancy graphic at Google.com. Maybe they were busy celebrating? Actually, if you didn’t know any better, you’d have no idea today was ID4 judging by the most common websites. I remember back in the day when Hotmail completely changed their look to celebrate Independence Day (that was, of course, before they were purchased by Microsoft). Just goes to show how long I’ve been a geek I guess.