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I tried BackTack beta 4 on my laptop Sony Z21WN yesterday. I was very surprised that it worked out-of-box without any modifications. I didn’t have to build a new kernel nor install any device drivers. I was delighted to see the wireless adaptor Intel Wifi Link 5100 can go to monitoring mode and inject packages without any problem. That makes this laptop a very good security tool that you can perform penetration testing on your networks. If you are using WEP protocol to encrypt your wireless network then you can be sure that it will take less than 10-15 minutes to capture and crack the password.

By the way, if you are interested in the subject and would like to know more about penetration testing then please let me know.

My next aim is to install BackTrack beta 4 into a USB Flash disk. Lets see how it goes.

Filed under: Security by huseyin
No Comments » Tagged with: BaskTrack 4 beta • Cracking WEP • Intel Wifi Link 5100 • monitoring mode • Sony Z21WN

I have recently created a page to share my photos. Currently, there is only one album but I ll be updating the gallery whenever I get the chance.

You can access the gallery by clicking the “Photo Gallery” link under pages section on the right sidebar. I will add more pages and publish them here, so make sure you don’t miss them.

Filed under: News by huseyin
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I have recently bought a Sony Viao VGN-Z21WN laptop. I should say, hardware wise, it is a very impressive machine. It is light (1.5kg), solid (carbon fibre) and fast (Intel Core2 Duo P9500 @ 2.53 GHz). Although the style of the keyboard was new to me but I got used to it pretty quickly and I really like typing on this laptop now.

Sony Vaio Z21WN

Screen quality is absolutely spot-on. It is bright, crisp and with a 1600 X 900 resolution, 13ich screen is providing a full HD experience. When it comes to graphics, it has a neat trick. There are two video card on the laptop and you can flick the button above the keyboard’s top edge from Stamina to Speed, and Intel’s onboard graphics are displaced by a more capable Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS. Flick back to stamina mode and it offers you about six-seven hours of computing. Almost forgot to mention, it has a built-in web cam, DVD Writer, and Wireless WAN 7.2Mbps (HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS) modem.

I should admit that it is a pricey gadget. However, I bought it from a duty free shop at the Manchester Airport with some extra discount.

Filed under: Review, Technology by huseyin
No Comments » Tagged with: laptop • Sony • Z Series • Z21WN

I decided to move my website from the University of Manchester Compsoc server. It was too unreliable and my blog suddenly stopped working. So, I had to do some recovery work to get my older posts back.
Anyway, huseyin.org is now hosted on one of my friends’ web server. So, very special thanks to Halil Ibrahim, the man who ended this misery and accepted to host my website.

Filed under: News by huseyin
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I have been away from blogging for a while due to various reasons and some commitments, but I am back now.

Filed under: News by huseyin
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It’s been more than a half decade since our mobile phones started to come with a digital camera and an mp3 player. However, so far they have all looked like a mobile phone. There were some PDA-looking phones which offered better office and web capabilities. However, if you weren’t a businessman or businesswomen then there was no way that you would carry one of these. Even if you had one, there was no way that you would expose them. But why not? Simply because you were cool!

iphone

Well, I think we are all about to start to redefine both the meaning and the look of being cool. Recently, Apple announced their long-waited phone iPhone. It is not just a phone; it is an iPod, a digital camera, an organiser, a web browser, a googleMap, an email client and more. Ohh, I almost forgot: of course, it is really “cool”.

When I look at it, it becomes so obvious to me that the future is going to be the Web. Goodbye to all PCs, digital cameras, mp3 players, mobile phones, PDAs etc. Whatever the names of the devices are going to be, they will all serve for one purpose: connecting us to Web. They will all connect us to our friends, favourite music, emails, photos, diaries, etc.

We will be all connected to the “Web”.

Filed under: Technology by huseyin
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Last week in Globalisation and IS lecture we looked at the digital divide in the world. There was an interesting article from Financial Times which focuses on how efforts to spread IT’s reach is progressing. More interestingly, a comment made by the president of Cisco Systems’ emerging markets group made me rethink about the role of ICT in connecting people. The comment was:

“For people in emerging countries to be members of a connected society will ultimately make the world a more stable and safer place.”

After we read the article, a question was asked to the class: why would a “connected society” make the world a “more stable and safer place?” The first question I had to ask myself was whether ICT really creates connected societies or not. I think it is beyond doubt that ICT connects us to people in distant and remote locations. However, I think at the same time it implicitly separates us from neighbouring people. As being social existences, we all need some sort of connection to and interaction with others. I think today, this need is mostly addressed by ICT. Therefore, we do not know about our neighbours and neighbourhood as we know about celebrities, political characters, actors, football players, friends on Facebook etc.

Don’t you think it is much easier to find a connected society in a remote little village in the countryside - most likely also that place would also be a more stable and safe place to live- rather than in a global world?

Filed under: Information Systems, Thoughts by huseyin
No Comments » Tagged with: globalisation • ICT

I came across with this extraordinary video last night and wanted to share it here.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Dr. Robert Lue and Dr. Viel from the department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University created an educational video for their students. “The video vividly illustrates the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus. This animation explores the different cellular environments in which these communications take place.

If you would like to learn more about this animation here is a video which explains everything happening in the animation.

Filed under: Science by huseyin
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What is the best anti-virus software? What is the best firewall application? I think these are the most common questions among computer users who concern about both their computer security and privacy. I have been asking these two questions for a considerably long time. I met firewall concept when I had heavily involved to IRC chat rooms almost a decade ago. Kicking out and banning people from chat rooms, capturing their IP addresses and sending them ‘nukes’ were becoming usual activities especially in Turkish chat rooms. Conceal Firewall was the first firewall and F-Prot was the first anti-virus application I had used. Since then I have tried almost every application in the market to find the ultimate best solution that will solve all today’s problems of privacy and digital security.

ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 7.0

I have recently tried ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite version 7.0.302. Last time the reason I uninstalled ZoneAlarm was because of their unsuccessful anti-virus engine. When I had learned ZoneAlarm had started using Kaspersky’s antivirus engine, I was quite curious about the result. I do believe that ZoneAlarm’s firewall was and is still one of the best firewall applications in the market today. On the other hand, Kaspersky made a promising entry to the market and surprised its all competitors. The Moscow-headquartered Company gradually has built their reputation and won many awards. Therefore, I thought that the combination of both would result in a big success. However, I was disappointed unfortunately.

CPU resource allocation

First of all, the memory usage was appalling. The application creates five visible processes: vsmon.exe, two scanningProcess.exe, zlclient.exe and Monitor.exe. I was shocked when I realised the sum of memory usages of these all processes were 117 MB. I think this is the point where the main difference between ZoneAlarm and its alternatives diminishes. We all know that the security is a crucial issue and requires some effort and sacrifices. However, the amount of ZoneAlarm’s memory usage is a big burden to today’s ordinary computers and makes this application really unattractive. You can argue that good solution comes with a price. However, I do believe that we can find better applications on the market to replace this software.

Second, virus scan takes ages. If you have Netbeans or Eclipse installed on your system you have a big problem. Because the scan requires a considerable amount of system resources; especially CPU usage, you might not be able to use your computer. Scanning of 15 GB must not take two and an half hour.

You can further argue that performance is not the big issue and it can be substituted by reliability, ease of use, customer support etc. Then perhaps ZoneAlarm might be a good solution to you. For me, I am going to go back to use NOD32 and Comodo Firewall combination for my security solution. These two applications are both free and very promising. However, combination of these two is not a total security solution. Systems must be supported with a decent Spyware application in addition to these two.

Filed under: Review, Software by huseyin
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Two bank robbers have been caught by the police and now being questioned separated from each other. The situation is that if one of them turns crown witness he will get off scot-free while the other will face 10 years in prison. If they both confess, they will each face 8 years. If they both keep mum then the best the police can expect is that they each get two years. This is known as The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

In 1979 the political scientist Robert Axelrod decided to organise a tournament which a number of game theorists from different academic fields were asked to submit a game which plays The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Each game computed to each other for 200 rounds.

What would you have submitted? In other words, what kind of strategy you would have come up with. You are one of the prisoners and you have to make a choice of defecting or cooperating 200 times. After each decision you will be informed about the other prisoner’s choice.

To everybody’s surprise, the shortest program won. It had been submitted by the psychologist and philosopher Anatol Rapoport. His strategy was TITFORTAT; on the first move, cooperate, then do whatever the other player did last. Interestingly, TITFORTAT couldn’t have managed to win a single game during the tournament. But its overall score at the end of the tournament was far higher than other programs.

Axelrod has arranged another tournament. This second tournament was a somewhat bigger affair, with 62 entrants from six countries. TITFORTAT was once again submitted to the tournament. When the results came out, Axelrod was stunned because TITFORTAT had won again. Despite the fact that all the contestants had known the strategy of TITFORTAT and how well it might do, none of them could come up with something that was better.

The reason behind the success of TITFORTAT was hidden in three characteristics of it.

Niceness
Forgiveness
Retaliatory

Is the success of our life related to these characteristics?

Are we still keep failing despite the fact that all of us know the “recipe” of the TITFORTAT?

Or, are we so persistent in winning every game?

Filed under: Thoughts by huseyin
No Comments » Tagged with: dilemma • game theory • strategy • titfortat