Sunday, October 21, 2007

Satellite Internet Security


This is kind of a "part Two" to my previous post "How safe do you think you are?"I've been using the offline downloading technique for a couple of months now, and I've
been getting all sorts of stuff through it.Ofcourse most of the stuff is junk, pics and videos of the "bad" kind, I'm using different filters to help me sift through all the crap, but I still get them anyway.
Among the good stuff I've been getting all kinds of documents, veeeeery interesting
stuff, for example, I got architectural plans for a tower called "Burj Al-Shat" which
is supposed to be constructed in Tripoli, in the place where the old "Al-Shat Hotel"
used to be. I'm talking about the actual architectural plans, they even have the name
and details of the firm that made the designs, which is based in Singapore. Along with
that I also got the Soil Testing Results Report made for that area, and since I'm a
civil engineer, I know that this kind of study costs a lot of money, and I don't think
the managers of this project would be too happy if they knew that their very important
documents were flying around for people like me to catch.Among the stuff I've also got a lot of family photos, scanned personal documents such as birth certificates, educational certificates and passports. You'd really be amazed at some of the things you can find.An interesting note, a friend of mine was poking around in my computer and he came across some of these documents, when he asked and I told him how I got them, he was so spooked his face's color was pale as snow :), makes me wonder what has he been sending and recieving on the internet :), needless to say, he asked me how to avoid being exposed like this and I introduced him to the wonderful world of data encryption, I simply gave him a lttle program on his Flash Drive that he can use to encrypt any data before sending it on the internet.So what can we learn from this? a very simple lesson:If you value your privacy, either use basic encryption or stop using the internet :)

Back with a new 8800GTS


It's been a while since I last posted, things have been a little hectic. Hopefully I'll be able to post more and on a regular basis within a couple of days, I think I've managed to put most of my things in order now :)
Being the Techno-Geek I am, I can't help but tell you guys -and gals ofcourse ;)- that the latest addition to my collection of computer hardware has arrived a couple of weeks ago. Those of you who have seen my old post about the graphics card probably know I've been trying to decide which one would I get. Well now that question is answered, I bought myself a spanking-new 8800GTS, a mighty card, and certainly not cheap. I had an impulse of "you only live once" attitude and decided that life was too short, I deserve to pamper myself with this beauty. And now after installing it, I'm glad to report that I have no regrets, it certainly made my computer much more powerful :)
Here's a pic for those of you who are computer-saavvy enough to care :)