NINJAM is a program to allow people to make real music together via the Internet. Every participant can hear every other participant. Each user can also tweak their personal mix to his or her liking. NINJAM is cross-platform, with clients available for Mac OS X and Windows.

NINJAM uses compressed audio which allows it to work with any instrument or combination of instruments. You can sing, play a real piano, play a real saxophone, play a real guitar with whatever effects and guitar amplifier you want, anything. If your computer can record it, then you can jam with it (as opposed to MIDI-only systems that automatically preclude any kind of natural audio collaboration1).

NINJAM - Novel Intervallic Network Jamming Architecture for Music

Google Base arrived recently, sharing the same domain as gmail, so cross site security holes in Google Base will allow access to all the gmail emails, as well as XSS phishing attacks using the google brand. Of course as you would expect for a new product from a major internet company, there’d obviously been no security testing whatsover and there were trivially obvious XSS holes in it.
Like the yahoo programmer last week, the incompetent google base programmer had simply taken a parameter from the querystring, and written it unencoded into the document. So a query *removed* performed the alert, this was fixed about 5 hours after I reported it, showing again that google don’t care about the security of our data enough to not release clearly insecure software.

More Google security failures

I grew up with a Commodore 64 as my best friend. The C64 offered a new world to escape to from the banality of 5th grade. This is a story I always tell and people respond with a blank stare eventually uttering, "What was the point? That's pretty stupid." So you just shouldn't bother reading this.

When I was ten I acquired a 300 baud modem. Services like Quantum Link (later to become AOL), which were primitive chatroom networks, soon lost appeal after I was repeatedly kicked off for excessive cursing. I started logging on to local BBSs (bulletin board systems) where a SysOp (one lonely guy) set up his computer to receive other users one at a time. The BBS’s featured message boards and download/upload areas. I was still involved in the real world of life, not totally ensconced in the world of computers, but I was looking for a way out, something new that would let me escape the constant ridicule of being fat and weird. Unfortunately these local BBSs were not the answer because they were usually run by old geezer hobbyists and most of the BBS members were from his close circle of friends. On the message boards they usually talked about RUSH.

I was always scouring the cheapo software bins where budget companies like Mastertronic would sell their games for $10 a piece. There was something enticing about these games in that they were obscure and were the effort of a couple people rather than a whole design team. Even if the game was absolute crap, it was a more personal and interesting experience than dropping $40 on a fancy multi-disc game from Electronic Arts. Like my record hoarding and MP3 collecting these days, it was like finding a treasure in a garbage dump.

Free cracked games were easy to come by with a modem. With a snail-slow 300 baud modem, it usually took about two hours to download 160 blocks…but the magical world that opened up by acquiring cracked games was more than worth it…and it wasn’t about the games.

Keep reading ...

My Commodore 64 Secret Life

With luck, you have found this site via either my original Stompbox How-To or the article I wrote for Make: Magazine. I've put up these pages under the stompboxnetworks.com name as the original URL (moro.fbrtech.com/~tora/EVDO) was rather ugly. All the old project pages are mirrored here now.
If you just wandered in here from a web-search or a curious click, you may be wondering just exactly what a 3G/Wifi StompBox is. A Stompbox is a home-brew WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network) router. In more human terms, it's a compact little box that gets data from cellular towers and re-shares it for multiple computers to use.
To use it all one does is plug it in to the cigarette lighter of a car (or a 12v supply when at home). It automatically boots up and links in to a cellular data service, turning itself into an access point. Turn on your laptop, join the network and voila -- you're on the net! It's just like using a hotspot (such as they have at Starbucks and airports), but it goes anywhere you car goes. Some people have even hauled them around in backpacks to make themselves into a walking network access site.

The Stompbox 3G to WIFI hotspot

i am glad to report that the gumstix (with a breakout-gs) dialed my cellphone through gm-862 module. i just connected the STUART of gumstix to the gm-862 module to create the hardware interface. the source code is available for your review and use.
(the code is available under the terms of GNU General Public License. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.)
if you want to try this code, you need to have a a gumstix computer, a gm-862 module and a cingular wireless simcard. of course, you must connect gumstix to the gm-862 module over ST UART. btw, you also need to specify a destination number in tux-phone.h file.
an important point to note: the hardware is not connected to any speaker or microphone or keypad or display. it just dials out to prove that the gumstix can communicate with the gprs module.

Kick Ass! I think I will wait until there is working code but this is cool...

http://www.sparkfun.com/ has the gm-862 modules and a host of other geek DIY stuff

The Open Source Cellphone

I just got off the phone with a good friend of mine in the mobile IT business. He had a client today who had their account suspended without notification, after a call to Cox support he was told that the customer's account was disabled because of an 'open wireless access point.' After some further questions he found out that now have vans driving around in various customer areas throughout Orange County and San Diego.

Anyone else heard of this going on? What are the implications of this? Is Cox connecting to customer networks without their permission or just scanning to see for a AP without WEP? What are the chances of Cox turning off a customer that has an AP (without WEP) powered on but not connected to the net? What is the deal with not telling customers they have been turned off and still billing them?

Wow I found this on the Netstumubler's Website.... How do they know that just because you have a non WEP AP that you are letting others use your wireless... I know of a few ways to have an non-WEP AP and still control access (NOCatAuth w/Locked to MAC Address) Also this is proof that most people do not know what they are doing, RTFM your AUP. But does the every day 'Joe' (or Tom & Dick :) ) know really what security is?

But someone posted a good question...

Yup, which brings up a question.. and I know Wardriving is not illegal but there are some that will say it is, and we have seen cases where a wardriver crossed the line (read accessed) on a network but lets say the fed steps in and rules wardriving is illegal, would Cox then be in violation of the law?
Cops are not allowed to commit a crime to catch a crook in most cases, least not with out some judge signing off on the act.

But I agree that there should have been some warning mailed (and emailed) to the user giving them say 30 days to either secure the AP or turn it off.

However, if the AP was insecure, Cox could have tested it... aka "crossed the line" and see if they can get online and go out to the net.. if they could not, then the AP is no concern to them since it does not connect to their network.

I mean if I had an AP connected to a "HoneyPot" which would did not have access to the outside world, my ISP has no beef with me since the packets go from wifi user to AP to HoneyPot to \dev\null.

but if they "accessed" the AP, then aren't they commiting an illegal act of network intrusion?

So legal or not?

Cox Using Wardriving To Shut Down Customers?

It's a crank. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has dismissed a WiFi-enabled, Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop aimed at bringing computers to developing economies as a "$100 gadget". The lime-green devices run on electromotive energy from a wind-up mechanism--thus allowing the machines to be used in areas lacking a regular power supply. But Barrett thinks a computer's features are more important than its price.

Decide for yourself. The One Laptop Per Child non-profit association, first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media lab at the World Economic Forum last January, claims the machine will "be able to do almost everything except store huge amounts of data". The current specifications of the rugged laptop, which has "USB ports galore", are 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel. The United Nations has heralded the cheap laptops--which will be shipped early next year to school children in Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria--as an effective way to spread computers across the world.

Intel's Barrett Dismisses $100 Laptop As 'Gadget'

Tucked away down a narrow driveway on a leafy, quiet street here is perhaps the most famous garage in the valley and, arguably, in all of the technology industry.
It is the garage in which David Packard and William Hewlett launched Hewlett-Packard, now the world's second-largest computer maker and the biggest printer maker, which they founded in 1939 and named with a coin toss.
Long considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley, the 12-by-18-foot garage was the initial spark for the now-thriving technology business in a region that has replaced the fruit orchards of the early 20th century with business parks, corporate campuses, suburbs and malls.
After HP came, other household tech names such as Intel, the world's biggest chipmaker (though not started in a garage), Sun Microsystems (again, no garage founding here), online media giant Yahoo, and many, many others.

But other garages did follow....

Garages hold mythic power in Silicon Valley...

This year's USBOIP (Universal Serial Bus over Internet Protocol) hands-on project explores what is necessary to enable USB devices to operate over a network. The project attempts to spark interest and consideration about the emerging methods to extend the functions of USB devices. As with all hands-on projects, the effort for this project spanned several months' research, planning, and implementation. The recently released Wireless USB specification was unavailable during most of the project, so it did not materially affect our effort.

Portable connection: Can USB work over a network?

Portable Apps Suite allows you to carry all your standard applications on a USB thumbdrive, iPod, portable hard drive or any other portable media. It contains a portable web browser, email client, web editor, office suite, word processor, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client and FTP client... all in one package, all preconfigured to work portably and be easy to back up. Just unzip it and you're ready to go. You can then plug your portable device right into any Windows computer and use all of the applications just like you would on your own computer.

Portable Apps Suite (USB Friendly)