Thanx to my sister in law who force fed me THIS little gift : A G3 GPRS card, enabling me to go online anywhere anytime. Now the GPRS I have enjoyed on my Palm Treo can be ported to any of my laptops with a PCMCIA slot. ( So that rules out my Macbook). There should be LInux drivers out there but i'm not really sure if i can even get the windows ones working. But that is not the main issue. In this day and age of 3g connections, broadband everywhere and what have you, telco's are still clinging to their wallets and squeezing out every dime out of the early adopters. With G3 coverage only available in the major cities (Antwerp and Brussels). GPRS is the main means of data communication for the rest of the country. Now thats not that bad is it. I mean with my Treo I can check my Emails, Sync up to my Google Calendar and even open an SSH session to my linux server. But what happens if I decide to slide this baby into my laptop ? Accessing the internet, watching one youtube movie and getting the occasional funny-filled email would blow the cap of my dataplan in about one day. I do not understand why Telco's boast about massive speeds wireless GPRS and G3 access everywhere and dare to charge these ridiculous ludicrous data prices. They give you a speed that is mostly fabulous, give you a dataplan that is something more suited for a third world country and give you a fine that make you pass out when you get the bill. And broadband internet is just the same. Datacaps and insane prices make Belgium one of the countries with the best cable-infrastructure on the planet, yet the highest broadband rates in Europe. Its a big ripoff !
But i'll hold on tight to my little GPRS card when i need it for emergencies. Instead of fumbling with my Treo to get it setup as a wireless modem i'll just slip the sim in and be on my way. Just in case I run out of suckers like THIS !
The story of a wifi noob !
Now I opened up my wireless network neighbourhood yesterday just to have a look-see at the rich collection of Wifi routers that dot the urban area of my house. Since I live in the city the chance that I will EVER EVER loose my internet connection can only be at the moment that the entire northern hemisphere has been hit by a massive EMP. The rise of wifi networks has only been equaled by the ignorance of the average user. Now take my next door neighbour. While most Wifi networks are protected by a WEP key this guy things that a threatening SSID might chase people away. It is written in Dutch so i'll translate. It literaly says : "Keep of my pipe goddammit" .. What is this ? The Wifi access point of John C Dvorak ? Hey you kids, stay off my lawn ? You must be kidding right. If there where taunting words, these must be them.
Hilariously the Wifi network was unprotected. Clearly Mr Noob does not know squat about wep or wpa protection yet does know how to change his SSID 🙂 Doing an Ipconfig to look at the default gateway, I entered that address in my browser and there you go : Not only the network was unsecured, so was the routers login page.
Time to have some fun 😉 I decided to tuck away my evil side (that wanted to put a wep key on the router and lock out the user with a password ) I changed the SSID to " I just hacked you again you N00b " 🙂 then rebooted the router. Now when mister daft gets home he might just have a little surprise.. And I have been snickering about my childish act all day long.
So who needs GPRS cards with idiots like these. Who is worried about data limits when we have pipe to steel ? If i where someone who did not know to secure my own wireless network I would sure as hell not name it like that :). Noobs 🙂 You should not abuse them. But every know and then .. Steel a chuckle 🙂