access

Yesterday, Canadian ISP (Internet Service Provider) Bell Sympatico admitted that it is restricting bandwidth access during "peak hours" to customers who are using p2p (peer-to-peer) networks such as Gnutella, Bit Torrent and Limewire. (Source: ... Betanews.com ) The company admitted to the action on its online customer support forums. "Bell Sympatico has launched a solution to enhance the online customer experience and improve Internet performance for all our customers during peak periods of Internet usage with the introduction of Internet Traffic Management," a company representative stated on ... (view more)

Just what is the cost of wireless service exclusivity on the iPhone? Last Wednesday marked the first day in the hearing of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, where representatives called for a more open wireless system. ... Both Democrats and Republicans spoke out against the hostage-type contracts, in what's been dubbed the "iPhone hearing." Being discussed is the fact that the iPhone will only work on AT ... (view more)

Talk about deja vu. A Finnish security researcher recently discovered that the same problems affecting Windows XP and recovery disks were inherited by Windows Vista. If you have a Vista install DVD, you can gain administrative level access to the ... hard drive without needing a password. Detailed documentation, including possible workarounds, can be found at Kimmo Rousku's web site . The potential hack was discovered on February 8, 2007 during a Windows Vista training session. It was immediately reported to Microsoft Finland who confirmed it two days later. Apparently, the Command Prompt tool in ... (view more)

Microsoft officially announced the Xbox Dashboard Spring Update this past Monday: a move that is sure to ignite spring fever among the game console's millions of users. Headlining the update is a new Xbox 360 accessory -- a QWERTY text-input device ... will directly connect into the Xbox 360 controller and will support text and instant messaging capabilities. (Source: itwire.com.au ) Scheduled to be launched on May 7, the new add-on will enable Xbox 360 users to access the Windows Live Messenger service through their game console, allowing gamers to identify each other by tags and communicate via ... (view more)

In Office 2007 (c), depending upon which edition you own, you can use Information Rights Management to allow only specified individuals to access a document. Using Information Rights Management, you can assign specific rights to each user, including ... restricting the ability to copy, print, forward, modify, or fact a document. You can even set an expiration date after which a user cannot access the document! To restrict permission to a document, follow the steps below: Click the Microsoft Office button, point to Prepare, Restrict Permission and then click Restricted Access. In the Permission ... (view more)

In the world of search engines, nothing beats Google. The competition, led by Yahoo, makes up a single digit fraction of the market attempting to challenge the Goliath. However, with that success comes a substantial amount of attention from hackers ... and the like. The most recent issue facing Google were reports that users were seeing their cookies exploited, giving the web's most malicious access to a pile of personal information. It's pretty simple. If a user is signed into their Google account, the pages they visit give the web host access to their cookies. This means the web host -- or the ... (view more)

Announced earlier this week, a group of technology companies are planning to provide a vast wireless network that will give the entire Silicon Valley free high-speed Internet access. The free WiFi service will be available as early as next year and ... will be provided by Silicon Valley Metro Connect: a group that is comprised of IBM, Cisco, SeaKay, and Azulstar. (Source: abcnews.com ) Silicon Valley Metro Connect will provide the service for 38 cities in California's San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, and Santa Cruz counties -- an area covering roughly 1,500 square miles. This move takes advantage ... (view more)

[Continued from Firewalls: Hardware and Software Solutions , Part 1] On the software only side of things, there are quite a few possibilities available for a software firewall. These all install directly on your PC and use the internal resources ... like any other program run on your system (such as memory, disk space, CPU cycles, and so on). Software firewalls do a good job of preventing both inbound and outbound traffic and are easy to install and configure. First up is Zone Labs Zone Alarm. The download is free as is the firewall product itself. They will try to get you to buy the Pro version ... (view more)

A firewall is a barrier to keep destructive forces away from your computer. In fact, that's why it's called a firewall. Its job is similar to a physical firewall that keeps a fire from spreading from one area to the next. Firewalls use one or more ... of three methods to control traffic flowing in and out of the network: Packet filtering: Packets (small chunks of data) are analyzed against a set of filters. Packets that make it through the filters are sent to the requesting system and all others are discarded. Proxy service: Information from the Internet is retrieved through the firewall and then ... (view more)

A short time ago, I found a cool web service called CosmoPOD that allows you to run a remote Linux PC from your desktop without having to actually install a Linux operating system. Once you are connected to the remote Linux PC, you are able to surf ... the web anonymously, plus have immunity to Spyware or adware attacks. But that's just one of the benefits of CosmoPOD. Once inside your new CosmoPOD desktop, you will have access to dozens of free or open source applications. For example: Open Office is one of the many installed applications and it lets you use and create most of the common ... (view more)