New Firefox Plugin Detects If You Are Being Spied On By The NSA

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

[RT] Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day? The government is likely logging even the most mundane day-to-day computer habits of millions of Americans, but there’s a way to stand up against surveillance while also rocking out.

According to leaked NSA documents published by The Guardian last week, the United States National Security Agency is conducting dragnet surveillance of the communications of Americans, regularly receiving phone records for millions of Verizon customers while also being capable of accessing the conversations that occur over Facebook, Google and several other major Internet names through a program called PRISM. Now a 28-year-old artist and developer from Brooklyn, New York has found a fun way of warning computer users about potential government surveillance, and he’s incorporated one of the best-selling rock albums ever in the process.

Justin Blinder released a plugin for the Web browser Firefox this week, and he’s already seeing a positive response in the press if not just based off of the idea alone. His “The Dark Side of the Prism” browser extension alerts Web surfers of possible surveillance by starting up a different song from Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic “The Dark Side of the Moon” each time a questionable site is crossed.

Blinder told the Guardian that he built the program over the course of four hours with the hopes he could "create some sort of ambient notification that you are on a site that is being surveiled by the NSA."

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Google Glass: Creepy or Useful?

Google Glass is eyeglasses that allow you to connect with friends through social networks, make phone calls, surf the Internet and do a myriad of other amazing, helpful things just with your voice. It gives a second-screen experience, popping up all the information you would usually see on your cellphone or computer screen right before your eyes. It may appear scary at first, as you will literally be connected to your technology and almost unable to avoid seeing a message or an update.

TV and Glass

Google is revolutionizing the media industry by connecting Glass and Google TV using a Wi-Fi connection. Viewers will be able to see a second screen with data, according to Forbes, Twitter comments, ad integration and more. With the new opportunities Google Glass gives to TV broadcasting, it wouldn’t be surprising to see new packages in additions to ones like HD or premium channels. A basic subscription runs about $30 per month, according to Direct TV, but sports and other live shows that offer feeds from Glass-wearers could become an option. Glass will use personal experiences from the day to suggest what TV programs to watch at night. Ads could be tailored to the viewer, as opposed to having to sit through various ads that aren't applicable to your lifestyle.

How D​o I Look?

However, there are a number of different aspects to Google Glass that have to be taken into account by both Google and the general public before we truly know how the new technology will effect the consumer. For one, there’s the aesthetic quality that is already being mocked on various blogs and tumblrs, like the hilarious White Men Wearing Google Glass. Saturday Night Live cast member Fred Armisen poked fun at Glass during Weekend Update, making the concept awkward and ridiculous. Though the SNL sketch places Glass in a poor light, the comedy star tried the real product with tech blog Engadget and looks much more impressed by the official tech compared to his character on SNL (though he still had trouble wearing them with his glasses).



Google is a step ahead of SNL and Mr. Armisen's qualms with Glass and normal eyeglasses. It's working with eyeglass manufacturer Warby Parker to design more attractive frames for the technology. This will also allow them to serve millions of people with prescription glasses needs.

Nothing is perfect when it's first created — think first generation iPod, brick cellphone and computers that take up an entire room. Currently Google Glass is comparable to Bluetooth devices, pocket protectors and cases for cellphones on people’s belts, according to FactCompany.com. In other words, not cool looking. Google will undoubtedly pump hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, into this image issue to keep it from effecting their plan with Google Glass and most people will respond — assuming the technology wows them as it should.

Durability and Price

Can Google Glass be made into something that is both affordable for the general public (in the range of an iPhone) and not break easily, so that Google won’t have to cover every problem that arises with the product. Like any physical device that is ever sold, this will not fully be known until the glasses hit the marketplace—much like iPhones were notorious for breaking when they were dropped from even low heights for their first few generations. In other words, we won’t really know if Google Glass will be a success until we are all each using it ourselves.

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Firefox/Chrome Plugin That Allows You To Schedule Sending Emails on Gmail

Image via CrunchBase

I have always enjoyed the ability to schedule sending an email from Outlook at a specific time. Sometimes knowing an email has to go out precisely at say, 7PM Eastern Time on June 12th for instance, you could type up your email now and schedule it to send precisely at that time.

Well, I needed to do that today in order to participate in Operation Troll The NSA, which is asking everyone in the world to email a particular script at the the same time. The script contains a number of key words that the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security uses to look for particular terrorist threats in our supposedly private emails and phone calls. The idea is that if millions of people sent an email with the same buzzwords at the same time it may succeed in jamming up the NSA's PRISM system.

Will it work? Who knows? That's besides the point. The point is that I wanted to schedule this email to send at precisely 4:00PM Pacific today, but I wanted to schedule it from Gmail. That feature is not natively built in, but I found a Firefox/Google plugin that will let you do it. It's called Boomerang!

From their page:

Send an email later
With Boomerang, you can write an email now and schedule it to be sent automatically at the perfect time. Just write the message as you normally would, then click the Send Later button. Use our handy calendar picker or our text box that understands language like "next Monday" to tell Boomerang when to send your message. We'll take it from there.

The best follow up reminders
Want a cleaner inbox, but don't want to lose track of important messages? Use Boomerang to take messages out of your inbox until you actually need them. Just click the Boomerang button when you have an email open, and choose when you need it again. Boomerang will archive the message. At the time you chose, we'll bring it back to your inbox, marked unread, starred, or even at the top of your message list.

Remind you if you don't hear back
There are times you need to make sure you follow up within a specific time frame after sending a message. You can select to only be reminded if nobody replies, or regardless. This way you won't let messages slip through the crack and will never forget to follow up with people.

Pretty cool right? How do you schedule emails to send at a particular time? Do you use Outlook, Boomerang or something else? Let us know in the comments.

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The Makers of StartPage and IxQuick Are Launching A Private Email Service

The makers of the private search engine StartPage and IxQuick are getting ready to launch a new email service that boasts of privacy. This is huge due to the recent (public) revelations that the NSA is spying on all of us and reading your email. The new service is called StartMail.

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How To Change The Default VLAN on A Dell PowerConnect 3448P So You Can Use VLAN 1 As A Trunk With All VLANs Tagged

A little over a year ago we had a crappy in-house Panasonic PBX for our phone system. Nobody knew how to configure it, and the consultant we hired to work on it, who is the only Panasonic guy in town, changed jobs. We decided to retire it and go with a hosted VoIP provider.

The problem at the time was the crappy switches that the IT guy who I replaced used to build the network originally were dumb, un-managed switches. I knew that if we were going with VoIP we needed to separate the SIP traffic to it's own VLAN, which meant we needed managed switches.

Well since my company is also very cheap, I couldn't spend any money on decent CISCO Catalyst switches, and we ended up with these really terrible Trendnet TEG-448WS switches that could handle VLANs fine, but were super basic when it came to QoS, which is important in VoIP.

After over a year of random drops, and other irritating issues, we had a VoIP company come in to make a recommendation. Mainly, I wanted a 3rd party to come in and confirm what I had been trying to say for a while, which was that we needed better switches.

They still wouldn't let me get a CISCO Catalyst, but they did let me buy some refurbished Dell PowerConnect 3448P's. These switches had more robust QoS features, but they had an interesting problem on their own. By default, you can't modify VLAN 1. It is considered the Native VLAN, or the Default VLAN. That means that all ports are untagged on VLAN 1, and you can't change that. Well, I should say, it's kind of a pain, hence this article, but it can be done.

In order to use VLAN 1 in a true trunk, which is what I wanted to do, you need to be able to set a port to be tagged on all VLANs. Now, you might be saying, why not just set the port on the device you are connecting to as untagged? Then there isn't an issue right? That's true, but the device I was connecting to was a Fortigate 60C Firewall, and it wouldn't give me that option. All VLAN interfaces on that unit are tagged, and cannot be set to untagged. At least, I don't know how to do that.

So what I had to do was to change the VLAN number of the default VLAN on my Dell PowerConnect 3448P. You cannot do this through the web interface either by the way, you have to do this through the terminal. I recommend doing it using the serial port. Also, once you do this, the original IP will be wiped out, so prepare for that. I set mine to 600, because I wasn't going to use it.

Here's what I did:

• Create a new vlan
  
  enable > configure > vlan database > vlan 600
  
• Set the new vlan as the default vlan
  
   default-vlan vlan 600
  
• Save your config, then reboot the device
  
  end > copy ru st
  
  reload
  
• Create a new vlan 1
  
  enable > configure > vlan database > vlan 1
  
• Set a new IP for vlan 1
  
  exit > interface vlan 1 > ip address 192.168.0.8 255.255.255.0
  
• Set a new IP for vlan 600
  
  exit > interface vlan 600 > ip address 192.168.1.8 255.255.255.0
  
• Plug your laptop into one of the ports, it should be untagged with vlan 600.
  
• Give a static ip to your laptop on that subnet, and browse to the ip address of vlan 600
  
• Login to the web interface, and now you can start tagging and untagging ports on vlan 1 through the gui.
  

Kind of a pain in the butt I agree, and I know that using VLAN 1 is not technically the best practice, but that is how the network is setup, and it would be an even bigger pain in the butt to correct it than it is to just change the default VLAN on this switch.

Did this help you out? Are you in a similar situation? Let us know about it in the comments.

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How To Install Cinnamon in Ubuntu 13.04 and Remove Unity

 (Photo credit: Jeffpro57)

I am finally getting around to building Bauer-Puntu 13.04. The first thing I wanted to do was install Cinnamon. I am building Bauer-Puntu 13.04 using Ubuntu-Gnome, so getting rid of Unity isn't something I am concerned with, but if you are I found the following instructions via Ask Ubuntu:

First you will need to add the Cinnamon PPA and install it.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon nemo

After Cinnamon is installed, logoff or reboot the system and login in Cinnamon. You can customize it now, or later, it's up to you.

Now you will need to make Nemo the default file manager.

xdg-mime default nemo.desktop inode/directory application/x-gnome-saved-search
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false
gsettings set org.nemo.desktop show-desktop-icons true

Then run the command below, if Nemo opens this means that everything is configured correctly.

xdg-open $HOME

Now, let's get rid of Unity.

I searched carefully at all the files related to Unity, with the help of Synaptic, and gather them all into a single command line. The next command will completely remove Unity and everything related with it, but will keep LightDM, Software Center and all the programs that comes with Ubuntu.

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge unity unity-common unity-services unity-lens-* unity-scope-* unity-webapps-* gnome-control-center-unity hud libunity-core-6* libunity-misc4 libunity-webapps* appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt* overlay-scrollbar* activity-log-manager-control-center firefox-globalmenu thunderbird-globalmenu libufe-xidgetter0 xul-ext-unity xul-ext-webaccounts webaccounts-extension-common xul-ext-websites-integration

Please note that there are a few libraries that will remain in the system, they are necessary, removing them will break your programs and possibly the system. These libraries should remain:

gir1.2-unity-5.0 libunity-common libunity-protocol-private0 libunity9 unity-asset-pool unity-greeter

There is a Thunderbird extension called “Messaging Menu and Unity Launcher integration” that needs to be removed from its folder.

sudo rm /usr/lib/thunderbird-addons/extensions/messagingmenu@mozilla.com.xpi

Cinnamon uses Muffin as window manager, so you can safely remove Compiz.

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge compiz compiz-gnome compiz-plugins-default libcompizconfig0

If you installed Nemo you can remove Nautilus as well.

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge nautilus nautilus-sendto nautilus-sendto-empathy nautilus-share

Optionally, you can remove Zeitgeist, which is considered intrusive by many users, this will also free some memory and reduce hard disk access.

zeitgeist-daemon --quit
sudo apt-get autoremove --purge activity-log-manager-common python-zeitgeist rhythmbox-plugin-zeitgeist zeitgeist zeitgeist-core zeitgeist-datahub

You can also remove configurations files related to Unity, Compiz, Nautilus and Zeitgeist, on your home directory. They are in the following paths:

~/.local/share/unity-webapps

~/.compiz

~/.config/compiz-1

~/.config/nautilus

~/.local/share/nautilus

~/.local/share/zeitgeist

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Want A '4K TV'? You Should, Here's Why

Just when you think there is no possible way technology could advance any further, manufacturers come out with some new gadget that blows your mind away. Such is the case with the 4K TV, otherwise known as the new big deal in entertainment.

What Is A 4K Television?

Essentially, the term 4K is used to denote any television with a resolution of four times the usual HD resolution, or in many cases still greater. The minimum resolution that can still be considered a 4K television is 3840 X 2160. As many newer 4Ks go well beyond this resolution, viewers will often also refer to other TVs with resolutions in the 4000 range as 4Ks. The official label for this type of television is Ultra HD, so consumers may occasionally hear the two names interchanged with one another.
Models of this type of television released thus far have all been quite large, with the most notable version probably being the 84-inch Sony XBR, says www.Forbes.com. However, Sony has made headway with the release of a smaller, 55-inch model and other television manufacturers are looking to follow suit.

4K Vs Traditional HD Televisions

Despite popular misconception, the 4K television is not the same as the traditional HD. As explained earlier, the 4K or Ultra HD comes with a resolution that is at least four times higher than that of the typical HD television. While the picture on many of today's HD televisions is quite impressive, it does not even come close to approaching the quality of the images on an Ultra HD screen. Thus, for the television enthusiast hoping for the clearest image possible, the 4K is definitely the way to go.

Compatibility Issues

A number of consumers have expressed interest in purchasing 4K TVs but also worry that these televisions will not be compatible with their favorite forms of media. This is a valid concern that is already being addressed by electronics manufacturers and streaming services alike.
In the realm of cable, satellite and video streaming, a number of companies have expressed an eagerness to adapt their services for the 4K television owner. DirecTV in particular has shown enthusiasm, says http://www.ClearTVBundle.com, with the provider having made a clear commitment to this small niche in the television market. This commitment comes in the form of several trademark applications made for 4K, 4KNET, 4KN, 4K Network and 4KNetwork. Clearly, DirecTV foresees a promising future in the world of 4K television, for its leaders would not take such a risk in obtaining so many trademarks for a cause they did not feel was worthwhile. However, the company's spokesman insists that DirecTV remains in the exploratory stages and is not about to release any new 4K technology just yet.
Intel is also looking to get in on the 4K TV trend, with the electronics manufacturer recently having announced plans for a new version of the Haswell processor that will support 4K resolution. Even better, Intel is also busy putting together a set-top box that may serve as the first true 4K media device. With this gadget, users would finally be able to stream content to Ultra HD televisions in the 4K resolution they have awaited for so long. Leaders at Intel believe that there is a real possibility of a set-top box being released soon, which means that other companies likely would not be far behind.
All the current data suggests that 4K will be the next great thing in entertainment technology. If you have not already thought about investing in this great television, you may want to start giving it some serious consideration!

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