Iron Fist

I am thankful for wireless internet. I am thankful that so many people are giddy to the point of stupidity about Wi-Fi. I am thankful that because of this giddiness, the price of wireless routers has come down and they are flying off the shelves, becoming commonplace.

I am also thankful that people aren’t so bright. Because of this, and because the makers of wireless routers want them to continue to fly off the shelves, the average home Wi-Fi network is ridiculously easy to set up. You just plug it in with some ethernet cable, run the dinky wizard software that comes with the routers, and you’re up and running.

Because they are easy for morons to set-up, I know that when I fire up my laptop and run NetStumbler, if I see a network with the default name “linksys” and no encryption, chances are this is someone who just brought home their router, got it out of the box, and plugged it in, never thinking that other people might be able to filch off their internet. This is probably a person who never looks at their logs to see if anyone else is using their connection. And this anonymous neighbor is probably wondering right now why their internet is running so slow, as I fire up Bit Torrent and crank up the transfer rate.

So to whoever my new wireless provider is, whichever room it is that you live in, thank you. Tool.

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Well, only a little misquoted. I’m in the Vanguard….er, I was in the Vanguard. Last week. Ranting about cryptography…oh crap, just read it already:

Cryptography

Addendum: I should add that I disagree with S____’s statement that “only the most paranoid people actually encrypt their emails.” Piss off, dude, I encrypt mine every chance I get. Is it only the most paranoid people that don’t write their PIN numbers across the front of their ATM cards? Only the most paranoid people use their car door locks? Only the most paranoid people who refrain from signing blank checks and giving them to panhandlers, saying, “It’s okay, I trust you”?

PhDs are so out of touch with reality. In the meantime, Prof, get back to work making new kick-ass cryptosystems. Everyone else, seriously look into getting Gnu Privacy Guard, which is cool because it’s free, or some other program to handle your encryption for you. S______ is right about that, don’t try to “roll your own.”

The mail program that Emily mentions in the article is Mozilla Thunderbird, from the same folks that brought you the kick-ass Firefox. (PSU people can find instructions for configuring it here.)

The plug-in that lets GnuPG play nice with Thunderbird is Enigmail.

Get to it!

Update: Check the comments, the professor was misquoted as well. I hereby recant my rant. Crypto still rocks, so get some.

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