Using Skype with Cellular BroadBand Modems

Paul

If your like me you will want to make sure you have the best possible speed and connection with your broad band modem. Here are a few articles to better help with you get the best possible speed with a broad band modem like a Cricket modem:

Some other things to consider are:

These will start to make it better for you to use a modem and get the best possible speeds from the modem.  You have to realize what your coverage area is.  There are many factors in regards to your modem speed but that is something that you will have to figure out how to get better speeds.

How do you use Skype with your Cellular broad band modem?

Somethings to remembers with your broadband modem is you won’t have a good connection no matter how hard you try.   Most cellular carriers don’t want you to us it with VOIP(Voice of Internet Protocol).   So you will have to pay close attention to how you use the bandwidth and what you are doing while making a VOIP call.

The good thing about Skype is, it comes with some very useful tools to better watch your bandwidth and to help get the best possible connection.  You will want to make sure not to have it be a super-node, to do this you go to:

Tools then;Options

My settings for Skype with Cricket<

As you can see I checked off use port 80 and 443 as alternative incoming connections, I also like to see all the technical information and bandwidth usage per call.  I made sure to use Socks5 to prevent skype from becoming a super-node. I also have it set to not automatically start up when I load windows.  To do that all you have to do is go to the General tab and un-check start Skype when Windows start.   You can use any port you want as long as you use the same on the SOCKs5 setting also.   I just made the port up it can be 0 to 4 numbers long.   If you want to understand what ports are this little document will greatly help you figure out which ports are good to use.  Some other things to remember when you use Skype for long periods of time is if you need to call someone you should try not to use the internet to much for that takes bandwidth also.  It is better to have Skype use all the possible bandwidth you have available.

BREAKING NEWS : Microsoft issues 961509

Paul

Microsoft as issued an new security advisory about the possible way someone might be able to take your sensitive information using an invalid digital signature:
[ad#ad2-right-1]

Microsoft is aware that research was published at a security conference proving a successful attack against X.509 digital certificates signed using the MD5 hashing algorithm. This attack method could allow an attacker to generate additional digital certificates with different content that have the same digital signature as an original certificate. The MD5 algorithm had previously shown a vulnerability, but a practical attack had not yet been demonstrated.

[via Windows Technet]

Although Microsoft has stated in the advisory most companies are using the SHA-1 algorithm.  Some are still using the MD5 and should stop using it immediately.   Microsoft says there is none in the wild but you can be bet on it someone will do it sooner or later.  Certificate Authorities should stop using MD5 and go to a much stronger better Algorithm. This is what Microsoft is saying and they aren’t providing much information for the end-user on how to prevent from using MD5 certificates on your system. You can remove the MD5 certificate manually if you are a system administor and want to protect the computers at the office.  Please don’t do this unless you know what your doing, you could very well break your system if you did something like this.

Microsoft Knows about the SQL Bug — KB961040

Paul

Microsoft confirmed some information about the this little SQl bug and issued a Statement in an Security Advisory 961040 and in it Microsoft said:

Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a vulnerability that could allow remote code execution on systems with supported editions of Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000), Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (WMSDE), and Windows Internal Database (WYukon). Systems with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 4, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 are not affected by this issue.

[via Microsoft Technet]

[ad#ad2-left-1]One researcher, a Bernhard Mueller, is claiming that Microsoft has the patch available and ready to patch this bug.  According to him Microsoft this patch is done and isn’t scheduled to be release yet.  I don’t know when they will patch this but if Techworld is right it will be an out of cycle patch.   I am sure that if Microsoft does release it in cycle then it will be this coming patch cycle.  January 13, 2009 is the next cycle of patches for Microsoft and should be available at 10pm PST time. If Microsoft doesn’t release the patch soon they will undoubtedly wait till Patch Tuesday.  In my previous article I talked about this to a point the workaround so if you are using an SQL server you need to do this work around.

Twitter Spam bots are hot to trot: http://gentai.com/revenge1

Paul

Ok so I was curious why I all of the sudden got people joining my list. each one I look at just to see who these people are have only one twitter message saying this from two different accounts:

twitbot3

and this one also

twitbots2

and once you click that link it takes you to this website and see what they want you to do:

twitterbots

These people are trying to get you to click on there links and [ad#ad2-left-1]get you give them email accounts.  This has been socially engineered to look like it is real.  I gave them a 10 min email account to see what they sent me.  It was a link to there porn site.  Wanting me to give them my credit card or checking account information and to join there site.  I don’t think so, not this old dog.   Anyways if you get this spam from a user you might just want to block these people.  Some of these people have followers.  Hmm I don’t know about these people.  I guess they want you to send an email to other people to spam them also.  How nice of them to social engineer this scheme so you can make your friends and family mad at you and probably not even talk to you.   So that is why it is good not to auto-follow people when they subscribe to your twitter account.   Some people have that set.  Some people just don’t learn. I am sure some people will like this site for other reasons but please don’t spam people with this little site. Please don’t put people on that list.

Windows 7 beta 1 leaked, how to get it:

Paul

It’s been leaked and some things to consider when installing this is you need to have a lot of space.[ad#tmi-right-1-1] So how do you get this elusive beta:

  • Rapidshare – Although I don’t know if this is the recent version it looks like it.  The problem with downloading these files are they are really big and it will take some time for you to download each and everypart.   You only can do 200 megs of download every 6 hours so it will take time.

  • Torrents site like Isohunt – The only way you can get it is through website search and downloading the torrent file.   I don’t know how reliable it is.  I don’t think it is safe on all of these but I want people to see it and see if it works for you.

These are the only two that I could come up with the might work for people.   If someone knows of any others let me know.  Be warned downloading files from unknown sources might [ad#tmi-left-1]let you get a virus.  It is always dangerous to download files from unkown sources so if you want to download it and put it on a virtual system that would be the best option.   I supply people with the tools I don’t link to anything that is illegal.     This is provided as is and you go to these sites on your own without any help from me.

The Build of the beta build should be 7000 and is should end on 7/2/2009 or at least that is what one screenshot looks like online.  It’s been leaked and should be looked closely at all the possible outcomes of this new OS.   If Microsoft is going to release it would be soon because they usually only give you 6 months to use the OS.  They usually only do it for each beta build, so it might be made available as soon as January 2, 2009.  That’s the look on the build!!