A thought that flowed through my mind recently, is how do you know when you are ready to start developing? How do you know if you're ready to start hacking?
Some might be tempted to start spouting requirements:
While those dependencies certainly have their place, the best answer I have found (and I admit that it isn't original):
you will know that you are ready when you stop asking "am I ready", and start doing it.
Just do it.
If you're mildly interested in following tech news, you may have heard about the recent Carrier IQ scandal. Carrier IQ is a third party application, designed to monitor smartphone use and send results back home. It is a rootkit, which means that it is pretty much invisible to regular users, and cannot be deleted or uninstalled by regular users.
Before you make the assumption that the Android OS is bad, because Android phones have Carrier IQ installed, you must understand that Carrier IQ is NOT part of Android. It is installed by sneaky vendors. Get mad at vendors for spying on you, not the Android OS itself.
Even though I despise vendors for spying on users without perrmission (and invading privacy and all that), I don't really care too much. Even though HTC is supposedly one of the vendors who has installed Carrier IQ, and my phone is an HTC phone, I still don't really care, because it doesn't really affect me.
Within three days after getting my HTC Sensation, it was already rooted, and CyanogenMod installed. The open source branch of Android OS is Carrier IQ free, and always will be. CyanogenMod is essentially the open source Android, with performance tweaks, and therefore also Carrier IQ free.
Advanced Android users have the freedom and tools to protect themselves from sneaky vendors.
Wardriving is the act of going about, looking for wireless networks, and recording their location on a map. In and of itself, it is a harmless and perfectly legal activity, as it is a passive process. It does not actually involve connecting to any wireless networks.
By default, and by design, most wireless networks regularly broadcast their presence. This makes it easy for normal users to find and connect to these networks. It also means that anybody else is also able to find and connect to those networks. Some places, such as internet cafes and coffee shops frequently advertise their wireless networks, as who doesn't like free wifi?
There are many projects around the world which undertake to make an exhaustive map of the visible wireless networks. There are many reasons for such projects, one of them being to simply raise awareness of their proliferation.
For a long time I have had an interest in documenting the number of wireless networks in Bermuda. Simply driving down Harbour Road you can easily find a hundred wireless networks. Driving down Front Street, you can easily find several hundred. Up until now, publishing that information has been rather tedious. It required using special software, special hardware. A GPS device, a compatible wireless network card, and software to triangulate network locations based on signal strength. Further, to be useful, this information also needs to be overlaid over a map. This process is not difficult, it just required an investment into learning how to put it all together.
However, with the advancement of smartphones, the process is now far simpler. I would like to briefly mention one such application, available for Android phones. It is produced by Wigle.Net, and can be found on the Google App store. This application makes use of the phone's built in wireless card, and built in GPS device, and handles recording, triangulation, and reporting. In all, it's pretty cool stuff. Search for your wireless network, and see if it's there.
spending some time with my wife, keeping her company while she makes mini cheesecakes for tonight.
Don't they look good?
Hello all, faithful readers. I know there are a few of you out there.
I have recently been upgrading this site, and in the process have broken links to some of the more popular articles. These included a few how-tos, and what not. Feel free to drop me a line if you desperately needed the contents of one of those articles, and I will be happy to dig through the archives for you.
In the meantime, I'll probably start from scratch again.
