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Merry Christmas From One Geek Solutions

Merry Christmas Everyone and My Family & I wish you the best this holiday season. No advice do I bring, just a sincere wish that everyone has a safe, happy, and wonderful holiday season.

May your holiday season be blessed and may everyone be very happy and safe.

Merry Christmas From One Geek Solutions

Send In a Hacker

I have always heard that to stop a monster you need another monster. I have also heard the phrase fight fire with fire. The news has been filled with debates over the proper response to the cyber-attacks on Sony. Obama said that the U.S. is reviewing whether to put North Korea back on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. He also vowed that the U.S. would  respond “proportionately” to the attacks and wouldn’t be “intimidated by some cyber-hackers.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called the cyber-hacking “an act of terrorism” and suggested re-imposing sanctions on North Korea and adding the country to the terrorism list. While all these responses are normal and are perhaps the way to respond to the usual attacks in the real world, they do not apply to the people who committed this attack. To stop a hacker or catch one we need to send in a hacker.

 

Yeah, that’s right, send in a hacker to catch or beat one. It’s OK to enact sanctions, but the only ones able to get in and go “zero dark thirty,” these bad guys are the types of hackers we either have locked away, or working for security companies and antivirus corporations. You guessed it, some of the programmers that make our computers safe are former hackers themselves. There are all types of questions over how the public response should be. To me its simple. Don’t send sanctions, don’t send Seal Team Six, send in someone like Penelope Garcia, although this reference may not be the one to paint the right picture. There are hackers that have been locked up in this country for some pretty strange things, including hacking the Defense Threat Reduction Agency server. The DTRA is an agency of the Department of Defense charged with reducing the threat to the U.S. and its allies from nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional and special weapons. 

So let’s hope that while they are talking about these things on the news and discussing what they intend to show the public as their response, they are actually making sure several lines of code are being sent out to hunt and destroy the hackers responsible to cracking Sony studios. With the amount of our lives and the percentage of information and actions that are stored and controlled digitally in this country and every other country, we need to take this as seriously as any other threat, and send in a hacker or a whole team of hackers to protect us from what is an understated, yet very real threat.

Send In a Hacker

Great Uses For Your Old Computer

 

Now That Santa Brought You a New PC: Here Are Some Great Uses for Your Old Computer

Ok, so you got that brand new hottest fastest computer you were so hoping Santa would bring. You have unplugged your old machine and setup the new one in its place and you are good to go. Now what? Are you going to just throw away your old machine after all you two have been through together? I hope not. In fact here are some great ideas to get new uses out of your old machine, instead of sending it packing like guest who has long overstayed their welcome.

Use your old machine as a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device: Lots of people pay good money for a NAS device to have files available to everyone on their network. FreeNAS is a small lightweight program that is easy to install and can turn just about any old PC with available storage into a, No investment required, Network Attached Storage device.

Make a Media Server: Most of the LCD TVs on the market today come with some type of input that can connect your PC directly to your TV. You can serve up images or even movies from your PC to your TV directly using one of several media serving programs. One Program that can make this easy is XBMC:Kodi, which is formally known as the Xbox Media center. This is a feature rich media center available on all operating systems that is easy to install and to use.

During the holiday season I have one final suggestion for that old PC: Install linux and make it a guest computer: This is really easy to do and sometimes you don’t even have to install anything new on your machine most versions of linux allow you the option to install linux or just run the operating system from a live cd. My two favorite versions of the many linux choices out there are Ubuntu & Linux Mint due to the programs built in and the ease of use. Both of these distributions of linux are lightweight and run great on older hardware. The good thing about making an old PC into a guest computer running linux is that guest can have access to the internet, email and several programs without risking any of the computers that you use every day.

Great Uses For Your Old Computer