Technical Tips From A NYC IT Consultant

News to watch – Can you be compelled by authorities to give up your encryption keys, passphrases, or passwords?

Federal prosecutors want a judge to order a Colorado woman to provide the password to decrypt her laptop, which the government seized with a search warrant.

With backup from digital rights groups, the woman is fighting the feds, arguing that being forced to provide her password violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against forced self-incrimination.

Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn is expected to rule any day on whether to force defendant Ramona Fricosu to decrypt her Toshiba Satellite M305, which authorities seized from her in 2010 with a court warrant while investigating financial fraud.

More reason to go with some sort of double encryption and a hidden encrypted file.

Read more on Wired.com –> Feds Want Judge to Force Suspect to Give Up Laptop Password | Threat Level | Wired.com.

There’s news out that Verizon Wireless wants to charge me $2 every time I pay my bill online using the single pay option. That means, when I get my bill, I’ll be charged a “convienence fee” of $2 for going online and paying on their website. However’ if I pay by check, through the mail, or sign up of auto bill pay, I won’t get charged.

Whaaat???? What kind of nonsense is this?  So you’re saying that it would be cheaper for me to send in my money, as a check, through the mail?

This ranks right up there with Netflix’s price increases…and the nickle & diming airlines…But it makes little sense since they’re giving other options to pay.

Update (12/30/11):  Now according to CNN, Verizon is scraping the $2 due to “customer feedback”. What kind of feedback did they expect from customers?!?

Update (01/16/12):  Got my Verizon Wireless bill. It’s up $1.75 anyways due to “administrative charges”, Fed surcharges, and taxes. What a crock.

Read more on cnet — Verizon Wireless: Yep, that’ll be $2 to pay your bill online | Signal Strength – CNET News.

I loaded Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Remix onto my Dell Inspiron. And though it comes with OpenJDK 6, I wanted to load Sun Java 6 Plugin. You can see what versions of java are on your system by typing the java -version command in a Terminal window.

Here are the simple steps I followed [writtern for Ubuntu 10.10]:

Download and Install Sun Java

• Open Ubuntu Software Center
• From the menu bar, select Edit > Software Sources, then click on the “Other  Software” tab
• Enable the Partner repository

• Click “Close, at which point it should reload
• Search for sun-java6-plugin and Install

That’s it!

Now, if you go check out the Plugins tab in the Firefox Add-Ons list, you should see Java listed:

And, if you visit this Sun Microsystems Java page, you can run a quick test to see if your Java is working. If it is, you should see a result like this: