The Washington Post printed a story about the Islamist terrorists who recently went on a murder spree in Mumbai India, with an interesting technological twist.

The bad guys used technology heavily:

• They trained using satellite images and video footage of their targets
• They used GPS navigation equipment on the boat they hijacked to get to Mumbai
• They used high-resolution satellite images stored on CD
• They carried Blackberry phones for communications
• They switched SIM cards between cell phones to make it difficult to intercept their communications
• They watched television to monitor police response
• They used satellite phones and VoIP to communicate to their leaders in Pakistan
• Their leaders in Pakistan used email to communicate to the news media

The Indian police, on the other hand, don’t have the financial support that Islamist terrorists benefit from. They lacked basic modern military technologies which would have provided them serious advantages in this conflict:

• Modern rifles
  with faster reloading and higher rates of fire
• Rifle scopes to allow the police to shoot more accurately and safely
• Night vision equipment to enable the police to fight better in dark buildings
• Military aircraft for rapid deployment

Technologies like cryptanalysis and nuclear weapons helped us defeat the Nazi’s and Imperial Japan. Similarly, technologies like GPS, night vision gear, and radio communications are proving invaluable against Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The technologies needed to defeat Islamist terrorism may not even exist today. Only the future will tell us what technological advances will be developed in the next few decades to help defend modern civilization against the barbarian hordes.

If you’ve dropped your cell phone in water, or just gotten it wet, then you’ll want to make sure you follow a series of steps to ensure it will continue to operate.

Remove the phone from the water source

If you are able to quickly remove the phone from the water, then you’re likely to be able to restore it. Most phones have a tight, sealed outside layer that will help keep out water for a short period of time. The key is avoiding contact between the water and the phones electronic components while they are powered by the cell phones battery.

Begin to dry the phone and remove accessories

You should quickly work to get rid of the excess water by draining the phone and then using a towel to clean off external moisture. Resist the temptation to use a hair dryer on the internal components, as this may cause damage to the circuitry, even at a low temperature. Instead, you need to use a suction source such as a vacuum, but be careful to keep it out of direct contact, otherwise static electricity might come into play. Once you have removed the water that you can directly, you should use a dessicate to absorb water on the phone.

Allow the Phone to Dry and Test It

After you have following the aforementioned steps, allow the phone to dry naturally dry. After 24 hours you should test its operation. If it’s still not working, you should visit your cellular carrier store to see if they can help replace or restore the phone.

This guest post was written by Stanley Richardson, who is an expert on cell phones. Stanley can be reached by combining his full name and adding [at] cellphones.org

It’s Christmas shopping season again and I have a recommendation for the best gift to buy your favorite techie.

Heart diseases is the number one cause of death in the United States. Diseases of the heart cause 28.5% of all U.S. deaths, even more deaths than cancer.

Many of these early deaths are preventable with little more than proper weight control. Weight control relies on two components: diet and exercise.

Personally, the only diet which has worked well for me is the low-carb Atkins Diet. The Atkins Diet works well for me because it keeps my insulin levels in check while still allowing me to keep my weight down.

Exercise is hard for techies. Most of us enjoy our work, which means that most of us work long hours. We don’t have a lot of time to go to the gym or join a softball league.

Worse, the nature of the Internet has led most of us techies to develop very short attention spans. We can’t force ourselves to jog or lift weights for half an hour, because there is just not enough mental stimulation during that time.

So what does this have to do with Christmas? My recommendation for a Christmas gift is the Wii Fit from Nintendo.

The Wii Fit is a specialized controller for the Nintendo Wii gaming system. The Wii Fit turns the Wii gaming system into a high-tech exercise system.

The Wii Fit isn’t just hardware, it comes with software which manages an entire exercise program. This software is designed to work with the attention span issues endemic among true technophiles.

Using the Wii Fit to get into shape doesn’t require extensive scheduling or coordination with groups of people.
Your favorite technie can take a break from his computer, jump on the Wii for 15 minutes, and then get right back to the Internet.

And best of all, the Wii software makes it all seem like a computer game.

Our friends at Qualys are offering free copies of the electronic version of Vulnerability Management for Dummies.

Vulnerability Management for Dummies:

• Explains the critical need for vulnerability management
• Details the essential best-practice steps of a successful vulnerability management program
• Outlines the various vulnerability management solutions - including the advantages and disadvantages of each
• Highlights the award-winning QualysGuard vulnerability management solution
• Provides a ten point checklist for removing vulnerabilities from your key resources

Our editors have just posted the latest reviews of new cellular phones.

The new cellular phones reviewed include:

• Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220
• Blackberry Storm
• HTC G1
• HTC Touch 3G
• HTC Touch Diamond CDMA
• HTC Touch HD
• HTC Touch Pro CDMA
• HTC Touch Viva
• Huawei M328
• Kyocera Cyclops K312
• LG AX-155
• LG KF900
• LG Lotus LX600
• LG Rhythm AX585
• LG VX5500
• LG Xenon
• Morpheus Aura
• Morpheus i576
• Morpheus i775
• Morpheus Krave ZN4
• Morpheus ACTV w450
• Morpheus Q-11
• Morpheus Rapture vu30
• Morpheus RAZR v3s
• Morpheus vu204
• Nokia 1680
• Nokia 2600
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
• Pantech C610
• Pantech Matrix c740
• Pantech Slate
• Samsung Delve R800
• Samsung Emporio Armani m750
• Samsung Epix SGH-i907
• Samsung Highnote M630
• Samsung JetSet R550
• Samsung M3200 Beat-S
• Samsung Pixon m8800
• Samsung SGH-A767
• Samsung Rant
• Samsung A837
• Samsung SCH-U430
• Samsung SGH-A137
• Samsung SGH-A637
• Samsung Sway SCH-U650
• Samsung T109
• Samsung U430
• UTStarcom Quickfire

The Blackberry Storm looks to be the star among all these new models, but most any of these handsets will provide years of excellent service.

About once a week, my <SHIFT>, <CAPSLOCK>, and <CONTROL> keys stop working. This is an Ubuntu issue, not a hardware issue. This issue has been recurring through several point releases of Ubuntu.

I was rebooting every time this issue occurred; that was a serious annoyance. Now, however, I have a much better fix.

The command `setxkbmap` resets the keyboard map and resolves the issue without a reboot.

I hope that this bug is eventually found and fixed, but now it’s reduced from a major annoyance to a very minor issue.

Ubuntu is still a lot less buggy than Microsoft Windows.

AMD CPU’s have great 64-bit performance and excellent multitasking performance. Intel CPU’s, however, are far and away the leading processors for playing computer games.

The folks at Tom’s Hardware publish frequently updated CPU performance charts. They use five different computer games for their CPU metrics:

• Prey
• Quake IV
• Supreme Commander
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Warhammer: Mark of Chaos

Intel processors currently own the top spots for all of the games. If gaming is your primary consideration, an Intel CPU should definitely be your CPU of choice.

I recently purchased the best digital camera available today. This camera is the Canon EOS 5D.

Canon offers an extensive line of digital SLR cameras:

• EOS Rebel XSi EF-S / EF-S / XTi EF-S / XS
• EOS 40D / 50D
• EOS 5D
• EOS 1D / 1Ds

The EOS Rebel cameras and the EOS 50D are fine cameras, but I wanted a full-frame camera for best picture quality and for best lens compatibility.

The EOS 5D and 1D lines both use a 24×36mm sensor — exactly the same size as one frame of traditional 35mm film. This takes great photos in low-light conditions. It also matches the same optics as a 35mm film camera.

The EOS 5D has a 13 megapixel resolution. That, like almost any other digital camera made today, is far more than is necessary. The 5D can store images in a variety of formats, including RAW. The 5D provides an ISO range between 100 and 6400.

You can read all of the specifications for the EOS 5D Mark II here.

Why not the EOS 1Ds?

The EOS 1Ds is in many ways a better camera, but:

• It is nearly twice as large
• It is more than twice the price
• It has suffered some very annoying software bugs

Lenses

The choice of lenses is arguably more important than the choice of a camera body. Luckily, the full frame size of the 5D and Canon’s market leadership mean that some very fine lenses are available for this model.

I have purchased Canon 50/1.4 USM lens for general-purpose work and a Canon 16-35/2.8L wide-angle lens for outdoor work. My next lens will be either a Canon 24-70/2.8L USM or a Canon 100/2 USM telephoto lenses. The USM lenses have better (ultrasonic) motors and the L lenses have upgraded optics.

Flash

I’ve topped my EOS 5D with a Canon Speedlite 580EX II. It’s a beast to carry, but it’s well-built and it has a quick cycle time.

We’ve upgraded our Proxy Sites database to make it even harder to spam and to further ensure the quality of all proxies submitted to the database.

We have also checked every site in the proxy list and removed ones that were broken or slow.

We believe that our proxy list is the best database of proxy sites on the Internet because it is the most frequently updated and because we do not accept money for proxy listings. We always give you the freshest proxies, not the proxies who pay to be put at the top of our proxy list.

Our database is much smaller than it was last week, but the quality is much higher. We currently publish more than 50 new proxies every day. This should help keep you ahead of any content filter which tries to censor your Internet activity.

SolarWinds’ Free Advanced Subnet Calculator is one of those tools that give you 101% of their capabilities without any restrictions or inconvenience. As its name says, it’s a tool that can help you with the subnetting process, but it can also come in handy in showing your address details, calculate CIDR or show available IP addresses within a subnet.
The Address Details tab can offer you a variety of information about a single IP address you’re entering. Whether it’s about the reverse hostname, the hex or binary version of the address, the class info, the average response time or retrieval from RIPE’s database of the proper information, the level of information is easy to understand and can also be handled efficiently.

The Classful Subnet Calculator is very useful in the subnetting process; after customizing the parameters you’re shown a full list of the possible subnets, including subnet mask, inversed subnet mask, the actual subnet size and the host ranges.

The Classless Inter-Domain Route Calculator (CIDR Calculator) extends the Subnet Calculator by adding CIDR support, for even more flexibility.

Last but not least, the Subnet Addresses tab helps you in displaying all the hosts within a subnet, by just entering the IP address and the subnet mask. It also highlights the subnet address and the broadcast address for your information.
An interesting feature was the possibility to export the obtained information into comma delimited files, text files, html files, PDF files or even Excel files, for future analysis.

Solar Winds’ Free Advanced Subnet Calculator is customizable from the skin point of view. It comes with 26 different skins for you to try, but its real power and usability comes from the way it provides IP and subnet information.

SolarWinds makes the Advanced Subnet Calculator available at no cost via their web site.