Selecting Project Management tools

I have been evaluating project management tools for next project. 

The result is that I need both online and private intranet solution. Looks like one or the other of Freedcamp or Teamlab will be the online tool. 

The private project collaboration solution is one of these: dotProject, projectOpen, or RedMine/ChiliProject. PO-might be the one we need. :) 

There are at least hundreds of these tools. Not to mention any of the desktop tools like OpenProject, Planner, GanttProject, ReqOne and so on..

Summary - There are three types of applications
1. traditional destop applications comparable to MS-Project
2. pure online-tools saving data to cloud services
3. team collaboration tools to be installed to corporate servers used inside the intranet
... and anything between ...

A huge collection of reviews can be found from net just by searching with " top 10 project management tools " :)

Testing Tor-network, part 2 - Exit-bridge problem

Couple of months ago I wrote a blog about testing anonymous TOR-network.
I got quite a lot of feedback why I stopped using TOR anyway. I have to admit that I still use TOR, but now I know better the weak point of this network "charity".
 My ISP, Sonera, sent me this message by email, SMS, OnScreen notification and all of a sudden disconnected me from network.

This says that my broadband is disconnected due to security issue. It claims that my server has been taken into remote management of offenders and lead to adverse traffic. :(

The real reason was that I checked on my TOR-application to act as "exit-bridge" which caused about 2-3 GB of traffic to both directions during the weekend.

I asked  permission ot try this beforehand and there was no rules about the "exit-bridge".
After blocking me offline I tried to sort out this issue by calling Sonera and asking permission to use TOR-exit-bridge. All I got was this: http://www5.sonera.fi/keskustele/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=8320
I clearly says there is NO restrictions at all.

Yes, I know, someone can spam e.g. ISP's smtp-server through my IP and I'm responsible for it because ISP is not able to trace the real spammer by IP. The same applies to this Open WLAN -case too: http://fin.afterdawn.com/uutiset/artikkeli.cfm/2012/05/14/oikeus_avoimen_wlan-verkon_haltija_ei_vastuussa_muiden_tekemisista

So, if you use Tor, don't put it in "exit-bridge"-mode because it forward a lot of anonymous traffic from Tor-network to public-internet and vice versa. All you get is problems from you ISP.
The thing you may be looking for - as I am - is the Tor relay (Tor bridge relay). It should be enough to be a volunteer to help Tor-users in censored countries to get anonymous access to free internet. It should not cause a lot of traffic or bandwidth.

If someone can provide more information about this I'm more than pleased to get advises how to configure Tor.

ISP desconnected my network-connection because of Tor-network

Tor-network study caused my ISP to disconnect me from net :(

I asked permission to use anonymous communication tools by email and in the discussion board: http://www5.sonera.fi/keskustele/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=8320&p=37282#p37282

I think tere are two possible reasons for that:
 - Maybe tere were too much data going through because Vidalia were few days configured as "exit-bridge" or
 - ISP is really conserned about encrypted data-flow and is not able to control it.

I'm still trying to find new solutions to surf anonymously and safely in the net. I do know proxies and I'm even using a commercial proxy, too. But I think the messages in the net should be encrypted as default. Now we feel us criminals if we are trying to use encryption.

Testing Tor-network

Testing TOR-network

After reading news about SOPA, attempts to restrict anonymous public network communication and traffic surveillance I got interested in TOR-network.

During the last weekend I tried it out by installing Tor and Vidalia. Reading Tor news, blogs and YouTube videos about the survailance and censoring issues was 'eye-opening' :)

I turned bridge-relay feature on to allow Tor-community to use my server as a hub for a while. I was curious about the traffic bandwidth and speed when using this anonymous browsing. The results was very interesting.

First I got several web services working which were not available for me. E.g Pandora radio started easily. It was available in Finland few years ago but was closed from people outside USA. Of course I don't need it any more. There are so many other radio sites like Spotify and Live365 which I'm paying to be a VIP-member. By using proxies, like Tor network is, restricted web-services can be opened from anywhere.

Claiming Tor users as pirate music and movies downloaders seems to be wrong. First, Tor-network is much slower than regular downloading. Tor network hides your identity and encrypts the content. No need for Tor for usual downloading: by configuring a proxy information to Torrent client application does the anonymous torrent download much better.

Furthermore, running the bridge over the weekend, all traffic game from places like Syria, Iran, Ethiopia, China and Netherlands. I bet those users are _NOT_ downloading illegal copyrighted material but rather trying to send short messages outside censored countries. Total relayed data was less than 100 MB's. It is hard to imagine people downloading MP3-music from anonymous net when there is shooting on the streets. Their only option is to get over the censoring and try to send FaceBook status updates and Tweet outsiders what is really going on. Thinking this scenario, maybe we all should support anonymous communication by running Tor-bridges.

Building an old project environment

I got a new job to do.

I need to update the old Pawnshop-application.
That should be a business as usual, but the problem is all the old tools I used in that project. If I recall right, the year was 2005 when the common programming environment was Windows NT, Visual C++ 6, MFC, ObjectiveGrid7, Linux RedHat and Fedora 9 and Sybase 11 for Linux.

Hmmm... I finally found all those backups but where to install all this stuff ? I really hope that VirtualBox will solve this problem. I've got a brand new HP laptop with Win7-64bit. Now VirtualBox is up and running many Linux distributions like Fedora9 & 16. If I only get WinNT and Visual C++ 6 with odbc installed on the same virtual environment, maybe I could deliver the most urgent changes to my client.

To get Visual C++ 6 running on top of Win7 is not an easy task. I hope the source code can be build with Visual Studio 2008 on top of WinXP and linked with Objective Grid and all this still works with odbc-drivers. Intresting.

Of course I need to port the Pawnshop-aplication to latest Visual Studio 10/win7 and MySQL-database.

New server and new way to use computers

In my new job it is important to have several operating systems available to test software before publishing to the customers. There comes e.g. Parallels and VirtualBox into great use. If, and when, things go wrong, it is easy to return back to the old snapshots.

Now my home server got a new life. It was upgraded a lot and configured in a new way. It is also great to find out that my laptop is able to show several user interfaces at the same screen at the same time. The native system is Ubuntu Gnome, of course :) But it starts Virtual environments as well. Currently two versions on Windows/Visual Studio and now yet another user interface from my Ubuntu server by VNCServer/vncviewer. Confusing but intresting :)

I really like virtualization and remote use of these systems.

Project to save the WORLD

What do I (as a hacker) think of FB ?  Let me explain a bit.

In the past Americans believed the 'whole Internet' == 'Yahoo welcome page'! The problem continues with different starting pages to the present days.
Now the whole mankind seems to think FaceBook's NewsFeed is THE INTERNET.

I'm pissed off. To me, it has become a big mess of all kind of stuff mostly from sources of news and commercials. I can't find there much messages from my friends any more. I know, my own fault.
I gradually has begun to go back to news-readers, chat, skype, irc, and so on, which I newer gave up.
    
But there is a possibility that FB can save the world. Or at least the information technology from disaster. You know: software bugs, viruses, trojans, mailspam, intruders, rootkits, sniffers... and mobile phones !

This is my proposal:

1. Since most people think FB is the INTERNET and FB is able solve any problem and has answer to any question, we must remove all other applications from the world. By doing that, we have only FB bugs left.
By my theory, nobody will notice this small change :)

2. FB's status field must be changed to Telnet-window which accepts only characters echoed to backbone system. This cleans up the mesh of multimedia and font chaos. The FB gets even more rewards for the improvements to clean up information flow. The users are forced to learn reading and writing skills, though.

3. Status update field will be chanced to accept only hexadecimal characters which forms SQL-command clauses through the system just right to the database directly. This may cause some resistance in some novice users, but hackers can sell consultation courses to those beginners. Half of the facebook application code (and troubles) are gone.

4. Mobility users are closed down by the new feature: The status updates from mobile devices are printed out by so small font that friends are not able to read. Commo'n.. mobile users can blame themselves, they have bought too small devices anyway, even without keypads.

5. Newsfeed-window can also be Telnet-frame. There are only textual information anyway (if nothing). And of course the Newsfeed-window could be the same window as the status field. Most IT-problems solved.

6. An improvement could be that irc, news-messages, chat and mail-messages could be redirected to different frames. And FINALY the users reach the level they always wanted. Everybody knows who to send and where the messages are from in controlled fashion.

7. Last step: Rest of the Facebook can be removed from the system.

quod erat demonstrandum

br.
   "A hacker - looking for the project manager for a new OpenSource project"