A Common Practice?

I did not have recent statistics on the percentage of wireless networks which are not secured. I can venture an educated guess that is the majority of networks although I believe the percentage to be shrinking. Far too many people from ignorance and apathy stop once the wireless router is working and fail to take the additional steps to secure it.

Humphrey Cheung, the editor of a technology Web site, tomshardware.com, measured how plentiful open wireless networks have become. In April 2004, he and some colleagues flew two single-engine airplanes over metropolitan Los Angeles with two wireless laptops.

The project logged more than 4,500 wireless networks, with only about 30 percent of them encrypted to lock out outsiders, Mr. Cheung said.

“Most people just plug the thing in,” he said of those who buy wireless routers. “Ninety percent of the time it works. You stop at that point and don’t bother to turn on its security.”

Public WiFi hotspots

There is nothing wrong with using a wireless network within an establishment which has provided that convenience for its customers. You would be well advised to be cautious about which Internet sites you visit and the information you access when on a public network. Those networks are inherently insecure and doing your online banking or accessing other sensitive information would not be advisable from such a location. If you use these networks you should be especially diligent about having your security software in place and up-to-date.

Using Your Neighbor’s Wireless

I know no one would even consider tapping into their neighbors water line or electric line and then try to excuse it as harmless. Using someone else’s broadband service without their permission may be illegal. In some states, even with your neighbors permission may be illegal. Don’t be fooled by believing accessing a network wirelessly is equivalent to accessing a network anonymously. It is possible to track you down if you are using another’s network wirelessly. It is also incorrect to assume law enforcement agencies are ambivalent to this crime and will not prosecute.

• 2006 – Illinois man David Kauchak was fined for unauthorized use of a local agency’s Wi-Fi access point
• 2005 – a Florida man faced felony charges for piggybacking onto a neighbor’s Internet connection without their permission

Not only are you opening up your computer to security threats, if your neighbor is using his network for nefarious purposes, you will have a lot of explaining to do if he is ever investigated.

Your Wireless Network

If you have an account with an Internet service provider and have purchased a wireless router to use in your home, take the necessary steps to install the security. There will be information provided with the hardware you purchase on how to complete this process. If you no longer have that information, you can look it up on the website for the manufacturer of your router. The process should only take about 15 to 20 minutes. Because you would not want to be associated with a neighbor who might be downloading child pornography on his network, secure your network so that he cannot take advantage of your generosity. If he decides to break the law, guess whose door they will be knocking on first?

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The first website is www.netbiblestudy.net/denominations and is entitled: “Denominational Doctrines” This study contains brief descriptions giving where and when each of the denominations listed began and who started them. Also given are some of their basic beliefs especially what they falsely teach and practice that one must do to be saved and why what they teach is false.

The second web site is www.netbiblestudy.net/faithfull It is an interactive Bible study course entitled: “Are You Being Faithful To The Lord Until Death?” consisting of 26 lessons. The purpose of this course is to encourage the faithful Christian to remain faithful and committed to the Lord, to help the Christian who is weak in the faith to become more faithful, and for the Christian who has become unfaithful to come back to the Lord.

The third web site is www.netbiblestudy.net It is an interactive Bible study course entitled: “Are You Really Sure Of Your Eternal Salvation?” consisting of 25 lessons. The purpose of this course is to teach the non-Christian what he must do to be saved.

The fourth web site is www.netbiblestudy.net/worship It is an interactive Bible study course entitled “Are You Worshipping God In Spirit And In Truth?” consisting of 24 lessons. The purpose of this course is to teach one what the Bible says we must do to worship God in spirit and in truth.

The fifth web site is www.netbiblestudy.net/evangelism It is a 13 lesson study entitled: “How To Do Personal Evangelism” and has a 4 lesson Bible study that you can download and print to help you teach others the gospel.

The sixth web site is www.netbiblestudy.net/bulletin It is entitled “Biblical Church Bulletin Articles” and has a number of short articles suitable for inclusion in church bulletins or used as tracts. Each article is Biblical and doctrinally sound. Feel free to utilize these in your church bulletins, or in any other way to the glory of God. From time to time I will be adding additional articles to the list.

The seventh web site is www.netbiblestudy.net/lessoins It is entitled “Bible Class Lessons” and has a number of Bible class lessons on various subjects to help ground us in sound doctrine of the Bible. These lessons are suitable for Junior High, High School, and Adult classes.

The eighth web site is www.netbiblestudy.net/mdr It is a seven lesson interactive course on what the Bible says about marriage, divorce, and remarriage and is entitled: “Are You Married, Divorced, & Remarried?”.

I fully expect we will see more congregations offering videos as well as live streaming in the coming months. The cost of this technology (cameras, discspace, and bandwidth) have gone down significantly in the past couple years.

Link: http://www.seminolepointecofc.org/

Site Link: Searching the Scriptures.net

I will take for granted that most of you know how to do a basic search, and even a phrase search (enclose a phrase in “your search phrase”). Most are not aware however that you can limit your searches to documents of a specific type (i.e. Word, PowerPoint, and HTML). In addition to this, you can limit your searches to certain sites, documents within a specific date range, documents that contain one word but exclude other words, or limit the search to the title of a document or the contents of the document. All of these features can be found in Google’s advanced search page one of the nicest things that I have seen this year from Google is the ability to create your own custom search engine. This is simpler than you might think and well worth your time if you find yourself searching the same sites over and over again. This feature does require that you create a free Google account which you can do at: www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount for those of you who also design web sites, you can add Google’s Powerful Analytics (web site statistics) to your web pages. I have not seen anything which is free of charge that can compare with the amount and level of detail that Google Analytics offers.

I discovered this site recently while browsing through open DNS. There appears to be a large amount of content available from this site. I have not had the time to do an in-depth study of the site contents. I was impressed with the Atlas section of the site. The site also has a large number of language tools available. The amount of time I have spent has only tweaked my interest in what this site has to offer. I would be very curious if any of you have investigated the site in more detail.

Link: http://biblos.com

Home Page

Although my personal preference votes against using black for a background for any Bible study site, in general the graphics on this site are impressive. This is a very deep site. There are references on the site to undergoing improvements which may be currently affecting what content is available. The site contains a lot of links to maps which may or may not be available on this site (I mean by that I am unsure if the content resides on this Web server or if this is a link portal referring to content on other Web servers). There is much more to this site than I have had time to investigate. The content I have used I have been impressed with. If you use the site and have a good or bad experience, let me know.

Link: http://www.bible-history.com