Free WIFI in Paris airport

So, I was stuck in Paris Airport for a few hours waiting for my connecting flight. I took out my laptop in hopes of free internet. Opened up my browser. And there we go. Bad news and good news! The familiar screen pops up asking you to pay for the internet. But wait, at the bottom corner of the screen, it says something like "Free internet browsing for 15 minutes". Woohoo. Atleast I have 15 minutes of entertainment. I entered my name, email address and there we go. So after some emailing, facebooking, twittering and browsing, the time slipped by and in no time the 15 minutes were over.

Now what??

I sat there and thought. Haha! I still have my phone. It was my Samsung Captivate. But you know the small screen and the slow speed of these phones. Makes browsing a terrible experience. Even though these phones are much better than previous ones, the browsing is still a pain.

So NOW what??

I remembered reading somewhere, "15 min browsing per device". Some of my grey matter upstairs put on their thinking caps. So if they say "per device", that means they don't use the email you entered in the beginning as a means to stop you from using the 15 mins more than once. But then how would they find out it was from a different device. The answer is obvious for any one of you who have studied computers. No?? Well the only thing that came to my mind was the MAC address of the device.

I was on my linux OS. I had done it before, changing the mac address, but I couldn't remember the commands. Opened up the terminal. Nope. For some reason I thought maybe staring at the terminal would make me remember. But I had my phone. That much browsing can be done of the phone right??

So a quick google search gave me the needed commands.

You will need to either loign as root or use sudo in front of every command.

> ifconfig wlan0 down
> ifconfig wlan0 hw ether XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
> ifconfig wlan0 up
> ifconfig wlan0 | grep HWaddr

You should enter any hex digits instead of the X's above. For example

> ifconfig wlan0 hw ether 4f:ed:18:05:a9:28

I got the commands from here.

I was a bit skeptical. It can't be that easy right?? But it was. It worked and I managed to get another 15 mins of free internet. Then after 15 mins, another change and another, but then it was time for my next flight.

If you are on windows or mac my friend, its not the end of the world. A quick google search will tell you how you can change the mac address of your computer as well.

Happy flying!!

The New MacBook Pro is out.

Well we have all been waiting for the new revolution in laptops. Well we have it. The NEW APPLE MACBOOK PRO finally out. The long wait of apple fans and the suspense of others are at ease now.
This new note book brings with it a new standard for laptops all over.

Well this is no ordinary laptop. Powered with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, it can do wonders. It also comes with a 2.53GHz processor or for extreme enthusiasts a 2.8GHz processor. You may expect all this processing to drain out your battery fast but Apple surprises us with battery with a working time of 5Hrs(Not bad Apple).Well we all have to agree that Apple does wonders. Well coming to storage, apple gives us a wide range of options.

• 250GB or 320GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive
• Optional 250GB or 320GB 7200-rpm hard drive
• Optional 128GB solid-state drive

Thats just the beginning.

MacBooks were usually preferred by the professional class. When these glorious machines were presented to gamers, they appreciated it but turned away saying it was not made for them. It was like offering a Rolles Royce Phantom to a Nascar racer.

But now all that has changed. The wake of the new MacBook Pro powered with true graphics processing capabilities from the all new Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT has given rise to a new revolution for hard core gamers.

"Before the MacBooks had one major weakness, its Intel graphics card. But now all that's fixed, thanks to the new Nvidia." said a friend of mine, a hard core gamer.

Apple said that the new MacBook Pros will come out with the Nvidia GeForce 9400M or the much more powerful GeForce 9600M GT. Apple claims that its new machines are designed to offer UP TO 5 TIMES the graphics power of the previous MacBook Pros.

Well thats all for the gamers. Now lets see what the new MacBook offers for us, the non-gamers..

Apple always tries to make sure that it keeps some new interesting features along with the usual to keeps its products out of the normal. Apple decided to import the Multi-Touch trackpad from the MacBook Air which supports two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, three-finger swipe, four-finger swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag capabilities. Its also has a built in full-size backlit keyboard that keeps you going throughout the night. The screen is a 15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with support for millions of colors.

Again Apple doesnt let us down with a Built-in iSight camera, Built-in stereo speakers, a rewritable DVD player, Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking and many more features.

Well looks like Apple gets to keep it reputation coming out with such a majestic machine which just leaves us wondering.."WHATS NEXT"..