This is great; I wasn't able to run it from my iThingy, though (worked fine on my Mac). Do you have plans for a Flash-free version in future?

I have Cox in RI, but FIOS in my Arlington, VA apartment. I'm pretty sure it's configured the way you describe; the fiber comes up to the ONT inside the building and is distributed over coax and a dry copper line that seems to be a mini DSL system right inside the building. So I have three boxes: a DSL modem, ActionTec router, and set-top box.

The only thing that I still[1] hate about it is that they misconfigured it; packets bleed across the coax somehow: I'd associate with my Wi-Fi router, but actually get a DHCP address and routing from some other person's router (the more I think about it, the more my head hurts).

I wasn't able to make Verizon's level 1 or level 2 people totally understand what was going on, and couldn't get further. So I went into my ActionTec router and added a firewall rule to block packets coming in over coax.

Took me forever to realize what was going on. I originally noticed it when I was changing the SSID on what I thought was my router, but the config screen was showing a different SSID than the one I'd associated with (they all use the same admin password by default). So I probably briefly broke some random person's network. I put it back to where I found it, though, and let the Verizon folks know when I spoke to them. To be fair, I think the techs got as far as understanding what was happening, but they had no idea how to deal with this misconfiguration.

I was confused as to why I needed both coax and the single-pair copper, but apparently, the set-top box gets channels over coax and TCP/IP (for widgets and some part of the channel guide) via a coax connection to the ActionTec (so there's a splitter, and this is probably where the packet bleeding is coming from).

I have thought about getting FIOS here in RI, but I think I'll stick with Cox because every time I've had a problem, they've been good about sending techs out, and they have either known what they were doing or were willing to work with me on the diagnosis. The Verizon techs aren't bad, but at least in Arlington, they seem to do whatever they can to avoid rolling a truck.

[1]The thing I used to hate about FIOS was that the ActionTec would freeze all the time, and is notorious for this (something to do with a limited NAT table size). At some point it fixed itself. 

This may sound boring, but my favorite mobile app is K-9 Mail for Android. I use it all the time to read my work email. The built-in Gmail client only handles Gmail, and the built-in IMAP/POP3 client on Android is pretty awful.

But because a lot of Android is open source, Jesse Vincent (@obra) was able to take the awful built-in mail app, create K-9 Mail, and share it with the world! Check it out, source and all:

http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/

- Brian 

I hear you; it can be tricky. I'm temporarily dividing my time between RI and the DC area, and I make a trip (train or plane) back each month for the geek dinners. I'm going to try to catch a couple of RI-Nexus Open Coffees, South County Edition during the summer as well, if I can swing it. But it's tricky to schedule my time, especially since I travel for work occasionally as well.

But if you can't make it to one of the events, why not start one of your own? What do you like to hack/make/create? Come up with an idea for a meetup, and throw out some ideas on the forum for location and time, and see what happens. You'll find that a lot of folks have good ideas, and you should be able to get something fun happening.

@ilikepi, there is a plan underway to do a small, Maker Faire-inspired event here in RI this fall. If you'd like to get involved, sign up for http://groups.google.com/group/ri-geekfaire-organizers, check out the latest update, and stay tuned for more details.

Here's something that one of my colleagues just participated in; an overnight coding challenge to build websites for non-profits in Minneapolis. http://www.f1webchallenge.com/

"ten teams of volunteer web pros to create free websites for ten nonprofits." 

Howdy! I'm @bjepson

I'd agree with Matt's suggestion to keep it focused on Ruby or programming. However, there are a couple of groups that are doing hardware hacking if you'd like to check them out:

DC401 (monthly--a mix of security and hardware)

AS220's Make and Break Wednesdays (every week where there isn't a Geek Dinner or DC401 meetup)

- Brian

I'm really glad to hear you found it. You should also poke around and see if they left any back doors. Check out any PHP/ASP/Perl/etc scripts you have on the server, check to see if anything funny is going on. And if a script has mysteriously appeared that wasn't there before, it's certainly suspect.

I think the most likely way they got in is through a software vulnerability. When there's a vulnerability, malicious hackers (I say malicious to distinguish from hackers like myself who aren't out to get you) will use that vulnerability to trick your web server into running some program that then grants them access to your server (effectively, they are able to use the vulnerability to run programs under your own credentials). Then they do their deed, and often will leave a back door so they can get back in if you find what they did.

To reduce my exposure to such problems, every time I install a new software package (Wikipedia, WordPress, Django, etc) on a server, I subscribe to the mailing list or RSS feed where the software project announces new releases. Then when a new version comes out, I drop whatever I'm doing and perform the update.

- Brian

You're welcome. To be honest, if I'm correct, you have a very serious problem. As far as I can tell, someone gained control of your site and replaced some of the code running on your server.

The way this happens is through vulnerabilities in some piece of software.

For example, I use WordPress on my personal web site. Each time a new version of WordPress comes out, I have to update immediately, because each new version (usually) fixes some kind of security flaw in the product. The minute the security flaw becomes known, malicious hackers begin probing every web site they can find until they find one that is vulnerable. Then they use the vulnerability to compromise the site.

After they've compromised it, they replace some part of the site with their own files. There are many forms this takes, but three common ones are:

• Malicious software that attempts to deliver viruses to site visitors,
• A redirect to some other site (this is what appears to have happened in this case),
• A defacement, in which case it is very obvious that something has happened.

If your site has been altered, then you should take steps to find out what was changed and restore it. However, once a site has been compromised, all of the files on it should be suspect, especially anything that is executable (PHP files, CGI scripts, etc.). There are many ways you can respond to a compromise, but one of the more conservative responses is to restore the server from the last backup before the compromise.

- Brian