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When running Verisign Payflow Pro under PHP on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora Core, all of the SDK instructions assume that PHP is getting recompiled and reinstalled from scratch. This is all well and good on testbed systems, but not so hot for productions systems that use subscription-based package and security updates.

Luckily, pfpro.so can be compiled as a loadable module:

1. Drop pfpro.h and libpfpro.so into their respective directories per Requirements.
2. Install the RedHat Enterprise Linux or Fedora Core PHP SRPM.
3. Add “--with-pfpro=shared,/usr/local \” to the “%configure \” line in php.spec.
4. Run rpmbuild -bc php.spec.
5. Copy /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/php-X.X.X/build-apache/modules/pfpro.so to /usr/lib/php4.
6. Add “extension=pfpro.so” to /etc/php.d/pfpro.ini using the other .ini files as templates.

Now sit back, relax, and bask in the knowledge that you are contributing to the evil empire that is Verisign.

In addition to the ORiNOCO Classic Gold PC Card, the Senao NL-2511CD PLUS EXT2 is a favorite among radio geeks that Wardrive with dual diversified antennas. Pushing 200 mW with two antenna jacks, a 3 dBi or 5 dBi short range antenna can be used to pick up close signals in tall buildings while an 8 dBi or 14 dBi long range antenna will pull in distant signals closer to the ground for further inspection.

The ORiNOCO Classic Gold PC Card is the radio of choice for Wardrivers and Netstumblers worldwide, and its massive internal antenna and external antenna jack make it an extremely versatile radio for both portable and mobile applications. Distributed under many different monikers, the PC Card may sport a decal for WaveLAN, ORiNOCO, Lucent, Agere, Avaya, or Proxim. To make things even more confusing, a 64-bit WEP Silver version of the card exists in addition to its 128-bit WEP Gold big brother.

Physically, it turns out that there’s little difference between the Silver and Gold versions except for a different label, a hefty price increase, and a few flipped bits in flash. After doing a search I found that it was indeed possible to easily hack the ORiNOCO Silver into an ORiNOCO Gold. Alchemy v1.01 by Lincomatic automates the process by detecting the card, dumping the PDA from flash, patching the PDA, then re-flashing the modified PDA. 128-bit WEP Gold capability can then be enabled by upgrading the firmware to the latest version.

This afternoon I ran Alchemy on a first generation WaveLAN Silver PC Card and successfully upgraded the firmware to 128-bit WEP Gold 8.72, and will try to upgrade a pile of old ORiNOCO Silver PC Cards this evening.

Google has introduced a new Web Alerts service that sends out notifications of new pages crawled that contain chosen keywords. Much like their News Alerts services, Web Alerts is still in beta and may or may not stick around. I’ve already created a couple dozen once-a-day alerts to keep me informed of Trunk Monkey sightings.