Free Republic

An investigative series I've been writing about organized cyber crime gangs stealing millions of dollars from small to mid-sized businesses has generated more than a few responses from business owners who were concerned about how best to protect themselves from this type of fraud.

I've tried various flavors of Linux (on live cd) on both desktop and on 3 laptop computers, to wit: Ubuntu 6.06Knoppix 5.01Damn Small Linux 3.0 (Knoppix hack) Overclockix 3.79 (Knoppix hack) By and large none of these Linux versions have any trouble finding the cable modem router & internet when run on desktop PCs. But none of them seem to be able to find the internet on the 3 laptop PCs running either Linksys PCMCIA 802.11g wireless network cards or Broadcomm internal 802.11 b/g wireless network card. Linux can't seem to find the Broadcomm internal 802.11 b/g wireless network card...

The modern PC is a marvel of technology. One of its more useful capabilities is the ability to use the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive as a boot disk. Many Linux distros use this feature to launch their installers, but if you can boot off the CD, why can't you run off the CD? In fact, you can. The cool thing about all this is that you don't have to install anything on your computer. In our other articles this week, we've looked at distros that had to be installed to your hard disk before you could use them. But that's...