Representative Expression

Back around June 2009, Tiscali took over the running of my old Pipex network.  And whereas before I was averaging around 2400Kbps, it all suddenly went pear shaped and dropped to less than 600Kbps for a few days.

It did recover later that day, but ever since Tiscali took over the routing of my data, both the upload and download speeds have steadily decreased until yesterday, they nose dived to below 750Kbps.  Pipex insist they do no traffic shaping, no bandwidth throttling on my connection, but I beg to differ!

I contacted support to see if any work was going on. “Absolutely none sir, nothing has changed this end”.
So I sent them a copy of the above data and rang them back. There response was “Have you changed your phone sir?” to which I replied “What everyday since June 2009 !”
He assured me nothing had changed and that there were no problems his end. I then asked them to sort out my Mac code as I had enough and I would be transferring away ASAP.
Funnily enough, within 30mins, my upload speed has shot up above 2000Kpbs for the first time since June 2009.

Pipex/Tiscali/Talk Talk absolutely suck and are to be avoided like the plague regardless of how cheap they are.

You are much better taking a look at Plus Net (although now they come under BT, I’d be weary of that).  My top suggestion at the moment is believe it or not, O2 Broadband.  Yes, they are a big corporate group, but their customer service is first rate. If you tell them there is a problem, they actually listen to you. They don’t treat you like some half witted idiot, but they actually listen to what you have to say.

So why am I still with Pipex? Because the buggers owe me over £400 in over payments and the instant I leave them, I face a long haul through the courts to try and claim it back. As for Ofcom? Forget it. They know who pays their wages and are about as effective as a chocolate fireguard.

And if you wanted further proof of just how bad Pipex/Tiscali can be, just take a look above.
They insisted absolutely nothing was wrong at their end. It took 30mins of ranting at their support guy for them to go actually get off their arse and take a look. And finally, after 8am, things magically get a whole lot better.

Be warned… stay clear of Pipex and Tiscali…

It happened to me last night around 12.30am.
It was my mobile number this time.
The phone rings twice, and then the call drops.
By the time I get to the phone, there is a missed call from 03598815400011

That is a number from Bulgaria and more than likely, a premium rate number.
I had a quick check online to see if there are any other reports on this number and low and behold, there are plenty. It does however appear to be a new number in use.

I was amazed to read some of the comments on one site and a few of the questions I have listed below:

"How do they get my number?"
"Why are they ringing me at that time of the morning? I'm not likely to answer".
"Why do they only let it ring once, I will never be able to answer the phone that quick"

Some people just don't seem to understand when they are about to be conned even when it jumps up and bites them on the nose.
They didn't "get your number".
And the reason why it only rings once is because they don't want you to pick it up and answer it.
(If you do, that costs them money and they don't want to actually spend any money, they just want to make as much as possible).

Here is a copy of my reply I posted in reply to one comment.

Image via Wikipedia

A few months back PIPEX changed my fixed IP address without warning. Ok, so I lost a few days in fault finding a few network issues when a few things stopped working because of the IP change. The fact that PIPEX changed my IP wasn't so much an issue, it was the fact that they never told me about beforehand. For operational reasons, I understand that sometimes an IP has to change, it just can't be helped. So I really wouldn't have minded. But to be not told beforehand is just bad business practice and causes a lot of unnecessary work. But PIPEX's ineptitude doesn't end there.

This is a partial extract from an article I've written for another website.

You can find the full article available here (PDF | WORD | OOD)

Why you should never use an ISP Mail address for Business

As a member and contributor to various Anti-"spam" forums, this is a subject that often appears.
Now unless you have some technical understanding of how mail works, it is not surprising that many people are not aware of the pitfalls surrounding email.

This document will discuss the issue of using any ISP for email, and examine the various other options available.

The title was intended to be contentious in order to provoke the reader into understanding the concept of why it is potentially harmful to your business not to understand the effects of not controlling your email. It must also be made clear that there are good ISP’s out there with which you could have no problems what so ever, but the points raised below still hold true for ANY ISP.

Contact Email Addresses on your Web Site.

Most companies will provide an email address on their web site as a means of contact.
There are a couple of main reasons why this can lead to problems.

• Masses of “spam”.

• Users unable to send mail to the address.

• User sends mail, but it's not received by you.

Getting No Replies to your Mail?

Imagine you have received an inquiry from a customer.
You send a reply, but never hear anything back.
You send a further reply, but still nothing back.

Or imagine you send out a newsletter from your own ISP mail account.
But you have a really low return rate.

Does this mean that your customers are just not interested in you now?
(Then why would they contact you in the first place).
The chances are that the customer never received your mail in the first place.

You can find the full article available here (PDF | WORD | OOD)

Two people have been cautioned for using people's wi-fi broadband internet connections without permission.

Neighbours in Redditch, Worcestershire, contacted police on Saturday after seeing a man inside a car using a laptop while parked outside a house.

He was arrested and cautioned. A woman was arrested in similar circumstances in the town earlier this month.

From:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/...

There are those who would argue that leaving your broadband connection open for others to share is harmless. Providing you have locked down access to machines on your internal network, what is wrong with giving away bandwidth that you are not using?

Some argue that drive-by users who enter illegal porn sites, or send massive amounts of spam would be hard to trace and that the owner of the network would held liable for any actions by these free loaders.

Wi-Fi Planet - Securing your Wi-Fi Connection

intelligentedu - 5 Simple Steps to Securing your Wi-Fi Network

Linux.com - Secure your Wi-Fi Traffic Using FOSS Utilities

From Wikipedia - Wi-Fi Social Concerns

Measures to deter unauthorized users include suppressing the AP's service set identifier (SSID) broadcast, allowing only computers with known MAC addresses to join the network, and various encryption standards. Access points and computers using no encryption are vulnerable to eavesdropping by an attacker armed with packet sniffer software. If the eavesdropper has the ability to change his MAC address then he can potentially join the network by spoofing an authorised address.

WEP encryption can protect against casual snooping but may also produce a misguided sense of security since freely available tools such as AirSnort can quickly recover WEP encryption keys. Once it has seen 5-10 million encrypted packets, AirSnort will determine the encryption password in under a second.^[10] The newer Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and IEEE 802.11i (WPA2) encryption standards do not have the serious weaknesses of WEP encryption, but require strong passphrases for full security.

Recreational exploration of other people's access points has become known as wardriving, and the leaving of graffiti describing available services as warchalking. These activities may be illegal in certain jurisdictions, but existing legislation and case-law is often unclear.

However, it is also common for people to unintentionally use others' Wi-Fi networks without explicit authorization. Operating systems such as Windows XP SP2 and Mac OS X automatically connect to an available wireless network, depending on the network configuration. A user who happens to start up a laptop in the vicinity of an access point may find the computer has joined the network without any visible indication. Moreover, a user intending to join one network may instead end up on another one if the latter's signal is stronger. In combination with automatic discovery of other network resources (see DHCP and Zeroconf) this could possibly lead wireless users to send sensitive data to the wrong destination, as described by Chris Meadows in the February 2004 RISKS Digest. [3]

In Singapore, using another person's Wi-Fi network is illegal under the Computer Misuse Act. A 17 year old has been arrested for simply tapping into his neighbor's wireless Internet connection and faces up to 3 years' imprisonment and a fine.^[11]

This two page cheat sheet also offers a comprehensive reference to grasp of basic to advance Google query building concepts and ideas.

read more | digg story

Handy crib sheet full of information about Google Services, Hints and Tips

Turbo-diesel flat-four claimed as world-first

Subaru's turbo-diesel boxer

Subaru said it's about to unveil what it called the world’s first horizontally-opposed turbo-diesel engine.

The company will be debuting the engine at the 77th Geneva International Motor Show next month, along with an entire, all-wheel-drive drivetrain.

Subaru said it "believes passionately" in its boxer engines which are more compact than in-line units and provide a much lower centre-of-gravity. This reduces body roll for safer cornering and also enhances handling precision.

Due for its first vehicle application early next year, Subaru claimed its boxer turbo diesel to be a highly rigid unit with low levels of noise and vibration, eliminating the need for a balancer shaft. Other benefits include compactness and strong pulling power at low engine speeds with high-rev throttle-response.

From: http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyI...

Knowing Subaru's experience at getting the most from an engine I wouldn't mind taking one of their cars with this engine in it for a test drive.
I still remember the first time I sat in a Subaru. It was my bosses car who I considered to be a quiet peaceful sort of guy, until he put his foot down and threw me into the back seat nearly breaking my neck in the process, (well that is what it felt like at the time).
And the noise that most Subaru's make is second only to that usually heard from most V8's in America. 

Can't wait to see what this new engine sounds and performs like.

Don't forget to head over to PistonHeads to check out more of the latest news and trends.
Cracking site, great bunch of members.

There is a very interestesting interview with Bjarne Stroustrup over at TechReview.

Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of the C++ programming language, defends his legacy and examines what's wrong with most software code.

In the 1980s and 90s, Bjarne Stroustrup designed and implemented the C++ programming language, which popularized object-oriented programming and influenced numerous other programming languages, including Java.

C++ remains the archetypal "high level" computer language (that is, one that preserves the features of natural, human language), and it is still used by millions of programmers. Many of the systems and applications of the PC and Internet eras were written in C++. For all that, the language remains controversial, largely because it is notoriously difficult to learn and use, and also because Stroustrup's design allows developers to make serious programming mistakes in the interest of preserving their freedom.

Pop over to TechReview and read the complete 3 page review.  You can add your comments to the many that are already there.
Failing that, you can pop over to the accu.org site and join the excellent discussions over there.

Update: Viruses coming to a screen near you soon - vnunet.com

McAfee's complete list of predictions for next year:
1. The number of password-stealing websites will increase using fake sign-in pages for popular online services such as eBay.
2. The volume of spam, particularly bandwidth-eating image spam, will continue to increase.
3. The popularity of video sharing on the web makes it inevitable that hackers will target MPEG files as a means to distribute malicious code.
4. Mobile phone attacks will become more prevalent as mobile devices become 'smarter' and more connected.
5. Adware will go mainstream following the increase in commercial Potentially Unwanted Programs.
6. Identity theft and data loss will continue to be a public issue – at the root of these crimes is often computer theft, loss of back-ups and compromised information systems.
7. The use of bots, computer programs that perform automated tasks, will increase as a tool favoured by hackers.
8. Parasitic malware, or viruses that modify existing files on a disk, will make a comeback.
9. The number of rootkits on 32-bit platforms will increase, but protection and remediation capabilities will increase as well.
10. Vulnerabilities will continue to cause concern fuelled by the underground market for vulnerabilities.

ISP's should hopefully take the lead in educating their customers about the potential dangers of connecting via their networks. It won't happen but I long for the day when ISP's become accountable for the damage that their customers cause. Only then might they take note and take the action that would reduce the problems we see today and will continue to see a rise of in 2007.

Mobile phone companies have the ability to use hardware to prevent or at least reduce the effect of Viruses, only cost and the 'impact' on their profit margins could deter them.  Far too many companies see it as a 'non-value added process' when it comes to investment in the infrastructure required to halt the spread of viruses. 
For many years, most ISP's were quite happy to let the weaknesses in the OS's take the majority of the blame when in fact it is the users that ultimately shoulder the responsibility of ensuing the security of their machines.
If you sent an email to 1000 users with the subject of "This is a virus, do not open and execute", you can bet that there will be a percentage that will still open it and still run it.
If you sent the same virus but said "This is a free picture of a top celebrity doing something they shouldn't" an even larger percentage will open it.

I've often seen the analogy of buying a new car and not being able to drive it off the forecourt until you have proven you have the required insurance and qualifications to be able to legally do so.  Whereas I don't think there is a need for every PC owner to sit an exam in order to be allowed to use the internet, ISP's should ensure through regular education and updates the need for vigilance and caution when using the network.
I would like to see the day when the ISP and/or user is held accountable for the damage caused to my network because of the actions of the user.  Maybe then people will take due care when they know they can be held liable.

Give password scams the boot with personalized sign-in seals.

Fight password theft with seals you create and add to Yahoo! sign-in pages.

• Don't be an easy target of phishing scams

  • Create a sign-in seal you'll see whenever you sign into Yahoo!
  • If your sign-in seal is not there, it's likely to be a spoof page created by a phisher to steal your personal information

Now I don't know how long this 'feature' has been around at Yahoo, but at least it appears they are moving in the right direction.

• So what's the problem?
• So what is the purpose of a sign-in seal?
• Does it prevent 'phishing' attacks?

So what's the problem?

There are 1000's of scams and phishing attempts out there in the wild.  One of the most current is when you receive a message from apparently from someone on your contact list which 'tells you about  some new photos they have on their webpage'.  In fact there are no photo's and the webpage is a phishing attempt whose aim is to get people to log in to a fake Yahoo page.
The instant you log in, the phishers have your login credentials and are free to use your Yahoo account at their will.

So what is the purpose of a sign-in seal?

The sign-in seal works on a per-computer basis.  So you do have to remember that on each PC you use the seal, you have to upload a new one.
At https://protect.login.yahoo.com/ you can upload your 'seal'.
Once you have set it up, whenever you go to a Yahoo page (on that computer) your 'seal' will be displayed on that login screen. 
Each and every login page at Yahoo will display your 'sign-in' seal.

Does it prevent 'phishing' attacks?

No. It cannot prevent 'phishing' attacks.  Only you the user can prevent those. (Well apart from locking up the pond scum responsible for the 'phishing' sites.)
What it does do if give you 'the user' the ability to detect a phishing site with great ease.
There are some things you just don't do, such as open attachments from people you don't know (without virus scanning, anti-spy ware scanning etc).  There are some things that genuine sites just don't do, like supply you with a link to a login page, (they 'should' tell you to go to the main page and log in.  You 'should' already know the site if you are a member, so you should know.
If you do ever receive a link within an email, you should always check as best as possible, that the link is genuine.

There is only so much that a regular user can do to ensure a link is genuine and some phishing links are quite clever in their cloaking.
At least for the moment, when you visit a fake 'Yahoo' page, your 'sign-in' seal will not be displayed.  (I say for the moment because I haven't looked at depth as to how it achieves the sign in seal and we know how much effort the fraudsters put into defeating anything put in their way).

• Remember, if you are in an internet cafe reading your email and login to a Yahoo site, you won't have a sign-in seal on that computer so it won't be displayed.  It is on a per-PC basis.
• It will not stop you from going to any phishing sites, it will only highlight that the page you have visited is NOT a genuine Yahoo login page.
• It will only protect you on Yahoo pages.

Bot nets likely behind jump in spam

A significant rise in the global volume of spam in the past two months has security analysts worried that bot nets are increasingly being used by spammers to stymie network defenses erected to curtail bulk email.

Estimates of the magnitude of the increase in junk email vary, but experts agree that an uncommon surge in spam is occurring. On the low side, Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus, has found that average spam volume has increased almost 30 percent for its 35,000 clients in the last two months. Others have seen much more significant jumps: Spam black list maintainer Total Quality Management Cubed has seen a 450 percent increase in spam in two months, and the amount of spam filtered out every week by security software maker Sunbelt Software has more than tripled compared to six months ago.

Two weeks ago I noticed an increase of the spam creeping through my filters and landing up in my various in boxes.
I use SpamPal on all of my PC's on my network at home and I recommend it to every person I meet.
As a long term user of SpamCop I also recommend signing up and reporting ALL the spam that people get. You can get a free reporting account and although it will not necessarily mean a decrease in the amount of spam you get, it could help reduce the amount of spam others get. I say not necessary because (1) you may be put on a gray list by spammers if they find out your are reporting your spam (and trust me, they do), or (2) until such time as every user subscribes to submitting spam to RBL's, there will always be spam creeping through

Funny. I had been asked a few times by customers and in online forums about the activation, or more precisely the reactivation of Windows XP after moving it from one PC to another, or after an upgrade of a major component/reinstall. Then my neighbour pops round with a similar question.
I had a quick look into it and found a few facts out.

With Browzar you can search and surf the web without leaving any visible trace on the computer you are using.

Browzar is free, it only takes seconds to download and you don’t even need to install it, so you can download Browzar time and time again, whenever and wherever you need it to protect your privacy

Hmm... Sound too good to be true? Well not quite. From the F.A.Q pages on their site ( Browzar Web Site )

What are the system requirements for Browzar?
The minimum requirements for Browzar are: Windows 98 Second Edition (SE): and Internet Explorer (IE) 5.5.

At first glance it appears to have a very small footprint (about 250k) which makes it seem that its a very small application for browsing the internet. Although there is mention of it in the FAQ, it will not work without Internet Explorer on your PC, which probably explains why they are still working on the Mac OS and Linux versions of the tool.

What should be noted however is that sinced it relies upon IE technology, it will suffer from the same security problems as Windows IE and therefore you should always update your PC as and when updates become available.

Also, since it is a Beta version, there are still a few problems being reported and as such I wouldn't rely on it being totally secure until such time as the main release has been issued. There is one site that I know of that is documenting a few problems with it ( Computer Zen ) namely that it does not remove ALL traces of sites that you visited. (He tried it with Playboy.com)

Would I use it over something like Firefox? No.
I am an IE user foremost. I do have Firefox and Opera installed on this machine (my main development box), but I've never really got into the habit of opening Firefox or making it my default browser. I can't remember why but a while back it had something to do with certain sites I used not fully supporting Firefox and I've just never switched over proper. (But on my other PC's and laptop, Firefox is my browser of choice and the system default).

So why would you use Browzar? What possible benefit could it give you?
Well I suppose when it is finished and it works as advertised, then maybe the privacy option could be a motive.
But for now, the main reason for using it would be the lack of toolbars, addons and all the other poop that gets loaded along with IE right now.
In that respect Browzar is an excellent choice. From my initial tests it appears to load faster, run faster and I would say display pages faster. (The main reason for the last statement is that I have so many plugins installed on my development machine that it does hinder the display of web page content if for example a plugin keeps dialing home to let them know what I am viewing to have it guess what I am going to view next). So in this respect, Browzar does have a benefit over IE.

But will I use it as my first choice browser in future? I don't think so. Its IE with a 'skin' on.
Why use IE as its base?
Why not take the Open Source Firefox codebase and use that as a base for a 'secure browser' ?
Why open your application (Browzar) up to the same security issues as IE?
(Of course, not to say that Firefox is not open to any security issues of its own).

I'll watch it for sure, since I want to see where it goes. But to launch it as a new browser is misleading and IMHO it should be labelled as a new Skin for IE.

If you have a Centrino based Laptop, I suggest you go check the following. There are no reported vulnerabilities yet, but now this is out in the open, you can bet there will be some coming along in the very near future. Also, I doubt if this will be issued via a Windows Update, so you will probably have to go to Intels site and download the update

Wireless LAN Products - Intel? Centrino Wireless Driver Malformed Frame Remote Code Execution

Summary: Security vulnerabilities exist in the Microsoft* Windows* drivers for the Intel® 2200BG and 2915ABG PRO/Wireless Network Connection Hardware because of the way that they currently handle certain frames. An attacker could potentially exploit these vulnerabilities which could potentially lead to remote code execution and system control.

I've finally finished upgrading my web hosting website and its now available for taking live orders.
I'm still waiting for a few payment processor accounts to go live and these are easy enough to add as and when they become active.
For the moment you can select Paypal as the payment processor or a manual invoice step which allows you to place and order and then I email you back to sort out payment options.

So if anyone visits my blog, and wants to place an order, use the manual step for the time being and I will sort you out an extra discount.
Once we agree on a price, I will give you the access page for the payment processor of your choice with the new reduced fee.
For those people who are members of the 'forum', I'll even set you up accounts at cost. (Those who know which forum will know what I am talking about, those who are wise enough to work out which forum can also have the discount). After you have made your order, email me your 'forum' username and I will give you the true 'cost' price.

I am still working on adding much more content to the site, but wanted to get the basics out there and running. I am about to add the following sections:

• Web Site Design - This will include links to the various sites I have already designed and in operation right now.
• SEO - We will also be offering SEO services in order to help improve your site rankings.
• Blogging - More information on the blogging services we offer. This will include installations of many of the popular blogging applications and also dedicated accounts for hosting your 'blogspot' blogs.
• Add in the FAQ section - The FAQ module is there, but not visible at the moment as it has been causing cross-browser problems on verification. Its only a few minor tweaks required, its just getting the time to fix it that is the hassle right now.

Now that there is a way for blogspot blog to add Google sitemap, and also a way to ping Google sitemap, does this mean that if a new blog have not been indexed yet, by adding Google sitemap to their blog and then pinging Google sitemap, one can get one's blog indexed faster?

This is part of a response I made to an email on the Yahoo Blogger support group to the above question. There had been a few questions on the subject in recent weeks so I thought I would post it here as post.

The answer or in this case answers is yes and no and now that I think about it, maybe....
If you host your blog on their servers (blogspot), it will take 3-7 days for them to find it.
If you host your blog on your own server, it will take around 5-7 days for them to find it.  (using blogger that is.. If say you use Moveable Type, then it will take them forevre to find it if you don't have any inbound links or tell them about it).
If you add a google sitemap and tell them about it, it will still take 3-7 days for them to get round to indexing it.

Also remember that just because you've told google about your site in say hours... It doesn't mean they will do anything with the data for weeks. It all comes down to the quality of the site content (and that goes with physical content as well site construction (coding, colour schemes etc)). Just telling Google about a site is a fraction of the story.

But, here is the word of warning I gave out before...

Yes Google have provided a way for you to authenticate your site by the use of a META Tag...
In order to prove that the sitemap you have submitted to Google belongs to you, they used to get you to upload an 'verification file' to your root directory. 
Google would then know that you had access to that folder and the chances were that the site was yours. 
Because some Blogspot users can't do this (because you host on blogspot not on your own web server), they provided a method for users to use a META TAG inserted in their template to provide the authentication.  

But being on blogspot you cannot generate a SITEMAP.XML (or SITEMAP.XML.GZ - the compressed version). 
Usually, this would be a file that contains ALL of the pages on your site.  So in the case of one of my personal blogs, a list to over 2500 individual pages.
There is nothing to stop you generating this SITEMAP file no matter who you are hosted with, but if you are on blogspot you cannot upload it to your sites root folder (because you don't have FTP access to that folder).
You cannot place it on a remote machine and then point Google Sitemaps to it because it has to be on the root folder of your website.
But don't despair...   You have two options, one of which is a tadge sneaky, but still alllowed.  

This is a response to good article that I read on the use of abuse to fight abuse and the issues that surround such activity. There is a link at the end to oringal article by David Cory Hart.

Much of the spam that we receive is sent in direct violation of various federal and local laws. Many purveyors of spam are, simply stated, criminals.

The only issue I have with the above statement is that not all countries regard sending SPAM as a contravention of their laws. Having a global policy of making it illegal would be almost impossible to enforce. What I do agree with David is that it should be illegal everywhere and those responsible treated as criminals where ever..

Motorola RAZR V3

Having worked for Motorola for over 9 years, I have owned only 3 Motorola phones.
When I first saw the RAZR V3 and its list of features. I ordered one.
(This was despite being made redundant by them the week before I ordered it).

I had a problem with getting the phone to take a charge from the mains charger.
There would be periods when the phone would appear to be 'dead' and pressing the power button would cause the panel to briefly light and then go out completely.
Even with the charger plugged in, it would not power up.

I was told by the company I bought it from that sometimes removing the battery and leaving it out overnight would help. Well twice it did, but other times it wouldn't. (I since found out why that worked and I'll explain it below).

I did some digging around on the net and couldn't find a definitive answer, so I called a few colleagues at Motorola. Despite working for them for 9 years, I only worked on the Base station aspect of Mobile phones (plus a year working on Tetra equipment). I never worked with the Mobile phone division directly. A few people had told me about charging circuit problems, but no one had a clue as to what the failures were about.

I think I have found the problem with my phone, whether or not it works for you, I don't know. Basically, when the battery is dead flat, the mains charger is totally useless. The internal charging circuitry will not switch on to allow it to take a charge from the mains charger. How to get round this? Use the car charger for 10secs. 10secs on the car charger is enough to give the battery a small level that will allow it then to take a charge from the mains charger.

One of the features I specifically wanted the phone for, was bluetooth. This allows me to sync up between my various PC's without the need for cables etc. It also allows me to use my laptop via dial-up on the phone without cables. The bluetooth feature though is one of the reasons why the battery has a life of less than a day most often or not. If I place the phone close to the other bluetooth device, it lasts longer, but if I place my phone in the kitchen away from the PC's, it seems the bluetooth device in the phone places a large drain on the battery.

If the battery is already low and it is nowhere near the charger, then a single call will drain the battery completely and leave it unable to take a charge from the mains charger.

I now make sure it is hooked up to the charger whenever I am near a mains outlet, or plugged in to the car charger on trips. As soon as the battery level drops to a single bar, I have to switch off the phone until I am able to find a charging point.

I believe they have fixed this in the later models of the phone, but even with my contacts, it is hard to get Motorola to admit there is a problem, and to get them to replace my phone with a later model. Both my wife and son have a Nokia which they charge once a week if they are lucky. If my V3 goes without a charge for more than a day, it will die until I can get it near my car charger.

So if your RAZR V3 dies and it appears the battery is dead as a dodo, then I would go plug it into your car charger (assuming you have one) for a minute or so, just to give the battery a boost.

Now in fairness to the phone, it might be that the voltage output from my mains charger is slightly low and unable to trigger the internal charging circuit. Car charges tend to output a slightly higher voltage (and rely upon the phones internal charging circuit to get the voltage to the right level).
It might also be a fault with the phone itself and I am leaning towards this, since the later V3 models have a modified charging circuit and the charger remained the same. It could have been down to component tolerances rather than bad design in itself. But seeing as Motorola won't respond to any of my support requests, I'll just have to guess.

As for the battery drain itself, well that might have to be accepted. The more features you place in a phone, the more features you want from a phone, then the bigger the drain on battery life. Motorola never really got battery life sorted out as well as the competitors, but then that's because certain other companies 'cheat' when it comes to battery life. (By cheat, I mean for example, the standards say a mobile phone must 'talk' to the network every few time intervals. If you cut the number of times that the phone talks to the network, then you save on power used. Motorola was always big on ethics and tended to stick to the letter of the standard, no matter if the competition cheated slightly). Motorola are also quite advanced in fuel-cell technology and it won't be long before we begin pumping 'butane' into our phones.

But in the mean time, I need to learn to switch off my bluetooth (which sort of nullifies the use of my headset), make sure its hooked to the mains charger 24/7, or by a hat with an inbuilt solar panel. (Or go by a Nokia... but I just can't bring myself to do that, despite the layoffs, just hearing the Nokia ring tone still makes me cringe).

Patently-O: Patent Law Blog: PTO Requests Model of Warp Drive Invention

PTO Requests Model of Warp Drive Invention

The Worsley-Twist warp drive does not depend upon traditional emissions of matter to create thrust. Rather, the drive creates a change in the curvature of the space-time continuum — thus allowing travel by warping space-time. Worsley & Twist patent application recently suffered another setback. The Examiner has now requested a working model:
Applicant is required to furnish a model of the instant invention. 35 U.S.C. 114. See Also 37 C.F.R. 1.91. Among other rejections, the Examiner has asserted a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 for lack of utility — finding that the invention is inoperable.

Links:
U.S. Pub. No. 2003–0114313

It's worth having a visit to the above site just to see some of the comments !

I thought I had some weird and wonderful ideas, but some of Keith Nagells really take it too the extreme.

Mind you, it appears that he has just sat down and watched every SCI-FI show on earth (I think just on earth), and tried to submit a patent for every 'prop' used.

When someone invents the transporter, just think of the energy we could save (but it will probably require a power source the size of the US). Who said you don't get something for nothing!

For some reason, Freeserve/Wanadoo (or Freecrap and Lottapoo) are having major snags with their email servers at the moment.

Anyone sending an email from either of those two will think that the email has been sent, but it might not reach the recipient.
Some emails are being bounced back, but not all. And we are not talking just sending to my domains, they are screwing up nearly everybodies email !!!

What appears to be happening is that nearly ALL of their servers have been identified as sources of SPAM and appear on the DSBL network.
(The DSBL network is basically a service that lists all email servers responsible for sending SPAM.
Most email servers will check the DSBL list when it receives a mail, and if the sending server appears in the list, the chances are it is SPAM.

Most likely it is a combination of bad email configuration at their end, and quite a few of their users probably have machines which have been taken over by spyware/trojans and have been sending out SPAM by the bucket load.
But looking at the DSBL reports it is very widespread.

Since 99% of Freeserve/Wanadoo servers have been listed, most decent email servers such as the ones I use, are rejecting all email from those accounts.

So if you are trying to send me an email, and it appears that I am not replying, or you are getting a bounce message try sending to one of my alternative addresses (Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo).
Obviously I won't post the addresses here cos it will get harvested and I'll be spammed to death !!!... But if you email me to chris.a.wright at my yaps domain usually, change the yaps part for gmail.com and I'll get it.

The best thing to do is to switch over to Pipex (http://www.pipex.net) and bin the money grabbing so and so's.

ENIAC: A computer is born | CNET News.com

ENIAC--monster and marvel--debuted 60 years ago By Michael Kanellos Staff writer, CNET News.com February 13, 2006, 4:00 AM PST In February 1946, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were about to unveil, for the first time, an electronic computer to the world. Their ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, could churn 5,000 addition problems in one second, far faster than any device yet invented.

It was the difference between the ENIAC and the Intel Dual Processor that made me laugh... Only 60 years between them but a world apart in specs.

Links:
http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/eniac-story.html
The ENIAC Museum Online
ENIAC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What to do with the empty Whisky/glass bottles; Whisky PC by MetkuMods - Because you love your hardware!

Whisky PC Something little that one can do with the empty glass bottles.

I got the link to this website from Slashdot and it's given me an idea.
I am considering making a business idea out of these and making a number of these up, and sellling them on Ebay or something. (Note: Actually, I would't touch Ebay for all the money in the world. They've pissed me off royally over the last few weeks).
So I reckon I need to order up a case of 24 large bottles of scotch, drink the contents and make a few of these up.
Only problem being after drinking that much whiskey, I wouldn't bet on any of them working... But it would be a good excuse to get hammered.

Seriously, its a neat idea for a one off, but it doesn't actually make much sense for an upgradeable, maintainable, reliable etc etc PC. A great novelty idea.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/02/05/161210.shtml

Microsoft Security Advisory (904420): Win32/Mywife.E@mm

Microsoft Security Advisory (904420)
Win32/Mywife.E@mm
Published: January 30, 2006 | Updated: February 1, 2006


Microsoft wants to make customers aware of the Mywife mass mailing malware variant named Win32/Mywife.E@mm. The mass mailing malware tries to entice users through social engineering efforts into opening an attached file in an e-mail message. If the recipient opens the file, the malware sends itself to all the contacts that are contained in the system’s address book. The malware may also spread over writeable network shares on systems that have blank administrator passwords.

CME-24

You have a few days to make sure your AV is up to date and that you have run a full scan of ALL of your PC's on your network.
I have included the full post from MS website in the extended entry below, but as always, use the MS website at the link above to get the most up to date information.

I had downloaded and installed a plugin for MT that basically puts an icon on your page which provides a short cut to allow Skype users to click it, launch Skype and call me.
There was me thinking that despite this site getting 190,000 hits during November, that no one really reads these pages. Well obviously somebody is reading the web page because in the 3 days since I placed the Skype shortcut, I've had hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of calls to my Skype account.
So to that extent, I've removed it for the time being. Not that I don't like being called, but more than a hundred calls a day doesn't leave much time for work !!!

Also, Skype 2 has now been released (from its Beta phase) and there is a new download available.
Skype 2 now supports Video calls, and has a few user interface changes as well. Nothing drastic. I've yet to try out a video call but its just another feather in its cap.
One problem I did have with the Beta version is that once installed it displays a dialog box saying "Would you like to test your video now?". Well in my system, I have several sources of video available, and the webcam was not the default. So clicking yes locked up Skype as it tried to access one of my video sources.
Quitting the application via the task manager was the only option. Upon reloading Skype I selected the options and configured it to use my webcam as the default video source and then tested it. This worked much better and didn't cause a lock up. I have passed a bug report to Skype and they are investigating it. They might even have fixed it in the released version (as I found this with the Beta build).

Update: 18:45 6th Jan 2006
Whilst I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that I made this post, but I received an updated version of the firmware for the DG834GT today (version v01.01.30). It was emailed to me directly from a Netgear support guy. Now I already had a copy of the v01.01.30 that was sent to someone on the forum months ago, but it didn't fix the issues I had been seeing. I've installed this version on my router for the time being just to see if the other problems show any signs of improvement.
It beats me why if this version has been around a few months and that it is being sent directly to people who request it via email, why they don't just publish it on their website. It makes you wonder if they are aware of any problems with the v01.01.30 version that is preventing them from making a mass release.
I would like to think that they in the process of compiling a new release that includes a few more fixes. (But somehow I doubt this).
Anyway, I won't post this v01.01.30 version here because any old tom dick and harry can come download it, modify it, and post their own versions.
If you do want a copy of the new software drop me an email and I will forward you on a signed (PGP) email with it as an attachment. (It's 3meg or so, so make sure you have the room).

I've had a Netgear DG584GT router for quite some times now. It behaves ok 99% of the time, but some of the functionality is a bit screwy to say the least.
Wireless performance is Ok at 54M/sec, but the alledged 108M/sec is a pain to get stable. Any Bluetooth band activity in the house trashes the connection.

The main problem that piddles me off is that the reporting is hosed up. I submit my access logs to DSHIELD for analysis, but some of the more useful information gets munged by the router. It's a simple fix that has been updated in similar DG834xxx models, so all they have to do is incorporate the fix into the same GT build. But that has taken over 9 months so far.

I wouldn't bother using their web support portal. It takes them ages to read it, and then you get a reply that is so far off the mark, it is as if the person reading it is from another planet. Mind you, the fact that Netgear outsourced their support to India is no surprise here. It takes several emails back and forth for them to understand the problem, and even then they will close the pin down as fixed when in fact it is not. I have had to raise the same pin 5 times now.

The web based forum is full of great information, but almost none of it actually comes from Netgear staff at all, but the general public.

So as much as I like the performance and functionality of the Netgear compaired to previous manufacturers, they support sucks to the extent that I will probably never purchase a product from them again. Once or twice to be infuriated is ok, but not ten times over a year; that is just taking the michael.

DG834GT
108 Mbps Super Wireless ADSL Router with 4-Port 10/100 Switch

Great kit, piss poor backup... Don't go there.

Summary
=======
Important Information for Thursday 5 January 2006


Microsoft announced that it would release a security update to help protect customers from exploitations of a vulnerability in the Windows Meta File (WMF) area of code in the Windows operating system on Tuesday, January 2, 2006, in response to malicious and criminal attacks on computer users that were discovered last week.

Microsoft will release the update today on Thursday, January 5, 2006, earlier than planned.

Microsoft originally planned to release the update on Tuesday, January 10, 2006 as part of its regular monthly release of security bulletins, once testing for quality and application compatibility was complete. However, testing has been completed earlier than anticipated and the update is ready for release.

In addition, Microsoft is releasing the update early in response to strong customer sentiment that the release should be made available as soon as possible.

Microsoft's monitoring of attack data continues to indicate that the attacks are limited and are being mitigated both by Microsoft's efforts to shut down malicious Web sites and with up-to-date signatures form anti-virus companies.

The security update will be available at 2:00 pm PT as MS06-001.

Enterprise customers who are using Windows Server Update Services will receive the update automatically. In additional the update is supported Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.0, Systems Management Server, and Software Update Services. Enterprise customers can also manually download the update from the Download Center.

Microsoft have released the patch for this vulnerability earlier than expected. Make sure you have your automatic updates switched on (for those that have it) or go off to the site to perform a manual update if need be.
There is no immediate rush to go get the patch, but I would do it as soon as possible.

Update: 18:40 6th Jan 2006
ZDNet reports that all applications launched inside Wine will be vulnerable to this exploit.
See the article here.

Be warned that there is a new nasty out in the wild. But contrary to the same old rumour mill, if you practice good internet usage (or safe internet practices) then you won't be at risk from attack.

The following is an excerpt from the advisory from Microsoft. Click the link to visit and read the full article and any updates.

Microsoft Security Advisory (912840): Vulnerability in Graphics Rendering Engine Could Allow Remote Code Execution.

What is the scope of the advisory?
Microsoft is aware of a new vulnerability report affecting the Graphics Rendering Engine in Microsoft Windows. This vulnerability affects the software that is listed in the “Overview” section.
Is this a security vulnerability that requires Microsoft to issue a security update?
Yes, Microsoft has confirmed this vulnerability and will include the fix for this issue in an upcoming security bulletin.
What causes the vulnerability?
A vulnerability exists in the way specially crafted Windows Metafile (WMF) images are handled that could allow arbitrary code to be executed.
What is the Windows Metafile (WMF) image format?
A Windows Metafile (WMF) image is a 16-bit metafile format that can contain both vector information and bitmap information. It is optimized for the Windows operating system.

For more information about image types and formats, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 320314. Additional information about these file formats is also available at the MSDN Library Web site.

To be at risk from this vulnerability you would need to visit a site that was specifically created (or altered) to use a special WMF file or open up an email with such an image in it. So if you visit sites you don't know or trust, or open emails from the same, you are asking for trouble and not just from this new vulnerability. Go Google for safe web practices !!!

Google Press Center: Zeitgeist It turns out that looking at the aggregation of billions of search queries people type into Google reveals something about our curiosity, our thirst for news, and perhaps even our desires. Considering all that has occurred in 2005, we thought it would be interesting to study just a few of the significant events, and names that make this a memorable year. (We’ll leave it to the historians to determine which ones are lasting and which ephemeral.) We hope you enjoy this selective view of our collective year

Take a trip to the Google zeitgeist 2005 site and check out the history of searches over the year. They have some neat graphs if you are nerdy enough to appreciate them.

Car paints changing with temperature by ZDNet's Roland Piquepaille -- German researchers have used ion bombardment and gold metallisation to produce new particles whose bonding behavior can be chemically tailored. This could lead to new shimmering car finishes which can change with temperature or humidity or new cosmetics.

Now when I first saw this, I thought "Wow....", but then I went outside to drop the kids off at school and remembered how frigging cold it is and thought, "Hmmm, the car will always be covered blue in this country", since it is so damn cold and wet most of the time...

Likewise, when I was living in Fort Worth, TX, it would probably have been bright red all the time, which isn't quite the case since the temperature variations over the year was easliy 50 degrees if not more...

Sorry to post yet more news about doom, gloom and death, but I learned today that John Vlissides who had a major part to play in Design Patterns passed away on Thursday 24th November 2005 after a long illness.

The Design Patterns project discovers and documents common solutions to problems in object-oriented software design. We document this information in pattern form—a semi-structured format that characterizes a single problem and its solution, the consequences of that solution, and variations on the solution's implementation. The pattern form helps the reader find specific information quickly, and it makes comparing patterns easy.

Go to http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JohnVlissides where they are collecting articles about him in a very fitting memorial.

I've not been bothered to get a Freeview Digital box because I know that there are some new ones coming out in a few months that will make the current ones obsolete. They will still work, but the newer ones will have a lot more features than the current models. But as I was looking up on the Savastore website, I noticed that they had a USB Digital TV Reciever for £42.89 inc VAT. (Freecom DVB-T USB Stick)

Ok, you can pick up a receiver box for much cheaper than that, and I was in some doubt as to the signal quality that could be picked up by a USB Device.
I ordered it on the Monday, and it arrived mid morning today (Tuesday).

The installation procedure is very easy indeed. Insert the USB device, wait for it to be detected and then point the driver installer at the CD supplied with the unit. The only problem I had was in entering the serial number bcause the one on the device would not be accepted. A quick trip to the website of Freecom and a browse through the forum showed I was no the only one to suffer the same problem. As it turns out, you are meant to enter the serial number that is printed on the cover of the CD with the software on it. Not so obvious until it was pointed out. (There was also a few people on the forum asking for replacement serial numbers since they through the paper CD cover away

After a quick reboot of the PC, and then starting the TV Application, it presented me with a config page where all I had to do was hit "Start" to begin scanning the UK frequency list for available channels. Now here it did find about 10 channels, and 10 radio stations but I must stress that I live in the middle of nowhere and I didn't expect to get much of a TV signal inside the house, surrounded by walls, trees etc, so I was surprised to see it found anything at all. I then hooked it up to the main TV aerial that is situated in the loft of this house. A quick rescan and it found every available TV and Radio station possible with excellent signal strength and quality.

I have to say for a unti no bigger than a USB memory stick, it works very very well. I can record from any channel, listen to any of the available digital radio stations. In fact I have the Man Utd match on ITV playing on the laptop next to me now while I am working on my main desktop machine.
I am quite impressed with the performance of the device and would recommend it to everyone as a quick an easy method of adding digital TV to your machine. It can be moved from machine to machine with no problem, and doesn't take up any space in your laptop bag and would be great for going on trips with. It is claimed to work on pretty much all of the digital TV standards world wide (but I can't verify that just yet, so I will take their word for it based on the success of their other claims).

Have a look the specs on Freecom and check it out, you won't be disappointed with its performance. (But remember, if you live in an area where Digital coverage is weak, or not yet supported, it won't do much for you).

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A 20-year-old man accused of using thousands of hijacked computers, or "bot nets," to damage systems and send massive amounts of spam across the Internet was arrested on Thursday in what authorities called the first such prosecution of its kind
Read Original Article Here

One down, 3,450,342 to go. (Judging by the number of attacks being made on my network each hour).
But this is a start I suppose, let us hope that there are many many more.

Mind you, in saying that, the amount of SPAM hitting my addresses this past few weeks has dropped to less than 10 a week !! It has not been this quiet since I first went online. I haven't changed anything, added any new protection. All I did was create a honeypot@thenameofmydomain.com for each domain I run and enable a spam trap on it that forwarded to SPAMCOP

And after more than 8 new variants of the Bagle virus landed in my mail this week, it appears to have gone quiet again the last few days.
So don't forget to update your virus definitions several times a day and if you can configure it to do it automatically during the day, more the better.

For all of those who have virus updates set to once a day, I would recommend running a manual update.
I received a new version of the I-Worm/Bagle.HV which was not initially detected by AVG. After performing a manual update it did download a High Priority update which did pick it up.

In my case, the email arrived with the To: address set to chris.a.wright@unilever.com.
Now the unilever.com part of it is faked, as were most of the headers, but the IP address I traced back to a PC which has been responsible for other attacks recently.
It also came within a zip file called Health_and_knowledge.zip and contained an executable loader.exe.

Below is the output from Virus total which as you will see shows that not all of the AV vendors are catching it right now.

Also, there is a link to their site at the end of the report. If you ever receive a suspicious file and you are not sure, then you can upload it to their site and it will run a virus check using a number of AV vendors. Whilst it is not 100% accurate, it gives you more confidence than none. But even if it comes back safe and you do not recognise the sender, ditch the file or send it to your AV vendor to have it checked. In fact if you recieve any sort of attachment from someone you don't know, BIN IT !!

An email dropped into my 'suspicious' folder today which is where emails that are not picked up by my AV, Junk Filter or known filters.

When I first saw the name of the attachment I recognized it as a variant of the Bagle Virus, but wondered why AVG had not picked it up.
I had seen similar email a few months back and again AVG didn't catch it on its first pass. I say first pass because after doing a manual Virus Database update, the new definitions did find it. I did the same today and AVG identified it as a new variant of the Bagle (TR/Bagle.CR).

So first things first, if you have your AV application set to perform an update only once a day, I would recommend that you configure it to do at least twice, or if you receive a lot of emails, maybe 4 times a day. (Your AV server might not like this because it would put 4 x the load on its service, but hey, I pay them a subscription to keep my PC protected, and if they issue new updates AFTER I have updated, how am I meant to know).

In the case of TR/Bagle.CR, it appears that most of the big guns issued an update today, only Fortinet had it marked as suspicious prior to today. In the case of Fortinet, they had it covered 12 days ago.

It appears that 5 new variants of Bagle hit the street today.

If you ever receive a file attachment and you are suspicious of it and you have the confidence to save it to your hard drive WITHOUT opening or executing it, you should consider uploading it to a site like VirusTotal

Results of a file scan

This is a report processed by VirusTotal on 09/19/2005 at 21:41:22 (CET) after scanning the file "newprice.zip" file.

Antivirus	Version	Update	Result
AntiVir	6.32.0.3	09.19.2005	TR/Bagle.CR
Avast	4.6.695.0	09.19.2005	Win32:Beagle-DV
AVG	718	09.19.2005	I-Worm/Bagle
Avira	6.32.0.3	09.19.2005	TR/Bagle.CR
BitDefender	7.2	09.19.2005	Win32.Bagle.CJ@mm
CAT-QuickHeal	8.00	09.19.2005	Bagle.da
ClamAV	devel-20050917	09.19.2005	Worm.Bagle.Gen-3
DrWeb	4.32b	09.19.2005	Win32.HLLM.Beagle.36864
eTrust-Iris	7.1.194.0	09.18.2005	no virus found
eTrust-Vet	11.9.1.0	09.19.2005	no virus found
Fortinet	2.41.0.0	09.07.2005	suspicious
F-Prot	3.16c	09.19.2005	security risk named W32/Mitglieder.FF
Ikarus	0.2.59.0	09.19.2005	no virus found
Kaspersky	4.0.2.24	09.19.2005	Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.da
McAfee	4584	09.19.2005	no virus found
NOD32v2	1.1221	09.19.2005	Win32/Bagle.BI
Norman	5.70.10	09.19.2005	no virus found
Panda	8.02.00	09.19.2005	Trj/Mitglieder.EX
Sophos	3.97.0	09.19.2005	Troj/BagleDl-U
Symantec	8.0	09.18.2005	no virus found
TheHacker	5.8.2.109	09.19.2005	no virus found
VBA32	3.10.4	09.19.2005	no virus found

Apart from the fact that my outlook pst file is almost to the point where it needs a hard drive all of its own, I thought it was about time that I sorted out my email folders.
I'm usually pretty pedantic about organising my emails into folders depending on who, what or where the message came from, but one thing I have never done is save the attachments off to a specific folder based for each email.
Over time, this has led to an massive increase in the size of the outlook pst file(s) that I use.

It has never really been a problem though, since I also tend to archive my emails quite often to try and keep the size of the pst files down. I even have rules to create individual archives.

More recently I have enabled cron jobs to email me the logs on sites that I maintain. Each time I receive an email with a log attached, I have to manually save the attachment into a folder so I can then run my analysis tools on it. I suppose I could have spent the time and developed a script or utility to do it myself, but I googled to see if there was anything out there and I found quite a few. All were reasonably priced (between £10 and £20s so I didn't really see the point in spending my time to develope one of my own.

The one that I decided to try happened to have a trial period of 30 days, but it took me 20mins of using it to decide I wanted to purchase the registered copy.

EZDetach is a Microsoft Outlook add-in that makes saving and categorizing attachments as easy as a mouse click - you don't even have to open the messages. It is a perfect Outlook companion for people who receive email attachments.

• Easily extract / save Outlook attachments from one or multiple messages.
• Save email attachments as individual files.
• Organize attachments in file system folders for easy access and sharing.
• Delete attachments.
• Print attachments.
• Regain access to attachments blocked by Outlook as unsafe.
• Automatically save attachments with Outlook Rules Wizard.
• Reduce mailbox size.
• Process attachments with custom scripts.
• And a lot more...

The company is called TechHit and you can find more details on EXDetach at their website: http://www.techhit.com/ezdetach/

Not only can I now filter the emails from the site servers in to their own folder, the rule also performs a custom action which invokes EXDetach and saves each attachment in to a specific folder. The rule even executes my analysis tools and creates my reports for me. And the whole process is now automated (which gives me more time to write yet more useless info in my blog).

To be slightly impartial, I did also find a production from Sperry Software, (Attachment Save), but they didn't have a trial period or a demo version (or at least I could not find one on their site), and I don't like not being able to "try before I buy" even if they have a money back guarentee. So they dipped out this time and I went ahead and got the EZDetach. It does exactly what I needed the utility to do, and probably more.

A question that I replied to on a Macromedia Forum.

I have a question that I hope some of you gurus can help me with since I am a novice here.
I have made my web page ( to the best of my ability and it is a learn as you go of course ) , and after I have it up . I contacted several ( 7 ) people to view it and let me know how it looks. I had two people tell me that the info was overlapping and it was all jumbled up, everyone else said it was looking ok on their monitors . For me, two people having complaints is two too many. Do you have an idea as to why this looks a certain way for some and not for others? I hope I have not been too vague here . Thanks in advance for all of your help and insight.

There could be a number of possible reasons.
For example, what browser did you test it with?.
Did you test it with say Opera, Firefox, and IE?.
Each browser displays certain HTML in a slightly different way..
They are meant to be all standards compliant, but this doesn't happen too well in real life..
Also, what screen resolution did the other people view your website at..
You might have designed it on your 1600x1200 resolution, and someone might have viewed it at 800x600..
You might have used font size "absolutely tiny", and the 'visually challanged' of us might have set the font to "majorly big"..

There are so many things that can impact the look and feel of your web page on varying end users displays..

There are certain things you can do to help minimise the cause and effects, but you will never really be able to totally control it. For example, making sure that your web page is standards compliant (to some standard), will at least make sure that your web page 'should' have the same behaviour on browsers that are standards compliant..

Remember the 'good old days' when you would see "This signed designed best for viewing on 800 x 600", well that was a way of making sure that they used the correct resolution, or at least gave them an answer as to why it might not look right. (I believe we are now in the realms of 1200x1600 being the default these days)..

And good use of CSS across your site will allow you to define consistant styles and make it easy to update various sections quite easily. It doesn't make the page look consistant, but it will help you achieve it..

But at the end of the day, there is only one way to ensure that your pages are consistent across multiple browsers, and that is to test, test and do more testing.

I have a machine that has every type of browser I can think of installed (both Windows and *nix). I always test pages on their. Likewise, you can have multiple browsers installed on the same machine as Macromedia. You can then use the settings in Macromedia to define the short cuts to these browsers (F12, Shift F12, Ctrl F12 for example). Pressing these on my Macromedia opens up the test page in IE, Opera and Firefox.
But this alone will not ensure that pages are the same.

1. Make your pages standards compliant as you can.
2. Careful selection of screen resolution.
3. Careful selection of fonts and image sizes.
4. View it on many different browsers.
5. Test and Test Again.
6. Goto step 6.

Having talked about it in a post the other day, I found the link (http://www.google.com/talk/) and installed it.
I've been trying it out and it is quite good. No bells and whistles, just a VOIP client for talking between PC's over the network.
Rather than have your MSN, Yahoo and other chat programs loaded, using memory and resources, Google Talk has quite a small memory foot print. It's only other feature is that it performs the same role as the Gmail notifier, letting you know when you have Gmail.

Google Talk is a downloadable Windows application that lets you send instant messages to your friends and make free phone calls over an internet connection. Google Talk offers excellent voice quality and works with any computer speaker and microphone.

Gmail is Google's free email service, offering lots of free storage, powerful spam protection, built-in search for finding your messages, and a helpful way of organizing email into "conversations." And there are no pop-up ads or untargeted banners - just text ads and related information that are relevant to the content of your messages.

With the recent (MS05-038) and (MS05-039) problems from Microsoft, I decided to have a look at my web logs for the yaps4u.net domain to see what sort users where hitting my site.
In relation to the (MS05-039) problem, I wanted to see how many Windows 2000 users there were out there.

If you click on the extended entry below you will see the stats from my server logs taken over a 24 hour period and equates to about 6000 hits.

As you will see 13.98% of hits use Windows 2000 which is quite a sizeable chunk of internet users.
It appears that 60% of users are of the Windows flavour.
I suspect the low number of Firefox users is probably down to a few page rendering errors when viewing my site with that browser. I will sort it out one day when I find the part number for ordering some more roundtuits.

Over 30% of IE Browsers are pre-IE6 and closer examination of the logs shows that not all of them are patched or up to date, which is very worrying in this day and age.

I won't go into the Anti-Microsoft thing, mainly because I am pro-Microsoft. In fact I am pro-anything, I just refuse to jump on the bandwagon and attack Microsoft at any oppurtunity. They happen to produce the majority of the tools that I use to do my work, and they perform quite well on the whole, so they can't be getting it that wrong. And they always give the appearance of being concerned with customers, so I excuse them any transgressions they make over time. Not to say that wouldn't change if they ever forgot about customers for want of profit, but I can't see that happening.

As Firefox became popular enough to draw hacking resources away from IE, the problems appeared with that browser too. Ok, there won't be the hacker who wants to create an exploit just because it is Microsoft, but there will be the commercial hackers whose aim is to gain financial rewards from their hacking exploits (no pun intended), rather than the discrediting of a major organisation.
In fact recent studies have found that there has been a large increase in what has been called commercial hacking, moving away from the trend of specifically targetting home users. The exploits will still 'use' the home user as a platform for launching these attacks as these supply the majority of unsecured machines with which to do so.
Now they are more likely to use home machines to attack or gain entry to commerical networks, rather than retrieve an individuals personal data.

Needless to say, no matter whose product has been identified as having a potential or real vulnerability, average Joe must be provided with the education to keep their machines up to date with upgrades/patches and the latest security, or these users will go on providing the methods for the hackers to work their nasties.
Education of the public is a must so rather than directing our angst at one company or group, we should start focussing on bringing Joe Public up to speed.

SPAMCOP is going down for maintenance on Tuesday August 23, 2005 starting at approximately 10AM PDT -0700 for a period of 6-8 hours

Check http://www.spamcop.net/ for further details.

A COM Object (Msdds.dll) Could Cause Internet Explorer to Unexpectedly Exit Published: August 18, 2005 Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a possible vulnerability in Internet Explorer. We are not aware of attacks that try to use the reported vulnerabilities or of customer impact at this time. Microsoft is aggressively investigating the public reports. The Microsoft DDS Library Shape Control (Msdds.dll) is a COM object that could, when called from a Web page displayed in Internet Explorer, cause Internet Explorer to unexpectedly exit. This condition could potentially allow remote code execution if a user visited a malicious Web site. This COM Object is not marked safe for scripting and is not intended for use in Internet explorer.

The above advisory was brought to my attention by a post to the DSHEILD list the other day but not from information from Microsoft. The information about this 'possible' exploit was on the FrSIRT site which even goes to list example code that could be used to generate an exploit.

The accepted practice from the respectable sites these days is on finding a possible problem you inform the vendor such that they can take action to prevent the effects of any such exploit.

What appears to have happened in this case is that FrSite have released not only information about a possible exploit, but also the code required to generate the exploit (or at least provide a good headstart). Just the mention of the possible problem is usually enough for those who create these exploits to get going. Giving them a headstart just encourages more people to 'have a go'.

At present there are no known exploits to take advantage of this, and some efforts to reproduce the problem have so far failed. It appears now that Microsoft have acknowledged the possibility of a problem and will no doubt be throwing resources at it to reduce the problems caused if (and more likely when) an exploit is released. (If in fact there is a problem).

With the present trojan and its variants (the zotob) doing the rounds you would think MS were busy enough, so the last thing that they needed was for some irresponsible company to release the details of another exploit while they were busy working the previous one.

For the mean time I would keep on the lookout for any suspiscious activity and make sure you are patched and up to date with any MS patches.
Don't think that because you have a good Anti-Virus installed that you are protected.

UPDATE: 16:22 19/08/2005
It appears that some sense has been shown by FrSIRT, in that they have now taken down the example exploit code.

This is just basic advice without going into technical details. All of the subjects will be included in the manuals that come with your wireless router. If they don't, you've brought the wrong one.
Likewise, all of the features mentioned below should be incorporated on your wireless router. Again, if they don't you've still brought the wrong one. (Unless, you have brought one of those small travel wireless modems for use in hotels or similar. These often don't have all the features, and sometimes don't have enough features in order to use them while travelling?)

So you've bought yourself a brand spanking new wireless modem to hook up all the PC's that you have in the house, or because you now have broadband and you don't want to run ethernet cable round the house. Either way, the first thing you should do once you take the 'thing' out of the box is to secure it.

Many WiFi units are set up to work 'as is' directly out of the box, (in fact I would further qualify this to say that 99.999% of all WiFi units will work directly out of the box).
Unfortunately, this is open to abuse by those than can and do. So I've just installed WiFi, what do I care if someone steals a bit of bandwidth every now and then? Well, that maybe ok until someone parks up outside your house and spends ages sending zillions of SPAM to all around the world, or up/downloading pornography of the worst kind using your ISP connection. It would be ok if it were just your neighbor say, but its those committing the illegal activities that you want to prevent from gaining access to your connection.

Firstly, I would change the default password that was set for the router at the factory. Change it to a strong password or even better a fairly long phrase. This will ensure that no one can go back in and change any security settings 'if' they ever did gain access some how.

Secondly, turn off the SSID and change it to something less obvious than the factory sets it to. (Call it "MyHomeThingyWotsit" rather than the rather obvious "Wireless" or "Netgear" as set on some units). The broadcasting of your SSID is basically an advert to any listening devices telling them that your network is up and around. Turning it off means that basically you have to know its there (which hopefully you should do!! So why broadcast it to others?). The SSID is basically the name of your Wireless network and since you have switched off the broadcasting of its name, any devices that you want to connect to your wireless network would have to be told the name of the network to search for. Obviously just switching off the SSID broadcast does not stop the RF being transmitted so a fairly simply WiFi scanner could still detect the presence of a WiFi network, but they would not know what it is called.

Next I would turn on WPA if you have it on ALL of your machines you are going to connect to the network or WEP if you don't. This will basically require you to enter a password on each of the devices that are going to connect to the network. Once again, use strong password/phrases.

Most Wireless Routers have the ability to limit access by using the MAC address of the connecting device. Each PC or wireless device has a unique serial number (MAC address) therefore no two MAC addresses should ever exist. You can find the MAC address of your wireless PC/device and enter it in the router configuration screen.

All of the above steps are in reality quite simple to do. But since most manufacturers set them up with no security, most end users hardly ever enable any of them (and even less enable all of them). It is not only protecting your PC's or wireless devices, it is protecting the other users of the complete internet. Even if you have the most secure PC/Wireless device in the world, you are giving them access to all the other non-secured devices on the network by allowing them the use of your connection. And as you are the person who pays the bill, it would be you answering the call of the law if action were as a result of someone misusing your connection.

Which products does Microsoft Update support?
In addition to Windows updates, the Microsoft Update website offers updates for some Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office 2003, Office XP, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft SQL Server. Typically, only updates for the latest version of each product are offered.

This is something I didn't know until I read it on the SANS site in that Office Updates are now included as part of Windows Update.
That has always been a pet hate of mine having to visit two updates sites in order to keep my computer up to date. (Not that I actually have to visit the Windows Update site since that is done automatically, but I always forget to check the Office Update site.
I mention this partly because I am waiting for a fix/patch for MS Word which everynow and the dies for no reason (well, not exactly no reason, it dies because its a piece of poop). Luckily, I haven't lost any data so far). MS know its a bug and are working on a fix (or have been working on a fix for the past 3 months, so it can't be too high a priority).

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Police have arrested a man for using someone else's wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice. Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony.

The number of wireless networks in use within homes in the UK has increased considerably over the past 12 months as more and more UK users buy extra PC's for use within the house and then purchasing wireless routers to connect them to there broadband connections.

To the average home user who has little knowledge of PCs let alone PC wireless security, very little information is given.
Should they use WEP, WPA-PSK or WPA-802 1x ? And there are a few others.
When you check the security settings on my Netgear DG834GT router, I currently have it set to Security Options: Disabled, yet I consider it to be secure.
I use MAC Address Authentication method. Each Network device has a unique address. Whether this be a wireless Ethernet card in your PC, or an in built Ethernet device, they all have this unique address.
You then set up a trusted entity access list and only allow those MAC Addresses access. In theory it is possible to break most of the widely used encryption methods used, but it is virtually impossible to imitate a MAC address.

It is actually quite easy to clone a MAC address, but extremely difficult to obtain it without gaining physical access to the device in the first place. So in the instance of the various PCs within my house, I have added their MAC addresses to my authorised list. It is almost impossible for someone to drive up outside my house and determine the MAC addresses of any machines on my network. They will still detect a wireless network from my house and they will also determine that there is no security enabled. But they won't be able to access my network because their MAC address will not be on my autorised list.

Some of the encrption methods are quite secure, but they involved adding quite a lot of overhead bandwidth, thus reducing the effective speed of your wireless network.
You can also purchase quite expensive equipment to sit on your network to handle network security, but that is beyond requirements of most common home users.

Ah, the mailto tag. The easiest way to let people contact you or your company from your website. Easily readable and clickable... and harvestable. Therein lies the problem. Spammers use email harvesting software to scan pages for email addresses to send their spam messages to. And, of course, the venerable mailto tag is the easiest thing for them to pull the address from. So, some people started just having their email address on the page as the text version of the email address. You have to copy and paste it into your email program, but it still works. Unfortunately, the harvesting programs where updated to catch that, too. Then people started encoding their address. Instead of email@example.com, it was emai... in the code. Still readable and copyable, but not clickable. And yet again, it appears that the spam filters have caught up and are able to harvest these encoded addresses. Now many sites now use JavaScript functions to create the mailto links. The calling script simply passes the address and the domain as seperate arguments and the function combines them. Of course, if these specific functions become widespread, the harvesters will be updated to look for them as well.

Obfuscating email addresses is one of those continuous challenges on a par with the painting of the Forth Railway bridge. Email scanners (or email harvesters) used by SPAMMERs to scan web pages looking for email addresses.
Obfuscation is a method of cloaking the email addresses to combat this, but as always happen, the SPAMMERs adapt.
The method discussed on the site below attempts to combat this using a different approach, and it appears to work quite well.
Have a look at the link below and give it a go.

I spent yesterday rebuilding my backup machine that hides away on my network and is responsible for taking the backups from the other machines and logging all suspicious network activity (from the outside).
I discovered that its best not to power down the machine whilst it is in the middle of defragging your registry. Funny that... (not).
I was running a utility to perform a defrag of the main registry when an update requested a restart of the machine. I didn't mean to click restart intending to do it later on after the defrag is finished. Nevermind I thought, the defragger will either cancel or delay the restart, or at least exit gracefully.
Maybe not, as I found it. On top of that, it managed to trash the file system where the registry exists which after a rebuilding contain so many invalid registry entries that a rebuild was the only option.

I'm getting quite quick at doing XP and Linux rebuilds these days but I always forget at least one vital part of information.
I made sure I had backups of any data on the OS partition, backed up any relevant system settings and was ready to go.
I set it to perform a format of the OS partition and reinstall a fresh installation of XP.
When it rebooted everything came up fine except for one or two missing drivers. One of which was the network card. Ahh. So this is what I forgot this time. I couldn't tell which network card it was or who made it. I then had to unplug the whole PC, spend 15mins cleaning out a mass of dust that had accumulated in it (beign tucked away out of site it tends to collect loads). I had to then remove the network card and get the missing information off it, go download a driver on another PC.
Having installed the network driver, the longest part of the install process came next. The 200Mb of XP updates to install, the network logging applications, the backup software etc etc.
In all, it took the best part of 5 hours to get the PC back online.
The only difference this time is that it no longer has the registry defrag tool installed. I think I'll be leaving that alone for a while

I've been following a thread on the ACCU list lately about the pro's and cons of Software Patents. I have to admit that there are more cons stated that pros.

Someone (Phil Nash) on the list made this gem of a quote:

I think this site as a great weapon in the fight against unfair patents: http://thesurrealist.co.uk/priorart.cgi

And despite the mockery, I still reckon if you click the reload often enough you will come across various ideas that you could patent and make a few bob from. That is the crassness of the whole patent process.

Do we really want software engineering to go this way?

A 22-year-old man has become the first person in the UK to be convicted for modifying a video games console. The Cambridge graduate was sentenced at Caerphilly Magistrates Court in Wales to 140 hours of community service. The man had been selling modified Xbox consoles which he fitted with a big hard drive containing 80 games

See the original article

We are still using the US PS2 that I bought in Texas and running it via a 240/110v transformer. It even works on the RGB input which is where I thought my main problems would be with the difference betweem PAL/NTSC. So many TV's, Videos and DVD's these days come with support for both systems already.
I must be the only person who was thinking of getting his US PS2 chipped to play UK games. My kids are getting fed up playing the games they got a year ago, (although they have now been converted to playing games on their PC, the kids that is, not the games, or I will be the next one taken to court). I'll be waiting for the next generation of PS before I do anything about it though.

Checking to see whether I had any comments to check the other day I found I had over 200 comments awaiting my approval.
"My God.. who have I offended now", I wondered.
As it turned out, a new Moveable Type Spammer had found my site. Most often Comment and Trackback SPAM is caught by a number of rules that I have in place.
I use a MT Plugin called SpamLookup and it works very well. None of the above comments made it on my blog as it automatically Moderated all of them.

SpamLookup has a number of methods by which is blocks SPAM. You can have it automatically delete the comment or moderate it. I prefer to moderate in case some coments get deleted that are valid. I could set it to auto delete seeing as to get labeled as comment/trackback SPAM you have to enter some very SPAM like comments, but I have never trusted automatic rules 100%.

Another method I use is to have a look at my server logs to determine who is viewing what and where from.
You'd never believe me if I said the bulk of comment/trackback SPAM comes from China (get away!!!), Mexico, Thailand, Korea and the odd batch from the USA.
You can tell the USA ones are the occaisional amature who thinks they are about to make a quick buck, because they are not too clever about hiding who they are.

Every now and then, I pull out those who have attempted to SPAM my blog from the server logs and I add them to my .htaccess file.
Even though the spammers are blocked from posting SPAM to my blog, they are still calling the scripts that post comments, which in turn calls the plugin that verifies the comment, which in turn calls an external site (in some cases) to verify the source of the SPAM.
All of this activity uses up bandwidth but more importantly it uses up processing time on my webserver. This has the effect of slowing down the whole system.
In the case of this blog and this webserver, it is a share server. This means that I am not the only person who has an account on that specific computer hosting the webserver. Most often, around 20 accounts probably exist on a share server.
So by placing them in to my .htaccess file I am preventing them from even reaching my MT Scripts and thus reducing the load on my server.

Here are the contents of my .htaccess file:

order allow,deny
deny from 64.27.27.203
deny from 216.129.107.21
deny from 216.40.249.17
deny from 82.103.65.225
deny from 63.208.158.252
deny from 63.208.158.253
deny from 63.208.158.254
deny from 148.244.150.52
deny from 207.248.240.118
deny from 148.244.150.58
deny from 148.244.150.57
deny from 207.248.240.119
deny from 64.4.195.62
deny from 64.27.27.150
deny from 219.150.118.16
deny from 216.195.51.193
deny from 216.195.51.17
deny from 80.77.84.252
deny from 216.32.80.98
deny from 207.248.240.119
deny from 193.190.128.253
deny from 202.28.204.123
allow from all

All of the above addresses are either known Comment/Trackback spammers, or ones that I have picked up from my server logs.

The problem with today's internet, according to (David) Clark, is that its 30-year-old design, which allowed for the development of exciting new applications (the world wide web, e-commerce, file sharing, you name it), is now stifling further growth.
More stories written by Mark Baard

The title isn't as daft as it first seems when you consider the statement made above. It is over 30years old and there are not many things in your home that you purchased 30 years ago and are still using today. Not only using today, but playing an ever increasing part in your life. Ok, I have 'things' in my home that over 30 years old (me for instance), but how many electrical goods in your house are over 30 years?.

When 'the net' was first introduced 'en-masse' to the public, taking email as a an example, there was no need for security, anti-virus or any other type of protection. If you sent an email to someone, you most likely knew that person. No one envisaged that a little while later on, the mail network would be clogged with SPAM. There was never any thought of someone sending a spoof email (for spoof, read phishing as well) and viruses didn't exist. At that point in time it was seen a direct replacement for writing a letter, or making a phone call. You would never have written a letter to a friend saying, "please find enclosed the I Love You Virus". "All your pens and paper will no longer function after reading this letter". You might have phoned someone up and said, "Hey, B&Q/Home Depot have a great deal on X&Y at the moment", but you would never have sat down and phoned every person in the phone book from cover to cover.
(I wonder if the upsurge in telemarketing jumped as a result of the internet usuage? I don't remember getting as many 'cold call' telephone calls when I was younger, apart from the odd kitchen salesman. And I certainly never got any phone calls asking me if I wanted a pill for a bigger penis!!).

No one envisaged that the internet would be abused by so many. In fact so much of the trafic is either porn, spam, hacking, viruses, trojans etc etc that this is the main reason why the internet is so slow. (If you think it is fast, just imagine how much faster it would be if we took the 90% of trash traffic off the network).

With a few simple changes we could elminated SPAM for good? (Can we really do this? I think not)
For example: By making all porn sites use the new .xxx TLD we could set filters up that would block ALL porn sites. (But this has to be a global law/ruling and is hard to prevent by design).
The main benefit of a new design would be as mentioned in the article where they say it opens the possibility of new methods to use the internet. Unfortunately, unless we plan for all the future misuse of the internet, some of these new tools will just become new platforms for 'abusing' the users of it.

I like to think back to the early 90's when the idea of charging people per/byte or kilobyte of data they sent or downloaded. (I don't think megabyte was even considered back then. You had to be a company to use that much data. Most of the UK was probably on 9600Baud dial-up back then.
Could you imagine being charged for downloading a couple of megabytes of SPAM? Or that link that you innocently clicked on thinking it was a new item on a respected and well read news site opened up a webpage that downloaded a huge presentation to you.
These days they might be charging you for gigabytes of data used (bandwidth), but the point would still be getting charged for something you didn't want in the first place.
Do you think they would have listened back then and started thinking of ways of blocking unwanted traffic?
How many lawsuits would have raged about being charged for services you didn't request?
I can bet the big companies forsaw the possible problems with charging for bandwidth and added the freedom of speach factor in as well and thought it was best left alone.
Not to mention that for example in China, you can rent a SPAMMING machine for $10000 to $20000 a month, no questions asked. They never respond to abuse complaints, they won't throw you off for sending out zillions of emails. They'll happily take your money and let you work your nasty deeds.

The problem with SPAM is us the end user. When a company rents space on a TV Station for a dedicated break during a show, the number of people who will see it is a known amount (within reason). That is to say that there is effectively a known maximum amount of people who will see that advert. From that known amount they reckon on a certain percentage actually picking up the phone or walking to the store to make a purchase on the back of that advert.
Now consider the same advert but sent via the internet. I am no longer constrained to a regional advert, or a national advert, it becomes instantly global. Ok, there are companies like Nike for example who have a global presence and can have global advertising campaigns. But when was the last time you saw a global advertising campaign for a penis/breast enlarging cream for $99 etc etc. Any person no matter what size of company can now reach a mass audience for very little cost.
If say in our TV campaign we had a 0.001% follow up in orders on say a show with 8 million viewers, that is a potential of 8,000 people following up. (It won't probably be as large as 0.001%, even though that sounds like a very small percentage, it isn't. Not when you factor in those who skip the adverts to make a cuppa, those who channel hop, those who just plain don't watch, etc etc. For the purpose of this post, let us just assume 0.001% to make all the figures work. It doesn't really matter what value we use, because you can increase/decrease the figure depending on what the item you are selling is, time of day, etc etc. It is just there to make a point, as are the subsequent uses of it)
Now lets send an email to every computer address on the planet, say about 580,000,000 (see here). With the same level of following up on the email, that would a 580,000 people who would follow up. Ok, lets say that even less people would follow up and assume 0.00001%, that is still 5800 people who will go on to purchase that miracle breast/penis enhancing cream, that will most like end up to be nothing more than vaseline dyed white !. And if I was to market the cream for a fee of $99, I would make a potential income of $57,420,000- $574,200

Ok, if it was that easy to make $57,000,000 or $574,000, everyone would be doing it. Looking at my SPAM filter results for last month, it appears that everyone IS trying to do it. But even if a 1000 people from 584,000,000 ordered something from me at $99, that is still $99,000.
All the time any number of us purchase something as a result of SPAM, they will persist to send it. So no matter what controls are put in place, what ever future designs are made, there are those that will find a way to exploit the network to get their message across. It is far too cost effective for them not to try. So in the long term the only way that we can get rid of it is to stop buying those things in the first place. But you and I both know that will never happen. (For example, while reading this, assuming you made it this far, another 30 mugs have been born, again assuming you took 30minutes to read this far)

Even if we suddenly found a way to kill all SPAM for example, they will find another way. Viral Email campaigns are on the increase and some of the big market leaders are at it already and have been for a long time.
Now at the risk of getting my butt sued off, I am going to use the example of the Ford KA adverts featuring the Evil Twin. They were never officially released by Ford for showing on TV, but found their way onto the net. Soon everyone who received it was forwarding it on to everyone in their address book. Before too long, everyone has a copy anyway. There was no need for Ford to use some dodgy open mail relay in Brazil, or pay some Chinese spam provider. All they had to do was email a few select people and their work would be done for them in a matter of days. Welcome to the art of Viral Emailing, or Social Engineering. Call it what you like. They will find a way round anything we put in place and again it is down to the end user, you and me to be responsible for stopping the SPAM.
I don't believe the 'Urban Myth' that Ford did actually place those adverts out there in an attempt to perform a viral email campaign, but it does go to show the power of such methods.

Perhaps I should change the title to "We Need a New Internet User"

To those of you that use my Cut n' Paste RSS Feed/Feed2JS (here), I will be updating both the Magpie and Feed2JS code in the next few days.
It shouldn't break anything, but you might see a short outage while I perform the update and subsequent testing.
The short outage will probably mean that any feeds you have displayed via my server will 'disappear' for a short while. They will come back once the update has been completed.

The update should increase the speed quite considerably and introduces a number of fixes. (I've never found anything broken with it, but I'll post a link to the complete list of fixes for the update when I remember where I put it).

I'll add comments to this post to indicate the starting and when I've completed the update.

Well I never did know that...

jiffy [1] a unit of time used in computer engineering. A jiffy is the length of one cycle, or tick, of the computer's system clock. In the past, this was often equal to one period of the alternating current powering the computer: 1/60 second in the U.S. and Canada, usually 1/50 second elsewhere. More recently the jiffy has become standardized, more or less, as 0.01 second (10 milliseconds). The word jiffy, with its ordinary meaning of an instant or very brief time, appeared in English during the eighteenth century, but its origin is not known.

jiffy [2] a unit of time used in chemistry and physics, equal to a "light centimeter," that is, the time required for light to travel a distance of one centimeter. This is a very brief interval indeed, about 33.3564 picoseconds. This definition of the jiffy was proposed by the American physical chemist Gilbert N. Lewis (1875-1946), who was one of the first to apply principles of quantum physics in chemistry.

Chris York reminded me of this link and since they now have all of their articles on a feed, I've added it to my syndicated list lower down on the right.

KurzweilAI.net features the big thoughts of today's big thinkers examining the confluence of accelerating revolutions that are shaping our future world, and the inside story on new technological and social realities from the pioneers actively working in these arenas. We are witnessing intersecting revolutions in a plethora of fields: biotechnology, nanotechnology, molecular electronics, computation, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, virtual reality, human brain reverse engineering, brain augmentation, robotics, and many others. The leading visionaries represented on this site examine these transforming trends and their profound impact on economics, the arts, politics, government, warfare, medicine, health, education, disabilities, social mores, and sexuality.

As well as the latest in technology, you should also check out the brain.

For a while when checking the access logs on my various sites there was an error message that I could not explain.
I kept seeing reports of 'favicon.ico' file not found.
I couldn't think of any webpages that I had created that used an image file called favicon so I ignored it for ages.
Couple that with the fact that it appeared on nearly all of the sites I maintain it really perplexed me. I thought perhaps it was related to the HTML editor I was using (Macromedia).

A few days ago I noticed the error again so I "Google'd" for 'favicon'. Then it all made sense.

When you add a bookmark, or a link to your browser, or save a bookmark to your desktop, quite often instead of the regular Icon (the IE icon in the case of Internet Explorer), a different icon is displayed.
For example if you view my site www.yaps4u.net you will now see that instead of the old boring icon, there is now a question mark style icon.

If you create an icon file and place it in the top level folder of your website and name it favicon.ico whenever someone creates a bookmark, link or shortcut the browser will attempt to fetch this file.

So the errors I had been seeing were people bookmarking my site and then the browser looking for the favicon.ico file. As I didn't have one, it caused a file not found error.

There are a number of free icon editors out there to let you create your own icon files, or you can search the vast number of free icons available on the web.

I searched for ages on various forums as to how to telnet to the Netgear DG834GT Wireless Router.
I actually found the answer on the forums run by Netgear themselves, although most of the posts(>99%) appear to be from the general population rather than Netgear themselves).
Either way, it was still a difficult search that involved a lot of reading.

I eventually found a post by .]Gargoyle[. that provided me with the infomation, so credit goes to him for the answer.

To gain access to the telnet service on the router, you must first enable debug mode on the router by entering the following link in your browswer : http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=debug
This assumes that your router IP has not been changed from the default of 192.168.0.1 of course.

Now you just open up a regular telnet session, which on windows you can do by:
Start --> Run --> telnet
A telnet session should then start.
You then type open 192.168.0.1 and away you go.

Simple when you know how...
Trouble for me, is that I spent so long looking for clues on how to get telnet access, now I can't remember why I wanted to do it in the first place.

I saw this in a signatute on a mail list I belong to.
It gave me a chuckle.

1 Copy MS Windows XP...$200; 1 Anti-virus ...$80; 2 3rd party firewalls....$120; 1 Visa Credit No. Stolen from same machine when hacked.....$50,000; 2 Anti-Spyware Packages ...
$60; 4 Trips to PC Service Center to remove Adware....$380..
Never worrying about this because I use Linux...Priceless

And the best thing about it is, if you don't understand the above, you are at risk of being hacked yourself.

Now I know I said I hate those who bash MS for the sake of bashing MS in a few other posts, but this is one of those times when it is justified. But here I just doubt the reasons behind the bashing (yet again). So I don't believe it is all MS's fault, just that they made a rod for their own back. I don't believe for one minute that they sit there and do nothing about security, nor do I believe that it is not one of their highest priorities.

Trouble is, the day they make Linux more user friendly, and make it easier for the non-pooter types, will be the day it gets renamed Windows 2010 or something.

You know I worked for Motorola for about 9 years and in all that time, not once did I get a discount on a mobile phone, let alone a freebie. We did have an employee incentive program that was quite good in the US, but even then I could go down to the local Verizon shop and pick up the same Motorola phone for free (rather than pay the discount employee price !).
I'd had a couple of business phones, but never a personal phone. Now I didn't work for the sector that makes the phones. For all but the last 2 years I worked for the group that was responsible for the base stations that your phones talk to. We did get a number of new phones for testing them out, and a select few were able to 'borrow' a few of these for 'testing' purposes.

So two weeks after getting laid off by Motorola for the second time, what do I do? I got buy a Motorola V3 Razr.
It is one of the smartest looking phones on the market at the moment and one of the best phones I have ever owned.
Configuring the phone to work with my Bluetooth headset (the Jabra BT 250BT) was painless.
I must also admit that Motorola bundled software isn't usually the best, but even this installed first time on both my laptop and desktop PC's. The bluetooth connection to my computers was again easy to set up and works fine. If you want full access to things like Outlook syncronisation, then you have to update the software to the full package for around £40.

I was so tempted to go buy a Nokia out of spite, but I just couldn't bare to do that. I don't know if it is that Nokia ring tone, but over the last 9 years, I cringed everytime I heard it.
My last phone which I bought on returning to the UK was a Siemans. The RF side of the phone had been degrading over the last 4 months or so to the point where getting a signal in my village was hard to do. For a simple phone to make calls, it was ok, and to be honest, that is all I look for in a mobile phone. Although the V3 has a camera, I don't usually go for a phone that has all the whistles and bells. But in saying that, the V3 camera has surprisingly good quality and an equally impressive digital zoom feature.

I'd better stop singing the praises of the phone now before they think I'm after my old job back. The phrase "not for all the tea in china" comes to mind, which considering the amount of work that Motrola is transferring to China, would probably be what I would get paid in if I did ever go back to them. Being laid off twice by them in 9 years is all the motivation I need to work somewhere else for a while now. My own business is taking off quite well so I might consider not working for anyone else again. <\p>

Either way, check out the V3 if you are looking for a really good functional phone that not only looks good, but works well too.

Recently discovered "zero-day" exploit code that takes advantage of two vulnerabilities could mean serious trouble for Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 users, and, to a lesser extent, Mozilla Suite users. Yesterday, Mozilla.org issued an advisory explaining the vulnerabilities and what measures to take to work around them. In Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2005-42, Mozilla.org explains that the exploit could make use of javascript: url code to navigate back to a previously visited page -- an online store order form with credit card information, an online banking account management page, etc. -- to steal cookies, data, or even to "perform actions on behalf of the user." This exploit affects both Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 and Mozilla Suite. Additionally, another javascript: url exploit takes advantage of Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3's install dialogue, tricking Firefox into believing a malicious site is a whitelisted site, and giving an attacker the ability to install software. According to Whitedust Security Portal, the exploit code can be adapted to threaten Mac OS and Linux OS users. In its advisory, Mozilla.org recommends the following actions until an update is released: Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 and Mozilla Suite users should disable javascript Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 should remove all "Allowed sites" under the "Allow web sites to install software" option.

You see, all those MS bashers out there who think they are so superior using their Firefox browsers (and I use Firefox, Opera or IE depending on what day of the week it is, not because it is the 'in thing' just to not be an IE basher!).

99% of them will say that the vulnerabilities discovered are some secret plot by Microsoft to undermine Firefox as a legitimate alternative no doubt. It is just a fact of life. If 99% of people drive a top of the range Jaguar, there are an awful lot of people who are going to find faults with it. It's the law of testing. You can never test 100% coverage, because for everything that you do think of testing, there is always the chance of their being some angle you don't consider, (and can't because the number of possibilities out there are huge). If you are the 1% of people out there who drive the new car on the block, whether it just be a free alternative or just a cheaper alternative, you are fewer in number which is fact. This means that there are fewer of you to perform the testing, you are more likely to be protective of your 'alternative' and less likely to complain about the lack of this feature, or the lack of that ability, because you have the cheaper, less costly alternative. You also less likely to catch the problems that inherently must exist within the product.

I have long warned of complacency when it comes to the Firefox browser. I will not use Firefox for anything that relates to security despite the fact I prefer the way it renders web pages on loading, I prefer the speed at which it loads some web pages, (which is not just down to IE being slow, it is down to the amount of 'bloat ware' that overtime has been hooked onto IE and not cleanly uninstalled over the time that I have used it. The reason I won't use it is down to the simple fact there are just not enough people using it to find the potential bugs that must exist.

It has been the natural thing to do for hackers to attack the most popular (for whatever reason), the most used, the most widely available browser on the market. But they are going to get bored at some point. Firefox will gain a significant number of users and then it will be financially viable to begin attacking this browser. Not all security breaches are a test of a hackers skill, some are down right malicious attempts to defraud the user in the long term. At present there are not enough users of Firefox compared to IE to warrant resources being applied. That and the fact that those you are competent enough to know how to install a new browser, those who are competent enough to understand the problems with IE are not those people who are the targets of said malicious attempts to defraud. But it must be said that without Firefox and the other browsers available, there would not be the incentive for the big operators to look for the bugs, to fix the holes that are found, or to provide the competition that creates enhancement and advancement in functionality. So don't get me wrong, I am not knocking anything or anybody. I just can't stand the knockers for the sake of knocking brigade.

So take this as a warning, there are holes in Firefox, there will be more holes found in Firefox as there will be in all Software, forever. It's life. You can knock IE as much as you like, but I know which one I would prefer to make my online purchases with.

May 5, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Established in 2003, The Anti-Phishing Working Group (apwg.org) is an industry association focused on the elimination of identity theft and fraud developing as a result of the growing phishing and email spoofing problems. The APWG provides a forum for the discussion of phishing issues and testing of potential solutions. Archives of phishing scams and other valuable information and resources are available through the organization’s Web site.

The link given above doesn't appear to be the correct one, or at least not ready yet, but the APWG does have a website at http://www.antiphishing.org

It has some good resources for checking for known Phishing Scams as well as an address where you can report suspect phishing emails.

For those of you who still don't know what 'Phishing' is all about, the above site will have more information, but here is my basic interpretation of it.
A scammer will copy the code from a sites webpage and change it to include some maliscous code that will ask you to enter some personal information. This usually takes the form of asking you for your ATM card number and the password, or your paypal log in ID and password. To most web savvy people this should seem quite wrong, but to those less familiar with online shopping or banking, the fact that the spoofed site exactly mimics the real site makes it more believable to them.
After you have entered your personal information, the spoof site will forward you to the real site and in theory you shouldn't notice anything different. (Apart from perhaps a sudden dwindling of funds from your account!!!).

A simple rule to avoid becoming the victim of phishing, is there will NEVER be a case where someone will ask you for passwords or pin numbers or anything else of that nature. Not even your credit card company are aware of your PIN. Those little envelopes that are printed when sealed have never been seen by anyone, other than yourself on the day that you opened it. With passwords, this might not be the case, since in theory the bank could retrieve those, but still, they would never ever ask you for your password, EVER.

I often get annoyed with the sites that are the subject of a phishing attempt, because they often make it easier to achieve. Most of the paypal phishing attempts that I have seen, are HTML based emails, (that is to say that they look like a web page rather than just plain text). All of the images in the emails are actually linked from PayPals own sites. And when you click on the email and are taken to the phishing site itself, it too has been built with code robbed off the genuine paypal site and modified. But again, the images and stylesheets are again linked back to the original content on paypals own sites. So even if you did have a quick glance at the HTML code, you would see mostly legitimate paypal links. Phishers will often obfuscate the links to the code that grabs your personal data, so you might not even notice it. This adds to the air of authenticity of the scam.

Another simple example, is somewhere on this page I have posted an image. If you liked that image, you could display it on your site, but rather than download it, store it on your web server, and then link to it on your machine, why don't you just use a link to the one already on my site. It saves your bandwidth?

Most if not all websites can switch off this feature (called hot linking) and that prevents people from using content on your site. True, they would just download it and have it on their site, but then it would be more obvious when looking at the scamming sites source code.
It might also be the case that the legitimate websites are using their access logs to trace back referrals. When your computer requests a webpage, your details are sent to the web server, so it knows who you are, where you are from, where you came from, what search word you used if any to get there, what search engine you used, etc etc. In theory, sites could examine their web logs and see if there is a spike in referrals for say the "paypal' logo from a site not within their network.
But other than that, I see no reason why sites should not disable hot linking.

Either way, I repeat what I have said above. No one, repeat, no one will ever ask you for access information whether it be credit cards, ATM cards, account passwords and usernames. Your account will never be suspended if you don't supply something. What is certain, and what most people are not aware of, is that if you do submit your details to a phishing site, it is you, the consumer who is responsible for the loss of funds. By giving out your personal data, you have broken the terms and conditions set my almost all institutions. Legally, you would not have a leg to stand on by blaming the legal site. (I would like to see this tested in a court though, by using my example above where the legal site is helping the phishing attempt by providing them a helping hand and supplying them the content required to make it look legit!).

For my next rant, I'll talk about those damn pesky Lottery Scams. For goodness sake, you don't ever ever get something for nothing, but people will always reply to them when they think they are going to get something... When will we learn...

Here is an example of what a good blog that is well written, and focuses on a single source can look like.
A great collection of network resources collected by James Messer

When searching for some decent project management tools I suggested to Chris York that rather than pay huge amounts of dosh, to go have a look on Soureforge.net and see if there were any decent freebies.
Well phpCollab is one such tool.
Be warned if you do install it, R2.4 is stable, but I had a few problems with it, so I decided to update to R2.5rc2 which I might add is not so stable, (it doesn't crash, it has quite a few bugs). Most of the bugs have been fixed and you can download them from the CVS repository. They could do with kicking out a new build quite soon.
But give 2.4 a go, and if you like it, you'll really like 2.5.
This is yet another good advert for opensource software.

This should be the lastest notifications from Dreamweaver

In a recent question posted to one of the blog forums I am a member of, a user wanted to know why a link to a feed should be placed on their site.
(Syndic8 forum can be found here although you may have to join to view the group).
The user in question had their blogs hosted with Blogger, who have an option to create the feed, make it public, but you must include a link in your template file if you want it to appear on your webpage.
On my own webpage you will see a link to a file called index.rdf .
This is my main feed for my site. One reason why you put these links on your site, is to allow people to syndicate your content. (Its where syndic8.com gets its name from).

First off, what is syndication?

Well simply put, syndication is providing content for other people to include on their own site. For example I am viewing various blogs and I happen upon yours. I find your site very interesting and its content is similar to mine, relevant or just something that interests me. I can take the short cut that you put on your site to your atom.xml file (in the case of Blogger), and I can using some third party code, display the content on my own site. I can display just the titles, the titles and some of the content, or the complete feed.

If you have a look in the right hand column of my pages you will see content from various places, (Test Engineering Careers, 'Tickling the Bone', Syndic8, Blogrollin and BlogLinker).
In the left hand column I have content supplied from the BBC News website.
I have a script/utility installed on my site here so enter your feed link (your link to your atom.xml if on Blogger), and have a play with some of the options and it will become a little more clear (hopefully)

Why else would you want to do this you ask???

Well, not only are you now displaying content from other sites, you are also displaying links to the content on their sites. So if you look again on my website, and click on one of the BBC News Headlines, it will open up a new browser window at the BBC website. Having lots of out bound links from your site helps to move you up the rankings on search engines. Even more so if they are related to the content on your site, ( so in my case, the BBC links are not quite related to my site, so it doesn't impact my search engine rating here too much)
Likewise if you have provided a link to you atom.xml file on your own site and someone comes along and uses it to display your content on their site,
it will now contains links back to your own site. These are called inbound links and similar to above, these also improve your web site rankings.

This is a basic introduction into syndication, written as an attempt to explain the why fors, and what fors to a beginner. There is more to the subject that this,
and if I get time, I try and post a deeper article on the subject one day.

glish.com : CSS layout techniques: "Look Ma, No Tables.
If you are looking for help making the transition to CSS layout (that's Cascading Style Sheets), you've come to the right place. I am cataloging here as many useful cross-browser CSS layout techniques as I can find, and some that I made up when I was bored last Thursday. All the examples on this site have been reduced to only their essential code, and you will find the source displayed on each page to hopefully make it quick and easy to understand the inner workings of the CSS. Feel free to steal all the code you find on this site, and consider linking back here on your site or in your source comments.
You will also find below links to various online CSS resources and tutorials, appropriate for both the novice and the seasoned CSS veteran.
I started this collection because of the dearth of resources I found out there when I went looking for information on how to translate typical table based layouts to CSS layouts. I know it is not nearly exhaustive, so if you see that there is something missing, whether it is a particularly good tutorial, or a site that is using a complex CSS layout, please let me know about it. I will pay you $3750 for each link you submit that I use."
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By no means exhaustive, this list has been put together to reconcile helpful CSS tips web-wide in one spot. Expect it to expand over time.
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Phishers target Yahoo Messenger | CNET News.com: "Yahoo's free instant-messaging service is being targeted by phishers attempting to steal usernames, passwords and other personal information.
Yahoo confirmed Thursday that its service, Yahoo Messenger, was being targeted by a scam. According to the company, attackers are sending members a message containing a link to a fake Web site. The fake site looks like an official Yahoo site and asks the user to log in by entering a Yahoo ID and password. "
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joatBlog: "(J)ack (O)f (A)ll (T)rades
Mostly Security, Some
Blogging, Misc. Admin,
and Bits of My Life"
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The Council Presidency today declared the software agreement of 18 May 2004 to have been adopted, in violation of the procedural rules and in spite of the evident lack of a qualified majority of member states and the requests of several states to reopen negotiations.

Perhaps the biggest mistake, injustice, or call it whatever you like. But how this ever got passed is beyond me?

Apparently all European Governments should be abolished and we should just let Brussels make all the decisions, because it appears that they can make up their own rules.
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ANA Spoofer Project: "Introduction (or, does spoofing matter?):
The Internet architecture provides no explicit mechanism to prevent packets with forged headers from traversing the network. By 'spoofing' the source address of an IP packet, a malicious user or compromised host can send packets toward a victim anonymously.
Techniques such as ingress and egress address filtering (RFC2827, RFC3704, RFC1918) and unicast reverse path forwarding (uRPF) are used to prevent spoofing, but these are typically useful only at the edge of the network and are often sporadically applied. While attacks emanating from zombie farms generally do not bother spoofing their source address, spoofing is still prevalent on the Internet from analysis of backscatter.
Previous work (Snoeren, et al., Bellovin) has suggested efficient means to trace spoofed packets back to their origin, but today finding the source of spoofed packets remains an operationally difficult problem. This project seeks to determine the extent to which spoofing is currently possible and a relevant issue on the Internet. "

Help support this project by downloading one of the binaries and running it. It takes all of a minute to install and run.
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The Code Project - Blogs,RSS News feeders, and ATOM [ Part One ] - ASP.NET: "Introduction
In this article you will be shown RSS standard, history and versions , also you will get familiar with the new next generation standard which is ATOM. Also you will get a brief history of Blogs, News Readers and its evolution , and the strong relationship between blogs and RSS . Most, if not all , of the news sites and agencies support a news feed link to the latest news or breaking news , Actually I consider the website that's not showing the news feed magic icon a poor one, you will find in codeproject a feed for the latest articles and site news , so everybody should be familiar with the concept of news feeds , both developers and novice users !"

This is an excellent article introducing you to Blogs, RSS, News Feeders and ATOM written by Kareem Shaker.
Look for Part two coming soon.

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The purpose of this document is to inform PHP programmers of common security mistakes that can be overlooked in PHP scripts. While many of the following concepts may appear to be common sense, they are unfortunately not always common practice. After applying the following practices to your coding, you will be able to eliminate the vast majority of security holes that plague many scripts. Many of these security holes have been found in widely-used open source and commercial PHP scripts in the past.

The most important concept to learn from this article is that you should never trust the user to input exactly what is expected. The way most PHP scripts are compromised is by entering unexpected data to exploit security holes inadvertantly left in the script.

( Page 1 of 4 )

PHP Security Mistakes
Contributed by Dave Clark

By Beth Cohen
February 24, 2005

Have you ever sent e-mail to your clients and suddenly received bounce-backs with error messages saying your mail server is invalid or on a spam blacklist? Or how about this scenario:

You have a DSL or cable modem Internet connection, which has been working perfectly for years. Suddenly, the connection starts randomly cutting off several times a day. Rebooting the router reestablishes the link. Your network administrator says everything is working internally, but your staff is annoyed with the continual disruption

If you are looking for a great collection of web resources, you won't go wrong looking here.

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"Java Programming Notes: Table of Contents
These notes were written to fill in missing or weak topics in textbooks that I've taught from, and some pages are still rough drafts. They may be useful for reference, but not as an ordered tutorial."
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1.2

"SwiXml, is a small GUI generating engine for Java applications and applets. Graphical User Interfaces are described in XML documents that are parsed at runtime and rendered into javax.swing objects. Depending on the application, XML descriptors may be deployed with the remaining code or loaded from a remote server at runtime. This late binding of the GUI has many advantages. Enabling features in an application based on a license code or a user's role does not have to be hard coded anymore. Instead an XML document describing the application's GUI could be dynamically loaded. Generating the GUI based on descriptors also has some of the advantages that code generators provide, but without generating the none-maintainable code."

MySQL 4.1.10, a new version of the popular Open Source/Free Software Database Management System, has been released. It is now available in source and binary form for a number of platforms from our download pages at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/ and mirror sites.

Note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point in time -
if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or
choose another download site.

This is a bugfix release for the current production version.

Starting from 4.1.10, we also offer the binaries for Solaris in PKG format
as well as special NDB packages in RPM format. Feedback about these new
packages is welcome.

Please refer to our bug database at http://bugs.mysql.com/ for more
details about the individual bugs fixed in this version.

PHP: General Information - Manual: "What is PHP?
From the preface of the manual:
PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.
A nice introduction to PHP by Stig Sæther Bakken can be found at http://www.zend.com/zend/art/intro.php on the Zend website. Also, much of the PHP Conference Material is freely available."
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Smarty : Why Use Smarty: "Is Smarty right for me?
Although Smarty is known as a 'Template Engine', it would be more accurately described as a 'Template/Presentation Framework.' That is, it provides the programmer and template designer with a wealth of tools to automate tasks commonly dealt with at the presentation layer of an application. I stress the word Framework because Smarty is not a simple tag-replacing template engine. Although it can be used for such a simple purpose, its focus is on quick and painless development and deployment of your application, while maintaining high-performance, scalability, security and future growth. "
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Product DetailsThe Belkin 54g Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway Router lets users share files and a broadband Internet connection among their computers-without using networking cables. It features 54g technology that makes accessing files and networked peripherals-such as hard drives, printers, CD-ROMs, and DVDs-easier than ever. 54g technology provides you with networking speeds nearly five times faster than the current Wi-Fi (802.11b) standard. An integrated, 4-port 10/100Base-T Ethernet switch also allows you to connect wired computers to the network. 54g technology is the easiest wireless network to implement. The Gateway Router uses the wireless 54g 2.4GHz standard to offer you the widest working range-upto 1500 feet-and greater interoperability in mixednetworking environments. 54g technology is backwardcompatiblewith the 802.11b Wi-Fi networking standard, so it allows you to implement faster wireless technologies incombination with existing 802.11b Wi-Fi networks. An added Turbo Mode will isolate your network from 802.11b wireless clients and allow your network to transmit data at the highest 54g data rate.

£35.89 ex. £42.17 inc. WAS £38.99 ex.

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PRODUCT FEATURES: Ergonomically designed wireless tablet with Bluetooth wireless technology; The ideal tool for drawing, handwriting, sketching, coloring and picture editing; Wireless 4.5" x 6" (114 x 152 mm) work space for optimal freedom of movement and perfect results for expressing creativity; Operate all software more naturally and intuitively with the included 3 button pen; Bluetooth wireless technology class II for transmission range of up to 10 meters; Full speed USB compatible for wired use if desired.

Price at Savastore: £55.50 ex. £65.21 inc.

Itemcode: 10278180
Trust Part Number: 14117

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SEO Tutorial from SEO Gold: "For the target audience to find your website on the search engines, the page should contain keyword phrases that match the phrases the target audience is actually typing into search queries (we like to state the obvious at SEO Gold). For example if a page of your site is about an 'SEO Tutorial' this phrase and it's derivatives (ie Ethical SEO Tutorial) should be used throughout the text and other important areas of the code. This might seem like common sense, but take 30 minutes to read through a few of your web sites important pages and ask yourself 'do they shout about your product or service?' If not you'll find this Search Engine Optimization Tutorial useful an essential aid to your future SEO plans.
Quick SEO Tip - note above how rather than writing 'If not you'll find this Tutorial useful' we added the important phrase 'Search Engine Optimization Tutorial' another derivative of SEO Tutorial. Being long winded is a prerequisite to good SEO copywriting! "
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£306 Inc. VAT (440,29 € )

An excellent contrast ratio of 800:1 and a 20ms response time make the Iiyama ProLite E485S stand out from the crowd. Ideal for image processing (broadcasting, videos, photos) and for games. The monitor boasts an MVA matrix and its dual inputs offer VGA and DVI connectivity. Integrated speakers and VESA wall mount compatibility mean you can use it anywhere, and Gamma and sRGB correction functions ensure this monitor can be used in a wide vareity of graphic environments. Once again Iiyama is offering the best with the E485S!

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Turn Your Photos into Movies: "Turn Your Photos Into Movies
by Suzanne Ross
Researchers from the lab in Beijing have developed a system that can take your still photographs and automatically convert them into motion clips. "

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But be warned... I have heard some bad things about customer support with Dabs, but I have never personally used them before. Quite a few people have complained about them and only one person had a good experience. But heck... 259 !!! It's a giveaway... Ideal for an entry level machine.. I was thinking of getting one for the kids and the spec is not so far away from my firewall/server box under my desk.
All I have to do is pop a wireless network card in (or might just go for a USB -> Wireless connection and they will be good to go). Note: It has no monitor, but you can pick up very cheap LCD's these days or go for a whopper of a CRT.

DabsValue Cel2.4 256MB 40Gb CDRW Desktops & Workstations: "Dependable performance
Simple usage & functionality
Easily expandable
Affordable by everyone

An exceptional offer with simple choices, this is a value proposition for those who do not want to spend too much yet ensures that you have all the features you need to get your work done. Ports on the front allow quick connection to peripherals and headphones. There is extra room to upgrade memory, graphics and drives, the ePC strikes the right chord for maximising all your options.

ePC Cel2.4 256MB 40Gb CDRW

Intel Celeron 2.4
Asrock Motherboard
RAM 256 DDR PC-333 Hynix
HDD 40GB SEAGATE - 7200RPM
Modem/LAN 10/100
CDRW 52x32x16
6x USB2 Ports (2 front)
PARRALEL Port
SERIAL Port
Gaming port-Optional
Expansion slots: 3X PCI, 1XAGP
Audio on board
CPU Cooler
Black/Silver PS2 Keyboard and Mouse
Black/Silver CASING
MS WINDOWS XP HOME (and recovery CD)

Quick setup poster
CE /local approval
ON SITE 1 YEAR from IBM "

Cel2.4 256MB 40Gb CDRW
£259.99 inc VAT (£221.27 ex VAT)

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Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2: "Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

Manufacturer: Microsoft
Quick Code: 199106
Manufacturer Part #
Stock: 11
Our Price £88.85 ex. £104.40 inc.
Our 5off Price £88.85 ex. £104.40 inc.

Delivery 3.75

This is the cheapest that I have found it anywhere on the net. It's so cheap, I was thinking they have made a mistake, but its not an OEM copy, its just a discounted copy. Even the upgrade package they are offering is more expenisive.
I'd hurry though, they only have 11 left in stock !!

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple unveils low-cost 'Mac mini': "Apple unveils low-cost 'Mac mini'

Steve Jobs unveiled a range of new Apple products
Apple has unveiled a new, low-cost Macintosh computer for the masses, billed as the Mac mini.
Chief executive Steve Jobs showed off the new machine at his annual MacWorld speech, in San Francisco.
The $499 Macintosh, sold for £339 in the UK, was described by Jobs as the 'most important Mac' made by Apple.
Mr Jobs also unveiled the iPod shuffle, a new music player using cheaper flash memory rather than hard drives, which are used in more expensive iPods. "
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For anyone looking for a new host I can offer the following:

2GB Space!
50 GB of Transfer!!
500 E-mail Accounts!!
Contract US Host UK Host

One Year $9.45 £6.49
Two Year $8.45 £5.49
Three Month $9.99 £7.99
Six Month $9.99 £7.99

Both the US and UK plans are backed up with 24 hour support, and all the usual things.
I'm in the process of putting this on my new site www.hostUtrust.com but thought I'd offer it here first.
But don't just take those prices above as concrete. Email me and I can work something out, since they are just approximate costs. Anyone who contacts me via my blog will automatically get a discount.
I'll be offering loads of extra services later on this year too, so check back here and at www.hostUtrust.com to see what I am up to.

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Voice-Over-Internet Protocol: "IP-Enabled Services
Internet Voice, also known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), is a technology that allows you to make telephone calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (or analog) phone line. Some services using VoIP may only allow you to call other people using the same service, but others may allow you to call anyone who has a telephone number - including local, long distance, mobile, and international numbers. Also, while some services only work over your computer or a special VoIP phone, other services allow you to use a traditional phone through an adaptor."
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Globedom - open relay check utility: "open relay check utility"

For those of you with your own email servers on your own domains.
Help stop Spam and check your email servers regulary.
An open email relay allows spammers to use your email server to send their spam for them, often making it appear that the spam is originating from your domain. This can often lead to your mail server being placed on a blocked/banned list from many legitimate email servers, resulting in your mail disappearing into the ether sometimes without warning.

If you get spam, check the email headers and enter the email domain / IP and most often you'll find that the mail server has an open relay.

An open relay is just one method that spamers use to send bulk email. Do a google for "bulk email tricks", "Proxy Abuse" and "Open Mail Relay".
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Common Ascii - HTML Escape Codes: "Escape Codes for Commonly Requested
Special Characters
Those special symbols no one seems to know how to help you put on your page.
This list is by no means a complete listing of the more obscure symbols.
Capital letters are very important
when using these codes"

Also see http://www.dragonwinds.com/resources/html-codes.shtml

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�35.00 Fan Cooled USB2 5.25" enclosure (Internal Power) at AtlastSolutions.com: "USB 2.0 silver coloured 5.25' enclosure with internal power supply
UK Mains power adaptor
USB 2.0 Data lead, approx 1m "

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Pioneer DVR-108 - DVR-108 16x Dual Layer IDE DVDRW /- OEM - Savastore.com: "Product Details

The DVR-108 is the industry's first DVD writer to support 16x write speeds on both DVD-R/ R along with the option to write at 4x speed on Double Layer media. This extends Pioneer's track record of establishing key performance benchmarks when introducing new DVD writers.

With the facility to write 4.7GB of data to write-once media in approx. seven minutes, or store up to 8.5GB on Double Layer media, the DVR-108 enhances a wide range of DVD applications including the authoring, editing and storing of video files, developing digital music catalogues, building image libraries and backing up data."

UKP 42.12 ex. (UKP 49.49 inc. VAT) which is the cheapest I have seen anywhere.

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BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Earth's permafrost starts to squelch: "In parts of Fairbanks, Alaska, houses and buildings lean at odd angles.
Some slump as if sliding downhill. Windows and doors inch closer and closer to the ground.
It is an architectural landscape that is becoming more familiar as the world's ice-rich permafrost gives way to thaw."

Read more here...
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Science News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The deadly Asian earthquake may have permanently accelerated the Earth's rotation -- shortening days by a fraction of a second -- and caused the planet to wobble on its axis, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.
Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or 3 millionths of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis."

Read more here..
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Gizmondo gears up for US launch | The Register: "Gizmondo is expected to announce the exact timing of its eponymous handheld games console's US launch next month, most likely at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show.
So far, all the company will say is that the device will launch in the US in the late Q1 2005 timeframe - around the time Sony is expected to begin shipping its PlayStation Portable in the territory"
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Technology News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "Using a computer doing 360 trillion calculations a second, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab will simulate the explosion of an aging nuclear bomb in three dimensions. The short, highly detailed video produced by the world's fastest computer will attempt to illustrate how missiles dating back to the Nixon administration would perform today."
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I had already posted an earlier item about the Feed2JS site/code, but I've since installed both it and magpierss and have been testing it.
I am impressed. It was easy to install (once I corrected a path I had entered in a config file).

All I have to do now is make a few changes to stop or control who uses it, or my bandwidth is going to go through the roof if I am not carefull.

As this is a free tool, you can't beat this for value. It is very configurable and I'll be having a better play with it when I get the time. But check it out !!

For getting syndicated content on your site it's great !!

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So What is "Feed to JavaScript"?: "Feed2JS
Using RSS Feeds in your web pages is just a cut 'n paste away!"
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www.yaps4u.net :: Index

If you want a Gmail account, post a message to the forum (link attached and I'll see what I can do). I only have 5 invites left.

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Reseller Hosting Demystified [Hosting]: "Reseller Hosting Demystified
By Nathan McKinlay
November 12th 2002
Reader Rating: 8
Web hosting can essentially be placed into three categories.
Shared or virtual
Reseller
Dedicated"
The most common is shared, where you have an account with a hosting company to whom you pay a monthly or yearly fee, in exchange for a pre-determined amount of space, bandwidth and a few extra's like PHP or ASP support (or both), and CGI etc. Often, each shared hosting account allows you to host one domain at a time, with a single control panel -- and that's pretty much it. Most of the time, that's all people require, and so the need for these types of hosting environments will always exist.
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Get Off Your RSS! [Content]: "Did you ever look at the daily reads list from a well-written Weblog? Some of those lists are insanely long, often containing more sites than most people read in a month! The crazy thing? When you read these Weblogs, you see their authors reacting and debating with many other Weblogs and sites. How do people keep track of it all? How can anyone manage to hold down a job while still checking so many sites so frequently?
They aggregate."
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Frequently Asked Questions: "What is blogLinker.com?
blogLinker.com is a free tool for managing your web links and dramatically increasing your site traffic. It can be embedded anywhere in your web page and can be easily configured to fit the existing design of your site.

The list is perfect for weblogs like Blogger, but can be used on any type of website - even free ones or Geocities. "
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