Archive for December, 2005

The Million Dollar Homepage

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

InternetThis guy came up with the idea of selling “pixels” on a web page for $1 apiece. He guarantees the site will be up for at least five years, and hopefully forever. So far he’s sold more than 870,000 of the 1,000,000 available pixels (hence the site name). What a way to become a millionaire!

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

UPDATE: Additional info here.

Note: comments have been disabled on this page due to excessive spam. If you want to make a comment, please contact Chad.

Power Surfing With Firefox Extensions

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

Firefox

If you’re using the Firefox browser (and if you aren’t, why not?), here is a list of 50 “power” extensions. Note there is some overlap between the extensions, especially for tabbed browsing. You can also check out my extensions, a good number of which appear on the “power” list.

http://pchere.blogspot.com/…

How to Make Cat-5 Cables

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

Tips

I’ve made Cat-5 network cables before, and the hardest part was determining which wire went to which pin—it doesn’t help that there are two different ways to wire them. This site gives a bit of explanation, along with the pin/color pairs.

http://www.lanshack.com/…

Yes, the Government IS Watching You

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

Government

An eye-opening example of what the government is doing to fight the war on terrorism.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/…

UPDATE: After further investigation by the American Library Association, this story appears to be a hoax.

Windows Security Vulnerability in *.wmf Image Files

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

Computer Security

There’s a new security vulnerability for Windows XP in the way it processes *.wmf image files. Your computer can be compromised merely by viewing the image on a web site or email. Currently there are no patches, and anti-virus utilities don’t detect it (yet). The exploit is “in the wild,” and hard to protect against—unless you use the workaround.

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/…

Anti-virus Absurdity

Saturday, December 24th, 2005

Computer Security

There is a bug in the Norton anti-virus program that will allow a specially-crafted RAR file to gain control of your computer while the file is being scanned for viruses. If you have your system set up to automatically scan incoming email attachments (and who doesn’t), you could lose control of your system without even opening the message. Fortunately there is no known virus in the wild that exploits this vulnerability, and there are workarounds. But it’s definitely time to run LiveUpdate.

http://www.newscientist.com/…

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/…

Why Wireless Security Matters

Saturday, December 17th, 2005

Computer Security

Paramount is suing Russell Lee for more than $100,000, alleging that he obtained an illegal copy of a movie and subsequently uploaded it to a filesharing network. In defense, Mr. Lee claims the real perpetrator hijacked his (then unsecured) wireless network. The evidence is weak, and while Mr. Lee will probably be exonerated he will still have to pay legal costs and deal with the stress of a court case. This just underscores why wireless security is so important.

If you have a wifi network, here are the basic things you should do to secure it:

  • Change the router’s default admin password.
  • Change the SSID and disable SSID broadcast.
  • Enable WPA2 security. If your wireless router does not support WPA2, then get a router that does. WEP security is easily cracked, and WPA, although better, is still vulnerable.
  • Use MAC filtering.

These steps will not keep out a determined expert hacker, but the goal is to make it difficult enough that he/she will hijack someone else’s network.

The Soldier Who Kept On Fighting

Sunday, December 11th, 2005

Military

An interesting read about a Japaneses soldier who kept fighting a guerrilla war for 29 years after World War II ended. I recall hearing about this back when he finally surrendered.

http://www.damninteresting.com/…

People See What They Expect To See

Sunday, December 11th, 2005

Linux Inside

This is an interesting social experiment, where a guy dressed up as a panhandler and gave out free GNU/Linux discs. He made nearly $150.

http://lobby4linux.com/…

Making Money Playing Computer Games

Sunday, December 11th, 2005

Gaming

People in China are paid to play MMORPGs 24/7 (in shifts). The resulting characters, items, and virtual money are then sold for real money.

http://www.nytimes.com/…

Despair, Inc.

Saturday, December 3rd, 2005

JusticeDespair, Inc. publishes spoofs of those fancy, single-word motivational posters that we’ve all seen. Some of them are hilarious. Here are links to a few of my favorites:

Pack of Squirrels Kills Dog

Saturday, December 3rd, 2005

Normally I’d just assume this type of story was an outright fabrication, but in this case you have to consider the source.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/…