Micro-Claymore Mine

Here's a hack on how to make a micro-claymore mine from office supplies found in most cubicles!!! You can fire it manually or with a tripline.... Thanks to the guys at BleachEatingFreaks.com for this little project.
Check out the instructions here.

fix XP internet connectivity

Often when removing adware from your system, your registry files become corrupt or get damaged in the process, WinSock XP Fix offers a last resort if your Internet connectivity has been corrupted due to invalid or removed registry entries. It can create a registry backup of your current settings, so it is fairly safe to use. For best results, run WinSock XP Fix immediately after using your spyware/adware removal tool, ex. Ad-aware.

Spyware removal programs

Here's a few programs that are great for removing spyware from your pc.

Spybot-S&D - Remove spyware using Spybot-S&D. Update, scan and remove all the infections you can, then turn on the immunization feature of Spybot.
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Ad-Aware SE Personal - This one is a personal favorite. Another spyware removal tool, update, scan and remove all the infections.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

SpywareBlaster - install SpywareBlaster to block future infections.
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

AVG Anti-Virus FREE - If you need a free virus prevention tool, visit:
http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php

Erasing all your Data!!!!

Check out this Blog and learn which program(s) can help you keep your personal information out of the hands of friends/family.

Click here to check out the blog.

Here's where you can directly download the boot and nuke program for your pc.

Jetico's BCWipe for Windows and Linux allows rapid secure file deletion and free space wiping and follows U.S. Department of Defence recommendations (DoD 5200.28-STD).

Ok, NOW THIS IS KEWL!!!!!!!!!!!

Attention all you tech freaks, geeks, and all other nocturnal pocket protector wearing walks of life,this nightscope Proof that "one person's trash..." Check it out

Attempting to answer a timeless question

For those fortunate enough to have seen a copy of Monty Python's The Holy Grail, numerous times, you'll recocnize a few of the following questions/phrases from the movie. I couldn't believe someone actually has more time on their hands than I do to even make an attempt to answer these.....
What is the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow?
What do you mean, an African or European Swallow?

It’s a simple question of weight ratios
In order to maintain airspeed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?

Three shall be the number thou shalt count

What is the capital of Assyria?

unlaidenswallow

Remember back in the day????

Ok, for all you children of the 70's who grew up in the 80s, you all remember the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). How somethings will not go quietly into the night, or in this case, into the garbage. Here's a site where you can play every title that NES has to offer. I just finished playing Double Dragon III, yeah I was a big DD fan.


Here's the link.

Hack your Boot Screen

Here's a great hack brought to you by Sarah Lane over at TSS. Now, I recommend following every bit of instruction down to BACKING UP YOUR DATA!!! I can't stress that one enough. Take it from me, unless you want to run your computer in safe mode to pull all of your data before wiping your drive to reinstall your OS, because your OS won't start, all because you didn't back up the files you wrote over, DO IT! I hacked both my bootscreen and logon screens. I felt like "billy badass" when I did it, but rather than be safe and copy/rename my files in case anything went wrong, I chose to write over them. Well when I hacked my logon screen, everything was fine, even after rebooting. I figured, if I can do it for my logon screen, then I can do it for my boot screen, WRONG!!!!! I was lucky that I could even get my computer to run in safe mode. It took me 4 days to pull all my data from my hard drive. So..... take your ntoskrnl.exe.... copy it and save it as ntoskrnl.bak to back it up.

Hack Your XP Boot Screen

Maybe you really like the "Windows XP Pro/Home" screen that appears when WinXP boots up, but I doubt it. Jeez. You know what OS you run. You know Microsoft made it. Does it really need to remind you at every startup? No. Allow me to show you how to make the currently obvious (and boring) boot screen say whatever you want. You have two options.

1. Use a boot screen changing program that walks you through the process.
2. Hack your boot screen.

Boot screen programs

I really like Stardock's BootSkin, a free program that works with Windows 2000/XP. Plus, you don't have to mess with the Windows kernel, which can really suck if you do something wrong. I like another good program called Screen Booty even better. It works with Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, but you'll need to pay $18 when the 60-day free trial period ends.

Hacking = more fun

I never like doing things the easy way, so I'm going to explain how to hack your WinXP boot screen by modifying the Windows kernel in Resource Hacker. Modifying the kernel is really risky, and if you mess things up, Windows may not even start. Please be careful. No, onto the danger! Start by getting the tools you need.

Every smart Windows tweaker needs Resource Hacker. Download it.

You'll also need an image editor that can import palettes such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. I'm using Paint Shop Pro's free trial edition.

The step-by-step

1. Locate ntoskrnl.exe in your \Windows\System32 folder. You might have to unhide the folder.

2. Make a copy of your ntoskrnl.exe and rename it ntoskrnl.bak for backup safety.

3. Launch Resource Hacker and open ntoskrnl.exe.

4. In the left hand you will see a list of resources to edit. Open the first tree called Bitmaps and you'll see numbers 1 through 12. The Windows XP Pro bitmaps are numbers 1, 8, and 10. Windows XP Home bitmaps are numbered 1, 7, and 9. The bitmaps are slightly different shapes and sizes based on the graphics and text for each. In this tutorial we'll work with Windows XP Pro. If you use Home, substitute the numbers for your OS.

5. Select No. 1. The bitmap will appear completely black, but it really isn't. For some reason Microsoft removed the color palette from the logo to another location in Windows XP. We'll fix it later in our image editor.

6. Go to the Action Menu and choose "Save Bitmap." You can save the bitmap wherever you want, but remember where you put them for later. Repeat this process for numbers 8 and 10.

7. Open your image editor (my steps are for Paint Shop Pro 8, but you Photoshop experts can go that route). Open all three of your saved bitmap images. When opened, they should appear totally black.

8. We'll have to import the palette to see the actual images. Save the following file to Program Files\Jasc\Paintshoppro\Palettes.

Download Paint Shop Pro Color Palette

Side note: you might need to right-click and "Save Target As" if your browser tries to open the file as a bunch of numbers. Make sure you rename the file with the extention ".PSPpalette" if that's not the extention by default.

9. In Paint Shop Pro, make sure the bitmap 1 window is active and press Shift + O to import your palette. If you have multiple palettes available, select your new one to import the colors used in the original boot screen.

Important: Make sure to select Maintain Indexes in the bottom options before importing. If you've already got all three images open at once in your canvas, you will need to apply the palette to bitmaps 8 and 10 as well with the steps above to make the images visible.

10. Modify the bitmaps however you like and save them over the existing bitmaps 1,8, and 10. They will make up your new boot screen.

11. Open Resource Hacker again, and reopen the ntoskrnl.exe. Under the Action menu, choose "Replace Bitmap." Select Bitmap to Replace for bitmap 1, then click "Open file with new Bitmap" and find your edited image. Click replace. Follow the same steps with bitmap 8 and 10.

12. Once you replace all 3 bitmaps, choose Save As and save your new ntoskrnl.exe to a directory other then the system32 directory. You don't want to overwrite the original while it's in use. Saving it to your desktop is fine.

13. You have the option to test out your new boot screen before totally overwriting the original. First, name your new ntoskrnl.exe something different (like ntsarah.exe). In boot.ini, locate this string:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Add a line just above it with this string:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="My new boot screen" /fastdetect\kernel=ntsarah.exe (or whatever you named your new ntoskrnl.exe)

Now, move your new and renamed ntoskrnl.exe back into your system32 folder. This will allow you to choose which kernel you boot into before Windows starts.

Now go ahead and restart. When you get to the prompt, choose "My new boot screen" and see if you like it. If you're happy, go back into boot.ini and delete the string you added.

14. You don't want to keep multiple booting options in your boot.ini. When Windows has critical updates or other updates it needs to install on your system, it only updates what it considers the original kernel, the ntoskrl.exe. Basically, you want to overwrite the original ntoskrnl.exe file so you only have one copy in the System32 folder. Remember, you did make a backup of the true original before at the very start of this exercise, so you can always revert back if you absolutely have to.

In order to overwrite properly, Windows File Protection makes you reboot into safe mode (reboot and hit F8 before the boot screen appears). You could also boot off a DOS bootdisk to overwrite the original ntoskrnl.exe in the System32 folder. Once you overwrite the file, reboot. Your new screen should appear!

If you're still with me, I commend you. I found this exercise really fun. Hopefully you did too.

XO,
Sarah

(This Sarah's really cute too....)

Make Firefox FASTER!!!!

Thanks to the guys at forever geek for coming up with this one. If you're on dialup, forget about it for now. Broadband users, you'll enjoy the benefits of faster page downlaods and multiple downloads.

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

Making a portable Rotary Cellphone

ok the guys at sparkfun have wayyyyyyyyy too much time on their hands to come up with this. It's an interesting experiment, very detailed, well, I'll let you ck out the link and decide. Who knows, maybe we'll see more of these out on the streets for the retro look.

Not a hack, but still fun when it's at your buddy's expense.....

Chatting AIM Bot What a site. You just enter some small info about the shell user you're going to use when sending an IM to your buddy (A/S/L) and enter your friend's AIM handle and have fun.

Note: For PC, IE users there’s some weird ActiveX thing it wants you to install, don’t allow it and it will work just fine.

Here's a screen shot of what the conversation could look like while using the AIM bot.

After the bot is finished sending the last message, you get a copy of the logs.

Check out the raging chatroom for examples of people who were "punk'd" so to speak.

The FireFox Solution

Spyware is the #1 enemy in the IT Department. What remains to be seen is whether these efforts can keep users from migrating to Mozilla's Firefox. Part of the attraction of the open-source browser is its reputation as being significantly more spyware-proof than Internet Explorer. Corporations have been slower than individuals to change browsers, citing compatibility concerns, but many IT departments are taking a close look at Firefox.

"We have been evaluating Firefox as a more secure browser to help prevent all malware infections," said Higgins of Saturn Electronics. "Currently, it runs about 90 percent of our intranet applications."

"Internet Explorer is an inherently vulnerable browser, partly because it has such a high user base and also due to poor coding by Microsoft," said Hughes. "Here at Marist, we recommend that users use (it) only for Internet Explorer-specific tasks, such as Windows Update, and use Mozilla Firefox for all other browsing."

With spyware attacks now coming from even the most innocuous-seeming software, enterprises may decide to follow suit. Security researchers at Panda Software recently discovered a pair of Trojans -- programs that let outsiders make changes to a user's PC, including loading other spyware -- that leverage DRM (digital rights management) technology built into Windows Media Player. When a user attempts to download a license requested by WMP, the Trojans redirect the browser to a Web site that attacks the user's system with a barrage of spyware.

Two great anti-spyware removal tools are
spybot
Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove adware files from your computer, ensuring complete elimination from your system.

Ad-aware
Ad-aware has the ability to scan your RAM, registry, hard drives, and external storage devices for known data-mining, advertising, and tracking components, Ad-aware SE easily can clean your system.

I recommend running both if you're going to continue to use Microsoft's IE.... I would remove up to 70 traces with ad-aware and up to 20 traces with spybot, every other day. Since switching to firefox I still run both programs every other day to scan my system. The end result, 1 trace found with spybot, less than 5 traces with ad-aware with the firefox browser.

Unless a friend sends you a "shredder" for files stored on your pc or inbox, do not trust an email from an unknown user.

Apparently a Antivirus company has found a worm (the Baba-C worm) that spreads through mass email and tricks the recipients that their PC has porn stored. The email with the words "Windows Evidence Checker has found XXX material on your computer," boasts the claim that the program attached called "Evidence Cleaner" which will purge any porn from your PC. "When activated, this program runs malicious code that allows hackers access to the data on the computer."

A senior technology consultant at Sophos said "the e-mail carrying the worm has the subject line: "Important! XXX sites found on your computer!" It also contains the following text in the body of the message:

"Windows Evidence Checker has found XXX content on your computer. You can hide your activities with Evidence Cleaner service.

To run Evidence Cleaner click to quick shortcut attached.

Warning! Your copy of Evidence Cleaner will be expired after 7 days. Today you can register for FREE.

Please check attached instructions for more details."

Check out the broadband bible, all the information you need.

This particular site broadband reports gives great information to anyone looking to switch from dialup service to DSL/Cable. All you have to do is type in your zip code and a list will appear of providers (if any) in your are whose services extend into your area. You'll also see the pros/cons of each ISP and comments from subscribers who give the thumbs up/down for each service and why. Do yourself a favor and check it out if you're tired of dialing in.

A great site on Hacks

I found this site and felt that I must share it with you all. It's called Hack a day. Basically, each day a new post will be listed on a certain "hack" that you can do. From hacking an altoids tin box, to hacking an old NES control and converting it into a USB control stick. You'll find some great new hacks in this site. Happy Hacking!

FireFox more secure than Microsoft's IE when it comes to phishing

When addressing the security hole found within FireFox's 1.0 release for malicious coders "As far as a 'security hole,' it should be more of a user vulnerability, as only a dumb person goes clicking links in e-mails from odd places,". But the less savy internet first timers will not know the difference between IE and FireFox. So, here's where I'll just flat out say it.... DUMP IE, get FireFox!!!! It's more secure than IE. Although far from perfect, it's still the better alternative to go with. You can even download Mozilla's browser to keep as your default. But, in the long run, turn on your spam filters, don't just open any email that comes into your inbox, use common sense.

Here's the article

FireFox continues gains against IE

Since the launch on 9 November, 2004. Mozilla's internet browser Firefox 1.0 has had over 8 million (yes, that's right 8,000,000) downloads of its test version. Data tracking has confirmed that Microsoft's IE has been declining in usage since most users are switching to firefox. "Much of FireFox's success rides on it simply not being IE. FireFox fans have praised the new browser's automatic pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing features, but security has been one of the big points. Viruses and spyware are often aimed at IE because of its near-total market dominance."

For the full article, click here.

Another reason to go Open Source

More and more people and even companies are seeing reason to switch to open source applications. "Once seen as flaky, cheap and the work of amateur developers, open source has emerged blinking into the daylight."

Read more here.

More of my cat hates you

It makes me wonder what goes through the minds of these pet owners to think of stuff like this.......lol

Kitty

Sampson

Spook

MY CAT HATES YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love this site!!!! My old Sociology Professor showed me this.... We each have a love for our cats. Any cat lover can appreciate this. Here's the link Also, check out this example of what you can expect on the website. Click here.

This one too.

Get Egg'd

I found this great site, you can order whatever you need, regardless of the brand and wholesale prices.
new egg

Some kewl Tech wear

Yes, I WOULD actually wear these shirts..... I'm planning on purchasing these..... Let me know what you think.

An interesting experiment for drunks

How to turn the cheap Vodka into Ketal One!!!!! Let me know how this one goes, I don't drink...LMAO. This is one experiment that I won't be able to conduct myself.

Here's the article.

"Firefox should not be subject to the same kind of scrutiny as its proprietary competitor from Microsoft."

I found this article online, perhaps the competitors are a bit envious of losing out on customers.

Click here This article talks about a potential security risk w/firefox. Nothing to worry about really, but it goes well with the next article which backs up Firefox even more.

Click here. This article talks about hackers not rushing to exploit this potential risk, that they'll stick to IE, Microsoft's browser. Look for a fix for this bug coming out in a later version.

Get Firefox

In my previous post, I discussed installing a new browser. I highly recommend Firefox, it's an open source web browser which works with the various OS (operating systems) such as Windows (to name the OS I use). My reason for going open source was easy, I wanted something more secure.

With open source, programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. When a company provides a browser like Microsoft's IE, there's a team assigned to program the source code. When there's a bug, secruity hole, it can remain out there for sometime. When it's open source, anyone can patch a hole, or fix the bug. It's very easy to use, navigating over the internet is fast too. One great reason to use Firefox, there's no spyware/adware software to worry about, it can't automatically install just by visiting a website.

You can even customize Firefox just as easy. I made a switch from SBC Yahoo's IE to firefox which is more secure. I did keep Microsoft's IE as my default, but I'm contemplating on losing that one as well. There are other alternatives, open source which could be used. If I switch it out, I'll post it and keep you informed. Since then, no browser crashes......

Yay for the FTC!!!

Ok, today was a great start for stopping illegal spammers from directing people to adult websites.... This was the government's first case involving adult internet spam. The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, dubbed "Can Spam." Spammers who violate the rule face possible imprisonment and criminal fines of up to $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for an organization.

Here's the full article here.

This past weekend

I barely finished with installing the last of the plug-ins for my new browser. I'll work on a section for downloads, tweaks, information for optimal pc performance, and perhaps some fun stuff too (what am I saying, computers are fun). I spent all night Thursday, until 5AM Friday morning loading my new browser and uninstalling my old one. SBC Yahell (yes, that's right Ya'hell), bye bye. Anyway, I migrated over 426 bookmarked sites to this new browser. Ugh, I forgot to eat the entire time...

I can't believe that I can lose total track of time while behind the monitor. From Thursday afternoon through Monday, I was doing what I could to get this browser up and running. Not in the literal sense of course.....lol. I had to rely on kazaa for a couple files since at the time of installation I couldn't download directly from those sites. Once I had everything I needed.... :)

I ran into a few snags along the way, but knew a few ways around them. I'm very pleased with my browser.

Web/Tech stuff

As I maintain my blog, I'm going to also review and post information here about the various programs, services, other items available to us. Stay tuned.