A techie named Rob Peter Verhagen and his Computer Frustrations

Facebook Hacking and what to look out for

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:49:00 +0000

Facebook has become the new way to connect with those people you have lost contact with., it has also in turn become a way for people to steal your identity. It is a good idea to be watchful and careful who you invite and what applications you allow to access your information.

1.) They try by email:

Subject: Facebook Password Reset Confirmation

Body: Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your
password has been changed.
You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

2.) They try by application:

Here is a screenshot of Facebook’s Application Privacy page, you are in Control:

The Meanest and best places to live in the world

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:55:00 +0000

The top three cities are, by rank, Vienna, Zurich (last years winner), and Geneva. Commonwealth nations fare pretty well, too, winning 9 of the top 30 spots—even though London comes in only at 38. The U.S. also fares poorly, barely making it into the top 30 with Honolulu and San Francisco in the bottom two places. The top city in Asia is Singapore, at no. 26. No cities from Africa or South America are in the top 30. The bottom? Baghdad once again comes in at 215.

Vienna

More Info at http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0428_best_places_to_live/1.htm

More on the recycle bin virus

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:31:00 +0000

Referring back to my article: http://screamatthepc.info/2008/08/taming-recycle-bin-virus.html

I have noted that I did not really express how to get rid of this virus. The quickest way to do this would be to remove it from your disk in the operating system - Linux or go to http://threatinfo.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=WORM_AUTORUN.CG&VSect=Sn

Ok I am guessing you didn't quite figure that one out huh? Ok if you want a sure fire way - Stick a Live boot CD of Linux into your machine, Ubuntu is a clear favourite and you can get the disk fairly cheaply from http://www.fosscds.co.za/product_info.php?products_id=589 or if you have the bandwidth, you can download it from http://ultimateedition.info/Ultimate%20Edition/ubuntu/

This virus distributes itself using your USB stick and your local hard drive - it has the uncannily ability of filling up a USB stick with whatever is in your recycle bin and then hides all the files using the windows dll files and resident memory in exlorer.exe. Most Antiviruses will detect this as I depicted in my previous article, but they are unable to get rid of the virus.

Print this out and take to a trained technician unless you are comfortable with taking out your hard drive and putting it in a machine that has Linux installed.

To the Technician: Gather all hard drives and memory sticks suspected as having the virus, connect them up in a machine that has Linux installed or where you have access to an Ubuntu Live CD - Important, please don't boot into Windows as you will then infect the host machine and will have to clean that too... Once booted into Linux, locate the windows hard drives connected, on Ubuntu these are usually displayed on the desktop, others will be located under /mnt/windows or /mnt/media. Go to the root of these drives, delete the following: autorun.inf, recycler and any bat or cmd files present excepting for autoexec.bat which is a legacy file for windows. Also delete ".recycler" and any folders that say recycler.

The Autorun.inf files and the cmd files are what makes this virus work, when you boot back into windows now the files are removed, you may get a few error messages, to get rid of these messages:

Open Registry Editor. Click Start>Run, type REGEDIT, then press Enter.
In the left panel, double-click the following:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>Microsoft>Active Setup>Installed Components
In the left panel, locate and delete the key:
{08B0E5C0-4FCB-11CF-AAX5-90401C608512}
Close Registry Editor.

If you are still getting the error, go back to registry editor and locate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>Microsoft>Windows>Current Version>Run

Delete any files you do not recognise (it would be wise to google and make sure) - most of the files here are a mirroring of the ones in your system tray next to the time. These files run in your memory so that they open quickly when you access them, such as your graphics tray - igfxtray and windows hot keys - hkcmd.

Stopping Autorun Viruses

DISABLE AUTORUN. This will stop a lot of viruses from spreading from one drive to the other. You can do this by opening regedit.exe and modifying the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

There should be an entry with the name NoDriveTypeAutorun. Set it to 0x95 to disable autorun on everything but CD drives, or 0xB5 (the letter 'B', not the number '8') to disable it on all drives.

Have Someone Spamming you? Report him

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:29:00 +0000

In order to report a person who is spamming you, you will need their IP address and then you click the image above and report them.

TRACING THE SOURCE OF SPAM EMAIL
Open the offending message in your inbox and view the full headers. Different email clients have different ways of doing this, but the facility almost always exists, even in gmail and AOL (Although once you click Spam button AOL and Gmail admins will be notified and if others have similar complaints that IP address will be reported)

Microsoft's Outlook email client
In MS Outlook 2002, and 2003 double click email, go to view > options.
In MS Outlook 2007, double click email, go to other actions > message header.

Scroll down and look for the line that starts with 'Received:'
For example:
Received: from mail.emaildirect.net (mail.emaildirect.net [65.98.250.173])

Now that you have the IP address of the culprit, report him

message pops up saying I need to install new version of flash yet flash is working

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:21:00 +0000

I recently installed Flashplayer 10 on my Vista machine and kept on running into a message that I needed to install the latest flash player software, which was interesting because when I close the message, flash worked anyway. So I did some thinking and did a search and finally found the solution at a forum:
http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-66707-how-do-i-download-flash-player-10-on-vista

Here is the fix:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/10/flashplayer_10_ax_debug.exe

A quirky file made in flash

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:42:00 +0000

Reindexing your blog and putting it into google rankings

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:55:00 +0000

Having done some research, I noted that in order to better my position on google's searches I would need to have my own website. The new website is at http://screamatthepc.com/

I have now re-indexed this website and have submitted the site index to google's webmaster tools.
Now I am going to wait for googlebot to find my website.

President Obama's Blackberry Hackable? Hmm I think it would be hard but not impossible

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:03:00 +0000

Very cool president to be allowed to have a Blackberry, certainly tech savvy...

Kevin Mitnick, a cybercrime pioneer, claims that given the right skills, a person could hack Obama’s handheld (FoxNews.com, 2009). I don’t think you need to interview a former hacker to understand that any piece of technology can be hacked, given time, patience, perseverance, and the right skill set. Most security professionals don’t work under the assumption their networks are completely secure, just secure enough.

First, let’s look at the work-factor (time and effort) necessary to crack Obama’s Blackberry. The handheld has a special encryption package and Obama is limited in how he can use it. No IM is allowed and only a small number of people are allowed to communicate with him via email (abcnews.com, 2009). Physical access to Obama’s Blackberry is very limited, unless the hacker can break through the phalanx of Secret Service agents. I’m sure it’s on someone’s checklist to protect the Blackberry as they would anything else of national security significance. So getting to the device is extremely difficult, even if an attacker knew what to do when he or she got there.

Second, the probability of being arrested once a hack is complete is very high. Hacking into the president’s technology would call down upon the unfortunate hacker the full force of U.S. Federal law enforcement. Ask Mitnick how that worked out for him. And the Feds are much better at rooting out cybercriminals than they were in the late 20th century.

There has been speculation about whether GPS capability in the Blackberry might give away Obama’s position. However, this is easily resolved by turning the device off when the Secret Service takes the president to an undisclosed location.

The work factor and the probable consequences of hacking into the president’s Blackberry act together as a strong deterrent against all but the most motivated attacker, one who either doesn’t care if he or she is caught or is under the protection of a powerful sponsor (e.g., China or Russia).
After all this, can the device or supporting service still be hacked? Of course. However, the safeguards in place provide a reasonable and appropriate level of security while allowing the president to maintain contact with key staff at all times. In other words, security is present without preventing Obama from doing his job.

So to sum it up, should President Obama have a Blackberry? Hell Yeah!
Should he worry about security? Not for the meantime, but it is important for his security team not to become too lax.

Putting my blog on google and indexing my site

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:09:00 +0000

I am currently in the process of learning how to be a Web Master, one of my first steps has been to improve my rankings on google searches...

1) Signed into http://www.google.com/webmasters/ using my Google account.
2) Added my blog url smackthepc.blogspot.com
3) I then verified it using meta tags that I added to my blogger template.
4) I then added a sitemap, I just used the rss feed for my blog, details at http://techmake.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-submit-blogger-sitemap.html

That done, I set up learning how to submit my site to the open directory project. This is work in progress...

The quest for free Wifi in Durban

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:12:00 +0000

I often see many a person working on their laptop at a coffee shop and
envisioned that it was probably because Wireless Internet at that
coffee shop was either free or cheap. It seems that in Durban Wireless
Internet at coffee shops is just a convenience and most of the time is
not free.
However being an avid surfer, I decided to explore my options:

Option 1 The first ten minutes at any Mugg and Bean are free, there after it is time to get out your
credit card. If you are an Mweb subscriber or you live in Kloof then
your Wireless Internet is free for 3 hours a month.

Option 2 Taco Zulu restaurant in Florida Road offers free wireless, just watch the 20MB limit

SheBee writes: http://moralfibre.co.za/blog/2009/01/26/taco-zulu-durban-restaurant-review/

Option 3 Most Durban libraries are now said to have free wireless internet:

"Free wireless internet access is already available
in all 85 libraries, thanks to eThekwini being the first municipality
in South Africa to roll out a fibre optic network that links all its
offices. Members can use the computers in the libraries, or bring their
own, wireless enabled laptops. Membership of the city’s libraries is
free and the membership number is used as the user name password to
enable connectivity."

Conclusion
So if you want free wireless Internet, the best place to go would
probably be the library. If you were hoping to have coffee with your
surfing, then I suggest that you find a coffee shop close to the
library...

My sources of information:

http://www.freewi-fi.co.za/free-hotspots

http://moralfibre.co.za/blog/author/shebee/

http://www.durban.gov.za/durban/services/services_news/rural-digital-gap-bridged?searchterm=suite&plone_skin=eThekwiniPrint

The main difference between http:// and https://

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 11:01:00 +0000

MANY PEOPLE ARE UNAWARE OF THE DIFFERENCES

**The main difference between http:// and https:// is It's all about keeping you secure**

HTTP stands for HyperText Transport Protocol, Which is just a fancy way of saying it's a protocol (a language, in a manner of speaking) for information to be passed back and forth between web servers and clients. The important thing is the letter S which makes the difference between HTTP and HTTPS.

The S (big surprise) stands for "Secure". If you visit a website or webpage, and look at the address in the web browser, it will likely begin with the following: http://.

This means that the website is talking to your browser using the regular 'unsecure' language. In other words, it is possible for someone to "eavesdrop" on your computer's conversation with the website. If you fill out a form on the website, someone might see the information you send to that site.

This is why you never ever enter your credit card number in an http website! But if the web address begins with https://, that basically means your computer is talking to the website in a secure code that no one can eavesdrop on.

You understand why this is so important, right?

If a website ever asks you to enter your credit card information, you should automatically look to see if the web address begins with https://. If it doesn't, there's no way you're going to enter sensitive information like a credit card number.

Taming the recycle bin virus

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:23:00 +0000

I have often encountered the odd virus in my line of work, but nothing quite like of recent. Our antivirus at work picked it up as the "Mal_Otorun1"or "Worm_Autorun.cg", interesting thing was there was more to the virus than the antivirus actually saw...

History of Autorun.inf
(This file is not the virus, but this is where instructions are kept to keep itself on your computer.)

There is or can be a hidden file on every removable storage medium called "Autorun.inf" containing instructions for the purpose of the media, e.g. run a flash presentation, open a readme file or web browser menu. CDs often contain this file for autoinstalls of software like drivers. Most memory sticks don't contain this file, however you can create one yourself in notepad with the following two lines at the start:

[autorun]
OPEN=setup.exe

If you put this on the memory stick it will open up "setup.exe" everytime it is inserted into a machine unless autorun is disabled on that particular machine.

Now the virus...
The virus itself resides in your recycler folder along with everything else you have in your recycle bin on your system drives, yes all of them including your memory stick. Strange thing is this recycle bin will now stay on your memory stick along with any deleted file to infect a new machine.

An easy way to see if you have the virus is to first empty your recycle bin, then go to windows explorer, click 'tools' menu, now 'folder options' click the view tab, select 'show hidden files and folders', untick the option 'hide protected operating system files', click yes to the message displayed. Click 'Ok' and now go to C:\recycler and highlight all your recycle bins and the right click one of the selected bins and click 'send to' and then 'compressed(zipped)folder'. Now open the newly created zip file, if each "s-1-5-21-xxxxx" folder contains anything more than desktop.ini and info2, in particular an iso32.exe or iso.exe. You have a virus and must follow the below instructions at the trend micro site...

http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=WORM_AUTORUN.CG&VSect=T

The new pattern file picks up this virus as WORM_AUTORUN.DAT and is able to quarantine it should your system be infected. The way not to get infected with this virus initially was to disable my recycle bin, right click your recycle bin, check the box that says do not move items to the recycle bin delete them permanently. The best way was to update my antivirus. So morale of the story keep your pattern files up to date and your antivirus on...

Security The Microsoft way

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:53:00 +0000

Protect yourself and your family

10 tips for safer instant messaging

Communicate only with people on your contact lists, be careful when creating your screen name--and other best practices to help protect your privacy.

Beware that easy-money e-mail scam

E-mail offers that sound too good to be true probably are. Here are seven telltale signs of a hoax that you should watch out for.

12 safety tips on blogging

Make sure that your kids don't post text or pictures that give too much away, plus more tips for smarter online journaling.

Help your teen counter bullying on the Web

About one-third of all teens online have been the victim of a "cyberbully." Help your teen avoid the abuse with these 10 tips.

The Top 10 Internet/Email Scams

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:47:00 +0000

1) The Nigerian scam, also known as 419
2) Advanced fees paid for a guaranteed loan or credit card
3) Lottery scams
4) Phishing emails and phony web pages
5) Items for sale overpayment scam
6) Employment search overpayment scam
7) Disaster relief scams
8) Travel scams
9) “Make Money Fast” chain emails
10) "Turn Your Computer Into a Money-Making Machine!"

Paste into Non-sequential Cells in Excel

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:38:00 +0000

You can use the CTRL key for multiple selections.

Sometimes, you want to copy a formula or piece of data into a series of non-sequential cells in Microsoft Office Excel. You can do this quickly without having to paste into each cell individually:

1. Copy the data from the source cell.
2. Hold down the CTRL key as you click to select each destination cell.
3. After all the cells are highlighted, paste the data by pressing CTRL+V. You have to paste only once. Similarly, you can type data into a series of cells simultaneously. 1. While holding down the CTRL key, click all the cells that you want to type the same text (or value) into. 2. Type the entry, and then press CTRL+ENTER. The text will be added to all the selected cells.

Categorizing Calendar Appointments in Outlook

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:31:00 +0000

Categorizing Calendar Appointments By using the Automatic Formatting feature in your Microsoft Office Outlook calendar,

You can highlight different types of appointments by using different colors.
1. Right-click an appointment, and then click Automatic Formatting.
2. Use the Rules Wizard to display that meeting or person's name in the color of your choice. If you repeat this procedure for other types of appointments, you can build different categories within your Outlook calendar for easy recognition—for example, weekly team meetings, customer visits, and personal appointments.

Windows Vista and Start Run

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:15:00 +0000

For Windows Vista
Command Prompt You can run your programs via the command prompt as follows: 1. Click Start. 2. Type command in the Quick Search box. 3. Click Command prompt. Alternately, you can simply type the program name in the Quick Search box, and use any parameters that may be required.

10 dirty little secrets you should know about working in IT

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:13:00 +0000

Originally found at http://downloads.techrepublic.com/

If you are preparing for a career in IT or are new to IT, many of the “dirty little secrets” listed below may surprise you because we don’t usually talk about them out loud. If you are an IT veteran, you’ve probably encountered most of these issues and have a few of your own to add — and please, by all means, take a moment to add them to the discussion. Most of these secrets are aimed at network administrators, IT managers, and desktop support professionals. This list is not aimed at developers and programmers — they have their own set of additional dirty little secrets — but some of these will apply to them as well.

10.) The pay in IT is good compared to many other professions, but since they pay you well, they often think they own you

Although the pay for IT professionals is not as great as it was before the dot-com flameout and the IT backlash in 2001-2002, IT workers still make very good money compared to many other professions (at least the ones that require only an associate’s or bachelor’s degree). And there is every reason to believe that IT pros will continue to be in demand in the coming decades, as technology continues to play a growing role in business and society. However, because IT professionals can be so expensive, some companies treat IT pros like they own them. If you have to answer a tech call at 9:00 PM because someone is working late, you hear, “That’s just part of the job.” If you need to work six hours on a Saturday to deploy a software update to avoid downtime during business hours, you get, “There’s no comp time for that since you’re on salary. That’s why we pay you the big bucks!”

9.) It will be your fault when users make silly errors

Some users will angrily snap at you when they are frustrated. They will yell, “What’s wrong with this thing?” or “This computer is NOT working!” or (my personal favorite), “What did you do to the computers?” In fact, the problem is that they accidentally deleted the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop, or unplugged the mouse from the back of the computer with their foot, or spilled their coffee on the keyboard.

8.) You will go from goat to hero and back again multiple times within any given day

When you miraculously fix something that had been keeping multiple employees from being able to work for the past 10 minutes — and they don’t realize how simple the fix really was — you will become the hero of the moment and everyone’s favorite employee. But they will conveniently forget about your hero anointment a few hours later when they have trouble printing because of a network slowdown — you will be enemy No. 1 at that moment. But if you show users a handy little Microsoft Outlook trick before the end of the day, you’ll soon return to hero status.

7.) Certifications won’t always help you become a better technologist, but they can help you land a better job or a pay raise

Headhunters and human resources departments love IT certifications. They make it easy to match up job candidates with job openings. They also make it easy for HR to screen candidates. You’ll hear a lot of veteran IT pros whine about techies who were hired based on certifications but who don’t have the experience to effectively do the job. They are often right. That has happened in plenty of places. But the fact is that certifications open up your career options. They show that you are organized and ambitious and have a desire to educate yourself and expand your skills. If you are an experienced IT pro and have certifications to match your experience, you will find yourself to be extremely marketable. Tech certifications are simply a way to prove your baseline knowledge and to market yourself as a professional. However, most of them are not a good indicator of how good you will be at the job.

6.) Your nontechnical co-workers will use you as personal tech support for their home PCs

Your co-workers (in addition to your friends, family, and neighbors) will view you as their personal tech support department for their home PCs and home networks. They will e-mail you, call you, and/or stop by your office to talk about how to deal with the virus that took over their home PC or the wireless router that stopped working after the last power outage and to ask you how to put their photos and videos on the Web so their grandparents in Iowa can view them. Some of them might even ask you if they can bring their home PC to the office for you to fix it. The polite ones will offer to pay you, but some of them will just hope or expect you can help them for free. Helping these folks can be very rewarding, but you have to be careful about where to draw the line and know when to decline. For help, take a look at TechRepublic’s free download “Ten ways to decline a request for free tech support.”

5.) Vendors and consultants will take all the credit when things work well and will blame you when things go wrong

Working with IT consultants is an important part of the job and can be one of the more challenging things to manage. Consultants bring niche expertise to help you deploy specialized systems, and when everything works right, it’s a great partnership. But you have to be careful. When things go wrong, some consultants will try to push the blame off on you by arguing that their solution works great everywhere else so it must be a problem with the local IT infrastructure. Conversely, when a project is wildly successful, there are consultants who will try to take all of the credit and ignore the substantial work you did to customize and implement the solution for your company.

4.) You’ll spend far more time babysitting old technologies than implementing new ones

One of the most attractive things about working in IT is the idea that we’ll get to play with the latest cutting edge technologies. However, that’s not usually the case in most IT jobs. The truth is that IT professionals typically spend far more time maintaining, babysitting, and nursing established technologies than implementing new ones. Even IT consultants, who work with more of the latest and greatest technologies, still tend to work primarily with established, proven solutions rather than the real cutting edge stuff.

3.) Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies

A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software or infrastructure can potentially save money and/or increase productivity and profitability. However, it’s often the case that one of the largest roadblocks to migrating to new technologies is not budget constraints or management objections; it’s the veteran techies in the IT department. Once they have something up and running, they are reluctant to change it. This can be a good thing because their jobs depend on keeping the infrastructure stable, but they also use that as an excuse to not spend the time to learn new things or stretch themselves in new directions. They get lazy, complacent, and self-satisfied.

2.) Some IT professionals deploy technologies that do more to consolidate their own power than to help the business

Another subtle but blameworthy thing that some IT professionals do is select and implement technologies based on how well those technologies make the business dependent on the IT pros to run them, rather than which ones are truly best for the business itself. For example, IT pros might select a solution that requires specialized skills to maintain instead of a more turnkey solution. Or an IT manager might have more of a Linux/UNIX background and so chooses a Linux-based solution over a Windows solution, even though the Windows solution is a better business decision (or, vice versa, a Windows admin might bypass a Linux-based appliance, for example). There are often excuses and justifications given for this type of behavior, but most of them are disingenuous.

1.) IT pros frequently use jargon to confuse nontechnical business managers and hide the fact that they screwed up

All IT pros — even the very best — screw things up once in a while. This is a profession where a lot is at stake and the systems that are being managed are complex and often difficult to integrate. However, not all IT pros are good at admitting when they make a mistake. Many of them take advantage of the fact that business managers (and even some high-level technical managers) don’t have a good understanding of technology, and so the techies will use jargon to confuse them (and cover up the truth) when explaining why a problem or an outage occurred. For example, to tell a business manager why a financial application went down for three hours, the techie might say, “We had a blue screen of death on the SQL Server that runs that app. Damn Microsoft!” What the techie would fail to mention was that the BSOD was caused by a driver update he applied to the server without first testing it on a staging machine.

Top twenty hacker movies

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:37:00 +0000

http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/hacking101/a/hackermovies.htm

According to the guys at About.com, these are the top twenty hacker movies:

20) The Net (1995)
Sandra Bullock plays a software engineer who loses her identity to digital thieves.
Filmed during the fanatic years of the then-novel World Wide Web, this film is now cliched. Nevertheless, fans of Sandra Bullock will still enjoy watching this B movie.

19) Takedown (2000)
This is the sensationalized story of famous phone phreaker, Kevin Mitnick. This is a cult classic that is very hard to find in rental stores.

18) Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
This is the flawed storytelling of how Apple and Microsoft came to be. While this movie got mixed reviews, many people have commented they loved it. Three dollars at your video store, and you can decide for yourself if this was a good film.

17) The Matrix (1999)
This was such a groundbreaking adventure in reality and existentialism. No, you will not learn how to break into a Linux server by watching Trinity port-scanning with "nmap". But this movie is definitely cool, nonetheless.

16) Hackers (1995)
Well, this story was really weak, and the hacking scenes were nowhere near reality. But you have to watch this just to say you did. Plus: Angelina Jolie is reason enough for some males to rent this.

15) The Conversation (1974)
While you won't see computers in this classic film, the theme of surveillance and the violation of people's privacy is so masterfully explored here.

**Related movie: The Conversation was re-imagined as Will Smith's Enemy of the State in 2001. The 2001 treatment of the story was designed as a modern techno thriller, and has some tremendous special effects and satellite surveillance sequences. Having Gene Hackman star with Will Smith makes it worth the price of a DVD rental.

14) Antitrust (2001)
This movie has some strong points about it. Two idealistic computer whiz kids graduate from Stanford, and one of them enters the world of private sector programming. Sure enough, these two programmers find themselves in the middle of cybercrime scandals. Definitely worth renting for three bucks.

13) Real Genius (1985)
There is only about 5 minutes of actual "hacking" in this comedy, where Laslo "brute-forces" his way into the defense network, and Kent and Mitch do phone bugging. But there are laughs aplenty in this fun B movie. Definite smile factor if you like playful and quirky humor movies.

12) Mission Impossible (1996)
While many people no longer like Tom Cruise, his first MI movie did have I.T. and computer hacking sequences. Some good action, too.

11) The Thirteenth Floor(1999)
A very extreme version of "The Sims", this movie is about scientists who create a virtual world where participants plug in and take over a computer character's life. The characters are unaware of their puppet existence, but then a real life murder shakes the foundation of the game.

10) Swordfish (2001)
Over-the-top violence, preposterous situations, sexy women, and outstanding special effects make this a great popcorn rental. No, don't bring your brain to watch this, but if you like techno-thrillers, definitely rent this. John Travolta is the slimy villain, Hugh Jackman is the studly hero hacker, and Halle Berry is the mysterious damsel.

9) The Italian Job (2003)
Modern heist movies always involve some sort of hacking. This particular heist movie is extremely entertaining, especially when the supposed true inventor of "Napster" is the main hacker.
At least 20 minutes of hacking footage in this actioner. Definitely worth renting if you haven't seen it.

8) Foolproof (2003)
A lower-budget movie about hobby bank robbers, this was a delightful surprise to many viewers. Ryan Reynolds and his friends "virtually" rob banks for fun, but are blackmailed into doing a heist for real. This is a good action rental.

7) eXistenZ (1999)
A David Cronenberg film, this is the creepiest entry in the list. A game designer creates an artificial reality game that plugs directly into people's minds. The line between reality and game then blurs in a violent and gruesome way. This is very much a powerful art film, and not for everyone.

6) The Score (2001)
Edward Norton and Robert De Niro are fabulous in this heist flick. In a clever plot to rob a Montreal customs house of some royal artifacts, Norton and De Niro must break into the security systems with the help of a socially-awkward hacker who lives in his mother's basement. Ten minutes of hacking, and 100 minutes of phenomenal robbery storytelling!

5) Sneakers (1992)
While dated, this movie was groundbreaking at the time, and is still charming to this day. The story revolves around two college buddies who take different paths in life. One becomes an ethical hacker, and the other...well, he is not quite so noble. Some great plot twists and comic scenes make this a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon at home.

4) Revolution OS (2001)
This documentary tells the story about the Linux operating system, and how it forwarded the philosophy of "open source" and free intellectual property. Not an action movie, but definitely interesting for people who want to learn more about why computer culture is the way it is. If you can find a copy of this, definitely rent it.

3) Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Leave it to Bruce Willis to save the world from uber hackers. Macintosh advertising personality, Justin Long, plays the reluctant programmer caught up in an digital terrorism scheme. Like Swordfish, this movie has over-the-top violence and outrageous action sequences, but if you liked the Die Hard series, definitely see this .

2) Wargames (1983)
Yes, this movie is very old, but it is still a pivotal film in many viewers' minds. A young man finds a back door into a military computer that is linked to the nuclear defense grid of the United States. A preposterous plot, but a compelling commentary on nuclear war and the destruction of the human race. You have to see this movie just to say you have seen it.

1) Tron (1982)
A classic! A hacker is transported into the digital universe inside a computer, and must survive combat as a cyber gladiator in order to stop the villanous Master Control. The imagination behind this movie made big ripples in the science fiction world, and today, Tron is a cult classic that every computer user should see at least once.

These Movies aside, my best movies not including these are:

Top Gun, The Last Samurai, James Bond Die Another Day, Next, National Treasure, American Outlaws and SWAT.

Clear my Recently Run list

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:21:00 +0000

If you frequently use the Run command in Windows XP (Start->Run), chances are you probably have a lot of paths displaying in the MRU (Most Recently Used) list, which appears in the Folder dropdown menu. If so, you may at some point in time want to clear that list or even edit it — especially if it contains paths that you no longer use. Here’s how:

Launch the Registry Editor (Start->Run->Type "Regedit.exe").
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU.
One-by-one, delete each string value you don't like by selecting it and pressing the Delete key.
To Clear the list completely, Select them all and press the delete key.
To Edit Individual strings, double click the one you want and change the Value Data and click Ok.
Close Regedit. Takes immediate effect.

Export Excel to PDF for free

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:41:00 +0000

I have often been asked this question and I have often wondered myself at times, there are several creative ways you could achieve this:

1.) Print your excel spreadsheet to a multi-function device and scan to PDF, this is often a common feature of these machines.

2.) Steal Adobe Professional from someone or download the full version via a torrent, I don't recommend this as very often this option is either password protected of comes with Malware installed whether you know it or not.

3.) Download a trial version of adobe professional or edit it online, this is probably a good solution if you have a very specific use and will only need a pdf creator for a limited time.

4.) Install primoPDF: http://www.primopdf.com/ This will give you a PDF printer which is very much like my first option.

5.) Download Open Office from OpenOffice.org this software enables you to create PDFs or save files as PDF, it also enables you to open and edit Microsoft Office compiled files and has many addins that give it even more functionality.

Submitting a directory listing to a file

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:15:00 +0000

Came across something quite by accident today...

Go to your command prompt, Start->Run->type "CMD"
Go to your destination directory (e.g cd\sugar\tech) and type Dir > c:\filelisting.csv
Now go to Excel, click open, go to your C:\ and open filelisting.csv

neat huh?

My other site has been updated

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:58:00 +0000

http://birdpretty.blogspot.com/

The meannest machine to date

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 16:30:00 +0000

Is there a meanest machine to date?

A computer now a days has a life expectancy of around four or five years, hence from you should consider either upgrading and 3 years after that replacing it all together...

Well actually this has always been the mentality of the users who buy a machine with Microsoft Windows on. Mac users however always got a machine that was built for what it was meant to do, well if they had enough money...if not they went and bought something that had an operating system from Microsoft. Now Mac can run on the Intel platform...

The Mac OS doesn't need outrageous resources to work properly. To decently run Vista, you will need a machine with at least 2GB of RAM and a core2duo that celeron just won't cope I'm afraid...

Look Macs are expensive, but considering they can run Windows and Linux, besides its Mac OS, the investment is comparable to that required for running Vista. While at system resources, I should add Vista eats up much of them (it needs 512MB RAM to just install). I must admit it's quite frustrating to spend a pile of cash on the meanest machine in the store and still wait on your system.

So am I getting a Mac? Windows Vista
No, I can't afford either and a lot of people can't anymore either, solution I am going Linux... Ubuntu in particular which is free and can run on any platform I decide to run it on.

Water Bottle Car Fire Warning From hoax-slayer.com

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Peter Verhagen) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:49:00 +0000

Water Bottle Car Fire Warning

Summary:
Message warns that a water bottle left inside a car on a sunny day could ignite the upholstery and start a fire.

Status:
True

Example:(Submitted, February 2008)

Starting fire with water

Or how I nearly burnt my car down

It's simple really...we do it all the time

...and I'd encourage you to try this at home...it drives home the message quite effectively when it is demonstrated!!

Paper doesn't burn that easily

But that doesn't mean it won't...

Car upholstery was another matter altogether...

Each of these burns took less than 7 seconds!

Contributing factors
. Angle of sunlight
. Shape and clarity of bottle
. Bottle full of water
. Readily inflammable material

What can you do?
. Don't leave bottles in vehicles (or near windows in buildings) – cover them up if you have to.
. Better still...use purpose-built water bottles which are not made of clear glass or plastic
. Share this within the business
. Share it with your family and friends
. PS – you now know another way to start a fire in a survival situation!

Commentary:
According to this warning, which is currently circulating via email, leaving a filled plastic water bottle in a vehicle on a sunny day has the potential to start a fire inside the car. The message includes several photographs depicting how sunlight shining through a water bottle could potentially generate enough heat to start combustion. The last photograph shows several upholstery burns allegedly caused by a water bottle.

Given the right kind of plastic container and the right environmental conditions it is true that sun shining through a water bottle can lead to combustion. A round plastic bottle filled with clear water can act as a lens that concentrates the sun's energy on one point. Basically, the bottle acts like a magnifying glass. This magnifying effect can be easily seen if one looks at an object through a full bottle. As many of us will recall from childhood experiments, it is not at all difficult to burn holes in paper or dry leaves using a magnifying glass.

Thus, if the sun's energy is concentrated through a water bottle on to combustible material, then it is possible that fire could result. I conducted experiments using the same kind of bottle featured in the above photographs and I found that, by focusing the sun's rays through the bottle onto a thin plastic sheet, I could quite easily burn holes. The following photographs illustrate the results of one of my experiments. A hole was burned through the plastic after around 30 to 40 seconds of placing the bottle. A small indentation was also melted into the hard plastic tool-case that I used to support the bottle and plastic sheet:

The phenomenon has also been captured on video by the New Zealand television program Fair Go. The program discusses damage caused to the upholstery of a Jeep Cherokee. The owner of the vehicle, Mark Gillings, first noticed the potential danger when he left a full plastic water bottle in the Jeep's backseat bottle holder on a sunny day. He subsequently reported the issue to the media and motoring groups in New Zealand.

An April, 2007 article on the program's website notes:

Mark Gillings of Queenstown came back to his car after a few hours fishing to find a burn mark on the back seat of his Chrysler Jeep Cherokee. It turned out that a full 1.25-litre Pump water bottle, which was sitting in the rear seat centre drinks holder, had focused the sun's rays like a magnifying glass on the seat about three centimetres from the holder.

Further investigation revealed a number of other cases in New Zealand. Thus, it seems clear that the phenomenon is real and the warning message is valid.

That said, according to the New Zealand Motor Industry Association, none of the reported cases actually lead to a car fire. In every instance, the damage was limited to small burn marks on the upholstery. Moreover, the majority of plastic water bottles have a series of surface ridges or indentations that seem to effectively disperse the sun's rays so that no one point can become heated enough to ignite. I conducted experiments with several types of plastic bottles, but I could only burn holes using those with clear, smooth tops. However, it should be noted that the "Pump" brand and other clear-topped plastic bottles like the one shown in the photographs are available in many Australian supermarkets. Also, there is a very large range of bottle styles available and some styles may only be distributed in specific countries or regions. Due to these factors, I could only experiment on a relatively small selection of bottle styles. And of course, the range of styles is even larger if you factor in plastic containers that originally held other liquids that may be reused for water, glass bottles, and bottles that hold clear liquids other than water. It is therefore probably safest to assume that any bottle has the potential to become a burning lens given the right environmental conditions.

Although incidents like the one reported in the warning message are probably quite rare, the potential for a serious car fire caused by a plastic water bottle certainly cannot be dismissed. Thus, the warning is worth heeding. As a precaution, it is advisable to remove plastic water bottles from cars left in the sun or cover them so that they cannot act as lenses.

References:
WHEELS ON FIRE
Fair Go
Water Filled Jugs Can Cause Fires