Typer Tappers

I’m a large fan of USB flash drives I always have one on me with everything on it.

But recently my attention has been drawn to the security problems they face, after watching some podcasts I see that people can steal everything that is on your drive or they can use a flash drive to steal passwords etc.

I’ve tried this out on my friend’s pc for a laugh for all of his passwords from msn login passwords to the computer access password.

When looking at the other one that will steal your data on your actual flash drive, which I can see happening a lot I have not yet, tried it out I’m waiting for a new USB flash drive to try it out.

So how can you protect yourself, well for the hack that steals your data from your USB drive you will need to hold down shift when plugging in your USB drive, because it will steal your data when if auto run’s so upon holding shift it will not do this.

Another way to protect yourself from people stealing your computer passwords is disabling the auto run function which you can do by clicking start >> Run type in ‘regedit’ hit enter then go to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CDRom’ double click on ‘autorun’ and change the one to a zero.

Visit http://www.hak5.org for more information on USB hacks.

You may have seen one of my posts before saying how Google are planning on buying YouTube, and finally they have sold up for 1.6 billion dollars which is around £883 million.

This can only mean good things for Google, upon reading a BBC news article it says “Google has also signed distribution deals of its own, with Sony BMG and Warner Music to offer music videos.”

So I would say we can see big things coming for YouTube and I can’t wait to see what goes on with it.

Well lets get started with mentioning the most well known one kazzaa aka virus city, and we all know that their not for legal things are they the most common files to be seen on there are mp3’s this also goes for Limewire and all the others.

Now for the best of all Bit torrent, this is the most legally used p2p program all around, you will see a lot of pod casters using torrents to hand out their files because it will save their bandwidth and allow their viewers to also help host their videos which is a large help!

So a lot of people ask why p2p the answers simple speed, you’re downloading of several peers allowing you to download faster than the normal http downloads which is where you’re downloading from one person.

So why do people download mp3’s off p2p programs, also a simple answer their free its only illegal to share your files that’s why Limewire has become so popular because you can turn that option off.

Viruses a lot of people couldn’t care until their pc becomes over run by viruses, then they will go and ask their mate to fix their computer which can be very annoying, there is a simple fix to this pay to download your mp3’s or go buy the CD!

So overall torrents have their uses but regular p2p programs are only good for viruses.

Well first off we need to find out what you’re likely to use your pc for lots of people I find just say “hmm I just want to use word”, but they don’t really take into account about their kids they might want to play games, or do some graphic editing.

So once you’re sure you can get started, for word processing you only need a very basic machine that can run something like Microsoft XP, I’ve found the best spec for word processing is

Processor speed: 1 GHz – 1.8 GHz

RAM: 256mb’s

Graphics card: 128mb’s

I actually have a 1 GHz machine that is brilliant for using word or excel and also a 1.8 which I can’t really see the difference in until hitting the games, which the 1.8 is slightly better.

Now for your graphics editing machine, here you will find a lot of company’s using Mac pc’s because they allow you to get the most out of a machine, using less resources and they are based around UNIX, well as you might no they can put holes in your wallets, so here is a spec I recommend if building your own pc.

Processor speed: 2 GHz – 3 GHz

RAM: 2 GB’s

Graphics card: 512mb’s

Operating system: Mac OS X

After searching the internet for a while you will be able to build one of these machines much cheaper that just buying them from apple.

The best of all professional gaming pc’s. Here you need a get good performance pc the bigger the spec the better your gaming experience, so here is my recommended spec.

Processor speed: 3 GHz +

RAM: 4 GB’s

Graphics card: 512mb’s

I haven’t found much difference running them on different operating systems but for ease of use I would say get Windows XP.

Well I have recently been reading a couple of articles on YouTube selling their website, YouTube was launched in 2005 and has had a massive increase in popularity with over a million video viewings a day!

So not surprising the price is between 1 to 2 billion dollars, so this could be perfect for Google they like snapping up some sites that they can see a good investment in example Blogger, so will we see Google buying YouTube?

We do not know unless YouTube can find someone to pay a higher price Google could be getting it.

In my opinion I think Google have the power to make it a much better site much more successful so I cannot wait to see Google buy it.

First I heard about a laptop catching on fire was on about.com when it caught fire on his lap, which was about 1 year ago.

Then around a month ago I heard that dell had to recall around 4million of their laptops because they where catching fire.

Now looking at my BBC news feeds I just found out that Fujitsu have just recalled another 287k laptops.

So in total, Sony’s batteries have affected around 10 million laptops, costing around £250 million.

This is a basic guide to set up your personal website.

1. You will need a good WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get) for this I would recommend adobe’s macromedia dreamweaver, this has to be the best WYSIWYG editor I have seen around.

The next program you will need is a photo editor, if your going for a professional look you should get adobe Photoshop CS2 which can be breaking your bank for a small website so I would say look for a open source one which would have to be GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), or if you brought the macromedia studio MX that includes dreamweaver you should of also got fireworks which is another photo editor.

2. Now lets get designing, first off you want to sketch a design you like try and create it as good as you can in your photo editor.

Once you have created your design you want to go ahead and use the slice tool which will break up your image into different pictures, so you need to find your navigator and use your slice tool on that then next find the content area and slice that off.

If you use Photoshop you can now go file save for web, you will have to find something similar in your photo editor if you haven’t got that option.

3. Well we have out basic design once you have saved that; we can open the .html file in dreamweaver and edit what you like you will find it hard to use at first but you will get used to it, so just for a example you can right click and go to page properties. Their you will be able to change the background color, font color etc.
4. So now you know how to make your own website, keep a eye out for information on publishing your website.

The majority of internet users are internet explorer users which firefox catching up about 1 quarter of the internet users are using firefox, and poor opera are left in the dust, so I’ve started a test a while back trying out 3 different browsers over the course of a week on each one first off I will be trying firefox my favourite.

Firefox:

Well I love this browser for a starter it has a large community dedicated to making extensions and themes, which I must say is brilliant you have a range of weather in your little status bar to a toolbar that randomly picks pages for you to go onto which we all know is the dumbest invention ever but great fun if you have a lot of time to waste, the themes are great to use I have a couple I like noia and pimpzilla which I think is brilliant if your looking for a complete change to firefox’s look go for pimpzilla.

But these are only the small things lets get down to the real firefox.

Their memory leaks, annoying but you can fix them I read about this on dig in the comments

“Opera and IE7 release their memory when you minimize them, however firefox doesn’t do this by default. You need to tweak it to release its memory. To do this, type about:config in the address bar. Right click add a new boolean name it config.trim_on_minimize set it to true restart firefox, and memory leak free.”

Well their we have that problem fixed next there is the speed easy fix for this as well

“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 your using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!”

Well their we have that we have the main problems fixed, but why should we do it?

Isn’t it up to firefox to do all this a lot of people aren’t a wiz on the computer and they might not be good at researching things, so firefox should be for the advanced user only, unless your good at researching things or you have a mate to set everything up for you.

Another problem I also came across today on digg is their JavaScript problems, apparently impossible to fix without re coding everything.

So overall firefox, bit iffy but not bad for advanced users.

Opera:

I actually liked testing this browser out it was great a nice change from my usual firefox, but first thing I noticed was the speed of the thing damn slow, you have to go into preferences then network and you need to fiddle around with the things in their, did that wasn’t as fast as firefox so it was a large disappointment to me.

The skins they are great just as good as firefox’s themes, well even better because you could preview them instead of restarting to see it, so I thought that was a brilliant plus side with opera.

Widgets, really didn’t like these, just added unwanted things to my taskbar, which I thought I don’t want I prefer to have them fixed on the browser.

So overall opera is simple easy to setup, if your not used to speedy browsers opera is great for you, their user interfaces are easy to understand easy to navigate round them so get it if your not using firefox.

Internet Explorer:

The dreaded test, using this for a week.

No tabs

No extensions

No skins

Very disappointed in it, so I’m sorry guys I could only stand using if for a day.

But in that day I found the speed very good, unfortunately no inbuilt popup blocker I had to rely on Norton to block them. The clicky sounds where brilliant as you clicked on some anchored text.

It’s a good browser not up to Morzilla firefox’s standards though it could do so much better, if you’re not a regular user of the internet like a dial up user internet explorer is the browser for you.

Over overall in my eyes I will never leave firefox, my beloved browser is the most secure, with the biggest community of people making extensions and themes and always willing to help you with anything, so its sorted download Firefox.