By Michael, on May 30th, 2009%
It’s not your bank information or credit card numbers hackers that take over your PC are interested. Those items are bonuses. The real use of a hacked, or zombie, PC is in the computing power the hacker can use. Things like: Illicit Web Hosting – You too can serve up porn Zombie Grunt Work – [...] . . . → Read More: Hacked PC Value
By Michael, on April 7th, 2009%
RFC is short for Request for Comments. Initially RFCs were just that – requests for commentary on proposed solutions for this networking thing being worked on by ARPANET. Over the years RFCs have become the publishing channel for Internet Engineering Task Force. If you want to know how something is supposed to work in the [...] . . . → Read More: RFC Turns 40
By Michael, on December 21st, 2008%
This morning the four inches of snow we received yesterday was covered with a coat of freezing rain. Libraries closed and most of Portland went into hunker down mode. The ice covered snow didn’t faze the hosts of the monthly PLUG (Portland Linux/Unix Group) clinic. They were on site for their monthly Linux clinic. Those [...] . . . → Read More: Dedicated Geeks
By Michael, on September 19th, 2008%
This New York Post story about the kid who cracked Sarah Palin’s email account has a graphic with tips to prevent your email account from being hacked. It describes steps that are in and of themselves reasonable. But not one of them addresses the weakness the cracker used to get into Sarah’s email. She could, [...] . . . → Read More: Wrong Advice for Account Protection
By Michael, on September 18th, 2008%
Banks and other places enable you to recover or reset your password after you answer some “personal questions.” People, be careful of the questions and answers you provide. Here’s how a hacker got into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! email account: after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to [...] . . . → Read More: Security Lesson – Listen Up
By Michael, on September 16th, 2008%
This Meme Patch is moving. In a few days this site, hosted at patch.com, will be transferred to new owners. To continue checking in with the residents you’ll need to visit http://www.JaMhome.us/. JaM refers to Jennifer and Michael. Jennifer for inspiration and motivation, Michael for words and implementation. This is the first time I’ve moved [...] . . . → Read More: Moving Meme
By Michael, on December 11th, 2007%
Can you image what the web would be like without images? Or with images you could only view if you were using IE on a Windows machine, or Safari on a Mac? That’s bleak. The web works because of standards that ensure interoperability. Every compliant platform must support GIF and PNG files. It seems JPGs [...] . . . → Read More: Web without Images?
By Michael, on September 8th, 2007%
Computing power is getting so cheap. How cheap? So cheap that, for a home user, a dedicated firewall can be run on a Wifi Access Point like the Linksys WRT54G or a Netgear AP. What a lot of geeks used to do with a spare, full sized desktop PC can now be done on these [...] . . . → Read More: Geek Power
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