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Techrant Is Moving

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

Hi all,

Just a quick note…

Techrant is moving to its very own domain. http://www.techrant.co.uk !

Go there now, and you can sign up to be alerted when it goes live!

The original techrant will vanish soon though, and it already redirects to the new site.

Hope you enjoy the new Techrant!

Rel

Error 418, I’m A Teapot. Take Control Of Your Coffee Pot!

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

That’s right folks, were talking HTCPCPcoffee 1.0!

For those of you who don’t know, HTCPCP stands for Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol. Let me explain…

Back in September when I started University, one of our first lab sessions for “Web and Media Development”, was looking up protocols on various given websites. One of the sites was http://ietf.org, which was when I remembered HTCPCP! I just HAD to look it up.

Low and behold, there was an article on HTCPCP, and its conception. The memo is 5 pages long, so I’ll talk about some of the best bits, and provide a link at the end of this post.

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Wikipedia Has Rules. Sure. One being Ignore Them.

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

Cant remember how I found this, but it’s been on my reading list for a while. There are always questions about wikipedia’s reliability, and now this, raises even more questions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules

Just encase you didn’t understand what its trying to say, you can even listen to this wiki policy! There is No Rulesactually a wiki page which attempts to explain exactly what the rule IAR means. In effect, its also known as common sense!

In fact there are no longer any "rules" on wiki, just a set of policies, and in essence, shouldn’t it be called "Ignore All Policies"? It itself, it is called a policy.

Maybe I’m just being picky, but I like wiki, and maybe this just proves the fact that wiki is user generated. Rather than making policies that mean you never need to ignore them to do what you need.

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The Future Of Cross Channel Travel – Jetpacks!

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

_45049658_rossy226bJetpacks!

Swiss man crossed the English channel in under 10 minutes. 22 miles from calais to dover. 49 years old this guy was! An ex fighter pilot, granted, but even so, 125 mph is rather fast flying in the air.

He did win £1,000 from the Daily Mail, 100 years after they started the competition, although I doubt this was his initial target,as I guessing it cost a lot more than that to put on.

It started with a 8,200 feet climb in a light aircraft (sort of cheating really), and then jumped out and flew using the jet pack with wings. The wing span is 8.2 feet, weighing in at a total of 121 lb. The actual decent took another 3 minuets, making a total of 13 minuets from flight to ground.

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My Pigeon Plays Tap Tap On iPhone Better Than You

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Ever wondered if a pigeon can play Tap Tap? Neither have I! But hey, this video answers that question. This is a pet pigeon, however why you would want a pigeon as a pet, is something I cannot fathom. Even if I DID have one, the last thing on my pet pigeon to-do list would be let it play on my shiny new iPhone. Oh well. Continue reading for link.

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Forotten Your Windows Password? No Problem!

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

LogonStudio2 Ever come across someone asking for help, saying they’ve forgotten their windows password. Naturally, this is a bit of a problem. I personally have never ran across this problem, however I’m sure someone has.

There is hope however, as long as the user hasn’t encrypted the password using the windows built in encryption. In that case, one would have to crack the password, which may be a tad difficult.

Ok, so you wanna learn how to recover your forgotten windows password? Well, I was reading an article on “The How To Geek”, about it just the other day, and the procedure seems rather simple.

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Macafee – Yet Another Reason Why They Suck Ass

Monday, October 13th, 2008

McRApee Ok, for those of you who don’t know, I’ve just started at Bournemouth University. Lovely place. Went to use good ol portable apps, when I get a report of a trojan on my usb. Needless to say, the university foolishly chose Macafee, when they could of chosen Kaspersky! Anyway, so the exe it flagged was the ultra handy usb ejector app I reviewed a while ago. Clearly this isn’t a trojan!

Not only did it detect, but it also AUTO DELETED THE FREAKIN EXE! SERIOUSLY! One not so happy guy. So I marched over to the IT tech support desk, and told them how crap Macafee was, and how I’d hack the system to show how crap it was and then replace it with Kaspersky and then… ARG! (or rather told them it reported a false positive). They said there was nothing they could do. So naturally one would assume reporting the false positive to Macafee would be easy, right? WRONG! Now Lets find out why it should be spelt MaCRAPe

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Computer Virus Found In Space

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

space station Next time you have a go at someone for not having any Anti virus or Firewall or ANY KIND OF PROTECTION AT ALL on their computers, maybe you should have ago at those at NASA first! YES, even those rocket scientists need us geek’s to secure their computers!

NASA admitted that laptops that were on the ISS in July were infected with a well known virus Gammima.AG, which was detected in 2007! Seriously guys, what’s going on? You can fly above our heads, and yet you run no Anti Virus of any kind?

Hang about, NASA continues to say this isn’t the first time a computer virus has been into space! They have never been anything but a “nuisance” according to NASA.

So what does this virus actually do? Lets find out.

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Learn Hacking At University If You Go To Scotland

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

hacker Yeh, that’s right. Every computer geek likes to think they can hack, but in reality, they can’t, and they know it! MSc Ethical Hacking and Computer Security course at Abertay University!

Apparently, the estimated income of a student after graduation is £55,000 pa. That’s not a bad wage! Most people assume that if they install AVG, all will be well on their computer, and they are protected. What they don’t know is that they are wrong! AVG DOESN’T protect you completely. Needless to say, YOU probably already know this anyway, which is why if you do use AVG, you have some sort of firewall too.

Have you ever heard the expression, “it takes one to know one”? Well Abertay University have taken this one takes this one step further, and state on their course page, “It takes a thief to catch a thief”. So are they admitting to having a thieving course? They say no. They compare it to a police detective know how criminals steal, in order to prevent, or catch them. Quite frankly, it seems like a rather good idea.

It hasn’t yet been accredited by the BSC, however the undergrad course with a similar title, hasn’t either. The uni does state that they based the course with referenced to the accreditation criteria, and it will be put forward when the first lot of students finish, in 2010.

The entry requirements for the undergrad course isn’t that high. CCC for A-levels, and Merit with an Advanced GNVQ or Level 3 IT.  The course content focuses on networking and security, and they are careful to put the word “ethical” before the word “hacking”.

Its a common misconception that hacking is all illegal. Those in the know, understand that there are White Hats and Black Hats. Black hat hackers are bad, and illegal, while white hat hackers are those doing legal hacking, testing systems and authorised to do so.

If you want to know any more about the course, visit the Abertary University website. If you can’t find it on your own, chances are you wont even get to the interview for this course, which is mandatory for all students.

Would you take this course? Any courses in USA that train ethical hackers?

Via [BBC]