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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: May 2011
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Tuesday, May 24, 2011. The Blue Screen of Death. Blue Screens of Death. Or blue screens or BSOD's, are those annoying and mysterious screens that pop up and tell you that something horribly wrong has happened to your computer, and that give you the secret code to fixing the problem. Ok, what is a Blue Screen of Death, anyway? Where do they come from? There are typically three variations:. With the first type, yo...
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: What is Jailbreaking?
http://peterspc.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-is-jailbreaking.html
Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Wednesday, September 07, 2011. What is "jailbreaking" you ask? What does it mean? Why is it called that? Jailbreaking is the term used by owners of iPhones and iPads when they want to use more features of the device than Apple will allow. If you have an "Android" device, the term is "rooting" because you are being given "root" access to the device. One consequence that no longer applies is going to real-world pr...
peterspc.blogspot.com
Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: January 2011
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Friday, January 28, 2011. PC World has new anti-virus ratings out for the New Year. You can find the article here. The article talks about how well the top paid anti-virus suites are doing not just in protecting you against known threats, but also emerging threats, such as banking-related malware. Still the top rated paid security program: Norton 2011. PC World also rates the performance impacts of these program.
peterspc.blogspot.com
Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: June 2011
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Saturday, June 25, 2011. An In-Depth Look at Public Wifi Insecurity. Recently, I wrote about the vulnerability of public (or "open") Wifi. Now a reporter for CNN has written an article demonstrating how the wifi-eavesdropping tool called Firesheep actually works. The article is here. I hate to be the guy who rains on everyones parade (like we need more rain! But this is (capital I) Important. Links to this post.
peterspc.blogspot.com
Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: August 2011
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Tuesday, August 30, 2011. On The Nature of Computers. Withe the news of Steve Jobs' departure from Apple, I am reminded of all the things he did to world of computers that has changed everyones life. In the early days of computers, there was one choice for a Personal Computer: IBM. It was a white or beige box, with a green on black TV-style screen sitting on top. At the time, every computer came with a floppy di...
peterspc.blogspot.com
Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: May 2010
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Thursday, May 27, 2010. How to recognize untrustworthy computer security companies. A blog post on Bruce Schneier's personal blog. Brought to my attention a video commercial from someone who is arguably the worst representative of the computer security industry. See the video here. So, how to recognize a bad IT guy from a good IT guy? Name of emailer) you are a fucking joke! Links to this post. It turns out that...
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: Hackers, Crackers and Pirates; Oh My!
http://peterspc.blogspot.com/2012/03/hackers-crackers-and-pirates-oh-my.html
Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Wednesday, March 07, 2012. Hackers, Crackers and Pirates; Oh My! At the moment, and there is a great debate over who and what is or is not a pirate, so I thought I would take some time and give some detail and a little background and these people: who they are, what they're doing, and why the heck they're doing it. Lets tackle hackers first, because they are the most well known. So, who really is a hacker? But, ...
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: How To Survive The Password Apocalypse
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Monday, November 26, 2012. How To Survive The Password Apocalypse. Some time ago, I said that passwords were not secure and that I would be doing a blog post about it so you would know what to do. At long last, this is that post. Did this reporter have weak passwords or some other easy reason why it happened to him? And it was still broken into. But before I do that, a word: I am talking about online. Yes, you n...
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: July 2010
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Thursday, July 29, 2010. Jailbreaking iPhones no longer a federal crime. Details here: http:/ www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26. Links to this post. Wednesday, July 14, 2010. Third party apps failing to use Windows security. Yep, thats about it. Several popular program written by people outside of Microsoft(which is why theyre called 'third-party') are failing to use the new security features in Windows 7.
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Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box!: Hacker, Crackers and Pirates, Oh My! (Part 2)
http://peterspc.blogspot.com/2012/03/hacker-crackers-and-pirates-oh-my-part.html
Magic Box Broken, Fix Magic Box! Explaining, De-mystifying and Translating Geek into English. Tuesday, March 13, 2012. Hacker, Crackers and Pirates, Oh My! In my last post, I talked about hackers; who they were and who they are, as well as a look into their motivations. Now, in this second of three posts, I am going to give crackers a similar treatment. So who are crackers, and why are they called that, anyway? Examples of such pointless restrictions are DVD region coding, the unskippable warnings at the...