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Custom Boot Menu in Windows XP

Advanced XP Boot MenuOne of the first things that I do upon receiving a new Windows computer is immediately create a poweruser-style customized boot menu. Then every time I boot I can choose Safe Mode, Recovery Console, Debug, whatever I want! It's quick and easy to set-up and everyone should have one, soo sweet!

Windows

Rigging the DreamHost Site of the Month Contest

Since I was disqualified and accused of cheating, which is absolutely false, I decided to go ahead and do the crime I have been punished for. That's right, I'm going to show YOU how I could have rigged the DHSOTM contest to hopefully make the statement that I absolutely did not cheat and I absolutely want to be re-instated as the winner.

Hosting

Caching WordPress with Batcache and Memcache

join-meUsing memcache for me personally and the client sites I work on, has improved performance by over 1000%, in some cases even higher than that. It is a truly revolutionary way to optimize the performance of MySQL queries, remote requests such as to twitter or other apis, and this article is step 1. Plan is to go all the way to step 10 in future articles, it it grossly underused and misused in the WP world.

Optimization, WordPress

Hacking VLAN switched networks

Bypassing VLAN security on networked switchesThere isn't much vlan info on the net in terms of specifics and I had to learn all about it because I needed to log in to a switch that was on a different vlan. With the help of the Ettercap developers NaGA and ALoR I figured it out.

Originally Posted: 3/30/2004

Hacking

Add CSS Class to body when Sidebar is Present

Here's the problem I was having while working on a custom theme for a client. Certain pages, posts, tag pages, archive pages, and custom pages either had the sidebar, or did not have the sidebar. The main content div #ContentW had a 72% width when the sidebar was present, otherwise it was 96%. The problem was that I dislike having to do things manually when they can be automated through code. What I was having to do was manually add/remove page-specific classes to the css file to reflect whether the sidebar was present on that page or not.

WordPress

Internet Census 2012 – Port scanning using insecure embedded devices – Carna Botnet

While playing around with the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) we discovered an amazing number of open embedded devices on the Internet. Many of them are based on Linux and allow login to standard BusyBox with empty or default credentials. We used these devices to build a distributed port scanner to scan all IPv4 addresses. These scans include service probes for the most common ports, ICMP ping, reverse DNS and SYN scans. We analyzed some of the data to get an estimation of the IP address usage.

Hacking

.htaccess Plugin Blocks Spam, Hackers, and Password Protects Blog

.htaccess security plugin 2

Well what can I say, other than this is sooo DOPE! Here is a list of the modules this plugin (version 4.7 unreleased) will automatically detect. I compiled the list myself using every module included with any default Apache installation for ALL the versions listed below, 1.3 to 2.2+

Want to know something else I'm including in this plugin? For each and every module that is detected, this plugin can then detect ALL of the modules .htaccess Directives! For instance, RewriteRule, AccessFileName, AddHandler, etc.. are each a directive belonging to a module that is allowed to be used from within .htaccess files.

Talk about sick.. these tricks have the diamond disease!

WordPress

Watch Dogs 2

watch-dog-2-yupThis trailer speaks to the current state of the Internet of Things, and what we can expect over the next several years.

Hacking, Security

PirateBay and Anonymous SOPA Press Releases

SOPA: Anonymous Lists Their Demands

A rallying cry on the occassion of the Web's first mass blackout

As we watch the web go dark today in protest against the SOPA/PIPA censorship bills, let's take a moment and reflect on why this fight is so important. We may have learned that free speech is what makes America great, or instinctively resist attempts at silencing our voices. But these are abstract principles, divorced from the real world and our daily lives.

Free speech is the foundation of a free society. We can have the vote all we want. We can donate money wherever we want. But unless we're able to talk to each other and figure out collectively _what_ we want, those things don't matter.

We believe a healthy society doesn't allow its artists, musicians and other creators to starve. The copyright industry has been justly criticized for abusing the political process in a desperate attempt to maintain its role as a cultural gatekeeper, a business model made obsolete by a digital age of free copies. But the RIAA, MPAA & IFPI deserve our opprobrium for making enormous profits while often leaving the very artists it claims to represent *poorer* than they would be as independents.[1] While the public may have greater access to the few artists deemed sufficiently marketable to gain mass media promotion, fewer and fewer of us are making art and music in our own lives.

We call upon all freedom loving Internauts to join us. We further call upon our legislators, bureaucrats and the media & telecommunications industries to immediately begin implementing our demands. The future of free speech is bright, and clear - either stand with us or get out of the way.

PirateBay Press Release regarding SOPA...

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It's all based on the fact that we're competition. We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.

Hacking

Discover who’s tracking you online with Collusion

collusion firefox addonThe collusion add-on for Firefox is super-legit. Just navigate to any website normally, then just click the little collusion icon in the status bar and a full detailed report pops up in a new tab describing all the sites that the current site shared your data with (shared as in connected).

View the full introduction to Collusion on mozilla.org, or view my Firefox Add-on Collection: AskApache Web Development (Advanced)

Software

Surf the net anonymously with Tor

Tor LogoTor is a network of virtual tunnels that give you a very good level of anonymity, using Tor with privoxy and FoxTor for firefox gives you privacy at the touch of a button.

Software

The Latest and Greatest php.ini

Grab the latest php.ini developmental version and discover new or previously hidden php runtime configuration settings... ahead of everyone else!

PHP

WordPress robots.txt SEO

WordPress robots.txt file can make a huge impact on your WordPress blogs traffic and search engine rank. This is an SEO optimized robots.txt file.

SEO