An excerpt from Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy: Access to computers – and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative. All information should be free. Mistrust Authority. Promote Decentralization. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. You can create art and beauty on a computer. Computers can change your life for the better.

A Root Certificate is a self-signed certificate or an unsigned public key certificate which forms an important part of the PKI (public key infrastructure). The most common commercial type of root certificates is based on the ISO X.509 standard. Such a certificate (a X.509 certificate) usually carries the digital signature of a certification authority (CA), which is the authorized body for validating the embedded data. In most enterprise-scale public key infrastructure systems, certificate chains prove or verify the identity of a party. When the certificate is issued by a certification Read More

Local and international networks require information to be constantly updated in order to properly route communications. Routing protocols were developed in order to help keep information flowing to the proper locations and to maintain network connectivity on both LAN and WAN. The Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is one of the most popular internal routing protocols used on medium to large businesses and education networks today. EIGRP Basics EIGRP was developed as a hybrid distance vector routing protocol that uses many of the same composite metrics as the Interior Read More

My Web Search is a malware toolbar distributed by Mindspark Interactive Network via their extensive network of spam sites, most of which are targeted towards young people.  This rapidly expanding list of sites includes Zwinky, Zwinky Cuties, GirlSense, Webfetti, Kazula, iWon, SmileyCentral, MyFunCards, CursorMania, and CardBoiled. These sites trick people, mainly children, into installing the My Web Search toolbar. The toolbar is spyware.  Mindspark admit as much in their EULA (End User License Agreement): “The My Web Search Toolbar, in the course of processing a given search query, sends a Read More

To delete your Myspace account, the first thing you need to do is log in to your account. Once your page loads, go to the top right hand corner of the screen and click “My Account.” Unlike Facebook, Myspace has it very clearly labelled where the delete account button is and that makes the process considerably easier than other social networking sites available on the web. From the My Account section, click Account. This will take you to a page where all the account decisions are made such as privacy Read More

Timekeeping devices usually contain or are connected to a machine that swings back and forth or oscillates at a constant rate to control the movement of hands or the rate of change of digits. Mechanical or analog clocks use balance wheels, pendulums and tuning forks as well as quartz crystals as their oscillating machinery for time measurement. Atomic clocks operate in much the same way – except that they use the frequency of the oscillation of atoms or molecules to measure time – thus the name 'atomic clocks'. How an Read More

As society is trying to slowly ween itself off of oil-dependency, the search for alternative fuels continues. One source of alternative "fuel" that already exists, however, is the electric motor. Electric motors are commonly found in vehicles, toys, and other electronic devices but there is still a campaign to improve the quality and efficiency of the electric motor through innovative contributions. Before the electric motor can be improved, though, people must learn how electric motors work. This article will explain what electric motors do and define the parts that make Read More

Opteron is a name for AMD's line of server-class CPUs. The Opteron line is designed to complete against the Intel Xeon server-class CPUs. Opteron processors are designed to execute 32-bit and 64-bit instuctions simultaneously. This enables them to directly address more than 4GB of RAM. Opteron CPUs feature an L1 cache with 64KB of RAM for data and 64KB of RAM for instructions. The 1024KB L2 cache in an Opteron CPU operates at the full speed of the CPU. These L1 and L2 cache numbers are per core. In a Read More

This list of bad web robots was originally compiled by funender. Some of these robots are designed to copy entire web sites, which can utilize a great deal of bandwidth. Others harvest e-mail addresses for spammers. Most benefit their owners, while providing absolutely no benefit to the web site owner. You must decide for yourself what qualifies as a bad web robot. Here is a list of robots that you may wish to exclude, in robots.txt format: User-agent: Alexibot User-agent: Aqua_Products User-agent: BackDoorBot User-agent: BackDoorBot/1.0 User-agent: Black.Hole User-agent: BlackWidow User-agent: Read More

The DirecTV Slimline Dish is a relatively recent addition to DirecTV’s collection of HD-enabled satellite dishes. A DirecTV Slimline Dish is roughly 18” tall and 22” oval. Since DirecTV satellites are positioned in the Southern Hemisphere, all DirecTV Slimline Dishes must have a clear view of the Southern sky in order to receive DirecTV services. When installed properly, however, a DirecTV Slimline Dish provides the user with clear, high-definition television and Internet. How DirecTV Slimline Dishes Work A DirecTV Slimline Dish works in the same manner as most other satellite Read More