Yep, use your ability to make money , but then there are the scammers.
How to spot the scammers:
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Freelancer.com Home for many of the worlds professional scammers
19
May
She works hard for the money…. OpenERP CentOS 6.2 Python 2.7.3
21
Apr
Well almost…
Todays time wasting job was OpenERP, not least of which was due to the piss-poor installer, dodgy language (Python… if you want to see libraries done properly see Pearl) and the poor instruction and installation guides provided by OpenERP. (I don’t think I have seen such worthless documentation since the Jasper reports-’Ultimate’ guide series)
Seriously if you’re going to charge 50 bucks for an ‘ultimate’ guide, then I expect to see such tips as having a two column report broken down into ‘Day’ & ‘Night’, where ‘Night’ always prints on the right even when the’Day’ column is missing. Not some trash about how to position sub-reports on a report page.
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CentOS 6.X yum does not work
16
Apr
I was recently working on a job that called for centOS.
not knowing what type of hardware the customer had, I opted to build a VM using i386.
Everything went fine until…
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Arvixe still not there yet?
04
Apr
I am beginning to get the idea that some members of Arvixe are giving false information in an attempt to make it appear to the customer/ or their supervisors that we are the one in the wrong and that they are ‘doing their best’ to sort out the problems, possibly in attempt to coverup their mess.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I just cannot see why it takes 3 weeks to setup a server with a domain name pointing to the same address, NOT install tomcat and give the customer the CORRECT details to connect to their hosted account.
Yesterday I received an emails clearly stating:
The ------ server is now the --- server so its(sic) not on the wrong server.
However after checking and executing a ‘ping’ to the customers REGISTERED domain name and a ping to the ‘—’ server I find that they are NOT the same servers
The server that they claimed was “NOT the wrong server”
ping ---.------.com
PING ---.------.com (---.---.---.52): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from ---.---.---.52: icmp_seq=0 ttl=49 time=260.736 ms
64 bytes from ---.---.---.52: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=261.221 ms
64 bytes from ---.---.---.52: icmp_seq=2 ttl=49 time=259.718 ms
The customers DNS server:
ping -------.com
PING -------.com (---.---.---.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from ---.---.---.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=259.538 ms
64 bytes from ---.---.---.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=260.570 ms
Clearly the pings resolve to different IP addresses, and after checking the content of the servers that are supposed to be ‘right and the same’, it was clear that they are NOT the same.
Anyone wanting a GOOD hosting company can click on this link:
Get a week’s FREE trial and a support team that, I have to say is absolutely the best and fun to send emails to. Plus it only takes them 15 minutes to get you running.
Arvixe hits an Iceberg, and the band played on………
01
Apr
Yep, this continues to be a pain, only two three weeks in and STILL not resolved.
Basically they sent me details that the server I was hosted on was: shall we say “xxx”, unfortunatly the DNS was pointed to “YYY”, so for safety I have been accessing “XXX” via an IP. Address.
Part of my message to them:
DO NOT INSTALL TOMCAT OR START TOMCAT..................., there is NO NEED to reset the account.
JBilling has its OWN tomcat.....
I had the system working last week, the only thing that was wrong was the domain name, it was pointing to the WRONG server.
See my post to the customer....
*******
Fairly specific right?
DO NOT INSTALL OR START TOMCAT, I put it in BIG letters so they would understand, -some call this shouting-, but after two weeks I think I am entitled to shout a little, especially as this is the sixth time I have made this point.
And they very thoughtful replied……
Hello,
The 'xxx' server is now the 'ppp' server so its not on the wrong server. So at this stage I suggest that we get the tomcat reinstalled for you in order to quickly resolve this issue.
You can also find the correct tomcat manager here:
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
May I go ahead and attempt the reinstall of tomcat for you?
Regards,
Well, thanks guys.
You actually changed the server WITHOUT informing me, so all the work I have been doing on “xxx’ has been completely wasted, because apparently it is NOT my server, so let’s not worry about it.
But please tell me, exactly WHAT do you not understand with the statement:
“DO NOT INSTALL TOMCAT OR START TOMCAT……………….“, do I have to start employing the use of a club to beat this information into your engineers?
I think we can say that if you are serious about business you should NEVER , I repeat NEVER use these people as a hosting company, yep maybe that have their stellar moments, but when it does go tits-up they do it with style.
Incompetent hosting companies (Arvixe?)
26
Mar
Yes: we will be having a post about hosting companies, complete with sales emails and ‘support’ logs.
We will show how some of these companies just waste your time and in particular request you to upgrade to packages that JUST DO NOT WORK
First up will be: arvixe
You can find avoid them at : http://www.arvixe.com
So….. here we go.
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Micro 3D printing, fastest in the world
14
Mar
There is an interesting article on 3D printing and micro resolution.
The guys over at ‘The Vienna University of Technology’ have been doing some stellar work.
Actually managing to build a replica of the ‘Tower bridge’ in London.
However, their model is only a few hundred µm, in fact the distance between the two towers is only 90 µm.
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Solution to APAD iMX51 Touch screen wobble/ jumping ?
26
Jan
We have seen many owners of the Freescale A8 pad computer systems with touch screens that ‘jump’ when users apply a finger/stylus to the touchscreen interface.
Currently we are seeing several thousand users with this problem, each with varying degrees of wobble, at the very worst the device is unusable.
Dental floss: The ultimate in S&M for cables….
(Cats no longer needed)
06
Feb
I’m always looking for new and interesting solutions to old problems, particularly when the problem has been solved previously and yet may require the innovative usage of materials (I have an issue with people stealing my post in China, so anything that is ordered usually gets ‘borrowed’, yep whoever you are can you return my degree paperwork it is no good to you.*)
Anyway checkout the following link for the task at hand: Dental floss
Initial fix for APAD iMX51 sound channel noise
11
Feb
There have been reports of sound distortion/pollution on the APAD sound channels.
Here is a visual representation of the noise:
APAD iMX515 Internal Bluetooth
28
Feb
It is bad enough being laughed at because you cannot afford an “Apple iPad”, but to have to walk about with 8″ of adaptor cable attached to your pad with a Bluetooth dongle hanging out the end of it is just unacceptable.
Utopia 10.1″ iMX515 pad
17
Apr
We have access to the new Utopia iMX515 pad computer currently called A10
Key features:
- No more screen wobble or jumping, (as per the revision one 8″ tablet)
- HDMI output (Built in)
- Screen side Camera (Built in)
- Fully Working Android Market.
We will of course be stripping this baby down and taking a look at any additional expansion possibilities.
Google/Android and the mystery of how they know where you are
24
Apr
This is something I have discussed previously on a number of BBS systems, seems some in the press are actually surprised about what is going on.
Daily mail discovers the truth ?!!!
70 million victims as the Sony band played on……
27
Apr
So what went wrong?
Computer networks get hacked every day, recently my own details were spread on the spam lists by the morons over at Marriott hotels.
One day after the hack at Marriott my email account started to fill with spam. Marriott claim my credit card details ,address and other personal information are safe, sorry Marriott I do not believe you.
I have one question to Marriott,Sony and the other fuck whits who think other peoples personal information is just data:
Why do you employ such complete morons to be in charge of your data networks?
Sure networks get hacked, but WTF (WHY ******), do you not keep the data on your networks encrypted?
Oracle has had encryption functionality built into its database for at least the last 5 years. Exactly what allowed these hackers to gain access to the data of 70,000,000 users, why was this information kept as unencrypted data?
People reading this news, may all think this has no bearing on them, but it does: since every Credit Card loss is a loss of each and every Credit Card holder, not to mention an increase in insurance and bank charges.
Sony should be royally shafted by both the people whose data was compromised and by the credit card companies.
But you know how this is going to turn out:
A few mid level Sony representatives will do a bit of bowing and shed a few crocodile tears, then they will go back to their happy lives.
HC
UPDATE
Here we go!!!!!!!
Sony No.2 Bows deeply
A really Small Atomic Clock
03
May
Symmetricom have released a development board for their new Atomic clock
I’d Like to do a review of the product and possibly write some cross platform software for the device, but unfortunately the price break is currently putting this baby at $1500 USD for a single piece.
Details of the device, as well as a couple of in-depth data sheets can be found at the following link: Symmetricom Atomic Clock
Sony does it again….. this time it is 25,000,000
03
May
Seriously Sony it is time to get your corporate act together.
If you cannot secure your networks, then employ people that can, failing this please arrange for the No1 person in Sony to give us all a bow and also the finger, because that is all the bowing by the No 2′s were worth.
A really small and cheap computer
06
May
A registered charity over in the UK is looking to get into the computing industry in a small way:
10.1″ Utopian wet Dream
06
May
Ok so we have the brand new Utopia G10 from Hiapad
We had actually started to take a look at the device, but we seem to have a couple of issues related to the USB & HDMI connections.
We also have photos of partial disassembly, that was until we dropped the digital camera.
Luckily, we have been able to recover a couple of the photos, unfortunately it is going to require a new photo session to get a clear breakdown of the full device.
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OpenRISC Asic
07
May
If you are interested in supporting a good cause for a public domain CPU design, then pop over to OpenCores and make a small donation (Say a Dollar)
It is for a good cause.
OSX Zero Day Exploit
08
May
Pure Hacking blogged recently about a potential Zero day exploit , where an attacker could target OSX Skype users.
The exploit is sent in the form of an attachment and if successful allows the attacker to gain shell access on the Machine.
More details available here Pure Hacking
10.1″ Utopia, USB & flexible cable issue
15
May
Well, It has taken some time to get the issues related to the USB port fixed, it seems it was a dual issue of broken USB socket AND a flakey inter board connector, if you remember back to the A8, this was also an issue.
See here for more details:
Why Apple’s OS X really annoys me
17
May
One of the most annoying things about OS X, is its continual insistence of leaving ‘rat droppings’ all over my drives.(Apple they are MINE not yours)
Yes, I’m talking about the ‘.DS_store’, ‘.Spotlight-V100′, ‘.Trashes’,’._.Trashes’, ‘.fseventsd’ and christ knows what other crap Apple insists in writing to my drives.
I am well aware the role such files play, but they also play havoc with development for embedded devices.
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Heads Up……… Macdefender
20
May
There is a new Trojan doing the round for OS X, currently going under the name of “MacDefender”, however that name is likely to change once people become more aware that the application is a trojan.
Just a tip, try to steer clear of ANY AV program for OS X that has not been on the market for at-least a year and for which you cannot find decent balanced reviews.
Yes it is true that most of the AV programs for mac suck stronger than a Dyson vacuum cleaner, but that is not an excuse to go mad and download a program just because it is ‘new’, let some other moron download and test it first.
Facebook Wembley Stadium Identification scam
22
May
There are rumours that Facebook is working on technology to identify individuals from their photographs.
Recently a photograph was taken at Wembley stadium, this photograph was so detailed and taken at such a high resolution that potentially it allows each and every person in the 80,000 crowd to be identified.
Identification scam
Please identify yourself
Apart from this already being a massive invasion of privacy, and in some cases against existing laws related to photographs of children(be clear that pedophiles will also have access to the picture), it has been kindly requested that if you can identify yourself, you should add a Facebook tag with your details or indeed the details of any other individuals you can identify.
Do you REALLY want Facebook to have a photograph of 80,000 people including yourself each with a clearly identifiable ‘tag’, just be clear that once you have done this you will be identifiable to Facebook, its agents, rival fans, criminals and any law enforcement agencies.
You are also going to be identifiable to the end of time, also you may well be giving up your right ‘NOT’ to be identified in any other images available on the internet.
Reject this invasion of privacy, unite and enter as many false details as you can to ensure the database is contaminated, so that it will be of little use to people trying to identify individuals, or as stated here:
You can “Tag yourself in the crowd and be part of history.” (In ways you could not hope to comprehend)
New forensic opportunities for cars
24
May
There was a recent announcement in the states that the government may be on the verge of requiring all cars to have black boxes fitted.
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How to avoid or remove Mac Defender malware
25
May
Apple,
Has finally woken up to the problems being caused by this malware, as a result Apple has released a technical support document, the document goes some way to explaining that you should not enter your credit card information!!, but it does also detail how a user may remove the malware, you can find the document here: removing Mac Defender
Look, Everybody with a mac
Do yourself a favour go over to the sophus website, and download their free antivirus program: Free OS X Antivirus.
Whilst it may not be the best AV on the market, it is going to be better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick
Meta-Data Hacking and location tracking with email.
27
May
So I was thinking about Email today, and how to track down those damned spammers.
They consider they are protected, because they sit behind an ‘hidden’ email account, usually one at Google or MSN.
At first it seems like it would not be possible to find out the TCP/IP address of someone you send an email to, especially as the email is a package that is delivered to a mail account and the mail account is read at random.
But consider If we set up a web server, that served uniquely encoded images.
We then send the ‘spammer’ a reply that contains HTML marked up text, and in the HTML we embed an image request, something like:
Now when their email client renders the email on THEIR computer, their computer will make a TCP/IP connection to our image server, once that is done their TCP/IP address will be logged and we can then start to build up a Geo-location map of where they are.
Potentially if we construct our server correctly, as soon as the image is requested we can then launch an exploit against the requesting computer.
This would seem to make rather an interesting ‘plug-in’ for metasploit.
Do NOT Buy Apple’s Lion OS X
07
Jun
So you may think this is a new pro windows rant.
It is not.
Jobs/Apple recently announced that:
“Lion will only be available to download online through the app store”
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Roll up… The great Facebook privacy abuse scandal
08
Jun
Just in today:
Facebook now scans the photos you upload to the FB service using facial recognition software, and just to ensure that profits are maintained the FB scanning system is enabled by default.
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How to have a high traffic, massive member Forum (A forum with lots of people)
14
Jun
Often you will see Forums for sale with tens of thousands of members plus a high through-put rating(something that says the forum have active postings).
How to some of these forums accomplish such high readership?
Simple: By not running anti-spammer software or plugins.
Currently this forum is under attack from such people, as can be seen below from my anti-spammer plugin.
Now interestingly to get this far, they have to enter a valid name & email address, plus they need to defeat a CAPTCHA and finally need to reply back to the email that is sent to them.
So either they have some fairly sophisticated software/scripting to perform this process or they are doing it manually in which case it is costing them money.
After all that hard-work, they ultimately end-up being caught in a massive honeypot sting.
So the moral of the story is, do not believe everything you read or see on the web and if something seems too good to be true, then usually it is.
DIY Magnetic Putty
14
Jun
So here is something interesting:
SillyPutty
Then this got me thinking
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Finally, someone gets a set of testicles
15
Jun
It has been announced that the UK government will be investigating Facebook.
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How to make friends
20
Jun
Just over a week ago I posted a blog about anti-spam measures.
I received a message from a nice guy over in the ‘RU’ domain name, a day after my post.
Basically the email just said:
“OK Bitch”
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Some people cannot take a joke
22
Jun
Seems my pet spammer is getting a bit upset.
After my latest post he upped the number of members trying to join for 5 to 50 a day.
Seriously even if it was 5,000 or 10,000 it still takes me less than 10 seconds to spam-trap and bin the members, plus he gets the added advantage of being completely and instantly black listed for every other user of the spam trap software.
Knock yourself out tiger……..
Ever taken pictures that are out of focus?
22
Jun
Then you need to check out ‘Lytro’ and Dr. Ren Ng’s material:
Rather than the camera just taking a picture of a scene that has been focused onto the back of a sensor, the camera equipment captures the details of the light in the area.
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Your Country needs YOU (highly unlikely)
29
Jun
Yep Good o’l Unkle(sic) Sam needs your help.
we need YOU!
Seems those wicked hackers in other countries may be ‘salting’ the chips supplied to the US.
So Sam is asking for all you chip hackers out there too pony up your fingerprints and contact details ( Bend over), so that you may discuss various methodology and ideas on the hacking and validation of physical chips.
Sounds like a marriage made in heaven.
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Dumbest attitude on the net
29
Jun
Dumb
This weeks winner goes to:
DahSing bank in Hong Kong:Dumbest bank
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Securing Hardware
09
Jul
An interesting article from the White house website.
Detailing attacks against hardware.
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RFID examination kit
10
Jul
There are a number of ongoing projects related to investigation of RFID cards.
One of the more interesting projects is the bootable RFID Hacking system.
http://www.openpcd.org/Live
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HSBC the world’s local bank most Incompetent bank
18
Jul
So why do I think HSBC is incompetent (or certainly the people in it)?
Today I received some sales promotion information from HSBC (as we know they have been having rather a lack luster year)
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LulzSec does a job on the Sun News (news international)
19
Jul
This morning the sun news paper front page was being re-directed to a twitter account for ‘LulzSec’.
All funny stuff, especially for a group that is supposed to be disbanded.
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Google at it again, please just STOP!!
20
Jul
Yes, our friends over at google are at it again
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Xilinx Bitstream encryption broken.
27
Jul
There is rather an interesting set of research papers available on Xilinx encryption.
So what is Bitstream encryption and why does it matter?
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Sweet deal over at Texas instruments
18
Aug
Texas instruments is running a discount on the following products:
eZ430-Chronos-433 – eZ430-Chronos Wireless Watch Development Tool
eZ430-Chronos-868 – eZ430-Chronos Wireless Watch Development Tool
eZ430-Chronos-915 – eZ430-Chronos Wireless Watch Development Tool
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Cry me a river
09
Nov
Seems the Yanks are all worked up:
Looking to blame China for the fact that American companies have been dumping E-waste in China and the Chinese had found a use for it……
By re-branding it and selling it back to American companies looking to buy components on the cheap.
http://defensetech.org/2011/11/08/counterfeit-parts-found-on-new-p-8-posiedons/#idc-cover
Now the question is :
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Web Store opening soon
02
Dec
Well, we have been busy looking at the Arduino, and since we have a few years industry experience in both Electronics and Quality assurance, we decided to open an electronics Shop.
We will be providing the Arduino range of products including a selection of the shields.
These will be pretested and with a guarantee ( not for user abuse, but we will be looking at a repair service for users that damaged their Arduino’s)
Initially we will be providing free registered shipping, payment via PAYPAL.
Setup functionality of WPA/WPA2 WiFi has potential to let in hackers
30
Dec
Yep…. despite all the posts on the net stating that WPA/WPA2 has been cracked (it has not), the research is still a massive shortcut to having to run ‘normal’ brute force attacks
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Arduino Mega direct reading off a Nand Flash memory chip
02
Jan
Since I had little to do over New years day, I threw together some Arduino code that would allow reading of Nand-Flash chips. This includes the memory contents and both the ID and ‘secret’ ID where supported.
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Arduino Mega: TinyWebServer update
11
Jan
We spent a couple of days cleaning up the TinyWebServer library by ovidiucp.
It now functions correctly under the Arduino 1.0 IDE
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Arduino Mega: TinyWebServer final
29
Jan
All major bug fixes have now been implemented in the main library.
This includes:
Memory leaks/memory corruption in low memory conditions
Corruption of uploaded files, when host was high speed
Incorrect file upload timeout watchdog.
Tips for using GitHub
25
Feb
GitHub is great for finding code and then forking it, however one issue is that there are a significant number of idiots forking projects and then making insignificant formatting changes, maybe they want to see their name up on the web or even claim that they are part of the project (great for job interviews)
So when forking a project you need to ensure you have the actual base project and not some numpties re-fork of a re-fork.
Here is a classic example taken of a FULL Git patch:
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
6# Datatypes (KEYWORD1)
7#######################################
8
9-DHT22 KEYWORD1
9+DHT22 KEYWORD1
10
11 #######################################
12 # Methods and Functions (KEYWORD2)
Well done Google ‘hot Tw*t’ == Hot, Thailand
08
Mar
Finally a Google tracking function that is functional as well as amusing.
Sick of google automatically setting my location and thinking that I am somehow interested in local news.
I decided to reset the Google location on the Google “news” page.
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