Category Archives: computers

Explaining the Excel Bug

Posted on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 by Beanbag

Joel on Software examines the recent Excel 2007 bug. By now you’ve probably seen a lot of the brouhaha over a bug in the newest version of Excel, 2007. Basically, multiplying 77.1*850, which should give you 65,535, was actually displaying … Continue reading →

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How to install and boot 145 operating systems in a PC

Posted on Friday, September 14, 2007 by Beanbag

You can now rest easy, knowing that, indeed, you can install 145 operating systems on one PC. An operating system needs to reside in a home. That is a partition to me. I used 2x300Gb Pata disk and 2×200 Sata … Continue reading →

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Rainbow Hash Cracking

Posted on Monday, September 10, 2007 by Beanbag

Coding Horror has written an informative article on Rainbow Tables, and why Windows servers can be particularly vulnerable. The multi-platform password cracker Ophcrack is incredibly fast. How fast? It can crack the password “Fgpyyih804423″ in 160 seconds. Most people would … Continue reading →

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The software awards scam

Posted on Friday, August 17, 2007 by Beanbag

This site did a little investigation into those software awards that are given out by download sites. The obvious explanation is that some download sites give an award to every piece of software submitted to them. In return they hope … Continue reading →

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HOWTO – kill terminal services sessions remotely

Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2007 by Beanbag

This is a useful tip on those rare occasions when you absolutely need to get into a remote server and all of the connections are tied up. While I’m sure we all agree that this is an awesome feature, sometimes … Continue reading →

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Downloads: Secure Login (Firefox Extension)

Posted on Monday, July 30, 2007 by Beanbag

This Firefox extension makes the saved passwords feature of Firefox safer by forcing you to click on the Secure Login button in order to fill in your login name and password on forms. This helps prevent cross-site scripting attacks on … Continue reading →

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Binary marble adding machine

Posted on Friday, June 22, 2007 by Beanbag

Matthias Wandel built this clever adder that uses marbles. It is quite pleasant to watch it in action…check out the video. It had occurred to me that perhaps with an insane amount of perseverance, it might be possible to build … Continue reading →

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Book: Where Wizards Stay Up Late

Posted on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 by Beanbag

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon Touchstone, 1998 In Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Hafner and Lyon take us all the way back to the earliest days of computer networking. … Continue reading →

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Book: The Computer: An Illustrated History

Posted on Wednesday, June 6, 2007 by Beanbag

The Computer: An Illustrated History Mark Frauenfelder Carlton Books, 2005 This is computer pr0n at its finest. This large, beautiful coffee-table book chronicles the evolution of the computer through hundreds of photographs. Following the earliest counting devices, hulking mainframes, personal … Continue reading →

Posted in books, computers, culture, history, technology | 1 Comment

Downloads: Qtpfsgui (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X)

Posted on Saturday, June 2, 2007 by Beanbag

If you are interested in HDR imaging, give this open source tool a try. It helps you create and tone map HDR images from bracketed exposures of a scene. Link There is also a Qtpfsgui Flickr group where you can … Continue reading →

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LCDs vulnerable to Van Eck Phreaking

Posted on Friday, April 20, 2007 by Beanbag

Just like CRTs, someone can eavesdrop on the electromagnetic emissions from your LCD display. Back in 1985, Wim Van Eck proved it was possible to tune into the radio emissions produced by electromagentic coils in a CRT display and then … Continue reading →

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Downloads: Thunderbird 2

Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2007 by Beanbag

Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 was released with an improved UI and some new features like Saved Searches and Vista support: Link Release notes

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Downloads: Roadkil’s Unstoppable Copier (Windows, Linux)

Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007 by Beanbag

Use this useful utility to recover files from damaged disks. Recovers files from disks with physical damage. Allows you to copy files from disks with problems such as bad sectors, scratches or that just give errors when reading data. The … Continue reading →

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Firefox Inside Firefox

Posted on Friday, April 13, 2007 by Beanbag

Run another instance of Firefox inside a tab with this trick. … With all these favorites inside Firefox, How about Opening Firefox inside Firefox? Not bad huh? and its really easy too just type in this url in a new … Continue reading →

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Freewaregenius

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 by Beanbag

This is an invaluable site that reviews numerous freeware apps. My mission: To replace as many retail/shareware software as I can with first rate FREEWARE alternatives, such that one day every installed program that I use will be FREE. But … Continue reading →

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Viktor’s Amazing 4-bit Processor

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 by Beanbag

This is an impressive feat: designing and building your own processor. I’ve been a software guy all my life. However, I was always fascinated by electronics, and part of my success as a programmer was due to my thorough understanding … Continue reading →

Posted in computers, diy, technology | 1 Comment

Downloads: TrueCrypt 4.3 (Windows, Linux)

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 by Beanbag

The latest update to the TrueCrypt encryption utility is now available. We are pleased to announce that TrueCrypt 4.3 has been released. Among the new features is full compatibility with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista, support for devices and file … Continue reading →

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The Lockdown

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 by Beanbag

Engadget has a fascinating series of articles on lock security and lock picking. The most popular locking mechanism in the world utilizes the pin tumbler design, first developed 4000 years ago in Egypt and then rediscovered and perfected a century … Continue reading →

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Meet cGrid, the real-time P2P punisher

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 by Beanbag

A new tool has been announced in the piracy arms race. This tool can be deployed by network administrators to monitor network traffic in order to identify people using P2P services, and can automatically boot them off the network. The … Continue reading →

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Use TaskList to identify spyware

Posted on Monday, March 5, 2007 by Beanbag

TaskList.org can tell you whether or not a process in your Windows task list is spyware. Link (via Lifehacker)

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