WoW?

So recently I’ve been playing alot of WoW. For those of you who don’t know what it means it stands for World of Warcraft. It’s a pretty decent game I’ve found. I of course don’t pay for it. If you want to learn how to play for free check the site back in a few days or a few minutes I don’t know which, and I’ll explain how to play for free. And yes, it’s legal. I have really found that Warlocks are the most fun to play with, but if you want to be more physical definitely go with a Warrior. You can go with any really. The game isn’t really based on skill so much as it is knowledge. It doesn’t take alot to be good at it, you just have to understand the basics of the game. Hence, people become advanced after a day or two.

Which Search Engine?

Do you want….

to browse a subject area?
USE Yahoo, Lookmart or the Open Directory

to search Newsgroups?
USE Yahoo, Google Newsgroups, AltaVista, HotBot

to include older gopher files in your search?
USE Webcrawler or Altavista

to search as much as the Web as possible?
USE Google or AlltheWeb.com

to search every word on a site or in a document?
USE AltaVista, or HotBot

to locate an obscure or hard-to-find document?
USE AltaVista,

to locate a fairly popular site or easy-to-find document?
USE Webcrawler or Yahoo

to retrieve a large number of results?
USE AltaVista or a metasearch engine such
as Savvy Search or Metacrawler

to retrieve few but relevant results?
USE Webcrawler

to search only titles, urls or keywords?
USE Webcrawler, Yahoo OR Alta Vista

to specify in what part of a site your search terms will occur
(including titles, urls and summaries)?
USE AltaVista (adv) or InfoSeek

to search reviewed and evaluated sites?
USE Looksmart’s select directory)

If you are just looking for a large number of hits that aren’t always specific use Google.

iGoogle

iGoogle (formerly Google Personalized Homepage and Google IG), a service of Google, is a customizable AJAX-based startpage much like Netvibes, Pageflakes, My Yahoo! and Windows Live Personalized Experience. It was originally launched in May 2005. Its features include the capability to add web feeds and Google Gadgets (similar to those available on Google Desktop).

It was renamed and expanded on April 30, 2007 and is currently available in many localized versions of Google (42 languages, over 70 country domain names, as of October 17, 2007).

As of April 18, 2008, Google has adopted the iGoogle page as its general user start page.

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So, I really have to reccomend this to people. iGoogle is absolutely amazing and so freaking easy to use! If you don’t believe me just try it yourself. You likely won’t regret it. I’ve found it to be useful to me with it’s many gadgets.

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iGoogle supports the use of specially developed “gadgets” to display content on a user’s page. The gadgets interact with the user and utilize the Google Gadgets API. Some gadgets developed for Google Desktop can also be used within iGoogle. The Google Gadgets API is public and allows anyone to develop a gadget for any need. ^[5]

Google also allows all users to create a special gadget that does not require the use of the Gadgets API. The gadgets are designed to be shared with friends and family. The special gadgets must be created using an online wizard and must be of one of the following types:

• “Framed Photo” – displays a series of photos,
• “GoogleGram” – creation of special daily messages,
• “Daily Me” – displays user’s current mood and feelings,
• “Free Form” – allows the user to input text and an image of their choice,
• “YouTube Channel” – displays videos from a YouTube channel,
• “Personal List” – allows the user to create a list of items,
• “Countdown” – countdown timer

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I’ve never really gotten into making gadgets mainly because I am always busy with websites for clients.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGoogle

I know there has been an other article about Brainfuck but I thought I could do better at some points so I decided to write my own.

Now to begin with, I saw comments on the other Brainfuck article which were like:
“wtf man? seriously. what can you do with this? why would you want to do something with this?”
“what the fuck is this”
“Brainfuck….HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA learn asm,C++/C,html, and even visual fucking basic compared to this bull shit. you noobs make me laugh”

I hope you can get an answer to these “questions” in this article.

Now what is Brainfuck?
Brainfuck is the most simplistic programming language there is. It uses only 8 operators and it’s meant as a challenge, and to amuse programmers. Its really the smallest language there is. There are compilers out there which are smaller than 200 bytes! And the language uses only 8 operators and everything you can do in any other language, is possible with these operators too. You just have to be creative to figure out how to. Now you don’t have to tell me this language isn’t practical because I know it isn’t. But it’s alot of fun to program in brainfuck and it stimulates creativity and logic thought. And it also helps me kill time in boring classes

Brainfuck uses a list of bytes, which all start at 0, and a bytepointer, which, as the name says, points to a byte. The operators are: ><+-[].,

> moves the bytepointer one byte to the right.
< moves the bytepointer one byte to the left.

+ increases the byte where the bytepointer is currently pointing to with 1.
- decreases the byte where the bytepointer is currently pointing to with 1.

[ if the byte which the bytepointer is currently pointing to equals 0, jump to the corresponding ].
] if the byte which the bytepointer is currently pointing to does not equal 0, jump back to the corresponding [.

. output of the value of the byte which the bytepointer is currently pointing to.
, get input from user, and store its value in the byte which the bytepointer is currently pointing to.

Output is usually the character with the ascii value of the byte, but it could be anything, like for example, the color for a pixel.
Input is usually the ascii value of the key which is used for input (eg A would write 65 in the byte and 0 would write 48 in the byte).

Yes, that's all there really is to it.

Some simple code would be:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.+.+.

Let's analyze it:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Will first put the byte's value at 49 (the ascii value of 1).
Then . will output this, so it would output 1.
Then +. will increase it, and output the new value, which will then be 2.
Then another +. will increase it, and output the new value again. which will then be 3.

So the output will be: 123.

Now we can do a nifty trick here to make the code much, much shorter:
++++++++[->++++++<]>+.+.+.

What did we do? As you can see the end is still the same. but alot of the +s are gone.

We replaced ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (thats 48 of them)
with ++++++++[->++++++<]>

So first, the byte is put at 8 (the ++++++++ does that).
then, it checks if the byte is nonzero, yes it is. so we will decrease the byte and it will be left at 7.
then we go one byte to the right, and increase it with 6.
then we go one byte to the left (that’s the one wich was at value 7) and it checks if its nonzero. Yes it is, so we repeat what’s in between the [].

What this does, is add 6 to the second byte, 8 times. so it will then, in the end, be 48.
Then after that, the > moves the bytepointer to the byte which is at 48, and it then repeats the lasts steps from the first example.
So again, the output will be 123.

That’s just one of lots of little tricks you can make up with these operators, like [-] will clear a byte, and [<] will find the first empty byte at the left of the bytepointer. I’m sure you can think of many more tricks like this.

Now a simple little script might look like this:
,>,<[->+<]++++++[->--------<]>.
I think this was the first script I wrote myself.

It’s a simple script which asks for 2 numbers, and then outputs the sum of the numbers. The sum can’t be larger than 9 or it won’t give the right outcome.

The simplicity of the languages also allows for fun ascii art scripts. Like you could hide your script in a steganographic way in an ascii art picture I unfortunately couldn’t put an example of this in here because html and this font don’t like ascii art. -_-

Well that’s all the basics, and some more advanced aspects, of Brainfuck. I hope you guys liked it, and finally got a better view on Brainfuck and what you can do with it.

Here’s the interpreter I use: http://dracuul.tripod.com/brainfck/brainfck01.zip
I haven’t tested alot of them but I like this one but there are many more, and probably some better than this.

Source: http://www.hellboundhackers.org/articles/653-brainfuck.html

Linux vs. Windows

With so many Microsoft Windows related viruses, errors, and other software problems, many average computer users are looking at alternative operating system platforms, such as Linux. It is important that users, frustrated with Windows, don’t simply install a version of Llinux without knowing what they are in for. There are many important differences between Windows and Linux that anyone considering a change should be fully aware of. Herein we discuss some of the similarities and differences between Windows and Linux so you can get a better idea as to which operating system is really best for you.

The major difference between Linux and Windows is the open-source nature of Linux and closed-source nature of Windows. Linux, as an open-source OS, can be modified by the user as he/ she sees fit. Open source really means that anyone can modify the underlying code, and that no one completely owns it. Microsoft Windows, on the other hand, is not an operating system you can modify easily – it was designed to work a particular way with a certain user interface as designated by Microsoft software engineers.

The consequences of Linux being an open-source OS are many. Because you can modify the code, and because there are many user interfaces out there (GUIs), there are usually compatibility issues with various software applications. Some software may be designed to work with multiple Linux GUIs, while others many only be able to work with a few, or just one. Also, the open-source operating system demands that the user know how to work with and modify the program – a task that is usually very difficult for the average computer user familiar with Windows. Even the installation of Linux can be a chore if you are not familiar with Linux terminology.

What I am getting at here is that Linux is great for those who are willing to take the time to learn the program, pick out and install a GUI they like (this may take a while!), and prefer choice over simple usability. Windows is easy to learn, easy to run, and does not demand a lot from its users. This OS is appropriate for a majority of the general public who simply want something that runs right out of the box with little configuration. People also want universal compatibility, and don’t want to have to deal with constantly modifying their OS. Price wise, Linux is super cheap compared with Windows. For advanced users who have the desire to modify their OS, Linux is the by far the best choice. If you don’t have the time or knowledge, however, stay with Microsoft Windows for the time being, and be sure to download all updates and security patches as often as possible!

Bradley James is a senior editor at SciNet.cc, a website containing many helpful consumer electronics review articles. For more information on Windows and Linux OS, please visit our Linux vs Windows webpage.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bradley_James

Blowfish Encryption – Introduction

Blowfish is a symmetric block cipher that can be used as a drop-in replacement for DES or IDEA. It takes a variable-length key, from 32 bits to 448 bits, making it ideal for both domestic and exportable use. Blowfish was designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier as a fast, free alternative to existing encryption algorithms. Since then it has been analyzed considerably, and it is slowly gaining acceptance as a strong encryption algorithm. Blowfish is unpatented and license-free, and is available free for all uses.

The original Blowfish paper was presented at the First Fast Software Encryption workshop in Cambridge, UK (proceedings published by Springer-Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science #809, 1994) and the April 1994 issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal. “Blowfish–One Year Later” appeared in the September 1995 issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal.

Many cryptographers have examined Blowfish, although there are few published results. Serge Vaudenay examined weak keys in Blowfish; there is a class of keys that can be detected–although not broken–in Blowfish variants of 14 rounds or less. Vincent Rijmen‘s Ph.D. thesis includes a second-order differential attack on 4-round Blowfish that cannot be extended to more rounds.

Everyone is welcome to download Blowfish and use it in their application. There are no rules about use, although I would appreciate being notified of any commercial applications using the product so that I can list them on this website. <!– Other sites that have free Blowfish source code available for download include ftp.ox.ac.uk (UK), www.task.gda.pl (Poland), and cryptography.org (US and Canada residents only). –> <!–Markus Hahn has written two very fast implementations of Blowfish, for C# and Java; see his software page. The Java implementation runs at 2.6 MB/s on a Pentium 200 under NT4. Another Java implementation of Blowfish is available as part of Cryptix. There are Visual Basic Versions by David Ireland and David Midkiff. –>

Leevi Martilla has demonstrated a C-to-English translator by creating an English version of Blowfish.

David Honig has written a paper about implementing Blowfish in hardware.

For Blowfish implementors, here are the hexadecimal digits of pi, arranged as four s_boxes and one p_array, as per the Blowfish default. Those who want to experiment with longer-round variants of Blowfish can find 65535 hex digits of pi here.

Here are new test vectors so that you can test your own implementation of Blowfish. Here are the test vectors rewritten in a format more friendly to C programmers.

Taken from: http://www.answers.com/topic/blowfish

md5 to Blowfish

By default, Debian & Ubuntu use MD5 to hash your passwords. While this is relatively secure, using Blowfish instead is (much?) better.

As I’m not a cryptographer, I have no idea how much better it is. But switching is incredibly easy, and there are no downsides, AFAIK. Follow along…

First, you need to install libpam-unix2, the pam module which uses Blowfish. This is only an apt-get away…

Next, replace ‘pam_unix.so’ by ‘pam_unix2.so’ in /etc/pam.d/common-auth, /etc/pam.d/common-account, /etc/pam.d/common-session & /etc/pam.d/common-password.

In /etc/pam.d/common-password, you also need to change ‘md5′ to ‘blowfish’.

And while you’re at it, change ‘max=8′ (still in /etc/pam.d/common-password) to something higher, like ‘max=20′. It is my understanding that this limits the max size of your password. While you can still use a password longer than 8 chars, it’ll just ignore everything after the 8th char.

Those are all the changes you need to make your system start using Blowfish. You will need to create Blowfish hashes though (obviously), so the changes only apply to newly created accounts or when you change (or re-set) your password (using ‘passwd’).

I have only basic knowledge of pam, so some of these modifications may be redundant. Or there might be an even easier way to change it – I don’t know, but these changes will most certainly make it work.

Firefox 3

Install Ubuntu 8.04

Welcome

Welcome to the site! I am your host Mr. Dudle! You can find me on a variety of websites, including myspace, and IRC. I guess I’ll let you get on to viewing the website.