[Geeks Are Sexy] Technology News

Spammers moving from email to the cellphone

By Mark O’Neill

This article in the New York Times really struck a raw nerve with me because it is a touchy subject in my life at the moment.     The article is about spammers who are moving their harassment from emails to the cellphone (or mobile phone if you are in Europe).    Never a day goes [...]

From Spam to Scams: 30 Years of Online Annoyances

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Break out the bubbly: Spam is celebrating its 30th anniversary this weekend. And my oh my, three decades later, how the annoyances of the internet have changed.
Where it all started

The message considered the first unsolicited mass e-mail went out to unsuspecting inboxes on May 3, 1978. A marketing employee [...]

Build a Whole New Identity to Protect Yourself Online

By Mark O’Neill

No, the title of this article is not the way it sounds.   I’m not advocating anything illegal.   I’m not offering any fake passports or dodgy driving licenses.   But instead, when you’re filling in another one of those endless web forms asking for your contact information, instead of giving them your actual details, how [...]

The Wikipedia Thought Police

By Mark O’Neill

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

I have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia. Over the years, I have quoted from it relentlessly in my articles and I have used it for research and reference purposes. I have even opened several user accounts and attempted to correct factual errors wherever I have found them (provided I have the correct knowledge to hand - nothing is worse than someone who changes a wrong fact with another wrong fact).

But something is fundamentally and fatally flawed with Wikipedia and it is something which has finally made me give up trying to edit Wikipedia articles. It is something which is making George Orwell’s 1984 predictions all come true. It is something that in true Orwellian style, the National Post calls the “Thought Police”.

Half Million Microsoft Servers Hacked

By PatB
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Gamers in China, desperate to get their powerups by cheating, are seeding Microsoft IIS servers with exploit code that will steal game logins. So far the mass attack has hit over 500k webservers.
Brian Krebs has the details, including some of the high-profile webservers affected at his blog on the Washington Post [...]

RapidShare CAPTCHA will drive you crazy

If you ever need to download a file from RapidShare be warned: You may have to spend several hours trying to decrypt their CAPTCHA pictures in order to download a file.

Each displayed letter contains the picture of a cat or dog. To proceed with a download, you’ll have to type in only the letters that [...]

High-Tech Navigation in the Palm of Your Hand

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Surfing the web may soon be as simple as waving your hand in front of your screen.
A British design agency called Clusta has just unveiled a new webcam-controlled site that lets you navigate with hand gestures.  The site uses a webcam to “see” your movements and translate them into points and [...]

HOW TO: Fix the Web With Greasemonkey

Here’s a great 3 minute video tutorial on how Greasemonkey, a Firefox extension what lets you run user scripts on almost any html page you want, can help you fix sites that really annoy you, such as myspace.

Watch out! The Germans are cloning the internet!

By Mark O’Neill
In the words of the immortal Yoda, “Begun the Clone Wars Have” - and the Germans seem to be behind it. Because for every site that pops up online, the Germans produce a clone of it. Friendfeed is the latest victim with FreundeFeed about to blossom into the world. [...]

Going online with that wi-fi comrade?

By Mark O’Neill
Russia is a country that I love but it is also a country that fills me with despair. While it is rich with history, culture and wonderful people, it also can’t decide whether it wants to be free or whether it likes to be stamped on by a dictator’s foot.
It [...]