Please spread the word and this video. CEOP should be known by everyone.

As Microsoft tells us all how it designed a new search with a list of new great ideas people have been noticing that it isn’t as new as Microsoft clam.

The travel site Kayak was teh true creator of the design and live updating by options on the left side. So the question is Why is Microsoft claming this is there work.

If Microsoft beleave it is OK to copy other peoples work then i hope they remember this next time people copy Windows Vista or Windows 7.

I for one will not be using Bing and i advice everyone else stays with Google.

Give some credit to the people that really created the idea behind bing.

http://douglassims.org/bing-kayak/

I have now decided to shut down my IRC chat server that was linked to the amcool.net network.

This has been something i have been thinking about for awhile now. I decided it was the right time as most of the network staff have disapeared from the network and the domain has been allowed to expire by the user that was in control of it.

Seems like there is little point having the server up if no one can connect to it.
Image By Fun3MD

Welcome to the 4th Heart of Three Cities publication featuring arts and cultural
events in the borough of Charnwood at the heart of the East Midlands. The theme
for this year is ‘Charnwood – A Land of Legends’ – myths, personalities, history,
invention, sporting achievements – Charnwood has hosted and sired many
remarkable people and stories. In this year’s publication we hope to share just a
few of them. We so often underestimate the world changing influence this place
has had in so many fields and walks of life. We hope there are a few surprises and
that we have contributed something to the knowledge of where you live!
As always the publication is an eclectic mix of Charnwood Arts’ own projects and
events, partnership projects and promotions of venues and other organisations
in the borough. There are also a number of competitions for you to engage with,
exhibitions and a wide range of workshops for children and young people.

Find out more at Charnwood Arts or download the Heart of 3 Cities Brochure

Though i would share this story.

Back in Jan 09 i lost a memory stick. I though nothing of it as it had no private data on and was all backed up.
Now almost 5 months later i have found the USB stick. It was stick in the door seal in the washing machine. It must of been though 100 washes with hot and cold water and washing powder. It was full of water and starting to go rusty on the contacts when i found it.  Can’t be good.
Anyway i just plugged in into the the pc. Not only did it reconise what it was to my amazment the drive showed up in my computer. I opened the drive and all the data was still there. i have now copied it all off the stick to my computer.

While this make me think that USB sticks are safe to use out and about without them breaking it also makes me wonder how long it would last in say the street or a field. would someone be able to get your data off if they found it after years in a river?

Lession here is Encrypt.

AJ-Services sites are now Green and a friend to the planet. All our services and sites are hosted in a data center that uses 100% green power.

Thanks to the following big sites the planet is not suffering.

aj-services.com
vowsclan.net
3para-hq.co.uk
lifeskillsproject.co.uk
trythisnow.info
munstuff.com
exquisitedecorandevents.trythisnow.info
Lightning-bolt.net
desrat.co.uk
energize-leics.co.uk
lilliecup.co.uk
wolfs-hideout.co.uk
humanrightsandequalitiescharnwood.org
ewiishop.co.uk
roseberystpeterscc.co.uk
firstandonlykidderminster.co.uk
olsen-twins.org

Vows and 3Para Teamspeak
Swat Downloader

Thanks to everyone for keeping it green.

What is Stream Ripping and Is It Legal.

Ripping Shoutcast is much like recording a radio station with the added advantage of using hte Meta data about the songs that shoutcast transmits with the music. When you rip a station you get files split by the name of the song/title that is sent with the shoutcast stream.
Now is it legal. This is not a simple yes or no. If you own or have permission from the copyright owner then yes its legal to do. If you however do not then you are illegally copying music.

Then you connect a streamripper to a shoutcast station the server will not know you are a ripper they will thing you are a listener. thats why this works so well. The server simply sends you all the music as if you were just listening.

Now own the the how…

1) download and install streamripper (there is a windows and linux version)
- Linux users its easy apt-get install streamripper or yum install streamripper.
- Windows users can downlaod and install it from SourceForge

2) when you install it make sure you know where it is installing to. you will need to know this later. You might want to install it somewhere easy like c:\streamripper. (i let it install to the default location)

3) once installed open the Command Prompt and enter the command to start ripping. There are many options you can change but the default settings will allow you to rip right away.

4) change the the directory and give the command streamripper http://linkofshoutcastradio.com (changing the link to the address you want to rip from. Your files will then be added to a folder in the current directory or on your desktop.

Streamipper also has a winamp plugin to rip the current station your listening to.

As we have new members of staff and as yesterday was the trigger date for the biggest viruses ever found i felt it wise  to send round the following warning.

Remember never to give out your user name and password to anyone over email or the internet. if you get a email asking you to do so it will be fake. This is a hacking attempt known as phishing and is trying to get you to give away your password.

This can take many forms from an email asking you to email your details to an email with a link to a website.
If you are ever unsure about an email ignore it. If its from a bank or service you use like a bank or website Never click on the link in the email as it might not be the site you think it may just look like it.
Always open your internet browser and type the website address in by hand. This way you know your giving your password to the real site and not one setup by spammers.

Computer experts watched warily today as a virus infecting millions of PCs activated itself as predicted on April 1.

But fears of internet chaos have proved unfounded – so far – as machines infected with the “Conficker” worm tried to establish a link to command servers as expected from midnight to no ill effect.

With April Fool’s Day already nearly over in the Far East, where the majority of infected computers are located, internet security experts reported that no new instructions have been detected from the virus’s creators.

Fear of what the virus might do next has spread round the world as April 1 approached – the date when Conficker was scheduled to use local time clocks to change programming. No one knows who created the virus or what they intend to do with the vast network of infected machines they, in theory, now control.

So now we wait. there are 3 possable thigns that can happen. The virus will stay idle and never harm anyone, The virus will become active, or the virus was an April fools joke Maybe released by some anti virus companies to make people buy more AV programs.

The global internet state look to be stable right now so no big events have hit any major part of the internet. But keep your eyes out.

Mcafee has a standalone tool for scanning and removing this virus. As the virus blocks security sites i have also mirrored it on this site.

You can Download it from the following

Mcafee

This Site (Mirror)

Corporation may have broken the law, say experts

A team of journalists and security experts from the BBC have purchased a botnet containing more than 22,000 infected PCs.

The network was constructed as part of an investigation into cyber crime by the television programme Click. The BBC said that it obtained access to the infected systems by purchasing information from cyber criminals in chat rooms.

After assembling the botnet, the researchers tested it by ordering the infected machines to spam a pair of test email accounts. A denial-of-service attack was also performed on a test website.

The BBC said that the botnet has since been disabled and the infected users have all been notified and provided with security tips to prevent further infection.

The rise of botnets has been well documented and observed by security experts in recent years.

Huge examples such as Storm controlled hundreds of thousands of infected machines at their peak, and were leased to other cycber criminals for spam runs and online attacks.

While the BBC’s botnet was modest in comparison, experts say that the experiment was still dangerous and possibly illegal.

“This is clearly an unauthorised modification of computer data and is, to my mind, a breach of the Computer Misuse Act,” wrote Sophos senior security consultant Graham Cluley in a blog post.

“The law says you cannot mess around with other people’s computers without authorisation. The BBC did not have the permission of the computer users to send those spam mesages.

“Sending spam from someone else’s computer obviously gobbles up bandwidth an d will use up system resources. Even if the BBC felt the impact would be minimal, it does not make it right.”

The BBC plans to reveal details of the experiment in the 14 March episode of Click.