Scientists from Duke University and RIPE managed to break 1% of the Internet by sending experimental data over the internet. The experiment used a new version of BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) that Internet Providers use to connect their networks to others around the world.

BGP is a big table that tells the routers how to get to a location and how many hops (each provider that is big enough to use BGP has a unique number called their Autonomous System or AS number) it will take to get there together with the cost to do so. A connection with the fewest connections (known as hops) works well for the protocol OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) but tends to be expensive, whereas it may be cheaper to do more hops.

By using some experimental extensions on the Internet, the routers couldn't cope with the new data. 3,500 of these hops over 60 countries ceased passing data.

The story can be found here

Apparently, the plastic parts of a laptop are called the A plate through to D plate.

The A plate is the top of the laptop, available in a variety of colours (for instance the Apple Macbook is white and silver for Air) 

The B plate is what you see when you open the laptop, the B plate hides the wiring that goes on to make the wireless work as well as power and drive the screen.

The C plate is the top plate of the inside of the laptop, housing the track pad and sometimes a fingerprint reader as well as hiding the keyboard fixings.

The D plate is the bottom of the laptop.

So those are their names in case you needed to know.

TekZilla mentioned this in one of their videos. Basically Spyware Terminator is a free anti spyware program that can use the free antivirus Clam. Unlike most spyware programs, this one is free to both domestic and business users.

Their website is: www.spywareterminator.com

A few years ago, manufacturers supplied a copy of Windows with every computer you bought along with a driver CD for all the drivers required to reinstall a system.

Manufacturers realised that they could cheat the consumer by providing a recovery CD instead of a full copy of Windows. This usually meant that the consumer lost their personal data whenever they recovered their computer.

Manufacturers then realised they could use a recovery partition on the computer to recover the computer, thus doing away with the recovery CD. If the hard drive died, the consumer lost everything.

Recovery partitions often used up half the hard drive because the manufacturers became sloppy.

Newer computers have recovery media the consumer has to burn to their own CD or DVD, which puts the onus on the consumer to make the recovery media themselves. However, very few perform this essential task, and so when it comes to repair, the cost of reinstall is far greater.

Manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon and have started to "sell" the consumer the recovery media that should have come with the computer, so not only do you have to buy new hardware, you have to buy additional recovery media in order to fix it.

PC Pro's link is here

Another reason to use a different browser (such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) is that Microsoft's Ad team overrode developers so they developed the browser in a way that users must deliberately turn on privacy settings every time they use the browser.

If you turn on InPrivate filtering and close your browser, next time you start your browser, you will find InPrivate filtering turned off!

In Firefox, if you start Private Browsing, it will stay on until you stop Private Browsing. In other words, your browser doesn't store cookies or browser history.

You can use software like IEPrivacyKeeper to remove cookies and browser history on close will remove the cookies but can't prevent the cookies within your browsing session.

Starcraft 2 has a problem where it forces your graphics card to work harder and therefore get hotter.

When your graphics card gets hot and dust has built up on the card, its fan and heatsink can't cope with the heat and either crashes or shuts down the card.

Blizzard have issued a fix for Starcraft 2 so it won't shut down so quickly.

However it is suggested that you clear out your computer with an air duster. Unplug the computer, take your computer outside, open the case and blast the dust and dirt out of it. You may be surprised at the amount of dirt and dust that will be blown out of it. Your computer will respect you for it.

Contrary to popular belief, Sky does not offer a Satellite Internet service. Sky offers Satellite TV with broadband being delivered over an existing BT telephone line.

Satellite Broadband is provided for places where there are no telephone lines or where the exchange doesn't offer the facilities for broadband. Countries such as Africa benefit from this technology.

Satellite Broadband is relatively slow in comparison to telephone delivered broadband (ADSL) or 3G mobile broadband and the hardware is usually prohibitively expensive. A dish will cost between 3-4,000 and monthly contracts start from around £50 per month.

The technology is pretty simple, you send a small upload to the satellite and then be prepared for a large download. The technology is practically useless for anything that requires real time communication, such as VoIP since it takes some time to send the signal up and down instead of over the wire.

I've recently acquired a couple of low end Apple Macs, they are effectively obsolete now, and are comparable to running Windows 2000 or XP on a PC. The Mac world tends to move on a lot quicker than the PC world.

Consequently, some of these machines run Mac OS 9, which is no real problem since I started supporting Macs running 7.5 and the only big change came with 7.5.3 which was a software update that changed things in a big way. Mac OS 9 has the distinct advantage that its extremely compact and runs happily on 32MB of memory.

Apple decided to drop support for Mac OS 9 back in 2002, instead embracing their newer OS X. 

The family names are:

10.0 Cheetah - Originally shipped with the iMac all-in-one CDs

10.1 Puma - The free upgrade for 10.0 and the first time OSX was installed on new machines. Introduced medium compression disk images .dmg, prior to this the disk images had no compression so you had a floppy disk image the same size as the floppy disk.

10.2 Jaguar - The last version that worked with beige G3 macs

10.3 Panther - The last version to support New World ROM macs such as the imacs and ibooks, the last version to be supplied on CD

10.4 Tiger - The last version to support "classic" OS9 applications, Intel Macs don't do Classic. Supplied on DVD and the last to support G3 and slower G4 macs. The format of the disk image .dmg changed in this version to support high instead of medium compression so the format is unsupported in older versions. Also the first version to bring the dashboard, which is a set of applications like the sidebar in Vista but only appear on the click of the scroll button.

10.5 Leopard - The last version to support the G series macs. Apple moved to Intel processors. Supported both 32 bit and 64 bit operating system.

10.6 Snow Leopard - 64 bit operating system, runs on PC hardware.

When Intel announced PCI (Peripheral Connect Interface - 32bit) as a replacement for ISA/EISA (Industry Standard Archictecture - 8bit/ Extended ISA - 16bit) in 1993 it was a time when different manufacturers were trying methods of their own, such as VLB (VESA Local Bus) and IBM's MCA (Micro Channel Architecture)

PCI-X was released in 1998 in order to deal with 64 bit cards but never caught on in desktop machines, though popular in high end servers.

In 2004, 11 years after the launch of their now standard connector it was replaced by PCIe (PCI express) which offers much faster throughput using serial instead of parallel connections. It also superseded AGP graphics (Accelerated Graphics Port)

Oddly enough, Floppy disk drives are still supported on modern motherboards along with old style PATA (Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment) and Parallel ATAPI (Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface)  which seem to be around for a few more years to come.

Ever since Summer 2006 when Microsoft found a serious flaw in Windows XP and below, Microsoft has been interested in phasing out their older operating systems. In the Summer of 2006, they effectively ended support for 95, 98 and ME as well as anything older simply by not providing a way to fix the serious flaw.

With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft had hoped that it would replace XP in the same way as XP replaced 95, 98 and ME. With the launch of Windows 7, that goal has become closer.

XP has ceased to be sold as a product and is only being sold on a small group of computers where the Windows 7 Starter cannot run.

Whenever you buy a new computer, it will be running 7 and some software companies are ditching XP support for their products. Internet Explorer 9 for instance will only run on 7. 

I know a lot of Apple Mac users that believe that their computers are immune to viruses and that its only the PC world that get viruses. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case.

While the Mac maybe more secure because of the small percentage of Mac users to PC users, as this percentage rises it becomes more of a target for virus and trojan writers.

In the latest release of Apple's OSX, named Snow Leopard, there is a trojan preventer that prevents known trojans from being installed on your computer. The recent updates show that Apple is trying to keep the fact that Macs are prone to viruses a secret by not disclosing what the updates were for.

However, this only prevents you from downloading and installing a trojan on your computer from the Internet, it doesn't stop it from entering from another source, such as a CD, DVD or memory stick.

You need an antivirus on your Mac as much as you need one on a PC.

In fact, these days your Mac has exactly the same hardware inside as a PC, ever since the G series Macs were phased out and replaced by Intel Macs.

For a while I have tried using captcha, (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) where you type in the words that were generated in the box and it would allow you to send an email.

This kind of protection can be difficult to implement as well as being a chore to use.

I discovered a better one that involves moving the shape to a circle with the mouse.

So far I've seen no SPAM emails being sent to me, whereas I'd regularly see SPAM emails without it.

I was shown a website that features a Bluetooth adapter that has an extending antenna. However, the antenna is fake! It gives the illusion that the product has an extended range and yet it doesn't!

Its one of those things not to buy if you ever see it!

AT&T have just revealed something they are calling a 3G MicroCell.

I've covered 3G to WiFi routers in the past, this is different in that you connect it to your home or business broadband and it provides you a 3G signal. 

You can register 10 phones to the system and use up to 4 at any one time.

You get unlimited calls on your mobile phone when connected to their equipment

It gives you full bar signal and 3G network service in your own home up to 5,000 feet.

The technology is only available in the US at present, but I'm sure other telephone providers will follow suit soon