Belgian Kimberley Vlaeminck, 18, went to a tattoo parlor and asked for 3 tattooed stars. But, she fell asleep and woke up with 56 black stars. In a sense, this is nice, but she seems pissed off.
PETER DECONINCK/AFP/Getty Images
Update on 24-June: It appears that after some time and media pressure, Kimberley admitted that this was not a mere issue of misunderstanding between the tattooist and her. Frightened by her father reaction to her stars, she tried to explain that it was not her fault. But she actually requested 56 stars from the beginning. So, she was lying…
You choose your passwords as the most sophisticated and the strongest as you understand the importance to protect your computer. But did you know that this is nearly useless? A few commands and here is your safe password replaced or removed by a mere user, by your youngest nephew.
On Windows, it’s enough to use the bootable CD-ROM of Ophcrack which is available as Open Source. Reboot and watch the software program find the Windows Administrator password…
Ophcrack also works on Mac (and Linux) but with OSX10.4, it’s enough to use the Apple installation CD and to choose “Utilities” to run “Reset the password”. On OSX10.5, you’ll have to reboot, press Command+S, then type the following at the prompt:
If on Linux, if boot is controled by GRUB, it’s enough to press ESC during the boot sequence to choose ‘Recovery Mode’ which will will start you as root without even knowing the password. Just change it now…
I learned (in karting) that you should not break and that you must choose the best trajectory. These French and Italian drivers are decidedly learning. And they crash so many cars that they are helping reduce the impact of recession on car manufacturers.
Be ready for more than 90 minutes of broken WRC cars, or crash compilation videos.
Final note: Even if most of these crashes happened about 20 years ago (there are plenty of Golf GTI, R5 GT Turbo, 205 GTI, Fiat Uno, Autobianchi Abarth and others 1980’s cars), some of them have killed or maimed people. So, drive safely and use the highway.
Even more when you unload a tank rail car. If you let the hot gazes cool down into the tank, here what can happen. Always check the security valves, or be ready to pay the price: $22,000 to $80,000 used (but usable).
You should protect your computer when navigating on the Internet. However, Microsoft would have you thinking that the embedded firewall provided by Windows is good enough. Actually, there is much better software to replace it. And not everything is expensive:
Comodo Firewall Pro (Freeware): Free and powerful, what do you want more? It’s also clean, simple, yet feature-loaded.
ESET Smart Security (Shareware) is expensive at $60, but has a very small memory footprint.
ZoneAlarm Free Firewall (Freeware) also checks your PC’s activity when you go to the Internet.
Your router’s built-in firewall: If you have one, this is one of the best and cheapest solution. And it’s already working for you.
Windows Firewall: It’s not that bad and it’s already included in Windows. But don’t try to get it doing exactly what you want, it has a mind of its own.
This means that you must be ready to repair your new car in all conditions. And some people really mean it. Here is the story of this rally race team. They had their car stopped by a broken throttle cable. So, in this case, what would you do? Abandon the race? Not these guys. One of them steps under the hood (!) and will handle the throttle from there to the end of the race.
So, this is the crisis, you are not ready to these extreme measures and you still need to buy a car, I advise all of us to chase a really carbon-emission-free truck (from a well-known battery provider):
Microsoft published today a large Security Update for Internet Explorer. This happens nearly every month, but this time, this is really important. Whatever your version of Internet Explorer, you should upgrade now, via Windows Update.
Microsoft is correcting a major bug in all versions of Internet Explorer and it is urgently important that you plug this security hole that could leave your computer totally open to external hackers.
Nota bene: generally speaking, you should try and keep your computer up-to-date for security issues. You may want tot check my previous post about Secunia PSI.
Isn’t it somewhat difficult to continuously check the status of security updates for the many software programs we have installed on our PCs, sometimes not even knowing it? Here comes Secunia PSI to help in this daunting task. It permanently observes the version of the programs on your PC and verifies if there is an available update. Thus, it efficiently protects us against the computer security risks we too often are submitted to.
This secret is almost public: PDF documents protected by a password (to prohibit cut-and-paste or print functions) are badly protected. As a matter of fact, there is even a fereeware utility program available for Windows whose only aim is to run around this protection. Freeware PDF Unlocker, even if it does not do much and is more limited than its commercial equivalents, merely and simply allows you to cut-and-paste the contents of a password-protected PDF file. Simple, efficient, recommended!
Defragmenting your hard disc drive may not be the latest fad, but it still is useful to improve the performance of a disc drive that’s been used for months or years and now looks more like a mouldy swiss cheese than a nice little techo-gadget. The solution: defragmenter your disc drive(s).
Here are a few ideas of (free) software programs that may be useful here:
Ultimate Defrag (from DiskTrix) is clearly a defragmenter wet dream. The only trouble? So many options that you won’t be able to sleep.
Smart Defrag (from IOBit) will help you defragmente several disc or several partitions at the same time.
Some have been surprised by one little habit of mine around my PC (I should say ‘my PCs”): I keep a detailled log of everything I do on my PC in a plain old school paper book. It may be a software installation, a parameter change on another software package, the update of a driver. Everything goes in there.
Main advantage: When my PC stops working perfectly, I can easily recognize what changed. Usually, I (like everybody else) say that I did not touch anaything before it stopped working. Bit when I check, I can find wat I did.
It also works for the configuration of a Local Area Network… even in a company. But beware of not writing down passwords that would then be left in an open paper book…
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You should protect your computer when navigating on the Internet. However, Microsoft would have you thinking that the embedded firewall provided by Windows is good enough. Actually, there is much better software to replace it. And not everything is expensive:
