Tag Archives: Web

Phone Hacking

Posted on by

The news of the moment in the UK is the News of the World Phone Hacking Scandal. With rumours that there are lists of 1000’s of celebrities, Government officials, criminals and victims who have had their phones hacked by journalists of the news of the world hysteria has hit the british press and the newspaper buckled under pressure and shut down.
Baffled by the reaction, I thought about the story, and suspect there is a fair amount of misunderstanding amongst the public. Especially when it comes to the question “What is Phone Hacking”. And the first thing to remember it is nothing like the underworld of computer hacking, virus writing, web page hijacking, or even phreaking to make free phone calls. No, what it is is simply playing off human lazyness and taking advantage of a functionality mobile phone networks introduced many years ago.
Almost every phone operator gives the option to check your mobile phone messages “remotely” ie from another phone when you do not have it with you. This is also the case for most modern answerphones for landlines.

For those who have not been following the stories, have a look on google news

For mobile phones it is simple:
1) You phone your mobile phone
2) Wait for the voicemail divert
3) Press the * key
4) Enter your PIN code

And your messages are read out as if you were accessing it from your own mobile phone.
The vast majority of users are (or until now) were unaware of this as they had no use for it and therefore would never go into their settings to change the PIN code.
Therefore, for most people the default will work – and this includes celebrities.
Clearly, you can’t initiate this plan if the person you are trying to get hold of answers the phone, so the ususal plan is to work in pairs where one person phones and if the person picks up the 2nd person immediately phones from another line and will immediately get through to voicemail. Meanwhile the original person phoning who got through to the person will give some excuse such as claim to be a sales person offering products that will be refused or that they have dialed an incorrect number opening the way for the other person who has got into the voicemail to listen through the messages saved, find out any numbers left by people who have left messages or even delete messages.

This BBC news site story has more info.
The guardian has a whole section of their website dedicated to it.

Out of curiosity I decided to try and hack my own phone having done a bit of googling to find the default pin codes.
The first problem i found was that I had actually disabled my voicemail which would explain why I hadn’t had any messages recently – not that i use it much. Next, having enabled it after 10 seconds of ringing I got through, followed the process only to find the default pins did not work, suggesting i had in fact changed the pin code at some point and have no idea what it is so good luck phone hackers getting into my voicemail!!

Music Snobbishness

Posted on by

There are many times when I wonder whether I am being musically snobbish especially after seeing some of glastonbury on BBC 2 this weekend when I have no interest in U2, Coldplay or Beyonce.
Of course I have my music vices but largely I like to think that the music i like is of a decent standard. This doesn’t help me in pub quizzes in music rounds when I have no idea what Adele song is playing or even that it is Adele because I have no interest in the artist.
That being said, the one thing that always reassures me is that there are people more snobbish than me and that is epitomised in a post i read on metafilter 7 years ago:

“We Built this City” is a great song with a great hook by a band that had no right have such a terrific hit that late in its alcohol-sodden, drug-dulled career. “Corporate” (Blender’s comment) my butt. How anyone could call “We Built this City” a bad song while there is the whole catalog of Wilco to draw from is beyond me — not to mention every song by Tom Waite, Randy Newman, every rap and hip hop singer who ever lived, the entire “alternative” and grunge movement, Nine Inch Nails, Supergrass, “Peg O’ My Heart,” the theme songs from “Friends” and every other sitcom, the symphonic output of Anton Bruckner, fully three quarters of Bob Dylan’s work, one-quarter of Bruce Springsteen’s, every song on the Outkaast album except “Ai-Ya,” “Wipe Out,” every song by James Brown, two decades of jazz-rock fusion, everything by Joni Mitchell after and including the album “Blue,” “Symphonie Fantastique,” Sting, reggae, any song that’s used in a car commercial, anything involving Brian Wilson after “Good Vibrations,” anything on the Beatles “White Album” (except “Oh-Bla-Di” which the bozos at Blender are not hip enough to like), any song by John Lennon after meeting Yoko Ono, any song (it goes without saying) by Yoko Ono, anything by Paul McCartney or the Rolling Stones issued in the last 25 years (except for “My Brave Face”), fully three-quarters of Elvis Costello’s recorded ouvre, all contemporary classical music since Stravinsky, anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber, anything by Fabian, anything by Philip Glass, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” everything by Prince except “Raspberry Beret,” I could go on…
posted by Faze at 1:53 PM on April 23, 2004

Parts of it I do agree with, but a lot of it is excessive, especially the part that says every song by prince except raspberry beret – can’t agree with that. On the other hand the classical stuff and andrew lloyd webber – have no objections.
It’s a shame the article on blender the comment relates to no longer exists, even on waybackmachine but hopefully the general gist comes through.

The Domesday Project

Posted on by

It’s been nearly 2 years since I last did any blogging – this has been largely due to a lack of time.
However, I’ve missed it and decided to get back into it.
So, I’ll begin with The Domesday Project:

This was begun between 1984 and 1986 to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book which for those not familiar was a book commissioned in 1086 by the then King of England, William I (More commonly known as William the Conqueror) in order to determine what land and property existed in the United Kingdom and who owned it. This was for the purposes of tax collection, but also served a useful piece of information from a social history perspective. While it is not fully clear how long the collection process took it is suggested that it took the best part of a year to collate this information into the book.
To celebrate the 900th anniversary the BBC asked schools across the country to create their own version and a snapshot in time named The Domesday Project. Being done by children and teachers they gave themselves 2 years to record the information. Created in association with Acorn Computers, all the data was entered electronically onto a purpose built computer system. Cutting edge for its time it was able to collect text, photos and videos but also would become the google street view of its time.
It’s biggest flaw was it was too cutting edge and the times weren’t ready for the technology.
The data was catalogued on a new storage medium – Laser Disc. Using a scsi controller, the player could be attached to a BBC Master Computer and when combined with a tracker ball (precursor to the modern trackball or trackpad). All in it cost the best part of £5000 which at the time was the price of a small family car. Therefore, sales were low and the project went into obscurity.

This week, The project hit the news as word came through that a part of the BBC had, 25 years on, managed to convert the data into a format that would be accessible to all for free on the web. The concern had come that not enough of the laser disc players existed and that the discs themselves had become corrupted because of a flaw in their design.
Several previous attempts had been made – firstly using emulation of the original BBC Master software on windows PC’s, then a version which did not require the emulation as the software had been re-written for windows PC’s. But finally, the ultimate which does not require any software be installed on the end user’s computer other than a web browser. The domesday1986 blog documents this while the Beebmaster Website shows the technology used to create/play the original discs.

The link for the successfully restored data can be found here:
Domesday reloaded

How Much Is a Site Worth?

Posted on by

stonysleep.com has been running for a while (10 or 11 years I think), admittedly not in blog form for all that time.
Now, there’s a website called yourwebsitevalue.com which values a website based on various criteria. Back in July we were worth less than $50, but I went to it today and was surprised to see the value zoom up to $208:

How Cool is that!?! Though am a little surprised what’s happened in that time to cause that. Perhaps google has finally got round to indexing all the blog so put a higher pricetag on it.
Anyways, check it out i you have a website or are curious how much some of the more well known sites are worth

Frankenstein Mac

Posted on by

My Powermac G4 Case Mod from 2003
I was talking to MacHeadCase yesterday about future computers, and we were comparing what each of us had. It was then that I realised that I’d never talked about my Mac on this website and/or blog. So I got my digital camera out, a Sony T-1 and built a little page about my Mac and what i did to the case.
It’s a bit of a mishmash of a computer now – many of the components have been upgraded, and being the first tower case computer i’ve owned, am reluctant to give it up, and want to upgrade it as much as possible.
It’s quite old though now – bought it in August 2000 as a 1st generation Powermac G4, with a 450MHz processor, Zip Drive, DVD ROM, 20Gb Hard Drive and 128mb RAM.
It now has a 2nd hard drive: 120Gb Maxtor, a DVD±RW in addition to the DVD ROM, 640Mb RAM, and no Zip Drive. I’ve added an extra 4 USB ports, and a wireless network card. The original ATI rage Pro graphics card was replaced 4 years ago for a NVidia GeForce 2MX, but that is now due for replacement – i think a Radeon of some description will be the best.
At some point i will want to replace this mac, possibly with a Powermac G5, but they are expensive, and don’t have dual optical drives which drives me nuts. Perhaps I’ll go for a cheaper 2002 edition of the Power Mac G4 Desktops or as I’ve threatened for many years buy a Windows Computer because it’s cheaper and easier to upgrade.

First Post – new blog

Posted on by

Hi there
I’ve decided to give this blog another go – this time on my own web space, with wordpress after lots of recommendations
I started off with a blog on blogger, only to find that there was another blog there using the same title & theme as mine by someone else, and if you google searched for my blog you got there’s which had been going way longer!
But that wasnt the reason for me not posting much – i had far too many forums where i was posting, and not enough time to use the blog
And I also tried using blogger to host it on my webspace with success, but i didnt like it, so i stopped

Fast forward 4 months and since everyone seems to have a blog in some shape or form, i think i need to get up to speed in all this. I also seem to have a lot to rant about these days, so no time like the present.

So who am i?
I’ve been around the internet a while now – i’ve been a member of many forums – though i’ve only really stayed with a few of them for the long run
I now have a forum on my own site, and a wiki to go along with it [not any more damn spammers]
I do all my web page designing by hand, though i have used most of the apps out there from the cheap end of Pagemill or Front Page through to Dreamweaver. I’ve just become a stickler to detail and like good, well formed code. After i learnt XML and XHtml initially to understand Apple’s Mac OS X preference files, i started to see why i should redo my website in xhtml, and how much neater it looked & behaved.
Gone were the font tags, in came CSS. Gone were all the unnecessary javascripts, and finally, the site conformed to W3C guidelines and passed their validator
But anyway, enough introductions, welcome the new blog

I will need to spend some time setting everything up here as it all looks a bit white and lacking in everything