Posts by author:

Matt Hodges

Security Guide: Passwords 101

July 22, 2010

It comes up all the time on the web: pick a strong password! But what does that really mean? There are many misconceptions about passwords that can lead to trouble. Insecure passwords are very vulnerable and subject to attack. Before you can understand how to prevent these issues, you must first understand how passwords are [...]

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The Video Bay: Pirate Bay’s YouTube Competitor

June 28, 2009

About two years ago, the makers of the ever-popular torrent website, thepiratebay.org, announced that they were working on a new project called “The Video Bay”. A few weeks ago, The Video Bay opened up a test version to the public. The public trial has since been disabled, but the site is still up. Currently, anyone [...]

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Should We Stop Masking Passwords?

June 25, 2009

Logging in to our computers or various web services is a normal routine we all go through every day. Each of us probably has half-a-dozen usernames across the web, with at least double that in passwords. We’re all also very used to the standard format when logging into a service: plain-text username and a censored [...]

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Rapidshare Fined €24,000,000

June 24, 2009

A German court has ordered the file sharing site Rapidshare.com to pay €24,000,000 ($33,600,000 USD) in fines and must now filter their content against copyright infringement. According to a statement from GEMA, “[t]he judgment states that the hosting service itself is now responsible for making sure that none of the music tracks concerned are distributed [...]

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Firefox 3.5 Focuses On Privacy

June 23, 2009

A few days ago, Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate, and the world’s second most popular web browser is sporting some nifty new features. Firstly, Firefox 3.5 contains addition speed improvements from the previous releases. Mozilla claims that Firefox 2 averaged page load times of about 18,000 milliseconds, Firefox 3 at roughly 4,000 milliseconds, and [...]

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Blu-Ray Usage Still Low

June 22, 2009

It’s been a while since Blu-Ray became the victor over HD-DVD. The battle was tough, but most people agree that since Blu-Ray is the superior format, it deserves the spoils. But Sony is still waiting on those spoils. Hothardware.com reports that “consumers are still wary due to the battle with HD-DVD, and frankly, many are [...]

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Activision To Sony: Lower The Price Of PS3

June 21, 2009

It was recently reported that Bobby Kotick—head of one of the largest video game companies: Activision—is a little discouraged with the state of Sony and the Playstation 3. Kotick says, “I’m getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the [...]

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Google Prepares For Google Voice

June 21, 2009

Last month, Google grabbed 1 million phone numbers; a move that implies we may soon see the availability of Google Voice. The service from the internet giant “lets users unify their phone numbers, allowing them to have a single number through Google Voice that rings a call through to all their phones.” There has been [...]

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Microsoft Will Continue Offering XP Until 2011

June 19, 2009

According to ComputerWorld, Microsoft is going to continue the availability of Windows XP until April 2011. The announcement came after a security expert attacked Microsoft’s plan to discontinue its sale once Windows 7 is released. The original plan stated that “[b]ecause of Windows 7′s Oct. 22 launch date, the six-month cap meant that OEMs would [...]

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ISPs Preparing For IPv6

June 18, 2009

Recently, Comcast demonstrated its network readiness for the switch to IPv6 addresses. Believe it or not, the internet is not infinite. In fact, it is running out of space rather quickly. That is, the current version of Internet Protocol is running out of space. What we now use is known as IPv4, and experts believe [...]

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Google To Consider Full HTTPS For GMail

June 17, 2009

You may or may not be aware, but every time you log in to GMail you pass through an HTTPS, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, connection. HTTPS is a combination of the regular HTTP and a cryptographic protocol and is used to pass sensitive information over the internet. Google implements this into the login portion [...]

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