McGaw Learning Center

A lot of people ask me how I can figure out how to break into websites, or bypass certain simple security features. The simple answer is that I know how to because I'm clever, but the truth is that the brunt of the work has already been done for me. This is all thanks to the developers of FireFox , the world's greatest Internet browser. FireFox is great because of the way it allows you to do whatever you want with your browser. Not only can you fully customize the feel, but you can add multiple things to your browser that allows you to make your browsing experience smoother, easier, funky, etc. I am going to go over the browser add-ons I use, and why. Ad-Blocker Plus Ad-Blocker Plus is great. It blocks ads. Those annoying ads you see on a website? Well, with ABP, you can get rid of them once and for all! *insert evil laugh here* Although it might seem cool, a lot of websites are supported by these ads, so by blocking them you are essentially not giving the people

Well after weeks of meetings and round table discussions I decided to accept a five year $25 million contract working with Tucker as an author on this Blog, and by this I mean his. I look forward to everyone's feedback and opinions as that will make my blogs that much more interesting and entertaining to reply to. I will do my best to entertain, educate and stimulate your minds, as we are all students for life and the only thing we know for certain is that we do not know anything. Posting will begin shortly! Thank-you, John

When I was in college, I got a lot of jobs to help me. One of those jobs was selling knives for a company called Cutco. While I was there, I learnt a lot about knives, how they're made, what type of knife to use on certain products, and the reasons why that is. A couple of times I have caught my fiancée using a serrated edged blade to cut things like soft fruits (bananas, kiwis, etc). This is incorrect. I can understand her though. A knife cuts, so what if it's serrated, or not? And that is true. But I am going to go over the various styles of knives, and what they are used for... or rather, what they're supposed to be used for.

I take online anonymity very seriously. It's not that I don't mind sharing data (if I did mind, I wouldn't be a part of any social networking site, nor would I be writing in a Blog). The reason why I take it seriously is that the user (you) should be able to dictate what you want people to see, and what you don't want people to see. The ethics of this is up for debate. Many people are fearful that an data you post online can and will be found. Although this is technically true, it's not as simple as Googling for someone and finding out the necessary information. Most identity theft occurs when a database of some sort is breached, or when someone knows enough about you that they can pretend to be you when they call your bank. This is why banks must always ask you the same questions over and over again, to make sure you are who you say you are. It's annoying, but it's better than the alternatives. So, what is "online anonymity". Well, the phrase

India. If I had to describe it in one word, I'd say, "Mysterious." Why? First, you need to know about how I know India and why I believe that this word is perfect. This won't take long, I promise. I was born in Manila, Philippines (my mother is Filipino), where my father worked on an oil rig as a deep-sea diver. Perhaps one of the most dangerous jobs around. Yeah, my dad was (and still is) hardcore in that way. But with family comes responsibility, and my mother didn't like my dad working 150 meters below the surface. My dad then got a job with a research institution, and in the process got an offer to come to India, to a city called Hyderabad . He agreed, and at the tender age of 5 (almost, but not quite 6 yet), we moved from Manila to Hyderabad. The whole family came long, including Samson, our yellow Labrador retriever. Settling down in India took some time, but that's the boring stuff, so we'll skip ahead. India to me was a land full of myste

One of the biggest problems in maintaining a healthy LAN network is finding out what your local bandwidth is doing. Sometimes an annoying user using proxies can bypass your firewalls and other 'preventive' counter-measures and allow them to do annoying things like download things or chat. A great tool for helping visualize this is NetLimiter . This nifty tool is really useful in spotting open ports and the amount of bandwidth a particular IP is using. There are other, better software, but this is cheap and I have found it pretty accurate in spotting anomalies. Give it a try. The Lite version is free, and allows you to monitor your network. The Pro version allows you to manually set the badnwidth and close ports remotely. Grab it, and give it a try. Let me know how you found it.

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. I decided that I will make a Blog about random things. So, yeah... that's about it. Stay tuned.