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Analog.5 Issue 0
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. Issue # 00 . | The Hak.5 | . .
: -----|---- |------------ | E - Zine | ------------| ----|--- :
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Analog.5 is a hacking eZine designed by the Hak5 community, for the Hak5
community. The editors of Analog.5 ask you to create articles to appear
in the ezine and help bring technolust to the masses. Articles can be any
size, and submited by email. Almost all entries are instantly accepted.
This zine is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
license. If you don't want your work to be redistributed, do not submit.
Analog5@Live.com
Famicoman Moonlit Mubix
Famicoman@live.com Moonlit@live.com Jd.mubix@gmail.com
Editor-In-Chief Executive editor Executive Editor
Table Of Contents.
Section.0.Analog.5: A Rundown..................................Famicoman
Section.1.Getting the Most Out of Your Connection.................Cooper
Section.2.Windows XP Computer Security & Protection.............ChevronX
Section.3.The Hackers Manifesto 2.0.................................TomB
Section.4.Hak.5 Radio - How does he do it..........................Mubix
Section.5.Setting up an IRC Bot.........................TechCentric-Nick
Section.6.Warchalking: The Lost Art............................Famicoman
Section.7.Exploring Networks..................................nickisgod1
Section.8.The World Outside......................................Moonlit
Section.9.code.C/++ Basics..........................................TomB
Section.10.Voice Activated Mac Media Center aka Voice Row.....Shinmaryuu
The Amazing Analog.5 Logo and Ascii art was designed by Sprecker
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. Section 0 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
Analog.5: A Rundown
Well, a few of you reading this right now will most likely know everything
that Analog5 is about. However, I’m guessing the majority of you readers
may have no idea what this thing is, and just picked it up sometime this
morning amidst the daily grind with cup of coffee in hand. If you haven’t
picked it up already, Analog5 is an eZine, or electronic magazine. The
history of electronic magazines is extensive at most, dating back to the
days of Dial-Up BBS and the 300 Baud. But why release a BBS at this day in
age? A day with email, Bittorrent, FIOS connections and instant
messengers. A day nothing like a day twenty years ago. Frankly, when I
stumble around the internet at my leisure I see all sorts of independent
media. Media distributed how electronic ezines of the past would be
distributed. Free to anybody, and keeping it that way. Even though this is
great, there is something missing, something that should be in place but
isn’t. Ezines seem to be lost in the heyday of independent movies,
podcasts and iptv. Ezines are a great medium for information and shouldn’t
be overlooked. So in the communal spirit, Analog5, an ezine made by the
Hak5 community, for the Hak5 community takes its shape here in this form.
Whether or not you’ve been a supporter of Analog5 since the idea was first
brought up, or if you just heard about this ten minutes ago, you might not
know the story of how it came up and where its all going, so without
further ado, on with the story…
Back in early November, 2006, I was reading through some old ezines from
the days of BBS up through present time because of the interest I have in
the subject. Whether or not an ezine was successful or not, whether or not
it had more than one issue, whether or not people liked it, it leaves its
own unique impression in one way or another. Simply the idea that these
publications could gather information from numerous sources and then
release it freely to the public without any distribution expenses at all
seemed like a really easy way to get what you want out there. A model that
would change and evolve over and over again for many mediums.
So its early November, at this point, after reading some zines, I’m
drifting in and out of conversations in IRC trying to figure out something
to do with my time when it hits me, create a Hak5 ezine. I was excited
with it, the few people I bounced it off of (one who I believe to have
been Moonlit) were excited with it, so I ran it by the development
community who accepted it with open arms. A few days later, I released my
idea to the complete public and waited for the submissions to roll in.
Here I sit about two months later with eleven articles under my belt and
a fantastic group of followers always there to hear out my ideas and make
suggestions for improvement. The magazine could not have made it this far
without a single one of them.
In the matter of where this zine is going, the best way to have that
question answered would be by using the famous “Where do you see it in
five years?” approach. Answering honestly, I see it surviving at least
that far. How it looks, what form its in, and if I’m still doing anything
for it is uncertain, but as long as someone wants to create content for
it, it will keep going. Offering information by Hackers, Gamers, Geeks,
Nerds, Phreakers, SysAdmins and everyone else to create a genre almost
irresistible.
I think a lowdown of all of the functions of the magazine deserve to be
discussed, so I’ll cover everything I have decided on thus far. This
ezine will be distributed though a variety of means. Http downloads, its
own wiki page, and hopefully a few other methods, perhaps even through a
Hak5 BBS. If you would like to mirror this somewhere, be it on your
website, your BBS, an FTP server, you may freely do so due to the fact
that Analog5 is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. I would just ask you
to notify me in some fashion so I could perhaps recognize you in future
publications, and see how far Analog5 is reaching out. Depending on how
many articles I get from you the submitters, I would like to release
every month on the 20th to be spaced out with the monthly Hak5 releases.
If you would like to send in an article, feel free to drop it at
Analog5@live.com and it will most likely instantly be put into the next
distribution. For a list of submission rules and guidelines, I’d like to
point you at http://hak5.org/wiki/Analog5 for any questions you may have.
In all honesty, those are the only two things completely solid about
Analog5 so far. Its always changing and growing to be what the community
wants it to be. Because of this, I’m also completely open to all
suggestions. Whether you love this issue, or hate it, I’d like to hear
from you. I hope you enjoy this issue of Analog5 and I believe that’s
all for this article, so its about time for you to get on with the rest
of the ezine.
-Famicoman
Famicoman@live.com
http://hackinacan.siteled.com
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. Section 1 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
Getting the Most Out of Your Connection
Speeding Up the Internet
I'm sure you've seen the ads about "speeding up your internet". The
products they try to sell you will vary from pure snake oil, to often
rebranded free download managers. The one thing the offered products tend
to have in common is that for the most part they simply do not work.
Interestingly enough, there are programs out there that will give you a
very real increase in the perceived speed of your internet connection.
And best of all, it doesn't have to cost you a thing.
By far the most effective way to speed things up is to install a
caching proxy server. When you're browsing a site, a large amount of
images shown to you are repeated throughout that site. Clicking the back
button tends to reload everything aswell. When you're running a proxy
server, you're only grabbing that data once, and every subsequent load
comes from your proxy server. Since that proxy server is on your local
network, or even your own computer, it can respond much faster than the
internet site, transmit the data much faster, and not use up any internet
bandwidth, leaving more of it available for other stuff. I can highly
recommend the Squid Proxy for all UNIX users. Windows users could give
WWWOFFLE a go.
Another great way to speed up your internet is to run ad blocking
software. A lot of you are probably running some form of ad blocking
software already, but the key question to ask is 'how does it block the
ad'. A popular ad blocking method involves using a .CSS to hide the ads
from you. While that might improve your browsing experience by not having
ads in your face all the time, it doesn't speed up anything as the ad
still gets loaded. It's just not being shown to you. What you really want
is something that prevents you from downloading the ad in the first
place. While you can do this in the browser, the best place to put your
ad blocking is in your proxy. It's really easy to make Squid not load ads,
and even provide a transparent image as a replacement so that leaving out
the ad doesn't automatically mess up the layout of the page you're
viewing. The free WWWOFFLE proxy I mentioned earlier can be set up to do
a similar thing. And since we're on the topic of filtering, you can make
Squid take out cookie requests from certain sites. So if you don't trust,
say, Google with your searching habits, and given the fact that Google
will work perfectly when cookies aren't enabled, you can tell Squid to
kill those cookie requests Google's servers are sending to your browser.
Next up is DNS. Ever notice that when you go to a page, it says
'Looking up whatever.com' in the status bar at the bottom? This means
your browser is trying to get the IP address of the server it needs to
contact, and the DNS server is slow to respond. Setting up a caching
nameserver can speed this process up incredibly. As with a caching proxy
server, a caching nameserver will forward your DNS request to your ISPs
DNS server for the first lookup, and cache the response. Any subsequent
requests for that domain name will be served from the cache. It won't
make much of a dent in the bandwidth you use because these DNS requests
use very little data, but sites will appear to respond much faster. Unix
users will probably want to use either BIND or DJBDNS. Those who run
Windows XP or newer don't have to do anything. Windows caches all DNS
responses for 24 hours by default. This however is a bit much. Most DNS
servers on the internet update their data every 4 hours these days,so
you might want to shorten these caching times. To do this, open regedit
and find the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNSCache\Parameters
entry. There should be a MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit key there. If not, add it
as a numerical value. The value is the caching time in seconds, so for 4
hours that would be 14400. Another key you'll want to change is the
NegativeCacheTime key. Windows by default not only caches succesful DNS
lookups, it also caches failures so any temporary DNS problems
automatically will last 4 hours on your system due to this caching. To
turn off the caching of the DNS failures, set the NegativeCacheTime to 0.
While you're in there, add a key named QueryIpMatching with a value of
1. By default, Windows will accept and cache any DNS response it receives,
including those from machines that it never even sent a DNS query to.
This is an obvious security issue with Windows. This setting will make
Windows accept and cache only DNS responses from servers it queried.
For more on this, see:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c24621675.mspx
There's one last thing you can do, but this is pretty advanced. Using
a Quality of Service, or QoS package you can do traffic shaping on your
network. Many of you will know and hate QoS software because it's
typically used to slow down bittorrent downloads, or othr similarly useful
services your network provider doesn't approve of. However, it can also be
used to give you decent throughput while browsing, a very low ping when
gaming, and acceptable speeds on your bittorrent traffic. It does this
by prioritizing certain types of traffic, and limiting other types to
prevent them from drowning out the rest. On top of this it can be used to
prevent the normally rather excessive buffering that's performed by your
modem or router. As this really is for the more hardcore networks guy, I'm
going to skip that subject for this article. If you're really interested
though, read the Linux Advanced Routing and Traffic Control Howto, which
can be found here: http://lartc.org/lartc.html
I've yet to find a free QoS package for Windows, so for the time being
your Windows guys are sadly out of luck.
-Cooper
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. Section 2 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
Windows XP Computer Security and Protection
*Windows Update
One of the first things to help secure your computer is to use Windows
Update, which is an online service supplied by Microsoft to help
secure your operating system against the latest exploits!
Windows Update can be found at the web address of:
http://www.windowsupdate.com
Alternative ways to get there is by Opening Internet Explorer and
click Tools, Windows Update.
If you are offline, it will ask you connect to the internet so if your
on dialup then enter in your Username and Password and click connect.
When you first go there it will ask you to install special Windows
Update plug-ins for Internet Explorer to allow you to use the Windows
Update website efficiently, so go ahead and click Ok.
Then it will redirect you to a page, asking whether you want to do a
Custom or Express install, Click Express it is by far the easiest,
Custom allows you to remove and add things to the update, such as
other tools Microsoft has provided, and Express already has the most
critical patches selected. A dialog box should pop up, and you just
click Install to have Windows Update download and install the latest
patches for your system. If an update wishes you to install it alone,
and needs a restart, then click Ok and restart the computer once it
tells you too after it has installed the patch and do the previous to
download the rest of the patches.
*Automatic Update
With Service Pack 2 (which can be obtained through Windows Update if
you don't already have it) of Windows XP, Microsoft perfected the
ability for your computer to download the latest updates
automatically, while your computer is connected to the computer. I
will show you how to configure Automatic update the easy way.
1. Right click My Computer (Either on the desktop or the Start Menu)
and click Properties.
2. Click the Automatic Updates tab.
Here it gives several options, you get to Turn it Off/On, Schedule the
updates so it downloads the updates when you wont be using the
computer, Just notify you that updates are available, or Download the
updates and choose when you want to install them. Before the updates
take affect, you need to shut your computer down.
*Windows Firewall
Another thing to make sure you have activated is the Windows Firewall,
which is dramatically improved with Service Pack 2. A firewall is an
application whose aim is to block access to your computer from the
outside, such as Crackers and others trying to gain access to your
system. It is also useful to block applications from access the
Internet, especially if you don't know what the program is, it could
be an application that has gained access to your computer and is about
to send all your email and documents to its creator.
Generally Windows Firewall is sufficient to use, and doesn't require
you to download any third party software and any patches that are
needed are rolled out in Windows Update.
To configure and make sure Windows Firewall is activated you can do
the following:
*Viruses and Spyware
Before we do anything else, I want to point out the difference between
Viruses and Spyware.
Viruses are created with malicious intentions, such as destroying all
your data, or better yet opening it out so all the world can read that
CV of yours. Viruses are have still a big impact on the world today,
as its ability to spread itself through the internet has cause a lot
of hassles, fortunately the updated Virus scanner can do wonders to
keeping your computer free.
Spyware is advertising and is commonly used to hijack your Internet
Explorer homepages, it also has a major impact on the performance of
the computer, by slowing it down quite a lot and even 30 infections
can sometimes do the damage of 30,000.
Luckily for us, there are utilities to protect our computers from both
Viruses and Spyware!
*Virus Protection
There are many applications for Virus protection out there, but the
ones I recommend and are sure are legit and not Spyware or viruses in
itself are AVG Free Antivirus, and an excellent NOD32. I do not
recommend Norton Antivirus or Norton Internet Security at all it has
cause a lot of main stream problems, with dramatically slowing your
computer down, and it doesn't offer the excellent protection that even
the free AVG Antivirus does.
**AVG Antivirus
This application can be found at this web address:
http://free.grisoft.com
Make sure you click Program download, the file should be avg5$$$$.exe
not u$$$$.bin ($$$$= Where the version number is, it changes with
every update).
Once it has been downloaded, Run the file and it should launch the AVG
Setup (It may take a few seconds).
Most of the steps are just there for if you want to customise it, I
recommend keeping it at default, so click Next, right through till you
get to Finish and then click that. AVG should now be running, in the
System tray (Where the clock is), and AVG Settings wizard will come
up, just click your way through it yet again, if for some reason AVG
does not appear in the System Tray, then restart your computer.
To update AVG, right click on the dull AVG icon in the system tray and
choose, Update, Internet it will get updates form the internet and
installs them.
If you needed to install updates manually, such as if you have the
update file on a floppy disk or CD (u$$$$.bin). Then you choose manual
and point AVG to where the update it stored. It should then say it
found an update and install it for you and that AVG icon should become
nice and colourful to indicate it is up to date.
AVG when fully updated, will automatically scan incoming files and
emails for viruses but you cannot be too careful. To run a scan, right
click the AVG System Tray Icon and click Test Center. It will open the
Test Center, click Complete Scan and it will begin the Virus scan of
your computer. Just a reminder to update the antivirus first for
maximum protection.
*Spyware Protection
I know of two great spyware scanning software, Adaware SE, and Spybot
Search & Destroy. Both are excellent and free, and when used together
can remove most if not all that your system can be infected by.
**Lavasoft Adaware SE Personal Edition
This application can be found at the following web address:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com
Once you have downloaded the setup file, and then run it and it will
launch the setup. It is again, simple to install, by clicking next or
I agree to the dialog prompts, till you reach the end with check
boxes. Untick all checkboxes to avoid confusion and click Finish.
The Adaware SE icon should now be on the Desktop, double click it. It
will tell you that your definitions are old, so you know what you are
going to download; definitions are updates with the latest list of
Spyware and the ability to remove them. Click Connect to allow it to
connect to the internet and download and install the latest
definition. Once it has downloaded and installed the definition file,
it will take you to the Adaware SE main screen. You have to scan for
Spyware, it won't do it automatically for you, so I recommend letting
it scan during the night. To scan click Scan Now, make sure Perform
Full Scan (You can choose Smart System Scan to scan for Spyware in the
most logical places where it usually resides, but if you want full
effect, go Perform Full Scan) then click Next and it will begin
scanning.
Once it has finished scanning, it will display its results, to remove
the Spyware form your computer Right click a result, for example
"Tracking Cookie" and select Select All Objects, to select all the
Spyware the scan found on your computer. Click Next, a dialog window
will come up, asking if your sure you want to delete the Spyware,
select Ok, and then it will remove the Spyware, and then take you back
to the main Adaware Screen. There may be Spyware that cannot be
removed, because it is currently protected, and it will then show a
dialog asking whether you want Adaware to run at next restart. Click
yes, so when your computer restarts it will run Adaware before the
Spyware has a chance of protecting itself, click Scan again and it
will scan and be able to remove the Spyware.
**Spybot Search & Destory
This application can be found at the following web address:
http://www.safernetworking.org
Spybot Search and Destroy another great Spyware scanner software and
ran with Adaware it is usually picks up a few that Adaware hasn't
found.
Double click the setup file to launch the installation. Just follow
the prompts and installing is a breeze. Once it is installed, run it.
If you have Adaware on your computer then Spybot will detect this and
bring up another dialog. Just click your way through that.
Updating Spybot is easy, at the main spybot screen, there is a Search
for Updates button, click it, it will then reach out to the internet
and show you a list of the latest updates it can download, you don't
need the help ones, or tea timer but select the rest and click
Download Updates. It downloads and installs the updates.
To scan, click Check for Problems, it will then scan and then display
the results, to remove Spyware, click Fix Selected Problems; all the
results will automatically be selected.
Just a reminder to update your Spyware database before your scan so
you can make sure you don't miss any!
There are other Virus and Spyware software out there, even Microsoft
have released an application called: Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware.
-Luke Murray (ChevronX)
lukejmurray@gmail.com
http://www.chevronx.com
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. Section 3 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
The Hackers Manifesto 2.0
NOTE: Do not take seriously. This is meant as a joke.
Another one got spammed today, it's all over the blogs. "Nigerian dies,
and the will money is handed out".
Damn tubes. They're all full.
But did you, in your three-piece suit and 2000s cubicle, ever take a look
behind the eyes of the Counter-Strike n00b? Did you ever wonder what made
him pwn, what forces aimed his gun, what may have molded him?
I am a pwnerer, enter my map...
Mine is a map that begins with hostages... I'm faster than most of the
other CTs, this crap they speak bores me.
Damn trucks. They're all slow.
I'm in my basement. I've listened to podcasts explain for the fifthteen
time how to hack an Xbox. I understand it. "No, Mr Dvorak, I didn't
upgrade to Windows Vista, I installed Linux."
Damn ISPs capping connections.They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found the outside world. Wait a second, this
is different. It does what the government tells it to. If it makes a
mistake, it's because religion fucked it up. Or the US government finds
oil in the middle east again. Or thinks the voting machines are broken.
Damn government. All they do is play wargames. They're all stupid.
And then it happened... the tubes opened... packets rushing through the
phone line like water through an internet connection. A VoIP pulse is
dialled out, an ACK packet is sent in. "This is it, this is where I b
elong... MySpace dot com.", "I know everyone here... even if I've never
met them, if I ever met them, they would be pedophiles from another city".
"I know you all..."
Damn podcasters. Tying up the tubes again. They're all alike.
You bet your micro we're all alike... we've been spoofing TV shows since
you were playing Half-Life 1. We've been dominated by Rev3, or ignored
by Apple. The few that had something to teach found us idling in #Hak5
on IRC.
This is our internet now... not some nuetral bullshit, the beauty of the
packet. We make use of a tracker already existing without paying for
what is overpriced. We click links.. and you call us criminals. We seek
free music... and you call us criminals. We exist without girlfriends,
without lives, without normal jobs. You hunt Afghans, destroy trade
centers, and wage war against terror. You cheat into office, and make
us believe it's for our own good.
Yes I am a pirate. My crime is that of piracy. My crime is that of
stealing MP3 files. My crime is that of filming movies in the movie
theatre. My crime is that of outsmarting Einstein.
I am an IPTV presenter, and this is my bullshit. You may stop this IPTV
show, but you can't stop Rev3... after all, they run Digg.
-TomB (Tom Bell)
tomb@nubuntu.org
http://ownthebox.net
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. Section 4 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
#!/bin/bash
####################################################################
create analog_stream;
execute(article["Hak.5 Radio - How does he do it?!"]
By mubix 2007-01-12
####################################################################
Well, I am finally putting it out there, the down and dirty of how
Hak.5 Radio comes to life. In the following paragraphs I will tell you
how I get the Song Request site up as well as the back end server portion.
Check it out.
I'm going to start with the server build, because without that, you
are just talking into a microphone that goes nowhere. Okay, so we need a
server. A Linux one will do, whether it is hosted by a provider, such as
Hak.5 Radio's is, or you can host it at home. Either way, a stable, always
on, Linux machine is needed.
Cool. We have a server and it’s running Linux. Next we get to pick a
streaming service daemon. Now, the two widely used are Shoutcast and
Icecast. Both are great service daemons and have so many configuration
settings that they are flexible from 5 listeners to 5000 with zero growing
pains. But, what is going to make me choose one after the other you say?
Well, you can google a blow for blow comparison, but this is how I see it:
Shoutcast has a listening service that you automatically get posted on
which will bring in quite a few listeners of “off the street” if you will.
Icecast on the other hand, has smaller delay on your stream. This is
important when taking calls on live shows. Icecast has a 3-8 second delay
from the time it hits the microphone to the time the listener hears it.
Compared to Shoutcast’s 30-40 second delay, it makes for a tough decision
for any new radio station.
Server, check! Service daemon, check! Wait…. You mean I have to
configure it? Yup, the cruel truth of Linux is you have to configure
everything. For both Shoutcast and Icecast, the manuals, FAQs and Forums
are undeniably better than anything that will ever fit into an article for
any eZine/magazine. Thus, I will leave the configuration up to you. I will
go over a couple things to look into in the configuration during other
sections of this article.
Now that it is configured, we want to make sure that it stays up.
There are a couple of ways to do this. The easiest is to make a cron job
(scheduled task) to check if the server is running and to run it if it is
found not to be running. The following script does just that.
#!/bin/bash
if [ ! "$(ps ax | grep icecast | grep -v grep)" ]
then
screen -d -m icecast -c ~/icecast/icecast.xml
fi
Save the file as "checkice.sh" and run chmod +755 to make the file
executable. Run crontab -e and put
*/15 * * * * /path/to/file/checkice.sh >/dev/null in or, mv the file into
one of your distro's /etc/cron.(hourly/daily/weekly) folders. Either way
you will be making sure that your server stays afloat. Now, you might
notice that I used the command 'screen'. Screen is a way of running things
on a virtual console. Basically it's a "insta-daemon" program. I will have
links to everything I go over at the bottom of this article.
Ok, we are all done on the server side. But what does all that hard
work do? Absolutely nothing without a client or 'streaming software
package' to send the music or video to the server for people to get it.
There are a limited number of programs that can do this. SAM Broadcaster
is the most widely used, but costs money.NSVTools w/ NSVCapture is used
for video, and I'll go into that a bit later, but it is free. WinAMP w/
Oddcast is also a free alternative. I actually use all 3 of these
solutions to run Hak.5 Radio.
I use SAM Broadcaster when ever I want to "go live", where I will be
DJing myself, queueing up songs and using the mic. WinAMP with Oddcast can
do this just fine, and is a awesome alternative, SAM just has a better
interface and more options. I use WinAMP w/ Oddcast and another plug-in
for WinAMP called "Song Requester". Guess what it does? Yup! Gold star for
you. It auto-magically generates a website of all the songs in your play
list and allows Internet users to request songs by searching for a song and
clicking on it. You can also limit how many songs a single user (by IP) can
request at one time. The default is 3, but on a low traffic station, I have
found that 5-10 works better.
The last trick to the radio station is the ability for listeners to
upload songs that they want to hear. For that I use a configured HFS server
on the "AutoDJ" box that has a virtual folder that allows the upload of
mp3s, waves and other such audio/video formatted files. WANQer is yet
another plug-in that watches that folder for new songs in the folder and
adds them to the play list. The only problem is Song Requester doesn't
update it's cache auto-magically. I had to set up a scheduled task to push
the update cache button for every 5 minutes to get around this obstacle.
Other than that, that is the basics of how Hak.5 Radio works. There are
a lot of little tweaks and specific configurations that will be unique to
how you set up your radio station but this article should be a huge bump in
the right direction. If you have any questions you can find all kinds of
ways to get a hold of me on the Hak.5 Forums, in the Hak.5 IRC, skype, IM,
http://www.mubix.com/, http://mubix.vox.com/, and yes, even on MySpace.
-mubix
Jd.mubix@gmail.com
http://www.mubix.com/
Links:
Shoutcast - http://www.shoutcast.com/
Icecast - http://www.icecast.org/
Intro to Cron - http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbie/unix/cron-1.html
Screen@ Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Screen
SAM Broadcaster - http://www.spacialaudio.com/products/sambroadcaster/
WinAMP - http://www.winamp.com/
Oddcast - http://www.oddsock.org/tools/
NSVTools - http://www.nullsoft.com/nsv/
SongRequester - http://www.oddsock.org/tools/gen_songrequester/
HFS - http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/
WANQer - http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=99396
|--------------|--------------\______________/--------------|------------|
: |-----|----------------/ \-----------------|---| :
. Section 5 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
Setting up an IRC Bot
*Introduction
Setting up IRC bots nowadays isn't the hassle it used to be. Early on,
you had to be able to code a bot from scratch, including adding in support
for anything and everything you wanted to do. Now, there are several
excellent bot frameworks to base bots off of, limiting the amount of work
to be done while maximizing its power and capabilities, and streamlining
it into nearly a 1-2-3 process. The point of this article is to walk a
newbie user through setting up an IRC bot with the goal of adding external
capabilities to it in the future.
We're going to be using Eggdrop in the tutorial, as it is by far the most
common framework.
*Prerequisites
Now, Eggdrop is first and foremost a Unix-based bot. While some people
have success using Cygwin and other tools to run it under other operating
systems, it would be recommended that for the sake of this tutorial you
have a Unix shell account or a local Unix box to be practicing and/or
running the bot from.
For the purposes of this demonstration, I will be demonstrating using an
i686 machine running Debian, commonly known to most as PhreakBox. ;)
Whatever you're using, you're also going to need the following
applications: tar, gzip, and gcc. I can't explicitly say how to get
them because there are too many variables involved like distro and
installation conditions, but check with any repositories your
distribution may have if the tools aren't installed by default, or
substitute others where necessary.
*Getting the Bot Up
Now, logged into your shell space, download (or upload, if you're moving
the package from another machine) the Eggdrop source package from
Eggheads.org to the machine.
nick@phreakbox:~/analogbot$ wget ftp://ftp.eggheads.org/pub/
eggdrop/source/1.6/eggdrop1.6.18.tar.gz
[NOTE: This is all on one line wih no spaces]
Once this is done, the natural next step would be to extract the files
from the tarball. How do we do that?
nick@phreakbox:~/analogbot$ tar xzf eggdrop1.6.18.tar.gz
(At this point, the tarball is no longer required, so you can delete it
if you want, or keep it so you don't have to re-download in case something
happens.)
Your tarball probably extracted into a subdirectory, so cd into that
directory and make sure you see something along these lines:
nick@phreakbox:~/analogbot/eggdrop1.6.18$ ls
aclocal.m4 configure.ac doc INSTALL Makefile.in scripts
ChangeLog CONTENTS eggdrop.conf language misc src
config.h.in COPYING FEATURES logs NEWS text
configure disabled_modules help Makefile README
The next step in prepping your bot for use is configuring your compile.
Do this by running ./configure at your shell prompt. You should see a
crapload of status lines and stuff fly by, and it can take a while to run
through. The best advice at this point is to get up and pour yourself a
drink.
Assuming all went well, you should be ready to compile Eggdrop. If
something went wrong, the configure script will let you know, and using
this information you can seek help out.
In this test case, everything worked out fine. So, we can now run make.
If you're anticipating everything to work out alright, you can kill two
birds with one stone as I do below. If you're new to this or think you
may run into a problem...separate the commands and run them separately.
Note that this is not recommended, and definitely not common practice, and
should be done with caution.
nick@phreakbox:~/analogbot/eggdrop1.6.18$ make config && mak
e && make install
[NOTE: This is all on one line wih no spaces]
Again, your compile might take upwards of several minutes. If you're
already in need of a refill on that drink you just got, you should
probably go get it now. You will probably see a few warning messages
mixed in; this is normal, and everything will sort itself out. If there's
anything that really ends up a problem, you'll be notified and it won't
compile any further.
Once compiling is completed, give your Eggdrop a test run. Go ahead.
nick@phreakbox:~/analogbot/eggdrop1.6.18$ ./eggdrop
Eggdrop v1.6.18 (C) 1997 Robey Pointer (C) 2006 Eggheads
[15:13] --- Loading eggdrop v1.6.18 (Mon Jan 1 2007)
[15:13] * Please make sure you edit your config file completely.
Wait a minute, why did I just have you do that if we're not done
configuring? This was simply to test that your compiled copy was
working. Assuming you saw that...you're in business. If not, try
recompiling, try deleting everything and redoing this tutorial from
scratch. Failing that, ask for help, and if nobody helps you (not my
problem), you might as well call yourself an emo and play in traffic.
*Configuring Your Bot
Now we can go through and edit your configuration file for getting the bot
online. Open up your favorite text editor, be it Kate, Pico/Nano, Vi,
Emacs, or whatever you have, and open up eggdrop.conf.
The first line, which looks like a CGI shebang line, is a request for you
to fill in the complete path to your bot. I'd show it, but some idiot is
bound to use my path in their script and then complain that it doesn't work
(and it would also be a potential security hazard, something I won't have).
I'm not interested in people doing that, so I'll make it fair; everyone has
to punch in their own. Can't figure it out? That's what the pwd command
at the shell is for.
Lines beginning with a hash mark ( # ) are comments. They are scattered
throughout the file to explain different parts of the configuration to you,
and can be useful if you want to leave yourself some extra hints along the
way. Of course, the configuration file says that itself, but it's worth
mentioning because I don't want to have to baby everyone in setting their
bots up.
*Basic Configuration
Scrolling through your configuration file, the first line beginning with
'set' is where we need to start. 'set username' sets the username that
appears in the IRC bot's hostmask. If you want to leave it at the default
(not recommended), you can, but it would be wise to change it. Right
below it is the admin line; fill that with your information following the
pattern outlined in the default.
I believe it is safe to assume you're not going to be networking your bots
anytime soon, so we can safely leave the next set line alone. You can set
the timezone if you want to, but it's not required (only useful for
logging and some scripts, which we will get to momentarily).
Most home machines will have one IP to bind to, so you can scroll down
past that too. (In my case, I have to configure it.) However, you probably
also noticed that some of the configuration options at this point are
commented too. Keep that in mind as you scroll through the file, and
notice that if you want to change some of the settings as you scroll
through the file.
The next two major points of interest are 'set userfile' and 'set pidfile'
(and further down, 'set chanfile'). These can be left alone if you're on
a single-user machine, but if you have the remote chance of being on a
shared machine (most likely for shell accounts or anything that isn't a
personal box), change them to something unique, perhaps 'pid.yourname'
for clarity.
Now, Eggdrop features some special options as well, such as administration
through DCC and telnet. I just want to take the time to point out that if
you screw up configuring these, they can be a potential security hazard.
Read all the comments before you make choices, and NEVER KEEP DEFAULT
SETTINGS!
Continuing on, 'set owner' is remarked but required. Unremark it (remove
the #), and set it to your IRC nickname. In the Channel section, read the
comments about how to set up your bot to join channels, and make sure when
you set modes for each channel you keep in mind what they do.
'set nick' and 'set altnick' define the bot's IRC nickname, set these to
whatever you want. Change 'set realname' while you're at it too; this is
a tipoff of a poorly configured bot.
Setting servers up is self-explanatory; just follow the patterns provided.
Keep in mind that if you leave these set to defaults, you might be
wondering why your bot doesn't show up in your channel.
For the sake of keeping this article short, I won't continue with
configuration settings; the comments above them do a well-enough job of
helping you decide what to set them to, follow those and use common sense.
Just keep in mind that there are two "kill lines" embedded in the
configuration file; these begin with 'die' and are placed to make you
read through it. Remark them or delete the line. (Remember how the bot
died when we tried starting it after we compiled it, and how it said we
needed to edit the configuration file? It was one of the "kill lines"
that did that...not the bot application itself.) Oh, and 'set modpath'
should probably be set to null because you compiled this fresh - but it
depends on how you set things up, again.
*Getting Online
Once the bot is configured (try a test run again, only this time the bot
should be saying something along the lines of "User File Not Found". If
so, good, run './eggdrop -mn'. If not, go fix your configuration file;
Eggdrop is nice enough to point out the problem for you.
Back on IRC, go to the channel where the bot is set up to go to, and
wait for it to appear. When it does, send a private message to it with
'hello' (or if you changed it, the new keyword) so it recognizes you.
In the console window, you should see a line like the following appear
as you get some PMs and notices from the bot:
[16:03] Bot installation complete, first master is <yournamehere>
Respond to the PMs using the commands the bot gives, such as setting a
user password.
Congratulations, the bot is now set up. Send a SigKill to the bot,
and start it with just ./eggdrop. It should join back to the channel.
*Conclusion
Congratulations, by now you've succeeded in setting up an IRC bot.
In future articles, we can discuss adding new capabilities to your bot
to make it useful. But for now, bask in your success, go get (yet
another) refill of your drink of choice, and stare at the bot in your
channel's userlist.
*Final Disclaimer
I'm installing Eggdrop 1.6.18, the most recent release at the time of
writing. These steps may differ as new versions are released, and
may not match your individual setup. I'm not responsible.
-TechCentric-Nick
nick@techcentric.org
|--------------|--------------\______________/--------------|------------|
: |-----|----------------/ \-----------------|---| :
. Section 6 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
Warchalking: The Lost Art
Warchalking is an activity made to go along with the act of Wardriving.
For those of you who don't know what wardriving is, its simply just going
around with something like a laptop or PDA and looking for WiFi networks
in your area. There are numerous articles and publications on wardriving,
so I won't delve into them here.
Warchalking originated in the Summer of 2002 by Matt Jones and according
to him, it was modeled after hobo signs. Hobo signs are marks that the
homeless make to show that certain houses will give you a glass of milk,
or another house will throw dogs for you or etc. Basically, you wouldn't
understand the signs unless you were a hobo, and thus, you wouldn't
understand warchalking signs unless you were a fellow warchalker.
Sadly, warchalking never caught on, mostly due to the fact that it was
instantly made commercial by companies. Nowadays, you never even hear
people talking about warchalking, or see a mark when you glance down
at the sidewalk. Even though this may be, warchalking is still pretty
unique in the fact you mark wifi hotspots in public with chalk.
There are three warchalking symbols...
The first is the open node symbol. This looks like two parenthesis
back to back with the ssid displayed overhead, and the bandwidth
displayed below. Example:
linksys
)(
1.5
This sign above signals that there is an open node with the ssid,
"linksys", and has a 1.5MB connection speed.
The second symbol is that of the closed node. The closed note is
simply displayed as a circle with the ssid put above it. Example:
Cisco
()
The warchalking sign above indicates there is a closed node
broadcasting the ssid, "Cisco".
The third and final warchalking signal is for a WEP encrypted node.
This is represented with a circle that has a "W" encased in it.
Under the circle is the bandwidth, on the top left corner is the
ssid, while the contact is in the top right corner. The contact,
however is usually unknown. Example:
donttakemywireless
(w)
2.0
The above network is broadcasting the ssid, "donttakemywireless", while
the node is WEP encrypted, and the connection is at 2.0MB/s.
If you have a laptop, and a stick of chalk, you can go around and start
warchalking. Its that easy. Get a group of friends together, and start
a warchalking club. Here is the url of a printable flier that contains
a cutable wallet sized chalking mini-book.
http://hackinacan.sitesled.com/Warchalking/warchalking-symbols.gif
-Famicoman
Famicoman@live.com
http://hackinacan.siteled.com
|--------------|--------------\______________/--------------|------------|
: |-----|----------------/ \-----------------|---| :
. Section 7 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
Exploring Networks:
A Very Condensed Guide to Nmap and Other Networking Tools.
Have you just started that new job, you're beginning at a new school,
or you just got that new Internet connection? Then you probably don't
want to keep a connection without knowing something about the other
computers on the network. Would you move into a new house, and not check
out the neighborhood? I know I wouldn't. So lets take a look at some
simple tools used to analyze your network neighbors. This article assumes
the installation of the following programs, links to their source or
binaries will be provided at the end of this article.
*The Linux operating system, or a live cd
*nmap
*nessus
*traceroute
*nc
*sing
*tcpdump
*wireshark(ethereal)
(I may or may not use all these specifically in this article, however
they are great programs, and thus the reader is advised to install them
and read their respective manuals.) In trying to be as distro neutral as
possible, no installation instructions will be provided. However as a
note to those using some form of ubuntu this tutorial assumes the use of
su -, and will not explicitly say sudo, so either set a password for your
root user with
$sudo passwd root
and switch your user to root with "su -", or remember to use sudo wherever
I issue a command as root.(to note all root command prompts will be noted
with # and user prompts with a $).
Now that that is out of the way lets start gathering information.
First lets find out our IP on this network
#ifconfig
This will show us a lot of information, right now what we are
interested in is the label for "inet addr:" probably under eth0, or
whatever NIC you are currently using to connect to the network. Note this
address, it will be quite useful. Most likely it will be in one of the
following ranges.
10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255
For the sake of this example we will assume your IP is 192.168.0.103,
with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. Lets start by seeing what hosts
are up on our subnet with a ping sweep.
#nmap -sP 192.168.0.0/24
You should get back a list of hosts up, as well as some of the mac
addresses, and possibly some info about the computers.
Starting Nmap 4.11 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2007-01-10
15:29 EST
Host 192.168.0.1 appears to be up.
MAC Address: 00:17:9A:24:E6:88 (D-Link)
Host 192.168.0.100 appears to be up.
MAC Address: 00:0C:6E:74:BD:B9 (Asustek Computer)
Host 192.168.0.101 appears to be up.
MAC Address: 00:15:E9:2C:36:3B (D-Link)
Host 192.168.0.102 appears to be up.
MAC Address: 00:15:E9:2C:85:DA (D-Link)
Host 192.168.0.103 appears to be up.
Nmap finished: 256 IP addresses (5 hosts up) scanned in 9.789 second
So now we have some information. We know that there are 5 hosts up on
our subnet including our own. Taking a look at the IP addresses,
192.168.0.1 is a good candidate for a router. especially in relation to
the other IPs. When we trace the packets route to Google with traceroute,
it confirms that the packets are indeed routed through this IP.
#traceroute www.google.com
(output omitted to avoid redundancy)
You are now ready to start looking at individual hosts on your
network. First lets take a look at some of nmap's functions. There are
two main types of scans that nmap can perform (as well as several others
not discussed here). The first is a simple tcp connect(-sT), which uses
the connect() syscall to actually attempt to make a tcp connection, then
immediately breaking it off. This easily allows nmap to see what ports
are open on a host, because they are the ones it is able to connect to.
However you will almost certainly be logged by the host, as even the
crappiest Detection software is going to notice that many connections in
a row. You do not need root privileges to run this scan. The second most common scan nmap performs is known as the tcp SYN
scan(-sS). The way this works is nmap sends a tcp SYN(Synchronize) flagged
packet to a port. If a port is closed, the host will respond with a reset
flag. if the port is filtered nmap will get no response, and finally if
the port is open the host will return an acknowledged flagged packet, at
which point nmap will immediately respond with a reset flagged packet
before a full TCP connection occurs. This will often prevent the scan
from showing in the application logs, however most modern firewalls will
pick up on the scan attempt, although this can normally be avoided by
changing nmap's timing and utilizing other options we will discuss later.
The syn scan does require root access to the machine.
Finally before we start exploring hosts lets take a look at a few of
the options nmap offers us. First lets look at the timing options. These
are useful because a host is less likely to notice a scan if the packets
are sent at longer intervals. This is set with the -T flag, the options
are 0 to 5, with 0 being around 5 minutes between ports, and 5 being
around a .3 second delay, at the 0 time level you are very unlikely to be
noticed, however a full scan would take forever, but with the fastest
(level 5) data could be lost. I recommend a level between 1 and 3. Next
lets look at IP Decoys. Decoying is a fairly effective way of hiding your
IP. Basically it does exactly what it sounds like, it sends not only
packets with your IP, but also other packets with spoofed IPs. Therefore,
to the host, it looks as if several IP's are scanning it. This is done
with the -D flag followed by the decoy IPs separated by commas. Nmap will
randomly place your IP unless you do so explicitly. I recommend using the
IPs of other active hosts, or it will be fairly obvious who is the actual
scanner. Nmap can also be set up to use only spoofed IPs with the -S
flag, however you would never get an answer since the host does not know
your IP address, so for our purposes it is not very useful. For those
interested, your mac can also be spoofed using the -spoof-mac flag. Now
for some of the more useful scan options, the first is OS detection.
Although not always entirely accurate, nmap usually tells you if it is
not positive. OS detection is activated with the -O flag. Another useful
option is the -sV, which tells nmap to probe for what service and version
are listening on a port. This is quite useful when looking for possible
exploits. Readers may wish to note that both the -O and -sV flags can be
set, by setting the -A flag. On a final note, if the user knows that a
host is up, one may want to pass the -P0 flag, which tells nmap not to
ping the host, keeping your scan much quieter. One may also want to use
the -v option for more verbose information. I encourage everyone to run
wireshark and tcpdump while learning to use nmap, seeing exactly what
you are doing, is often important to learning, it can be quite
interesting as well. Now armed with our new knowledge, lets find some
information about a host.
# nmap -sS -sV -O 192.168.0.100
Starting Nmap 4.11 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at
2007-01-10 23:57 EST
Interesting ports on 192.168.0.100:
Not shown: 1676 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
135/tcp open msrpc Microsoft Windows RPC
139/tcp open netbios-ssn
445/tcp open microsoft-ds Microsoft Windows XP microsoft-ds
1026/tcp open tcpwrapped
MAC Address: 00:0C:6E:74:BD:B9 (Asustek Computer)
Device type: general purpose
Running: Microsoft Windows 2003/.NET|NT/2K/XP
OS details: Microsoft Windows 2003 Server or XP SP2
Service Info: OS: Windows
Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 11.934
seconds
So what does this tell us, lets have a look. First off it is running
either win2k3 or XPsp2. It is running 4 services, with only opened and
closed ports, none filtered. This process can be repeated with multiple
hosts individually, or nmap can be told to scan a number of hosts.
If one is doing this scanning for the purposes of security audits,
and not just curiosity, I recommend several other things. Firstly
familiarize yourself with the nmap manual ($man nmap), the are several
scans not covered here which can give more information, especially in
regards to filtered ports, udp scans, and other interesting stuff.
Also a great tool to have in your security arsenal is nessus. When you
come across an interesting host in your scans that you wish to audit
for security purposes, I strongly suggest starting the nessus service
and scanning the host, it is an amazing tool. Just want to remind
everyone again to not be afraid to look at wireshark or tcpdump to see
what is happening, also take a look at the programs (listed earlier)
that I did not get too in this article, sing is also quite useful and
a lot more powerful then ping. Happy scanning.
*Programs
Check your specific distro most of these programs are probably available
though repositories for you package management system, apt-get, yum
etcetera.
nmap http://insecure.org/nmap/
nessus www.nessus.org
traceroute www.traceroute.org
sing http://sourceforge.net/projects/sing
netcat http://netcat.sourceforge.net/
-Nick S aka Nickisgod1
nickisgod1@gmail.com
|--------------|--------------\______________/--------------|------------|
: |-----|----------------/ \-----------------|---| :
. Section 8 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
The World Outside
Every time I take a ride through the countryside it makes me wonder. While
it's not for everyone I have to say I love the scenery. I watch the green
hills roll by, the cattle grazing in the fields and the corn peacefully
swaying in the breeze but wait... there's something I can see that seems
to follow me wherever I go. No matter how far I go, no matter where I look
that something is technology. I look left and I see a string of
electricity pylons wired together like robotic scarecrows, I look right
and I see the pylons continue off in to the distance toward the town. Does
it make you wonder where it's all going to end? We enjoy everything
electrical from TVs to toasters, blenders to washing machines, lights and
sounds all provided to us courtesy of electricity. Electricity also gives
life to the big box of tricks you're viewing this file on right now - your
computer. From the lowly ICs of yesteryear to the powerhouse multi-GHz,
multi-core, 64 bit monsters of today, they're all essentially the same;
you put data in, you manipulate it and it gets spat out of the end as more
data. The things is though that all of this, the pylons, the toasters, the
Athlons and Pentiums make me wonder where we're going with all of this
technology. Surely it has to end somewhere, doesn't it? We continue to try
to force out new pieces of kit that might be faster, might have new
features, might be able to do more than the previous incarnation but do we
need it? Merely a century ago we were using pens and paper as our Notepad,
puppets and theatres as our VLC and orchestras as our WinAmp so what
changed? It's all the same thing isn't it?
We continue to buy, to purchase more and more equipment, more and more
power with more and more bells and whistles but do you need that Vista
powered beast with upwards of 2GB RAM and a dual core 2GHz CPU when a
7.14MHz M68000 Amiga or a 25MHz i80486 can do almost the same thing?
"But they can't play Far Cry" I hear you yell, or perhaps "It can't play
my videos!". Well, that's completely true but do you need to play Far Cry
or watch videos? A 486 can let you connect with like-minded souls so why
would MSN or AIM need Windows XP? An Amiga can play music so why does
iTunes need such a hefty system to run well? While we're on the subject
of old machines why does your mom have a Pentium 4 when all she does it
write some letters to her cousin or use it as a glorified PDA? Why isn't
a Pentium II good any more if it was good 10 years ago? I bet it'd still
work... I think it's easy to miss the fact that a computer is layer upon
layer of finely tuned systems all miraculously working together and we
cry when we have a BSOD or kernel panic. You wonder why errors occur when
these machines are chewing on thousands of calculations per second. We
continue to demand that little bit more every year when what we have right
in front of us now wasn't even dreamt of 20 years ago. I have to admit
that we wouldn't have these machines at all if people hadn't demanded
more, hadn't experimented and pushed the technology that one step further
but there has to be an end, surely we can't just continue to make our
machines more and more powerful until the day the planet gets wiped out...
I'll leave you to ponder on that for a moment as I skip over to another
aspect of ever improving technology. We complain about 'big brother'
watching our every move and telling us what we can't do but do we need to
accept it? While they're all worrying about DVD piracy and who's leeching
the new Britney Spears album we could go and experience something that
doesn't have a monitor. Go for a picnic, go to a theatre and watch a
play, go see a concert. Granted these things aren't police-free but you
can enjoy them without fear that you're accidentally doing something
illegal (unless you whoop out your handycam so you can be the first
scener to XviD Les Miserable). We seem to have forgotten there's life
outside. Perhaps though it's because we're not so fond of people. I know
I'm not. Really though, if you find a quiet spot somewhere in a field with
a friend or two, perhaps even a lady friend or a strapping young lad with
a basket of wine, fruit and cakes you're not likely to encounter obnoxious
irritating idiots and much less script kiddies or rude gamers who are just
there to scream HAX!! (and much much worse, I'm sure) over TeamSpeak. You
get to choose who you go with, you get to choose what you do. I think
sometimes we forget that we don't have to accept what the internet feeds
us just like we say about the TV. I appreciate that it's not always easy
to get away from it all if you're smack bang in the middle of a huge city
or whatever but just think for a moment, what could you do? There's always
something...
While you're watching the fat lady sing or the birds twitter though you
can forget all those Japanese police robots too. Do these make you think
it's all gone a bit too far? They have their uses I'm sure, perhaps in
situations where it's a little dangerous for a real fleshbag to stride on
in and start trash talking the dude with the gun but whatever do you
imagine the Victorians would think if you put an autonimous robot on the
streets... they'd probably be horrified... now why aren't we? We're
striving to make our technology more user friendly to the point of trying
to make computers act, talk, think and move like us, rendering lifelike
images of humans that are almost indistinguishable from a real member of
our species, creating robots with skin. Isn't this a sign that we're
missing the point? Computers are tools like a flint, a hammer or a knife
so why not treat them as such? You never heard of someone trying to make a
chainsaw look like a cow, right? This has been something of an incoherent
rant for the most part but I guess the point of it was that you don't need
to be in front of a computer to have a good time. Sure,we can go out and
drink ourselves stupid and come home and compile the latest kernel or
leech the latest movie but while computers may be an integral part of our
lives they are only tools. There are many other tools you can use to have
a good time (yes, alcohol's one of them but there's still even more to
choose from). Go out, take a book to the park and sit 'neath the old
weeping willow and while away the hours in a world of humour, pain,
horror, romance or just plain poetry. Turn off the monitor/TV and go for
a walk, maybe take a friend or a partner and talk about all the stuff
you could be talking about. Anything, there are so many possible things
you could do... We did without computers before then we did fine with
low spec computers so what's wrong with a PII being your main rig? You
only need $6000 worth of kit if you rely on it to make a living or rely
on it to live for you. Go forth! Don't take the car unless you need it to
get somewhere nice, go to the beach, a park, anything! In fact, it
doesn't matter where you go if you've got good company. 'Do lunch' with
some people, maybe an evening meal. Oh, and one more thing; you don't need
to get drunk to enjoy alcohol, it's a tool, don't overuse it. I'm
stuggling to find an end to this thing, so I'll nid thee farewell and hope
you enjoy exploring the better side of being sociable. Later.
Props to gameman73 for being my personal backup service, without whom
this article would have been consigned to the eternal bit-bucket in the
sky.
-Moonlit
Moonlit@live.com
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: |-----|----------------/ \-----------------|---| :
. Section 9 . |--------------| |--------------| . Code .
Intro to C and C++
Many of you will be reading this because you wish to learn
how to code or you know how to code and want to learn something
new. I will generally be using C and C++. I will assume
anyone reading this has little to no knowledge of C or C++.
To start off with I'll show you simple console input and output
in C and C++. To follow these examples you will need a C/C++
compiler with a standard C library, and standard C++ library
I will provide a list of good compilers at the end of the
section. It is a good idea to read your compilers help files
to understand how to use it.
*Console output
Console output is basically display any type of output on
a console (terminal). Generally this is usually text.
For the first example we are going to output 'Trust
Your Technolust' onto the console. After I will example
what the lines of code do.
[code]
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Trust Your Technolust!\n");
return 0;
}
[/code]
Compile this with your compiler and run the executable. If
everything went well it should display 'Trust Your Technolust!'
on the console. Now I will explain what each of these lines
is doing.
1. #include <stdio.h>
#include is a preprocessor directive which tells the preprocessor
to include the file 'stdio.h'. The file stdio.h contains all
the function prototypes for standard input/output functions. Which
means we can use them in our project.
2. int main()
This is the main function of the program, and should always exist
in your code. The 'int' part is the type that the function
returns. Sometimes you will see 'void main()' or maybe even see
'int main(int argc, char** argv)', I will explain these another
time.
3. {
Functions require you to use curly braces. You will get used
to using these in your code.
4. printf("Trust Your Technolust!\n");
This is a function that prints text to the console screen. We
give it the argument "Trust Your Technolust!\n". This is a
string. The '\n' you see at the end is an escape character.
The one we are using means insert a newline. Also remember
to put the semicolon after function calls.
5. return 0
This tells the program to return 0 when it finished. Returning
0 means that the program didn't have any errors when executing.
6. }
We must remember to close our curly braces. This is all the
code we need. it should look like the following code:
[code]
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
printf("Trust Your Technolust!\n");
return 0;
}
[/code]
When you compile this code, and run the executable. It should
display the output 'Trust Your Technolust!', and exit.
Now we will look at the exact same application, but written in
C++ instead.
[code]
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
cout << "Trust Your Technolust!" << endl;
return 0;
}
[/code]
As you can see this code is pretty different from it's C counter
part. Now we will look at each line of code, and see what it
does.
1. #include <iostream>
This does the same thing as in the C example, except it is
including the header file "iostream". You will see that
many C++ headers don't have the .h extension.
2. using namespae std;
This allows use to use the functions in the std namespace
without having to prefix them with 'std::'. This isn't
that important at the minute, but remember to include it.
3. int main(int argc, char** argv)
This is the same as explained in the C example.
4. {
The usual open bracket for the main function.
5. cout << "Trust Your Technolust!" << endl;
This is line that outputs the string to the console. As you
can see it is very different. 'cout' is the standard output
defined as a steam object. The stream object is used in
connection with the insertion operator, which is two
less-than symbols '<<'. 'endl' is a manipulator that
adds a newline. 'endl' also flushes buffered streams.
Generally 'cout' will be an unbuffered stream.
6. return 0
This is the same as explained in the C example.
7. }
This is the same as the C example. Always remember to close
your opened brackets.
When you compile and run this application, it should do exactly
the same as the above C example. Now we have looked at standard
output, I am going to show you standard input. Which is basically
getting input from the keyboard.
I will start off by showing you the example, and then explaining
each line.
[code]
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
char name[20];
printf("Please enter your name: ");
scanf("%s", name);
printf("Hello, %s!\n", name);
return 0;
}
[/code]
Please understand I am not including any error checking, because it
is only the basics. When you become more experience you will be
able to incorporate the needed error checking.
1. #include <stdio.h>
This is needed for the standard input/output functions in the standard
C library.
2. int main(int argc, char** argv)
This is the main function as usual.
3. {
The open bracket, get used to it you will be seeing lots of them ;-).
4. char name[20];
This is our first use of variables. To store a name we need to store
a number of characters in an array. A string is basically an array
of characters in C and C++. So we declared an array called 'name'
that can store 20 characters, enough for the average name.
5. printf("Please enter your name: ");
This is just displaying the question we are asking the user, using
the same function we used in the C example for output.
6. scanf("%s", name);
The function 'scanf' scans the standard input for the intput required
and stores them in the specified variables. So '%s' means we are taking
a string from the standard input, and we're storing it in our variable
called 'name'.
7. printf("Hello, %s!\n", name);
This shows us how we can use the 'printf' function is display output
that includes variables as well. The string we want to display is
'Hello, %s!\n', so we are displaying a string variable, and it's passed
as the second argument to the 'printf' function.
8. return 0;
This is the same as explained above.
9. }
Remember to close those open brackets ;-).
When you compile and execute this application, it'll prompt you
to enter your name, when you do and press enter, it'll display
'Hello, name!', where name is your name, then exit.
Now we will look at the same example in C++.
[code]
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
char name[20];
cout << "Please enter your name: ";
cin >> name;
cout << "Hello, " << name << "!" << endl;
return 0;
}
[/code]
1. #include <iostream>
Include the <iostream> header as usual for C++ programs.
2. using namespace std;
Allows us to use the functions without prefixing 'std::'.
3. int main(int argc, char** argv)
The main function.
4. {
The infamous open bracket.
5. char name[20];
This is the same as the variable declared in the C example.
6. cout << "Please enter your name: ";
This is the output for our question to the user.
7. cin >> name;
Now we are introduced to the standard input stream object 'cin'.
We use the extraction operator, which is two greater-than
symbols to get the string from standard input, and store it in
'name'.
8. cout << "Hello, " << name << "!" << endl;
This is outputting the message 'Hello, name!' to the user.
9. return 0;
This is the same as all the above examples.
10. }
Remember to close the open brackets.
When you run this program, it should do exactly the same as the C
program. There is one thing you have to remember when using 'cin'
with strings. It will only get the string up to the first blank
character. This means we can only get single words. I will
expand on this in the next issue.
Next issue I will expand on the different data types, and some
selection and iteration.
*Appendix
C/C++ Compilers:
For Windows:
Dev-C++ - http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
Visual C++ 2005 Express - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/visualc/
default.aspx (All on one line)
For Linux:
Ubuntu and derivatives - sudo apt-get install build-essential
(Most distributions have gcc and g++ installed.)
-TomB (Tom Bell)
tomb@nubuntu.org
http://ownthebox.net
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: |-----|----------------/ \-----------------|---| :
. Section 10 . |--------------| |--------------| . .
Voice Activated Mac Media Center aka Voice Row
*Preface
There are millions it seems media centers out there of many different
types and complexity but nothing matches the coolness of the old Star Trek
episodes where the computer did whatever you said, literally. This project
is not the holodeck but trust me it's just as cool. Even better is having
a solid media center or media center front end can be had for as little as
200 dollars. Plus you can talk to it.
*Old Mac Vs New Mac
The first thing you have to look at when getting started with this project
is do i have an old mac or a new mac. The reasoning behind this is we are
going to be using the Front Row software as the base and it only comes
with newer macs. If you have a newer mac with Front Row you can skip step
1 and go straight to step 2.
Step 1: Getting Front Row on an Older Mac:
If your older mac is running Tiger 10.4.4 your all set. You can
download Front Row from apple and install with no problems. If your
not running this version of Tiger your going to have to get your hands
dirty with some quirky hacks. Instead of trying to explain that giant
mess here I am going to point you to where i learned at this link
(http://www.andrewescobar.com/frontrow) from Andrew Escober's website.
He has a great tutorial on getting Enabler to work and get Front Row
installed on those older macs. Another quirk with older macs is they
do not offer the Apple remote used for Front Row. There are a lot of
ways around this using keyboard commands etc but i prefer to use a
wireless remote from a third party like Keyspan
(http://www.keyspan.com). There RF Remote for Front Row Part Number:
ER-RF1 is a perfect replacement for the Apple Remote.
Step 2: Let there be Voice
Once you have Front Row set up you should be able to hit Command+Esc
and Front Row will open. You can hit it again to close the software.
We will now take advantage of this keyboard shortcut via voice. A
quick tip is to go into Keyboard & Mouse under System Preferences
and disable the Front Row short cut because the next Step does not
seem to work unless it's shut off. When you try and type the command
it just opens Front Row instead of recording the strokes. Once you
have that shut off go back into System Preferences and click on Speech.
Make sure "Listen continuously with keyword" is set to on and the
keyword is Computer. Now turn Speakable Items on and say the following
command "Define A Keyboard Command" a dialog box will pop open asking
for a set of keyboard strokes. Hold down Command and press Esc it will
show up as Command+Esc if so click ok. Where it says "By Saying this
Phrase" type in the phrase you wish to use. In my case Open Front Row.
Click on the Any Application radial and click Save. Once you have done
this go back into Keyboard & Mouse and turn the shortcut back on. Once
this is ready say "Open Front Row" and front row should open. Say it
again and it should close. You can set up another command using
"Close Front Row" if you would like.
Step 3: My table of Commands
Here is a quick list of commands i have set up for voice activation.
Of course once you have the first one setup the sky is the limit on
this hack. You can control most of your Apple machine using voice
commands. It might be a cool idea to learn all of these and impress
you friends.
Open Front Row - Command+Esc
Left - Left Arrow Key
Right - Right Arrow Key
Up - Up Arrow Key
Down - Down Arrow Key
Enter - Return Key (Selects an item with in front row.)
Back - Shift+Esc (Esc seems to send you back to the desktop
where as Shift+Esc will just take you back a page in Front
Row. If your at the turn table. it will also slowly take you
back to the desktop which looks
very cool.)
Once you have all of these set to voice commands your ready
to control your front Row media center with nothing but the
sound of your own voice.
Step 4: Notes/Contact Info
- Episode 2 of my show Random Acts Of Anarchy
(http://RAOATV.Blogspot.com)
should have a video demo of this in action.
- Any questions can be sent to UndergroundInformation@Gmail.Com
with "Voice Row" in the subject line.
- If you would like to follow my progress with this project using a
G4 Mac Mini you can hit up my blog (http://www.Shinmaryuu.vox.com).
I am doing a lot with media centers so it's becoming a good
resource for information.
-Shinmaryuu
http://www.Shinmaryuu.vox.com
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