Saturday, October 30, 2010

HOW TO DOWNLOAD MOVIES BY BITTORRENT

Bit Torrent Tutorials

The first things you need to know about using Bit Torrent:
-- Bit Torrent is aimed at broadband users (or any connection better than dialup).
-- Sharing is highly appreciated, and sharing is what keeps bit torrent alive.
-- A bit torrent file (*.torrent) contains information about the piece structure of the download (more on this later)
-- The method of downloading is not your conventional type of download. Since downloads do not come in as one
big chunk, you are able to download from many people at once, increasing your download speeds. There may be
100 "pieces" to a file, or 20,000+ pieces, all depending on what you're downloading. Pieces are usually small (under 200kb)
-- The speeds are based upon people sharing as they download, and seeders. Seeders are people who constantly
share in order to keep torrents alive. Usually seeders are on fast connections (10mb or higher).

In this tutorial, I will be describing it all using a bit torrent client called Azureus. This client is used to decode the .torrent files into a useable format to download from other peers. From here on out, I will refer to Bit Torrent as BT.

Which BT client you use, is purely up to you. I have tried them all, and my personal favorite is Azureus for many reasons. A big problem with most BT clients out there, is that they are extremely CPU intensive, usually using 100% of your cpu power during the whole process. This is the number one reason I use Azureus. Another, is a recently released plug-in that enables you to browse all current files listed on suprnova.org (the #1 source for torrent downloads).

Before you use the plug-in, take a look at /http://www.suprnova.org, and browse the files. Hold your mouse over the links, and you'll notice every file ends in .torrent. This is the BT file extension. Usually, .torrent files are very small, under 200kb. They contain a wealth of information about the file you want to download. A .torrent file can contain just 1 single file, or a a directory full of files and more directories. But regardless, every download is split up into hundreds or thousands of pieces. The pieces make it much easier to download at higher speeds. Back to suprnova.org. Look at the columns:

Added | Name | Filesize | Seeds | DLs (and a few more which aren't very useful.)

I'll break this down.
Added: Self explanitory, its the date the torrent was added.
Name: Also self explanitory.
Filesize: Duh
Seeds: This is how many people are strictly UPLOADING, or sharing. These people are the ones that keep .torrent files alive. By "alive", I mean, if there's no one sharing the .torrent file, no one can download.
DLs: This is how many people currently downloading that particular torrent. They also help keep the torrent alive as they share while they download.

It's always best to download using a torrent that has a decent amount of seeders and downloaders, this way you can be assured there's a good chance your download will finish. The more the better.

Now that you should understand how torrent files work, and how to use them, on to Azureus!
First, get JAVA! You need this to run Azureus, as java is what powers it. Get Java here: /http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html
Next, get Azureus at: /http://azureus.sourceforge.net
Next, get the Suprnovalister plugin from /http://s93732957.onlinehome.us/storage/suprnovalister.jar

Install Java JRE before you do ANYTHING.

Install Azureus, and then in the installation folder, create 2 more folders. ./Plugins/suprnovalister (For example, if you installed Azureus to C:\PROGRAM FILES\AZUREUS, create C:\PROGRAM FILES\AZUREUS\PLUGINS\SUPRNOVALISTER). Next, put the suprnovalister.jar file that you downloaded, in that folder.

Load up Azureus, and if you want, go through the settings and personalize it.

The tab labeled "My Torrents" is the section of Azureus you need the most often. That lists all your transfers, uploads and downloads. It shows every bit of information you could possibly want to know about torrents you download.

In the menu bar, go to View > Plugins > Suprnova Lister. This will open up a new tab in Azureus. Click on "Update Mirror". This will get a mirror site of suprnova.org containing all current torrent files available. Once a mirror is grabbed, choose a category from the drop-down box to the left and click "Update". Wah-lah, all the available downloads appear in the main chart above. Just double click a download you want, and bang its starting to download. Open the "My Torrents" tab again to view and make sure your download started.

After your download has finished, be nice, and leave the torrent transferring. So people can get pieces of the file from you, just as you got pieces from other people.

Alternatively, if you don't want to use the plugin... you can just head to suprnova.org and download files to any folder. Then go to File > Open > .torrent File in Azureus.

This should about wrap it up for the Bit Torrent Tutorial. If you guys think of anything I should add, or whatnot, just let me know and I'll check into it.

BEST XP KEYBOARD SHORCUT

Getting used to using your keyboard exclusively and leaving your mouse behind will make you much more efficient at performing any task on any Windows system. I use the following keyboard shortcuts every day:

Windows key + R = Run menu

This is usually followed by:
cmd = Command Prompt
iexplore + "web address" = Internet Explorer
compmgmt.msc = Computer Management
dhcpmgmt.msc = DHCP Management
dnsmgmt.msc = DNS Management
services.msc = Services
eventvwr = Event Viewer
dsa.msc = Active Directory Users and Computers
dssite.msc = Active Directory Sites and Services
Windows key + E = Explorer

ALT + Tab = Switch between windows

ALT, Space, X = Maximize window

CTRL + Shift + Esc = Task Manager

Windows key + Break = System properties

Windows key + F = Search

Windows key + D = Hide/Display all windows

CTRL + C = copy

CTRL + X = cut

CTRL + V = paste

Also don't forget about the "Right-click" key next to the right Windows key on your keyboard. Using the arrows and that key can get just about anything done once you've opened up any program.

Keyboard Shortcuts

[Alt] and [Esc] Switch between running applications

[Alt] and letter Select menu item by underlined letter

[Ctrl] and [Esc] Open Program Menu

[Ctrl] and [F4] Close active document or group windows (does not work with some applications)

[Alt] and [F4] Quit active application or close current window

[Alt] and [-] Open Control menu for active document

Ctrl] Lft., Rt. arrow Move cursor forward or back one word

Ctrl] Up, Down arrow Move cursor forward or back one paragraph

[F1] Open Help for active application

Windows+M Minimize all open windows

Shift+Windows+M Undo minimize all open windows

Windows+F1 Open Windows Help

Windows+Tab Cycle through the Taskbar buttons

Windows+Break Open the System Properties dialog box

acessability shortcuts

Right SHIFT for eight seconds........ Switch FilterKeys on and off.

Left ALT +left SHIFT +PRINT SCREEN....... Switch High Contrast on and off.

Left ALT +left SHIFT +NUM LOCK....... Switch MouseKeys on and off.

SHIFT....... five times Switch StickyKeys on and off.

NUM LOCK...... for five seconds Switch ToggleKeys on and off.

explorer shortcuts

END....... Display the bottom of the active window.

HOME....... Display the top of the active window.

NUM LOCK+ASTERISK....... on numeric keypad (*) Display all subfolders under the selected folder.

NUM LOCK+PLUS SIGN....... on numeric keypad (+) Display the contents of the selected folder.

NUM LOCK+MINUS SIGN....... on numeric keypad (-) Collapse the selected folder.

LEFT ARROW...... Collapse current selection if it's expanded, or select parent folder.

RIGHT ARROW....... Display current selection if it's collapsed, or select first subfolder.

Type the following commands in your Run Box (Windows Key + R) or Start Run

devmgmt.msc = Device Manager
msinfo32 = System Information
cleanmgr = Disk Cleanup
ntbackup = Backup or Restore Wizard (Windows Backup Utility)
mmc = Microsoft Management Console
excel = Microsoft Excel (If Installed)
msaccess = Microsoft Access (If Installed)
powerpnt = Microsoft PowerPoint (If Installed)
winword = Microsoft Word (If Installed)
frontpg = Microsoft FrontPage (If Installed)
notepad = Notepad
wordpad = WordPad
calc = Calculator
msmsgs = Windows Messenger
mspaint = Microsoft Paint
wmplayer = Windows Media Player
rstrui = System Restore
netscp6 = Netscape 6.x
netscp = Netscape 7.x
netscape = Netscape 4.x
waol = America Online
control = Opens the Control Panel
control printers = Opens the Printers Dialog

internetbrowser

type in u're adress "google", then press [Right CTRL] and [Enter]
add www. and .com to word and go to it

For Windows XP:

Copy. CTRL+C
Cut. CTRL+X
Paste. CTRL+V
Undo. CTRL+Z
Delete. DELETE
Delete selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin. SHIFT+DELETE
Copy selected item. CTRL while dragging an item
Create shortcut to selected item. CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item
Rename selected item. F2
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word. CTRL+RIGHT ARROW
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word. CTRL+LEFT ARROW
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph. CTRL+DOWN ARROW
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph. CTRL+UP ARROW
Highlight a block of text. CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys
Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text within a document. SHIFT with any of the arrow keys
Select all. CTRL+A
Search for a file or folder. F3
View properties for the selected item. ALT+ENTER
Close the active item, or quit the active program. ALT+F4
Opens the shortcut menu for the active window. ALT+SPACEBAR
Close the active document in programs that allow you to have multiple documents open simultaneously. CTRL+F4
Switch between open items. ALT+TAB
Cycle through items in the order they were opened. ALT+ESC
Cycle through screen elements in a window or on the desktop. F6
Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer. F4
Display the shortcut menu for the selected item. SHIFT+F10
Display the System menu for the active window. ALT+SPACEBAR
Display the Start menu. CTRL+ESC
Display the corresponding menu. ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name
Carry out the corresponding command. Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu
Activate the menu bar in the active program. F10
Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu. RIGHT ARROW
Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu. LEFT ARROW
Refresh the active window. F5
View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows Explorer. BACKSPACE
Cancel the current task. ESC
SHIFT when you insert a CD into the CD-ROM drive Prevent the CD from automatically playing.

Use these keyboard shortcuts for dialog boxes:

To Press
Move forward through tabs. CTRL+TAB
Move backward through tabs. CTRL+SHIFT+TAB
Move forward through options. TAB
Move backward through options. SHIFT+TAB
Carry out the corresponding command or select the corresponding option. ALT+Underlined letter
Carry out the command for the active option or button. ENTER
Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box. SPACEBAR
Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons. Arrow keys
Display Help. F1
Display the items in the active list. F4
Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box. BACKSPACE

If you have a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, or any other compatible keyboard that includes the Windows logo key and the Application key , you can use these keyboard shortcuts:

Display or hide the Start menu. WIN Key
Display the System Properties dialog box. WIN Key+BREAK
Show the desktop. WIN Key+D
Minimize all windows. WIN Key+M
Restores minimized windows. WIN Key+Shift+M
Open My Computer. WIN Key+E
Search for a file or folder. WIN Key+F
Search for computers. CTRL+WIN Key+F
Display Windows Help. WIN Key+F1
Lock your computer if you are connected to a network domain, or switch users if you are not connected to a network domain. WIN Key+ L
Open the Run dialog box. WIN Key+R
Open Utility Manager. WIN Key+U

accessibility keyboard shortcuts:

Switch FilterKeys on and off. Right SHIFT for eight seconds
Switch High Contrast on and off. Left ALT+left SHIFT+PRINT SCREEN
Switch MouseKeys on and off. Left ALT +left SHIFT +NUM LOCK
Switch StickyKeys on and off. SHIFT five times
Switch ToggleKeys on and off. NUM LOCK for five seconds
Open Utility Manager. WIN Key+U

shortcuts you can use with Windows Explorer:

Display the bottom of the active window. END
Display the top of the active window. HOME
Display all subfolders under the selected folder. NUM LOCK+ASTERISK on numeric keypad (*)
Display the contents of the selected folder. NUM LOCK+PLUS SIGN on numeric keypad (+)
Collapse the selected folder. NUM LOCK+MINUS SIGN on numeric keypad (-)
Collapse current selection if it's expanded, or select parent folder. LEFT ARROW
Display current selection if it's collapsed, or select first subfolder. RIGHT ARROW

HOW TO MAKE XP FASTER

Boot Winxp Fast

Follow the following steps

1. Open notepad.exe, type "del c:\windows\prefetch\ntosboot-*.* /q" (without the quotes) & save as "ntosboot.bat" in c:\
2. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "gpedit.msc".
3. Double click "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and double click again on "Shutdown" in the right window.
4. In the new window, click "add", "Browse", locate your "ntosboot.bat" file & click "Open".
5. Click "OK", "Apply" & "OK" once again to exit.
6. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "devmgmt.msc".
7. Double click on "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
8. Right click on "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Properties".
9. Select the "Advanced Settings" tab then on the device or 1 that doesn't have 'device type' greyed out select 'none' instead of 'autodetect' & click "OK".
10. Right click on "Secondary IDE channel", select "Properties" and repeat step 9.
11. Reboot your computer.

HOW TO BYPASS WEB FILTERS in your school

How to bypass web filters

There are several occasions where you will be at a public te How to bypass web filters
rminal, and require access to a particular website that is blocked for some reason or another. How to bypass these restrictions is a very common question, and will be covered here.

Lets pretend for a moment that the Internet is made up of 26 websites, A-Z. The web filter blocks your browser from accessing sites X-Z, but not sites A-W. Simply make the browser think you’re going to A-
W. There are a variety of ways to do this:

Proxy Servers:
This is a list of http proxies. These sites may not be up forever, so you may need to search for “free http proxy” or “public proxy servers” or other similar terms.

Proxy server lists:
http://www.aliveproxy.com
http://www.multiproxy.org
http://www.publicproxyservers.com/index.html
http://www.tehbox.com/proxy
http://www.proxz.com
http://www.proxy4free.com/index.html
http://free-proxies.com

Now that you have a list of proxies, you would open IE (internet explorer) and click on Tools > Internet Options > Connections > LAN Settings > Advanced. Enter the address and port of one of the servers from the list in the proper area (http) and make sure the “use a proxy server for your LAN” option is selected. Remember to replace the proxy and port at your terminal to the original when you're done.

*Note: Some proxies listed may not work, and this method may decrease your surfing speed. By trying various entries, you’ll find one that works, or works faster.

The infamous translation trick:
Go to a web page translation site and use their services to “translate a page to English” thus accessing the blocked page through their trusted site.

You’ll notice that several translation sites are blocked, but by using less popular ones, this method can still be effective. Here is a list of some translation services. Again, these sites may not be up forever, so you may need to search for them.

http://babelfish.altavista.com
http://world.altavista.com
http://translation.langenberg.com
http://freetranslation.com/web.thm

Url Scripting:

Url scripting is the easiest method. It works on a select few web filters and is based on the same principal as the translation trick. By typing and address like “www.yahoo.com@www.restricted_site.com the filter will not go into effect as it recognizes the trusted site (in this case yahoo.com)

Other tricks:
Simply open the command prompt and type:
Ping restricted.com ? restricted.com obviously being the restricted site
At this point you can take down the IP address (ex. 216.109.124.73) and enter it into the browser. If access to the command prompt is also restricted, see “How to bypass restrictions to get to the command prompt.” If this article has been taken from information leak, then know that it involves anything from opening the browser, selecting view > source, then saving it as X.bat and opening it to opening a folder or browser and typing in the location of cmd.exe depending on the OS. I will not go into further, as this a completely different topic.

Use https://restrictedsite.com as referring to it as a secured site may confuse the filter.

Note: These are ancient methods that many new filters defend against, but still may be applicable in your situation. If not, a little history never hurt anyone.

Web based Proxies:
Another one of the easier, yet effective methods include web based proxies. These are simple in the fact that you just enter the restricted address and surf! Some of these have some restrictions, like daily usage limits, etc but you can also use another proxy (perhaps one that sucks, like a text only) to bypass their restrictions as well. Here is a list of some:

http://proxify.com]http://proxify.com
http://www.anonymizer.com/index.cgi]http://www.anonymizer.com/index.cgi
http://www.guardster.com/]http://www.guardster.com/
http://anonymouse.ws/anonwww.html]http://anonymouse.ws/anonwww.html
http://www.the-cloak.com/login.html]http://www.the-cloak.com/login.html
https://www.megaproxy.com/freesurf]https://www.megaproxy.com/freesurf
http://www.anonymizer.ru]http://www.anonymizer.ru
https://nadaily.com/cgi-bin/nph-proxyb.cgi]https://nadaily.com/cgi-bin/nph-proxyb.cgi
http://www.userbeam.de/cgi-bin/nph-userbeam.cgi]http://www.userbeam.de/cgi-bin/nph-userbeam.cgi
http://www.free2.surffreedom.com/nph-free.cgi]http://www.free2.surffreedom.com/nph-free.cgi

Proxy Programs:
There are many proxy programs that allow you to surf anonymously that are more or less based on the same topics we’ve covered here. I’ve added them just to cover the topic thoroughly:

http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/28480.html]http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/28480.html
http://www.inetprivacy.com/a4proxy/anonymous-grc.htm]http://www.inetprivacy.com/a4proxy/anonymous-grc.htm
http://www.orangatango.com/home/index.ie.html]http://www.orangatango.com/home/index.ie.html
http://www.steganos.com]http://www.steganos.com
http://www.anonymization.net]http://www.anonymization.net ? toolbar that requires admin rights to install

Making your own CGI proxy server:

Making your own proxy server may come in handy, but I personally find that simply uploading a txt file/w a list of proxies to a free host makes for a much easier and headache free solution. If you don’t know PERL, there is code out there to help you set it up. Check out these sites for more info:

http://httpbridge.sourceforge.net]http://httpbridge.sourceforge.net
http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy]http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy
http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/open-source-personal-proxy-servers-written-in-java/view]

• http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/op...en-in-java/view

Admin Access:

When all else fails, you can simply take over the PC and alter or delete the damn filter. This method varies according to the OS (operating system) you are dealing with. Please see “Hacking Windows NT” for more information. If this tutorial has been taken from information leak, then I will go as far as to say it involves booting the PC in another OS, copying the SAM file and cracking it using a program like saminside or LC5 rather than start a whole new topic within one.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

GOOLE NEW INTRODUCTION GOOGLE PLACE SEARCH

Google, the internet search giant which has been running the tech run for quiet sometime seems to be a never-stopping company. The search giant unveiled a brand new feature known as Place Search which has the ability to produce results based totally on locations, making the search more ‘local’. Google users now would be able to search for a specific activity in a certain place or a restuarant, for example you search for ‘Japanese New York’, the list of results would display all the places, location-wise which match the search criterion in a new clustered fashion.

While search results are displayed on one hand, Google would also display the Google Map which would presented with red pins, showing the results on a map and allowing users to click on the list of displayed review sites, to find out which results suits them as best.

Google-Place-Search

Results are displayed in a new way, with managed results, maps and reviews on sites.

Jackie Bavaro, Place Search Product Manager, wrote:

Today we’re introducing Place Search, a new kind of local search result that organizes the world’s information around places. We’ve clustered search results around specific locations so you can more easily make comparisons and decide where to go…Place Search results will begin appearing automatically on Google when we predict you’re looking for local information.In addition, you’ll find a new link for “Places” in the left-hand panel of the search results page so you can switch to these results whenever you want. For example, when I’m in New York, I love to go out and play foosball, but a search for [foosball] doesn’t automatically show me Place Search results. If I click “Places” I get the new view. We’ve made results like this possible by developing technology to better understand places. With Place Search, we’re dynamically connecting hundreds of millions of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. We automatically identify when sites are talking about physical places and cluster links even when they don’t provide addresses and use different names.

Google is emphasizing more on location services and local businesses, in a move make its revenue grow.

via [Official Google Blog]

Monday, October 25, 2010

PROTECT YOUR PC FROM AUTORUN VIRUS

Most virus spread through the autorun feature that get started when you plugin in removable devices like USB Drives/CD/DVD etc.I’ve shared multiple tools to protect your system from autorun virus, here another one to add to that list.USB and AutoRun Vaccine from Panda.

panda-usb-vaccine

The free Panda USB Vaccine allows users to vaccinate their PCs in order to disable AutoRun completely so that no program from any USB/CD/DVD drive can auto-execute.It can also be used on individual USB drives(Pen Drives) to disable its AUTORUN.INF file in order to prevent malware infections from spreading automatically preventing it from being read, created, deleted or modified.

It works only on FAT & FAT32 USB drives and tested on Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP1-SP3,  and Windows Vista SP0 and SP1 and remember that vaccination of USB drives cannot be reversed.

Download Panda USB Vaccine.

FREE ANTIVIRUS FOR USB

USB pen drives can be a great source of virus spreading from computer to computer, here are two portable antivirus solutions that are portable and can keep your portable storage media clean from viruses, trojans,worms,etc.

Mx One Antivirus – Mx One is designed to protect the devices of external storage devices like usb (pendrives), iPod., mp3, mp4, memoirs M2, SD, microSD,etc.,

Features :

  • Protection against: Virus, Trojanos, Worms, etc.
  • Compatible with any antivirus resident like for example: Nod32.., Kaspersky.
  • Protection in realtime with System “Check and Block” which neutralizes potential threats.
  • Takes less than 1MB of space.

Mx One : HomePage || Download

ClamWin Antivirus – ClamWin is a Free Stanalone Antivirus for Microsoft Windows. It provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine.You can use it from your USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive or a CD and use it on any computer.

Features:

  • High detection rates for viruses and spyware
  • Regular virus database updates. ClamAV team regularly updates virus databases to include a new virus/variant immediately after it appears
  • Standalone Virus Scanner, which means that you need to manually scan the files using ClamWin before you copy your files onto the pendrive.

The portable version of the antivirus engine is available from PortbableApps

ClamWin Portable : HomePage | Download

VIRTUAL DESKTOP MANAGER

If you are familiar with GNOME and KDE in Linux, you know that you can have multiple virtual desktops. By this way, if you have to run many applications, you do not mess them up. You simply open applications in different virtual desktops. Even you can move applications among these virtual desktops. Same utility is available in Mac OS X named “Spaces” (I think).

The lack of multiple desktops in Windows Vista and XP is really annoying. You do not get any built in facility for Windows Vista n XP. You have to download 3rd party software to have virtual desktops at your Windows machine. There are some paid and free software available. Vista/XP Virtual Desktop Manager is one free available software which can create unlimited no. of virtual desktops.

* An infinite number of desktops only limited by the amount of memory in your computer
* A full screen desktop/window manager/switcher
* Live Vista thumbnails of all of your windows
* An alpha-blended indicator window to provide a visual indicator when you switch between desktops
* Hotkeys for up to 9 desktops using your numpad keys along with “send window to desktop” hotkeys
* A system tray icon to access a menu containing items for every desktop, no matter how many
* Multiple-monitor support
* Arrow key hotkeys
* One system tray icon per desktop (optional)
* Window-specific menus
* Sticky windows to exclude windows from the virtual desktop manager
* Per-desktop backgrounds
* XP support
* Thumbnail window tool
* Show all windows hotkey
* Show mini-preview at cursor hotkey
* Program rules for locking programs onto desktops
* Command line arguments for launching programs onto desktops, switching desktops, and showing the switcher


There are few keyboard shortcuts:
* Windows Key + Z – Show the fullscreen “switcher”
* Windows Key + W – Pop up the window menu for the active window
* Windows Key + Numpad 1…9 – Switch to the corresponding desktop, if it exists
* Windows Key + Arrow Keys – Move to the corresponding desktop
* Windows Key + Control + Numpad 1…9 – Send the foreground window to the corresponding desktop
* Windows Key + Control + Arrow Keys – Send the foreground window to the corresponding desktop

This is very small utility. Its installer is of just 1MB and after installation it does not take more than 2MB disk space. I tested it on Acer 8920G and it did not affect the performance of my machine. It is still in beta phaze v0.9.1. You can access home page HERE and download page is HERE.

how to stop your screen saver when running movies or other activities

I am not used to use screensavers when computer is not in use. Instead of screensaver, I simply set monitor turnoff timing to 10 minutes. This helps me to save a bit electricity, energy consumption and also an unnoticeable step to save our world. You may be thinking my thoughts as fool but for tomorrow we have to do today. Although, I have some very good 3D screensavers installed on my desktop but my preference is turning off display and not to use screensaver. But there are many people who use screensavers. Whatever, we use screensavers or not, we turnoff monitors or not, MouseJiggle is useful in both cases.

a

You are watching a movie, a football match is on live broadcast, you are running some maintenance software, installing some important software or any other activity where you have to watch your monitor continuously but no interaction with mouse or keyboard, if you have set screensaver or idle monitor time, sooner or later you have to touch your mouse to off any of both. Might be some of you may not care about such thing but I do. It disturbs me and also disturb the involvement. Since sometime, I am using Mouse Jiggle.

MouseJiggle is a very small but useful tool. It is system friendly and will not eatup resources. And you do not need to install it. Donwload it, run it, select one or both options and forget it. Simple is this.

It has two jiggling modes. Simply enabling  jiggle is physician jiggling but it is too slight to notice. Zen Jiggle is virtual jiggling mode. Computer thinks the mouse is jiggling but in reality it is not. A simple, small and useful utility also save a few seconds which you will spend to turnoff screensaver or increase the monitor sleep time. A little help can be seen in About MouseJiggle window.

Currently the MouseJiggle project is hosted at CodePlex.com. The latest stable release of MouseJiggle is 1.2. Get it here:

http://mousejiggler.codeplex.com/

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

DOWNLOAD GOOGLE CHROME OPERATING SYSTEM

 
Chrome OS is at the beta stage. You can download the free Chrome OS Live CD below.

untitled

Download Chrome OS 0.8.552 beta (x86) Live CD

602 MB iso, MD5: 9089c4d93f03a3644b1a500aa708c3ba

Download using BitTorrent

How to install: Download the iso file and burn it into CD-R. Boot the computer from it and when Chrome OS is loaded, click Live Installer on the desktop. Follow the instructions.

User password: user

Root password: root

SOURCE : GOOGLE

HOW TO INSTALL GOOGLE CHROME OS IN XP

Have you heard about a new Operating system? No, i mean haven’t you heard of an operating system from Google named Chromium OS. Oh! So you have heard but not tried it due to many reasons. Don’t worry, after reading this article, you will be in a position to install the same!

chromeosscreenshot2

So, there’s all new Operating system called Chromium OS which comes from Google’s family. Though this operating system is Linux based which is an open source.

Let’s check out the Ingredients first : Google Chromium OS iso file and Virtual Box software suite.

First, all you need to is to download two foremost things, one is Google Chromium operating system iso file and other is Virtual Box. You need to download Google Chromium OS iso file from here and download Virtual box from here.

Procedure to install Google Chromium OS :

So, are you ready to install an all new Google Chromium operating system? If yes, then kindly follow the step by step procedure to install the same!

Step 1: Open the download file of “Virtual Box” and first install the same. After installing the same, open it.

Now, create a “new” virtual machine, name it and set operating system to “other” and then click on “next”

Step 2: Now, it’s time to set the size of the base RAM, though my recommendation to you is to set 512 MB, but also consider that in future you can increase the memory later on if you feel.

Step 3: After setting up the RAM size, you need to create a new virtual hard disk, please note that while creating the boot hard disk please “Check” “Primary Master” option.

Step 4: Now, after RAM size, all you need to do is to pick up the storage which you wanted to use. It’s recommended to have one dedicated drive with dynamically expandable storage.

Step 5: Now, select your virtual hard disk space. Its recommended to use at least a minimum of 2GB but you can also set according to your needs. Now, click on next and proceed by starting Google Chromium OS.

Step 6: After pressing the “Start” button, a new pop up will be popping up “First Run Wizard” which will appear to help you manage the media to use. Now, you will need to select and add the downloaded Chromium OS ISO image.

Step 7: Now, the installation of Chromium OS will start immediately after having selected the installation media from either pen drive or a DVD/CD.

Step 8: The Google Chromium Operating System installer is really very easy to use, so just go on and enjoy the finished installation with a whole new operating experience.

Have a look at the welcome screen of Google Chrome Operating system:

Bingo! There you are, you have successfully installed an all new and latest Google Chrome Operating system 8, kindly don’t forget to share your experience here! After all, commenting is the new THANK YOU for us!

How to protect your USB flash device?

There has been a huge buzz about security for all USB flash storage devices, a tool which you wanted for securing the data stored in USB flash drives. Now, your wait is over as we will discuss about a tool wherein your USB flash storage drive will be secured after installing an ultra-small security software tool with which all your confidential and sensitive data will be secured. This protection can only be possible by triggering a password request whenever someone tries to access the USB flash drive which ensures that only you can open the files and no one else.

The USB flash security is the name of the software tool which will help you in securing your USB flash drive. To get this tool, all you need to do first is to download USB flash security from here. After you click on this tool, you can find that, there are 5 different versions to download, scroll down and select “Free (non-commercial/personal use) USB Flash Security Download” tool to download.

DOWNLOAD 5332013084a3d3d8744d43

Now, after downloading this tool, all you need to do is to install it by opening the downloaded file with WINRAR. After opening the WINRAR file, double click on “USB ENTER SETUP.EXE

click-on-usb-enter-setup

As soon as you click on “USB ENTER SETUP.EXE” you are now welcomed with a welcome screen in which you need to click on next and proceed to where you want to store this tiny application as shown below:

welcome-screen-of-USB-security-tool

Now, after installing this application, a shortcut of this USB security tool will be available on desktop screen. Now, click on “USB FLASH SECURITY” icon and open it, as soon as you open this tool, all available drives will be listed in a window as shown below with the help of image:

install-usb-security-tool

As soon as you select the drive on which you want to install this suite, your drive contents will be completely deleted, so kindly back up all your data before you install this tiny suite into your drive. After clicking on “install” tab, you will have to confirm your selection by clicking on “OK” which is shown below:

install-in-your-Flash-drive

After clicking on “OK”, a new window will be popping up wherein you will be prompted to add the password, confirm the same and also the hint just in case if you forge the password.

enter password

As soon as you finish entering the details in the above fields click on “ok” and proceed as again it will reconfirm the installation of the suite into your selected drive. Select “OK” and proceed again. Don’t worry if your USB flash drive renames into LABEL of “USBENTER” as it changes automatically to this name.

password request

So you are all done, next time when you plug this USB flash drive, it will ask for the password which you have assigned to open it. Enter the password and there you go, you have successfully password protected your flash drive.

The two main functions of this suite are, one is you can obviously secure your flash drive and secondly you can also set a different folder wherein you can load all your secret files separately in the USB flash drive in which you have installed this software suite.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

How to Resetting the CMOS

Resetting the CMOS
There is only one other way to get past the BIOS password. It involves discharging the static memory (CMOS) used to store the password and other system information. Once it is discharged, however, you have to reset all the system settings by hand.

Follow these steps:

  1. Start up the computer a. If the system allows it, enter the Setup Screen (Usually by pressing F1, DEL or INS during the memory check)
  2. Record all the Setup Information. Double Check.
  3. Turn off the computer
  4. Remove the casing, and put the computer on the ground in such a way that you can see and access the side of the motherboard with the processor on it.
  5. Look at the motherboard
  6. If you can see a round, disc-like battery, then remove it, and let the computer sit without the battery for 15-30 minutes. Put the battery back in.
  7. If you have access to the circuit diagrams for the motherboard, look in there for the password or CMOS jumper. Flip it on and off.
  8. Look for a blue, soldered-in battery with a jumper running off of it. This jumper is for connecting an external battery. Pull it out for 15-30 min. to reset the CMOS.
  9. Replace the computer casing.
  10. Enter the Setup Screen, and set the Setup Information back to the original values that you (hopefully) recorded.

If you were unable to record the setup info, then you'll just have to set it up manually. Some newer Plug & Play BIOSes have an autodetect feature that automatically sets-up the hard disk and other items.

Again, I would like to mention that there are numerous password extractors available for free off the internet and on BBSes. Try those first: they are much cleaner and easier-to-use.

IP ADDRESS CHANGE HOW TO

Before you can change your IP you need some information. This information includes your IP range, subnet mask, default gateway, dhcp server, and dns servers.
1. Getting your IP range - Getting information about your IP range is not difficult, I recommend using Neo Trace on your own IP. But for my test just look at your IP address, say it's 24.193.110.13 you can definitely use the IP's found between 24.193.110.1 < [new IP] < 24.193.110.255, don't use x.x.x.1 or x.x.x.255. To find your IP simply open a dos/command prompt window and type ipconfig at the prompt, look for "IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : x.x.x.x".
2. Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, DHCP Server - These are very easy to find, just open a dos/command prompt window and type 'ipconfig /all' without the ' '. You should see something like this:

Windows IP Configuration:
Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : My Computer Name Here
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .: Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . . . . . . .: xxxx.xx.x
Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : NETGEAR FA310TX Fast Ethernet Adapter (NGRPCI)
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . . . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 24.xxx.xxx.xx
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .: 255.255.240.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 24.xxx.xxx.x
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .: 24.xx.xxx.xx
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 24.xx.xxx.xxx
24.xx.xxx.xx
24.xx.xxx.xxx
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .:Monday, January 20, 2003 4:44:08 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .:Tuesday, January 21, 2003 3:43:16 AM
This is all the information you will need for now, I suggest you either keep your dos/command prompt window open or copy & paste the information somewhere, to copy right click the window and select text and click once.


III. Changing your IP Address
To change your IP address first pick any IP you like out of your IP range and remember it or write it down. It is usualy a good idea to make sure the IP is dead (except for what we are going to do later on) so just ping it via "ping x.x.x.x" and if it times out then you can use it. Now go to My Computer, then Control Panel. In Control Panel select Network Connections and pick your active connection, probably Local Area Connection or your ISP name. Open that connection by double clicking on the icon in Network Connections, then select Properties under the General Tab. In the new window that pops up select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click properties, it's under the general tab. In this new window select the General tab and choose "Use the following IP address" and for the IP address enter the IP you would like to use (the one you picked from your subnet earlier) and for the Subnet Mask enter the subnet mask you got when your ran ipconfig /all, same goes for the Default Gateway. Now select "Use the following DNS server addresses" and enter the information you got earlier. Now just click OK. Test that it worked, try to refresh a website and if it works you know everything is okay and you are connected. To make sure the change worked type ipconfig again and the IP address should have changed to your new one.


IV. DDoS & DoS Protection
If your firewall shows that you are being DDoSed, this is usually when you are constantly getting attempted UDP connections several times a second from either the same IP address or multiple IP addresses (DDoS), you can protect your self by changing your IP address via the method I described above.


V. Web servers & Other Services
If you know someone on your IP range is running a web server and he or she has pissed you off or you just like messing around you can "steal" their IP address so any DNS going to that IP will show your site instead because you would be running a web server yourself.
To "steal" an IP is to basically use the changing IP address method above and picking an IP that someone that is running a web server has in use. Often you will be able to keep that IP at least for some time, other times you wont be able to use it so just keep trying until it works. You your self will need to have a web server on the same port with your message. You can do this with other services too. You can also DoS or DDoS the IP address you are trying to steal to kick him off the net, but I don't recommend as its pretty illegal, an your ISP will get pissed ;)

What is a Proxy Server?

A proxy server is a kind of buffer between your computer and the Internet resources you are accessing. The data you request come to the proxy first, and only then it transmits the data to you. I know many are looking for IP Maskers or Scramblers, but honestly, it aint real easy for the simple fact that any website that you visit needs your IP to send the info packets too. If its scrambled, you will get alot of errors and crazy redirects :P My solution? Read on........... for a good list of Proxy servers try here>> http://www.multiproxy.org/


Why do I need to use proxy servers?
Transfer speed improvement. Proxy servers accumulate and save files that are most often requested by thousands of Internet users in a special database, called “cache”. Therefore, proxy servers are able to increase the speed of your connection to the Internet. The cache of a proxy server may already contain information you need by the time of your request, making it possible for the proxy to deliver it immediately.


Security and privacy. Anonymous proxy servers that hide your IP address thereby saving you from vulnerabilities concerned with it.
Sometimes you may encounter problems while accessing to web server when server administrator restricted access from your IP or even from wide IP range (for example restricting access from certain countries or geographical regions). So you try to access those pages using an anonymous proxy server.


What is a public proxy server?
It is a proxy server which is free and open for everybody on the Internet. Unfortunately most of them are not anonymous.
Free service trying to provide list of public HTTP proxy servers. Usually provide small list of proxies with low percent of functioning servers due to hosting restrictions on CPU time (they simply can't allow themselves to check many proxies every second especially in parallel).


The Solution?
When using an anonymous proxy server you don’t give a anybody chance to find out your IP address to use it in their own interests. ;) If there is a need to make an (inner) proxy connect to the outside world via another (outer) proxy server, you can use the same environment variables as are used to redirect clients to the proxy to make inner proxy use the outer one:
http_proxy
ftp_proxy
gopher_proxy
wais_proxy
E.g. your (inner) proxy server's startup script could look like this:
#!/bin/sh
http_proxy=http://outer.proxy.server:8082/
export http_proxy
/usr/etc/httpd -r /etc/inner-proxy.conf -p 8081
This is a little ugly, so there are also the following directives in the configuration file:
http_proxy http://outer.proxy.server/
ftp_proxy http://outer.proxy.server/
gopher_proxy http://outer.proxy.server/
wais_proxy http://outer.proxy.server/

What is a Firewall? ALL ABOUT FIREWALL


A firewall is a tool that monitors communication to and from your computer. It sits between your computer and the rest of the network, and according to some criteria, it decides which communication to allow, and which communication to block. It may also use some other criteria to decide about which communication or communication request to report to you (either by adding the information to a log file that you may browse whenever you wish, or in an alert message on the screen), and what not to report.
What Is It Good For?


Identifying and blocking remote access Trojans. Perhaps the most common way to break into a home computer and gain control, is by using a remote access Trojan (RAT). (sometimes it is called "backdoor Trojan" or "backdoor program". Many people simply call it a "Trojan horse" although the term "Trojan horse" is much more generic). A Trojan horse, is a program that claims to do something really innocent, but in fact does something much less innocent. This goes to the days where the Greek soldiers succeeded to enter through the gates of Troy by building a big wooden horse, and giving it as a present to the king of Troy. The soldiers allowed the sculpture to enter through their gates, and then at night, when the soldiers were busy guarding against an outside attack, many Greek soldiers who were hiding inside the horse went out and attacked Troy from the inside. This story, which may or may not be true, is an example of something which looks like something innocent and is used for some less innocent purpose. The same thing happens in computers. You may sometimes get some program, via ICQ, or via Usenet, or via IRC, and believe this program to be something good, while in fact running it will do something less nice to your computer. Such programs are called Trojan horses. It is accepted to say that the difference between a Trojan horse and a virus, is that a virus has the ability to self-replicate and to distribute itself, while a Trojan horse lacks this ability. A special type of Trojan horses, is RATs (Remote Access Trojans, some say "remote admin Trojans"). These Trojans once executed in the victim's computer, start to listen to incoming communication from a remote matching program that the attacker uses. When they get instructions from the remote program, they act accordingly, and thus let the user of the remote program to execute commands on the victim's computer. To name a few famous RATs, the most common are Netbus, Back-Orifice, and SubSeven (which is also known as Backdoor-G). In order for the attacker to use this method, your computer must first be infected by a RAT.


Prevention of infections by RATs is no different than prevention of infection by viruses. Antivirus programs can identify and remove most of the more common RATs. Personal firewalls can identify and block remote communication efforts to the more common RATs and by thus blocking the attacker, and identifying the RAT.


Blocking/Identifying Other Types of Trojans and WQorms?
There are many other types of Trojan horses which may try to communicate with the outside from your computer. Whether they are e-mail worms trying to distribute themselves using their own SMTP engine, or they might be password stealers, or anything else. Many of them can be identified and blocked by a personal firewall.


Identifying/Blocking Spyware's/Adbots?
The term "spyware" is a slang which is not well defined. It is commonly used mainly for various adware (and adware is a program that is supported by presenting advertisements to the user), and that during their installation process, they install an independent program which we shall call "adbot". The adbot runs independently even if the hosting adware is not running, and it maintains the advertisements, downloads them from the remote server, and provides information to the remote server. The adbot is usually hidden. There are many companies that offer adbots, and advertisements services to adware. The information that the adbots deliver to their servers from the computer where the adbot is installed, is "how much time each advertisement is shown, which was the hosting adware, and whether the user clicked on the advertisement. This is important so that the advertisements server will be able to know how much money to get from each of the advertised companies, and how much from it to deliver to each of the adware maintainers. Some of the adbots also collect other information in order to better choose the advertisements to the users. The term "spyware" is more generic, but most of the spyware fall into this category. Many types of adbots can be identified and blocked by personal firewalls.
Blocking Advertisements?
Some of the better personal firewalls can be set to block communication with specific sites. This can be used in order to prevent downloading of advertisements in web pages, and thus to accelerate the download process of the web sites. This is not a very common use of a personal firewall, though.
Preventing Communication to Tracking Sites?
Some web pages contain references to tracking sites. e.g. instruct the web browser to download a small picture (sometimes invisible) from tracking sites. Sometimes, the pictures are visible and provide some statistics about the site. Those tracking sites will try to save a small text either as a small file in a special directory, or as a line in a special file (depending on what is your browser), and your browser will usually allow the saving site to read the text that it saved on your computer. This is called "web cookies" or sometimes simply "cookies". Cookies allow a web site to keep information that it saved some time when you entered it, to be read whenever you enter the site again. This allow the web site to customize itself for you, and to keep track on everything that you did on that site. It does not have to keep that information on your computer. All it has to save on your computer is a unique identifying number, and then it can keep in the server's side information regarding what has been done by the browser that used that cookie. Yet, by this method, a web site can get only information regarding your visits in it. Some sites such as "doubleclick" or "hitbox" can collect information from various affiliated sites, by putting a small reference in the affiliated pages to some picture on their servers. When you enter one of the affiliated web pages, your browser will communicate with the tracking site, and this will allow the tracking site to put or to read a cookie that identifies your computer uniquely, and it can also know what was the web page that referred to it, and any other information that the affiliated web site wanted to deliver to the tracking site. This way tracking sites can correlate information from many affiliated sites, to build information that for example will allow them to better customize the advertisements that are put on those sites when you browse them.
Some personal firewalls can be set to block communication to tracking sites. It is not a common use of a personal firewall, though, and a personal firewall is not the best tool for that, but if you already have one, this is yet another possible use of it.
Blocking or Limiting the NetBIOS Communication? (as well as other default services)
The two common methods of intruders to break into home computers, are through a RAT (which was discussed in II.3a) and through the NetBIOS communication. The NetBIOS is a standard for naming computers in small networks, developed long ago by IBM and Microsoft. There are a few communication standards which are used in relation to the NetBIOS. The ones that are relevant for Microsoft Windows operating systems, are: NBT (NetBIOS over TCP/IP), IPX/SPX, and NetBEUI. The communication standard which is used over the Internet, is NBT. If it is enabled, and there is no firewall or something else in the middle, it means that your computer is listening for communications over the Internet via this standard, and will react according to the different NBT commands that it gets from the remote programs. It is thus that the NBT (which sometimes loosely called "NetBIOS") is acting as a server. So the next question should be "what remote NBT commands the NBT server will do on the local computer". The answer to this question depends on the specific setting on your computer. You may set your computer to allow file and print sharing. If also NBT is enabled, it means that you allow remote users to share your files or printers. This is a big problem. It is true that in principle the remote user has to know your password for that computer, but many users do not set a password for their user on Windows, or set a trivial password. Older versions of Win95 had file and print sharing over NetBIOS enabled by default. On Win98, and WinMe it was disabled by default, but many technicians, when they set a home network, they enable the file and print sharing, without being aware that it influences also the authorizations of a remote Internet user. There are even worms and viruses who use the File sharing option to spread in the Internet. Anyway, no matter whether you need it for some reason or just are not aware of it, a personal firewall can identify and block any external effort to communicate with the NetBIOS server on your computer. The more flexible personal firewalls can be set to restrict the authorization to communicate with the NetBIOS. Some Windows operating systems, especially those which are not meant for home uses, offer other public services by default, such as RPC. A firewall can identify communication efforts to them, and block them. Since such services listen to remote communications, there is a potential risk when there are efforts to exploit security holes in the programs that offer the services, if there are such security holes. A firewall may block or limit the communication to those services.
Hiding Your Computer on the Internet?
Without a firewall, on a typical computer, even if well maintained, a remote person will still be able to know that the communication effort has reached some computer, and perhaps some information about the operating system on that computer. If that computer is handled well, the remote user will not be able to get much more information from your computer, but might still be able to identify also who your ISP is, and might decide to invest further time in cracking into your computer.
With a firewall, you can set the firewall so that any communication effort from remote users (in the better firewalls you may define an exception list) will not be responded at all. This way the remote user will not be able to even know that it reached a live computer. This might discourage the remote attacker from investing further time in effort to crack into your computer.


The Non-Firewall Defenses
We've discussed a few situations where a personal firewall can provide defense. Yet, in many cases a computer maintainer can deal with those situations even without a firewall. Those "alternative" defenses, in many cases are recommended regardless of whether you use a firewall or not.
Remote Access Trojans?
The best way to defend against remote access Trojans (RATs) is to prevent them from being installed in the first place on your computer. A RAT should first infect your computer in order to start to listen to remote communication efforts. The infection techniques are very similar to the infection techniques that viruses use, and hence the defense against Trojan horses is similar to the defense against viruses. Trojan horses do not distribute themselves (although they might be companions of another Internet worm or virus that distributes them. Yet, because in most cases they do not distribute themselves, it is likely that you will get them from anonymous sources, such as instant messengers, Kazaa, IRC, or a newsgroup. adopting a suspicious policy regarding downloads from such places, will save you not only from viruses but also from getting infected with Trojan horses, including RATs. Because Trojan horses are similar in some ways to viruses, almost all antivirus programs can identify, block from being installed, and remove most of the Trojan horses, including all the common ones. There are also some programs (sometimes called antiTrojan programs) which specialize in the identification and removal of Trojan horses. For a list of those programs, and for comparison on how well different antivirus, and antiTrojan programs identify different Trojan horses, see Hackfix (http://www.hackfix.org), under "Software test results". Hackfix also has information on the more common RATS (such as the Netbus and the Subseven) and on how to remove them manually. There are some tools and web sites, such port scanners, and some ways with a use of more generic tools such as telnet, msconfig, and netstat, which may help you to identify a RAT.


Other types of Trojans and worms?
Also here your main interest should be to prevent them from infecting your computer in the first place, rather than blocking their communication. A good antivirus and a good policy regarding the prevention of virus infections, should be the first and most important defense.
Spyware and Adbots?


The term spyware is sometimes misleading. In my view, it is the responsibility of the adware developer to present the fact that the adware installation will install or use an independent adbots, and to provide the information on how this adbot communicates, and which information it delivers, in a fair place and manner before the adware is installed. It is also a responsibility to provide this information in their web sites, so that people will be aware of that before they even download the software. Yet, in general, those adbots do not pose any security threat, and in many cases also their privacy threat is negligible for many people (e.g. the computer with adbot number 1127533 has been exposed to advertisements a, b, c, such and such times, while using adware x, while on computer with adbot number 1127534 has been exposed to advertisements a,d, and e, such amount of time, with the use of adware y, and clicked on ads number d). It should be fully legitimate for software developers to offer an advertisement supported programs, and it is up to the user to decide whether the use of the program worth the ads and the adbot, or not. Preventing adbot from communicating is generally not a moral thing. If you decide to use an adware, you should pay the price of letting the adbot work. If you don't want it, please remove the adware, and only if for some reason the adbot continue to work even if no hosting adware that uses it is installed, you may remove the adbot. Anyway, there are some very useful tools to identify whether a program is a "spyware", or whether a "spyware" is installed on your computer, and you are certainly entitled to this information. Two useful programs are "AdAware" which identifies "spyware" components on your computer and allows you to remove them, and Ad-Search which allows you to provide a name of a program, and it tells you whether this program is a "spyware" and which adbot it uses. It is useful to assist you in choosing whether to install a program or not. You may find those programs in http://www.lavasoft.nu (or, if it doesn't work, you may try http://www.lavasoftusa.com). Those programs are useful, mainly because many adware developers are not fair enough to present this information in a fair manner. AdAware allows you to also remove those adbot components from your computer. This might, however, terminate your license to use the hosting adware programs, and might even cause them to stop functioning. A website which offers to check whether a specific program that you wish to install is "spyware" or not, is http://www.spychecker.com .


Blocking Advertisements?
Leaving aside the moral aspect of blocking advertisements, a personal firewall is not the best tool for that anyway. This is not the main purpose of a firewall, and neither its main strength. Some of them can block some of the advertisements from being downloaded, if you know how to configure them for that. Yet, there are better tools for that, such as Proxomitron (http://www.proxomitron.org), CookieCop 2 (search for the word cookiecop on http://www.pcmag.com), or Naviscope (http://www.naviscope.com), and there are many other programs as well. You may check for other alternatives, e.g. in Tucows (http://www.tucows.com/adkiller95.html).


Blocking Tracking Sites?
Also here, a personal firewall is not the best tool for that, and there are other tools and ways which are more effective. These are cookie utilities. Since a tracking site uses a cookie to identify and relate the information gathered to the same person (or computer), by preventing the cookie from being installed. The tracking site will lose its ability to track things. There are plenty of cookie management utilities. Some of them are freeware, and some are not. CookieCop which was mentioned in the former section is one of them. WebWasher (http://www.webwasher.com) is another recommended one, and there are plenty of other alternatives such as cookie-crusher, cookie-pal, pop-up killer, etc. You may search for other alternatives, in Tucows (http://www.tucows.com/cookie95.html).
NetBIOS and Other Services?


The NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NBT) which is sometimes loosely called "NetBIOS", is a service which has some security problems with it. It is enabled by default in Windows default installations, and it is very common to see that a firewall does the job of preventing the efforts to get access to your computer via NBT. Yet, in almost all cases, this service is not needed, and thus can be disabled. To disable NBT in Win95/98/ME is not as simple as it is in Win2K/XP, but can still be done reliably. We explain how to do this in another article (#to be written soon). It is needless to say, that if NBT is disabled, there is no need for a firewall to block communication to it. Also, in the case of other services, such as RPC services, and others, in many cases you simply don't need those services and better disable them from within Windows rather than use the firewall to block them. There are various ways to know which services are running on your computer, and which of them are listening for communications from the outside. If there are ones that you don't need, they should be disabled.


Hiding the Computer?
In web sites of many personal firewall companies, they are putting a lot of weight on the ability of their firewall to hide the computer on the Internet. Yet, exposing your home computer on the Internet is by itself, neither a security nor a privacy threat. If you provide some services to the Internet on your computer, for example, you put a web server on your computer to allow other people to view web pages, then you might get rid of some of the crackers, by setting your firewall to unhide only this type of communications. Some attackers will not make a full scan of your computer, but only a partial scan, and if they did not scan for the specific service that you provided, they will not see your computer. Yet, if the service is a common one, there is a good chance for many of them to scan it and thus find the existence of your computer. If they "see" the existence of your computer, they might decide to scan it further, and find out the services you are providing, and scan it for security holes to use. Yet, there is no much meaning to it when we speak about simple home computers.


What a Firewall Cannot Do!
Another misconception about personal firewalls is that they are incorrectly thought as if they claim to give an overall protection against "hackers" (i.e. intrusions). They are not.

Defense Against Exploitation of Security Holes
A firewall can allow or deny access to your computer or from your computer according to the type of communication, its source and destination, and according to the question which program on your computer is handling the communication. Yet, its ability to understand the details of the communication is very limited. For example, you may set the firewall to allow or to deny your e-mail program from getting and/or sending messages. It may allow or deny your web browser from browsing the Internet. But if you allowed your e-mail program to communicate with the e-mail servers for sending and receiving messages, (and you are likely to allow it if you want to use your e-mail program), or if you set the firewall to allow your web browser to communicate with web sites, the firewall will not be able to understand the content of the communication much further, and if your web browser has a security hole, and some remote site will try to exploit it, your firewall will not be able to make a distinction between the communication that exploits the security hole, and legitimate communication. The same principle goes with e-mail program. A personal firewall may block you from receiving or sending e-mail messages, but if you allowed it to receive messages, the personal firewall will not make a distinction between a legitimate message and a non-legitimate one (such as a one that carries a virus or a Trojan horse). Security holes in legitimate programs can be exploited and a personal firewall can do practically nothing about it.


I should comment, however, that some personal firewalls come combined with some Trojan horse detection, or intrusion detection. This is not part of the classical definition of a firewall, but it might be useful. Such tasks are usually taken by other tools such as antivirus programs or antiTrojan programs.
Tricks to Bypass or Disable Personal Firewalls
There are also various ways to disable, or bypass personal firewalls. During the time a few tricks to bypass or disable were demonstrated by various programs. Especially, tricks for an internal program to communicate with the outside bypassing or tricking the firewall. For some of them such as the one demonstrated by the Leaktest, and in which a non-legitimate program disguises itself as Internet Explorer, practically today, all personal firewalls are immuned. For other tricks, such as a one demonstrated by Outbound, which uses some non-standard type of communication directly to the network adapters bypassing the components of the operating system which are suppose to deal with Internet communication, and by that bypassing the firewall, are only now being patched against by the various firewalls, and yet other methods, such as the one demonstrated by Tooleaky, which uses Internet Explorer as a messenger to communicate with the outside, and is thus identified as a mere legitimate browsing, are still waiting for most of the personal firewall to find a fix.


Firewalls CANNOT Decide for You What is a Legitimate Communication and What is Not
One of the main problems with personal firewalls, is that you cannot simply install them and forget them, counting on them to do their job. They can deny or permit various types of communications according to some criteria, but what is this criteria, and who decides what is the criteria for whether they should permit or deny some communication?
The answer, is that it is the computer user's job to define the exact criteria when the firewall should allow a communication and when it should block it. The firewall may make it easier for you, but it should not take the decisions. There are too many programs, too many versions, and it is not possible for the firewall to decide accurately when a communication is legitimate and when it is not. One person might think that it is legitimate for some program to deliver some information to the outside in order to get some service, while another will think that it is not. One version of a program might communicate with its home server in order to check whether there is an upgrade, and another version might also install the upgrade even if you do not wish. Some firewalls will try to identify communication efforts which are largely considered as legitimate, and will let you the information so that it will be easier for you to decide whether such should be allowed. Others will suffice with more basic information, making no suggestions (and thus - no incorrect recommendations). One way or another, once you installed a firewall, you will have better means to understand what types of communications are running on your computer, but you will also have to understand them in order to be able to configure your firewall so that it will correctly know which communications to allow and which to block.


Common Problems and Deficiencies Regarding Personal Firewalls
A personal firewall might be a good contribution to security. Yet, if you do not understand much about the topic, then you are likely to be confused and misled by its alerts and queries, and thus find yourself spending hours in chasing after imaginary crackers, fear from imaginary threats, and misconfigure it due to misunderstanding. You may find yourself blocking legitimate and important communication believing it to be cracking efforts, and thus surprised to see why things work slowly or why you are disconnected from the Internet, or you might be misled to allow a non-legitimate communication by some software that tricked you to believe that it is a legitimate one. On the other side, if you are quite knowledgeable on computers and security, then you are likely to effectively defend your computer even without a firewall (by means discussed in section II.4) and it is thus that the role of personal firewall in securing your computer, is extremely small and not much important. We discuss here in brief some of the problems that personal firewalls may generate.


A False Sense of Security
As we've already learned here, a firewall is limited in its ability to secure your computer. Yet, many people believe that if they will install a personal firewall they will be secured against the various security threats. I was even surprised to find out that there are people who believe that give much higher priority in installing a personal firewall than in installing an antivirus program. An always updated antivirus program plays a much more important role in the security of a personal home computer than installing and maintaining a personal firewall. A personal firewall should not come on account of any other security measure that you use.


A False Sense of Insecurity
When you install a firewall and you look at all the communication efforts through it, you might be surprised at the amount of communication efforts from the Internet to your computer. Most of them are blocked by a typically configured firewall. There are all the times efforts to try to communicate with various backdoor Trojans on your computers. If you are not infected, there will be nothing to listen and to respond to those communication efforts, and they are thus practically harmless. There are efforts to communicate with your NBT driver, to see if your computer by mistake allows file sharing. There are other types of probes to see if your computer exists, or various efforts of servers to probe your computer in order to find the best path for legitimate communication to it. There are sometimes remnants of communications that were supposed to go to other computers, but made their way to yours (for advanced readers: because the IP number that your computer uses, were used by some other computer earlier). Those communication efforts are blocked even without a firewall. If your computer is not infected with a RAT, and if your computer don't have NetBIOS over TCP/IP enabled or even it does not have file and print sharing enabled (and on most computers this is disabled by default), then none of these pose any security threat. If your computer is not infected with a SubSeven Trojan, then no matter how often there will be efforts to communicate with it, they are all doomed to be failed.
Yet, some personal firewall (such as Norton Personal Firewall or ZoneAlarm) by default proudly announce that they have just blocked an effort to crack into your computer. Norton may even define those efforts that were blocked as "high security threats" while they were not a threat at all even if your computer didn't have a personal firewall at all. Such firewalls give you the false impression that they save your computer again and again from extremely dangerous threats on the Internet, so that you wonder how did you survive so much time without noticing any intrusion before you installed the firewall. I usually say, that those personal firewalls are set their "report level" to "promotional mode". Namely, the personal firewall is set to give you the false impression that it is much more important than it really is.


Chasing After Ghosts
This is a side effect of the types of misunderstandings that were discussed in the previous subsection.
When a person who starts to learn about the jargon related to personal firewalls, is reported that some "dangerous" communication efforts persist from the same source, the person is decisive to locate and identify the "hacker", and perhaps report about it to the police or to its Internet service provider. However, since many people do not really understand thoroughly how things work, they may sometimes spend many hours in trying to locate a cracker that does not exist, or when the knowledge they need to have, in order to track the cracker, is much higher than what they have, and they might even suspect the wrong person due to lack of knowledge (e.g. the connection person on the Internet service provider that was used by the cracker). More knowledgeable people, usually do not bother to track those "hackers" (which are usually teenagers), but instead are concentrating on the security of their computer.
Blocking Legitimate Communications


No personal firewall is smart enough to decide for the user what is a legitimate communication and what is not. A personal firewall cannot make a distinction between a legitimate program trying to contact its server to check and notify the user when there is a newer version, and a non-legitimate program trying to communicate with its server in order deliver sensitive information such as passwords, unless the user tells it. It is thus up to the user to decide what should be considered as legitimate and what should not. Yet, can we count on the user to be knowledgeable enough to decide what is legitimate and what is not? In many cases the user is not knowledgeable enough, and may thus allow non-legitimate communication or disallow a legitimate and important communication. There are many types of communications handled just to manage other communications. Among this are various types of communications between your computer and the various servers of your Internet service provider. A not knowledgeable user may interpret those types of communications as cracking efforts, and will thus decide to block them. As a result, a connection might become slower, a connection to the Internet service provider might be disconnected quiet often and other types of communication problems.


Being Tricked by Trojans bbb
Just as less knowledgeable users may instruct the firewall to block legitimate communications, they can be tricked by various Trojans to allow them to communicate. Some Trojans are using names resembling or identical to names of legitimate programs, so that the user would think that it is a legitimate programs. Users should be aware of that.


Heavy Software, Buggy Software
Until now we discussed only problems related to lack of appropriate knowledge by the user. Yet, there are other problems regarding personal firewalls. For example, some of them are known to be quite heavy on computer resources, or slow down the communication speed. Different personal firewalls quite vary with regard to that. If you have a new computer with a slow Internet communication (such as regular dial-up networking) then it might not slow down your computer noticeably. Yet, if you use an older computer, and a fast communication, you might find that some personal firewalls will slow down your communication quite drastically. Personal firewalls also vary on how much they are stable.


Advantages of External Firewalls over Personal Firewalls
1. They do not take resources from the computer. This should be clear. This is especially useful when the firewall blocks flooding attacks.
2. It is harder (although in principle still possible) for a Trojan horse to disable it, because it does not reside in the same computer that the Trojan has infected. It is not possible to use the specific communication while totally bypassing the firewall.
3. They can be used without any dependence on the operating system on the computer(s) they defend.
4. No instability problems.

HOW TO MAKE XP LIKE GOOGLE CHOROM OPERATING SYSTEM

Google Chrome operating system announcement made lot of buzz recently. While official Google Chrome OS release is still few months or years away, here is a free XP theme for some Google Chrome OS play on your Windows XP computer. Chrome XP V4 is a free theme that transforms your Windows XP computer to look like Google Chrome OS.

Chrome_XP
Of course, this is unofficial and virtual way of checking out “how Google Chrome OS will look like?”. Theme look all polished and thankfully does not have Vista inspired elements. Download Chrome XP V4 theme below , to install copy theme contents in folder “C:WindowsResourcesThemes” on your XP computer.
Give your XP PC Google Chrome OS makeover, interested?


Free Download Link for Chrome XP V4 theme :

download turbo c++

Turbo C++ was a C++ compiler and integrated development environment (IDE) originally from Borland. Most recently it was distributed by Embarcadero Technologies, which acquired all of Borland's compiler tools with the purchase of its CodeGear division in 2008. The original Turbo C++ product line was put on hold after 1994, and was revived in 2006 as an introductory-level IDE, essentially a stripped-down version of their flagship C++Builder. Turbo C++ 2006 was released on September 5, 2006 and was available in 'Explorer' and 'Professional' editions. The Explorer edition was free to download and distribute while the Professional edition was a commercial product. In October 2009 Embarcadero Technologies discontinued support of its 2006 C++ editions. As such, the Explorer edition is no longer available for download and the Professional edition is no longer available for purchase from Embarcadero Technologies. Turbo C++ is succeeded by C++Builder.

 

download from here5332013084a3d3d8744d43

Monday, October 18, 2010

WHAT TO DO WHEN COMPUTER HANG

Have you ever been using your computer and your system suddenly stops responding in ways like it if you try to open something it just hangs? One time I tried deleting a folder and it said it was in use, but it really wasn't. If this ever happens to you, you can follow these simple steps to 'reboot' your computer without 'rebooting' it.

Press CRTL + ALT + DEL

Go to the 'processes' tab and click explorer.exe once and then click 'end process'.

Now, click File > New Task and type explorer.exe

Everything should be fine now! If the problem is major, I would recommend actually shutting down then starting up again.

HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION

This post is about increasing the speed of an internet connection.here is a software which greatly increases the download speed and internet browsing speed.speed up your existing Internet broadband connection and get the best performance possible from your current Internet access. No technical questions; just one click and it’s done. Free Internet speed test software included.. Full Speed will increase your online Internet speed with everything you do: faster downloads, web browsing, data streaming, e-mail. P2P and gaming.

Features:

* Faster Internet access
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* Improve Internet and Intranet performance
* Quicker data download times
* Improved streaming music and movies
* Faster download for songs and video
* Faster performance with email
* Better download speed for all data
* Faster loading Web graphics
* Speed test for Web site browsing
* Speed test for general data transfer

What’s New in This Release:

· A 20% bandwidth reserve which is claimed by default by Windows XP for selective network functions and is very often not used, is re-claimed and used by Full Speed to increase Internet access bandwidth, (when not used by the other network functions).
· Full Speed testing software now uses higher capacity, more accurate and consistent hosting servers….

Homepage -
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HOW TO RIP DVD IN UBUNTU

I've been mucking around now for a while trying to work out the best way to rip and encode DVDs.

I tried using Handbrake for a while to rip and encode, but what I really want is something that just does it in the background. On the mac, RipIt is a great tool for ripping the DVD to the HDD allowing you to go back at your leisure and encode it.

What i really want is a solution that will autorip on DVD tray-close (like RipIt on the mac) and then a cron that will encode. This is a post about how I get on.

First, we'll need to add restricted formats:

  • sudo apt-get install libdvdread4
  • sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Now, install dvdbackup

  • sudo apt-get install dvdbackup

Create a directory to put the ripped DVDs into and enter it and execute the command to rip the DVD:

  • mkdir Ripped
  • cd Ripped
  • dvdbackup -M

You can also use the -F option rather than -M to just get the main feature, but I had bother with using handbrakeCLI to encode after doing that. Also use the -v flag to give a bit more output.

And, to eject, just use the command

  • eject

So, now we need to work out how to do that automatically when a DVD is inserted into the machine. In the perfect world, we'd do that using the terminal only so that it could run flawlessly on a headless server.

Handbrake


We need to install handbrake from a PPA.

  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:handbrake-ubuntu/ppa
  • sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install handbrake-cli

Then, it's a simple hop skip and a jump to a simple CLI command to encode the ripped disc using a preset for "Film"

  • HandBrakeCLI -i 21/ --main-feature -o 21.mp4 --preset="Film"

Amazingly, this encoded the film at, on average, 280fps (granted, I'm running a quad core AMD monster), but still! I'd tried this on the Mac, using the GUI version and was getting an encode with an average fps of about 9!

LOTS OF OLD VERSION FREE STUFF FROM SUN

Well, the time has come for a long-overdue clear out and tidy up of my office, and regretably some stuff has to go. :-( It would be much easier to just chuck this stuff away, but given that at least some of it might have some historical curiosity, I wanted to see if anyone was interested in it. I don't want much, if anything, for this stuff (although I ask that interested people pick up the tab for shipping), provided it's to a good home.
Here's a partial list of the stuff I'm disposing of (there are still boxes of stuff I need to sort through). If interested, drop me an email!


* Insignia Solutions SoftPC 1.1 for Sun 3 systems. Complete package as far as I can tell.
* Pretty much complete SunOS 3.5 manual set. No binders, and most of it is still shrink-wrapped. Still in it's original shipping carton!


* SunOS 3.5 Export for the 68020, on 5 QIC 24(?) tapes.


* UK Sun Express catalogues, Issue 2 to Issue 20.


* SunOS 4.0.3 Export Upgrade, on 2 QIC24 tapes.


* Various old SunSolve and Catalyst CD ware CDs.


* Various Solaris media kits (mostly different Solaris 9 releases IIRC).


I'd really like the SunOS 3.5 tapes and manuals to go to a Sun museum if at all possible. I'll be listing more stuff in the coming weeks/months, so stay tuned!

WHICH ONE IS MOST ADVANCED OS IN WORLD

A while ago Jenny bought herself a new laptop. There was no way we consider wasting money on a laptop running Windoze (you try buying a non-Apple laptop without paying Windoze tax!), so a MacBook Pro it was (I had some say in the machine's specs).
The Mac has some interesting features, and I like the way everything Just Works. MacOS is a bit different from Solaris, but it's really easy to pick up. So what's the point of this post? Apple touts Mac OS as "the world's most advanced OS", and that patently isn't so. Don't get me wrong: I like Mac OS (although I still find the idea of paying for an OS to be a bit grating), but the world's most advanced OS it isn't.
I'll raise just a couple of points to support my view.
1. Until the recent release of Mac OS Snow Leopard (10.6), Mac OS was a 32-bit only OS (Snow Leopard is apprently 64-bit--I can't confirm this cause I haven't got round to installing it yet). Colour me unimpressed: Solaris has been 64-bit clean the launch of Solaris 7, well over a decade ago! Also, Solaris' 64-bit kernel is quite capable of running brand new 64-bit apps and ancient 32-bit apps side by side. I don't know if Mac OS supports that.
2. Mac OS is based on (IIRC) FreeBSD. Not exactly the first OS that comes to mind for multithreaded scalability. How scalable is Mac OS? I guess we won't know because the biggest machine Apple sells is a piddly dual-socket, quad-core desktop. Big deal! Solaris scales from tiny single-core tiny laptops to massive 64-socket, quad-core behemoths that supports up to 4TB of RAM. And that's from the same OS binary.
3. Apple recently announced the dropping of ZFS, arguably the world's most advanced file system. If your OS doesn't support an adavanced file system like ZFS, then it is not a contender for the world's most advanced OS. It's just that simple.
4. Solaris has support for HW hot swapping that Mac OS can only dream of. In the right machine, if a CPU board dies, you can just replace it on the fly. No downtime, no interruptions.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Mac OS is a fine OS and is leagues ahead of Windoze, but the world's most advanced OS it isn't. That crown belongs to Solaris.