Monday, September 29, 2008

Firefox addons

Here is the list of firefox addons that I like:

1. firebug - Useful if you want to see or edit code of a site on the go. (good tool for hacking interested people)
2. pdf download - Provides an option to download the pdf instead of opening it in the browser
3. flash block - doesn't load flash objects like advertisements. You get a play button, only when you click on that, that flash is loaded. Its better for people with low speed and low bandwidth.
4. google gears - allows you to use google reader and google docs even in the offline mode
5. download them all - its a great downloader addon, provides good features and speed

Other extension that I read but haven't tried is Greasemonkey. I read that it has many useful scripts that make life easier.

PowerMenu

PowerMenu was one application I liked most when I was on windows. It is a very small program that allows you to minimize any program to tray, add transparency to a window or allow you to put a certain windows always on top. The always on top was the thing that I liked most. It allowed me to chat or use notepad while reading or watching movie behind that window. Its a great application.



Best thing is that, you don't even need to install it. Just double click and done.

Download it (with | without installer)

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Two good videos

MAC V/S PC V/S LINUX



MAC V/S PC

Friday, September 26, 2008

Oldest domains

Do you know when the first domain was registered and what was it? Do you think it was microsoft.com? Or maybe att.com? ibm.com? Not exactly. The first one was symbolics.com registered at 15-Mar-1985. Below is the list of oldest domains ever:

15-mar-1985 symbolics.com
24-apr-1985 bbn.com
24-may-1985 think.com
11-jul-1985 mcc.com
30-sep-1985 dec.com
07-nov-1985 northrop.com
09-jan-1986 xerox.com
17-jan-1986 sri.com
03-mar-1986 hp.com
05-mar-1986 bellcore.com
19-mar-1986 ibm.com
19-mar-1986 sun.com
25-mar-1986 intel.com
25-mar-1986 ti.com
25-apr-1986 att.com
08-may-1986 gmr.com
08-may-1986 tek.com
10-jul-1986 fmc.com
10-jul-1986 ub.com
05-aug-1986 bell-atl.com

As you can see some notable nowadays ones are missing. So, here are their registration dates:

10-may-1994 linux.org
19-sep-1994 freebsd.org
13-jan-2001 wikipedia.org
15-sep-1997 google.com
18-jan-1995 yahoo.com
10-nov-1994 msn.com
15-jul-1999 paypal.com
02-may-1991 microsoft.com
07-mar-1997 w3c.org
22-nov-1988 dell.com
17-nov-1986 amd.com
22-sep-1993 cnn.com
20-oct-1998 ask.com
15-jul-1989 bbc.com

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Useful sites - 4

Here are a few new useful sites I found today:

1. www.teachertube.com Just like YouTube but it is more education related. Check this video out.
2. www.lintube.com Just like YouTube but only Linux Tutorial related videos. Best place to learn how to install software, games and Linux itself.
3. http://www.linuxscrew.com Tips, tricks and tutorials for Linux users.

Well this is not a useful site, but it is worth a look
http://thehottestgadgets.com/ Check this.

Microsoft asks us to use Linux for data recovery

I have hated Windows in the past, now I hate Linux. But just like everything else, I stick to things I hate. At least come back to them once in a while.
I had been wondering if it was time to go back to Windows. The crap system where I needed to install and update:
1. Eset Nod32 Antivirus
2. Comodo Firewall
3. Spybot Search & Destroy
4. CCleaner
and various other software for security alone. Plus I need to increase the piracy :(
But I changed my decision. Why?
The http://port25.technet.com/ Microsoft's open source community asks us to use Linux for data recovery if the Windows doesn't boot.
In one of the blogs (I lost the link) they pointed out Linux operating system (Live CD/ USB) could be used in order to recover the data or fix the Windows in most cases. At least the data can be recovered.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Useful sites - 3

Some good video and TV show site

http://www.sidereel.com/_home
http://www.crawlanime.com/
http://www.surfthechannel.com/
http://www.veoh.com/

Mentioning http://www.youtube.com, just to make sure no one thinks I am stupid. Its the best out there.

How to find music using google

http://tyoogle.com
http://index-of.blogspot.com
http://papaiti.com
http://www.g2p.org
http://www.marcandangel.com/turn-google-into-napster-2000-gui/

Do read this article
http://www.marcandangel.com/2006/10/13/turn-google-
into-napster-2000/

Useful Sites - 2

Have been busy lately, plus my net goes down frequently. Here are a few sites that might be interesting:

1. http://www.accountingcoach.com/online-accounting-course/
Teaches you the basics of accounting, balance sheets, etc.
2. http://webaccelerator.google.com/
Have a slow net, check this net optimiser from google, it will surely increase your net speed.
3. http://www.google.com/linux
Search optimised for linux
4. http://www.google.com/options/specialsearches.html
This one is great, why? Because it allows you to search special things. If you are looking for some university to apply or for microsoft related or patents. This is a great place.
5. http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
Want to have your own specialised search, that will search only certain sites, this is the place. It allows you to setup a custom search environment.
6. http://www.stackoverflow.com/
It is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers — regardless of platform or language.
7. http://whatiswrongwiththeworldtoday.com/
News on different topics like hacking, gaming, google, software, etc The hacking news are great.
8. http://300allpctips.blogspot.com/2008/09/top-10-tricks-
to-exploit-sql-server.html
Microsoft SQL Server Exploits explained properly.
9. http://whatiswrongwiththeworldtoday.com/hacking/wireless-
cracking-hacking-tools
Wireless Cracking and hacking tools list (If time permits, I will explain the usage of some of these, try them anyway), a most for each KLCE student, go rip them apart.
10. http://www.workjoke.com/
Great jokes on different profession. (Read mathematicians and enjoyed a lot)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Great news: LHC was cracked before it could destroy the world

Well a shocking but true story has come out. Whether LHC makes black hole in earth or not a Greek hacker found a hole in the LHC network. He successfully entered and fiddled with their network. Great isn't it, guess what will happen if he tries out a few experiments of his own.

According to The Telegraph newspaper, the group, calling itself the “Greek Security Team,” left behind a half a dozen files on the system and damaged one CERN file.

At least we won't need to go to college anymore. :)

Keyloggers

Though I hate to do it. Lets begin the journey to the doomed world of cracking.
First thing: "Privacy is like an intelligent blonde girl, everyone talks about it but no one has seen it".

A keylogger is a computer program that logs each keystroke a user types on a keyboard and saves this data into a file or transfers it via the Internet to a predetermined remote host. The keyloggers represent a serious threat to your computer’s security and personal privacy. It’s a kind of weird development in computer history

Basically there are two types of keyloggers

1) H/W keyloggers and
2) S/W keyloggers

Hardware Keyloggers plug in between a computer keyboard and a computer and log all keyboard activity on an internal memory.They are designed to work with PS/2 keyboards, and more recentlywith USB keyboards.

Hardware keyloggers have an advantage over software keyloggers as they begin logging from the moment a computer is turned on (and are therefore able to collect a BIOS password for instance), and do not require software installation (unlike software solutions).

But the software keyloggers are much more powerful than the hardware keyloggers because now they are integrated with some spywares as well. Also one could find out hardware keyloggers easily but to find an installed software keylogger is a really hard job. It will entirely monitor what you have typed on your computer also processes currenly running on your computer as well as able to send keystrokes, chats, websites, screenshots of you computer desktop and passwords periodically as an email attachment or FTP to unknown parties. All the things are running as a hidden background process and you can’t view that process through the normal task manager.

Also some keylogger software allow you to install it on a remote PC on your network or sent it to someone as an email attachments.

Here are some keyloggers:
http://rapidshare.com/files/30447072/Dark_Elite.exe
http://rapidshare.com/files/23649214/keysteal_1.34.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/17935151/AV-Tester.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18585289/Ghost_Keylogger.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3633050/ardamax_metakodix___JR.rar

Don't do too much damage
I run Linux anyway

Monday, September 15, 2008

Useful sites - 1

Here are two good websites:

1. www.g2p.org
Uses the google at its max, you can find all the songs, books and software you are looking for without much hassle. Instead of running behind torrents, limewire, ares, shareaza or going to esnips and rapidshare and trying to find those files, just type the name, select the type ad you will have it. I tried it, it's great. I tried to search a few songs (hindi, english and telegu) and they were there on the first link itself.

2. www.giveawayoftheday.com
This is a site you should see everyday. Just like the name says, it gives away different costly software for free.
www.giveawayoftheday.com
These links are also present at my delicious

Friday, September 12, 2008

The Poll Result

This is the poll result:


Boring Linux related
3 (23%)
Hot cracking stuff
11 (84%)
Technical NEWS
2 (15%)
Tips and support
6 (46%)

So, hacking stuff wins. I will try to bring something related.
Thanks for voting

Google Chrome

Little late to write this. I am sure by now most of you would have read and heard about the new Google Chrome Browser. But here are a few things that you may not know. Check it out anyway.
It gives away a lot of features. I have copied the context of this from site:

1.New Tab Page: For the first look it looks much like a Opera feature. According to Google, new tab page let's you see a visual sampling of your most visited sites, most used search engines, and recently bookmarked pages and closed tabs.
2.Application Shortcuts: This feature directly loads your favorite online applications. You can create a shortcut as follows:
#Go to Page menu and select Create application shortcuts
#Select the checkboxes where you want shortcuts to be placed on your computer(Desktop,Start Menu, Quick Launch Bar).
3.Dynamic Tabs: This is really an awesome feature. Dynamic Tab feature let's you drag tabs out of the browser to create a new window. You can even gather multiple tabs into one window or arrange your tabs according to your wish.
4.Crash Control: In the Google Chrome each tab run independently in the browser, there by reducing the chances of crash of all the tabs if one application crashes at any time.
5.Incognito Mode: Web pages that you open and files downloaded while you are incognito won't be logged in your browsing and download histories; all new cookies are deleted after you close the incognito window.
6.Safe Browsing: By the help of this feature, Chrome warns the user if the user is opening a unsafe website.
7.Task Manager: Google Chrome has it's own Task Manager which lets you kill any non-responsive tabs instantly.

Now the above crap is everywhere else, but read the following:
Just copied from some forum
Chrome is a shameless copy.
The speed dial - Opera
The address bar - IE 8 + FF3
Incognito - Safari & IE 8
Tabs as separate processes - IE 8
The name Chrome - Microsoft's codename for a multimedia browser years back.
Chrome consumes less memory (really very less) as compared to the resource hog - Firefox 3.
Shortcuts, if you like
Control + Shift + N: Opens the famous “incognito” windows. Thanks to it you will be able to surf without leaving any footprint on your PC (cookes, history etc.)
You can also open a website in an “incognito” window by right-clicking on a link and selecting: Open link in incognito window.
Alt + Home: Loads your Google Chrome home page along with thumbnails of your most visited sites.
Control + T: Opens a new Tab.
Control + Shift + T: Opens your most recently closed tab. Press this key combination again to open the tab closed before the one you just opened.
Control + 1, Control + 2, Control + 3, etc. : Lets you jump to different tabs.
Control + Tabs: Lets you open tabs in order.
As in Fireofx 3, you can drag a link onto a tab to it , or drop it between two tabs to open a new tab.
Control +B: Hides or shows the bookmark’s bar.
Control + H: Opens the History page.
Control + J: Opens the download page.
To delete an item from the download page, right-click on the selected item and click Remove.
Right-click the top of the browser window, select Task manager to find out how much memory tabs and plug-ins are taking from your computer to work. Select one of them and click End process to stop it running.
About:plugins (write it in the address bar): Lets you see what plug-in you are using.
About:crash (write it in the address bar): Lets you see what a crashed tab looks like.
To know more information about Google Chrome you can also type in the address bar the following commands:
about:stats, about:network, about:histograms, about:memory, about:cache, about:internets.
To delete all of your data stored into Google Chrome: click the Tools icon and select Clear browsing data…
Shift + Escape: Lets you bring up the Google Chrome Task manager.

The other great thing is it runs well in WINE. So *nix users can use it as well.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

A few good things

Here are a few good sites:

1. http://www.paulgraham.com/
2. http://words4mind.blogspot.com/
3. http://www.gnucitizen.org/
4. http://lifehacker.com/software/how-to/hide-files-inside-of-jpeg
-images-282119.php

A lovely article. Anyone who wants to become an entrepreneur most read this.
http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html

Here's something interested. May be some of you have heard of it. GIFAR, it is a new type of file, that the creative BlackHats came up with. It's a jar embedded in gif image. What's so special about it? Well, someday you will see me giving the address of my orkut (which doesn't yet exist) and you may happily visit it. You'll see some lovely images jumping around. But all those lovely images jumping (the gif files) will actually be jar files, copying your orkut, yahoo passwords, downloading trojans to your computer and stuff without you knowing. You will smile thinking after so many words, he bent down and started using orkut without realising you just lost all your data.

Can I do this? May be not. I don't know enough to program something to do that. But be careful with the sites you will be visiting. Especially the crack, torrent and ???? sites.

To understand it better, log on to http://blog.internetnews.com/
skerner/2008/08/black-hat-beware-of-gifar.html

I know, some of you have already started thinking how to make a gifar. Here's a video on that:
http://riosec.com/how-to-create-a-gifar
That video uses linux, but a little knowledge of dos commands and the fourth link is all you will need. It also shows how to add the jar file to a docx file, it should work with a doc, odt files as well. I think it will work with any file that is based on zip. Keep trying.
The thing I like about GIFAR is it embeds a Java ARchive, thus it is platform independent.
A lot of votes are coming for Hacking & stuff, but for some reason, I hesitate to write on that topic.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Prevention from trojans

We all are always troubled by the Trojans. Put a pendrive in, and the misery starts. So here are a few things you could do in order to be safe from the trojans.

Lets first identify the ways trojans spread:
1. By allowing pendrives to autorun
2. By receiving trojans from infected computer on the same network
3. By being stupid

The third point is the most important one. Most people get fooled by the trojans. The best example for this is the NewFolder.exe trojan. It shows a folder icon named the same as its parent directory. Its one of my favourites.

Lets solve the above problems one by one:

1. Goto http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/power toys/Xppowertoys.mspx and download TweakUI. Install it. To run it go to start -> run, in there type tweakui. You will see the tweakui window, in there is an option to disable autorun for usb devices.
Some people say if you press the left SHIFT key when inserting the pendrive, it stops the autorun (Never worked for me though)
2. Download the Flash Disinfector. It creates an undeleteable folder named autorun.inf in all drives thus blocks trojans from spreading.
3. Better don't open pendrives by double clicking the drive. Go to Start -> Run and open the drive. Suppose it's the f: then type f: and run.

You may also see, some restrictions like unable to see Folder Option, Task Manager, Control Panel,etc. You can use the Restriction Removal Tool (RRT) to remove these restrictions. First install an antivirus, update it, remove all your viruses then run it. Also install Spybot Search & Destroy. Update it, check your system for problems. Another great tool is Noob.Killer, it allows you to remove some common trojans.

Which antivirus is a big question. I would recommend Nod32, Kaspersky, BitDefender 10. Nod32 had always worked for me. To get the username and password needed to update Nod32(new versions), goto this site: http://nod32.areone.cn

You can buy Kaspersky Internet Security for Rs. 999 at any store or you can get it for free from other sources.

Coming to the point of being fooled by the trojan. Go to the Folder Option, and uncheck the "Hide the extension of known filetypes." And think twice before running anything that has a .exe extension if the icon is something else.

Wish you luck with this.
There is one other way of being safe from the trojans and other viruses.
Come to the free and open world of Linux.

Did I miss something? Add a comment.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Operating System

Hi guys,

Well, I heard the Ms Windows guys are giving away their Windows Vista dvds for free. Well I don't think many people would take it even for free. Despite all promises from the Big Guy about improvements in the service pack 1. We fail to see anything. It is a big flop but what can we do, its the future.

Some people think Linux is the answer, Mac still wants a piece but we should not forget the BSD. PC-BSD was bought and is going to be transformed from a boring security oriented operating system to the challenging new desktop environment. Hope the best. I am totally bored and sick of using the Linux.

But still, if you are remotely interested in Linux. I can help. I have cds and dvds of many distributions of GNU/linux.
And a little know how on how to use them.

Choose openSuSe or Mandriva if you know nothing about linux. openSuSe 11 is a great distribution but it is slightly slower than it was before. :(
Mandriva is the best you can get, simple and easy to use. Mandriva Control Center (mcc) rocks the linux world, though not as good as openSuSe's yast, it is powerful and easy to use.

Most people have trouble using net in linux. If you can get your net working in linux, you will love it.
Mandriva and openSuSe both have good number of applications that you may need. Starting from pidgin messenger to pdfedit.

Though jokingly Linus Torvalds goes around calling the BSD guys Mas......ing Monkeys, you should try the PC-BSD, its way better than Linux, more stable and it has the double click and install option just like Ms Windows.

Do whatever, don't use Mac. It's a beautiful system. But you will never learn anything about the computer. It has so much of abstraction that most Mac users don't know where the terminal/console/X11 (Mac version of cmd) is. At least the Windows guys know what the cmd does.

** Nokia is sick. Just because Motorola was using qt for its linux based mobile phones, Nokia went and bought Trolltech, the company that owned qt.

We all know linux is just the kernel. Is there a need to say GNU/Linux operating system? I don't think so.

Open for comments

Thursday, September 4, 2008

I am back

Hi everybody

After a long time, thanks to a friend, I am back to what I was.
Lets start a movement towards the knowledge incentive sharing of all our intelligent thoughts. I want to make this blog just as good as my newsletters. ( :(( Sad to have stopped it)
Similar contents -
1. the new ideas I got
2. the new things I read about
3. the new websites I think are worth visiting
4. anything worth sharing

Well, if you see there are a lot of 'I' above, and its not a good thing to do so.
Therefore do give your valuable suggestions, advices and comments.
I will need a lot of help to bring a charm to this blog. I need a help from all the readers.
I promise weekly updates. So do come back.

Just to start, keep an eye on the following

1. My esnips (Check both the folders)
2. My delicious (the place I put my bookmarks {sad Yahoo! bought del.icio.us})
3. Bishal Pantha's delicious (This one has a lot of cracking and hacking stuff)

Here's a good piece of non-sense worth your free time
http://www.cracked.com/blog/2008/08/07/5-scientific-theories-head-explode/