Various cool software and more
When I fist saw this house on YouTube I actually thought it was a model or something, but…. its not, some guy actually did create this utterly cool Christmas display…
It makes my few Christmas ornaments look like nothing… Its SOOOOOOO cool..
So for a few idea’s for your next christmas display goto this site and see the walkthrough;
http://www.holdman.com/christmas/projects.asp
Have you ever had the need to assist your friends or family on their PC’s, sure if they live nearby its always nice to drop by and get a free dinner or beer and fix their problem, but should the trouble pc be located in say Milan and you are in Denmark that approach could prove costly..
Messenger claim to be able to do remote assist, however my experiences show that once you pass the first router (that is leap anywhere but in your own home) this proves impossible.. Anyway, take a look at;
http://www.teamviewer.com/products/firststeps.aspx
its simple, works and its free 🙂 You can now do remote control of pc’s on the other side of the world if you need…
Here is a tip for backing up all those product keys you have on your system today (be that the key to your CD burner software or the latest version of World of Warcraft).
We all hate to reinstall our PC, but every now and again it is necessary. One of the very annoying things are all those serial keys you enter for your products, where DID you write that down or print it out to when you bought it.
Well this product will assist you with this, it can extract serial/product keys for a ton of programs all in one convenient sweep and at a price of just 29$ it is a bargain, just run in before a reinstall and print a report, that was the good news. Good news often is accompanied by bad and this is no exception, the very same product can be used by evil doers to extract YOUR serial/product keys from YOUR machine all they need is to have physical access to it, or if they know your credentials they can even do so via the network.
Linux warning; Debian/Ubuntu and other linux installations are in extreme risk as a very serious vulnerability has been discovered that can allow relatively easy bruteforcing security codes generated with the affected systems.
Truth be told I don’t know much about linux so I cant really describe what the problem is and how it may affect your setup, I do however know enough to recognize that this is a very serious issue. Actually, I used to have a Debian based VOIP server (Trixbox) up and running (guess many other are in the same situation) and the problem here is that systems like that suddenly are vulnerable.
If you have any kind of Linux installed (be that Ubuntu, Debian or just some print server in the corner office) be SURE to check the with the supplier if you have an issue and need to do some patching.
Want to know more;
http://itradio.com.au/security/?p=72
Microsoft has (some time ago actually) released a utility (or security addon if you wish) for Windows XP called Steadystate;
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx
What is does is basically to add very strict control to your desktop and to allow for guest or kiosk pc’s.
Lets say you administer a library pc, and daily have to deal with users changing settings downloading strange software/malware and basically just giving you a hard time. Well with Steadystate you can inflict strict rules on what a user can and can not do, you can add time-limits for usage and finnaly (and this is the neat part) you can have the computer restore to a predefined setup at fixed intervals (or at every boot/logoff if you prefer).
In a corporate domain setup the software does not seem that interesting as many of the settings can be set via GPO’s, but for kiosk pc’s it’s neat. And as the author of a commercial predecessor I should know 😉 www.security-setup.dk did basically the same thing just not in the same dept and detail.
If you have a kiosk pc environment, hared pc’s or your kids just keep messing their installations up this may be worth a look. and the final good news, ITS FREE!!
As you may know, Google have for a long time had a translation service (equal to the Babelfish service on Altavista.com), the new thing is that it now offer translation to and from Danish also… It is even capable of dealing with the famous sentence “Rødgrød med fløde!” (a Danish sentence that is almost impossible to pronounce if you are not Danish) well sort of in English the translation reads “Rødgrød with cream!” but hey its close 🙂
Kan man det (which is what this site is called www.readmydamnblog.com) become “Can it”, hmmm not quite that close but hey it is a step in the right direction..
For a few cheap laughs go to;
http://www.google.com/translate
JEROME J. NIEDERMEIER, United States Magistrate Judge. has ruled in favour of the defendant in a case of a subpoenaed Password for a laptop.
The case concerned a computer user which laptop was ceased during a border-crossing, the laptop allegedly contained child porn but was encrypted using PGP, a grand jury had subpoenaed the defendant to turn over the password but the defendant denied and claimed the “Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination!”. This was later backed up by “JEROME J. NIEDERMEIER, United States Magistrate Judge”.
I do in no way condone any possession or usage of child pornography, but even though I am pleased with the ruling – as it in my world is a victory for personal privacy. The issue is today of little relevance, as it could be avoided using Truecrypt with a hidden secret partition (a hidden encrypted partition within a regular encrypted partition – refer to Truecrypt.org for further details).
Links;
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9834495-38.html
http://www.volokh.com/files/Boucher.pdf
Just spend a few hours on a simple batch job issue 🙁
I had a job.cmd file I executed, but the containing commands was not executed as Windows could not locate the filename.exe files 😐 The problem was rather simple, the current directory (%cd%) while executing the job.cmd file was “c:windowssystem32”.. doh 🙁
Anyhow, found out that there is actually a simple way around this;
@Echo off
set IDP=%~dp0
set OLDDIR=%cd%
cd /d %IDP%
filename.exe /S
cd /d %OLDDIR%
This is rather simple, IDP (%IDP%) is set to the executing batch file’s directory via the IDP=%~dp0 and finally OLDDIR contain the ‘before’ current directory. If you need to set the %cd% at the end, well no probably not (but hey I’m a nice guy 😉 )..
For further details;
http://weblogs.asp.net/whaggard/archive/2005/01/28/get-directory-path-of-an-executing-batch-file.aspx
Now as everyone else I have heard of WOW (World of Warcraft), Second Life and the list go on and on, but with a ‘First Life’ to take care of my time to explore such universes are limited.
Anyway I stumbled across a reference to a YouTube video that I simply had to share with you, maybe a good reason to keep out of wow 😉
Just shows that online computing can be a hazard to your mental state 😉 *lol*, but hey its cool that someone actually has the time and energy to really get it under their skin, shame I did not invent WOW man they must be earning a mean $ or two these days.
Ever met files with the extension UIF of DAA, these are likely CD/DVD images saved to a file, the idea is that they (as opposed to ISO) can be compressed, however not everyone has software installed to deal with these files.
Well good news come in small links, here is a link to a blog with links to utilitys to convert these files 🙂
DAA;
http://w-shadow.com/blog/2007/12/27/free-daa-to-iso-converter-gui/
UIF;
http://w-shadow.com/blog/2007/12/30/uif-to-iso-converter/
or the software source itself; http://aluigi.altervista.org/mytoolz.htm
