Last week, i was called to fix a machine which had XP installed in it. As usual, i tried to look into the symptoms. The behavior i observed was, whenever i tried to execute a shortcut( or Double click a short cut) to open an application, nothing happens. None of the applications opened.
Surely i figured out, that the system was affected with some kinda virus. And when i didn't want to continue looking at the symptoms of that virus and when i came to know that data backup was not needed, i just went ahead with a clean reinstall of the Windows.
But the cool part which i figured out later is, how to identify if our executable( ie .exe ) files are affected with a virus.Because some of the apps act weirdly sometimes.It could be a failure in the app code, that might cause the app to stop working or it could be the virus.And usually most of the viruses target the .exe files on your system.
Here is an easy way to find out, if your system is really affected with that kinda virus or not.
1. Open Start -> Run
2. Type in cmd and press 'Enter' ( go to the command prompt )
3. goto your windows folder.
Mostly this action need you to key in the following commands
- cd \ 'press enter'
- cd windows or cd winnt 'press enter'
- cd system32 'press enter'
- setup 'press enter'
If you get a popup window saying " Please go to Control Panel to install and configure system components" then your .exe files are not affected and you can be sure that your system is safely away from those harmful viruses.
If you get something else... or nothing pops up... then you better get your AntiVirus updated.
This method can also be used to check your computer, even without an antivirus available.
SystemCheckup without an Antivirus
Turn Off Desktop Cleanup Warning in XP
Windows xp always shows this ballon popup, which suggest you for a desktop cleanup. When you run this cleanup wizard, it removes your unused desktop shortcuts or files and places them into a unused folder.
But most of the times, this balloon is irritating and i want my desktop to be like the way it is..
I have a quick fix for this...
1.Right Click on the empty space on your desktop,
2.Goto> Properties
3. select the desktop tab
4. Click on the Customize Desktop button
5. Under General tab you will be able to see desktop cleanup
6. Uncheck the Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days checkbox...
7. Click ok>Apply>ok and you are done..
8. Your windows will not complain to you anymore about your desktop
Creating Portable Apps
Download both the softwares from the above links and install them.
Now let me illustrate the steps to create the portable app for the Application CCleaner.
The ccsetup224.exe file can be downloaded from the above link.
Windows 8 makes it to the Microsoft Roadmap
The Operating system gaint Microsoft has declared that it will release its next generation the successor of windows 7 by 2012. This Operating system named Windows 8 is rumored to be a 128 bit operating system. The company is co- working with Intel, AMD, HP and IBM for this 128bit machines which will be in markets by 2012.
Nothing much have been said about the features that its gonna have, but 3 years from now is a long way. And Microsoft having a hard time maintaining its timescale. Since Windows vista was delayed by 2 years, microsoft said that it wont have 5year gaps between its new launches. Then came windows 7 which is gaining market these days and in 3 more years lets hope windows 8 will have more to offer....
Google Chrome OS..."The Future has Arrived"
The Wave of Google chrome is already setting sails in our minds. The Features that are being claimed by the new OS being developed by the Search giant Google, named after its browser chrome are just astonishing.
The announcement made 4 months back was to develop the Operating system that will enhance the way people surf and would allow to embrace the internet in a more easy way than the conventional operating systems. They have announced that chrome OS will have a faster booting ability. It predicts that the time taken for you to start browsing will be almost same as the time needed to switch on your TeleVision. Your internet reachability will be enhanced to this extent, you wont need to start all your programs to get to internet and it means you literally have a booting time of less than 5 seconds. It would be a milestone in the history of the operating systems.
Google said that "It's basically a Web browsing machine"and they added all data in Chrome OS will automatically be stored in the cloud, but also cached on the computer's internal hardware to boost performance. This OS will have to get rid of the usual desktop softwares such as the office suite of Microsoft for its faster performance and when google already have its google docs running online, it think it wont be a difficult task for them to host the applications on the servers and run them based on the requirements of an individual.
And with all the data synched on the cloud, its a winning move for google to conquer the search market and also increase its revenue. With the advent of Chrome OS it would mean that more google searches and more google ads tending to increased revenues and profits.
Mouse Tricks
Everyone would be familiar with the most important user interface component of a computer... the mouse.
Now a days, its common for every mouse to have a wheel in it. The wheel as everyone know is used for scrolling up and down a document... This wheel has many other functions when it comes to a browser. Lets see what other functionality does this wheel has
1. Tabbed Browsing.
Every browser today supports tabbed browsing, whether its IE 8 , Mozilla , Opera or the google chrome... The wheel on your mouse can act as button. When you want a link to be open in a new tab, you just have to click on the wheel. The wheel is like a third button on your mouse.
Now you need not have to right click and then select the Open Link in New Tab option from now...Just go clicking the wheel.
2. The second trick is a cool one, just try holding the shift key on your keyboard and then try spinning your wheel( or scrolling) , you actually go forward and back depending on the direction you spun. This works in both IE and Mozilla.
3. One more trick with the wheel...In a situation where you have opened up multiple tabs say around 25 tabs open on your tab bar, you will have to go and click on the arrow button at the left or right end of the bar to scroll in correspondingly. Rather than doing this, you can actually move the mouse pointer on the tabs open and spin the wheel to scroll back and forth , This feature worked in mozilla firefox
Try it out... when you are bored to click on the back and forward button in a browser.
Few Tips to keep safe from Computer viruses
Readers of this blog ...Today i wanna give you few tips to Safe keeping your desktops and laptops from all the viruses that are wildly waiting to attack your computer with their vulnerablities.
Good to know that these days the viruses don't get shipped with the Cd's or dvd's. And thus it leaves us only to the counter-attack the viruses that are in your pen drives, memory sticks or the memory cards.
I would like to present you the few basics at first and then proceed with the method to prevent viruses from attacking your PC.
- Firstly as everyone suggests...install a good antivirus on your pc or laptop. Norton, McAfee, Avg, Eset Nod32 any one of them will be fine.
- Keep updating your antivirus software regularly.
- Before opening your pendrive do a scan of the pen drive with the antivirus scanner.
- Delete all the files that would be shown as affected.
But as the days go by, and the technology grows... reducing the physical size but increasing the capacity of the pen drives. These days its common to have 2gb, 4gb, 8gb and 16gb pendrives.
Few years back we used to get hard disk of these sizes.
Scanning few mega bytes would not take much of the time, but these days when you have a 8 gb pen drive filled with your office files and you take to a cybercafe near your place for a print out and the guy there starts a scan on the whole pen drive... Believe me its gonna eat up lots of your minutes.
I experienced this when my friend brought the designs of our t-shirt in his 8gb pen drive to the shop where we had gone to give the order, and the guy there started scanning it.
We just required a single file from the pen drive. And in this age where impatience is the new life, its not agreeable to waste time scanning the whole pen drive.
So whats the alternative to scaning the whole pendrive.
Yeah I do have an alternative, But prior to it, let me take you on a walk through, of how the viruses from the pen drive affect the PC's on how so they spread.
When you insert your pendrive into the usb , the windows searches for the drivers and are automatically installed and it displays that the device is installed and ready to use
In the next step it searches for the 'autorun.exe' or "autorun.inf" file which lies inside every pendrive. This is a hidden file which will be in the pendrive by default from the device manufacturer .This file contains the various calls to other files. The windows by its default behaviour runs this autorun file.
So now if there are any virus scripts or any programs like trojan horse, malwares etc... they wil be inside your pendrive. The virus writter just need to edit this autorun file and put a line of code into it so that whenever autorun is called ,it automatically calls the virus script which runs in the background and thus it starts affecting all your files.
And this will happen everytime you plug this pendrive into your usb drive in any of the systems.
- So my first tip is to disable the autorun in your windows.
This is done by editing the groups policies. Go to start > run > type 'gpedit.msc' and press ok
A group policy editor window will popup. As shown below.
Now in this window there are two configurations the computer configuration and the user configurations.When you click on these the right side partition will show various options which can be enabled and disabled.
Now we need to browse through the path computer configuration> Administrative templates > System . Now scroll down in the right partitions and you will find an option saying turn off autoplay. As shown below.
Double click on the Turn off Autoplay, you will get a popup window as shown below. here the default option would be selected saying its not configured. Change it to enabled and also select All drives in the drop down menu.
Now press Apply and Ok.
Now you need to change the settings in the user configuration. Its very similar to the above process . Go to the path user configuration > Administrative templates > System > Turn off Autoplay . enable it for all the drives.
as shown below.
Press ok and you are done with it. Close the window.This also has a side effect. For example if you insert your favourite movie DVD. It now doesnot autorun with your DVD software. you need to browse the cd and manually select the files that you want to play.
2. The first one was good to prevent the virus from spreading.But the virus file is still in your pendrive. Usually the name of the virus file will be very similar to your folder names inside the pendrive. You open your pendrive and there is a virus file inside the pendrive ... something like 'New folder'. And you accidently doubleclick on this folder thinking it was your folder but it was actually 'New folder.exe' which runs the virus file.This again affects your computer.
So in this step we will change the folder options such that it shows all the hidden folders.
You go to start > control panel > folder options
In the Folder option window, scroll down and select 'Show hidden files and folders'
3. the third and the last step is to untick the check box saying 'hide the extensions of known files type'. It is just next option below the show hidden files option .This will display the extension of every file in the system. You will feel the difference when you open your mp3 folder where the name of the song is suffixed with .mp3
Now its easy to distinguish between the original 'New Folder' and the 'New Folder.exe'.
Thus after the step 2 and 3 the folder options should look similar to the image below.
Apply it and click on Ok and your are ready.
Thus now you need not be scared that you double clicked the drive as soon as you insert it into the usb drive and the virus will start to spread.
After opening the pendrive you just need to browse only the folders that you know are free of virus and now you dont accidently click into any of the unknown file. You can just delete the New folder.exe file now and similarly other hidden files.
Now you can put your pendrive anywhere , in a cybercafe and you don't need to worry that your pendrive is affected and you need to scan he whole memory now. Just right click and open the pendrive and only copy the files and folders that you created and the rest can be deleted.
Thus you dont need to waste time scanning , you need not waste time thinking that you opened the pendrive without scanning.
This method is safe only if there are few files.
And when every folder is affected in the pendrive, then you obviously need to have a good antivirus scanner to clean all your files or delete the virus.
Maintianing your Privacy on Firefox...
Being a firefox fan, i was searching for the addons... and i Stumbled upon these few security addons.. but i think they can be great help for all the geeks around to carry on with their peeky stuffs...
STEALTHER
The first one is the Stealther.... It allows you to browse the web in the stealth mode... It disables all the cookies, browsing history, cache files when you switch on the stealth mode.
This is similar to the Incognito mode in the Google Chrome. This allows you to browse the web safely without leaving any trace behind. I know this is already tickling your senses, Even i was insearch for such an addon from long time.
Distrust is a similar one that will help you browse in a private mode.
Close 'n' Forget
This one is a step ahead of Stealther... Suppose you forgot to switch on the private browsing mode and you come across a site and then it blinks to you that you forgot to switch on the private mode....What to do??? Close 'n' Forget comes to your rescue...!!
Just hit the special close button once you are finished and that site will be deleted from history and cookies cleared as if you had never visited the site.
If you want to Close the current tab and forget about the visit : suppress the related cookies and, if configured, the whole domain from the history.
Just install the close 'n' forget, find the new "close" button in the toolbar customization panel and drop it in your prefered place and just use it...
TabRenamizer
Do your tabs give you away? Why dont you change their names with TabRenamizer
This addon will let you play with the tab titles so that you can change them according to your will. With this you have 2 modes... The first one called the 'paranoid mode'.. which changes your tab names randomly... and the other 'custom mode' will allow you to rename the tabs with your custom names.
And thus with all these addons ...you can play safe.... in future with your mozilla....!!
Cracking the Root Password Part II
This is the sequel of my post hacking the ROOT
Here i would like to write about a new technique through which we can hack into the root.
This does not have limits... i mean to say this method can be used even if the grub of any system is locked down...
But both my methods the former one in the previous post and the one that i will present here all need physical access to the system...!!
This method requires the live cd.. preferably Ubuntu... since its simple
- Insert the live cd and boot from the cd.
- You can choose the option " Try ubuntu without any changes to your system"
- let ubuntu boot up normally.... now go to System->Administration-> Users and Groups in the menu bar above.
- you will have a "user settings" window poping up
- just select root , click on properties and set the password by hand.Finally press ok
- Now Shoot open the terminal.type su , it will ask for the password you just created.
- Type fdisk -l in the terminal window. This will display the list of partitions on the harddrive. we are looking for a linux partition here.
- next my linux drive here is /dev/sda2 or /dev/sda3 you will have to mount the partition. since i have two linux installed on my disk, let me work on my sda2 partition
- lets create a folder to mount type mkdir /media/linuxpartition to create a directory.
- now type mount /dev/sda2 /media/linuxpartition to mount the partition.
- Now lets change the root type chroot /media/linuxpartition for my example here.
- now you should have the command prompt symbol changed as shown below
- Type passwd and enter the new password, and there you go... you have just changed the password for your linux root.
- type reboot to restart the machine and login with your new password.. and enjoy...!!!
Phantom OS- A New Rvolution ?
Phantom is new, but it can currently boot, execute applications, and continually save system state to disk. A GUI is planned, as are cross-development tools. The new OS is planning to support interpreted scripting languages like Ruby and Python, and virtual machine programming languages like C# and Java. What, no perl?!
The saved-state nature of Phantom makes it a real contender for both the mobile market, as well as servers. Switch off your phone running Phantom and then turn it back on with no loss of data or apparent interruption in what you were doing. For server environments, a power loss may no longer be a big deal.
It’s great to see real innovation in the OS space. Challenging the status quo may mean that Phantom has an uphill battle before it, but it’s refreshing to see people really thinking outside the box.
*Source -Crunchgear.
Intrepid- Flash Update Problem
I usually run any updates on a my Ubuntu. For the Flash update in Intrepid Ibex I’ve made an exception: each page I opened that contained Flash (and in these days, which doesn’t?) pulled my CPU to 100%. That’s annoying.
If you have the same problem, just search for the flash update in your Update Manager and install it. Right click in the list, select “Uncheck all” and select only the flash update. After a restart of firefox you should be OK.
In my install the Update Manager started complaining that it wanted to do a Partial update. Don’t worry, just click “Close”.
Overall 8.10 is running extremely well. There are a few bugs that are annoying:
- NetworkManager forgets the password if you use multiple wireless networks.
- The dimming of the screen still doesn’t work right. If I plug in then it will dim to a fixed value, even if I selected it to be at a lower value. And plugging it in will select a higher value.
- Suspend and Wakeup works very good on my Sony. But it seems that changing anything during sleep kills the stability. I mean stuff like: unplug, or plug, the AC or attached (yes, or detach) an external monitor. I understand that’s complicated stuff: you wake up and the world has changed. I have that every day.
- I still had to do some tweaking to make the external monitor work. What’s good: at least it tried to adjust the Virtual setting in xorg.xonf.
- Compiz still can’t handle more then 2048×2048. Is it just me, or is that a bit outdated?
What I miss in the release is the USP, the killer app, … Of course it’s faster, uses less memory, works better with the hardware, but what makes this release special? It should have been the theme, but that is too weak for me.
It’s going to be a good release. Probably it will bring Ubuntu up to the level where XP was after about 7 or 8 years: stable and just working. Let’s hope the next release will take that step extra that pulls it above M$(yea!, M$) and Apple.
Intrepid Ibex vs Windows 7
First the download itself: it took a long time since Microsoft didn’t expect so many people to download the beta..Is that naive or just plain stupid?
But after a full night downloading(yeah!,moreso, because of my internet plan :P) the ISO is in.
I had Vista before and I assume that Windows 7 should run on a machine with at least Vista’s settings: I have created a partition with 16Gb disk, 2Gb memory and 128Mb video memory, 3D enabled. Microsoft promised that Windows 7 would be more resource friendly.
It takes ages before Windows 7 has figured out what hardware the machine contains, but the installation itself runs smoothly. It requires 2 restarts, but thats normal with Windows(:P). After about 50 minutes I’m on a working desktop. But, darn!, Aero doesn’t work, that was to be expected. The install takes about 7Gb (!). So I ended up manually updating the drivers for the system and the video. Another restart required.
Ubuntu clearly wins here. The Ubuntu installation is easier, more logical and much faster.
Going over to the General performance issues. I feel thats its still slow. When I click anything it opens slow, very slow. The Card Deck application took about 50 seconds to open.
I have the feeling that Windows 7, as Vista, depends to much on Aero for the frontend that not being able to run Aero breaks the whole system. Also Windows 7 still starts a lot of services after it has already shown the desktop which causes it to be less responsive in the first minutes. After this is done the system response improves a lot. It’s not as fast as Windows XP , but it’s much better then Vista.
Memory usage after startup is 300Mb, that’s impressive!
Ubuntu is faster. That’s no surprise.
After playing with the monitor settings I managed to kill the resolution of the monitor, it now displays 800×600. So if you want to play with Windows 7: don’t fool around with the screen resolution!
I’m a Gnome addict, I never liked the Windows and KDE interface approach. The new taskbar which an act like a dock is pretty nice. It takes a lot of screen space though, which is a general problem with the Windows 7 visual design. The icon tray is still there, include the bizarre ‘hide icon when not active’ function.
Explorer (the file manager, not the browser) is very much the same as in Vista. The only difference I could find was that the ‘open folder’ triangles fade out when the pane is inactive. What’s strange is that the Folder Settings dialog is still the same as in windows XP, that dialog is 10 years old…
If I look at the default installation only, so no personalisation then Windows 7 is doing quite good. The Ubuntu default config with the awful orange/brown colors and the Gnome default layout is horrible. Windows 7 looks more clean and the start menu is fast and easy to use.
While configuring Windows 7 more to my liking I was reminded of why I prefer Ubuntu: Windows can’t be configured. You can can choose a predefined setup that matches your needs best, but you can’t tweak it completely. Windows is and stays what it is.
When you play around with Ubuntu it enables you to make it exactly as you want it. This takes time and effort, so not everybody will do that. If you stay with the default config I’d say Windows 7 is actually better then Ubuntu, but if you’re ready to think and do some tweaking Ubuntu is so much better than Windows 7.
On the ease of use I would say Ubuntu and Windows 7 are equal. Ubuntu is more configurable, but most people won’t use that, Windows is familiar and that’s working ok. On the visual level I like Ubuntu better (especially with the Shiki Colors scheme!), but that’s mainly taste. Windows 7 looks good, so I’d call this a draw.
There is a huge difference in the approach that Windows 7 and Ubuntu take the pre installed features here. Windows 7 is an operating system, with everything that an OS needs: kernel, GUI, utilities, even some end user applications like Notepad and Paint.It’s not a fully operation system after installation; you need to install your productivity tools yourself: mail, word processor, spreadsheet, etc. This makes sense: not everybody wants to use what your supplier offers you.
Ubuntu installs a lot more end user applications, it actually comes fully loaded. After installation you can start working. This is easier, but it also forces you to use the preinstalled tools or to deinstall them and install your own preferences.
When it comes to the preinstalled features Ubuntu is a clear winner. Windows delivers near to nothing when it comes to end user applications.
What Windows does deliver a complete stack of OS features. In that section it is a good competitor of Ubuntu. Please mind that I’m looking at this from the standpoint of the end user, and not a system administrator. Windows 7 even includes a decent command line tool, which supports some more Unix oriented commands like ‘ls’ and ‘cat’. A peculiar decision of Microsoft.
Windows 7 has a complete and understandable set of tools to manage the system. Ubuntu tends to get a bit hard to understand for newbies at some points, although this is improving fast.
Windows 7 has sufficient features to call it a good OS, but Ubuntu delivers a much more complete set of features. Ubuntu is the winner here.
Conclusion
Windows 7 is far better then Vista. It’s faster, looks a little better and takes yet another small step towards the future. But. I’ve downloaded 2.44Gb to be able to install a system that contains only an OS. Nothing more, just a kernel, a GUI and some utilities. It takes 7Gb on your harddisk after installation and it can’t run 3D graphics in a slower machine.
I have mixed feelings here. On the one side Windows 7 is really going somewhere, it’s good. But on the other side Ubuntu is so much better when you tweak it a bit. When Canonical would invest some more time in delivering a more tasty off the shelf install then it would easily defeat windows. But they don’t.
There is no winner in this competition. Windows 7 will be the next most used OS, there is no question about that. Ubuntu is trying to compete, but it will never be able to. In the end Ubuntu is a better OS, which a better GUI, but it should show that much better then it does now.
Rescue a "crashed linux" without re-installing...
"Whilst attempting to boot Fedora from the NTLoader, I recieve the following "message': "GRUB _" (The underscore represents a blinking cursor thing)...
Is that you QUESTION?!!
If Yes,
Then with the grub cursor flashing it sounds like the system can't find grub you might want to do a reload of Fedora .. But DONT DO THAT!, Fixing is is much easier than what meets the eye..:)
You could actually try duel booting using XP boot manager (My Preference. I don't like third party boot managers.)
Run the command
dd if=/dev/hda5 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1
If hda5 is Not your boot partition, change it as appropriate. Type: df then determine which hda# is associated with your /boot partition. A file named boot.lnx should now have been created in the root's home directory or where ever you told it to be. Do an ls -l boot.lnx to confirm this.
Mount your pendrive drive use the command mcopy boot.lnx J: Or if your internet is up and running email it to yourself.
Now reboot and go to Windows XP.
J: Copy boot.lnx C:\ (It will land it in C:\ root.)
Double click your boot.ini file and add one line at the end it should read c:\boot.lnx="Fedora 7".
Then save it.
When you reboot your XP boot manager will come up when you chose Fedora it jumps to the Grub Boot manager on your second drive.
Reboot to Fedora and Enjoy!
XBMC- Media beyond the ultimatum!
XBMC, recursive acronym for “XBMC Media Center“, is an award winning free and open source software media-player and entertainment hub for all your digital media.
Multi-platform, Internationalized, and Localized
XBMC is a cross-platform software available for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard, Tiger, and Apple TV), Microsoft Windows operating-system, as well as the original Xbox game-console. With translations to over 30 languages for a worldwide audience. All versions of course completely free of any adware or spyware.
- XBMC for Linux
- XBMC for Mac
- XBMC for Windows
- XBMC for Xbox
- XBMC Live
Community
Over 50 developers have contributed to XBMC, and over 100 translators have worked to expand its reach. XBMC was created by created by a group of like minded back in 2003. XBMC Community Forum today have over 30,000 registered members, nad XBMC had already an estimated userbase of over one million daily end-users when it was only running on the the Xbox platform, and now that XBMC runs nativly on several other platforms as well we estimate that that the userbase have growed exponentionally.
User-friendliness that is Next To Godliness
XBMC is easy to install and setup, and its many beautiful custom user interfaces offers simple very intuitive navigation which are very convenient and flexible, adding to great price verses performance ratio when installed on cheap hardware to this best in class software. With and experience surpases all retail media center systems.
Superb Format and Codec support
XBMC supports a very complete spectrum of of audio and video multimedia file formats and codecs right out-of-the-box, and include features such as playlist playback, audio visualizations, picture viewing, slideshows, and weather forecast functions, RSS feed scroller on your home screen, together with a ever expanding array of community driven third-party add-ons and plugins.
Endless playback capabilities for All Types of Media
XBMC can play most audio and video file formats as well as display images at resolutions up to 1080p and over from virtually any source, including your local harddrive, CD/DVDs, USB flash drives, the Internet, and network shares, upscaling any lower resolutions videos to the maximum of your displays capability. XBMC can also playback DVD-Video movies with menus from ISO/IMG-images on-the-fly, even when they are in an RAR or ZIP archive. For music playback XBMC offers gapless playback, crossfading, cue sheet, replay gain amplification, advanced smart playlists, and chapter support.
XBMC can download or stream Internet video and audio streams, and play Internet radio stations (such as Podcasts and SHOUTcast), and listen to your favorites and discover new music with free, streaming music from Last.fm, among others.
XBMC of course handles all common digital picture formats with the options of panning/zooming, and slideshow with “Ken Burns Effect“. XBMC also handles CBZ and CBR comic book archive files, this feature lets you view/read, browse and zoom the pictures of comics pages these contain without uncompressing them first.
Online Powered Media Management
XBMC has a database driven video and music library view modes which help organize and filter all of your media straight out-of-the-box in. The video library allow you to easily browse your video content by things like; genre, title, year, actors, and directors, as well as carry our extensive searches on casts and related information. Similarly, XBMC’s music library allows the organization of your music collection by information stored in your music file ID meta tags, like title, artist, album, genre and popularity, as well as having access to powerful search and Smart Playlists features, helping you find exactly what you want in a fast and simple way.
Album and Cover Art
XBMC takes full advantage of broadband Internet connection if available, Artwork is automatically fetched for posters, artwork, fanart, synopsis and reviews on movies, plot, cast and episode information for TV shows, also album covers and artist information for music.
Extendable and Flexible Add-ons
XBMC features a Python Scripts Engine and WindowXML application framework (a XML-based widget toolkit for creating a GUI for widgets) in a similar fashion to Apple Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets and Microsoft Gadgets in Windows Sidebar. Python widget scripts allow normal users to add-on ‘extensions’ with new functionality to XBMC themselves, using the easy to learn Python scripting language, without the need for knowledge of any complex programming languages or the inner workings of XBMC. Current plugins and scripts include a multitude of added functions like Internet TV and radio streams, podcasts, movie-trailer browsers, and cinema guides, e-mail clients, instant messaging, train-timetables, peer-to-peer file-sharing downloaders, IRC, also casual games (sometimes also referred to as mini-games or party-games) such as Tetris, Snake, Space Invaders, Sudoku, and much more.
Fully Skinnable and Customizable Interface
XBMC is noted and highly regarded as having a very flexible GUI toolkit and robust framework for its GUI, (now also proven by the fact that several other software projects have copied it). Users can create their own skins, or choose one of the many already available skins. XBMC uses a standard XML base, making theme-skinning and personal customization very accessible to everyone. Users themselves can create their own skin (or simply modify an existing skin) and share it with others via public websites dedicated for XBMC skins trading. Colors, controls, navigation, positioning of elements, animation, even adding additional functionality can be achieved with a skin. “Project Mayhem” is the official skin from Team-XBMC; which is now in its third version, commonly know as “PM3″. Many third-party skins exist and while many are of original and unique designs, a few skins are almost exact replicas of other multimedia software, with skins clones of Apple TV and Front Row, Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition (MCE), MediaPortal, Meedio/MeediOS, HDeeTV, Kaleidescape, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and others. Each skin provides a totally different and unique user experience, all showing just how flexible XBMC’s skinning engine really is.
FOSS (Free Open Source Software)
XBMC Media Center software is distributed as open source under the GNU General Public License, (with a few sub-libraries licensed under the LGPL), and as a non-profit project XBMC is run and developed by volunteers in their spare-time without any monetary gain. Team-XBMC encourage anyone to contribute to the project, submit their own source code patches for new features and functions, improve existing ones, or fix any bugs in XBMC that you might find.
Technical Summary
XBMC is written in the C++ program language (and some Assembly code), XBMC uses the SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) multimedia framework and OpenGL for graphics rendering the Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows based operating-system platforms, and the Xbox version of XBMC uses Microsoft DirectX multimedia framework and Direct3D for graphics rendering, (as the Xbox does not support OpenGL).
Installation
Open System->Administration->Software Sources and select the Third Party Software tab. Add the following software source:deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-intrepid/ubuntu intrepid main
Close Software Sources and when prompted, choose to reload the repositories.
Install XBMC from the package xbmc (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:sudo apt-get install xbmc
Optionally you can also install:
- additional skins
sudo apt-get install xbmc-skin-* - support for remote controls
sudo apt-get install xbmc-eventclients-* - a scripting example
sudo apt-get install xbmc-scripts-example
Starting and Running XBMC
All that is left now is to start XBMC. You can start XMBC by going to Applications->Sounds & Video->XBMC Media Center.
Compiz Earth
Compiz 0.7.6 comes with new plugins that allow you do quite a lot. The best of the lot is getting the earth out of your desktop.
Check the video below--
"Awesome!" would perhaps be just an euphemism!
Click here to view the video
To install Compiz 0.7.6 just add the following repository
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu hardy main
The Worlds First SuperComputer PC
The world's first personal supercomputer, which is 250 times faster than the average PC, has been unveiled on dec 6 2008 . With its £4,000- £8,000 price tag, the Tesla supercomputer is beyond the reach of most consumers, but is expected to revolutionise the way scientists and medical professionals carry out their work.
Until now, supercomputers were massive systems made up of thousands of machines taking up entire rooms, which cost millions of pounds to build and maintain.By contrast, Tesla personal supercomputers will cost between £4,000 and £8,000 and look much like an ordinary PC
David Kirk, chief scientist at NVIDIA, the American company which has designed the new technology, said: "Pretty much anything that you do on your PC that takes a lot of time can be accelerated with this.""These supercomputers can improve the time it takes to process information by 1,000 times."
The new computers make innovative use of graphics processing units - a technological breakthrough, which the company claims could bring lightning speeds to the next generation of home computers.They went on sale to British customers yesterday and will initially be sold to universities and to the scientific and research community.
The PC maker Dell, however, said that it would soon be mass producing them for the general consumer market.
Mount ISO images without burning..:)
Some times you want to use iSO images without burning them.If you don’t want to waste your CD’s/DVD’s here is the simple possible solutions using these tips you can mount and unmount ISO images without burning them.
I know two possible solutions
1) Using Nautilus Scripts
2) Using kernel loop module
Now we will see each one in detailed
Using Nautilus Scripts
I am taking this tip from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=87369&page=3 first you need to download two scripts for mount iso images download from www.debianadmin.com/images/iso/mount.sh and to unmount iso images download from www.debianadmin.com/images/iso/mount.sh
Once you have these two scripts you need to change the permissions using the following commands
sudo chmod +x /home/username/mount.sh
sudo chmod +x /home/username/unmount.sh
Now you need to copy them nautilus scripts
sudo mv /home/username/mount.sh ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/
sudo mv /home/username/unmount.sh ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/
That’s it now you are ready for mounting and unmounting your ISO images.
Crack the .zip passwords using ubuntu!
If you want to crack zip file passwords use fcrackzip.fcrackzip is a fast password cracker partly written in assembler. It is able to crack password protected zip files with brute force or dictionary based attacks, optionally testing with unzip its results.
Install fcrackzip in Ubuntu
sudo aptitude install fcrackzip
This will complete the installation.
Fcrack Syntax
fcrackzip [-bDBchVvplum2] [--brute-force] [--dictionary] [--benchmark] [--charset characterset] [--help] [--validate] [--verbose] [--init-password string/path] [--length min-max] [--use-unzip] [--method name] [--modulo r/m] file.
fcrack Options
-h, –help
Prints the version number and (hopefully) some helpful insights.
-v, –verbose
Each -v makes the program more verbose.
-b, –brute-force
Select brute force mode. This tries all possible combinations of the letters you specify.
-D, –dictionary
Select dictionary mode. In this mode, fcrackzip will read passwords from a file, which must contain one password per line and should be alphabetically sorted (e.g. using (1)).
-c, –charset characterset-specification
Select the characters to use in brute-force cracking. Must be one of
a include all lowercase characters [a-z]
A include all uppercase characters [A-Z]
1 include the digits [0-9]
! include [!:$%&/()=?[]+*~#]
: the following characters upto the end of the spe-
cification string are included in the character set.
This way you can include any character except binary
null (at least under unix).
For example, a1:$% selects lowercase characters, digits and the dollar and percent signs.
-p, –init-password string
Set initial (starting) password for brute-force searching to string, or use the file with the name string to supply passwords for dictionary searching.
-l, –length min[-max]
Use an initial password of length min, and check all passwords upto passwords of length max (including). You can omit the max parameter.
-u, –use-unzip
Try to decompress the first file by calling unzip with the guessed password. This weeds out false positives when not enough files have been given.
-m, –method name
Use method number “name” instead of the default cracking method. The switch –help will print a list of available methods. Use –benchmark to see which method does perform best on your machine. The name can also be the number of the method to use.
-2, –modulo r/m
Calculate only r/m of the password. Not yet supported.
-B, –benchmark
Make a small benchmark, the output is nearly meaningless.
-V, –validate
Make some basic checks wether the cracker works.
fcrackzip Examples
fcrackzip -c a -p aaaaaa sample.zip
checks the encrypted files in sample.zip for all lowercase 6 character passwords (aaaaaa … abaaba … ghfgrg … zzzzzz).
fcrackzip --method cpmask --charset A --init AAAA test.ppm
checks the obscured image test.ppm for all four character passwords. -TP fcrackzip -D -p passwords.txt sample.zip check for every password listed in the file passwords.txt.
Intrepid Ibex- The Views and their Re-Views!
One of the first things you would notice after booting into Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop , is the new improved Human theme which has got a tinge of Orange. Status bar,Buttons glow and few icons have been changed and made more friendly looking. Ubuntu 8.10 also includes a brand new theme "Dark Room".
with "Dark Room" theme appliedHowever , with "Dark Room" theme I noticed I was unable to read text in Menu Bar sometimes.
Improved Shutdown dialog boxUbuntu 8.10 includes the latest stable version of Gnome - Gnome 2.24 . Gnome 2.24 is an extremely polished desktop environment and includes a host of feature addition. Nautilus the default File Manager in Gnome , now supports like Mozilla Firefox , Tab Browsing allowing you to browse number of different directory location inside a single nautilus window in separate tabs. Also Nautilus now supports encrypted private directory.
Furthermore , Ubuntu 8.10 includes improved Network Management tool allowing you to easily configure your DSL , Wireless , Wired , VPN etc networks.
Multiple tabs in Nautilus, also note new eject icons infront of mountable drives and encrypted folders
Ubuntu 8.10 supports "Guest Login" allowing anyone to log into Ubuntu machine without having an account ,however only catch is Guest users will not get access to any file of other users or be able to create files for security reason. This is especially useful where a single computer is used by a number of users , and you dont want others to peek into your files.
Hardware support has definitely improved with version of Ubuntu 8.10 , everything from Network Card , Bluetooth to Sound Card worked out of box on my cranky old Lenovo y410 laptop, In fact prior to version 8.10 I had hell lot of trouble configuring my sound card properly and even then headphone jack never worked properly. Inclusion of Alsa-1.0.17 in Ubuntu has definitely improved audio hardware support.Also there is improved support for NVidia graphics chipset/card. Proprietary drives can be easily downloaded and installed onto the system from (System -> Administration -> Hard Ware Drivers ). One reason why HardWare support is better in Ubuntu 8.10 is Ubuntu 8.10 is based on Linux kernel 2.6.27 which has significantly better hardware support.
Also , I am not sure whether it's me only or other people have also noticed that Intrepid Ibex runs a lot faster compared to earlier version of Ubuntu - "Hardy Heron" everything opens in a jiffy.
On the Software side , File-Roller now supports ALZ, RZIP, CAB, TAR.7Z file types , Ubuntu 8.10 includes updated version of X.Org - X.Org 7.4 which includes new much helpful failsafe X to diagnose cases where X Server fails to start. Ubuntu 8.10 also includes updated Samba 3.2 for browsing Windows Share on a network.
However , Ubuntu 8.10 includes older version of Open Office even though Stable 3.0 Version of Open Office is out. Though it will not be difficult for someone to update Open Office from repositories on a new Ubuntu 8.10 system.
Conclusion : Overall Ubuntu 8.10 is a well polished desktop Linux distribution , though not radically different from earlier version 8.04 of Ubuntu. Features like Tabbed Browsing in Nautilus , Encrypted Folders , better Hardware support ,being faster etc are reason compelling enough to Upgrade to the latest offering from Ubuntu team.
Re-installing grub; After "Windows wipes out Fedora"
"I reinstalled my Windows XP and my grub was fully erased in my Windows’ MBR. I could not boot my Fedora 8 anymore." Is that your question?! This could be of big help to you. Just follow the simple instructions below. Insert your Fedora 8 installer (CD1) and set your boot sequence to your CD. When the CD is loaded, choose “Rescue installed system” from the menu. Wait for it to be loaded and follow the wizard. In the command, check first the name of your partitions, fdisk -l It says something like sda, sda1, sda2/hda, hda1, … In my system, my Windows is installed on my first partition which is the sda. Change the current directory to /mnt/systimage with a root privilege. chroot /mnt/sysimage Install grub to your MBR’s location device, which is the Windows partition /sbin/grub-install /dev/sda Perfect! Restart your system and set the boot to your hard drive. It will show you the menu listed your Windows and your Linux. If these steps will not work, repeat again because this really works.
