SysAdmin

My Spambox, Create A Temporary Email Address In Firefox : " Temporary email services are great when it comes to protecting one’s privacy on the Internet. They are especially useful during website and service sign ups, considering that a lot of services sell user information or use the information to send advertisements. But, those disposable email addresses are not suited for all purposes. It is often not a good idea for instance to use a temporary email address for signing up with a service that the user wants to use on a regular basis. Why? Think of signing up for Facebook with a temporary email service. Most services of this kind allow anyone access to all email addresses, which means that any user knowing the email address, or stumbling upon it, could access the user’s Facebook account. This possibility depends largely on the type of temporary email service though. The Firefox add-on My-Spambox adds capabilities right to the browser’s status bar to create a temporary email add...

Restore the Windows Boot Loader After an Ubuntu Update : " Will your computer not boot into Windows after installing an update on your dual-boot or Wubi Ubuntu install? Here’s how you can get your Windows boot loader back so you can easily get back to work in either OS. We’ve mentioned before how Wubi is a great way to run Ubuntu on your Windows PC or netbook , and in general it works great. However, sometimes your system may receive updates to GRUB, and if you choose the wrong option, the next time you reboot your computer you may find that it think there’s only Ubuntu and no Windows installed on your computer. Or, perhaps, even more ominously, you boot your computer to see that it thinks it has no operating system. Often, there’s no need to panic. If you recently received an Ubuntu update, or somehow managed to mess up or remove your boot loader, it’s quick and easy to get it back using familiar Windows tools. Here’s how. Reinstall Your Windows Boot Loader From ...

The Linux credit card -- with Tux on the front and everything : " Filed under: Fun , Open Source I couldn't make this up if I tried: The Linux Foundation is now offering a platinum rewards Visa credit card . There is no annual fee, a low introductory APR -- in fact, it's a normal credit card with Tux on the front. Every purchase you make with the Linux credit card will kick back a percentage to the Linux Foundation. The Foundation also gets $50 for every activation! In the words of the Foundation, this card is for 'those who want to support the Linux Foundation's activities while expressing their commitment to Linux. The Linux credit card is an easy way for anyone to contribute to the growth of Linux and identify themselves as supporters of the community by carrying Tux in their pocket.' Unfortunately it's for U.S citizens only, otherwise I'd sign up right now! If you're going to rack up credit, why not do it in a way that benefits the mos...

Prisão de homem na Rússia faz circulação mundial de SPAM cair 20% : " Provavelmente você não percebeu, mas a empresa que administra sua conta de e-mail sim: depois que a Rússia prendeu Igor A. Gúsev, 31 anos, um dos maiores spammers da atualidade (para não dizer o maior), a circulação de SPAM caiu cerca de 20% em todo o mundo. De acordo com a polícia de Moscou, Gúsev é o principal nome por trás de uma rede que pagava a outros spammers para a emissão de mensagens indesejadas, especialmente sobre medicamentos falsificados comercializados por uma empresa chamada Depsmedia. Esse esquema pode ter gerado um faturamento de nada menos que 120 milhões de dólares nos últimos três anos e meio. A rede de Gúsev foi desativada repentinamente no dia 27 de setembro (2010) e, nesta semana, sua residência foi invadida pelas autoridades russas, operação que resultou na apreensão de computadores, unidades de armazenamento de dados e até remédios. Com a desativação da rede e, consequentemente, co...

How to Crash Any Version of Internet Explorer with Simple HTML : " We’ve already shown you why so many geeks hate Internet Explorer , and since it’s almost Halloween we figured we’d show you something really scary—how to crash any version of Internet Explorer with nothing more than HTML and CSS. Note: we’re really not trying to bash on Internet Explorer—in fact, the latest beta version is really quite nice , but we figured we’d have some fun with this bug, and maybe somebody at Microsoft will fix this problem before the final release. How to Crash Internet Explorer with HTML Simply open up notepad or another text editor, paste in the following, and save it as SomeFilename.html. <html><head> <style type="text/css"> #a { margin:0 10px 10px; } #b { width:100%; } </style> <title>IE Crasher</title> </head> <body> <table><tr><td> <div id="a"> <form id="b"...

Statistics show European Microsoft Windows browser ballot screen to be useless : " Filed under: Browsers The browser ballot screen that Windows users in the EU have started to see since March , which was supposed to lessen the monopolistic stronghold that Internet Explorer has on browser market share, has proved to be quite useless. New data shows that the differences in browser use trends between the EU and the world from January to October are within the error margin. This is despite Opera's past claims that the browser ballot screen at one point made downloads of its browser in the EU skyrocket. Let's take a look at the numbers (seen in the table above). IE use dropped 5.25% in Europe between January and October, and 5.92% worldwide. Firefox market share went down 1.23% in Europe and 0.14% worldwide. Chrome jumped 6.4% in Europe and 6.24% worldwide. Safari went up 0.05% in Europe and 0.8% worldwide. And so on. Now that we've established that the browser ballot sc...

Free OCR Software for Windows : " Windows only I’ve never been a huge fan of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) applications because of how they have a hard time reproducing the original document that is being used as the source. Sometimes, however, the formatting may not be as important as just trying to avoid retyping a few dozen pages that you only have in a printed form. If you’re in that situation I’d definitely recommend checking out FreeOCR . It’s not the most extravagant OCR program I’ve seen, but it’s both free and really simple to use. Since it is capable of directly tying into most scanners I’d say that even a novice computer user could figure out how to use this. You don’t have to use a scanner though. FreeOCR can also be used to open a PDF file or an image (including most common image types and TIFFs). I tested out the accuracy by printing a snippet from one of our articles, and then scanning it back in. The results I got were really good, but as of right now it c...

CIO Essentials for Cloud Computing : "Cloud computing is changing everything we ever believed about information technology (IT). By essentially renting Web-based applications instead of purchasing software and servers, businesses are beginning to understand the implications of cloud computing for virtually on-demand scalability and reduced infrastructure and complexity as well as saving money. And that's just the beginning. IT professionals and decision-makers had better be ready for the next generation of cloud computing. View this ZDNet Webcast to learn more about the fast-changing implications of the most important technology since the Internet and what it means for both business and IT leaders: Find out how cloud computing will continue to profoundly impact the way that software is purchased and consumed and what it means in terms of issues such as service, security, storage, and compliance Learn why cloud computing is completely re-shaping our thinking of the data cent...

10 ways for road warriors to avoid snags and snafus : " From small aggravations to huge headaches, a lot can go wrong when you hit the road. Veteran globetrotter Brien Posey offers some advice that will help you stay productive when you travel. Between consulting gigs, technology conferences, and vacationing in exotic places, I travel more than just about anybody I know. So I have a lot of practical experience with working while on the road. Over the years, I have adopted numerous techniques that help me stay productive while I am traveling, and I want to share some of those tips with you. Note: This article is also available as a PDF download . 1: Bring your own power strip If someone were to ask me my number one tip for road warriors, I would tell them to always bring their own power strip. Over the years, I have found that some hotels are severely lacking when it comes to electrical outlets. Having my own power strip allows me to power my laptop and charge my cell phone (and ot...

Use Robocopy's multi-threaded feature to quickly backup your data in Windows 7 : " Soon after Windows Vista came out, I discovered that Microsoft had updated the venerable Robocopy with a bunch of extra features and made it a regular part of the Windows operating system. Of course, when Windows 7 came out I immediately examined the newest version of Robocopy and discovered that Microsoft had again updated Robocopy with a single, but very powerful new feature - the ability to perform a multi-threaded copy option. More specifically, with multi-threaded capabilities Robocopy can now simultaneously copy multiple files in parallel, which will result in very fast backup operations. In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report , I’ll show you how to take advantage of Robocopy’s features to create an exact mirrored duplicate of all the pertinent data files in your user profile folder (C:\Users\YourName). As I do, I’ll show you how to use the new multi-threaded copy feature. T...

What is the Linux Kernel and What Does It Do? : " Image by ingridtaylar With over 13 million lines of code, the Linux kernel is one of the largest open source projects in the world, but what is a kernel and what is it used for? So What is the Kernel? A kernel is the lowest level of easily replaceable software that interfaces with the hardware in your computer. It is responsible for interfacing all of your applications that are running in “user mode” down to the physical hardware, and allowing processes, known as servers, to get information from each other using inter-process communication (IPC). Different Types of Kernels There are, of course, different ways to build a kernel and architectural considerations when building one from scratch. In general, most kernels fall into one of three types: monolithic, microkernel, and hybrid. Linux is a monolithic kernel while OS X (XNU) and Windows 7 use hybrid kernels. Let’s take a quick tour of the three categories so we can go in...