At one time or another we’ve probably all had problems with Windows. Lets face it, being the most popular consumer Operating System it’s the primary target for spy ware and viruses. Sure you can use the Windows CD to run some repairs, or the Ubuntu boot disc that I previously showed you how to make to back up your data but there is a much better option to use. The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows.
By now you should have a pretty good idea how powershell can be leveraged to help you with all sorts of tasks. This tutorial will cover the foreach loop to show you how you can chew through collections such as string arrays or windows services. There are two types of foreach loops in powershell, the foreach statement and the foreach-object cmdlet. They work similarly and you can get the same results with either, but they do differ in several important areas.
I couldn’t really pin-point one subject for my blog entry, so I’ll cover a few things that I found interesting!
Computer World is reporting that the new “I’m a PC” ad campaign for Microsoft was actually created on a Mac. Some of the source files are tagged with “Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh” in the picture properties. Granted, not all of them were tagged like this, however; when trying to clean up the already poor reputation of Vista™ you could at least… you know, use the operating system you’re trying to save.
Asus, as reported by Ars Technica, had a bit of a blunder recently. It seems they released restore DVDs that also included a cracking tool for winRAR, confidential Microsoft documents for PC Manufacturers, and Asus source code. Asus will be tracking this issue down and dealing with it but expect to see lawsuits from RARlab.
And finally, for the conspiracy theory buff in us all left wondering how we’re still alive, the Large Hadron Collider has been taken offline until spring of 2009 due to a liquid helium leak. Rest easy knowing that you’ve got a few more months until we’re all sucked into oblivion! I am, of course, kidding… but there’s a 1:1,000,000,000 chance* that I’m not.
*figures not accurate.
Ever been doing something on the internet and seen one of those boxes with the crazy letters that you have to type in the letters before it’ll let you finish you’re post or comment on you’re friends Myspace page? It’s called a CAPTCHA which is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. They’re also known as a type of Human Interaction Proof (HIP). You’ve probably seen CAPTCHA test on lots of Web sites and you have to type them in correctly in order to complete the form.
The reason behind CAPTCHA is quite simply to stop people from exploiting a weakness in the computers running the site. While these people make up a minority of all the people on the internet, their actions can affect millions of users. For example, a free email service might find itself over run with account requests from an automated program which could be part of a larger attempt to send out spam mail to millions of people. CAPTCHA tests help prevent this from happening.
When windows performs it’s updates, often but not always some of the hot fixes leave backup files so that you can later uninstall those hot fixes should they themselves be a problem. Normally these backup files present no issue and can simply be ignored. On the occasions where this is not the case and you need or simply want that space back, there is a free tool to help.
NetworkWorld has a slide-show of 15 new technologies from DEMOfall 08. Showcased are everything from services dedicated to finding ’spin’ in news stories, to new money management, to finding musicians for project collaboration, to RFID tags for home use, to streaming media from your house to your cellphone! Don’t worry, IT gang, there’s new ways to spy on you, new ways to monitor servers/tickets/inventory (like we need anymore of that - there’s enough open-source options to fill a colo), to a PCIe card that uses flash memory for a SAN. It’s worth the few minutes to check out. The one thing that’s strangely absent from the list is a new product to take a slide-show and put it into a normal html based page.
With the rising cost of energy everyone is looking to make cut backs on everything to save a little cash and help out the environment. Local Cooling is a free power management program to help you control the amount of power your computer consumes. Local Cooling is a wanting to create a community of 100 million PC user who want to cut back on CO2 gas emissions by cutting energy cost and reduction of greenhouse emissions. The utility shows detailed results of how much power you’re computer uses and gives you suggestions on how to save. After downloading the program you’ll be prompted to create an account on LocalCooling.com so you can compare your savings to other users.
After installing the app you can look at the My Power tab adn see how much wattage your computer and connected devices are using. On the General tab you can choose pre-selected power saving options or create a custom one. It gives you the option of viewing your statistics on the application or on their website.
Because of better power management options available through Vista and other similar applications Uniblue isn’t offering the download on their site, but you can still get it from download.com here. Just because it’s no longer on Uniblue’s website doesn’t mean the project is dead and if you’re interested in helping to save the environment you can complete their survey or join the Local Cooling community.
There are many free scripts on the net you can use with powershell, but the real power comes in making your own cmdlets. To begin, first start by enabling scripts.
I’ve been testing Google’s new browser, chrome, for quite a bit today (download it here). So far so good. The interface is simple and smooth while the settings are a breeze and easy to understand. It’s still in beta, but I did have a nice little chuckle when I couldn’t even install google’s own toolbar. Then again it’s not really nessisary as you can just type your search into the address bar. The majority of the firefox/ie keyboard shortcuts are the exact same, so switching over isn’t a hassle. You can also import your settings and bookmarks, although I opted not to do so for now. Since it’s an open source project, many of your favorite firefox and internet explorer plugins will probably be made availible in due time. I’ve noticed a bit of annoying lag when viewing/interacting with a rather heavy-handed flash based sites, but I’m sure that will smooth out with updates. All-in-all I’d say it’s worth a look-see; however, I don’t see if flat out replacing my highly tuned firefox setup just yet. Oh, yeah, and you must have a windows operating system to try it out.
In a previous article I walked you through how to make a Bootable Ubuntu CD to retrieve your information from a dead windows machine. Now I’m gonna show you how to make a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive. To do this we’ll use a small software program called UNetBootin, which doesn’t need to be installed, just download and open it. Download the Ubuntu installation cd if you haven’t already then in UNetBootin just point the diskimage to the Ubunto ISO and choose your flash drive and hit ok. The process doesn’t take very long to copy the files and install bootloader. Once this finishes you’ll be asked to reboot, which isn’t necessary unless you want to test booting from the flash drive.
You might get a device error when trying to boot from the flash drive because the partition is not marked as active. In that case you’ll need to use the command line diskpart utility to fix this, if using Windows Vista you can open the command prompt by right clicking and choosing Run as Administrator. Once you’ve got the command prompt open type “diskpart” to get to the diskpart utility. Then type “list disk” to list the drives on your computer then “select disk #” (where # use the number of the drive), “select partition 1″ and then “active”. The “active” command will mark the current partition as active. After this you should be good to go, you can try to boot from the flash drive. Every BIOS is different but most of them will tell you which key to press for the boot menu and boot from your flash drive. You’ll actaully see a UNetbootin menu instead of the regular Ubuntu boot menu, which has basically the same options. The boot process should be alot faster than using the regular Ubuntu boot cd.
