h4k.com

The GParted Live CD is a bootable image of the popular and powerful GParted partition editor. Once the ISO has been written to a CD it boots into a minimal Linux distribution GUI with GParted and that is it. This is a great way to create or modify existing computer partitions because it loads into a minimalistic environment thereby creating less potential for interruptions during partition modifications. Avoiding interruptions is important because an error during partition modification can potentially make the current partitions inaccessible. It has a friendly and intuitive interface making it very easy to use (see the screenshots).

http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/

0xED is a free and powerful hex editor for OS X that is fast and lightweight. It has been designed in Cocoa for the full OS X look and feel.

Available from Apple here:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/0xed.html

Or the company home page here:
http://www.suavetech.com/0xed/0xed.html

Some web sites request an email address to register for something they are offering. If you don’t want to risk getting spam in your mailbox or never plan on visiting the site again then in some instances it is preferable to use a throw-away email address.

http://www.mailinator.com

If a web site requests an email address type in anystringhere@mailinator.com and replace anystringhere with any set of letters and numbers (ex: dfFx90sR7e2j@mailinator.com, me123@mailinator.com). To check the mailbox go to http://www.mailinator.com and in the “Check your inbox!” text box type in the new string of email address prior to the ampersand.

Warning: Anyone who goes to mailinator.com and types in a string that was used can check the email inbox. There is no way to prevent other people from seeing the contents of the mailbox which is why it s important to only send non-sensitive emails to these accounts. To achieve some basic level of security it is a good idea to use the auto-generated accounts that are listed at the top of the page by the “Check your inbox!” area. The are randomly created accounts that have a low possibility of being entered by chance from someone else who is trolling through accounts to find sensitive information.

Some web sites will not allow you to use mailinator.com email addresses so mailinator.com provides other throw-away email address domains to use as well. They can all be checked at mailinator.com:

• mailinator2.com
• sogetthis.com
• mailin8r.com
• mailinator.net
• spamherelots.com
• thisisnotmyrealemail.com

Schneier on Security an excellent blog covering technological and physical security. It is updated frequently and covers lots of modern topics and other breaking issues. On the site there are also a lot of links to his other works and article. Bruce Schneier is an expert cryptographer who has designed and co-designed multiple provably secure encryption algorithms and authored many books as well.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/

Bruce’s fame in the security world has also landed him a humorous set of parody facts.

Ask.com is a search engine that has a new function called “AskEraser” which deletes your search history from their servers within hours of searching. Some search engines keep the data indefinitely or for an undisclosed amount of time. For example, Google keeps your searches indefinitely and only makes them anonymous after 18-24 months (according to the official Google blog here). Unfortunately “anonymous” search engine data processing has been found to be vulnerable for being able to determine individual users as seen with the AOL searches data set release.

To enable AskEraser go http://www.ask.com then click on the word “AskEraser” in the upper right corner. A window will appear and click “Turn On AskEraser”. In the upper right corner where it says “AskEraser” it will now say “AskEraser > On | Off” with “On” being highlighted.

It is important to also use something like Adblock because Ask.com uses Google AdWords so Google is still getting information about your searches.

OS X has many options that can be used when the system is turned on. Start holding the keys down when the computer turns on, about the same time the startup noise occurs. Hold the keys until the progress indicator appears. The following commands can be used to help troubleshoot or upgrade an Apple computer.

• Press X during startup – Force Mac OS X startup
• Press Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup – Bypass primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume (such as a CD or external disk)
• Press C during startup – Start up from a CD that has a system folder
• Press N during startup – Attempt to start up from a compatible network server (NetBoot)
• Press T during startup – Start up in FireWire Target Disk mode
• Press Shift during startup – Start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items and non-essential kernel extension files (Mac OS X 10.2 and later)
• Press Command-V during startup – Start up in Verbose mode
• Press Command-S during startup – Start up in Single-User mode

OS X keyboard shortcuts for once the operating system has been loaded can be found here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

When viewing a web site it can tell what web browser it is being viewed with, amongst lots of other data. Some web sites put up restrictions on accessing content based on what web browser is being used. These restrictions are occasionally used because the web site does not work with that specific web browser but sometimes the restriction is superficial and unnecessary. This can be easily bypassed with User Agent Switcher. If you come across a site that does not like Firefox simply install this tool, go to Tools –> User Agent Switcher and set the referrer to a new web browser then refresh the web page.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

By default the extension only comes with three different user agents. Save the file below then import it into the extension to add many new options.

http://h4k.com/files/UserAgentStrings.xml

Screengrab! is an extension for Firefox that can save a web page as a single image. After installing it right click on the web page and select ScreenGrab! then Save and then choose an option. It offers the options to save the complete page or frame, save the visible portion, or save the selected area. A very handy tool for getting a quick copy of a web page.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146

Foxit Reader is a lightweight, fast and free PDF viewer for Windows. Reading PDF files in Adobe Acrobat Reader can often be slow and create a large drain on system resources whereas Foxit is small and quick loading.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

VMware Server is a virtualization application that is used to create and run virtual computers. It offers some benefits over VirtualBox OSE such as better networking options like bridged networking and the option to divide the virtual hard drive into multiple files. Unfortunately it is not open source software and does require a registration for a free license number. Versions are available for Linux and Windows.

Setting up VMWare Server on Ubuntu 7.10:

Download VMWare Server:
http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

Get a free registration number:
http://register.vmware.com/content/registration.html

It is currently possible to keep your email address private by giving an invalid email address because the registration number is displayed on the screen after you enter in the information and is not emailed to the given address.

Installing VMware Server in Ubuntu from the terminal:

Make sure the proper build environment is available:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-’uname -r’
sudo apt-get install xinetd

Change to the directory where VMware was saved and unarchive the tar.gz file:

tar -xvzf VMware-server-*.tar.gz

Open the newly created directory:

cd vmware-server-distrib

Run the installation script:

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Accept all the defaults presented by pressing the ENTER key.

VMware Server Console can now be accessed by going to Applications –> System Tools. To access it from a command line type “vmware”