Man Versus Technology

Secret Space Encryptor - Universal Encryption Software for Android

2012-05-23T11:50:00.000-05:00

Until Google builds in encryption into Android a data security conscious user has to rely on a 3rd party application to encrypt sensitive information. One such useful tool available at Google Play is called Secret Space Encryptor by Paranoia Works.

It's a very simple, intuitive, and powerful application allowing the user to store encrypted passwords, encrypt text messages, as well as local directories and files.

It weights in at 3.71MB and requires only the following permissions:
Storage to modify SD card content
System tools to prevent phone from sleeping

That in itself is very conservative considering most applications rely on many more permissions with Network Communication being the most widely used. On top of that developers provide the application source code, which can be downloaded here.

Application Features:

Password Manager, Message Encryptor and File Encryptor integrated in the all-in-one solution

Store and manage all your passwords in one secure place with the Password Vault

Keep your messages and other texts safe from unintended readers with the Message Encryptor

Encrypt your private and confidential files or folders with the File Encryptor

Available encryption algorithms in this version of the SSE: AES(Rijndael) 256bit, RC6 256bit, Serpent 256bit, Blowfish 256bit

Encryption engine based on the Bouncy Castle Crypto Library

This software is Open Source

Screenshots:

File Encryptor Screen

Password Vault Screen

Message Encryptor Screen

Links:
Secret Space Encryptor @ Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paranoiaworks.unicus.android.sse&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5wYXJhbm9pYXdvcmtzLnVuaWN1cy5hbmRyb2lkLnNzZSJd

SSE Source Code: http://www.paranoiaworks.mobi/download/downloads.html

Developers website (mobile version): http://www.paranoiaworks.mobi/sse/

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"Don't mess with the Internet"

2012-05-23T02:03:00.000-05:00

Texas Congresman Lamar Smith, sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act

Don't mess with the Internet! After the largest ever online blackout protesting SOPA these two huge billboard ads right at the doorsteps in his home district will be a good reminder not to mess with people's freedom and what the crowd wants. All paid for by no one else but the Internet people who chipped in as part of an online campaign to put those up.

Courtesy of fightforthefuture.org

Educate yourself more:

FightFortheFuture: http://fightforthefuture.org/billboard

Don't Mess with the Internet Campaign: https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/dont-mess-with-the-internet-billboard-in-lamar-smiths-home-district

Lamar Smith: http://www.vice.com/read/lamar-smith-sopa-copyright-whoops

SOPA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

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Calculate how much is Facebook making off of your data on the stock market.

2012-05-23T01:07:00.001-05:00

It's all about how much Facebook "knows" about your life. The more details the better they can target their money making content at you. While losing your privacy online is unavoidable to a certain degree, it really gets unacceptable once you see what, where, and who is tracking your every move online. One way to find out more about who cares about what you do online is to use browser plugins like disconnect and Collusion.

Getting back on the subject, the same folks who wrote those plugins let you calculate how much money all of your personal data on Facebook makes for them on the stock market

I was worth ~$360 being a male at 32 at my current location were the biggest factors.

Links:
How much is Facebook making off of your data on the stock market? https://fbme.disconnect.me/login

disconnect & Collusion browser plugins: https://disconnect.me/tools

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Another method to find out if the OS is running in virtual environment

2012-01-26T09:36:00.002-06:00

Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and CentOS have a tool called 'virt-what' that detects if the operating system is running in a virtual environment.

It can detect the following environments:

hyperv: Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor
ibm_systemz: IBM SystemZ (or other S/390)
ibm_systemz-direct: IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning system
ibm_systemz-lpar: LPAR on an IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning system
ibm_systemz-zvm: z/VM guest running in an LPAR on an IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning system
linux_vserver: Linux VServer container
kvm: KVM hypervisor using hardware acceleration
openvz: OpenVZ or Virtuozzo container
parallels: Parallels Virtual Platform (Parallels Desktop, Parallels Server)
powervm_lx86: IBM PowerVM Lx86 Linux/x86 emulator
qemu: QEMU hypervisor using software emulation
uml: User-Mode Linux (UML) guest
virt: Some sort of generic virtualization
virtage: Hitachi Virtualization Manager (HVM) Virtage hardware partitioning system
virtualbox: VirtualBox guest
virtualpc: Microsoft VirtualPC
vmware: VMware hypervisor
xen: Xen hypervisor
xen-dom0: Xen domU (paravirtualized guest domain)
xen-hvm: Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM)

To install it run:

yum install virt-what

Usage is as simple as running it without any options.

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How to find out at command line if a system is a virtual guest.

2011-12-05T13:46:00.001-06:00

There will be times when it will be necessary to check if the system that you are currently SSH'd into is a hardware or virtual based guest. Before it was easy, just issue an 'eject' command and go check yourself which machine has the CD tray open. Before there were no mixed environments, so things were easier.

There are couple of ways to figure it out.

1. Use the 'dmidecode' utility. The following command will show basic hardware information for the machine:

dmidecode | grep -A 10 "Handle 0x0001"

Output:

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
Manufacturer: VMware, Inc.
Product Name: VMware Virtual Platform
Version: None
Serial Number: VMware-XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX
UUID: XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX
Wake-up Type: Power Switch
SKU Number: Not Specified
Family: Not Specified

The key to the answer is the 'Manufacturer' line. Normally, on a physical hardware it should show the name of the manufacturer: Dell, HP, IBM etc. If the system is virtualized, it will display the hypervizor name.

2. If the system is hosted on VMware server, then an easy but not foolproof method to find out if the guest system is or 'may be' hosted in virtualized environment is to look for guest support tools that may be installed. In case of VMware one should look for vmware-tools:

rpm -qa | grep -i "vm"

Output:

VMwareTools-7300-82663
xorg-x11-drv-vmmouse-12.4.0-2.1
xorg-x11-drv-vmware-10.13.0-2.1

This doesn't necessarily mean that the system is virtualized but can at least hive a hint about that.

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Fedora 16 x86_64 and Picasa Segmentation Fault

2011-11-05T00:57:00.002-05:00

If you run into this error while trying to start Picasa on Fedora 16 64 bit system:

/usr/bin/picasa: line 189: 5216 Segmentation fault (core dumped) "$PIC_BINDIR"/wrapper check_dir.exe.so /usr/bin/picasa: line 248: 5325 Segmentation fault (core dumped) "$PIC_BINDIR"/wrapper set_lang.exe.so

then, what fixed it is doing the following:

- install the 'wine' package:

yum install wine

- copy the 'wine-preloader':

cp /usr/bin/wine-preloader /opt/google/picasa/3.0/wine/bin/wine-preloader

Picasa should start now.

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less Syntax Highlighting in Fedora

2011-08-04T11:49:00.002-05:00

If you look at a variety of text, configuration, and source files on the command line using 'less' then you will appreciate this trick which will make viewing syntax much easier by highlighting it.

In Fedora, install source-highlight:

yum -y install source-highlight

Then, edit the ~/.bashrc file and add the following 2 lines:

export LESSOPEN="| /usr/bin/src-hilite-lesspipe.sh %s"
export LESS=' -R '

Next, exit the terminal (ctrl-d) and re-login for the changes to take effect.

Finally, unless you work with a monochrome display, enjoy the colors.

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Fix Picasa Segmentation Fault in Fedora 14

2011-01-28T18:21:00.000-06:00

Without going into too many details, if you are running Fedora 14 and Picasa fails to start, try running it from the command line. If you get the following output:

/usr/bin/picasa: line 189: 14526 Segmentation fault (core dumped) "$PIC_BINDIR"/wrapper check_dir.exe.so
/usr/bin/picasa: line 248: 14642 Segmentation fault (core dumped) "$PIC_BINDIR"/wrapper set_lang.exe.so

Then there's a good chance the following fix will help:

(on the command line as root)

cp /usr/bin/wine-preloader /opt/google/picasa/3.0/wine/bin/wine-preloader

BOOM! Picasa works again.

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Install Android Eclipse Plugin in Fedora Linux

2011-01-09T17:42:00.003-06:00

Update:
Thanks to a reader Kris who pointed out that this fix also works for Eclipse in Windows 7 64bit.

If you get this error in a fresh installation of Eclipse in Linux (Fedora 14 i686 in this case) then there's a good chance some additional plugins are missing:

Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found.
Software being installed: Android Development Tools 8.0.1.v201012062107-82219 (com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.feature.group 8.0.1.v201012062107-82219)
Missing requirement: Android Development Tools 8.0.1.v201012062107-82219 (com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.feature.group 8.0.1.v201012062107-82219) requires 'org.eclipse.gef 0.0.0' but it could not be found

It's very easy to fix it. In Eclipse go to Help->Install New Software and add a new software source appropriate to your Eclipse version. As of January 2011, I'm running Eclipse Helios (3.6.1) and its source is: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios. Type that into the 'Work with:' text field and let the list auto-update. Once it's updated check the "WST Server Adapters" from the list and finish the wizard.
After it installs, the Android plugin for Eclipse should finish installing without a problem.

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US Air Force Christmas Gift: 1,760 PlayStation 3 Consoles

2010-12-03T17:33:00.000-06:00


Condor Cluster

The United States Air Force must have been really good last year. The Christmas is very close, and they already got their holiday present: 1,760 PlayStation 3 consoles! Apparently, they decided to brush up their skills in cyber warfare and train their top guns in virtual reality ass kicking. Not really. In this case not a single console they got will ever see any online combat, nor will it entertain soldiers with Blu-ray movies. All of them are involved in a more noble project: 33rd fastest supercomputer in the world! US Air Force has converted all those 1,760 PS3 consoles into a huge computer cluster called "Condor Cluster".

They used the first generation of PS3 consoles due to the fact that they allow to install Linux on them. All of the hardware combined with Linux is able to perform at an astonishing 500 trillion floating point operations per second (TFLOPS). Not the best in the world, but by far the fastest computer in the entire US Defence Department.

What else is intriguing about it is that they didn't really waste the tax payers money on it at all. Quite the opposite, they saved close to $9,600 on each single processing unit. Comparable hardware would have cost about $10,000 per unit, they paid $400, that's a saving of almost 2,500% per unit! And we're talking US Air Force here. In total the whole setup came up to about $2,000,000. That's not bad considering if they used comparable computer parts to match the same processing power, it would have been way more, about 10x to 20x more.

There's more. Since it's built from PS3's, which are consumer grade hardware built with power efficiency in mind, the whole cluster will only consume about 10% energy of what other supercomputers with similar processing power do. So taxpayers are happy, tree huggers are smiling, but what about the US Air Force? They didn't build it just to be the coolest guys on the block. The purpose of it is to aid in radar enhancement, satellite imagery processing, and artificial intelligence research, and kick some major butt in online deathmatches during breaks.

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Blog XML Converters: Easily Convert from MovableType, Wordpress, and LiveJournal to Blogger When Migrating Blogs

2010-11-19T11:37:00.006-06:00

Blog XML Converters

Are you moving a lot from one blogging platform to another? Can't commit to one and keep your all posts and comments on one site instead of starting from scratch each time you move your blogging home to a different provider?

We've all been there at some point and the frustration can be high enough to discourage even the most creative bloggers. However, there are some really smart folks out there, mainly JJ from the Data Liberation Front, who wrote a very useul script that allows to convert from one blog platform to another.

My last post about Wordpress to Blogger converter drew a lot of attention and provided help to many bloggers who came across the same technical issues as I have when I was migrating from Wordpress to Blogger.The solution so far has helped many and it seems it isn't just limited to folks ditching Wordpress only. There are couple other converters available for LiveJournal and MovableType as well.

Currently available converters:

Wordpress to Blogger

http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/

Blogger to Wordpress
http://blogger2wordpress.appspot.com/

LiveJournal to Blogger
http://livejournal2blogger.appspot.com/

MovableType to Blogger
http://movabletype2blogger.appspot.com/

This is the current conversion matrix:

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T-Mobile G2 Tethering, WiFi Hotspot, and Wi-Fi Calling

2010-11-05T15:23:00.001-05:00

It turns out the rumors were true. T-Mobile added USB Tethering, Portable WiFi Hotspot, and WiFi Calling. These new features came from T-Mobile, and not from Google, in the 1.22.531.8 build update. Good job T-Mobile!

Here are instructions on how to check for updates with a G2.

For those unaware:
USB Tethering - connecting a phone to computer's USB port and using the phone as a 'modem' for Internet access.
Portable WiFi - using a phone as a temporary, portable access point for wireless devices.
WiFi Calling - using your home wireless Internet access to place calls with the G2. This may come in handy for anyone who's coverage suffers in an urban jungle or rural desert.

Diet2Go - The Best Android Dieting Application

2010-10-27T15:08:00.000-05:00

Creative developers from SimpLabs have created one of the best, most intuitive, versatile, and creative dieting applications so far available on the market for Android. They call it a "a revolutionary mobile application" and it may just as well be a ground breaking one not only from the fact that it serves a great purpose of promoting a healthy life style but also due to its awesome and streamlined user interface. It is called Diet2Go and it's the best thing since the sliced bread (pun intended).

It has the largest collection of diet plans, I counted 54 so far:

Diet Listing

3-day Cleanse
3-day Detox
3-day Low Calorie Diet
3-day Low Fat Diet
4-day Protein Diet
After Holiday Cleanse
Apple Diet
Beverly Hills Diet
Blood Type 0
Blood Type A
Blood Type AB
Blood Type B
Cabbage Soup Diet
Chicken Diet
Comfort Food Diet
Daily Food Group
Delicious Low Carb
Easy Detox
Easy High Fiber Diet
Easy Low Carb
Easy Vegan
Fish & Seafood Low Carb
Gentle Cleanse & Energy
Grapefruit Diet
Healthy Detox
Healthy Food Combining
High Fiber
Low Carb, Low Cal
Low Fat, Low Cal
Low Glycemic Index
Mediterranean Diet
Mono Food Diet
No Meat Weight Loss
Pescetarian Low GI Diet
Radical Cleanse
Raw Deal
Salad Days
Salad Delight
Simple Cleanse
Simple Food Combining
Simple Italian Diet
Simple Low Carb
Simple Pescatarian Diet
Simple Vegatarian Diet
Summer Detox
Sunny Beach Lite
Sunny Island
Super Protein
Tasty Healthy Diet
Vegan Fresh Summer Diet
Vegatarian Food Combining
Volumetric Diet
Winter Detox
Zero Hunger Diet

There are plenty of diets to pick from depending on personal goals and life styles. And this application takes it a step further by personalizing weight loss estimates, so the diet preference may be based not only on the style of it but also on the amount of weight a certain diet may help to lose.

Personal Profile

The first step to personalize the diet is to completely and accurately fill out the profile. It asks for such info as: age, height, weight, gender, and activity level. Meal reminders (1 minute alarm, one time notification, vibrate, none) and units of measurements (metric, imperial) can be configured in the tab as well.

Once the profile is complete, going to the Diets tab will list all available diets with some additional custom information listed for each diet. Each diet entry shows the amount of weight that can be possibly lost over a certain amount of time. It varies from 0.5 - 3 lbs, and from 3 - 8 days depending on the personal profile details, and diet choice. Hence, it's important to fill out the personal profile as close as possible to avoid inaccurate reading and possible disappointment with the final results.

Another great thing about this application is that it will remind you when to have a meal. Dieting isn't about starving, it's about eating smart, and on regular basis. What a better way to keep track of that then with a smart app like Diet2Go that has this functionality. It will nag you according to the setting configured on the Profile tab, and according to the diet's meal frequency. When picking a new diet, it is possible to set a personal schedule for each individual meal. Meal timing can be set to fit a day's schedule. It also allows to set the starting day.

Diet Schedule

But what a great diet would be without well planned meals? Here's where the complete and detailed outline of what should be eaten for each given meal comes in. Diet2Go allows to see the whole diet's meal plan for all days, as well as current meals in case of an already ongoing diet. The application shows what the next meal is on the My Diet tab. It shows which diet day out of all days it is, what diet we're using, completion bar, meal name, time and date for the meal, meal ingredients and their amount, as well as a random Tips & Tricks to help with the dieting.

It doesn't end here, by pressing phone's 'Menu' button, the user can access the groceries shopping list. A complete list of all the things that need to be bought for the whole duration of the diet and their amounts. The list can be emailed as well, making it easy to print. Or if you don't want to print, pressing on any individual item will check mark it as complete (bought). That's in my opinion one of the strongest points of this application. When I begun cleaning up my diet, I found it especially hard to plan for a week worth of meals before going grocery shopping on the weekend. I usually either miscalculated the amount of food to buy or missed some items all together, consequently throwing clean eating off balance. This problem is virtually completely eliminated with the shopping list feature of Diet2Go.

Grocery List

Dieting can be quite challenging, especially if no 3rd party support, advice, and critique is available. Well, Diet2Go devs thought about it as well, and created a very clean and simple to use forum where users can post questions, and give answers and advice to other members, giving it a nice personal touch and feeling of belonging to a same-minded community.

To sum it all up, Diet2Go takes the whole planning, keeping track of, researching aspect out of the mind, and makes it brain dead easy to actually start something health conscious with only a few taps of the finger. I don't see any hope for someone who would ignore such a powerful tool and still do nothing about bringing balance to a daily diet. The Internet gave us an opportunity to research the knowledge, Diet2Go takes all that knowledge and puts it into a clean, intuitive, well design package that automates the whole dieting concept to the point where only limitation of the phone are the limit. Who knows, maybe in few years phones will be able to shop, clean, and prepare our meals, until then our wives got to do it, but the rest is taken care of by Diet2Go.

Daily Diet Breakdown

Diet Information

Forums

Missing Edit Button in Shutter

2010-10-22T21:03:00.001-05:00

Shutter is the one of the best Linux screenshot applications available hands down. In case you run across a problem with the Edit button being grayed out here's the solution to it:

For Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libgoo-canvas-perl

For Fedora:

su -
yum install libgoo-canvas-perl

Enjoy Shutter Edit.

How to Check-in for Updates With a T-Mobile G2 Android Phone

2010-10-19T10:01:00.000-05:00

If you own the new T-Mobile HTC G2 Android phone there's quite a chance that a OTA (Over The Air) update could be available for your phone as of this writing. Unofficial rumors on the T-Mobile Forums say there is an OTA update being tested now for the T-Mobile G2 that will enable wifi calling and internet tethering. These are two huge features! I miss internet tethering from the rooted G1, it has saved my butt numerous times while troubleshooting Internet connection issues. And on the new G2, once enabled, it will allow to connect through the new T-Mobile high speed wireless with up to 14 Mbs speeds. That should own my measly 3000/600 DSL. And wifi calling should be useful for folks who get poor reception in their homes/offices by using a local wifi connection to make calls. From the rumors it seems wifi calling will still use regular over-the-air minutes included in the plan.

Here's how to check-in for updates: On the dial pad type this *#*#2432546#*#* After typing the last asterisk, all the characters will disappear from the display and about 2-3 seconds later, there should be a top bar notification saying that the 'Checking succeeded'. My assumption is that once there is an OTA update, this should cause the phone to receive it.

Cleanup your Linux system with fslint

2010-10-15T22:03:00.000-05:00

Do you remember the days when your first computer came with a certain pre-installed operating system that used to come to a crawl the more you used it. Yeah you do, 'good' old days of Windows Millenium, XP, Vista. The best practice at this point was to either use the built in clean up tools or go out to the web and download one of the many clean up tools. This kind of practice was done at least once a week otherwise your computer would get slower and slower, causing a lot of frustration. If you were technically inclined, it wasn't a problem. Just run a clean up utility and enjoy a slightly faster OS; an easy DIY. If you were my neighbor or aunt the only solution was to call the 'computer guy', meaning you, to fix it. I bet at some point you thought about making money out of it, I did as well, and I actually did make some money, but the effort wasn't worth it.

Now skip forward several years. You found out about Linux. Be it Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, or Gentoo, initially it seemed it was the best thing since sliced bread. Unbreakable, stable, no fragmentation, secure, flexible, free etc. You see, I didn't mention one thing: unwanted, redundant, temporary trash. Although it's Linux, it doesn't mean it is immune to file clutter issues. Well, I can't say it's the operating systems's fault for creating all the unwanted junk, in most cases it's the user's actions that lead all the stuff accumulating in the file system that needs to be cleaned up once in a while. And let's face it, Linux folks have a tendency to be control freaks, and what's a better way than a tool that let's you find out about things that would normally go unnoticed.

Let me introduce a tool called 'FSlint'. Let's see what the creators have to say about it in brief:

"FSlint is a utility to find and clean various forms of lint on a filesystem.

I.E. unwanted or problematic cruft in your files or file names.

For example, one form of lint it finds is duplicate files.

It has both GUI and command line modes."

So they wrote an awesome application but their description sucks, so let me expand on it.

FSlint finds the following:

- duplicate files

- all installed packages

- 'badly named' file names, badly named meaning containing special characters

- files with the same name, causing name clash

- all temp files, our favorite

- bad simlinks

- bad file IDs

- empty directories

- non stripped binaries

- redundant whitespace

It does all that on per directory basis. So you can select either the root ('/') or your own home directory to scan. It all depends on how much damage you want to do to your system. If you are really cautious about your system you can always select directories which should be excluded.

This is a great tool for a neat freak system administrator but it requires some responsibility and basic knowledge to avoid removing legit stuff off of your system. That's why everyone should RTFM: http://fslint.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/FAQ

Installation:

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install fslint

Fedora:

yum install fslint

Other:

Refer to the download website: http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint/

Overcome the bX-tjg9ds Blogger Import Error

2010-10-15T18:17:00.002-05:00

Update:

For more information about other blog converters see this post:

http://www.manvstech.com/2010/11/blog-xml-converters.html

Importing a xml file from another blog into Blogger is a very easy and convenient way of moving from one blogging platform to another. What 10 years ago would take days to copy and paste all the content, now is only a manner of couple of clicks. Unless of course along the way comes the bX-tjg9ds. It's a cryptic error message from the Blogger import tool that says: "Sorry, the import failed due to a server error. The error code is bX-tjg9ds". Information overload? Hardly, rather something that prompts a user to google it up to look for possible clues. And it doesn't get easier from there either. Usually answers on Google Groups are filled with laments, pain, and tears, rarely anything solid.

However, not all is lost. At least for someone migrating from Wordpress. There's a tool out there called Wordpress2Blogger that processes the Wordpress exported xml file into a Blogger compatible import file. This greatly valuable tool can be found at http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/

There's just one catch, and it happened to me couple of times while importing. Once the xml file is ran through Wordpress2Blogger, and imported into Blogger the import status bar may run back and forth without any apparent progress. I found out that by hitting the browser back button and going to Edit Posts, it reveals that all content from the xml file was imported properly. So while it's not perfect, the main objective of the import works.

PDFTiger Time-limited Giveaway

2010-10-15T14:16:00.001-05:00

Guys at http://www.pdftiger.com are having a promotion for their PDF Converter product called PDFTiger. It's a Windows only based tool that converts documents from and to a PDF format.

See what they say about what it does:

PDFTiger is a Word To PDF Converter and PDF To Word Doc Tool that quickly and accurately create PDF documents from Word, Excel, Powerpoint, txt or Images.PDFTiger can also convert PDF files into editable MS Word Documents, Rich Text Documents, Plain Text Files, Images, HTML Files, and Shockwave Flash SWF Files. In batch mode PDFTiger will convert more than 10,000,000 files at a time.

Here's the types of file it will convert:

Word to PDF

PDF to Word Doc

PDF to JPG

Excel to PDF

PDF to RTF

PDF to BMP

PowerPoint to PDF

PDF to TXT

PDF to GIF

TXT to PDF

PDF to HTML

PDF to TIF

Images to PDF

PDF to SWF

PDF to PNG

All Printable Files to PDF

PDFTiger

The promo runs until October 21st, so hurry up and grab the installed and the promo activation key from their website.

Download PDFTiger

How to Fix a Bricked HTC Dream (G1) with an AK-47 Assault Rifle

2010-10-15T12:44:00.000-05:00

Recently I switched from my good old trusty T-Mobile HTC Dream (G1) to a brand spanking new T-Mobile G2. My original G1 has been rooted for a long time with CyanogenMod. I never had any issues rooting it despite doing it numerous times. Actually, I rooted it once, but updated the rom, radio, and recovery image many countless times without any issues.

However, there were some unfortunate folks who's G1 got bricked along the way. Rooting failed, and the phone was useless. It's a shame for such a great and innovative Android devices as the G1, the OG of Android phones. One such unfortunate owner of a bricked G1 came up with an ingenious idea of trying to fix it by applying a well placed 39mm round from an AK-47 Assault Rifle.

No, just kidding, we all know a brick is a brick. So what better way to finish it up then by having some fun with it instead of just throwing it in the trash. We all love shooting stuff up so why not?

How to Fix a "Bricked" or Broken T-Mobile G1 - HTC Dream

Adobe® Flash® Player "Square" - 64bit Flash Plugin for Linux

2010-09-17T08:32:00.000-05:00

Adobe® Flash® Player "Square" is a preview release that enables native 64-bit support on Linux.

Can be downloaded from here: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Installation on Fedora:

General installation:
Go to the download directory and untar the flashplayer_square_p2_64bit_linux_092710.tar.gz file:

tar -zxvf flashplayer_square_p2_64bit_linux_092710.tar.gz

then move it to /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ or ~/.mozilla/plugins/
mv libflashplayer.so /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/

Next, fix the permissions:

chmod 755 /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

Google Chrome:

Go to the download directory and untar the flashplayer_square_p2_64bit_linux_092710.tar.gz file:

tar -zxvf flashplayer_square_p2_64bit_linux_092710.tar.gz

Create the following directory if it doesn't already exist:

mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins

and link the /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so to /opt/google/chrome/plugins:

ln -s /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so /opt/google/chrome/plugins/libflashplayer.so

To test if it worked, restart all browsers and go to any flash enabled website.
Or you can type this into the URL address box in your browser:
about:plugins
and search for "Shockwave Flash"

Good job Adobe!

Streamripper Simple Frontend

2010-09-16T13:46:00.000-05:00

Streamripper Simple Frontend

I have created a simple and lightweight script that allows ripping favorite SHOUTcast streams to a local machine so that they can be listened to later.

This script runs on Linux only.

Submitting suggestions and bugs is welcomed and encouraged.

More information can be had here.

CyanogenMod 6 & [INSTALL_FAILED_CONTAINER_ERROR] fix

2010-08-10T14:01:00.001-05:00

After updating to CyanogenMod 6 (in my case 6.0.0 RC2) I was faced with a rather big problem. More then 50% failure in application installation. After running a manual install using the 'adb' tool and tracing the log output with 'logcat' it turned out that each failure was acompanied with an error indicating that 'smd12tmp1.asec' file already exists, while the manual installation command (./adb install package.apk) errored out with "Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_CONTAINER_ERROR]".

The next logical step was to remove the offending file and retry installing the packages that failed. To remove the file, start the shell:

./adb shell

and

rm /mnt/secure/asec/smdl2tmp1.asec

This only happened when Android was configured to install packages in the external storage. Installing internally worked well but was limited to however much space was left.

"The open-source entrepreneur" - Red Hat Story.

2010-06-16T02:58:00.000-05:00

An interesting blog post from BBC's dot.Maggie about the early days of Red Hat and its founder's road to success. For those without ADD there's an interesting fact mentioned somewhere at the end of it.

"From the outset, his software company Red Hat bucked the trend set by the big players like Microsoft which stubbornly guarded every line of code and charged whopping fees to maintain it.

Red Hat's approach was unusual at the time and relied on free software developed by an open-source community. Customers were given the right to change the code any way they liked and Red Hat sold services to make sure it all worked."

Read more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2010/06/the_open_source_entrepreneur.html

Windows 7 God Mode

2010-02-04T08:11:00.000-06:00

Windows 7 "God Mode"

Even though I haven't really covered anything Windows related, it's still an operating system, and I'm still a system admin with interest in those things, so naturally this seems like a pretty cool OS trick worth mentioning. And cool trick it is. Basically, 'God Mode' in Windows 7 allows to put all of system configuration utilities into one central place. So by using one shortcut to a single window with links to all system tools, one is able to basically configure every possible aspect of the operating system from one central place. Almost like playing your own personal computer God.

To achieve this awesome level of Godness one must do the following:

- go to whatever location in the file system (ex. Desktop) and create a new folder with the following name: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
- once the folder icon changes, double click and wreck havoc.

fdupes: Find and Delete Duplicate Files in Linux

2010-02-03T12:27:00.000-06:00

As it's man page says: "fdupes - finds duplicate files in a given set of directories". I don't think it requires any more explanation. It's a very simple program, which purpose is to go through all files in a given directory and find duplicate copies of files based on file sized, MD5 checksum signatures, and byte-by-byte comparison.

Name: fdupes
Arch: x86_64
Version: 1.50
Release: 0.2.PR2.fc12
Size: 34 k
Repo: installed
From repo: fedora
Summary: Finds duplicate files in a given set of directories
URL: http://netdial.caribe.net/~adrian2/fdupes.html
License: MIT
Description: FDUPES is a program for identifying duplicate files residing within specified directories.

To install it on Fedora:
#yum install fdupes

To find duplicates in a single directory:
#fdupes /dir

To find duplicates recursively:
#fdupes -r /dir

To omit first file in the matches output, which may be useful in piping the output to a different command:
#fdupes -f /dir

To show size of identical files:
#fdupes -S /dir

To delete files in the output:
#fdupes -d /dir