This will allow you to create a folder with dozens of tweaks in Windows 7.

This trick actually duplicates the Windows Control Panel, but it puts the 271 most useful commands from its various modules.

To get started, create a new folder on your desktop (or anywhere you want).

Rename the folder: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

If you’ve done it right, the folder icon will change to that of the Control Panel. This folder will now be a shortcut to the Windows 7 Godmode.

The Godmode allows you to quickly access many Windows 7 functions via a GUI. Double click the icon to see the dozens tools.

The following is a post from Les T., the owner of Humor-Erotica @Google Groups

ITS A TRUE STORY…

THIS IS INDIA
IT’S WHERE YOU (non-Indians) CALL WHEN YOU
WHEN YOU HAVE A TECHNICAL PROBLEM
WITH YOUR COMPUTER

I’m now using Windows 7!!

You may recall the problems I had at the beginning of February when I was in contact with the manufacturer of my computer ….  Hewlett-Packard (hp) and spoke to a tech reps from India for about 20 hours trying to upgrade from Vista 64….

They (support at hp in India) managed to complicate things so badly that I finally was forced to reinstall Vista 64…

I spoke to at least 5 different people during this time….

They managed to install Windows 7 but all data and programs were gone! I had a back up drive that they used to try to reinstall everything but lost about 50000 pictures and all my video files (2000) and 10000 songs!!

Well… after much hesitation…. a long letter to the president of hp  (no response)…. and making an up to date backup on an exterior drive… copying my programs to a cd …. etc etc. etc. I decided to call them again last Friday!

This time I got hp support in Nova Scotia (just the luck of the draw)…talked to a tech rep there and explained the situation to him…

Much to my surprise…he told me that an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 is easily done and the computer should have all data and most of my programs installed and ready to use after the upgrade!!!

He took over my computer, started the process, and told me to be patient for a few hours when someone from his office would call back to check up on the progress.

They called back after a couple of hours and again after another 3-4 hours. By then, all was finished and ALL my data was back and ALL my programs were operational!! (I never needed my backup).

They told me to try it out as some settings are sometimes wrong. The next morning at 10AM…another call from them…I had a short list of settings to change and that took less than 10 minutes!!

All that was left for me to do was download Windows Live email…. and it was automatic… my email addies with Sympatico were all back!!

The agent in Nova Scotia gave me the email addy to the president’s office and he will be hearing from me very soon….

I’m just waiting to be reimbursed for the money I paid to hp…. THEN, I’ll be writing a long long letter asking for compensation!

Tech support? Be very very careful who you speak with… My first clue was the first guy in India who took 2 hours just to take over my computer….I should have hung up after 10 minutes!!

Network security appliances do a great job of keeping the cyber monsters from invading your business. But what do you do when the monster is actually inside the security perimeter?

Here are some important points on how your network can be attacked. Read on…

1. USB thumb drives: It is one of the common or the easiest ways to infect a network from inside a firewall. The ubiquity of thumb drives has driven hackers to develop targeted malware, such as the notorious Conficker worm, that can automatically execute upon connecting with a live USB port. Changes in the computer’s default autorun policies can be said as one of the solution to this treat.

2. Laptop and netbooks: A notebook may already have malicious code running in the background that is tasked to scour the network and find additional systems to infect. This notebook could belong to an internal employee or guest who’s visiting and working from an open cube or office. Laptops are also really handy Ethernet port for tapping directly into a network. Implement an encrypted file system for sensitive data can be a precaution.

3. Wireless access points: Wireless attacks by wardrivers are common and have caused significant damage in the past. It can provide immediate connectivity to any user within proximity of the network. Wireless APs are naturally insecure, regardless if encryption is used or not. Strong, mixed passwords should be used and changed on a fairly frequent basis to prevent this.

4. Miscellaneous USB devices: Devices like digital cameras, MP3 players, printers, scanners, fax machines and even digital picture frames are also included in the list besides the common USB devices. Since the primary functions of these devices are different we often forget their potential to cause threats. Therefore it is important to implement and enforce asset control and policies around what devices can enter the environment and when.

5. Inside connections: Internal company employees can also inadvertently or intentionally access areas of the network that they wouldn’t or shouldn’t otherwise have access to and compromise endpoints using any of the means outlined in this article. Passwords should be changed regularly. Authentication and access levels are a must for any employee – he should only have access to systems, file shares, etc. are some of the important steps to prevent this.

6. The Trojan human: It can take less than a minute for an unsupervised person in a server room to infect the network. Avoid assumptions and identify the source by asking questions can be said as one of the major steps.

7. Optical media: Recordable media that appear to be legitimate can and has been used to piggyback data in and out of networks. And, like the thumb drives mentioned above, they can be used as a source for network infection. As with the USB tip, it’s important to implement and enforce asset control and policies around what devices can enter the environment and when. And then follow that up with frequent policy reminders.

8. Hindsight is 20/20: The human mind is also very effective at storing information. Who is watching you when you log into your desktop? Where are your hard copies stored? What confidential documents are you reading on your laptop at the coffee shop, airplane, etc.? The best safeguard is being conscious and alert about this threat whenever working on sensitive material — even if it means stopping what you’re doing momentarily to observe your surroundings.

9. Smartphones and other digital devices: Phones do more than just allow you to call anyone in the world from anywhere; they’re full-functioning computers, complete with Wi-Fi connectivity, multithreaded operating systems, high storage capacity, high-resolution cameras and vast application support. And they, along with other portable tablet-like devices, are starting to be given the green light in business environments. Therefore it is important to implement and enforce asset control and policies around what devices can enter the environment and when.

"Hack U" @ IIT Bombay on Oct 8-10, 2010

Close to 150 students participated in ‘Hack U‘ — the University Hack Day event for IIT Mumbai students held recently at the Powai campus.

At the outset, let it be noted that one is not talking about hacks of the writerly kind. Or the kind who break into e-mail ids or cellphones… The hacks referred to here are geeks who drool over the inner workings of computers.

Hack U is a novel concept where students get the opportunity to work on product ideas, develop working prototypes in a 24-hour ‘Hackathon’ and eventually have a chance to win cool prizes.

Conceptualised along the lines of Yahoo’s Open Hack Day, the three-day event provides a platform for the student community to develop, build applications using Yahoo!’s Open APIs (Application Programming Interface) like YQL, YAP, or create a new product concept itself.

Hack U kicked off with a series of hack-related presentations, followed by a non-stop 24-hour hacking session by the students. Technology experts also conducted technical talks on Yahoo!’s Open Platforms like YUI, OAuth, YAP and YQL during the event.

Hari Vasudev, Vice President, Cloud Platform Group, Yahoo India R&D, delivered the keynote address stressing the need for hacks to deliver personally meaningful experiences to users on the Web.

It encouraged participation from students for hack ideas and innovative concepts on shared research interests such as information extraction, parallel/distributed programming and more. Students got to interact with Yahoo! web experts, received hacking tips and lessons, and hands-on exposure to cutting-edge applications and technologies.

Neha Jatav, student researcher, at IIT Mumbai was thrilled to see “such enthusiastic mentors to help around all the time during Hack U. It was an experience that CSE junta should experience to learn what it is like to code without the fear of grades and deadlines just for the sake of your happiness, just for accomplishing your own targets.”

Mayank Singhal, IV Year Dual Degree Student of Computer Science and Engineering said, “Hack U is probably the fastest way to learn how it works in the real world of geeks; and that too while having a lot of fun. Interacting with Yahoo! engineers is even more fun, they are in my opinion the friendliest techies I have met. In short, Hack U is far too awesome to miss.”

Professor S. Sudarshan, Computer Science and Engineering Department, IIT Mumbai, recalled Yahoo! Hack U was held for the first time in India at IIT Mumbai in February 2009, allowing students to interact with top-notch programmers, such as Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP. Students were introduced to some of the APIs provided by Yahoo! which allowed creation of many interesting applications.

Open Hack Days started as an internal event that brought Yahoo! developers together around the globe. The annual event has developer workshops and progresses to an overnight Hack Camp, concluding with demos, judging and award presentations.

Microsoft has outlined the strong momentum for Windows 7 since the launch of the operating system a year back.

Globally, over 240 million licenses have been sold making it the fastest selling operating system in history. In India, over 7000 businesses are running Windows 7.

Further, a study conducted by the CIO Association of India reveals that over 80 percent are planning to deploy Windows 7 in less than 12 months time, highlighting the popularity of the operating system designed to make everyday life faster and easier. Commenting on this Sumeet Khanna, Director – Windows Client Business Group, Microsoft India said, “It has been a momentous year for us and we are excited and humbled by the huge uptake of the operating system in the country.

The numbers itself are a demonstration of the fact that consumers and businesses alike are seeing value in the unique experiences delivered by the operating system. Our customers and partners are core to everything we do and we remain steadfast in our commitment to bring to market, solutions that add value to their lives.” A report by the CIO Association of India has revealed that businesses are finding value from features like Branchcache, BitLocker, federated search and power management.

In fact, a survey by the CIO association of India reveals that 98 percent of CIOs who have already deployed Windows 7 have rated the operating system as excellent or satisfactory.

Adding to Microsoft’s first anniversary celebrations for Windows 7, a team of 22 employees at Microsoft’s Hyderabad campus have stormed into the Limca Book of Records. These employees had created a dazzling display of the Windows 7 logo using 7000 wooden dominoes during launch last year, for the first-of-its-kind dominoes display in the world.

Led by Archis Gore, the team placed 7000 dominoes, each weighing 12 gms and placed barely 0.2 inches apart side-wise and 0.5 inches lengthwise, to create a Windows 7 logo.

Here is a small Microsoft Windows Registry tweak which enables write protection of all USB ports. I tried this under Windows XP and it works fine.

One needs to create/edit the following entry in the registry…

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

and change the ‘WriteProtect‘ entry value.

0 = Not Protected

1 = Write Protected

Remember, you will need to reboot Windows after saving the registry for the change to take effect.

Abiding by the Microsoft’s guideline which bars OEMs from shipping any PCs with Windows XP Professional or XP Home after October 22, 2010, Dell has announced its decision to stop shipping Windows XP systems. According to Dell, it will stop offering XP as a OEM or downgrade option on its PCs beginning this month in preparation for the termination of all consumer licensing agreements for XP by Microsoft.

Dell is advising customers who need to use XP for any reason to run XP Mode in Windows 7 Professional if required. Microsoft’s Windows customer support blog has also advised customers that Windows XP SP2 support officially ended on July 13, 2010; however, support for Windows XP SP3 will continue through to April 2014.

“Per Microsoft guidelines regarding Windows XP, system vendors like Dell will no longer be able to ship systems with XP Professional and XP Home after October 22, 2010,” states a company blog post. “This means that we will stop offering XP as an option for customers starting this month in preparation for next month’s deadline. One other important thing to note is that Dell plans to continue Windows XP driver support until December 2012,” the post adds.

In addition to simply migrating customers to Windows 7, IT administrators also have the option of using Custom Factory Integration (CFI) services to load XP images onto corporate machines, Dell said. After the deadline expires, Dell’s CFI service will be the only means by which Windows XP systems will be available to qualified customers.

Though I have being using Ubuntu for quite a long time now, I still have dual-boot (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Microsoft Windows 7). The other day I downloaded a Windows-based application (while being in Ubuntu) and then re-started my box and booted Windows to install and test the application, only to find that I had saved the download under my Ubuntu partition (/home/jitneo/Downloads).

As Windows cannot read linux partitions, the option was to again re-boot into Ubuntu and transfer the file to my Windows partition.

Before doing so I did Goggled a bit and found an utility called Ext2Read, which can access any linux partition from Windows. Ext2Read is an explorer like utility to explore ext2/ext3/ext4 files. It now supports LVM2 and EXT4 extents. It can be used to view and copy files and folders. It can recursively copy entire folders. Below is a screenshot of the utility.

view of folder properties

You can download the latest release from here.

"Developer Evangelist" Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu

A “Developer Evangelist” for Microsoft Bangalore, Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu, has been designing the robots over weekends for five-six years, and in the past few months, has connected them to a cloud and to Internet for an integrated “buddyHome”, a proof-of-concept system that uses already available face- and image-recognition technology to offer intelligent everyday solutions.

All of it cost just a few hundred rupees. Each machines are custom-made to serve a purpose – be it to wake him with a splash of water on his face if he doesn’t respond to the morning alarm, to clean the house, or to alert him about intruders and overcooked noodles on the stove.

Chellamuthu says buddyHome is a self-learning system that takes three pictures of him every second, processes them to understand whether he’s sleeping or smiling and activates certain features accordingly, recollecting all the information from the cloud-based on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform.

Besides security and entertainment features, one of the buddyHome modules enhances his magazine-reading experience by ascertaining his interest in a particular story or picture from his facial expression and pulling out videos on the subject to play on a projected screen. In a video he presented at Microsoft Tech-Ed India 2010, when he reads an IPL advert in a magazine, it offers to book tickets for the next game.

Now Chellamuthu is working on a hand-gesture-recognition system for the speech-impaired that will translate sign language into words and also he working on integrating into the system an autobot that can communicate real-time. “If I’m not on my seat and my boss sends me an instant message, won’t it be cool if it can take my place and reply to him?” he says.

Microsoft’s four Security Bulletins will offer assistance to users to protect a vulnerable windows computer which was disclosed by Google employee Tavis Ormandy before Microsoft could provide a solution.

Along with the patches, Microsoft has taken its hands off from supporting Windows XP Service Pack 2 which suggests that Windows XP will no longer receive security updates from Microsoft.

Dave Marcus, Research and Communications Director, McAfee says,”McAfee Labs has seen malware in the wild that exploits this o-day vulnerability. Security researchers need to work closely with software vendors to ensure vulnerabilities are patched in the most expedient method and timeline possible, without putting users at risk.”

McAfee approves of Microsoft’s patches and has asked users to install them at the earliest. Windows Automatic Updates should be used by home users and for the purpose of business it is important to have a risk management system in place to prioritize the patches.

The cyber criminals will ride on the culmination of support from Microsoft as customers heavily depend on this application. Marcus said, “Users of Windows XP SP2 should consider migration options and robust security solutions to mitigate risk.”