Freeware Top 30 The following is a list of 30 freeware programs that I cannot live without. I wanted this to be the one page a reader can turn to get all the essential free programs they need to install on a new computer. This list doesn’t cover the best free program in every conceivable category, but for those categories that are represented the programs showcased here in most cases, I would argue, are best-in-class. This list last updated July 17th 2010: 1- Everything: desktop file search that will transform the way you use your PC 2- Launchy: my favorite launcher 3- LastPass: centralized, cloud-based password manager 4. Some notes before proceeding: 1- Everything: desktop file search that will transform the way you use your PC Sounds hyperbolic, perhaps, but I stand by it 100%. Right clicking “search everything” on folders will soon become your method of choice when seeking, well, anything. “Everything” is relatively low on resource consumption (11 megs on my PC). > Go here to download.
WebBrowserPassView - Recover lost passwords stored in your Web browser See Also Description WebBrowserPassView is a password recovery tool that reveals the passwords stored by the following Web browsers: Internet Explorer (Version 4.0 - 11.0), Mozilla Firefox (All Versions), Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera. This tool can be used to recover your lost/forgotten password of any Website, including popular Web sites, like Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and GMail, as long as the password is stored by your Web Browser. After retrieving your lost passwords, you can save them into text/html/csv/xml file, by using the 'Save Selected Items' option (Ctrl+S). System Requirements And Limitations This utility works on any version of Windows, starting from Windows 2000, and up to Windows 10, including 64-bit systems. Versions History Version 1.86: Added 'Quick Filter' feature (View -> Use Quick Filter or Ctrl+Q). Using WebBrowserPassView WebBrowserPassView doesn't require any installation process or additional DLL files. False Virus/Trojan Warning Command-Line Options License Feedback
Run Android on Your Netbook or Desktop Would you like to try out Google’s Android OS on your netbook or desktop? Here’s how you can run Android from a flash drive and see how fast Android can run on real hardware! Install Android On Your Flash Drive or Memory Card First, make sure you have a flash drive or memory card inserted into your computer with around 256MB or more storage space. Remove any files you may need off of the drive, so you can use it to run Android on your computer. Now you’re ready to download and setup Android on your drive. In the mean time, head over to the UNetbootin site (link below), and download it as well. Once your downloads are complete, run UNetbootin. UNetbootin will now copy the files to your flash drive. Once it’s finished, it will ask if you wish to reboot. If you want to try Android on a computer that has a CD/DVD drive, you could just burn the ISO to a disk and boot from it. Using Android-x86 On Your Computer You’ll see a text prompt for a few moments as Android begins to load. Conclusion Links
HTML Help 1.4 SDK Microsoft HTML Help is the standard help system for the Windows platform. Authors can use HTML Help to create online help for a software application or to create content for a multimedia title or Web site. Developers can use the HTML Help API to program a host application or hook up context-sensitive help to an application. As an information delivery system, HTML Help is suited for a wide range of applications, including training guides, interactive books, and electronic newsletters, as well as help for software applications. HTML Help offers some distinct advantages over standard HTML, such as the ability to implement a combined table of contents and index and the use of keywords for advanced hyperlinking capability. HTML Help consists of an online Help Viewer, related help components, and help authoring tools from Microsoft Corporation. Important Please note that the latest version of the HTML Help technology is 1.4, as is the SDK. In the Microsoft HTML Help 1.4 SDK Documentation
The Usability of Passwords (by @baekdal) #tips Security companies and IT people constantly tells us that we should use complex and difficult passwords. This is bad advice, because you can actually make usable, easy to remember and highly secure passwords. In fact, usable passwords are often far better than complex ones. So let's dive into the world of passwords, and look at what makes a password secure in practical terms. Update: Read the FAQ (updated January 2011) Update - April 21, 2011: This article was "featured" on Security Now, here is my reply! How to hack a password The work involved in hacking passwords is very simple. Asking: Amazingly the most common way to gain access to someone's password is simply to ask for it (often in relation with something else). When is a password secure? You cannot protect against "asking" and "guessing", but you can protect yourself from the other forms of attacks. The measure of security must then be "how many password requests can the automated program make - e.g. per second". Like these: It takes:
Pixel art scaling algorithms An image scaled with nearest-neighbor scaling (left) and 2×SaI scaling (right). In computer graphics, image scaling is the process of resizing a digital image. Scaling is a non-trivial process that involves a trade-off between efficiency, smoothness and sharpness. With bitmap graphics, as the size of an image is reduced or enlarged, the pixels that form the image become increasingly visible, making the image appear "soft" if pixels are averaged, or jagged if not. With vector graphics the trade-off may be in processing power for re-rendering the image, which may be noticeable as slow re-rendering with still graphics, or slower frame rate and frame skipping in computer animation. Apart from fitting a smaller display area, image size is most commonly decreased (or subsampled or downsampled) in order to produce thumbnails. Scaling methods[edit] An image size can be changed in several ways. Nearest-neighbor interpolation Bilinear interpolation hqx Supersampling Vectorization Mipmap Algorithms[edit]
A brief Sony password analysis So the Sony saga continues. As if the whole thing about 77 million breached PlayStation Network accounts wasn’t bad enough, numerous other security breaches in other Sony services have followed in the ensuing weeks, most recently with SonyPictures.com. As bad guys often like to do, the culprits quickly stood up and put their handiwork on show. This time around it was a group going by the name of LulzSec. Sony stored over 1,000,000 passwords of its customers in plaintext Well actually, the really interesting bit is that they created a torrent of some of the breached accounts so that anyone could go and grab a copy. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at password practices from a real data source. What’s in the torrent The Sony Pictures torrent contains a number of text files with breached information and a few instructions: The interesting bits are in the “Sony Pictures” folder and in particular, three files with a whole bunch of accounts in them: Analysis Length Character types
Cheat Sheets & Quick Reference Cards for Developers | DevCheatSheet.com Official Website | FreeBASIC Programming Language Open Source (Almost) Everything When Chris and I first started working on GitHub in late 2007, we split the work into two parts. Chris worked on the Rails app and I worked on Grit, the first ever Git bindings for Ruby. After six months of development, Grit had become complete enough to power GitHub during our public launch of the site and we were faced with an interesting question: Should we open source Grit or keep it proprietary? Keeping it private would provide a higher hurdle for competing Ruby-based Git hosting sites, giving us an advantage. Open sourcing it would mean thousands of people worldwide could use it to build interesting Git tools, creating an even more vibrant Git ecosystem. After a small amount of debate we decided to open source Grit. Why is it awesome to open source (almost) everything? If you do it right, open sourcing code is great advertising for you and your company. Smart people like to hang out with other smart people. Lastly, it’s the right thing to do. Ok, then what shouldn’t I open source?
Projectile Motion Primer for FIRST Robotics | Wired Science It is that FIRST Robotics competition time of the year. Basically, in FIRST, high school students work in teams to build robots that compete in specific tasks. Apparently, this year a task involves throwing a basketball into a goal. And this leads to the popular question: how do I tell my robot to throw the ball? Oh? Projectile motion you say? Quick note: just about all of the following has been posted somewhere before on my blog. Can You Neglect Air Resistance? For basic projectile motion, the assumption is that the only force acting on the object is the gravitational force. With the following variables: ρ is the density of air.C is the drag coefficient that depends on the shape of the object. So, when do you have to include this air resistance force? Same speed and the same size (and shape) means they have the same air drag. Ah HA! The magnitude of the gravitational force is easy to calculate. And now for the magnitude of the air drag force: But what about motion with air resistance?