Top posts for 2010

As with many blogs summing up their top viewed or commented pages, here are the top 5 most viewed posts this year:
#1 how to lock down internet explorer 8 with GPO registry
#2 Hide IE8 address bar
#3 The corporation
#4 How to set up a wireless(shared) printer
#5 Lock down windows xp clients with server 2003

Wikileaks and Simpsons

After all the buzz around wikileaks I have been following the stories and got reminded of a very funny episode of the Simpsons that resembled this situation.

The Simpsons season 12 episode 06 called "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" (2000) when Homer got a computer and made a webpage, to get content on it he wrote a rumor about the mayor using money for street paving to build his private pool! (fox published this webpage with all the articles here: www.mrxswebpage.com).

Mr X. is like wikileaks and Homer Simpson is like Julian Assange! great to watch the old episode again, check it out here: www.icefilms.info/ip.php?v=46979.

Enjoy and tell me what you think!

How to watch streaming video on icefilms.info

1. Install and open Chrome (or Firefox with greasemonkey)
2. Install the older version of divx web player (also linked from icefilms)
3. Install the quick stream script for icefilms (also linked from icefilms)

You should now be ready to go!

Note: set the "ask to update" preferences of divx player to "once per month" instead of "once per session" because you don't need the new version (always cancel if it asks to update).

Let me know how it goes.

How to delete scan to destination email

HP LaserJet M1522

1. Open the scan software from start>all programs>HP>HP laserjet M1522>Scan

2. Click Setup > Delete existing destination > Next

3. Choose the one to delete click next, confirm and your done!

DivX Streaming website evolution

We came a long way from relativly slow bittorrent downloads which cannot be streamed (because the pieces are not downloaded in-order) and I thought this history is worth mentioning somewhere so here is my version of how it came to be with high quality divx/xvid/avi video streaming websites, also a good way to conclude the end of this year 2010.

1st generation:

It all started when DivX, Inc. created what appeared to be an answer to youtube, a competing video host/streaming site called stage6.
An ambitious idea indeed, actually I thought it was great and hopped it would take off and really be something great. I actually think they could have evolved it further the way youtube started working with copyright holders, record label companies and movie production companies/film studios. Anyway as the webpage says "Stage6 Is No More", they opened up the market for other hosting companies to arise on February 28, 2008 [1] and initially they recommended veoh which did mostly flash based video but with their own spyware software would allow downloading divx, that died in popularity with the HQ lovers like me.

2nd generation:

As it happens stage6 search engine sucked and when it came to copyrighted files (be it music videos, movies or shows) they got deleted often when names were obvious so the tech-savvy users renamed them and posted to private community type sites. One of these sites which I liked a lot was joox (still active). When stage6 announced it goes down, or when it actually went down the search for another host has begun and megaupload (also still active, still the best file host) had the biggest file size limits at the time. This was used with joox for some time until it had some issues and was offline for a long time which brings us to 3ed gen...

3ed generation:

A new search has started and there were (and still are) many websites coming up, going down all the time but this focuses on what I liked the most but in this case it was so widely liked that ninjavideo(no longer active) became a household name like MTV or something. They still used megaupload as the host but they had a very special virtual software that was run on java (not to be confused with javascript), once accepted the warning by opening the "ninjavideo helper" normally followed by a version # which means it was activly being developed, this allowed you to stream divx/xvid avi videos in blazing fast speeds. This special embedding was so good that the only way I found out it uses megaupload is by sniffing the packets and looking up the IP addresses, in other words users would never know where they are hosted.
This was honky dory until the domain name was seized by the united states government on grounds of copyright infringing.

4th generation:
This brings us today to icefilms, yet again using megaupload (notice a common denominator?) and being very useful with searching (google's custom search) and organizing which goes by movies, shows, genre, popularity, real release date and by added to the site date they are all very convenient. There are also great features that I enjoy which is page scraping from imdb, linking to imdb and to youtube for trailers (searches youtube!). All this and even great speed at adding videos from forum posting (unlike ninjavideo's judgment ridden forums). Great speed at new releases and also a great decision is to avoid CAM movies which I hated on ninjavdeo.... just cause it's out there doesn't mean I want this low quality video!
This is all possible with a special "ICE Quick Stream" greasemonkey add-on script which takes the megaupload pages and turns them into embedded divx web player type pages. But I still enjoy using the manual streaming with VLC when installing the plugin script isn't a good option.

Overall this forth generation is the best right now, it does worry me a little that it's using a common denominator (megaupload) but we should change our copyright law's anyway and this will not be a huge concern.

Let me know your thoughts!

YouTube slow on Rogers Internet throttling

So for some time these has not happend but recently made me quite angry so had presed the print screen button and now reporting back on the internet inequality of Rogers, also known as throttling of bandwidth (or something).

First screen shot shows how slow youtube loads this video Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Interview

Notice the network utilization is very slow to load this youtube video, to prove that it's isolated to youtube we can use the speed test.

Point A is the first attempt, point B is the second, it's between 6 and 10 percent network utilization compared to barely 1 percent with youtube!

[update: it's getting a little faster at times, at least fast enough to keep up with the video...]

Us Now film review and thoughts

Us Now is a documentary film that asks "Can we all govern? Us Now looks at how 'user' participation could transform the way that countries are governed." [vo.do]. I highly recommend seeing it soon as you have a spare hour (and maybe a few minutes to ponder afterwards). [Watch it on watch.usnowfilm.com or youtube/usnowfilm or download using p2p & bittorrent from vo.do/usnow]

While I always knew about collaborating, helping and sharing ideas and work are great in projects such as Wikipedia, Linux and open source software, rideshare and more, I actually never heard of coutchshare, momnet, management of a soccer team (in England) and even amazingly funds and investments through individuals, helping bands get gigs and even albums made by commenting on good tracks and even contributing some money for them to get studio or air time. These examples only scratch the surface of what can, will and IS being done by collaborating, helping and sharing ideas, work and decisions.

These collaboration tools are really amazing when it comes to those individual things described but this can be much more powerful when applied to bigger impact things such as Government spending, policies and so on. There can be many, many useful places to think about collaboration of thoughts, ideas and even work as we see with many, many projects already happening everyday and probably since the dawn of time!

I think this will play a large role in the future of not only our society but dare I say our humanity and civilization as a whole. Sharing our ideas, knowledge and experiences not only makes our life great but it also benefits everyone. The right and qualified people on particular subject matter are always needed but I also think that any average person can have enough experience and knowledge to contribute to those kinds and more of the conversations, topics and help in decision making or simply question things from their perspective. Having devil advocates always proved a good thing in small groups, imagine having the entire world to help in whatever you can imagine! 

This is an amazing time to be alive, our human population is large and growing thanks to our technological,  medical, chemical, biological and, well, all the topics in the world (and the universe) that we have made serious advances in. This is only possible by our collaboration, sharing our knowledge and learning, experimentation and further observation and advancing our science, engineering and so much more!

The only thing that seems a little lacking is the field of our governing ourselves (and religion but I will not get into that). Most of those ideas are from ancient history and even those things that have been adopted are still very lacking. It's very clear that there will be a new way for us to manage ourselves in the future. True democracy will come when we can accept decisions that a majority agrees on, transparent systems using web technologies that are open and standardized. But I'm sure these will be finally tuned as we grow in the new society.

I think it makes a lot of sense to combine some of the ideas from Future by Design which I reviewed much earlier this year. Although it sounded more like a pipe dream at first, after seeing 'Us Now' it makes much more sense when thinking about resources based economy, together with these sharing technologies that really wire us all together, and help decide collectively as opposed to 'mechanically' as they said in Future by Design or how it is done now and for the past 100s of years, decisions are made by few elitists at the top that, for what ever reason, got there...

When we put our minds together we can accomplish anything, think about how the internet, the truly global network connecting all of humanity together can really take this civilization further and into the future into a much better place for all of us. I think many already agree that so many things are wrong in our civilization (money and government being the top problems), so we really all need this type of system and I think it's not a matter of IF it will be implemented but rather, when and how it will happen.

We all know the saying that two heads are better than one, will in this case we have the entire population (that can access the internet - for now 1 or 2 billion).

Let me know your thoughts!

how to do a lease take over

Couldn't find the simple step-by-step details so here is what I have so far:

1. Get the credit check application from your leasing company (this is a financial company or manufacturer, ask your dealer if you don't know)
2. Fill the application and send to the company (fax or mail is probably acceptable) = $25 (charged from your usual lease payment method
3. As this happens or before this happens (bear with me as I find out, I will update this step) you need to get your car proof from the provincial ministry (or state organization if in US I assume) to prove the car was not in accidents. = $not sure yet
5. Upon approval I assume the transfer can be done (didn't get this far yet, will update once I do.) = $500 (sent by check from my understanding)

And this is as far as I got so far, if you have any tips or different steps, comments, etc leave them below or privately to my email.
Thanks for visiting!

How to change IP address

The real answer (for me at least) is different from the most common tutorials on the net, so here's how to do it successfully if you have a cable modem and possibly some DSL (untested) internet service providers.

1. If you have a router gateway, login to your router (this is done by browsing to http://192.168.1.1, use the default password if you don't know it - google search your router model's default password.)

2. Find the MAC address on your router configuration pages, (if you are wired directly to the internet directly from your computer without a router you will need to do this on the computer instead)

3. Change the MAC address even by one digit and Save/commit your changes.

4. Once the saving is done you may require a restart of the router but your IP should now be changed (check via whatismyip.com or similar websites or on the router itself)

Since every router is very different interfaces, default passwords and configurations this is hard to provide in screenshots or otherwise so the major ideas are here but if you have issues feel free to leave a comment.

MySQL get Query took seconds time taken

Took a bit of time to find this online so here's what I found that works.
This is suppesdly from phpmyadmin (which is where I should've looked) but I was lazy to check there so found it online and worked great!

This is before the query:
list($usec, $sec) = explode(' ',microtime());
$querytime_before = ((float)$usec + (float)$sec);

**query and execution here**

After the query:
list($usec, $sec) = explode(' ',microtime());
$querytime_after = ((float)$usec + (float)$sec);
$querytime = $querytime_after - $querytime_before;

I use functions so this is how I sent back the value:
return array("something" => $something, "qtime" => $querytime);

the function is called normally for outputing the results as well as the time
$thefunction = thefunction(whaterver);

inside the other loop I used this to collect the total queries time together:
$qtime = $thefunction['qtime']+$qtime;

After that, you can output it at the bottom of the page (or where ever):
<?php $strQueryTime = 'Query took %01.4f sec';  echo sprintf($strQueryTime, $qtime); ?>

The final output result will be :
Query took 0.00xxx sec

Let me know what you think in the comments

Open directory folder via CMD in windows

I had installed the portable xamp version which was great for developing in various places!

Anyway this can apply in many cases but for this case I have to get to inside directory (F:\xamp\xampplite\htdocs\) as you can see it's far inside and takes many clicks, to save time I found a way to get there faster!

Simple: create a text file and type the following:
start xamp\xampplite\htdocs\

Save it as something.bat and place in the root of your flash drive, since they tend to have different drive letters it's best to keep the path relative instead of absolute.

When executed (double click or right click and run) this will open the folder in windows!

Great solution in my opinion, but let me know what you thought (in the comments below)

Appointment Tracking Calendar Program Software CRM

Been developing a CRM (customer relationship management) calendar software application program (in the cloud which means it's web hosted). The main goal of it is to track and manage appointments with additional components for customer relationship management.

It is currently in full production with the company, but we have a private beta version currently open so if you would like to know more please contact me at theborisedu at gmail dot com.

Mainly we are looking for feedback on the current version that we find extremely useful but we can customize the software further for specific needs.

Our main focus are small to medium business that has employees booking appointments for sales people. And if you are interested in a tracking software for both the sales people and employee organizational purpose, professionalism, mobility (anywhere there's a browser and internet: iPhone or other smart phones included).

Whether you (or someone you know) are in those categories and if you currently have a management system for some or all aspects and if you are considering switching or adding components of the business customer relationship managements. Or if you don't have any type of software management use at the moment and looking at options we think we have something great for you!

I would like to to hear from you or that someone you know, about your or their needs for the organization, more about the company and how it operates from a logistics and statistic level, and what kind of the organizing is done at the moment and looking for in the future.

Either leave a comment below or drop us a message (theborisedu at gmail.com) to get more information.

Thanks to everyone.

How to use LogMeIn - connecting to remote computers

Found an old tutorial and though it's probably somewhat outdated, maybe you can get a general idea or something...

Last updated: April 5, 2009

You will learn how to:

• Create a LogMeIn account
• Log in to LogMeIn
• Access computers with LogMeIn

Follow this this link; Sign up, then go to step 4.

If the link doesn’t work, then follow the following steps.

1. On a web browser, type http://logmein.com and hit enter.
   
   
2. Click on Create an account (Fig 1).

 Fig. 1

3. Click on Sign up under LogMeIn free. (Fig 2)

 Fig 2

4. Fill in your email twice, enter a password twice, choose Canada, and click Create Account. (Your email and that password will be used to login later – so don’t forget what you entered in this section!)

5. Check your email and follow the instructions in the email to activate your account.
   
   
6. You will receive an email with a verification link, click it. (fig 3)

Fig 3

7. Once it is activated, let me know which email you used to register/login and which computers you need access to.
   
   
8. Once I include your email in the permissions you will receive an email with the invitation to access the remote computers. (fig 4)

  Fig 4

9. Click the link to accept the invitation. Enter you first and last name. (fig 5)

Fig 5

10. Click Next. Now on the “my computers” page click the down arrow under Profile, and select Secondary user for boris123456@email.com. (fig 6)
    
    

   Fig 6

11. Now you will see all the computers that you can log into. Click the computer name if it is online. You will be prompted for a username and password which will be provided by the administrator.
    
    
12. Once logged into the computer, you can remote control it by clicking the “Remote control” button on the left panel.
    
    
13. Click “ok” and “continue” when and if asked while connecting to the computer.

How to record audio mp3 from computer

Thought this might be useful to someone...
If you have audio playing on your computer (even without speakers, just audio drivers installed) you most likely can recoding it. It's really simple!

You will need:

• Working audio drivers (if listening to anything works - you have it!)
• Audacity

1. make sure your audio works, if you hear any sound from sites like youtube, or even test using the sample music in my music folder, the speakers don't have to be in for this to work. Also check if you see the small speaker icon near the clock.

2. Assuming this works go ahead and install Audacity, once done open it and go to the drop down that will show 'Microphone' (or something else?) choose 'Line in' 

3. click the record button (big red circle near the play and pause) if you start playing something with sound (i.e. youtube, music) you should see the audio waves move on it. If not stop, choose the 'Stereo Mix' and try again recoding audio while it's playing. Every computer seems to have a different one that works for it and some have various options so play around until you get which works for you.

4. once done recoding what ever you can click the stop button (square) and now save by clicking file, "Export as MP3" (this may require some other dll but it's not hard to find on google.) name it and your done!

Now you have your mp3 of music from youtube or other places without relaying on third party websites to convert (although there's nothing wrong with them converting it anyway)

Enjoy and let me know what you think in the comments below

change text color css onfocus onblur

this one seemed tricky but actually pretty simple, thought this code may look a bit clustered I admit there's probably a neater way since I only needed one place with this I didn't bother cleaning, if you do don't forget to hit me about it!

<input type="text" name="search" class="search" size="15" value="Search..." onKeyPress="if(event.keyCode == 13){ search() }" onblur="if(this.value==''){this.value='Search...'; this.className = 'unfocused';}; " onfocus="this.className = 'focused'; if(this.value=='Search...'){this.value=''};" />

This adds on to the previous post about search input text that will display "search..." and disappear when clicking it, this addition makes the text gray and back to black when use types into the box (on focus)

heres the css:

.search{
color:gray;
}
.focused {
color:black;
}

try it out and let me know how it goes!

WEP wifi hack windows 7

SEE ANSWER

I never found instructions for windows 7 so after 2 days of testing came up with solutions that worked for me, follow these 10 steps and let me know if it works in the comments here.

Please purchase these instructions for only $4.99 (USD) here:

Watch the youtube video

You will need:

• windows 7
• compatible wireless card
• wep hack pack (Warning: Some AVs might detect this as a virus. Download: 2shared-mediafire-sharebees-bitshare-4shared)

Data Gathering
1. Install commview: go to the commview folder in the package and double click setup, follow the install nothing special but once done it will fail saying it's not compatible with vista, ignore that.

2. take the crack file and place it in C:\program files\commviewwifi\ (or program files86 if you have 64 bit windows), it will say something about overwriting accept it.

3. Next right click the file cv.exe and click properties, compatabilities and select windows xp sp3 and run as administrator.

4. run it, now if you can click the play button your drivers work your lucky and can skip to number 7

5. otherwise you can close the program and right click computer, manage. go to Device Manager and find your wireless card that you are using (under network adapters) now right click and Update driver software...

6. Browse, Let me pick, Have Disk, Browse
Locate the pack included and go to Driver or NewDrivers (one should work for new as there's different versions [thanks logan perkins]), ok it and see if it finds your drivers
If successful open the CV.exe again and you should see the play button highlighted it worked and you can continue

7. click it and select Scan find the network you are targeting and begin the capture
Note make sure to check the logs to autosave and increase the size to 1000Mb and 100mb per log
They will be located under the program files directory of commview, LOGS

Cracking
It can take 4-8 hours of gathering packets (might be less or more depending on how lucky/unlucky you are - took me around 20 hours because of weaker signal strength), once done you can continue to crack the data to gain the passphrase shared wep key:

8. Open the logs with commview, file, export, Tcpdump files (*.cap) save whatever name you like

9. Go to the pack, aircrack, Aircrack-ng GUI.exe, browse to the files, choose 64 (or leave at 128 if determined it) and launch

10. wait for the loading and press 1 and enter, the cracking begins and when done you should get the key.

Note to remove the colons and use just the numbers (maybe letter characters too?)
Report back and let us know in the comments below (note: the comments section was getting too big so I have moved the previous comments here: http://eduboris.blogspot.com/2012/07/wep-wifi-hack-windows-7-comments-user.html you can still comment here but I will move it there for organizational purposes.)

Done...

Thanks for visiting.

enter key submits without javascript

What was absolutely mind boggling to me is when my script had input tags that would work just fine when pressing enter, running the javascript and others that wouldn't. To explain further heres the code that was in the input text tags:
onKeyPress="if(event.keyCode == 13){ search() }"

Here you see the event which is equal to enter (when enter is pressed) should run the function of javascript (in this case search which does... you guessed it, search) anyway the problem was it would submit the form in the get method in the simplest way that my website couldn't interpret because it's a little more complex and sends stuff inside files... to the solution!

add this code to the body tag at the top of the pages with this issue:
OnKeyPress="return disableEnterKey(event)"

and add the function to your general javascript or somewhere at the header depending on how you do things:

function disableEnterKey(e){
var key;
if(window.event)
key = window.event.keyCode; //IE
else
key = e.which; //firefox

return (key != 13);
}


This solved my issue, source and credit for this solution (although with a small misspelling) goes to this link: http://www.bloggingdeveloper.com/post/Disable-Form-Submit-on-Enter-Key-Press.aspx

refresh div html with js

With a small mod for my particular project the code from this site was perfect: http://designgala.com/how-to-refresh-div-using-jquery/

In my case I wanted to refresh when something else happened and this was the simplest for me to implement. heres the code:

this on top of the page (script)src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.0/jquery.min.js">
( script)

This in the ajax.js

function navrefresh(){
setTimeout($('#navigation').fadeOut('fast').load('containers/nav.php').fadeIn("fast"),1000);
}

of course i liked things fast (they had it slow on that site above) and the correct div ID as well as the php page to load the right things..... now just call this function where needed and your all done!


ps. i still didn't figure out how to use the html tags without blogger thinking it's html?
update: found it in the > post options, compose settings "show html literally"

autoplay autostart mp3 music on startup

It was a quick project to setup an 'on hold' music server, but this can be used for countless other projects such as a jukebox or whatever you can think of, get creative :)

Very simple, first you will need VLC, used this for many years now, updates constantly but i'm sure older version can work too.

Second you need a playlist of the music, mp3s or wma etc (most will be played by VLC, that's what it does :)
I had created mine by opening VLC, click on the 'show playlist button' drag and drop all the music into the middle, wait for the processing and click "Media" > "Save playlist to file", named it and I choose the m3u extension.

Third part is the command line, as follows:
"c:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" -Z "c:\mp3\onhold.m3u"

In my case I used -Z to shuffle because I want it to keep going and in a random order, there are many more options found HERE

Create the scheduled tasks to load this playlist on start up:

Control Panel, Scheduled Tasks, right click, new scheduled task, in the properties place the absolute path to this script file or simply the line above in "Run" and under schedule choose "At login" or "At startup", save and now when you reboot this will start!

Note: 1.keep all the files in place, if directories or names change that may affect the music from playing.
2. Once the command is executed you will see VLC start with preloaded settings and playlist songs.
3. You may see the black command prompt window, this can be closed in most cases without lose of music.

Let me know how it goes!

Mulve no more

All good things come to an end... this one is no longer available for download but also the program unrelated to the site (so i thought) doesn't function anymore either...

too many legal issues? http://torrentfreak.com/police-repeat-oink-mistake-mulve-accusation-conspiracy-to-defraud-101012/

Mulve.com music discovery

Once again the music industry should be rethinking selling mp3s.
Heres an amazing new application that allows fast download of music.

It's small (~2Mb)
It's fast (~400KB/s)
and best of all it's safe (no uploading, no sharing, just untraceable download)

Well that's it for this post and let me know what you think of mulve
and what you think the music industry

[update] this one has been closed so to keep archive of the exe file it's found HERE or here
It doesn't seem to work for me but let me know if it does for you!

How to download mp3

There are many ways to download mp3's these days, simplest and most legal seems to be youtube to mp3 converting, via websites or other tools (record or download).
Record labels have finally realized the great potential of allowing copyrighted songs to be used on youtube, therefore anything that is on youtube can and will be converted to mp3 via the many methods out there.

The simple how-to is as follows:
1. grab the url of the video with song/sounds your interested in downloading mp3 format
2. past it into site such as video2mp3.net and wait for conversion, download will auto start 20 seconds after completion.

As simple as that!

On this note I will conclude that if it's so easy to get the mp3 from youtube, knowing record labels have allowed singles to be put on youtube, they should just drop the act or even attempt at getting money for something that we can get free. But this free can be used to make profit in other ways; for instance the videos that get played also often display adverts which are capital generating in them self. And I think the conventional method of obtaining music in cds, records or otherwise will die out and eventually artists will have to make performances that draw a crowed, such events are the real capital generating for musicians these days.
So the spread of free music can just help to draw such capital from concert events and advertising power for other products.

All I know is that the entertainment industry is digitizing and with this change so will the profit generating methods will change and they should just accept and embrace the change to find new ways of making money instead of trying to reinforce the old conventional methods that will no longer work today.

How to open files with applications

Also how to perminantly set those extensions to open with the applications (unless of course you install other applications which change which extensions are associated with them...)

To make things simple you must get familiar with the properties of files, a file is simply anything that is not a folder (folders are yellow folder icons in microsoft windows operating systems), anyway i'll assume you know this part and move to the fun part:
Right click the file with extension which you want to permanently set to open with particular application

Phishing attacks

I have been recently witnessing a lot of phishing attacks, in particular email messages from what appears to be legitimate sites such as banks and classified types of sites etc. showing links with correct text but href pointing to phishing sites which often hosted on free or even paid hosts.

how to spot phishing attacks you ask?
sometimes it's simpler then others but exercise common sense and caution when receiving emails that you are not expecting to arrive, and even those you expect, inspect them carefully.

I have several examples but it may be safer not to post them for now.

Neuro-Programmer 3

Neuro Programmer (Formally known as neural noise synthesizer) is a cool program that was has audio clips to help do various tasks. For example there are audio clips ranging from 10 to 50 minutes to help fall a sleep faster, get motivated, get energized, concentrate to be creative, learn or prepare for tests, etc.

Once installed you have a trial for 15 days at which point your required to buy a license.

I'm experimenting with various clips to see if they work, so far the sleep thing didn't work for me but it has in the past.

Download the program here: http://www.transparentcorp.com/products/np/download.php

To get fuller version you may or may not be able to use a peer to peer program but you didn't hear it from me!

P.s. you can also record the audio straight from the program while playing it using Audacity.

Let me know about your experiences :)

PHP never expire vs timeout cookies vs sessions

As mentioned earlier I have a newly found hobby with PHP MySQL programming, and after lots of trial and error in the development of this project I found a working method for a 'remember me' button and the expiring cookies and sessions.

The first part is login script, here you will determine if they want to be remembered in our terms this means to never time out the user. This is done with simple cookie to set the expiration a week from now, here is my code:

$long=time()+60*60*24*7; //Setting up the expiration time
$short=time()+60*25; //short time (25 minutes) for those without 'rememberme'
$username = $params['username'];
//Check whether the remember me box is checked
if (isset($params['rememberme']) && $params['rememberme'] == "on"){
setcookie('username',$username,$long); //username cookie and long expiration
setcookie('expire','no',$long); //expire is set to no
}else{
setcookie('expire','yes',$short); //expire is set to no
setcookie('username',$username,$long); //username cookie with short expiration
}

Easy right?
Next setting the users that will be timed out after inactivity I decided 25 minutes are enough because it is also the time default sessions get timed out.
Notice that the username cookie is still with a long expiration, the expire cookie is in control of expiration and the username just saves the username data which is required in various places to determine access and such.

After the login page you will need a function that is called every time something is requested, (in order not to annoy the users and only time out after inactivity) this can look something like this:

function check_login(){

if ($_COOKIE['expire'] == "no"){

$_SESSION['user'] = userInfo($_COOKIE['username']); //reset the session

}elseif ($_COOKIE['expire'] == "yes"){

setcookie('expire','yes',time()+60*25); //reset the cookie time

$_SESSION['user'] = userInfo($_COOKIE['username']); //and session

}else{

echo " Session timed out. To login  input type=\"button\" value=\"Reload Page\" onClick=\"window.location.reload()\"";     //use the tag opening before input, blogger messes here lol

exit;

}

More coming soon...

Ultimate FTP/SFTP text editor winSCP

Today's cloud computing put to the max by my newly found hobby of coding in PHP/MySQL and JavaScript (plus a little CSS) but it was only made more enjoyable when I found the great way to edit the code visually.

So I thought to share it with the loyal eduboris blog followers!

First component is the FTP/SFTP, the free and open source windows application I found is WinSCP
Second is the editing, while the default editor is OK for quick fixes it definitely is not something you can use to code, so for many years now I used Notepad++.

To combine the two and have a truly cloud computing coding environment go to WinSCP (while logged in) Options>Preferences>Editor>select the first one and click Edit> choose external editor and browser to your Program files and find notepad++ directory, and executable (if you installed it, otherwise go to the extracted folder)

From here on in consider your ultimate sftp text editor setup and ready to use!
The features I really like about Notepad++ are:

• Default language detection with color coding
• Default line count and word wrap
• Great stability under huge files (6k+ lines)

Anyway feel free to comment about this and let me know what you think below.

IE8 block sites how-to

After some review of IE security and noticed a flaw (read more) I needed to block users from all sites except those allowed. I used the IE content advisor and GPO to do this.

The first step is to create a septate group policy object or use a common one with other IE changes to help in the organization.

Once you have your group policy object editor open navigate to "User Configuration" > "Windows Settings" > "Internet Explorer Management" > "Security" and open "Security Zones and Content Ratings".

Click the radio button "Import the current content rating settings".

In the Content Advisor window click the Approved Sites tab there you will add the domains, sub-domains or IPs you approve or disapprove of and this will affect users that this policy applies to (it seems to also affect the server).

If you need more info, screen shots or other details let me know in the comments below.
Enjoy!

IE8 lockdown report

This is not a flaw with Internet Explorer at all, the flaw was in the security theory. Even though I had sites blocked before locking IE, I decided to lift the block after removing the address bar which I thought was the only way to get to other sites... this was not the case and I was so intrigued by this one that had to write a little report about it.

After locking IE and the entire user profile down I was convinced that users cannot go to any other sites than those we intended, i.e. the home page and links on desktop and without an address bar they couldn't get anywhere else. What never even crossed my mind and I had not thought of, is that one of our links' webpages was leading to google maps to show an address, seems harmless enough but from there the user can simply click on the web search and google anything and get to where they want! (assuming it does shows up on google of course - at least there will be no malicious sites)

The solution is another group policy object to only allow IE to get to sites we decided (read post), can include google too but if they try getting to another site it will be blocked.

So there you have it folks, even with security in mind you cannot always think, see or find the flaws in your system until it is used in production with real users daily tasks and them trying to exploit the system. In this case: with no address bar it is still possible to get to any site you want via search engine if it's linked ANYWHERE.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Hacker Documentaries

I was always fascinated with the concept of hacking, discovery of new ways to do things unimaginable. Applied to computers and networking it's very intriguing. So I started collecting documentaries about hacking (stream from megaupload):

• Freedom Downtime

Let me know what you think in the comments!

How to Download and Stream from MegaUpload

It's really quite simple, note you will need VLC installed and either Firefox or Chrome as your browser.

Watch the video and read instructions below:


1. [Update: this part is now skipped by megaupload: start from step two, I will keep it for archive purposes] First you are going to get to a download page, enter the code and hit download file
(Example: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EBRH99AC)

2. Next you wait for the counter which will take 45 seconds without an account or 25 with an account (sign up is free).

a. This   

b. Will turn into this

3. Now you simply click Regular Download image button and the download starts! (you may close the window but don't close the browser so the download can finish)

4. If the file is avi/divx type (extension doesn't always matter), streaming will work with VLC and firefox/chrome, go to the download location (normally at My Documents>Downloads) Right click the file (which will be named appropriately, in firefox the extension is .part and as of 10/22/2010 chrome changes the extension to .crdownload) > and click Play with VLC media player (if the option you may need to restart or reinstall VLC player)

5. VLC will give the message "AVI is broken..." (it's because the file is incomplete, because it's in the process of download!) just click Don't Repair and the streaming video will start!

Note: depending on your connection (and other factors), VLC might stop playing - check if something interrupted the download (remember not to close the browser!) or just slow download speed, just wait a few minutes and repeat step 5. again. If it's too slow you may just prefer to wait until the download is complete.

Enjoy!

NinjaVideo is no more

After giving it some time and waiting to see if the site comes back up I am pronouncing it dead today, here is a last gimps at the wonderful site before it disappears from the cache (no longer there)

It made us cry, it made us smile but now we look forward to the next pirate streaming site that will provide us with mindless entertainment for countless hours and chew more bandwidth then our ISPs can swallow .

We loved it for so many reasons.

Pop culture and underground mashed up into one, a place like this is truly unique and let's hope the other sites can handle it, but the real question is when will the feds stop taking down those sites?

Maybe one day we will figure it out... until then, ROCK ON pirates!

A hate site to that has suggestions for alternatives could come in handy now.

Useful linux commands

Found an old post didn't publish here yet, so here it is.

Useful linux commands:

• nmap
• uname -a
• modinfo
• edit /etc/fstab to add a mount when booting
• edit /etc/inittab to change runlevel when booting (id:3:initdefault:)
• scp somefile user@IP:/home/user/directory
• [root@localhost ~]# PS1=$
  $   (to change prompt)
• change hostname (localhost):
  [root@localhost ~]# hostname localhost.localdomain
• add services to runlevels:
  chkconfig --level <number> <service>
  chkconfig --level 3 httpd
• tail -f    to keep outputting as the file grows
• any ideas on how to solve this mail.txt -email theborisedu@gmail.com
  

redirect http to https multiple domains

After the torture of trial and error I have devised a working .htaccess way to redirect http to https while having multiple domains, follow the steps below.

First task is to have the /secure directory secure with https, in this directory create the .htaccess and place this text:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{http_host} secure.domain.ca [or]

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://domain.ca/secure [L,R=301]

You can place this anywhere else that you want redirected (i.e other domains), basically users will try hitting the http and redirect to that domain with https!

Second is having the / domain not secure (if your certificate isn't *. users will get a warning, we don't want that), and it will have different subdomain in this example (www1). In the root directory place this in .htaccess:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{http_host} ^domain.ca [or]

RewriteCond %{http_host} ^www.domain.ca [NC]

RewriteRule (.*)  http://www1.domain.ca/

And now waiting to see if the mx records work...

Mercury KPC-6225V Driver download

Noticed that the webcam drivers could be hard to find, so here is a distribution of the Mercury KPC-6225V Driver for download.
Filename: Mercury-PC-CAM-WEBCAM-Driver-KPC-6225V.zip
Size: 607.48 MB
Link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BCVB5FR4

how to stream movies videos ninjavideo

In particular, this will fix the issues some videos are having. For example the sound is off and the picture seems incorrect, also if you hit the 'download' button but want to stream (watch the movie without having to wait for the download to complete).

What you will need is VLC player (of course to work with ninjavideo you need java and older version of divx installed [firefox or chrome is also recommended]).

The simple version: go to My Documents/My Videos in XP or Videos in 7 or Vista (%userprofile%/My Documents/My videos/ or where your directory is located). Navigate to DivX Movies\Temporary Downloaded Files/ and find the movie or video that you want to watch. It will have .part extension simply open this with VLC and hit "Don't repair" if prompted, now you are watching the streaming movie in VLC instead of DIVX!

If you are downloading the movie via the download button, use firefox as it will not work with other browsers I tried. Find the .part file where you are saving the file (Desktop or My Documents/Downloads) and play it with VLC.

Make .part files open with VLC by default for ease of use.

For more info check the post about streaming megaupload.
Let me know what you think in the comments below.

SchTasks for backups with examples

It's easy to find the switches here but not so easy to find working examples.

Following up on the previous post(s) to schedule a tasks use this example:
schtasks /create /tn "Check server Mon-Fri at 8am" /tr c:\scripts\checkserver.bat /sc weekly /d Mon,Tue,Wed,Thu,Fri /st 8:00:00 /ru %computername%\%username% /rp %pass%

The computername and username are set by the system, you will need to specify the password:
SET pass=mySecurePass

So your script can look like:
SchTasks.bat

@echo off

SET pass=mySecurePass

echo Adding Check Server scheduled task...

schtasks /create /tn "Check server Mon-Fri at 8am" /tr c:\scripts\checkserver.bat /sc weekly /d Mon,Tue,Wed,Thu,Fri /st 8:00:00 /ru %computername%\%username% /rp %pass%

echo.

echo done..

pause

NOTE: if you are using a domain instead of workgroup you will need to specify that instead of %computername%.

network monitor

Took me some time to find the right components, finally got it to work and this will help me a lot!

The dependencies are:
1. The mail program, best one (or only one) I found is HERE (more info and alternate download), get the one with STARTTLS (if using gmail), I saved it under %systemroot%\system32 and renamed to mail.exe for ease of use but you can leave the name (change in script) and place in same folder as script if there are security concerns.

2. Sleep command found HERE.

checkServer.bat
============================================
@echo off

SET ip=192.168.1.100
SET wait=300

echo Checking if server (%IP%) online...
ping %IP%

if not errorlevel 1 goto :eof

echo.

echo Attempting to start VMware...
start vmware -x "D:\vmware\server\server.vmx"

echo Retry in %wait% seconds
sleep %wait%
ping %IP%

if not errorlevel 1 goto :eof

mail -f my@gmail.com -d gmail.com -smtp smtp.gmail.com -port 587 -t my@gmail.com -sub "SERVER DOWN!" -from my@gmail.com -cc techsupport@gmail.com +bcc -v -starttls -auth -user USERNAME -pass PASSWORD -M "Please check server (%IP%) now!"

pause
=============================================

substitute the IP, emails, NAME and PASS to your gmail username and password.
Also which actions you want to do, if vmware check your location... etc.

Test it, and now all that's left is to schedule the script... those and more coming up in next posts.

Let me know how it goes!

My type of Beer

The beer with my name....

how to stream movie videos from megaupload

This is surprisingly, very simple to do, you will need:

• Firefox or Chrome
• VLC

------------------------------------------

I will assume these are installed with fairly default settings and that you have a working video link to megaupload (example).

1. You can go ahead and type the code, wait for 20-40 seconds and click download.
2. Once the the download starts navigate to your download folder (normally in My Documents\Downloads)
3. There, you will see the filename of what you are downloading, using firefox it will be an empty file but  *filename*.part  can be played with VLC, if using chrome you can play the normal filename with VLC!

If you are unfamiliar with how to open in VLC: 

-Right click the *.part file > Properties > under Opens with click Change
-Find and select VLC media player > click OK and again OK.
-Now simply double click the file and you can start watching the video/movie!
Done!

For NinjaVideo streaming go check my newer post.

Let me know what you think, or if there are any issues... print screens coming soon!

Prohibition in the 21st century

Many already know the prohibition continues in the USA and majority of other countries... here is a more recent look at what is going on in California: How Weed Won the West part 1 and part 2

Although President Obama promised to allow marijuana to be categories as conventional medicine, and allow state law take presidency over federal law, the raids continue. DEA take the crops, cash and trash the place from further business while the economy suffers - it seems the two just cannot be linked. Governor Schwarzenegger also agree in 2009 that the deficit is so large marijuana taxation will enable to keep schools open and violent prisons in jail.

This is so clear to so many yet it feels nothing can be done, maybe the few that benefit are more powerful than the many that suffer and so life carries on being the way it was...

For those stumbling here and interested in more videos check out the following great documentaries:

• The Union: The Business of Getting High
• Marijuana Inc.: Inside America's Pot Industry
• High: The True Tale of American Marijuana
• Cocaine Cowboys

more coming soon...


As always let me know what you think!

Why not to use wireless keyboards

It seems like everyone has those cool wireless keyboards, but in the security world we explore everything and guess what has a weak encryption and can be hacked?

Of course it's the topic of this post...

Anyway I just thought it was important to get the word out there and inform the citizens of another security threat.


Keyboard Sniffer Keykeriki from Max Moser on Vimeo.

The device is not (yet) for sale but can be made by anyone with some soldering skills, once made it can reach 75 meters and the software is open source downloadable but probably will require some learning or even experience with Linux/Unix.

Needless to say this is not only dangerous of eavesdropping on peoples conversations but passwords, credit cards and whatever else is being typed on those wireless keyboards of sensitive nature - can all be picked up over the air waves by soon-to-be-sold device and free software already available... [see bottom]

Common wireless keyboard manufacturers (Microsoft and Logitech come to mind) don't give users a fauls sense of security when it's clear those are insecure!

Also you should probably work on a better encryption, try getting some help from those who hacked your keyboards for starters....

For more information check out remote-exploit.org's project.

Wake on LAN command line script

Automate the Wake On LAN (WoL) by scripting a small but smart script.

First, make sure your hosts can wake on LAN, you may have to check the bios but also make sure to enable  wake function from windows, test that it works with the WOL GUI if you'd like and move to the next step when it works.

Second, download the wolcommand from here, I like to place it in C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder so it can be accessed from anywhere in the local system but you can place it in the same folder as the script which makes this command a dependency for the script.

Third step is the scripting portion, as described at the bottom of enable WoL in windows save all the MACs if there are multiple hosts you want to wake up, in my case the list is as follows:

pc00: 00-07-E9-xx-xx-xx

pc01: 00-07-aa-aa-aa-aa

pc02: 00-07-bb-bb-bb-bb

Place as many MACs as needed in this text file, we named it ip-mac.txt but you can name it anything else and have any other delimiter but make sure to edit the script below accordingly if you do have changes.

Now the fun part:

FOR /F "tokens=2 delims=:" %%G IN (ip-mac.txt) DO wolcmd %%G 192.168.1.255 255.255.255.255

pause

Named it wol.bat (or anything you like) and run or schedule with at command or  The first line is a FOR loop that takes the second field with colon delimiter (:) then execute "wolcmd " with each of the MAC address lines, it may help to learn more about FOR loops to understand this for your case.

Second line is a pause which will wait for user input any key, I just want to make sure the commands were successful otherwise the command window closes before you blink.

Anyway, this seems to work with most PCs, I am also considering placing a sleep few seconds between each MAC wake execution to give the packets time to leave before sending the next.

Let me know what you think!

Enable Wake On LAN Windows XP

In order to wake the computer from the Local Area Network you may need to check the BIOS to allow this but since there are too many different ones I will cover the Windows XP enabling (same with server 2003 and similar to older and newer versions of windows operating systems).
On your PCs Network Interface Cards (NICs) you require to "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby", and here is how to do it:

1. First locate the Local Area Network properties, normally can be found in Control Panel > Network Connections (Fig. 1) double-click your network connection to get to the Status

Fig. 1

2. Next in Status click Properties:

Fig. 2

3. Now in the Properties click Configure:

Fig. 3

4. Now click the "Power Management" tab and select the check-boxes with the wake on LAN capabilities.

Fig. 4

Since with the Intel drivers this section looks different for me, here is a more common look for this tab:

Fig. 5

You will need to check the bottom two boxes and click OK until there are no more open.
And this will -in theory- allow you to bring the computer from a turned off or standby/hibernate state to a powered on and running state.

There are various ways of doing this: Make sure to record the MAC Address found in Support > Details of Fig. 2

Fig. 6 

Press Ctrl+c to copy these details and past them into a noetpad text file and save it for future references.

Next, there are many routers that have the capability to wake the computer's by MAC, either by default firmware or upgraded, in any case I prefer the software on a server in the LAN, so the while the rest of the computers sleep the server can be scheduled to wake them up via the WOL software which can be scripted in my next post.

How to drive a manual / standard shift gear car

Update: Since I wrote this I have learned quite a bit more about how to drive better, smoother and feel like an automatic car to your passengers and compiled some tips:

#1 my main mistake was not staying in gear long enough, this feels slow and depending on your car power you may need to play with your situation but in my car I found staying until 3 or 3.5 thousand RPM (revolutions per minute) was optimal - unless of course you're in traffic when you don't need that much power and the driving style changes. So this helps avoid the jerk feeling or slowing down when specially when shifting to the second gear since you need more power to get moving and the car is not yet moving fast, stay with the gas until you reach 3,500 RPM and when you plateau on the accelerating you can clutch, let go of gas, shift to second and slowly+smoothly engage the clutch. Same idea for the rest of the gears depending how fast you need to go (street or highway).

#2 when reversing, or rather when sliding the gear into reverse make sure the car is not moving (even a little) because in my car's design it will not allow the gear to enter R if the car is moving even slightly in any direction. First gear will let you slide in as long as your gown <15km/h, also while we are on the reverse topic, the clutch engages a little faster and unless you plan to go far in reverse you probably won't let the clutch out fully. I end up reeving a little and slowly engaging until I get far enough and can go forward.

Feel free to comment your tips, experiences, thoughts etc I know I'm not a pro and far from it...
------------More will be updated as I get them, here is the original article:

A long awaited journey on the learning curve of the manual/ standard shift gear car has began two weeks ago and I wanted to report back on the educational (edu blog) experience.

First, how to get things started, 5 gears and reverse, clutch on the left, break in the middle and gas on the right as usual. The clutch is the most important piece because it is the most used and toughest part in my opinion.

Second, to get moving, clutch has to be all the way down to the floor, start the engine and slide the gear in place.

Now you can press the break and release the hand break (all the while keep the clutch all the way down).
Once in gear and ready (first or reverse - depending where your going) you need to release the clutch very very slowly, this is important, releasing too far will stall the engine. Centimeter by centimeter you release the clutch very small movement of the pedal until you feel the car moving in the direction, or you see the revs get lower but don't let them drop any further without giving gas, because again this is where the engine will stall.

This is the most critical point of driving manual cars, getting from 0 is the toughest in my experience and I'm sure for many others. But from people's instructions and even tutorials on the net (even youtube videos) I noticed the teaching doesn't get me where I am going, anywhere.

So, again, keep the break on, clutch all the way down, release very very slowly until you feel some movement, practice this until you find the 'grip point' of the clutch - where it engages the gear to the wheels.

You don't have to know the mechanics but it helps, once you feel the engagement of the clutch, keep it there and start applying the gas - slowly as well, you don't want to rip it now!

Put the revs above 1, at 1.5 should be sufficient for most cars, at this point the car shouldn't even roll back if you are on a hill, so we solved that problem as well.

Now continue releasing the clutch - still very slowly or the car will jerk, until your left foot is completely off the clutch and now you are moving!

Step three, changing the gears: this one is often overlooked as the getting started part seems tough enough.
Well, from my experience you still need to be very smooth with the clutch in order to not make your passengers seasick, and of course avoid hardware problems in your car mechanics.

Okay, so your at 2.5-3 thousand RPMs of the first gear, you need to switch. Press down the clutch - all the way to the floor and this doesn't have to be smooth, actually best to do this fast [edit: easing off the gas should be smooth as to not launching your passenger forward]. Keeping the clutch down you switch the gear from first to second and now comes the clutch re-engagement part. Don't drop it or else you will jerk the car!

Release the clutch about half way until the engaging point and now smooth out the clutch at a slower release while reapplying the gas, smoothly. Keep in second gear for another 20KM/H or 2.5-3 thousand RPMs again until switching to third, fourth and fifth (unless you have a sixth). From there it is mostly smooth sailing.

Slowing down: down-shifting should still be done smoothly as described above, clutch release is the challenge as always and in this case we can't re apply the gas (unless your using heal-tow maneuver) so you need to get the right gear for what's going to happen next, predicting isn't tough in driving since you know you will need to accelerate after you get past a turn, therefore dropping the gear to second or third, or simply neutral if your coming to a stop (don't down shift to first unless your speed is below 20km/h)

Coming to a stop you should clutch again but don't put in first gear until you are ready to reengage, no explanation for this, just how it is. In other words until you reach 0-10 you should not switch to first gear.

Turning, most of us turn at 30-40KM/H which should put you at 3-4th gears is what I found from experience.

Stop and go traffic will probably put you at 1,2 and sometimes 3ed gears, clutching and if you're like me, using the neutral so my left foot can rest (release the clutch on Neutral).

If you have questions, leave a comment or email.
I will try to get a video put together but it's proving difficult to drive and hold a camera at the same time...
Check out youtube for other people's explanations, but some can be misleading and not entirely great...