SSH is one communication protocol that is used to access remote systems all the time. Short for “Secure Shell”, SSH provides a secure channel for data exchange, unlike Telnet and other insecure remote shells. Telnet, e.g., transmits all data including passwords in plain text.
For a system A to connect to a remote system B through SSH, A needs a SSH client (like PuTTY for Windows) and B needs a SSHD server running all the time so as to accept incoming connections.
SSH is a proprietary software offered by SSH Communications Security, and as an alternative the open source version OpenSSH is …read more

Every now and then a popular website gets hacked and tons of user passwords are published for everyone to see. On one side, it can potentially lead to huge losses to the users whose passwords have been compromised. On the other, security analysts use the data to gain various insights.
In one such recent attack, Robert Graham, the CEO of Errata Security, came to a few startling conclusions based on the passwords published showing what should not be your password:

16% of passwords matched a person’s first name
14% of passwords were patterns on the keyboard
4% are variations of the word “password”
5% of …read more

DOS has a few commands like find, findstr and sort which can be used to manipulate text. ($ help <cmd> shows the usage help for all these commands.) However, their usage is very different from those that a Unix user may be familiar with.
One of the best things about Cygwin is that these commands useful for “quick and dirty” work on large chunks of text data are easy to learn, are consistent across all Unix-based OSs, have a number of options, and are quite extensive. When used in combination, they can save a lot of programming.
($ <command> <option> <inputs> is …read more

There are a lot of utilities that can be used to clean a computer. These do something more than the usual “Disk Cleanup” ($ cleanmgr), are easy to use with custom features and are faster too. Cleaning up your computer can improve its performance and ensure greater privacy. For a while now, I have been using Piriform’s CCleaner. It is one of the most comprehensive utilities of its kind.

CCleaner’s primary feature is the Cleaner. First, it will analyze the system, fetch the files that it is going to delete from the recycle bin, browser caches, other application caches, and many …read more

find is an elaborate search program with a number of features. Unlike the Google Desktop Search and locate, it doesn’t index anything but processes the request on the fly. Thus it is slower.
find is one of the most useful commands when you also have to search within unknown files and make further operations on the result set. It does a recursive search, looking in all subdirectories.
The first set of arguments is always the paths where the search should initiate. $ find /home /tmp <remaining arguments> would search based on the remaining arguments in /home, /tmp and all their subdirectories. If …read more

The last week has been filled with frenzy here in India with rumors about a $10 laptop. Not $100. It is $10. The prototype designed and developed by IISC Bangalore and IIT Madras (my alma mater) was unveiled today. Immediately, it has been hit by very negative reviews with reporters disappointed that it isn’t really even a netbook with scaled-down features. Of course, you can’t yet get a computer that costs 40 times less and has similar functionality.
Called “Sakshat”, the concept is similar to OLPC. While screenshots aren’t out yet, Sakshat has a small screen, 2GB disk space, wi-fi connectivity, …read more

I am two days late, but never mind. Lifehacker, the fabulous site with everyday tips and downloads for getting things done, had its first post on 31st Jan 2005. What a phenomenal success it has achieved in these four years!
On this occasion, the super blog has two interesting posts: Our Best Posts From 2005 to 2009, and Weirdest and Most Controversial Posts.
I am especially thankful to Gina Trapani, the blog’s founding editor, for introducing me to Cygwin and the todo.sh. She used to make frequent posts but has been writing only a weekly column on the blog these days. …read more

I’ve realized that my last Tech Channel Roundup was nearly a month ago and I’m guilty of it. So, bear with me as I overload you with a number of interesting links that I found in some of the sister blogs.
Milo discovered a product especially useful for enterprises of all sizes called Nightwatchman, a good news that Microsoft didn’t lay off anybody in the Vista team. I knew that they didn’t touch the Silverlight team, but frankly I’m surprised about this because Vista hasn’t been very profitable to Microsoft. Or has it? One bad news is the Windows 7 minimum …read more

Launchy is a nice little utility that makes life easier, especially for all those users who prefer the keyboard to the mouse, say laptop users to whom typing a few keys is more convenient that navigating using the mouse.

It runs in the background and when invoked to the foreground allows you to launch various programs that you wish. There are a few similar apps like Colibri and yLaunch, but Launchy stands out for the wide range of features that can be customized.
To start with, the hotkey used to invoke Launchy can be set. I choose “Win + Space” instead of …read more

What a journey the last 25 years has been! Here is wishing Mac a very happy birthday.
The first Apple Macintosh was launched on Jan 18, 1984. It was the first commercially successful computer with a GUI and a mouse instead of CLI.

To the left is the first Mac and to the right, the latest.
Jef Raskin envisioned the first Mac and wanted to name it McIntosh, after his favorite type of Apple, but had to settle for Macintosh. That compromise allows us to call it a Mac.
One specialty of Mac is that Apple oversees all aspects of its hardware and …read more