That's how long it took Ophcrack to find the password on my old Windows XP laptop.

Ophcrack is a free password cracker for Windows XP and Vista. It can be run on Windows, Mac and Linux machines, also comes in two liveCD versions so you don't need to install it, and is claimed to crack 99.9% of alphanumeric passwords up to 14 characters long within a few minutes.




Ophcrack uses rainbow tables which you can download separately to try different character sets and password lengths. They range in size from ranging in size from 380MB to 135GB!

So, how long did your password last? Post a comment!

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 )

Dropbox is a great  utility for sharing, syncing and backing up files across multiple computers. A default (free) account gives you 2GB of storage, and because it's web-based it'll work on Windows, Mac, Linux and even the iPhone. But one element is missing for KDE users; a proper KDE-based solution. Here's how to remedy that.

The default installations for Linux all use the Gnome desktop's Nautilus file manager. While installing and running Nautilus in KDE is simple enough, why bother with another file manager -- especially as we already have two great ones in Konqueror and Dolphin?

Once you've created a Dropbox account, download the apppropriate Dropbox client:

•     Dropbox for Linux - 32-bit
  

•     Dropbox for Linux - 64-bit
  

In a terminal session, unpack the file with the command

tar xvf dropbox-lnx*.tar.gz

Then move the contents of the unpacked file to your root user folder:

mv .dropbox-dist ~/

You can now start Dropbox with the command

~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox &

If you want Dropbox to start automatically every time you boot, either manually add a link to KDE's Autostart folder ...

ln -s ~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox ~/.kde/Autostart/

... or do so graphically via the Settings / System Settings / Advanced / Autostart menu items.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

US tech commentator Robert X. Cringely recently discovered a 12 year old microcassette tape of an interview with Bill Gates in which he says of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, "What I can't figure out is why he is even trying? He knows he can't win." That leads to an interesting two-company comparison.

In June, 1998 Microsoft had a market capitalization of $250 billion, Apple was worth just $6 billion. Today however;

Microsoft is worth $240 billion, a tiny drop from 12 years ago, with the shares now around $27 (down from $29). Nothing gained in more than a decade. Apple shares, on the other hand, have gone from $7.25 to almost $240, Apple's market cap has risen more than 33X from $6 billion to $220 billion. And Cupertino's cash hoard today is almost exactly the same as Microsoft's at around $40 billion.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 7 )

KSnapshot is KDE's in-built screenshot grabber. Just hit the PrtScr key and you can save a screenshot in a wide range of formats. How wide? Here's the list!

BMP	Windows Bitmap
EPS	Encapsulated Postscript
JPEG / JPG	Joinit Experts Photographic Group
MNG	Multi-image Network Graphics
PBM	Portable Bitmap
PCX	Personal Computer eXchange
PGM	Portable Grey Map
PNG	Portable Network Graphics
PPM	Portable Pixmap
RGB	Red Green Blue
TARGA / TGA	Truevision Advanced Raster Graphics Adapter
TIFF	Tagged Image File Format
XBM	X Bitmap
XPM	X Pixmap

But there's more to KSnapshot than just formats.



Capture Mode has five snapshot options. Each hides the KSnapshot applicaton window and turns the cursor into a crosshair (+) but how you actually capture the shot depends on which mode you've selected.

• Full Screen : left-click to snap the whole screen.
• Window Under Cursor : left-click to snap the window you're pointing at.
  
• Region : left-click and drag with the mouse to select any area you like. Resizing handles around the sides of the selection enable further adjustment, or you can reposition the selection area by clicking and dragging it about. Press ENTER to actually make the snapshot or ESC to quit.
  
• Section of Window : move the cursor over an open window and you'll find it's individual sections highlighted by a red boundary box. Left-click to snap the one you want.
  
• Current Screen : is for multiple monitor users. Move the cursor on to the screen you want to snap and left-click to capture only what's on that monitor.
  

All selections appear in KSnapshot's preview window in the upper left corner so you can double-check you've got exactly what you want.

Snapshot Delay gives you time to position things before the picture's taken. Say for example you want a shot of an application showing the contents of its File menu. Selecting a delay of five seconds will give you time to position things after you click New Snapshot.

Include Window Decorations gives you the option of including the Title Bar, Maximise, Minimise and Close buttons along the top of the window if you're shooting in Window Under Cursor mode.

Save As obviously allows you to save in any of the above formats. One neat "hidden" feature is that it automatically indexes subsequent saves. If you call your first save "MyPic1.png", the next time you use KSnapshot it'll offer the name "MyPic2.png", then "MyPic3.png" and so on.

Open With presents a drop-down list of applications to open the snapshot immediately. No need to save it to an intermediate file!



Copy to Clipboard is similar. It puts the image in the PC's clipboard, allowing you to paste the image directly into any other applications as many times as you like.

(And in case you're wondering, I made the snapshots in this blog using KSnapshot. But how? As soon as you click New Snapshot the application hides itself. Solution: I hit PrtScr twice so the second instance of the program captured pictures of the first!)

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Following a spate of recent acquisitions that include photo editing site Picnik, email searchers reMail, document collaborators DocVerse and a minor European country called France, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt announced this morning that the Mountain View-based company had bought Microsoft Corporation.

Schmidt said the purchase price of just US$2 billion reflected the company's true value after the Vista fiasco, ongoing losses in Office patent lawsuits and the way Linux continues to kick Windows 7's sorry butt.

Windows 7 Ultimate: $599		Linux: $0

Trading on the NASDAQ was temporarily suspended after the announcement so that trading codes of Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) could be combined. The new entity will be known as Google (GOOFT).

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who once said he'd "f***ing kill Google", now claims he was misquoted. "What I actually said was, 'I'd f***ing kill to work at Google.'" Ballmer is understood to be seeking a janitorial position.

Old news:	Ballmer apologises for Windows
	Hackers "open source" Vista

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 )