Tomorrow, June 27th, 2008 will mark the final day that Bill Gates serves as the "Chief Software Architect" for Microsoft, the company he helped found in 1975. He was still in his early 20's when he started Microsoft. It started as a small company that set out to market an operating system for the newly emerging personal computer market.
From the beginning, what Microsoft lacked in creativity it more than made up for in business sense. Their first major product, the Disk Operating System (MS-DOS), was purchased from a private developer and then marketed to IBM to be used as the exclusive operating system for their new line of personal computers.
With Gates at the helm, Microsoft went on to release many other products, most of which are now household names, like Windows. Microsoft Windows was originally designed as little more than a graphical front end for DOS, but later developed into it's own Operating System, eventually replacing DOS altogether. Other Microsoft products, like OS/2 did not fair as well and eventually fell by the way side to be forgotten in the annals of electronic antiquity.
No one can deny that Microsoft has thrived with Bill Gates at the helm. The fact is, he has become the very face of Microsoft. But the question now exists, how will they do when he is gone? Gates will remain the Chairman of Microsoft indefinitely, but he will no longer control the day-to-day operations of the company.
Gates is a brilliant business man, and has become a remarkable philanthropist. With his net worth being estimated at over 58 billion American Dollars, he certainly doesn't need to keep working. But the question remains what will be his legacy? Will he be remembered for the sometimes ruthless business tactics used by Microsoft to crush their competition? Will he be remembered as the richest man on earth? Will he be remembered as the founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation? Time will tell. One thing is certain, Bill Gates will not fade into obscurity, and no one is likely to soon forget the name "Microsoft". What is not as certain is how the Microsoft product line will develop without Gates driving the ship, especially in the face of an ever more viable open source movement.
Raleigh – Thanks to some text message-savvy grandchildren, North Carolina drivers whose license plates have the potentially offensive "WTF" letter combination can replace the tags for free.
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The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Tuesday the state Division of Motor Vehicles has notified nearly 10,000 holders of license plates with the letter combination. Officials learned last year the common acronym stands for a vulgar phrase in e-mail and cell phone text messages.
But this week, the DMV officials got another surprise when they learned the same letters appeared on the agency's own Web site on a sample personalized plate.
"I can't believe it," DMV Commissioner Bill Gore said Monday when told about the online glitch. "Obviously, I didn't know it was there."
Officials are working to remove the sample plate.
The "WTF-5505" used on the Web site's sample plate was the first random letter combination available when DMV switched from blue- to red-lettered plates, officials said. DMV spokeswoman Marge Howell received a sample plate WTF-5506 to use as a prop for news stories about the switch.
Tired of juggling multiple phone numbers? Or just need an extra one? You should check out GrandCentral Beta, which offers all kinds of new tricks with phone calls by utilizing VoIP and the internet. First and foremost, they offer you a free local phone number from 47 states.
One Number For Everything
I think the main idea behind the name is that this free phone number will become your only phone number. This way, if you move or change jobs you can keep the same number forever, or at least for as long as you like. To entice you to do so, they add in some cool features. For example, when a person calls your GrandCentral number, you can:
1. Have them call different phone numbers in order, for example home, then work, then cell phone. So people only need to know one number to reach you anywhere.
2. Immediately redirect them by Caller ID to a specific phone number. Maybe certain friends just go straight to cell phone?
3. If they are a known telemarketer, you can set the spam filter to not ring your phone at all.
An Extra Number For Personal or Business
The way I’ve been using the free number is as my new business phone number. This way, you have a separate business number to give out to customers, but it can ring your regular cell phone. You can know that it is a business call by setting the caller ID to display your “Biz” GrandCentral number, and answer professionally.
They even have a cool WebCall button where a customer can click on your webpage and call directly you for free.
Avoid Long Distance Charges
Added: I haven’t worried about long distance for a while now, but you could also use it to avoid long distance charges for your friends (or yourself), by getting a number in one area code and forwarding it as needed to another area code. Thanks to commenter Ross below for the tip.
Get More Free Minutes With T-Mobile MyFaves or AllTel Circle
Both T-Mobile and AllTel have plans where you get unlimited calls to and from a few select numbers. So here, you would set your “Personal” GrandCentral number as one of your favorites. Then, just tell everyone to call the GrandCentral number instead, which will redirect to your cell phone, giving you unlimited minutes! It would seem that you would lose the ability to see who’s calling, however.
They also offer store your voicemail all in one place with unlimited storage, and have a ton of other features that I’ve never used yet. You can record phone calls, switch seamlessly between your home phone and cell phone to save more minutes, screen calls by name, and more.
Will This Stay Free?
It seems like unlimited inbound calling will remain free, but I’m sure they will start charging for some of their premium features, like calling outbound. From their FAQ:
Will GrandCentral always be free?
Yes, we’re excited to say that we will always offer a free version of GrandCentral, even after beta. Our free version will include unlimited inbound minutes, unlimited voicemail (up to 30 days old), and access to all of our core features.
During beta, we’re giving everyone unlimited access to our premium features. In exchange, all we ask is that you send us your feedback (good or bad) to beta@grandcentral.com. We’ll read every comment.
Got a better idea of how to take advantage of this service? Please share in the comments.
AntiPhormLite confounds BT's spyware by simulating random browsing
If you're pissed off that BT and other ISPs are using software like Phorm to track your browsing habits, you could try out AntiPhormLite, an app that generates a never-ending string of spyware radar-chaff, running a second browser that continuously, plausibly browses the web, screwing up your profile and confounding the snoops. They've posted the full source for audit as well.
AntiPhormLite runs independently and silently in the background of your PC. It connects to the web and intelligently simulates natural surfing behavior across thousands of customizable topics. This creates a background noise of false information disguising and inverting your own interests. We believe our technology is indistinguishable from that of a typical user engaging the internet. To support this claim we have introduced a preview mode that works with any of your preferred browsers, and together with a detailed reporting system and a host of custom options each AntiPhormLite will appear unique.
We encourage you to use AntiPhormLite. It's free. Share it with everyone you know. If enough of us use AntiPhorm, profiling and data mining could become a profit loss industry. This beta release will continue to be developed with your input, ideas and support, so please get involved. We value your feedback. For detailed information on the software visit our software and faq pages.
When working on MS-Outlook with POP3 or IMAP accounts, all received and sent emails are saved in a Personal Folders (.pst) file. Microsoft allow the user to set a password on a .pst file, in order to protect the content of the emails, and prevent from accessing them by other users.
although commercial software that crack the password of pst files exist for years, many users don't know that password protection of pst files is very weak and can be cracked very easily, and may thing that their private emails are protected from viewing by other users.
In the following article, I'll give a small explanation about how the password is saved in the pst file, as well as I'll demonstrate a funny bug with pst passwords.
How the password is saved in the pst file ?
In fact... The password is not really saved in the pst file. Instead of saving the real password, Outlook creates a 32-bit hash value that represents the original password. The algorithm that is used to generate this number is just a CRC32 algorithm with a little modification. CRC32 is mostly used to verify data integrity, but from unknown reason, Microsoft decided to use it for password protection instead of using a strong hashing algorithm, like MD5 or SHA-1.
The bad thing about using a CRC32 algorithm for saving a password is the fact that for each 32-bit number, there are a lots matching passwords, which mean that if you set a password on your pst file, you can also open it with many other passwords that match the same CRC value.
For example, if you set the password '1234' to your pst file, you can also open it with the following passwords: 'yZdHpA', 'hkNkwC', 'YUWqKD', 'FkbbpH', 'WZHAwJ', and much more...
Don't believe it ? Just try it, and you'll find out that it's true !
The null password bug
Outlook uses the 32-bit value that I mention above to determine whether to ask the user to type a password. If this value is other than zero, the user must type a password that matches the same CRC value in order to open the pst file. If this value is equal to zero, the user is allowed to open the pst file without typing any password.
But... What happens if you set a password to the pst file that matches to a zero CRC value ? This is exactly the bug that I'm talking about !!
If you set a password to the pst file that matches to a zero CRC value, Outlook will accept your password without complaints, but in the next time that you try to open the pst file, you won't need to type any password !
The following list contain passwords that generate a zero CRC value in Outlook, and thus if set one of these passwords to your pst file, Outlook won't ask you to type a password in the next time that you access the pst file:
* eyzVS1
* tHPuT3
* 5J8j84
* EvIoh4
* TGcLo6
* JeX2N7
* 1Rj78C
* nr9VuE
* CNQp0J
* pLMtUP
* O0fc8Q
* NaE3OT
* ArTniW
* z7s4mm
* YUfCxp
* yZUzCu
* 5kfzQx
The above passwords list was generated by using my new pst password generator. This password generator is a part of my new pst cracker utility that was released during June 2006 - PstPassword.
Steps to reproduce the bug in Outlook 2003
1. From the menu, select Tools -> E-mail Accounts
2. Select 'View or change existing e-mail accounts', and click Next.
3. Click 'New Outlook Data File'.
4. Select the type of storage, and then select a new pst filename.
5. In the pst creation dialog-box, type one of the passwords from the above "bad" passwords list. Don't check the "Save this password is your password list" option.
6. Click 'OK' and then 'Finish'.
7. Try to access the newly created 'Personal Folders'.
At this stage, Outlook should ask you to type a password, but if you used one of the password from my list, Outlook will allow you to access the pst without a password. This is the bug !!