While this book is no longer in print, it’s content is still very relevant today.
This is a very useful site which uses the ISBN and gets the current book prices from all the popular sites.
For Example : http://isbn.net.in/0805091742
If you’ve been wondering why Facebook chat was mysteriously “down for maintenance” during normally high-usage hours this morning, it’s probably because they were alerted this morning to a pretty serious security hole in their privacy settings.
The hole allowed for what can only be called one of the easiest exploits in recent memory; it allowed any Facebook user to see his or her friends’ live chats and pending friend requests just by typing their names in the site’s built-in privacy preview page. TechCrunch Europe received a tip about it, along with a link to a YouTube video (below) showing the exploit in action earlier this morning, and notified Facebook almost immediately.
Whether it’s the way they’ve made it nearly impossible to simply upload a profile picture without getting hassled to install worthless software, or the fact that at any given point in the day, something on Facebook is horribly broken; disaffected Facebook users already have enough to worry about without having their friends eavesdropping on their private conversations.
The video:
A site this broken is usually tagged with in beta! — and come with caveats like use at your own risk.
Facebook’s reaction to the exploit was surprisingly straight-forward:
“For a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users’ chat messages and pending friend requests to be made visible to their friends by manipulating the “preview my profile” feature of Facebook privacy settings. When we received reports of the problem, our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function. We also pushed out a fix to take care of the visible friend requests which is now complete. Chat will be turned back on across the site shortly. We worked quickly to resolve this matter, ensuring that once the bug was reported to us, a solution was quickly found and implemented.”
This latest in a long line of completely preventable screw-ups only goes to show that the only thing Facebook’s team isreally good at is showing the world time and again that it’s technically inept and largely irresponsible — but at least they’re learning to quickly admit their failings.
Now, all the recent buzz about Facebook’s privacy shortcomings (yes, it’s an understatement) has many users wanting out. Unfortunately, leaving Facebook can prove to be much more difficult a prospect than anyone could have guessed, and most users simply give up after falling under the impression that they can’t delete their accounts.
While it may be difficult, deleting your Facebook account is not impossible; you just need to know where to look. For one thing, users often get lost trying to find account-ending options because Facebook has questions about them labelled misleadingly; in this case it’s “Security: Hacked Account.”
Once there, you’ll see that after lengthy stalling, it finally gives you a link to the fabled account deletion request form. Don’t think you’re completely out of the woods once you hit that final submit button though, because they’ve built in a 14-day cooling-off period that keeps your account frozen but available should you change your mind.
If you don’t quite want to delete your account, you may be toying with the idea of deactivating it. You might think that deactivation is good enough, since Facebook says that “your profile and all information associated with it are immediately made inaccessible to other Facebook users.” What’s missing here is a breakdown of exactly what happens to your account. While it’s true that your profile will be ghosted, you won’t be. You can still be tagged in photos, notes, and status updates just like normal. For all intents and purposes, most people won’t notice you’ve left — because you really haven’t.
If you’re going to kill your account, be sure to uninstall any Facebook Mobile apps from your phones, clear Facebook cookies, and make sure you don’t leave any Facebook Connect sites set to automatic login. If you accidentally log into your account during those final 14 days, you reactivate your account and have to go through the process all over again.
Sometimes, there really is no shame in quitting.
You’ve got to hand it to Facebook. They certainly know how to do security — not.
Today I was tipped off that there is a major security flaw in the social networking site that, with just a few mouse clicks, enables any user to view the live chats of their ‘friends’. Using what sounds like a simple trick, a user can also access their friends’ latest pending friend-requests and which friends they share in common. That’s a lot of potentially sensitive information.
Unbelievable I thought, until I just tested the exploit for myself.
And guess what? It works.
Google has been testing this redesign for a long time, and today it’s going live globally. You will see a new logo and a new left-hand side bar in results. The logo feels brighter and flatter than the old one, the search results have become less minimalist.
I’ll wait to see if I grow used to the side bar, I get a feeling that for the most part I will simply ignore it as I don’t need it (I rarely do a web search and then want to switch to book search, or videos; often when I want a maps or image search, I go straight to that particular search). But who knows, perhaps it’s useful for certain types of research tasks, and it does make the different Google sites discoverable for users who might not know them (though with Google’s “jazzy” onebox model, which is still in for the “everything” search, discoverability of the other sites was also provided). The UI of Google’s sub services also feels more consolidated now, part of a single search. In the meantime the crown for most uncluttered search results might have to be passed on to another site in 2010.
What do you like about the new design, and what do you dislike?
It seems that my linux processes have gone crazy.
Look at the crazy GB sizes
Last week, Facebook added a suite of new features that let websites like Pandora and Docs.com access some of your personal information and use it to instantly personalize your experience. Pandora, for example, will recommend streaming music stations built around artists you’ve Liked on Facebook in the past.
Most of the time this information is harmless and you shouldn’t worry too much about it being used for nefarious purposes, but if you want to err on the side of caution, you can actually opt out of the program for privacy reasons — the option is called “Instant Personalization” and it’s sitting deep inside of Facebook’s privacy settings pages.
Opting Out at Specific Sites
You can either turn Instant Personalization off entirely at Facebook, or you can opt out at individual websites on a case-by-case basis. The latter is easy; the first time you arrive a website that uses Instant Personalization, a bar will appear at the top of the page letting you know that’s what’s happening and giving you the option to either accept that or to tell it “no thanks.”
Blocking Instant Personalization For All Sites
The feature is on by default when you first arrive at a site, though, and if you’re sure you never want to use it anywhere, you can dig deep from your Facebook home page to make sure no other website can ever access your Facebook information for Instant Personalization purposes. To do that, start by clicking on “Account” in the upper-right corner of the Facebook homepage. Select “Privacy Settings” from the list that drops down below.
You’ll be presented with a list of five privacy settings pages. You can do a lot with these pages — customize who can see your profile info and news feed updates, for example — but the option we’re looking for now is right in the middle: “Applications and Websites.” Give that a click.
There it is at the bottom of this list: “Instant Personalization.” Consider clicking “Learn More” by the top item, too, though, as it explains exactly how your other privacy settings affect what information is shared with other applications and websites. Anyway, click “Edit Setting” by “Instant Personalization” at the bottom.
This last stop in the rabbit hole tells you what Instant Personalization does, and provides a lone check box at the bottom to enable or disable it. It’s on by default. Click the check box to turn it off.
There you go. It’s done! Facebook won’t share your personal information with websites for Instant Personalization again until you re-enable this feature. You can do that by going back and re-checking the box at any time, so if you decide you want the new features after all, this isn’t irreversible.
Preventing Friends From Sharing Your Info
You should be aware that friends can still sometimes share your information from their own profiles with websites even though this is turned off. This is easy to change. Just jump back one level to “Applications and Websites” and click “Edit Settings” by the second option — “What your friends can share about you” — instead of “Instant Personalization.
Here you can check and un-check boxes to specify what information your friends’ connections can share with other applications and websites. If you un-check everything here, none of your information will be shared. It’s nice to be able to choose exactly what you are and aren’t comfortable with, though.
First, the shortcuts that are so fundamental to computer use that you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them. Almost all of these shortcuts should be performed with the LEFT hand, with your thumb on Alt or Ctrl.
- Ctrl+T — opens a new tab in all major Web browsers.
- Alt+Tab — cycles through currently-open programs. If you also hold down Shift, it cycles backwards.
- Ctrl+Tab — cycles through Web browser tabs (you can use Shift to go backwards too).
- Ctrl+W — closes the current window or tab. Some applications can be closed with Ctrl+W, but Alt+F4 is universal.
- Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V — copies selected text (you can use Shift and arrow keys to select text!), and then paste it. Use Alt-Tab to switch between source and destination for bonus points.
- Ctrl+Z — undoes your last action. This works in almost everything except Web browsers. ‘Redo’ varies from program to program (check the ‘Edit’ menu to find out!)
- Ctrl+Mouse scroll wheel — zoom in, zoom out. This works in almost every kind of app, including Web browsers. Great for increasing the size of tiny ‘aesthetic’ text on normal websites… or tiny thumbnails on nefarious ones. Also scales the size of icons on your desktop, if they’re too small for you!
- F5 – refreshes your current folder/directory or Web page. Yes, you can hammer a button on your keyboard rather than foolishly clicking a button over and over!
- Alt+D – selects the address bar in your Web browser or folder/directory view! Yes, I know — how awesome is that?
Really Neat Keyboard Shortcuts
This next block of shortcuts is for the power users, the administrators, those of you that want to squeeze just a little bit more out of your PC. These shortcuts are nearly all Windows Key combinations, so first… a little bit of trivia (you never know when you might get asked about the Windows Key in a pub quiz!).
The Windows Key (the one with the flag on, next to ‘Ctrl’ and ‘Alt’) is a relatively recent addition to modern keyboards. It’s functionally identical to the Mac’s Command Key, and both of them originated on the awesomely-named ‘Space-cadet keyboard‘ at MIT. Along with its bastard cousin the ‘menu key‘ (I can only assume that key was thrown in for special people with one-button mouses), it started to appear after Windows 95 was released. And now on with the shortcuts!
- Windows Key+L — locks the computer! BLAM! It’s really fast and probably the best (and most secure) way to quickly clear your screen of anything offensive.
- Windows Key+D — shows your desktop. Hit Windows Key+D again to bring the windows back! Another great way to hide whatever you’re up to — or maybe you just want to declutter your workspace.
- Windows Key – pops up the Start Menu. It also focuses the ‘instant search/run’ box, so you can start typing immediately. Type the name of an application and press enter! Windows Key+R is the same thing but without the as-you-type search.
- Windows Key+Number (0 through 9) — opens the program pinned to your Superbar/taskbar as indicated by the number. Windows Key+1 would be the first icon on your taskbar… +5 the fifth, and so on. If the program is already open, you switch focus to that window. Shift+Windows Key+Number opens a new instance of the pinned program.
- Windows Key+Tab — a pretty, Aero Flip version of Alt+Tab. Cycle through your open applications in 3D! This can be quite slow on laptops or older PCs.
- Windows Key+Shift+Left Arrow — on multi-monitor setups, this moves your current window to the left-hand screen. +Right Arrow would move it to the right. If you only have two screens it doesn’t matter which combo you use.
Note: these shortcuts all work with Windows 7; most of them work with Vista — and only some work with XP and earlier.
Kinda Cool Keyboard Shortcuts
This last section is dedicated to the shortcuts that no one really knows about. These are fairly obscure, and in some cases completely useless, but who knows: maybe you’ll find something useful!
- Ctrl+Shift+Left Click — use this on a Superbar or Start Menu item to run it as an administrator. One of the many ways to combat UAC annoyances…!
- Hold Shift — if you hold Shift after putting a CD into your computer it will stop it from Auto Running (this one goes way back to Windows 95!)
- Ctrl+Shift — switches between keyboard layouts. Usually you’ll change keyboard layout without noticing… now you know the shortcut to change it back! (Or just uninstall the other keyboard layouts — that’s what I do)
- Left Alt+Left Shift+Print Screen (PrtScrn) — changes Windows to ‘high contrast’ settings. Good for Web sites that all ‘fade into grey’ — or for older people with weaker eyes!
- Ctrl+Shift+Esc — opens the Task Manager. No, you don’t have to access it via Ctrl+Alt+Del!
- Ctrl+Alt+Del — yes… this one reboots your computer. Surprising how rarely you have to hit it nowadays, eh?
- Windows Key, Right, Right — no, not a cheat code! This brings you to the Log Off/Shut Down/Sleep menu.
- Ctrl+Right Arrow (or Left Arrow) — when word processing, this moves the cursor one word to the left or right. Much faster than simply ‘holding down the arrow key’. If you hold down Shift you also select the text as you go; very cool.
- Home and End (Page Up, Page Down, etc.) — the whole ‘block’ to the right of the Enter key are actually used for moving around documents and pages. Home takes you to the start of a line; End… to the end. Hold Shift to select text as you go.
Incredible tag clouds on Tagxedo
Lately I have been seeing the new layout on Google. Is this some new enhancement being beta tested ? 
Most of us have spent years building up our digital music libraries, along with tons of missing, mismatched, and incorrect tags on your music over that time. Here’s a step-by-step guide for organizing your entire library, once and for all.
Start to Finish Guide to Whipping Your Music’s Metadata into Shape
DIY site Instructables highlights an inexpensive method for breathing new life into those old, scratched CDs you’re still clinging to. Their solution: a dab of Vaseline or any type of petroleum jelly.
A soft cloth or disc cleaner, petroleum jelly, and some ancient scratched CDs are all that is required for this project. Using the disc cleaner/cloth, apply the jelly to the CD. After applying it in a thorough manner, the excess grease needs to be removed. Take a cotton ball, swab it with some rubbing alcohol and start cleaning it off. The idea is that the petroleum jelly will fill in the scratches on the CD, making it—hopefully—readable.
Remove Scratches from a CD/DVD with Vaseline [Instructables]
According to Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu 10.10 will be called Maverick Meerkat. I think it’s a pretty neat name; I like meerkats.
Other than a neat name, 10.10 will continue pushing for faster boot times and faster overall speed. Also, the new “light” theme will be even more pronounced. That’s what Shuttleworth says, at least. Ubuntu isn’t known for refreshing the UI very often, but maybe they’ll make an exception for all of the users that are complaining about the “wrong location” for the window control buttons.
On 10.04, you can already update your status on various social networks without opening a browser, right from the desktop. Shuttleworth says that this trend will continue, and that it’s “time to start to bring those social networks back into our everyday computing environment.”
The final list of all 1st April pranks
