- Make a raw file in the name same of a virus file. Most probably, these these files will be hidden. To view this, a good way is open the pen drive in Linux OS. you can see some names such as "virus.exe" on the root folder of pen drive. If it exists, open it using a text editor program and delete all the characters and if you want, include some raw characters and save. If you don't have any such files, but want to prevent them, you first of all need to find the name of that virus file and make a raw file in any text editor and save it in the same extension of the virus file. I successfully prevented a most common virus named "autorun.inf". Warning : This method not always work.
- Use a good anti virus on your PC as well as in your pen drive. Some good links are http://www.usbantivirus.net/ and http://www.zbshareware.com/download.html
- Format your pen drive well, if your head ache is cumbersome. Some virus programs can override quick format in windows. So use GParted.Prevention is better than cure. Formatting is the last chance.
How to prevent virus from USB pendrive
Sometimes attacks of virus through USB pen drives are a real headache. Even though most of them are trivial, anti virus programs may not catch them. Use this following techniques in order to prevent them.
Valence 09 :Techfest on Jyothi Engineering College
Electronics and communication dept. of our college is going to conduct a techfest on 23rd and 24th November 2009 bz the certification of IEEE. Electronics and Communication Students Association (ECSA) works together with IEEE.
Go to the official link to register for events.
Prize winners will get an IEEE marked certificate along with cash prize. For more details navigate to the official website.
Go to our college official website.
Go to the official link to register for events.Prize winners will get an IEEE marked certificate along with cash prize. For more details navigate to the official website.
Go to our college official website.
Let's do a simple hack!
If you are not aware of the difference between the words 'Hack' and 'Crack', I recommend you to hear what wikipedia says. Anything you want to do in a propitiatory program like MS Windows which is prohibited by license or it is not intended to do so may be called as crack. But the word 'hacking' has a great meaning which is different from 'cracking'. You can do anything on your open source program. If you are trying to crack your Linux OS which is open source, it may be called as 'hacking'. What is I want to say is that, an open source program can't be cracked because, they provide source code and hacking (cracking!) is allowed by license. If you are trying to beat an open source program, surely it will become a part of development. So an open source program can't be beaten. Hacking is intended for fun, especially by applying intellectual skills on something and and allowed by law. If anything you find violating the law, please call it as 'crack' not 'hack'.
If you are a beginner in Linux, like me, this simple hack will really attract you. This hack is done in my pocket slax 6.1.2 which is installed on my USB pen drive. But you can do this in any linux based distro which has a boot splash screen or login screen. The only thing you need to do is,
Navigate to /boot directory. In pocket slax, it is situated in the following path:
system:/media/sda1/boot
Then you can see one or more image files with .png extension. In slax, it is 'slax.png'. Edit this picture with a suitable image editor and change as you like it. For example, type "Hacked by
Mouse gestures for Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox one of the leading power of internet browsers, shows its real power and beauty only when the appropriate add on-s are installed. You can download and use them from Firefox add on page. There are a plenty of add-ons available and no need to specify which is good because it greatly depend upon your tastes. Recently I installed an add-on named All-in-one gestures and I feel it very interesting. You can install by clicking 'add to Firefox' button as you usually do while installing add-on. There provision to change the gesture pattern in the 'preferences' mode. Mouse gesture means that, some operations you done in Firefox such as 'back', 'forward', 'refresh' etc can be done simply by moving your mouse. I experienced no problem with both Windows and Linux platforms. There are tons of interesting add-ons like this. It is really fun to experiment with Firefox add-ons.
Booting from CD ROM or USB devices
Booting from resources other than HDD is very simple, but the way in which configure your system for boot from a particular task may differ. First of all, you should know that, the boot configuration appearing on your monitor is independent of the OS, or any other peripherals connected to your system and it is occupied in your BIOS and it may vary for various type of mother boards. Nowadays, many people use liveCDs or liveUSB loaded with their favorite Linux OS for the sake of portability. So I think this tutorial will be useful to you.
After you power on your PC properly, a splash image will appear within few seconds on your monitor probably mentioning about your motherboard vendor or vendor logo. Some keys and their function may be mentioned on the screen.
For example: F9 : Boot menu F2 : Setup
The keys used for boot setup and boot menu will greatly varied. But the major problem is that this splash screen appears for less than a second in some systems so that you can't even recognize what is written on the screen. Here you should do is that press 'Pause/Break' key in your keyboard (It is positioned in between alphabetic keypad and numeric keypad). Then the screen pauses. Then you can configure as you like it. If you now want to boot system normally, press 'Enter'. Each of the operation will be explained while you are attempting to change this. This will not be explained here because this is different for different systems. But in most systems, if you think that you did something and don't know what is the consequence press 'Esc' continuously and probably one dialog box asks you to save changes. Press n/N for No or y/Y for Yes if you want to save changes.
If you want to just boot from CD ROM or like external devices, good option is that select one resource form the boot menu. The way how to navigate to the boot menu will be specified on the splash screen. If not, try F8 because, many systems having F8 as the boot menu key may not be explicitly shown. In boot menu, you can see several sources. 1.FLOPPY 2.HDD 3. CD-ROM 4.USB HDD .Select one which you want to and press 'Enter'. The system try to boot from the source. If fails, system may try a normal boot or a restart. Sometimes some devices for example USB HDD will not be listed until you inserted your memory stick or pen drive to the system before power up. In this case you should insert the USB device and try a restart and do the same procedure. Similarly, you should insert CD ROM to your drive before selecting boot device. One more thing is that if you are attempting to boot from a pend drive (or memory stick or thumb drive), you should select USB HDD. Some other options like USB FDD, USB ZIP may also be listed. One more problem associated with USB boot is that if you didn't enable USB boot in the boot setup (the key for boot setup will be displayed on splash screen), USB boot will be failure. In some systems you have options to enable/disable USB 2.0. All you need to do is that if a USB boot failure occurs, you should navigate through the boot setup menu and do as your need. In this case, the boot selection will not be saved and need to do the same procedure every time you boot time. Otherwise a normal boot will occur.
To permanently setup a boot configuration, you navigate to the boot setup menu and change the 'boot priority'. In normal case, first boot device will be HDD. You can change it to CD- ROM or USB HDD. One thing be noted is that you should give a priority to HDD as second or third device. Hence, if a boot error occur on the first device, system try on the second device (here HDD), so a normal boot will occur. Change the boot priority to CD-ROM as the first device and second device as HDD is a good practice in order to debug your OS, in case of permanent system crash. Here the system ask to save changes. Press y/Y to say Yes, and this configuration is saved on BIOS for future.
If you do the configuration permanently, every time system checks for first priority device and may feel time consuming if you are waiting for a normal boot. If you are doing it in temporary, every time you need to select boot device. It is recommended that you permanently change boot setup in your Home PC while temporarily do in office PCs.
In the worst case, your motherboard will be entirely different thing and you need o read motherboard users manual. If you didn't got any manual on purchase, you can freely download it from the vendor's website. Probably you need to search by the part number. The part number of your mother board can be found on the top side of your motherboard (Hmmm..Best chance to hack your PC).USB boot is not allowed in some old PCs. But all general purpose motherboards not older than 3 or 4 years can have USB boot capabilities.
After you power on your PC properly, a splash image will appear within few seconds on your monitor probably mentioning about your motherboard vendor or vendor logo. Some keys and their function may be mentioned on the screen.
For example: F9 : Boot menu F2 : Setup
The keys used for boot setup and boot menu will greatly varied. But the major problem is that this splash screen appears for less than a second in some systems so that you can't even recognize what is written on the screen. Here you should do is that press 'Pause/Break' key in your keyboard (It is positioned in between alphabetic keypad and numeric keypad). Then the screen pauses. Then you can configure as you like it. If you now want to boot system normally, press 'Enter'. Each of the operation will be explained while you are attempting to change this. This will not be explained here because this is different for different systems. But in most systems, if you think that you did something and don't know what is the consequence press 'Esc' continuously and probably one dialog box asks you to save changes. Press n/N for No or y/Y for Yes if you want to save changes.
If you want to just boot from CD ROM or like external devices, good option is that select one resource form the boot menu. The way how to navigate to the boot menu will be specified on the splash screen. If not, try F8 because, many systems having F8 as the boot menu key may not be explicitly shown. In boot menu, you can see several sources. 1.FLOPPY 2.HDD 3. CD-ROM 4.USB HDD .Select one which you want to and press 'Enter'. The system try to boot from the source. If fails, system may try a normal boot or a restart. Sometimes some devices for example USB HDD will not be listed until you inserted your memory stick or pen drive to the system before power up. In this case you should insert the USB device and try a restart and do the same procedure. Similarly, you should insert CD ROM to your drive before selecting boot device. One more thing is that if you are attempting to boot from a pend drive (or memory stick or thumb drive), you should select USB HDD. Some other options like USB FDD, USB ZIP may also be listed. One more problem associated with USB boot is that if you didn't enable USB boot in the boot setup (the key for boot setup will be displayed on splash screen), USB boot will be failure. In some systems you have options to enable/disable USB 2.0. All you need to do is that if a USB boot failure occurs, you should navigate through the boot setup menu and do as your need. In this case, the boot selection will not be saved and need to do the same procedure every time you boot time. Otherwise a normal boot will occur.
To permanently setup a boot configuration, you navigate to the boot setup menu and change the 'boot priority'. In normal case, first boot device will be HDD. You can change it to CD- ROM or USB HDD. One thing be noted is that you should give a priority to HDD as second or third device. Hence, if a boot error occur on the first device, system try on the second device (here HDD), so a normal boot will occur. Change the boot priority to CD-ROM as the first device and second device as HDD is a good practice in order to debug your OS, in case of permanent system crash. Here the system ask to save changes. Press y/Y to say Yes, and this configuration is saved on BIOS for future.
If you do the configuration permanently, every time system checks for first priority device and may feel time consuming if you are waiting for a normal boot. If you are doing it in temporary, every time you need to select boot device. It is recommended that you permanently change boot setup in your Home PC while temporarily do in office PCs.
In the worst case, your motherboard will be entirely different thing and you need o read motherboard users manual. If you didn't got any manual on purchase, you can freely download it from the vendor's website. Probably you need to search by the part number. The part number of your mother board can be found on the top side of your motherboard (Hmmm..Best chance to hack your PC).USB boot is not allowed in some old PCs. But all general purpose motherboards not older than 3 or 4 years can have USB boot capabilities.
Battle Game - The computer thinks!
Recently I built a game and named 'Battle' as a consequence of my studies in the field of artificial intelligence. As a first step, I built a mathematical model instead of more flexible neural network model. The work on neural model is on the way and the work is very slow. The mathematical model also not much efficient but I took care to make the program 'act' as intelligent (I know intelligence is needed to act!). Rarely the program may crash. I not interested to make this game for commercial use and I am givin it under GPL. The program is not much pretty both in efficiency and it's intelligence. Since I am not a proffessional programmer, the rules for a good program may not be satisfied. I compiled it in C++, but the entire structure is like C.
The game is like ordinary 'Tic Tac Toe'. but has a little difference that maximum number of players is limited to 3 and If you placed your all three players, you can move them to adjacent places to align the players in a line. For the simplicity of learning the game I have put a video of how to play the game.
I have built a Qt (which is cross platform) GUI for my game for beginners but have put also the CUI mode game for code diggers. Even though this game is not intended for entertainment surely it provide some entertainment if you read the code. I need you comments to speed up the development of neural model of the game. I did all the work in win32 platform and linux users also can compile the code because, Qt is cross platform. But you need to install Qt on your distro.
Here's the download links:
GUI BattleGame (Recommended)
CUI version 1a.0
CUI version 1b.0
The game is like ordinary 'Tic Tac Toe'. but has a little difference that maximum number of players is limited to 3 and If you placed your all three players, you can move them to adjacent places to align the players in a line. For the simplicity of learning the game I have put a video of how to play the game.
I have built a Qt (which is cross platform) GUI for my game for beginners but have put also the CUI mode game for code diggers. Even though this game is not intended for entertainment surely it provide some entertainment if you read the code. I need you comments to speed up the development of neural model of the game. I did all the work in win32 platform and linux users also can compile the code because, Qt is cross platform. But you need to install Qt on your distro.
Here's the download links:
GUI BattleGame (Recommended)
CUI version 1a.0
CUI version 1b.0
Arduino - The hardware hack!
Nowadays the meaning of opensource is becoming vague becuase everything which make the revolution in the scientific world is open source. Arduino is a product of open source hardware series which has a power of a great community. Arduino becoming popular these days, because of the wide acceptance of microcontrollers and their low cost. Arduino is basically a microcontroller development board which makes the development easier. Especially useful in the educational field. Once you have built your own arduino in your home (You can purchase one also), there is nothing more to do. You can control everything by your Arduino board. Arduino uses Atmel's AT mega8, Atmega168 series microcontrollers which is very handy and low cost. The things which can be done in your Arduino can be called as 'Hardware Hack' because everything related to Arduino is now open to the public. The latest version is Arduino is Duemilanove. You can buy one if you interested. Indians look the website of official Arduino vendor of India. But geeks try to build one thier own. Visit Arduino official website for more details. You need one software to work with Arduino which is open source. You can download it from the official website. The software is crossplatform and works in every OS.
