Hotfixes are patches that Microsoft makes available before they've been fully tested and integrated into a service pack or official patch. But if you're one of those people who's been affected by a bug, you might not hesitate to give the hotfix a try. However, getting a hotfix can be tricky: in some cases, you'll see an option to request it online, in other cases, you'll have to contact support directly.

Aaron Tiensivu has posted information about a technique that generates the online request even when it doesn't appear by default:

I don't know if this is considered a 'backdoor' or not, but it has worked with every KB article I have tried it on so far.

Most of the time, if a KB article is available to the public, there will be a "Hotfix Download Available - View and request hotfix downloads" message on the top of the screen like this:

If you have a particular KB article that you want to download, and the image above seems to be missing, try this link in your web browser:

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=[KBnumber]&kbln=[KB language]

Requesting MS hotfixes online has changed slightly - new way of generating a request

Also, the How-To Geek has an article up about Hotfixr, which will generate URLs of this format for you.

I tried getting Windows XP running on my 20GB EEE PC 900, but out of the box, it's pretty sluggish. The problem may be that Windows XP is not being optimized for solid state drives (SSDs). Posting on the OCZ (maker of SATA SSD drives) forums, Tony has written up a HOWTO on making Windows XP play quite a bit better with SSD drives:

Cheaper SSD drives like our Core V1 and Core V2 series have limitations with random writes filling up the write buffer on the drive and causing the SATA controller to pause while this is flushed. The reason for this is Nand MLC drives at present have to erase before they write...hence you get added latency. So every bit written to the drive has to be preceded by a bit erased, the drive can not write over the top of pre written data.

What we are trying to do here is limit how much XP writes to cache/database. many apps within XP do this, apps you add also do this (such as outlook)
The tweaks you will see listed may help with this, SSD's do not take well to lots of tiny random writes.

I gave these a try on my EEE PC today, and they made things quite a bit faster. I'm still getting the occasional freeze, but that only started happening after I put some files on the 16GB secondary drive in my EEE PC. As long as I stuck with the faster 4GB C: drive, these tips made a world of difference in performance. My next step is to try formatting the D: drive as FAT32 to see if that makes any difference at all.

Making XP pro SSD friendly

Alessio Sangalli has been maintaining a guide for a few years that shows you how to create a serial port IR receiver from scratch and use it in both Windows and Linux. Her design is pretty slick since, as you can see from her photo above, the whole package fits neatly inside a standard 9 pin serial connector. There are still plenty of machines that don't have built-in IR support, so this could be handy if you're thinking of turning an old box into a media player or DVR.

How To Build A Simple But Cool IR (Infra Red) Receiver

The interesting thing is that a file can have 0 to many ADS forks attached to any file or directory. While some of the ADS identifiers are use by the OS, there's nothing stopping you from adding other ADS forks to a file. You can do this directly from the command line, using a simple colon ":" notation.

Let's say you have a file called test.txt. You can store a secret message in the file like this:
echo "This is a secret" > test.txt:secretdata

If you view the contents of the file, you won't see anything peculiar. If you know about the existence of the secretdata ADS entry, however, you can easily extract the hidden information with the following command:
more < test.txt:secretdata > output.txt

When you now open output.txt, you'll find your secret data inside.

Because it's a lower level OS feature, you can even trick most programs into loading the data. In the scenario above, you could actually load and edit the secretdata stream inside of notepad by running "notepad test.txt:secretdata".You can even store and execute binary data of any particular size in an ADS fork. For instance, maybe you want to shove solitaire inside one of your text file's ADS entries:

type c:\winnt\system32\sol.exe > test.txt:timewaster.exe

Running the file is as simple as "start .\test.txt:timewaster.exe". Wild, no?

So the odd thing is that all these hidden streams are floating about your filesystem and until Vista's /R flag on the DIR command, there hasn't really been a very good built-in way of detecting them. To solve this, Frank Heyne created an application called LADS which is an excellent command line utility that will scan a directory and print out stream names and sizes for files within it.

There's was also a tool released in an MSDN article about file streams that will at an extra tab to the file properties in Windows Explorer. I've linked to a FAQ that Frank maintains about ADS that walks you through setting up the dll and registry entries to make this work. When it's activated, the Streams tab in the properties panel will let you create, view, edit or delete the stream data that's attached to any file, right in Explorer.

I can see how this file system feature could be useful, but it's a little odd that it's so hidden from the user and there seem to be a few problems with the concept. Obviously, because of ADS's hidden nature, there are a number of malicious uses that can be employed by jerk-o's who write virii and that sort of thing. Even ignoring that, there are also data interchange issues—moving a file between NTFS and another file system causes the loss of all this attached information. Call me old fashioned, but I like my files the way they used to be, with a start, an end, and some bytes in between.

Frank Heyne - Alternate Data Streams in NTFS FAQ
LADS - NTFS alternate data stream list utility
The Dark Side of NTFS
MSDN: A Programmer's Perspective on NTFS Streams and Hard Links

A few days ago, this video appeared with Matthieu Deru and Simon Bergweiler showing off a hack that allows them to surf Google Earth using a Wii. Unfortunately, there weren't too many details about how it was accomplished and I couldn't track down any source for the C# application that talks to the bluetooth device.

What I did find was this other clip from almost a month ago (?!?) in which Daniel Schneider demonstrates using the Wii Balance Board to navigate the web in Firefox.

That's right. You can actually surf the web:

He's using the latest version of GlovePIE (v0.3) to accomplish this. As far as I can tell, it's still very alpha, and the WiiLi wiki claims it's buggy, but it does appear to work. Daniel has some pointers to how he's configured things, including the Greasemonkey script that allows you to surf without clicking.

For more information on coding GlovePIE scripts that use the Balance Board, peek at the documentation.rtf file that's packaged with the GlovePIE download. There's information around page 70 that describes how the board functions and how to pull the 4 sensor values from each of its feet.

Using GlovePIE and Firefox with the Nintendo Wii Balance Board
GlovePIE

If you're a del.icio.us power user and you use Windows Mobile, you've probably missed the del.icio.us plugin that's available in desktop browsers like IE and Firefox. Dale Lane took this problem as a challenge and coded a nice little Pocket IE plugin that adds a del.icio.us submittal form to the browser's menu.

This is not as trivial as I expected - it took hundreds and hundreds of lines of code just to get a new entry in the Internet Explorer's menu that gets me access to the web browser object as an IWebBrowser2. And (perhaps especially so for someone who has been getting a little lazy with Java and C#! ), some of it is a little intricate and complex.

Still, once done I could use my access to the browser to launch my "post to del.icio.us" form and prefill it with the URL and page name of PIE's current page. From there, the form uses the public del.icio.us API to send all the info off to my del.icio.us list.

It's written in C++ and he's zipped up the full Visual Studio project. Based on the difficulty and lack of great documentation for doing something like this, this is actually a pretty solid find. If you want to make a PIE plugin, this would be a good place to start.

A del.icio.us plugin for Windows Mobile (or C++ is a pain)
Pocket IE del.icio.us plugin and source

It pretty typical for Windows to take a minute or two to shutdown. Most of this wait is due to the OS being extra patient, waiting for all of your applications to safely close. So when an application hangs during shutdown, you are forced to twiddle your thumbs until Windows decides that enough time has elapsed to force-kill the application.

It turns out that most of these arbitrary timeout periods are configurable through the registry and Dennis O'Reilly has posted some easy tweaks that will force Windows to shut down a lot faster.

The registry keys in question are "HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/desktop/WaitToKillAppTimeout" and
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/desktop/HungAppTimeout". The first controls the amount of time, in milliseconds, to wait before killing applications at shutdown, and the second is the amount of time to wait before killing a hung application.

There are some other registry adjustments that can be made which will automatically end running tasks and speed up killing hung services. Check the link below for the nitty gritty.

Shut Down Windows in an Instant

With this hack, you can have your external USB disk show up on "c:\usb", or anywhere else you like. Here's how:

• Open the disk management utility: Start->Run>diskmgmt.msc
• With the USB disk inserted, select the drive from the list.
• Right-click and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths"
• Click add and select the "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder"
• Browse to the folder you want the disk to mount beneath

Now when the disk is inserted, it will always show up mounted beneath the directory of your choosing.

This could come in handy if you have a folder that's filling up your disk. Normally if you move it to another disk, it affects a bunch of paths (especially if it's your program files or something on your desktop). With this tip, you could add another drive, move the contents of the directory to it, and then mount it beneath the former directory.

Assign USB Drives to a Folder [via Lifehacker]

Racketboy has a great article showing off some of the capabilities of the modern N64 emulator. If your machine is fast enough, most of the available emulators will really give you a noticeable resolution boost and better looking anti-aliased models. Using the Rice Video plugin with the Project64 emulator, you can even swap out the textures for some games with user-created texture packs.

I still use the real hardware (is the N64 considered "retro" now?), so before seeing this, I hadn't even considered emulation for this platform. That all changed when I saw the Mario64 mod shown above. The selection of available emulators is impressive, and there are open source emulators available for just about every platform. I'm currently playing a game under Mupen64 on my iMac and it's pretty flawless. My only wish is that all computers came, by default, with a nice joystick like they did back in the 80s.

Enhance N64 Graphics With Emulation Plugins & Texture Packs - Link
Project64 Emulator - Link
Rice Video Plugin - Link
Mupen64 Emulator (cross-platform, open source) - Link

With cURL installed, you can post to Twitter from the terminal window by using the following syntax:

curl -u yourusername:yourpassword -d status="Your Message Here" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

You will receive a response containing the XML coding for your post which acts as a confirmation that your post was submitted.

Consider this: instant messaging is the new talk (phone for my VMS peeps) and Twitter is the new finger. It's nice to see at least one of these handy communication tools make its way back to the command line.

Posting to Twitter from the Terminal Window - Link
cURL downloads - Link

andLinux is a Ubuntu distribution that used the coLinux kernel, a Windows port of the Linux kernel which allows andLinux to run natively inside Windows without any virtualization software. After downloading, you basically just run the install Wizard. When your machine reboots, an extra taskbar icon will be waiting for you to launch and install pretty much any standard Linux application.

The coLinux kernel can be launched as a service and it runs in the background with a dedicated amount of RAM allotted to it. During the install, you create a folder to house the andLinux Ubuntu installation's root directory. If you need to access the full C drive from Linux applications, it's just a quick entry in the /etc/fstab.

When you've got everything running, the end result is really seamless. The Linux applications each run in a standard window, just like your Windows apps. There's no switching between operating system windows. Xterm, Konquerer, Amarok, whatever—It basically just works.

The installation is pretty simple, and there's also a nice tutorial at Tinkernut that runs you through the installer and shows you how to use Synaptec to easily install other Linux applications. If you're primarily a Windows user, but you miss all the great open source apps and command line tools that are available in Linux, this is worth the 700MB download.

andLinux - Link
Using andLinux (video) - Link

Unlike USB2, the Firewire spec allows devices to have full DMA access. By impersonating the appropriate device, a PC can essentially obtain full read/write access to another machine's RAM, just by connecting the two machines with a Firewire cable. Adding to the recent discussion about the insecurities of physical access and Princeton's cold-boot RAM dump demonstration, Adam Boileau released a Linux Firewire utility that will give you immediate Administrator to an XP machine:

It's two years later, and I think anyone who was going to get the message about Firewire has already got it, and anyone who was going to be upset about it has got over it. Besides, according to Microsoft's definition, it never was a Security Vulnerability anyway - screensavers and login prompts are - as Bruce says - about the Feeling of Security. Anyway, today's release day for Winlockpwn, the tool I demoed at Ruxcon for bypassing windows auth, or popping an admin shell at the login window.

...

• Yes, you can read and write main memory over firewire on windows.
• Yes, this means you can completely own any box who's firewire port you can plug into in seconds.
• Yes, it requires physical access. People with physical access win in lots of ways. Sure, this is fast and easy, but it's just one of many.
• Yes, it's a FEATURE, not a bug. It's the Fire in Firewire. Yes, I know this, Microsoft know this. The OHCI-1394 spec knows this. People with firewire ports generally dont.

Adam's tools include a few Python apps that can copy and impersonate Firewire device signatures, dump RAM on a remote machine, bypass Windows authentication, and extract BIOS passwords. It's not exactly comforting, but I've got a new appreciation for Firewire now. This is the sort of access that used to only be possible by creating hardware that physically connects to the PCI bus. Now all you need is a cable and a laptop.

Firewire, DMA & Windows - direct memory access over Firewire - [via] Link

Windows Home Server may seem like an unusual piece of software, but it's worth playing around with if you are considering a home server for your Windows systems. You can get a 120-day evaluation version from Microsoft, and OEM versions are available from retailers like Newegg.com. Here's a Windows Home Server hack from Preston Gralla's Big Book of Windows Hacks. This one shows you how to connect remotely to your home server so you can keep an eye on things back at home. Hack #129 - Link

Related:

• Big Book of Windows Hacks @ the Maker Store - Link
  
• Big Book of Windows Hacks--New from Make: Tips & Tricks for Unlocking the Power of Your Windows PC - Link
  
• Hack #156 from Big Book of Windows Hacks: strip down your Windows installation - Link
  
• Big Book of Windows Hacks #16: a grab bag of Vista interface hacks - Link
  

This project came into being after reading this post at lifehacker (original post and solution here). It listed a method to retrieve mails on your home/office PC by sending a "magic email" to it, but it was only for mac's. Seeing that people wanted it for windows as well, I thought of making something up during lunch time at office.

If you think about it, this is kind of a clever way to get around a corporate firewall. It'd be funny to add some directory listing functionality to it and formalize an email file transfer protocol.

Remote File Access Through E-Mail -Link

Hackszine reader IraqiGeek writes:

I made an application that uses libusb-Win32 and PPJoy to map the Sony Sixaxis into a windows joystick with the accelerometers working and mapped.

Unfortunately, the gyro on my sixaxis seems to be faulty. So, while the code is already there to read the gyro data, it can't be used for anything.

The installation process is not exactly the shortest, but I've made a step-by-step how-to describing it.

I did a little digging and there are a couple of other noteworthy SIXAXIS hacks. In addition to IraqiGeek's driver, there is another Windows SIXAXIS driver that people are using with some success. I also was able to find a third Windows driver which contains full source, in case you want to do something more interesting than play games.

Speaking of more interesting, there also exists an open source library for Linux. If you check out the above video, you can see that a gumstix embedded computer is using the SIXAXIS input to control a number of servos.

The six R/C servos are connected to a Gumstix board with built-in Bluetooth module. Inertial measurements from the SIXAXIS are received directly through a PF_BLUETOOTH socket (not through the joystick API, due to HID descriptor issues). Heuristics explicitly discriminate between two types of motion (rotation or translation).

The author was even able to use this setup to control a small helicopter. Pretty cool stuff, I must say.

Anyone know if the SIXAXIS sensor data can be easily polled with an Arduino? Maybe this could be a be a cheap option for a 6DOF IMU.

Using the PlayStation 3 controller in Bluetooth mode with Linux - Link
SixAxis source driver for Windows - Link
Use your SIXAXIS on Windows (ps3sixaxis_en.exe)- Link
WinSIXAXIS (IraqiGeek's libusb/PPJoy driver) - Link

The How-To Geek posted this easy Windows registry hack that will add an "Open with Notepad" option to the right click menu for all files:

Open regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell

Right-click on "shell" and choose to create a new key, calling it "Open with Notepad". Create a new key below that one called "command". Double-click on the (Default) value in the right-hand pane and enter in the following:

notepad.exe %1

The other option is to drag a shortcut to the Notepad application to the "Documents and Settings\Username\SendTo" folder. I dig how the registry hack adds it right to the top of the context menu, though. More often than not, I want to open a file with Notepad, regardless of its default file association, so it saves some time having this at the top of the list.

Add "Open with Notepad" to the Context Menu - Link

The command format is fart <options> filename search <replace>. Basic options are -r (recursive), -c (print filename and match count), -i (ignore case), -n (print matched line numbers), --c-style (interpret backslashes as c-style characters).

For example, let's say a Linux buddy of yours sent you a bunch of html files and they have unix line endings that are barfing in notepad. One simple command fixes the problem, replacing all the newlines with a full PC carriage return, line feed combo:

fart --c-style *.html \n \r\n

Or perhaps you need to quickly track down some work that is left to be done throughout a big project directory. You can use fart to recursively search a directory and spit out all the file names and line numbers containing the text "TODO":

fart -nr * TODO

It's easy to see how you could shoot yourself in the foot with this one. Make sure to fart with caution and back up your files before doing a big search and replace.

FART @ SourceForge - Link

The Wii Drum Kit is another great example of a tangible user interface made possible with the Wiimote. The latest version adds support for the Nunchuck, so you can use both hands to play your virtual drum kit. This one is a Windows application, and source is available at the This is Not a Label blog.

The Wiimote + Nunchuck combination seems like the perfect interface for an air drum. Different gestures are used to trigger a specific drum, so the high hat is a flick to the side, the snare is a forward hit, etc. There's no kick pedal, of course, but the fist stamping motion that's used is a reasonable alternative.

Wii Drum Kit - Link
Control Your Applications With a Wiimote - Link

Aaron Tiensivu has posted the commands you need to know to shut off the Windows speaker beep temporarily or for all time.

To temporarily disable the PC Speaker beep:
net stop beep

To disable the PC Speaker beep for good (until you undo this setting):
sc config beep start= disabled

Now you don't need to run out of the room screaming next time you make a mistake at the Command Prompt that would normally make the hills come alive with BEEP BEEP BEE BEEEP BEEEEP. One liners: Disable the PC Speaker beeps in 200x/XP/Vista - Link

A while ago we wrote about removing the DRM from Netflix "Watch Now" movies. At the time, it involved wading through a bit of HTML source to find the target video URL. Since then, a couple of important things have happened: a Greasemonkey script was written that makes it a bit easier to download and process the DRMed WVM file, and more importantly, Netflix is now allowing unlimited downloads.

What can you do with this? Well, you can download a number of videos ahead of time and then watch them at your leisure, especially if you travel a lot and are offline for extended periods of time. It also means you can convert the files to mp4 format for playing on your mac, iPod or Apple TV device. Or maybe you were hoping to finish that documentary you were making about the strange facial expressions of Sylvester Stallone and needed a few more clips to splice into your film...

How To Rip Netflix "Watch Now" Movies - Link
Netflix Downloader Greasemonkey Script - Link

Paul McGuinness wrote in about a home theater PC system he is building, and tipped us off to a GPLed software package called MediaPortal. It's a full-featured media center package for Windows users, featuring (HD)TV, DVD, photo, music and radio support. It also has a scheduled recording feature and a bunch of other niceties that basically beats the pants off of the media center software that comes with your PC.

MediaPortal: the open source media center - [via] Link

I read today on Lifehacker about a freeware tool called Linux Reader. It provides you with read access to ext2/ext3 partitions within Windows and has an explorer-like interface that allows you to drag and drop files from a standard Linux partition.

What about full read/write access? With a little googling, I found another freeware utility called Ext2 IFS that provides full write access. It's is essentially a kernel ext2/ext3 filesystem driver for Windows, which allows the operating system to access your Linux partitions in a more native manner.

After installing, you can mount your Linux partition under a drive letter, just like you would an NTFS partition. The drive will be available in Explorer and within any file browser dialog in your favorite Windows applications.

As far as I can tell, both packages pretty much ignore the permission settings on files, so you'll have full access to files across the entire partition. One caveat is that LVM volumes are not supported by the Ext2 IFS driver (and I'm assuming the same is true for Linux Reader). ReiserFS, XFS and other filesystems are also not supported. For your plain Jane dual-boot system with an ext3 partition, however, you should have no problem accessing your Linux files from within Windows.

Ext2 Installable File System For Windows - Link
Linux Reader - [via] Link

Looks like it's possible to install Vista on that tiny little Eee PC. Why? Because you can, of course.

Paul O'Brien figured out the trick to this hack. The key is to make the WinSXS directory a junction (Vista's name for a symbolic link) to an external SD card. This directory takes up about 1.5GB of space which you just don't have an excess of on the Eee PC.

You'll want to grab the largest SD card you can get your hands on. In addition to accommodating the WinSXS directory, it can be used for the program files directory of any additional applications you want to install. Oh, and remember not to remove the drive with the machine running.

Installing Vista on the Eee PC - Link

#1 The cursors change color based on the action performed (Normal/Link Select/Etc)
#2 They are easy on the eyes, professional looking, and most importantly, easy to locate on a laptop LCD.
#3 They work well on Citrix and Terminal Server sessions with low color depth.

Here's another hack from Preston Gralla's Big Book of Windows Hacks that digs into some cool hacks for the Vista user interface. You'll learn how to hack ClearType, get rid of the text from desktop icons, mess around with selecting multiple files in Explorer, delete files without being interrogated each time, and more. Hack #16 - Link

Related:

• Big Book of Windows Hacks @ the Maker Store - Link
  
• Big Book of Windows Hacks--New from Make: Tips & Tricks for Unlocking the Power of Your Windows PC - Link
  
• Hack #156 from Big Book of Windows Hacks: strip down your Windows installation - Link
  

Preston Gralla's Big Book of Windows Hacks has hit the streets, and we're really excited about it. It's truly big: 600 pages and 188 hacks. You'll learn how to bend Vista and XP to your will, get the most out of gadgets like the Zune, your networking hardware, and Windows Home Servers. Here's some of the stuff you'll find in there:

• Expanded tutorials, new background material, a series of "quick hacks," and informative sidebars
• Security hacks, including protection at wireless hotspots, hacking Vista file permissions and user account protection, and more
• Efficiency hacks, such as tweaking your PC hardware, troubleshooting hardware problems, and speeding up system performance
• Fun hacks, like building a custom Media Center PC or turning a PC into a digital video recorder
• "Beyond Windows" hacks for running Linux inside Vista, dual-booting Linux/Windows or XP/Vista, or emulating classic video games on your PC

We'll be running a few sample hacks, starting with "Strip the Crud Out of Your Windows Install", which explains how to slim down your Windows installation before installing Windows. Hack #156 - Link

Related:

• Big Book of Windows Hacks @ the Maker Store - Link
  
• Big Book of Windows Hacks--New from Make: Tips & Tricks for Unlocking the Power of Your Windows PC - Link
  

Universal Plug and Play support is available on most modern wireless and DSL routers. Among other things, it allows client machines on the local network to remotely configure the router's port forwarding, typically without authenticated access.

Adrian Crenshaw has a nice screencast which shows how to detect UPnP capable devices on your network and how to use the PortForward utility in Windows to remotely configure port forwarding for routers on your LAN.

After looking at this, you'll probably come to the conclusion that, while convenient, unauthenticated UPnP is pretty dangerous. It allows someone who has momentary access to your network to easily reconfigure your router to punch holes through its NAT firewall. This could be somone on your wireless network, or it could be as simple as a malicious program that you accidentally execute on your own machine.

Fortunately, most routers allow you to disable UPnP, and you should probably take advantage of this and turn off UPnP on your devices now.

UPnP Port Forwarding and Security Screencast - Link
UPNPScan - Link
UPNP PortForward (exe, source and documentation) - Link

What would you do if you had to automatically backup a remote Linux box (e.g. your web server), and all you had locally was Windows machines? How about this:

1. automatically expanding local storage space
2. transmissions of differences only
3. automatic scheduling
4. local storage of differences only
5. secure and compressed transfer of remote data and
6. instant filesystem navigation inside daily snapshot images

I covered all these requirements using open source tools, and I now locally backup our 3GB remote server in less than 2min!

We've all used Samba and rsync before, but Thanassis has really put all the pieces together into a complete backup system that's superior to a lot of commercial products I've seen.

The really impressive bit is how he's easily doing snapshot images using filesystem hardlinks. You can save several days worth of snapshots at very little cost because additional space is only taken up by files that have changed. Using hardlinks, identical files from different snapshots all point to the same inode.

root# mount /dev/loop0 /mnt/backup
root# cd /mnt/backup
root# rm -rf OneBeforeLast
root# cp -al LastBackup OneBeforeLast
root# cd LastBackup
root# rsync -avz --delete root@hosting.machine.in.US:/ ./

The "cp -al" creates a zero-cost copy of the data (using hardlinks, the only price paid is the one of the directory entries, and ReiserFS is well known for its ability to store these extremely efficiently). Then, rsync is executed with the --delete option: meaning that it must remove from our local mirror all the files that were removed on the server - and thus creating an accurate image of the current state.

And here's the icing on the cake: The data inside these files are not lost! They are still accessible from the OneBeforeLast/ directory, since hard links (the old directory entries) are pointing to them!

In plain terms, simple navigation inside OneBeforeLast can be used to examine the exact contents of the server as they were BEFORE the last mirroring.

Just imagine the data recovery headaches you could solve by adapting that to a cron job that shuffles a months worth of nightly backups.

Optimal remote Linux backups with rsync over Samba - Link

Here's a decent screencast that shows you step by step how to alter a few registry settings so that your Zune will show up in Windows just like a normal external USB drive.

Step 1. Make sure your Zune is not plugged in and your Zune software isn't running.

Step 2.
Open up regedit by going to the start menu and selecting "run". Type regedit and hit "OK"

Step 3.
Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\ Enum\USB\

Step 4.
Right Click on the USB folder and select Find
Search for "PortableDeviceNameSpace". This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_ ########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above ...\USB\ The ##'s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune

Step 5.

Change the following values:
• EnableLegacySupport to 1
• PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0
• ShowInShell to 1

It's explained in more detail at the end of the video, but for some people the user will get a device locked error when trying to drag files to or from the device. Starting up the Zune software and syncing a large file, then killing the process from the task manager mid-sync will trick the Zune into thinking it's unlocked and allow you to access it from explorer.

Paul McGuinness sent us a few more Blackjack hacks today, some of which are particular to the device, and some that apply to Smartphones and Pocket PCs in general. My favorite, though, is getting an NES emulator running on the device.

I've played with the PocketNester NES emulator on my PPC quite a bit. You just download the PPC ARM installer from the SourceForge site, run the installer when you are connected to ActiveSync, and copy some ROMs over to play. It's painless on the PPC, but it won't install on the Smartphone.

I haven't been able to test them, but there are a number of alternative PocketNester ports floating around, including PocketNesterPlus which is said to run correctly on the landscape/widescreen Smartphones. I've linked to what I could find. Hopefully one of them will get you up and running on your particular device.

While you're checking this out, you're going to need to find some ROMs to play. Instead of just downloading a bunch of old Nintendo ROMs, I always get a kick out of trying homebrew NES apps. The game pictured above is called Grave Digger, and it's an addictive (maybe twisted) take on the old computer science "game of life" cellular automaton. The goal is to dig up all the zombies, but every time you dig, the adjacent graves will toggle between exhumed or filled.

The reason I mention Grave Digger is that it was written in 2004 as part of Bob Rost's game development class at Carnegie Mellon. If you start to get into playing retro Nintendo games, it might be worth taking the next step and taking a swing at writing one. The CMU lectures, tests, and a nice collection of NES homebrew resources are available on Bob Rost's site (as well as a few cool game ROMs). It's definately worth checking out.

References:

• Original PocketNester (PPC portrait @ sourceforge - I've tested this one) - Link
• PocketNester (for qvga SP @ surrealnetworks) - Link
• PocketNesterPlus (for landscape SP @ surrealnetworks) - Link
• PocketNesterPlus @ modaco forums (most recent? download appears to be corrupt right now) - Link
• Samsung Blackjack Hacks Wiki - [via] Link
• Game Development for the 8-bit NES - Link