Hackosis

Kevin Mitnick tells a story about how he played workers at a Hollywood telephone company with his 1337 social engineering skills:

More videos and info at news.cnet.com.

Hackosis.com is now open source. This opens up a whole new world of opportunity to this blog and anyone that wants to be involved.

What does this mean?

1. You can modify and redistribute the content on Hackosis.com in any way you like. We don’t require that you give credit, but it is appreciated.
2. You can submit articles to Hackosis using the submission form. We will give you credit.
3. You can participate in modifying posts to improve the quality and content. I have outlined the details on the open source statement page.

Remember, there are no restrictions on what you can submit or modify! Just be sure to follow proper netiquette, cite sources, no stealing content, etc.

My plans in the future include this blog turning into somewhat of a wiki-blog hybrid that everyone can easily take part in. Please contact us if you are interested in helping speed the process.

How does this benefit me?

1. While we prefer that you submit original content, it is not required for inclusion. You could link to your blog or web site.
2. Take part in what will be an awesome community with help from many great minds from around the web (including myself ;P).
3. The potential to be featured on lifehacker.com, digg.com or other great sites.
4. This site receives around 5,000 visits a day, so your content will be seen.
5. This is just the beginning. Remember everything here is changeable. Let your voice be heard.

That’s that, and I now invite you to suggest edits on content (including this post or any pages) and submission of posts. Through a collaborative effort we can make great things happen.

Lets experiment with the process on this page. You don’t have to register to comment.

[changefrom]the original content you wish to change[/changefrom]
[changeto]the new content you wish to change the original content to[/changeto]

Let the games begin…

From the makers of CCleaner and Recuva comes a brand new freeware defragmentation tool.

Defraggler allows you to defrag single files as well as the whole drive. Defraggler is also portable allowing you to store it on your USB drive. Defraggler runs on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista including 64 bit support.

Check out the screenshots and download defraggler - the download is only 503KB!.

Coming soon is a rad new program called CamSpace that lets you control your games and applications with a web cam and almost any object you choose.

From the FAQs:

1. What is “CamSpace” ?

CamSpace is a program that allows the user to control his favorite games and applications with any webcam. Use your body and arbitrary objects to replace the mouse and joystick!

Currently, CamSpace only works for Windows, but Mac and Linux versions are on the way…

2. What can I do with “CamSpace” ?

With CamSpace, You can do amazing things! You can use a paper plate as a racing wheel, you can control FPS games by moving your fingers, you can control music applications by moving in free space, the possibilities are endless!

CamSpace is an open platform that enables each and every one of us to create his own application in the language of his choice. You can either use CamSpace’s internal Emulation editor to connect it to any game, write a casual game or simple apps directly inside, or create a sophisticated software application that connects to CamSpace Automatically. Use C++, VB, VB.NET, C#, PYTHON or Delphi and get the tracking information easily from CamSpace API.

We here at Cam-Trax Technologies encourage you to create any application you can think about that benefits from the user’s natural movements in free space!

Check out the demo video:

Head over to the CamSpace site to sign up for the beta. Hopefully after it is release it will either be open source or freeware. They now only have a Windows client, but supposedly a Mac and Linux version is coming soon.

Lets hope they send the beta invite to me soon so I can test it out. Now I might have a good excuse to purchase a web cam - go CamSpace!

360desktop just launched the public beta in conjunction with the 4th of July. If you haven’t heard about 360desktop, here is a quick overview from the site:

360desktop is a free and safe software download, that transforms your standard Windows® desktop into a 360-degree panoramic workspace, giving you many times more desktop space.

Quick video demo:

30desktop runs on Windows XP and Vista. Download the public beta from the 360desktop site. Don’t forget to let us know what you think.

I am currently giving it a spin and I can tell you this much - it don’t do doodoo next to compiz-fusion on Linux.

The Ubuntu Wiki has released a training manual for both students and teachers alike. Both PDF files are around 70MB and include a wealth of information to get you on your Ubuntu way.

From the site:

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

Changelog via flexbeta.net:

Launchy has been completely rewritten with QT o Your old plugins/skins will no longer work o Your old configuration will be wiped .

• A new look! New icons and skin thanks to Tyler Sticka
• Much better skinning support
• Options merged into a single, tabbed dialog
• Skin selection now shows previews
• Plugins much more configurable
• Launchy can hide when it loses focus
• Fade in/out effects
• Customizable transparency
• Optional shallow scan of directories
• Unicode support for Firefox bookmarks
• Vista support
• It’s just better.

Launchy Homepage | Launchy Screenshots | Launchy Download

Nmap v4.5, along with a 10th anniversary, has been released along with a brand new addition called Zenmap, 2nd generation OS detection, and 320 other changes to the network mapping software.

Zenmap is a front-end GUI for Nmap allowing beginners to easily use Nmap and also allows experienced users quick access to advanced features. Read the press release for Nmap v4.5.

Zenmap Screenshot:

How do I install Nmap?

Windows:

Windows users can find an installer on the Nmap download page.

Linux:

If you have RPM based package management, download and install it from the Nmap download page. Don’t forget to get the Zenmap RPM also.

OR

Download the Nmap tarball from the Nmap download page. Also make sure you have the proper build tools installed.

How do I use Nmap?

You really need to read the Nmap man page for all the details, but the most common options will be covered here.

NOTE: Most of these command line switched can used in a combination. Replace scanme.nmap.org with a real IP address or host name that you need to scan.
Read the rest of this entry …

If you haven’t heard Linspire has partnered with Canonical and have just released CNR (Linspire’s default package manager) for Ubuntu. Linspire and Freespire are based on Ubuntu. This is in beta stage at the time of posting, so don’t be surprised if you find bugs.

Open a terminal and type the following command to open sources.list in a text editor:

In sources.list, search for the following lines (the address might differ) and uncomment them (remove the ‘#’ at the begging):

EDIT: And then, just download the client from the CNR site. Thanks to Peter for the tip.

You can then run CNR by going to Applications -> System Tools -> CNR.

Loading screen:

CNR Web site (This is loaded as the client):

Read the rest of this entry …

Serdar Yegulalp at Information Week talks about how Microsoft is doing away with WGA and how Vista will not require you to activate after three days — Vista will just nag you every hour and have a 15 second delay at login. [sarcasm]Those guys at Microsoft have some really ingenious ideas. Gosh[/sarcasm]

Introducing Windows Vista, Freeware Version