How Strong Is Your Password?

Hackosis has a Brute Force Calculator which can tell you how long it would take a modern PC to crack your password. Some example results:

6 lower case letters 2 numbers 1 special character Your password is 9 characters long and has 988,530,483,200 combinations. It takes 3.60 hours or 0.15 days to crack your password on computer that tries 137,438,953,472 passwords per hour. This is based on a typical PC processor in 2008 and that the processor is under 10% load.

and

6 lower case letters 8 numbers 1 special character Your password is 15 characters long and has 988,530,483,200,000,000 combinations. It takes 3,596,252.95 hours or 149,843.87 days to crack your password on computer that tries 137,438,953,472 passwords per hour. This is based on a typical PC processor in 2008 and that the processor is under 10% load.

It's a Sad Day in Jumbledtown

As is my normal practice, I do a backup of my files and software once per week. I have a more time intensive backup that I do once a month (and store in an off-site location). Today, I turned on the external hard drive which holds my movie and TV show collection... and was greated with "whee whEE whee whEE" (never a good sound to hear from your hard drive). I tried everything I could - plug in the USB cable instead of firewire cable, try different cables, connect the drive to another computer, use a special USB tool for connecting internal drives to a USB port. Nothing worked. The drive is shot and and I can't get any Windows (XP nor Vista) to recognize it. *cry* I have two problems. First, the movie drive is my second largest hard drive, so when I do backups, I'm not able to back up all the movies and TV shows I've accumulated over the years. Second, I recently upgraded the hard drive in my TiVo, and in the process, repurposed the movie backup hard drive (because I didn't yet know the original movie drive was dead). Now I have no movie drive, and no movie backups! The movies I can get again, for the most part, as I have the original DVD's. But, I'm really mourning the loss of the TV shows I've collected, most of which don't play on TV, now. Shows such as Spy School (where brits learn to be MI6 spies), Taken, and more. This is the second time I've lost the movie drive. At least the first time, I had a 50% backup to restore from. Now I've got nothing. *cry*

TiVo for your PC

From CNET News:

Traditionally, anyone who wanted to convert a PC into a DVR was limited to the likes of Windows Media Center, SnapStream Beyond TV, or (for the more adventurous DIYers) MythTV.

Starting in mid-October, however, people can turn their Windows PCs into a full-on TiVo DVR thanks to Nero's new Liquid TV package. The software effectively turns a standard PC into a full-service TiVo DVR, replete with the same interface, program guide, and ease-of-use as TiVo's standalone hardware DVRs--but with the added ability to burn recorded shows to DVD or export them to portable devices such as the iPod or PlayStation Portable.

Liquid TV will be available in two versions. The $200 package includes a standard TiVo remote, USB DTV tuner/antenna (for over-the-air analog and digital TV, including HD broadcasts), and an IR blaster (for controlling external cable and satellite boxes, which would then be fed into a video capture card on your PC). The $100 package is software only; it's for people who already have a TV tuner card and remote solution (or who will opt for the software's onscreen mouse controls). Images credit Nero.

XBox Media Center (XBMC) Released For All Platforms

From LifeHacker:

The popular open-source media center application Xbox Media Center (XBMC) has rolled out the first beta release of XMBC Atlantis, which brings XBMC to all platforms. That means XBMC now runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, the original Xbox, and even your thumb drive or live CD. Despite its beta status, this release brings XBMC even closer to cross-platform bliss—including iTunes and iPhoto integration for XBMC on your Mac. The new release also boasts a killer new HD skin, so keep reading for a closer look.

XBMC is free, works on all platforms. This release is currently in beta, so you may see some bugs. That said, so far it's been running like a champ on my machines. If you give the new XBMC beta a try, let's hear how you're liking it in the comments.

XBMC ‘Atlantis’ Beta 1 released - now serving all common platforms Download XBMC [XMBC.org]

Visual Studio 2010 to Come with 'Black Box' for Testers

Airplanes are equipped with recorders that capture both cockpit audio and flight data, so in the event that something goes wrong, investigators can try to determine the source of the problem. And Microsoft wants to give that capability to developers and testers. In the next version of its developer tool suite, to be known as Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft plans to include the ability to record the full screens of what testers are seeing, as well as data about their machine. When a test application crashes, the technology will enable developers to see the bug as it occurred. In an interview last week, Microsoft Developer Division Director Dave Mendlen said the feature is designed to avoid the all-to-frequent conflict that occurs when a software tester finds a bug that the developer says it can't reproduce. Internally, the feature has been called "TiVo for debuggers." Microsoft is also talking about new modeling tools it says will make it easier for programmers new to a team to get a sense of how earlier versions of the software work. One of the other goals is to add more business intelligence tools--things like dashboards and cockpits--that enable the project managers to assess whether a development project is on track. Now that I'm finally settled into Visual Studio 2008 and LINQ, I'm ready for 2010! I really like the TiVo for debuggers option. I can see this be very helpful for game developers, who have an even more difficult task of reproducing a state that caused a crash. We've had all sorts of workarounds in the past, including creating our own "Tivo for debuggers" (which basically records the value of all variables, and let's us load the game at any given state). I'm also excited to see what other new tools will be in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0. I've seen hints that cloud computing classes will be included, for example. Visual Studio Team System 2010 will offer tools for managing test cases and execution, and will boost support for filing actionable bugs. (Credit: Microsoft)

Nodevice Hordes Missing Drivers, Manuals

From LifeHacker:

If you're stumped trying to find a Windows driver for your hardware (and you didn't back it up when it last worked), try Nodevice has a database of more than 30,000 drivers, and roughly 20,000 each of manual files and DLL files. Looking for something Vista-specific? Check out RadarSync. [via]

How to Delete a Windows Service in Vista or XP

If you are a fan of tweaking your system and disabling services, you might find that over time your Windows Services list becomes huge and unwieldy with a large number of services in the list that will never be enabled.

Instead of just disabling a service, you can alternatively completely delete the service. This technique can be especially helpful if you've installed some piece of software that doesn't uninstall correctly, and leaves an item in the service list.

Important Note: Once you delete a service, it's gone, and it's going to be a pain to add it back. Use with caution.

Deleting a Service

The first thing you'll need to do is identify the name of the service, so open up Services through the start menu or control panel, and then find the service in the list that you want to delete.

You'll want to open up the properties by double-clicking on the service name, and then highlight the "Service name" value and copy it to the clipboard. This is what we'll need to disable it.

You'll need to open up a command prompt, and if you are using Windows Vista you'll need to right-click the command prompt and choose Run as Administrator. We'll use the sc command to actually do the work.

The syntax used to delete a service is this:

sc delete ServiceName

If your service name has spaces in it, you'll need to wrap the service name in quotes, like this:

sc delete "Adobe LM Service"

Note that I'm not recommending deleting this particular service, it's just an example.

Now if you use the F5 key to refresh your Services list, you'll see that the service is gone.

I've found that using this technique (carefully) can make your Services list a lot more useful, since you don't have to weed through dozens of items you will never have enabled.

Source: The How-To Geek