Super-Scary Android Flaw Found

Stagefright, which processes several popular media formats, is implemented in native code -- C++ -- which is more prone to memory corruption than memory-safe languages such as Java, according to Zimperium.
Stagefright has several remote code execution vulnerabilities that can be exploited using various methods, Zimperium said.
The worst of them doesn't require any user interaction.
The vulnerabilities critically expose 95 percent of Android devices -- about 950 million, by Zimperium's count.
"Users of Android versions older than 4.1 are at extreme risk," Drake told LinuxInsider.

The No-Touch Flaw

Attackers need nothing more than a victim's mobile phone number to exploit the most dangerous Stagefright flaw, Zimperium said.
They can send a specially crafted media file delivered as an MMS message.
A fully weaponized, successful attack could delete the message before the user sees it, leaving only a notification that the message was received.
The victim wouldn't need to take any action for the attack to be successful.
Zimperium reported the vulnerability to Google and submitted patches, which Google applied within 48 hours.

Who's Safe

Users of SilentCircle's Blackphone have been protected against these problems with the release earlier this month of PrivateOS version 1.1.7, Zimperium reported, and Mozilla's Firefox for mobile, aka "Fennec," includes fixes for these issues in v38 and later versions.
Google is coordinating with members of the Open Handset Alliance to get the issues addressed in official Android-compatible devices.
"We thank Joshua Drake for his contributions," said Google spokesperson Elizabeth Markman. "The security of Android users is extremely important to us, and so we responded quickly -- and patches have already been provided to partners that can be applied to any device."

What's Happening Now

If you're an Android device user, expect nothing and prepare for trouble.
"Many carriers and manufacturers prefer to push patches out to customers themselves, if at all," said Ken Westin, security analyst for Tripwire.
That means "even well after the patches are made public, more than half [of users] will still be vulnerable," he told LinuxInsider.
Further, this vulnerability goes back to Android 2.2, which was released five years ago, Westin pointed out, so "some of these devices may not have patches available through their carriers as they are too old and are no longer supported."
"This problem doesn't show any signs of going away," Drake said. "Even Nexus devices remain without a patch today, presumably because of this very problem."
Tripwire so far has not seen any exploits of the Stagefright flaw in the wild, although "this can change very quickly now that the vulnerability has been exposed," Westin said.

Android's General Safety Overview

Most Android devices, including all newer devices, "have multiple technologies that are designed to make exploitation more difficult," Google's Markman told LinuxInsider. Android devices "also include an application sandbox designed to protect user data and other applications on the device."
However, the jury's still out on whether sandboxes can fully protect devices.
Bluebox last year discovered an Android design error it dubbed "Fake ID," which let malware sneak by Android's app sandbox and take control of other apps.
Google removed the Android webview Flash flaw from Android 4.4 KitKat, but 82 percent of devices couldn't update to the new version of the OS because mobile carriers and manufacturers delayed or did not deliver the update, Bluebox said.
Sandboxes have failed to stop advanced cyberattacks, according to FireEye.

Staying Safe in the Malware Storm

Applying strong authentication to critical apps could help Android users remain safe, Secure Channels CEO Richard Blech told LinuxInsider. Also, login credentials should not be kept on the device.
"Always use a currently supported mobile device," Zimperium's Drake suggested, and "keep your device updated to the latest version at all times." If an update isn't available, "manually install an OS likeCyanogenMod that supports older devices for a longer period of time." 

heuristic

A heuristic is a commonsense guideline used to increase the probability of solving a problem by directing one's attention to things that are likely to matter. The word is derived from the Greek "heurisko" which simply means "I find". The exclamation "eureka", meaning "I found it!", shares roots with heuristic.

Just as the "Eureka!" screaming forty-niners of California's Gold Rush did not have secret knowledge or tools to tell them exactly where all the gold was buried; software testers don't know exactly where the bugs are going to hide. However, both software testers and gold miners know where bugs and gold have been found before. We can use that knowledge of past discoveries and the nature of what we seek to create heuristics that help us narrow in on areas most likely to contain the treasure.

Gold miners and testers can find treasure by accident. However, intentional exploration for bugs and gold are more likely to produce results than aimless wandering. That last statement is a heuristic. It is true most of the time, but sometimes it can be proven false. Sometimes wandering testers and miners stumble into something very important. I just don't want to do all my testing by accident.

Heuristic-based testing may not give us concrete answers, but it can guide us to the important things to test. Heuristics can also be used in automation to provide information to guide human testers.

There was a time that I told developers and project managers that I could not test their products when the requirements did not include straightforward "testable" criteria. I thought that I could not test without being able to report "pass" or "fail" for each test.

A good example was a requirement that stated something like "the user shall not have to wait an unacceptable amount of time". As a good quality school tester working in a factory school organization, I demanded to know how long was acceptable before I could start testing. I wanted to quantify "unacceptable". In this case, the truth is that "unacceptable" will vary based on the user. There were no contractual SLAs to satisfy. I may not be able to report that the requirement is met, but I can provide useful information to the project team to assist in determining if the performance is acceptable.

I have since learned that answers to heuristic questions are useful. It was in that same project that I started applying heuristics to automated data validation. Even without concrete requirements, we testers can provide provide information that is useful in answering important testing questions -- especially the qualitative questions. (As a side note, I am now amazed at how much we who call ourselves "Quality Assurance" like to focus on quantitative requirements and metrics.)

To use heuristics in testing, create a list of open-ended questions and guidelines. This will not be a pass/fail list of test criteria. It will not be a list of specific test steps. Instead it can be used to guide your test scripting and exploration for bugs. You will likely develop general heuristics that you can apply to all your testing and specific heuristics that apply to specific applications.

We need to be careful to apply heuristics as heuristics and not enforceable rules. For example, most people involved in testing web application have heard the heuristic that every page should be within three clicks of any other page. Applying this "rule" to web application design usually results in better usability. However, it does not always improve usability. Sometimes making every page within three clicks of another is not reasonable. Adding too many links are likely to confuse users more than they help. (Another heuristic?) Complex work flows often require that pages be more than three clicks away from others. Common sense needs to be applied to heuristics to ensure they are applied only when they fit the context.

Happy bug prospecting.

Computer program fixes old code faster than expert engineers

Last year, MIT computer scientists and Adobe engineers came together to try to solve a major problem that many companies face: bit-rot.

A good example is Adobe’s successful Photoshop photo editor, which just celebrated its 25th birthday. Over the years Photoshop had accumulated heaps of code that had been optimized for what is now old hardware.

“For high-performance code used for image-processing, you have to optimize the heck out of the software,” says Saman Amarasinghe, a professor at MIT and researcher at theComputer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “The downside is that the code becomes much less effective and much more difficult to understand.”

This results in what Amarasinghe describes as “a billion-dollar problem”: companies like Adobe having to devote massive manpower to going back into the code every few years and, by hand, testing out a bunch of different strategies to try to patch it.

But what if there were a computer program that could automatically fix old code so that engineers can focus on more important tasks, such as actually dreaming up new software?

Enter Helium, a CSAIL system that revamps and fine-tunes code without ever needing the original source, in a matter of hours or even minutes.

The team started with a simple building block of programming that’s nevertheless extremely difficult to analyze: binary code that has been stripped of debug symbols, which represents the only piece of code that is available for proprietary software such as Photoshop.

A particular type of computational kernel popular for such software are “stencil kernels,” which allow you to do operations for entire areas of pixels. Stencil kernels are especially important to update because they use huge amounts of memory and compute power, and their performance degenerates quickly as new hardware become available.

With Helium, the researchers are able to lift these kernels from a stripped binary and restructure them as high-level representations that are readable in Halide, a CSAIL-designed programming language geared towards image-processing.

Going from binary to high-level languages was a big leap that the team originally didn’t think was doable, according to lead author Charith Mendis.

“The order of operations in these optimized binaries are complicated, which means that they can be hard to disentangle,” says Mendis, a graduate student at CSAIL. “Because stencils do the same computation over and over again, we are able to accumulate enough data to recover the original algorithms.”

From there, the Helium system then replaces the original bit-rotted components with the re-optimized ones. The net result: Helium can improve the performance of certain Photoshop filters by 75 percent, and the performance of less optimized programs such as Microsoft Windows’ IrfanView by 400 to 500 percent.

“We’ve found that Helium can make updates in one day that would take human engineers upwards of three months,” says Amarasinghe. “A system like this can help companies make sure that the next generation of code is faster, and save them the trouble of putting 100 people on these sorts of problems.”

The research was presented in a paper accepted to the Association for Computing Machinery SIGPLAN conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI 2015), which took place June 13-17 in Portland, Oregon.

The paper was written by Mendis, fellow graduate students Jeffrey Bosboom and Kevin Wu, research scientist Shoaib Kamil, postdoc Jonathan Ragan-Kelley PhD '14, Amarasinghe, and researchers from Adobe and Google.

“We are in an era where computer architectures are changing at a dramatic rate, which makes it important to write code that can work on multiple platforms,” says Mary Hall, a professor at the University of Utah's School of Computing. “Helium is an interesting approach that has the potential to facilitate higher-level descriptions of stencil computations that could then be more easily ported to future architectures.”

One unexpected byproduct of the work is that it lets researchers see the different tricks that programmers used on the old code, such as archaeologists combing through computational fossils.

“We can see the ‘bit hacks’ that engineers use to optimize their algorithms,” says Amarasinghe, “as well as better understand the larger context of how programmers approach different coding challenges.”

---

Computer program fixes old code faster than expert engineers

Last year, MIT computer scientists and Adobe engineers came together to try to solve a major problem that many companies face: bit-rot.

A good example is Adobe’s successful Photoshop photo editor, which just celebrated its 25th birthday. Over the years Photoshop had accumulated heaps of code that had been optimized for what is now old hardware.

“For high-performance code used for image-processing, you have to optimize the heck out of the software,” says Saman Amarasinghe, a professor at MIT and researcher at theComputer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “The downside is that the code becomes much less effective and much more difficult to understand.”

This results in what Amarasinghe describes as “a billion-dollar problem”: companies like Adobe having to devote massive manpower to going back into the code every few years and, by hand, testing out a bunch of different strategies to try to patch it.

But what if there were a computer program that could automatically fix old code so that engineers can focus on more important tasks, such as actually dreaming up new software?

Enter Helium, a CSAIL system that revamps and fine-tunes code without ever needing the original source, in a matter of hours or even minutes.

The team started with a simple building block of programming that’s nevertheless extremely difficult to analyze: binary code that has been stripped of debug symbols, which represents the only piece of code that is available for proprietary software such as Photoshop.

A particular type of computational kernel popular for such software are “stencil kernels,” which allow you to do operations for entire areas of pixels. Stencil kernels are especially important to update because they use huge amounts of memory and compute power, and their performance degenerates quickly as new hardware become available.

With Helium, the researchers are able to lift these kernels from a stripped binary and restructure them as high-level representations that are readable in Halide, a CSAIL-designed programming language geared towards image-processing.

Going from binary to high-level languages was a big leap that the team originally didn’t think was doable, according to lead author Charith Mendis.

“The order of operations in these optimized binaries are complicated, which means that they can be hard to disentangle,” says Mendis, a graduate student at CSAIL. “Because stencils do the same computation over and over again, we are able to accumulate enough data to recover the original algorithms.”

From there, the Helium system then replaces the original bit-rotted components with the re-optimized ones. The net result: Helium can improve the performance of certain Photoshop filters by 75 percent, and the performance of less optimized programs such as Microsoft Windows’ IrfanView by 400 to 500 percent.

“We’ve found that Helium can make updates in one day that would take human engineers upwards of three months,” says Amarasinghe. “A system like this can help companies make sure that the next generation of code is faster, and save them the trouble of putting 100 people on these sorts of problems.”

The research was presented in a paper accepted to the Association for Computing Machinery SIGPLAN conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI 2015), which took place June 13-17 in Portland, Oregon.

The paper was written by Mendis, fellow graduate students Jeffrey Bosboom and Kevin Wu, research scientist Shoaib Kamil, postdoc Jonathan Ragan-Kelley PhD '14, Amarasinghe, and researchers from Adobe and Google.

“We are in an era where computer architectures are changing at a dramatic rate, which makes it important to write code that can work on multiple platforms,” says Mary Hall, a professor at the University of Utah's School of Computing. “Helium is an interesting approach that has the potential to facilitate higher-level descriptions of stencil computations that could then be more easily ported to future architectures.”

One unexpected byproduct of the work is that it lets researchers see the different tricks that programmers used on the old code, such as archaeologists combing through computational fossils.

“We can see the ‘bit hacks’ that engineers use to optimize their algorithms,” says Amarasinghe, “as well as better understand the larger context of how programmers approach different coding challenges.”

---

Computer program fixes old code faster than expert engineers

Last year, MIT computer scientists and Adobe engineers came together to try to solve a major problem that many companies face: bit-rot.

A good example is Adobe’s successful Photoshop photo editor, which just celebrated its 25th birthday. Over the years Photoshop had accumulated heaps of code that had been optimized for what is now old hardware.

“For high-performance code used for image-processing, you have to optimize the heck out of the software,” says Saman Amarasinghe, a professor at MIT and researcher at theComputer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “The downside is that the code becomes much less effective and much more difficult to understand.”

This results in what Amarasinghe describes as “a billion-dollar problem”: companies like Adobe having to devote massive manpower to going back into the code every few years and, by hand, testing out a bunch of different strategies to try to patch it.

But what if there were a computer program that could automatically fix old code so that engineers can focus on more important tasks, such as actually dreaming up new software?

Enter Helium, a CSAIL system that revamps and fine-tunes code without ever needing the original source, in a matter of hours or even minutes.

The team started with a simple building block of programming that’s nevertheless extremely difficult to analyze: binary code that has been stripped of debug symbols, which represents the only piece of code that is available for proprietary software such as Photoshop.

A particular type of computational kernel popular for such software are “stencil kernels,” which allow you to do operations for entire areas of pixels. Stencil kernels are especially important to update because they use huge amounts of memory and compute power, and their performance degenerates quickly as new hardware become available.

With Helium, the researchers are able to lift these kernels from a stripped binary and restructure them as high-level representations that are readable in Halide, a CSAIL-designed programming language geared towards image-processing.

Going from binary to high-level languages was a big leap that the team originally didn’t think was doable, according to lead author Charith Mendis.

“The order of operations in these optimized binaries are complicated, which means that they can be hard to disentangle,” says Mendis, a graduate student at CSAIL. “Because stencils do the same computation over and over again, we are able to accumulate enough data to recover the original algorithms.”

From there, the Helium system then replaces the original bit-rotted components with the re-optimized ones. The net result: Helium can improve the performance of certain Photoshop filters by 75 percent, and the performance of less optimized programs such as Microsoft Windows’ IrfanView by 400 to 500 percent.

“We’ve found that Helium can make updates in one day that would take human engineers upwards of three months,” says Amarasinghe. “A system like this can help companies make sure that the next generation of code is faster, and save them the trouble of putting 100 people on these sorts of problems.”

The research was presented in a paper accepted to the Association for Computing Machinery SIGPLAN conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI 2015), which took place June 13-17 in Portland, Oregon.

The paper was written by Mendis, fellow graduate students Jeffrey Bosboom and Kevin Wu, research scientist Shoaib Kamil, postdoc Jonathan Ragan-Kelley PhD '14, Amarasinghe, and researchers from Adobe and Google.

“We are in an era where computer architectures are changing at a dramatic rate, which makes it important to write code that can work on multiple platforms,” says Mary Hall, a professor at the University of Utah's School of Computing. “Helium is an interesting approach that has the potential to facilitate higher-level descriptions of stencil computations that could then be more easily ported to future architectures.”

One unexpected byproduct of the work is that it lets researchers see the different tricks that programmers used on the old code, such as archaeologists combing through computational fossils.

“We can see the ‘bit hacks’ that engineers use to optimize their algorithms,” says Amarasinghe, “as well as better understand the larger context of how programmers approach different coding challenges.”

---

GRAPH MATCHING

 GRAPH MATCHING
An implementation of a dual decomposition technique for the graph matching optimization problem described in

Feature Correspondence via Graph Matching: Models and Global Optimization.
Lorenzo Torresani, Vladimir Kolmogorov and Carsten Rother.
In European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), October 2008.

• GraphMatching-v1.01.src.zip

SRMP

 SRMP
An implementation of the "SRMP" algorithm described in

A new look at reweighted message passing.
Vladimir Kolmogorov.
In IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, May 2015.

• SRMP-v1.01.zip

The New Approach on Fuzzy Decision Forest

The introduction of decision trees in the 1980’s lead on to the thriving research until the 90’s. However, handling data that are not in a clear form was a problem to be solved since computers were designed to only calculate crisp data. This paper presents a method that allows decision trees to handle fuzzy data. Also, for better accuracy, this paper introduces decision forests, which is a bundle of decision trees that decide the case together. Additionally we did an experiment to prove the performance of new algorithm by comparing it with support vector machine, which is known as the best algorithm in data mining field.
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................

New Algorithm for Component Selection to Develop Component-Based Software with X Model

Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) is an approach which is used to enhance the reusability with the development of component-based software from the preexisting software components or with the components which is developed from the scratch. A new algorithm is proposed for component selection by using best-fit strategy and first-fit strategy through X model which is used to develop componentbased software with two approaches likely development for reuse and development with reuse. But when reuse a preexisting software component through the development with reuse, component selection play an important role. Component selection for Component-Based Software Development (CBSD) is very challenging field for researchers and practitioners. This paper also presents the two component selection problem viz. Simple Component Selection Problems (SCSP) and Criteria Component Selection Problem (CCSP). On the basis of these two problems, this paper presents a new optimal solution with new algorithm for optimal component selection from repositories. Lastly, paper summarizes the factors used in algorithm for optimal selection of components with the help of X model repositories to fulfill the requirements of client by using SCSP and CCSP.

New Android feature keeps phone unlocked in user’s pocket

The security option has been joined by other useful security options like trusted places, trusted devices, and trusted faces which might appeal some users.

WASHINGTON: Google may soon come up with a new Android feature that would help smartphone users get rid of the hassle of unlocking their phones dozens of times a day when it's simply unnecessary. 

The tech giant is working on a feature, known as 'on-body detection', that would make sure that a smartphone remained unlocked while the user had it on person, which could possibly solve the problem of unlocking it multiple times. 

Some Android Police readers, who posted its screenshots to the site, recently spotted the new feature and explained that it would disable the lock screen once in the user's hand, pocket or purse and revert it back to the lock as soon as it was placed onto some other surface, The Verge reported. 

The security option has been joined by other useful security options like trusted places, trusted devices, and trusted faces which might appeal some users. 

However, the feature would not be able to identify the user and the smartphone would most likely remain unlocked even if it was with someone else or a pickpocket, since it uses the device's accelerometer to determine its continual move.

RIP, Internet Explorer: Did You Think Nobody Would Miss IE? These 5 People Will

It's the end of an era. By now, everyone knows, or ought to know, that Internet Explorer, the once-beloved Microsoft browser that so many of us learnt to navigate the world wide web with  will soon find its name etched in the extinct column. Microsoft is working on an all-new browser for Windows 10 which is tentatively called Project Spartan, thus putting an end to the Internet Explorer brand name.

For several users, Internet Explorer was not just a gateway to the web, it was also synonymous with the Internet itself. With digital evolution, however,  IE transitioned into something of a dinosaur - from being the browser netizens loved, it became the browser they loved to hate.

And so, social media bids goodbye to IE and while many are declaring it good riddance, there are some who are lamenting its passing. We've compiled a list of five people who we're pretty sure will miss IE a lot:

1. Bill Gates: Who could feel the pain about IE shutting down more than the former Microsoft boss? After all, Internet Explorer reigned supreme up until the advent of Firefox and Chrome.

Source

2. Sheldon Cooper: TV's most exasperating and endearing brainiac uses IE, believe it or not. Someone tell him he will no longer be able to - and watch the Big Bang that ensues from the safety of the other side of the TV screen.

Source

3. Everyone who grew up in the '90s: For the dial-up generation at least, IE was the king of browsers. For most logging on to the Internet meant clicking on that Internet Explorer tab. It's time to keep calm and carry on, people.

Source

4. All the other browsers: No one would've known how good or bad they are in the absence of Internet Explorer.

Source

5. All the IE meme makers: It's time to find a new patsy. Start lookin
g

WhatsApp Voice Calling Already Banned by UAE's Etisalat: Report

To say the WhatsApp voice calling feature has captured the attention of the masses would be an understatement, and among the latest developments regarding the rollout of the feature is a report that a United Arab Emirates (UAE) telecom operator has blocked the VoIP functionality.

A report by Emirates 24/7 cites an unnamed company source to claim Etisalat - one of two licensed telecom operators in the UAE, the other being Du - started blocking WhatsApp voice calls over its network from Monday, and that the ban would take four to six days to affect all its customers in the UAE. It is being speculated that those users who've managed to activate the feature can still continue to use it over Wi-Fi networks.

The Emirates 24/7 report adds that subscribers of Du are still able to use the WhatsApp voice calling feature, implying the telecom operator has not yet blocked the service. This leniency is not expected to last however, with a statement by the country's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) clarifying the rules surrounding the offering and usage of VoIP services in the UAE.

(Also see: WhatsApp Voice Calling - Everything You Need to Know)

The TRA in its statement says that "VoIP services are still a prerogative of the licensed providers who reserve the right to provide such services through their networks. Companies wishing to offer such services must co-ordinate with the licensed telecom providers in the UAE." The regulator's VoIP policy from 2013 states only Etisalat and Due are licensed to provide telecommunications services in the UAE, and this includes VoIP.

(Also see:What Is Net Neutrality? Here's a Simple Explanation)

Of course, with such a rule in place, WhatsApp voice calling is not the only VoIP service that is affected. Skype, perhaps the most popular VoIP service in the world, is only allowed to offer text messaging in the UAE, and the TRA confirmed that no change has been made to the VoIP policy with specific reference to the Microsoft-owned service.

"As to what the licensees have done in unblocking Skype's website in the UAE, this action does not change the position of the TRA or amend the policy as this service is considered a Regulated Activity, therefore, it must be provided by a licensee. Should the service be provided through a partnership with a third party, both licensees must seek approval to provide such service after fulfilling the regulatory and technical requirements of the TRA, which has not happened in the case of Skype. VoIP services through Skype are still unauthorised," the TRA said.

The regulator added that Viber, which also offers VoIP services elsewhere in the world, is also not licensed in the UAE.

Etisalat's reported reaction to ban WhatsApp voice calling in the UAE is not very surprising, with other telecom operators having already made clear their reluctance to freely allow VoIP and other OTT services to operate. Specifically, India's leading operator, Bharti Airtel, had back in December announced plans to rollout VoIP calling packs in the country, attributing the move to the potential loss in investment of rolling out data network infrastructure across the country.

Airtel later reversed its decision, saying it would wait for Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to release its consultation paper on OTT services, which essentially includes all apps and services that make use of the Internet

HACKER VS CRACKER

Who is a Hacker?

A Hacker or White Hat Hacker, also known as Ethical Hacker, is a computer security expert, who is specialized in penetration testing or other testing methodologies to ensure that a company’s information systems are secure. Such people are employed by companies where these professionals are sometimes called as Sneakers.

Who is a Cracker?

Black Hat Hackers, who may also be known as Crackers, are Hackers, who specialise in unauthorized penetration of information systems. They may use computers to attack systems for profit, for fun, or for political motivations, as part of a social cause. Such penetration often involves modification and/or destruction of data, and is done without authorization. They also may distribute computer viruses, Internet Worms, and deliver spam through the use of bot nets.

Take Ownership of Files and Folders in Windows 7

If you are a Windows 7 user, then you are most likely to be aware of the fact that you need to TAKE OWNERSHIP of files and folders before you can make any changes to them. This feature was introduced first in Windows Vista and later in Windows 7 in order to prevent any unauthorized changes from being made to the system files.

However, it can be little annoying to follow a long list of procedure every time you want to take ownership of a certain file or folder. So, to make this job simpler, I have found a nice tool called Take Ownership Shell Extension which adds the “Take Ownership” option to the Windows context menu itself. This makes taking ownership too simple and requires no more than a click.

Just run the portable tool kit and click on the “Install” button. This will add the “Take Ownership” option onto the context menu. To take ownership of a file or folder, all you need to do is just right-click on it and click the option “Take Ownership“.

In case if you wish to uninstall this tool at any time, you can just run the tool again and click on the “Uninstall” button. I hope you like this tool. This works on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista. You can download it from the following link.

Download Take Ownership Shell Extention

How to take the Ownership Manually?

In case if you are interested to know how to take the ownership manually, here is how you can do that:

1. Right-click the file or folder on which you want to take the ownership and then click on Properties.
2. Now go to the Security tab, click on Advanced button and then click the Owner tab.
3. Now, click on Edit and do the following:
• Under the “Change owner to:” section, select the user or group to which you would like to grant the permissions and then click on the OK button.
• If the user or the group to which you would like to grant permissions is not listed under theChange owner to: section, just click on Other users and groups and, under Enter the object name to select (examples), type the name of the user or group, and then click OK.
4. Now you should get the confirmation dialog box stating that the ownership is granted.

How to Retrieve Clipboard History in Windows

Ever copied a code snippet or text from the web and forgot to paste it before you copied something else? So, wondering to know how to retrieve clipboard history?

Well, all of us will have an experience of something like this where we want to desperately retrieve those information that was once copied to the clipboard. But since Windows clipboard will only remember the last item that was copied onto it, it would seem impossible to recover the information that was copied earlier. However, this problem can be solved using any of the following alternative clipboard managers in place of the default one.

In this post you will find a few such alternative clipboard managers for Windows using which it would be possible to save and retrieve every piece of information that was copied to the clipboard. Here’s a quick list:

1. Clipdiary

This tool is a powerful clipboard manager which will store every piece of information that was copied to the clipboard including text, images or any other file. Clipdiary automatically loads upon Windows startup and maintains a database to store the history of all copied items.

This makes it possible to retrieve the information that was once copied to the clipboard, be it the last hour or the last week. Clipdiary is a shareware tool which comes with a 30 day fully functional evaluation period.

Download Clipdiary

2. ClipMagic

ClipMagic is similar to Clipdiary but includes a few extra features that could seem handy for advanced users. The following are some of the extra features of ClipMagic that are not present in Clipdiary:

• Categorize/organize your clips. You can also create filters/rules for your incoming clips
• You can store/categorize your ideas to research fast
• Assign often used text like email signatures to hotkeys

Download ClipMagic

3. Ditto

Ditto is a powerful alternative to the default Windows clipboard manager which is an open source tool. It keeps track of all the copied items such as text, images and other files so that you can retrieve them whenever necessary. The following are some of the highlights of Ditto:

• Assign hotkeys to frequently used clippings
• Search and organize the clippings based on task or project
• Supports unicode so that you can copy foreign and non-standard characters without any issues
• Get a preview of all the copied items including thumbnails of images just by pressing the assigned hotkey
• Ditto comes as a freeware so that you can enjoy all of its features free of cost

Even though Ditto is a freeware, it is still comparable to the two shareware tools discussed earlier. So in my opinion Ditto is always the first choice. You may still download and try all the three and keep the one that you like

Tips to Enable or Disable Toast Notifications on Windows 8

Windows 8 is among the most incredible and interesting kind of Windows version from Microsoft. It has visually eye catching design, which is found in modern user interface that is meant for redesigning a number of operating systems, worked out for users. If you have used or seen someone using Windows 8 you could have noticed the toast notifications in this modern version of windows, which simply appears the moment you install or uninstall any application. There are many users who are well versed with the bubble notifications, which were found in the earlier versions of Windows seen via the taskbar. The new application platform in Windows 8 comes with an integrated notification system for installing or uninstalling a number of modern applications.

The Windows 8 style application can employ a number of notifications types including the traditional toast notifications, live titles and lock screen. These can be managed by either disabling or enabling the notification of your application for certain accounts or simply silencing the notifications temporarily so that you are not often bugged by them. Unfortunately, this new version of Windows 8 simply doesn’t carry any notification center, which allows you to view the history of your notifications in just one place. The pop up notification of Windows 8 is very much transient wherein its lock screen application and live tiles portray a more permanent kind of notifications. Well, let’s check out the step by step tips to enable Toast Notifications found in Windows 8 as under:

Enabling Toast Notifications on Windows 8

You have a number of options when it comes to enabling or even disabling the Toast Notifications in Windows 8. This feature is very much beneficial; however, at times it can be annoying while you see them popping up time and again. Hence you have some simple ways to enable and disable the same. Once you have disabled it and after some time want to enable it, don’t get disheartened. Unlike the simple ways of disabling, the steps involved for enabling the toast notifications in Windows 8 too are very much simple. Let’s check them step by step.

Steps for Enabling Toast Notifications:

The users have the option to receive the toast notifications by simply changing the PC settings found over the OfficeScan client PC. This is the place where you have the option of enabling the toast notifications.

Step 1 – If you are keen to enable the same, the first step you need to do is to move the pointer of your mouse at the right corner of your screen just at the bottom side so that you end up displaying the Charms bar.

Step 2 – Once you carry out the first step, it’s time to move to the second, wherein you need to click at Settings and then to – “Change PC Settings” then you will see the PC Settings screen appearing before you.

Step 3 – Once you are done with the second step, it’s time to head on to the third step wherein you need to click over the option called “Notifications”. The moment you click over this section, you are supposed to choose the “On button” so that you enable the Toast Notifications in your Windows 8 based computer system.

Step 4 – This is the final step, wherein you have to choose on the option of “ON” to the three things. These include the “Show App Notifications”, “Play Notification Sounds” and the “Show Application Notifications” on the Lock Screen. The first one is mandatory while the last two are are optional and the choice to enable them is upto you.

Final Word

Microsoft has come up with this feature only in the latest versions of Windows – the Windows 8. However, if you are using operating systems like Windows 7, Windows XP or Windows Vista then make sure you do not have this notification to bug you. In your initial days, you may find a bit difficult doing whole lot of these steps as discussed above, hence it is vital to jot down all these steps in your notepad and start doing it as and when you need them. Doing them several amount of times can enable you to remember the same.

Windows 8 is a new and the most modern kind of operating system and hence different than the previous versions. You need some time to get accustomed to the same before you start using them proficiently. This certainly includes the enabling and disabling of the Toast Notifications

C Program to Print its Own Source Code

Ever wondered how to write a C program to print its own source code? Well, here is the source code of a C program that when executed will print its own source code. In other words, the output of this program is exactly same as its source code.

Here’s the program:

#include<stdio.h>

char *program=”#include<stdio.h>%cchar *program=%c%s%c;%cvoid main()%c{%cprintf(program,10,34,program,34,10, 10,10,10);%c}”;

void main()
{
printf(program,10,34,program,34,10,10,10,10);
}