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Disable USB drives - remotely
A while back we published an article about disabling USB drives. It included a little program that would make the registry change for you.
We took it one step further this week. We just released our free remote USB disabler. It only disables storage devices. USB Mice, keyboards, scanners will still work fine when this is in place. You can disable, or enable USB storage devices across your network.
It is small enough to fit on a floppy, and does not need any 30MB .net runtimes, or DLLs. It works without an install.
You can download it from here - as always no spyware, adware or junkware - only freeware goodness
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Thursday, June 29, 2006
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New version of remote reboot released
We have just put the finishing touches on the new version of Remote Reboot.
It is a free utility that lets you reboot, shutdown, or logoff machines remotely. The update we made in this version was some better support for older NT4 machines, and the ability to force a logoff on a remote machine
We have to give thanks to the user koa in our new forums - he (or she!) has had some great suggestions.
The best part of this utility is that it does not require any runtimes, 30MB .net installs, or DLL files - it runs without any install.
You can download it from our website here - as always, we never put any spyware in our products. We mean it when we say 'Only freeware goodness'
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Monday, June 26, 2006
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Steve Jobs and Apple - The roadmap to world domination
I keep reading articles like this. They are totally off base. Steve Jobs and Apple have done a great job of fooling everyone. Matt Hartley of OSWeekly makes the argument that it would be a great idea for Apple to allow OSX on PCs - just for good publicity. He goes on to say that OSX is just a "Cool Feature" that powers Apple's hardware.
Jobs has been on a long term plan since he came back to Apple. He wants nothing more than to dominate Microsoft. Anyone who ignores this fact is not seeing the whole picture. People forget that Jobs is just like anyone. His company was number 1, and was almost crushed to death by Microsoft. Since that time he has planed his way back to the top. There is no way Apple could possibly gut their hardware operations in a few months, or years. In order for Apple to survive it needed to have a long term strategic plan that would allow them to continue with their hardware sales until their OS platform was powerful enough to compete with Microsoft.
Lets run through my thoughts on how and why this will happen:
Apple switched to the Intel Processor. This could not have been done years ago when OSX was first released. The company was in a bad position and needed to get strength and market share back before making any major change. Why was the timing perfect? Right now developers across the world are just starting to weigh their 64 bit plans. Many projects will need to be rewritten, and revisited. During this time it will leave a window of opportunity for these developers to start looking towards the Apple environment. Microsoft has helped with their Vista delays, and the 20MB runtimes they require for developing in .NET
Now that Apple is on the Intel platform, drivers for it will be much easier to develop. I predict within the next 2 years nearly 99% hardware such as video cards, sound cards, cameras, etc will have OSX drivers - even those $10 network cards that are in a white box.
Apple will wait. Wait until the time is exactly right. They need to wait until enough components have drivers for the OSX platform - the second biggest hurdle for OS acceptance. The #1 reason for OS acceptance is applications. This is almost a non issue right now. When the time is right we will see a big announcement - either Apple purchases Dell Computer, or Dell computer to install OSX on its PCs.
Lets talk about Apple and open source. Apple could not care less about open source. They only use it to further their goals. This is why I have to laugh when I see people suggesting that Apple might ship Linux with their boxes - never going to happen. Why? This is because if you want to run Unix, then you should run the best Unix there is - OSX.
Steve Jobs is not interested in having a niche product. Nope. Sorry to all those smug Mac owners that think they are in some special club. Steve Jobs wants nothing more than to be the richest man in the world. In my mind he is like Bill Gates on steroids. He is an ambitious man. He wants Apple to be #1. No not #2.
He is so good at brainwashing the tech community. Here is an excerpt of some posts on Slashdot about my argument that he wants world domination:
by Golias (176380): Jobs doesn't want to dominate. He's a kooky hippie who managed to strike it rich, not an aspiring Bill Gates or Larry Ellison. He wants his *vision* to dominate. By that metric, he's already won.
Moby(771358): I don't think Jobs wants to dominate.
Apple has very carefully created a boutique quality to their products. This was a calculated move. To strive for dominance would bring much of the hip-and-cool aspects of Mac culture to an end
This was just a small selection of much of the same. The clouds of smug from these posts are getting so thick I think I need my gas mask. I guess most people take their history from the Pirates of Silicon valley, and forget that Steve Jobs took shares away from employees, and his partner Steve Wozniak gave part of his to these people to make up the difference.
Finally - why does this matter to us? We just normally write about our software, or tricks and tips. It matters because if Apple is going to be this big, we need to start developing for their platform. We have not started yet, but we are starting to look in their direction. I feel within the next year we will.
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Sunday, June 25, 2006
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Microsoft uses Warez?
We developed a program named 'ReducedPermissions' a while back. It is a free utility that allows you to run Internet Explorer as a non-administrator. Recently, we have been getting a lot of questions about it. The biggest question is: Does it work like DropMyRights?
I have never used this program before so I started to search for it on the net, and determined that it was a free command line program provided by Microsoft.
Here is a screenshot from the article (In case they take it down)
Click here for a screenshot (almost 1mb) of the entire page (Again - in case they take it down)
You can see the original article here
Anyone who is anyone knows that the term Warez is used for pirated software. Was the whole purpose of this utility to allow you to run pirated programs in a secure sand box? What the hell was this person at Microsoft thinking when they posted the article?
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Wednesday, June 21, 2006
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Remotely Enable Remote Desktop
Remote desktop is a nice feature of Windows 2003, XP, and 2000 server that lets you remotely login to, and work on the system as if you were there. Many times you find that you need it enabled - but the machine you are trying to access is far across your network where it is tough to reach.
There is nothing within windows that will allow you to enable this feature remotely. We have taken the liberty to fix that.
It is a totally free utility that does not need an install, extra dlls or runtimes. Just download from here and immediately you are able to disable, or enable Remote Desktop across your LAN
As always - no spyware, adware..Just freeware goodness.
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Thursday, June 15, 2006
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Test your VNC installations for vulnerability
It was almost over a month ago that we discovered a serious vulnerability in VNC 4.1.1. After we published our proof of concept web program we took it down almost immediately. The reason behind this was to give the RealVNC team time to fix the problem before allowing people to determine what the actual flaw was. Additionally, we have received a huge pile of email begging us to release some type of tool to test for the flaw, or just put our page back up.
We believe that the cat is out of the bag now, and no harm is done by releasing a VNC flaw testing tool.
We have put together a more polished version that you can download and use on your own:
It is easy to use. Just download and run the application. Type in the host name or IP address of the machine you would like to test, and click the begin test button. If the remote machine is vulnerable you will see a very small screenshot of the remote machine displayed. If it is not vulnerable you will get an all clear message instead. You can download it from our downloads section - As always, no spyware or adware - only freeware goodness
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Wednesday, June 14, 2006
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Set your VNC password remotely
We just released a totally free program that will allow you to set the password of your VNC server while it resides on your local network. It has the option to allow for alternate credentials, and it works for all of the major flavors of VNC (UltraVNC, TightVNC, and RealVNC).
It is a nice tool when you are working on machines that are 100s of miles away within your WAN.
 No extra dlls, or .net runtimes are required. It just runs without any installation, and can be found in on our downloads page. As always no spyware, adware - Just freeware goodness. Requires at least Windows 2000.
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Tuesday, June 13, 2006
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VNC Navigator - New product released
We have been quiet on our blog now for a few weeks - not to worry we have been busy moving our website to a new host, working on some new products, and fielding all of the questions we got over the VNC 4.1.1 security flaw that we discovered. I should be back to posting free utilities and tips within a few days.
The latest program we just finished is VNC Navigator - It allows you to easily manage your VNC Servers. You can connect with a double click, and all of your passwords are kept safe using 256 Bit encryption.
It is free if you only need to manage three servers or less.
Click here to get your free copy today (No spyware, or adware. I Promise!)
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Monday, June 12, 2006
Check out our utilities for windows
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