While browsing through YouTube, I found an old video of Kevin Rose explaining how to crack a Windows password. However, such an operation takes time, effort, and having certain tools (LiveCDs and the such), not to mention that it won’t work if you can’t boot from the machine’s CD drive for whatever reason (password-protected BIOS and the such).

I have found, however, a simple and effective way to bypass Windows’ password security without any additional tools or requirements. All you have to have is physical access to the machine. The method is as the following:

• Reboot the machine
• Wait until Windows starts loading, and then turn off the PC either by removing the power cable or (on some computers) by holding the power button down for a certain duration. It’s important that you do this while Windows is still loading.
• Turn the machine on again. Windows should present you with a boot menu that includes the option to boot Windows into safe mode. Use the arrow keys to choose that option and click enter.
• Windows will now boot in safe mode. When you see the login screen, there should be, next to all of your normal users, a new “Administrator” user. This user has no password, and has full access to the machine. Log into it.
• Now you can use the control panel to either change your user’s password or add a new user. Have fun!

When [name removed at request] said he’d send me his contact list, I thought he meant he’d give me a list of emails of people I needed to work with. You could probably imagine my surprise when I got a CSV file weighing 19 Kilobytes. Yes, that’s right, folks.As I found out once I imported the thing into GMail, he has just sent me his whole, unsorted, unmitigated list of contacts.

Amongst my newly ackquired contacts were many addresses that were (and will probably remain), completely nonsensical to me, such as is that of “zzzzzzzz” (might not be the correct number of z’s). Some were actually useful, such as those of numerous site team members.

And then, there was that one address. The address I have yearned for so much, just to get it now, after I could never use it. Isn’t it ironic how life plays tricks on us? I am fortune’s fool.

Isn’t it suddenly strange, to have this option at your fingertips? I should never use it, and yet I can’t bring myself to delete it. In some ways, it reminds me of the ring from Tolkein’s famous trilogy. One cannot dispose of it unless it wills so.

Horrible disaster might be one click away. Can I refrain? Probably. Is it sure? Never.

I just found a Chinese Google blog, and decided to translate it and scan through it, if not only because it’s kind of interesting, in a way, to see an American company claiming to try to “do no evil” (yes, the sentence continues) going into China, which, besides having a completely different culture, is also totalitarian.

A quick scan of the page showed no Communist signs (China’s one party claims to be Communist, though the economic system is increasingly capitalistic), nor are there any nationalistic signs of the People’s Republic of China. In fact, Google Chine (aka GUGE) seems to show its Chinese branch as more connected to ancient China than to the modern, technologically-advanced Chinese state (an internet company does not want to seem modern, ironic? sure, why not), as this flash movie illustrates.

The Chinese name itself, GUGE (谷歌), alternating translated as “Song of the Vally” and “Song of the Harvest”, is also lets less modern connotations arise when discussing the company which was founded in 1998. Then again, who can blame them? I mean, now they can say “sure, you when you search for Tienanmen square in our search engine you get tourist opportunities, but we’re called ‘Song of the Harvest’! How can you get jollier than that?”

Google itself, strangely enough, translated only half of the page, leaving the other half in Chinese, which was really annoying, especially since I don’t have Chinese fonts installed. Still, the half that is left is intriguing enough to continue to dive in.

Obviously, with a language so different from English in its structure (?) and proverbs, it is clear that some of the meaning will be lost in translation, as it is here:

In this hard season, Google called “Valley Song.” To Valley for the song, the song is planting and expectations are harvesting songs with joy.

Sometimes, however, the meaning rings clear, except that the subtext rings clearer:

We see each website as a voter, all these search results rankings entirely mutual voters “vote” just decided. Because we believe that the message that everyone is equal before, we only really been in the network of public election, and trust information is valuable.

Google also tries to explain its new name in a marketing-esque way:

The golden yellow of endless wheat fields like gay information, we are here to work, creativity, harvest results to the users. Therefore, to Valley [Probably synonymous with harvest —Noam] for the song, and we look forward to the planting of songs, but also with joy harvest songs.

The last article the Google Translator was willing to translate before falling down dead and leaving the rest of the page the Chins es language was an article about statistical models for parsing the Chinese language. To tell the truth, I think that it would have passed way over my head even if not for the poor, mechanical translation. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the translation was still a major factor, with unparsable grammar and randomly sticking irrelevant words in the middle of nowhere just to confuse me.

Personally, however, I think that the quote that sums up Google China best of all seems to appear in the first article on the page: “Much information, we do have more.”

(Link to a Google translated version of the Google China blog)

I installed it. It sucked. I returned to Archlinux.

Indeed, I messed around a bit with my desktop, resturing my theme to an old favorite. I think I am quite pleased with the results:

(Click on the image to see the screenshot)