The interwebs were alight a couple of weeks ago with news of the ‘Windows Godmode’ shortcut.
Essentially, a GUID based shortcut which grouped various settings together in one area. One source of complaint for me has always been the ‘reorganization’ of many settings in Vista and 7.
I likened it to busy work where a developer moved settings into separate menus, where they used to be together in a single menu. Annoying and seemingly without reason but I’m sure some guy got to keep his job.
Someone at Microsoft thought the reaction of people was funny and released a bunch more GUIDs for everyone to play with. With that being said, I tried them all to see what they do. There have been reports of troubles, so you have been warned.
The format for trying this out is “name.{GUID}”. For example, the first one could be a folder named “Default Location.{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}” Don’t include the quotes when copying.
Here’s the list of strings which have been circulating around. Some are more interesting than others…
{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} – Godmode
{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33} – Change your default location
{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428} – Biometric devices
{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D} – Select a power plan
{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9} – Select which icons appear in the notification area
{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70} – Store credentials for automatic login
{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4} – Install a program from the network
{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966} – Choose default Windows programs
{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43} – Lists public key tokens (?)
{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87} -Manage wireless networks
{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D} – Network
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} – Attached drive menu
{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} – Printer menu
{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B} – Remote App and Desktop Connections
{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423} – Firewall
{62D8ED13-C9D0-4CE8-A914-47DD628FB1B0} – I couldn’t get this one to work
{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC} – Performance menu
midbach tech Godmode, GUID, Windows
Bruno sent this to me and I was sure that I had seen it before. I finally had a look and realized that I hadn’t.
Interesting piece on crazed Internet gamers in Korea. Koreans might be well known for this but they aren’t the only ones with Internet addictions.
midbach tech
I’ve always been pretty tolerant of online ads; they’re kinda required for the interwebs to operate. Lately, ads have been appearing in RSS feeds. Big ads. Ads with embedded movie files in them. Nasty stuff…
Ok, I get that the author needs to get some cash wherever possible. Maybe even more so in an RSS feed than on the site itself, as people tend not to visit the site when browsing via an RSS reader.
I stumbled across this custom hosts file (15,000+ lines!) which lists thousands of known problematic and malicious websites. This will not only block ads, but also banners, third party cookies and page counters, web bugs and even hijackers.
In a nutshell, it works by telling your browser that your local machine will be serving up the ad. Of course, your machine is not hosting the ad, so your browser displays a standard 404 error where the ad should be. All this without requiring a single extension and it works in any browser and on any operating system.
Overall, it’s a tidy solution that doesn’t require you to bog down Firefox with yet another extension. It’s a shame that it’s such a manual process, requiring the user to keep checking for updates.
Disclaimer: If you don’t know what a hosts file is, I suggest you find a geek (preferably not me) to help you. If you screw this up, you’re on your own. /Disclaimer:
midbach tech hosts
Brian decided to start using his laptop again but it was in a bad way. With this in mind, I told him that he should consider using Linux. No virus worries, pretty slick and easy to use. He was open to the idea so I began researching what would be involved in putting it on his Inspiron 6400.
I found a HOWTO and prepared myself for a long night of hacking. I burned 9.04 to a disk, rebooted and settled in for a long night.
30 minutes later Vista was banished and I started poking around to see what was working. “Hey wireless is up, all these buttons are working and so is the track pad!” much to my astonishment, everything was working. Ok, there is one button but nothing serious.
I did my updates, installed a bunch of software and signed him up for some new accounts. Within 90 minutes I was done. Everything. All that was left to do was to turn over the keys.
I’ve been an Ubuntu user since 6.10 but I was stunned at how easy it was. I knew it was quick to install but I had no idea that the driver support was so advanced. Ubuntu never ceases to amaze me.
midbach tech Ubuntu
