Reveal your saved Passwords in Firefox

Many users save their passwords in Firefox so that they do not have to enter it again when visiting the website it was saved for again. Firefox remembers the password and enters it automatically if the user selected this option on his first visit. This is great for us lazy users but poses the problem that we sometimes can’t remember the password when we need it again.

A classic example would be a Gmail user who has been using the Gmail website so far now trying to get the POP3 access running. So, what is this user going to do ? He actually has several options to reveal the password in Firefox. The first that comes to my mind is the ability to go into the security tab of the options. You do find a show passwords button there that displays all passwords, usernames and site urls.

I have written about this before and want to concentrate on other possibilities. Please note that a master password has to be entered for all the following methods if one has been set.

1. Greasemonkey Scripts:

If you are using the excellent Greasemonkey extension you can choose from a wide variety of scripts that reveal the passwords:

Show Password on Click - displays the password if you click the password form.

Show Password onMouseOver - reveals the password if you hover the mouse over the password field.

Unpassword - changes the type of the password form to text which always displays the passwords as text.

2. Javascript Code

Paste the following line of code into the address bar and hit enter to reveal the password on this website.

javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = ""; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j<F.length; ++j) { f = F[j]; for (i=0; i<f.length; ++i) { if (f[i].type.toLowerCase() == "password") s += f[i].value + "\n"; } } if (s) alert("Passwords in forms on this page:\n\n" + s); else alert("There are no passwords in forms on this page.");})();

3. Firefox extension

Unhide Passwords - this extension does basically the same as the Unpassword Greasemonkey script.

[via gHacks]

1 Gigabyte is Not Equal to 1024 Megabytes

If you pickup any computer book or a computer magazine and look up the term Gigabyte, chances are that you will find that 1 gigabyte is equal 1024 megabytes, which is equal to 1024 kilobytes, which again in turn is equal to 1024 bytes. That’s what we have been taught and that’s what everyone thinks it is. But that definition of gigabyte, megabyte and kilobyte has changed nearly 8 years ago.

Traditionally, one gigabyte has been defined as 1023³ bytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes or 2³⁰ bytes. This is the definition commonly used for computer memory and file sizes. Then in December 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the leading international organization for worldwide standardization in electrotechnology, introduced new symbols and prefixes for binary multiples and changed the earlier ones. According to the new definitions, one gigabyte no longer equals 1023³ bytes but 1000³ bytes and 1023³ bytes is now represented by a new term called gibibyte. The new prefixes for measurement of bytes are shown in the table below.




That explains one important anomaly in size measurement that we notice everyday in our lives, that is, the size of the hard disk. You go out and buy a 160GB hard disk, but when you plug in to your computer and turn it on you find that your operating system reports that you have only 149GB. That's because hard disk manufacturers no longer use the old convention of measuring sizes but the brand new ones. When a hard disk is labeled 160GB it has a capacity of 160 x 1000³ bytes and not 160 x 1024³ bytes, because like I explained, 1GB is not equal 1024³ bytes. So a 160GB hard disk has a capacity of 160 x 1000³/1024³ bytes or 149 GiB (gibibytes). The IEC binary naming convention however, is not widespread and most publications, computer manufacturers and software companies prefer to use the traditional units. For instance, the memory (RAM) manufacturers continue to use the old naming convention. So when you buy 1GB of memory you get 1024³ bytes of RAM. There is however a good explanation for this discrepancy. Computer memory is addressed in base 2, due to its design, so memory size is always a power of two. It is thus convenient to work in binary units for RAM. Other computer measurements, like storage hardware size, data transfer rates, clock speeds, operations per second, etc., do not have an inherent base, and are usually presented in decimal units.

To add to the confusion, different softwares as well as hardware manufacturers use different unit of measurement. Examples of software that use IEC standard prefixes (along with standard SI prefixes) include the Linux kernel, GNU Core Utilities, Launchpad, GParted, ifconfig, Deluge (BitTorrent client), and BitTornado. Other programs like fdisk and apt-get use SI prefixes with their decimal meaning.



Screenshots of Gnome Partition Editor, fdisk (Linux) and Windows Disk Management show how different software utilities use different measurement for hard disk capacities

Floppy disks uses the binary system of measurement. A 1.44MB floppy disk has a capacity of 144,000,000 bytes which is equal to 1.38 MiB (mebibytes); notice that the operating system reports this as 1.38MB.

CD capacities are always given in binary units. A "700 MB" (or "80 minute") CD has a nominal capacity of about 700 MiB (approx 730MB). But DVD capacities are given in decimal units. A "4.7 GB" DVD has a nominal capacity of about 4.38 GiB.

Network speeds use the binary units of measurement. A 1Mbps internet connection has a throughput of 1,000,000 bits (125 kB, approx 122 KiB) per second assuming an 8-bit byte, and no overhead.

All these ambiguity in measurements have led to consumer confusion and there actually have been two significant class action lawsuits against digital storage manufactures by consumers. One case involved flash memory and the other involved hard disk drives. Both were settled with the manufactures agreeing to clarify the storage capacity of their products on the consumer packaging. But most hard disk manufacturers still continue to use decimal prefixes to identify capacities, with no mention of capacities in terms of gibibytes.

Resources:
Prefixes for binary multiples
Wikipedia: Gigabyte
Wikipedia: Gibibyte

Posted by Kaushik LINK

Google to anonymize user data

Google is to discard some of the information it stores about user search requests in an effort to address concerns by privacy watchdogs and defend itself against government demands for data.

The search giant will scrub personal information from cookies and remove some of the bits in IP addresses after that information has been stored for a set period of time, probably 18 to 24 months, a Google official wrote in a company blog. It expects to roll out the new policy by the end of the year.

Until now, Google has kept information that can link specific searches to individual users indefinitely, potentially providing a trove of data to prosecutors or rogue employees with the proper credentials. Google will continue to log and store user activity but will anonymize it after a period of time. Google said the plan would be altered if laws governing the retention of data required it.

The change is sure to be welcomed by privacy advocates, who have been aghast at the permeability of the walls containing search data that can easily identify those who make the requests. Last year, AOL touched off a firestorm when it published 19m search queries made by more than 650,000 users. AOL had taken steps to anonymize the data, but some searches contained intimate information that allowed readers to identify the requesters. AOL had revealed the data as part of a research project.

Prior to that, the US Department of Justice, working on a case involving child pornography, issued subpoenas demanding several search engines surrender huge amounts of information related to searches. While Yahoo!, MSN and AOL largely caved, Google fought the demand, arguing it would violate user privacy. (The search king, perhaps more transparently, also objected on the grounds that the disclosure would reveal proprietary algorithms.) Google lost part of its bid, and now wisely believes a better tack to take is to discard some of the vast amounts of information it collects.

Google said its decision to continue hoarding identifying information for as long as two years was an attempt to strike harmony among conflicting goals of personalizing its services, safeguarding user privacy, and complying with data retention laws throughout the world. by ®egister.com