My low-budget router has just crashed, and there is no way to reset the beast remotely via a network. Never fear – an X10 module, controlled by a web GUI with an Ajax interface, can actuate the mains switch.

Although a couple of scratches are visible, you can read from the backup CD. The question is, for how long? Cdck measures the sector access times to give you an idea. Have you overwritten the bootloader on your disk? Super Grub Disk to the rescue!

Microsoft’s new PowerShell relies on .NET framework libraries and thus has access to a treasure trove of functions and objects. How does PowerShell measure up to traditional shells like Bash?

Application development shouldn’t be a chore. We’ll show you how to simplify the development process with the Ruby programming language and the Glade interface design utility.

SecurID tokens use an authentication system by RSA Security to give the user a valid key for logging onto the target system. A home-grown optical character recognition tool in Perl monitors the key generator.

The people behind Wikipedia have launched the Search Wikia project, which hopes to compete with the major search engines through a mixture of large community and sound financial backing.

More is not always better, especially at the command line. Lean text editors such as nano, JOE, and ee fit Linux novices and experts alike.

An uninterruptible power supply can help get you through a short power outage without losing data or damaging hardware. A Nagios script written in Perl checks UPS health and initiates a controlled powerdown if the unit exhausts its battery capacity.