Give this little application a run..it's a great free replacement for the Windows Media Player. It plays music AND videos. But it really excels at videos, playing all formats (WindowsMedia, Real, Apple QuickTime, Divx etc.) without crashing your system.
VLC Media Player
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Friday, January 21, 2005
A Possible Alternative To Cable / DSL Internet Access
Wireless broadband might break the monopoly stranglehold that the cable and telephone companies have on Internet access. The new competition could lead to lower prices.
Internet and Phone Companies
Plot Wireless-Broadband Push
By JESSE DRUCKER and ALMAR LATOUR
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 20, 2005
Several big Internet and phone companies are moving to provide wireless high-speed access to the Internet -- without phone lines or cable -- challenging the dominance of those traditional connections to millions of U.S. homes and offices.
EarthLink Inc. hopes to be selling this kind of Internet access, known as wireless broadband, in multiple markets across the country by the second half of this year, according to a company executive. Sprint Corp. and MCI Inc. are actively testing the technology, while AT&T Corp. plans to begin deploying it in 2006.
The city of Philadelphia is moving ahead with the nation's largest citywide deployment of the technology know as Wi-Fi and next month will announce details for its plan to blanket the city with cheap wireless Internet access. The reason, city officials have said, is that parts of some neighborhoods haven't been wired for high-speed Internet access via phone or cable lines, and others can't afford it.
These various wireless moves have the potential to yet again shift the balance of power in the rapidly changing U.S. telecommunications industry, giving consumers a potentially cheaper and more flexible alternative to phone and cable lines for Internet access and many other services.
One of the technologies drawing the most attention is WiMAX, which is similar to the popular Wi-Fi standard that millions of people have used to set up wireless networks in their homes but is slated to have a range of several miles. Since WiMAX has yet to be certified, companies are using precursors to the technology.
If the technology takes off, millions of phone and cable customers could cut the wires that tether them to the regulated telecom world. That means being able to surf the Internet and send e-mail at high speeds -- maybe eventually make calls over the Internet -- with a wireless-enabled computer in any room in a house or any outside space covered by the technology. The advantages of portability should be obvious to anyone who remembers when there were no cellphones.
Besides lopping off some wires, wireless broadband could open the door to more competitors. It is expected to become relatively cheap to deploy over time, which could mean lower prices and more options for consumers and businesses.
One disadvantage: The spectrum that Wi-Fi uses is unlicensed and more prone to interference. These plans are different from the so-called 3G cellular networks that wireless companies like Verizon Wireless are rolling out to zap e-mail and video via cellphones.
Before anyone can cut their old cords, however, the technology must clear a number of hurdles. And no one expects to see the telephone companies and cable operators, with their dominance of the Internet-access market, to cede much of that turf easily or soon.
In fact, the Bell companies also are actively testing various wireless services as they rush to dominate an array of emerging technologies like Internet calling. Qwest Communications International Inc. has tested wireless broadband in several markets and plans to roll it out to consumers and businesses in 18 months. Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. have also run advanced trials.
Sprint, for example, has been doing trials of wireless broadband using equipment from Motorola Inc. called "Canopy," in rural markets in North Carolina and Kansas. There, customers receive high-speed Web access wirelessly. Once the wireless broadband services are standardized, "that would allow us to truly compete with a broadband type of application that would compete with cable and DSL providers," says Oliver Valente, Sprint's vice president of technology development. DSL is the most common high-speed technology for Internet access via telephone lines.
Sprint is also looking at offering national WiMAX services, combining its valuable radio-wave spectrum with that of Nextel Communications Inc. The two companies last month announced plans to merge.
Internet and Phone Companies
Plot Wireless-Broadband Push
By JESSE DRUCKER and ALMAR LATOUR
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 20, 2005
Several big Internet and phone companies are moving to provide wireless high-speed access to the Internet -- without phone lines or cable -- challenging the dominance of those traditional connections to millions of U.S. homes and offices.
EarthLink Inc. hopes to be selling this kind of Internet access, known as wireless broadband, in multiple markets across the country by the second half of this year, according to a company executive. Sprint Corp. and MCI Inc. are actively testing the technology, while AT&T Corp. plans to begin deploying it in 2006.
The city of Philadelphia is moving ahead with the nation's largest citywide deployment of the technology know as Wi-Fi and next month will announce details for its plan to blanket the city with cheap wireless Internet access. The reason, city officials have said, is that parts of some neighborhoods haven't been wired for high-speed Internet access via phone or cable lines, and others can't afford it.
These various wireless moves have the potential to yet again shift the balance of power in the rapidly changing U.S. telecommunications industry, giving consumers a potentially cheaper and more flexible alternative to phone and cable lines for Internet access and many other services.
One of the technologies drawing the most attention is WiMAX, which is similar to the popular Wi-Fi standard that millions of people have used to set up wireless networks in their homes but is slated to have a range of several miles. Since WiMAX has yet to be certified, companies are using precursors to the technology.
If the technology takes off, millions of phone and cable customers could cut the wires that tether them to the regulated telecom world. That means being able to surf the Internet and send e-mail at high speeds -- maybe eventually make calls over the Internet -- with a wireless-enabled computer in any room in a house or any outside space covered by the technology. The advantages of portability should be obvious to anyone who remembers when there were no cellphones.
Besides lopping off some wires, wireless broadband could open the door to more competitors. It is expected to become relatively cheap to deploy over time, which could mean lower prices and more options for consumers and businesses.
One disadvantage: The spectrum that Wi-Fi uses is unlicensed and more prone to interference. These plans are different from the so-called 3G cellular networks that wireless companies like Verizon Wireless are rolling out to zap e-mail and video via cellphones.
Before anyone can cut their old cords, however, the technology must clear a number of hurdles. And no one expects to see the telephone companies and cable operators, with their dominance of the Internet-access market, to cede much of that turf easily or soon.
In fact, the Bell companies also are actively testing various wireless services as they rush to dominate an array of emerging technologies like Internet calling. Qwest Communications International Inc. has tested wireless broadband in several markets and plans to roll it out to consumers and businesses in 18 months. Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. have also run advanced trials.
Sprint, for example, has been doing trials of wireless broadband using equipment from Motorola Inc. called "Canopy," in rural markets in North Carolina and Kansas. There, customers receive high-speed Web access wirelessly. Once the wireless broadband services are standardized, "that would allow us to truly compete with a broadband type of application that would compete with cable and DSL providers," says Oliver Valente, Sprint's vice president of technology development. DSL is the most common high-speed technology for Internet access via telephone lines.
Sprint is also looking at offering national WiMAX services, combining its valuable radio-wave spectrum with that of Nextel Communications Inc. The two companies last month announced plans to merge.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Saturday, January 15, 2005
AOL Can Save The Internet
It's fashionable to bash AOL. Anyone who has progressed beyond the newbie stage is expected to move on to other providers. But lately so many people have had their internet experience crippled by spyware, viruses, popups, browser hijacks, and spam, that the "nanny" approach of AOL may be seen as useful again.
AOL offers it's subscribers anti-virus protection, it blocks a lot of spam, employs an effective popup blocker, and restricts spyware. All of this is basically transparent to the AOL user who just wants to use the web wih as little effort as possible. Without the user's knowledge or permission, AOL installs protective software and even disables potentially problematic tools such as the MSN Messenger. The result is a better expereince for the average user who would not be able to manage his PC for himself.
Other ISP's such as Earthlink and MSN are also following this approach.
Of course it's not for everybody. Advanced users are perfectly able to defensively configure their PC's for themselves. But for the average user, having an ISP as a nanny, is not a bad idea.
AOL offers it's subscribers anti-virus protection, it blocks a lot of spam, employs an effective popup blocker, and restricts spyware. All of this is basically transparent to the AOL user who just wants to use the web wih as little effort as possible. Without the user's knowledge or permission, AOL installs protective software and even disables potentially problematic tools such as the MSN Messenger. The result is a better expereince for the average user who would not be able to manage his PC for himself.
Other ISP's such as Earthlink and MSN are also following this approach.
Of course it's not for everybody. Advanced users are perfectly able to defensively configure their PC's for themselves. But for the average user, having an ISP as a nanny, is not a bad idea.
Friday, January 14, 2005
Many Users Are Giving Up On Computers
No More Internet for Them
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 14, 2005
Stephen Seemayer had the first Pong video game system on his block. A decade later, the Echo Park artist was the first in his neighborhood to get a personal computer. And in 1996, he was so inspired by the World Wide Web that he created a series of small paintings for viewing over the Internet.
Now the 50-year-old Seemayer is once again on the cutting edge: Sick of spam clogging his in-box and spyware and viruses crashing his system, Seemayer yanked out his high-speed connection.
"I'm not going to pay for something that I can't use," he said.
A small but growing number of frustrated computer owners are coming to the same conclusion. They're giving up or cutting back their use of the Internet, especially at home, where no corporate tech support team will ride to their rescue.
Instead of making life easier — the essential promise of technologies since the steam engine — the home PC of late has made some users feel stupid, endangered or just hassled beyond reason.
Seemayer's machine, for instance, got so jammed with spam that he stopped checking e-mail. When he surfed the Web, pop-up ads from a piece of spyware he couldn't wipe out spewed sexually explicit images and used so much computing power that the PC would just stop.
"I could be sitting here in the living room reading a book," Seemayer said, "and I'd hear my son scream: 'It froze up on me again!' "
So when his son left for college in September, Seemayer finally unplugged.
Now when he uses his computer, it's to compose letters or organize photos — anything that doesn't require interaction with any other system.
Seemayer is still in the minority. Overall Internet use continues to grow.
But 2004 "was a real turning point in a bad direction," said technology analyst Ted Schadler of Forrester Research. "People are getting really angry. They're angry at Dell and Microsoft and their cable providers, and that's appropriate. They should be."
In a recent survey, 31% of online shoppers said they were buying less than before because of security issues. And though more people are signing up for high-speed, commerce-friendly connections, the proportion of U.S. Internet users paying for things online barely budged in 2004 from a year earlier. It rose to 27% from 26% in 2003 after jumping from 20% the previous year, according to Harris Interactive.
For many, spyware was the last straw. During the last 18 months, the sneaky programs have soared to the top of the list of tech woes, triggering the most tech support calls to Dell Inc., the nation's top PC maker. Spyware lurks on as many as 80% of computers nationwide, according to the National Cyber Security Alliance, a trade group.
Spyware generally transmits information to third parties and sometimes takes control of a PC, usually to display ads. The most pernicious varieties have instructed millions of computers to make expensive toll calls or logged every keystroke on affected machines and sent account numbers and passwords to identity thieves.
No one is immune. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates discovered spyware on his personal machine not long ago.
The aggravation level has reached the point that some in the computer industry believe it threatens to undermine advances of the last decade, during which the Internet has grown from a virtually empty domain to a global community of 800 million souls. They say they need to act before the same early adopters who led mainstream Americans online lead them off.
"If, as an industry, we're not able to provide a safe, reliable computing environment, we do think consumers will get increasingly frustrated," said Michael George, general manager of Dell's U.S. consumer business. "We're concerned, and we want to get to a position where we play an instrumental role in fixing the problem."
It may well be up to private enterprise. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission are exploring a crackdown on spyware, but government efforts to stop another online scourge, spam, have had limited results, as many with an e-mail account will attest.
The root cause of the problems is the open architecture of the Internet, initially inhabited and managed by a collaborative community from government and universities.
"The Internet … grew out of a shielded, nice-guy environment in academia," Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen said. Back then, "the worst abuse might have been sending a prank message. Nowadays, the Net reaches everyone in the industrialized world, including large amounts of people with no shame and large numbers of criminals."
Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system also makes it possible for malicious code to spread, in part because it was designed to allow so many functions. Once a weakness in Windows is discovered by hackers, a virus can wreak havoc on millions of computers before Microsoft can offer a patch — which typical users may not take the initiative to download.
And consumer advocates claim that state and federal laws against spam don't help. Courts have protected software vendors from most consumer lawsuits, and some have held that the companies are all but immunized by warnings buried in lengthy user agreements, those boxes with massive amounts of text with the "I agree" button at the bottom.
Whatever the reasons, the threats have evolved from minor annoyances to serious computer risks.
Gerald Stark, 52, trained on computers in school and in the Navy before starting a small cleaning business in Lisbon Falls, Maine. He figured he could use the Internet to find equipment at a good price, track his sales and organize his volunteer activities with the Boy Scouts.
"I thought that the computer was the way to go because it was so much faster," he said. "It turned out to be a nightmare."
A virus killed one machine. Then spyware infested the next one, wiping out a year's worth of receipt records.
Stark read five years' worth of computer magazines just to keep up with how to defend himself.
Even with two firewalls and antivirus and anti-spyware programs running, Stark stopped looking for new business deals online. He said he would buy only from places he had dealt with before, preferably in the physical world rather than the virtual one.
"I'm not letting my guard down again," Stark said. "Never."
Henry Stiegel didn't think he needed his guard up in the first place. Pressed by his stockbroker and friends, Stiegel got his first home computer in 2003.
"I thought it was going to be like a television set — I'm going to sit right in front of it all day and have some control and learn things, scan for airfare and travel," the former Grumman Aerospace Corp. engineer said from Homosassa, Fla.
Even after studying in computing classes, the 77-year-old Stiegel was swamped by hundreds of viruses, other malicious programs and pop-ups.
"I still have windows I can't delete when I want to get rid of them. When I send an e-mail, I get interrupted and have to start all over," Stiegel said. "I have actually pulled the plug out of the wall so I could reboot."
Stiegel now turns the computer on only two or three times a week, mostly to read his e-mail.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., homemaker Peggy Kasul sits halfway between the anxious newcomers like Stiegel and the jaded old pros like Seemayer.
A computer owner for seven years, Kasul did a little shopping online. Her husband used the machine to help manage some rental property, and her 16-year-old daughter wrote term papers for school.
Then her daughter went on the Internet to research a paper on the issue of breast-feeding in public. As if she had typed in a magic word, spyware ads for porn sites popped up and wouldn't go away.
Soon the computer was unusable. It took more than three weeks and $300 to get the thing working again, by which time all the family's data had been wiped out.
Now Kasul sends her daughter to use the computers at school or the library.
"I don't do much shopping online anymore because that scares me," Kasul said. "I go to the store."
The biggest factor behind the rapid increase in spyware is the amount of money at stake. Ads for such blue-chip companies as Motorola Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. appear in spyware programs.
The businesses most often accused of distributing spyware, including privately held Claria Corp., WhenU Inc. and 180Solutions Inc., say they are providing legitimate "adware" services to customers who approved the installation. But their disclosures are often misleading or buried: A recent Claria license ran for more than 60 electronic pages, first mentioning the phrase "pop-up" on page 18.
Much spyware arrives bundled with programs such as screensavers and file-sharing software.
"The part that worries me most is the tremendous amount of money that can be made by tricking people into installing junk on their computers," said Ben Edelman, a Harvard graduate student who has testified against spyware companies. "It's a great business."
The defenses remain scattered. Windows PCs often don't come with antivirus software installed. Firewalls and spam blockers are usually separate too, and there are dozens of small companies offering what they describe as anti-spyware products — some of which are actually fronts that install spyware.
"Staying safe online has gotten too complicated for the average user to do by buying individual products and making them work together," America Online spokesman Andrew Weinstein said.
Realizing that such fragmentation is making matters worse, some companies are rounding up the pieces of a more complete resistance.
Microsoft recently bought both an antivirus company and an anti-spyware software maker. Time Warner's latest version of AOL checks for spyware and offers to delete it. And where Dell's online guide for configuring a PC used to suggest a combined antivirus and firewall program without saying why, it now explicitly warns buyers to protect themselves or face potentially costly problems in the future.
Legislation that would have required more direct warnings by spyware companies to consumers and ensured that users could delete the programs made headway in the last session of Congress, despite objections from top computer-security company Symantec Corp. and other software providers. Ari Schwartz, an anti-spyware lobbyist with the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, put the odds of some legislation passing in 2005 at better than 80%.
The FTC last fall filed its first case against spyware companies accused of using a security flaw in Internet Explorer to cram system-glutting programs into the machines of website visitors. The companies named were Seismic Entertainment Productions Inc. and SmartBot.net Inc. But current fraud laws allow regulators only to recover ill-gotten gains — no matter how much damage the bad guys have inflicted.
Enacting new federal bills "would be helpful," said Lydia Parnes, acting director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. Spyware "needs to be understandable to consumers, and it needs to be presented in a way that's kind of visible to them."
Even if a strong law passes, Parnes said she didn't know whether the average computer user would be any better off in three years.
If it's worse, Seemayer probably won't be the only one on his block with a PC cut off from the Internet.
"It's great for anything you can do on your own," he said. "It seems to me an incredible typewriter — and that's it."
Fed up over problems stemming from viruses and spyware, some computer users are giving up or curbing their use of the Web.
By Joseph MennLos Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 14, 2005
Stephen Seemayer had the first Pong video game system on his block. A decade later, the Echo Park artist was the first in his neighborhood to get a personal computer. And in 1996, he was so inspired by the World Wide Web that he created a series of small paintings for viewing over the Internet.
Now the 50-year-old Seemayer is once again on the cutting edge: Sick of spam clogging his in-box and spyware and viruses crashing his system, Seemayer yanked out his high-speed connection.
"I'm not going to pay for something that I can't use," he said.
A small but growing number of frustrated computer owners are coming to the same conclusion. They're giving up or cutting back their use of the Internet, especially at home, where no corporate tech support team will ride to their rescue.
Instead of making life easier — the essential promise of technologies since the steam engine — the home PC of late has made some users feel stupid, endangered or just hassled beyond reason.
Seemayer's machine, for instance, got so jammed with spam that he stopped checking e-mail. When he surfed the Web, pop-up ads from a piece of spyware he couldn't wipe out spewed sexually explicit images and used so much computing power that the PC would just stop.
"I could be sitting here in the living room reading a book," Seemayer said, "and I'd hear my son scream: 'It froze up on me again!' "
So when his son left for college in September, Seemayer finally unplugged.
Now when he uses his computer, it's to compose letters or organize photos — anything that doesn't require interaction with any other system.
Seemayer is still in the minority. Overall Internet use continues to grow.
But 2004 "was a real turning point in a bad direction," said technology analyst Ted Schadler of Forrester Research. "People are getting really angry. They're angry at Dell and Microsoft and their cable providers, and that's appropriate. They should be."
In a recent survey, 31% of online shoppers said they were buying less than before because of security issues. And though more people are signing up for high-speed, commerce-friendly connections, the proportion of U.S. Internet users paying for things online barely budged in 2004 from a year earlier. It rose to 27% from 26% in 2003 after jumping from 20% the previous year, according to Harris Interactive.
For many, spyware was the last straw. During the last 18 months, the sneaky programs have soared to the top of the list of tech woes, triggering the most tech support calls to Dell Inc., the nation's top PC maker. Spyware lurks on as many as 80% of computers nationwide, according to the National Cyber Security Alliance, a trade group.
Spyware generally transmits information to third parties and sometimes takes control of a PC, usually to display ads. The most pernicious varieties have instructed millions of computers to make expensive toll calls or logged every keystroke on affected machines and sent account numbers and passwords to identity thieves.
No one is immune. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates discovered spyware on his personal machine not long ago.
The aggravation level has reached the point that some in the computer industry believe it threatens to undermine advances of the last decade, during which the Internet has grown from a virtually empty domain to a global community of 800 million souls. They say they need to act before the same early adopters who led mainstream Americans online lead them off.
"If, as an industry, we're not able to provide a safe, reliable computing environment, we do think consumers will get increasingly frustrated," said Michael George, general manager of Dell's U.S. consumer business. "We're concerned, and we want to get to a position where we play an instrumental role in fixing the problem."
It may well be up to private enterprise. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission are exploring a crackdown on spyware, but government efforts to stop another online scourge, spam, have had limited results, as many with an e-mail account will attest.
The root cause of the problems is the open architecture of the Internet, initially inhabited and managed by a collaborative community from government and universities.
"The Internet … grew out of a shielded, nice-guy environment in academia," Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen said. Back then, "the worst abuse might have been sending a prank message. Nowadays, the Net reaches everyone in the industrialized world, including large amounts of people with no shame and large numbers of criminals."
Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system also makes it possible for malicious code to spread, in part because it was designed to allow so many functions. Once a weakness in Windows is discovered by hackers, a virus can wreak havoc on millions of computers before Microsoft can offer a patch — which typical users may not take the initiative to download.
And consumer advocates claim that state and federal laws against spam don't help. Courts have protected software vendors from most consumer lawsuits, and some have held that the companies are all but immunized by warnings buried in lengthy user agreements, those boxes with massive amounts of text with the "I agree" button at the bottom.
Whatever the reasons, the threats have evolved from minor annoyances to serious computer risks.
Gerald Stark, 52, trained on computers in school and in the Navy before starting a small cleaning business in Lisbon Falls, Maine. He figured he could use the Internet to find equipment at a good price, track his sales and organize his volunteer activities with the Boy Scouts.
"I thought that the computer was the way to go because it was so much faster," he said. "It turned out to be a nightmare."
A virus killed one machine. Then spyware infested the next one, wiping out a year's worth of receipt records.
Stark read five years' worth of computer magazines just to keep up with how to defend himself.
Even with two firewalls and antivirus and anti-spyware programs running, Stark stopped looking for new business deals online. He said he would buy only from places he had dealt with before, preferably in the physical world rather than the virtual one.
"I'm not letting my guard down again," Stark said. "Never."
Henry Stiegel didn't think he needed his guard up in the first place. Pressed by his stockbroker and friends, Stiegel got his first home computer in 2003.
"I thought it was going to be like a television set — I'm going to sit right in front of it all day and have some control and learn things, scan for airfare and travel," the former Grumman Aerospace Corp. engineer said from Homosassa, Fla.
Even after studying in computing classes, the 77-year-old Stiegel was swamped by hundreds of viruses, other malicious programs and pop-ups.
"I still have windows I can't delete when I want to get rid of them. When I send an e-mail, I get interrupted and have to start all over," Stiegel said. "I have actually pulled the plug out of the wall so I could reboot."
Stiegel now turns the computer on only two or three times a week, mostly to read his e-mail.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., homemaker Peggy Kasul sits halfway between the anxious newcomers like Stiegel and the jaded old pros like Seemayer.
A computer owner for seven years, Kasul did a little shopping online. Her husband used the machine to help manage some rental property, and her 16-year-old daughter wrote term papers for school.
Then her daughter went on the Internet to research a paper on the issue of breast-feeding in public. As if she had typed in a magic word, spyware ads for porn sites popped up and wouldn't go away.
Soon the computer was unusable. It took more than three weeks and $300 to get the thing working again, by which time all the family's data had been wiped out.
Now Kasul sends her daughter to use the computers at school or the library.
"I don't do much shopping online anymore because that scares me," Kasul said. "I go to the store."
The biggest factor behind the rapid increase in spyware is the amount of money at stake. Ads for such blue-chip companies as Motorola Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. appear in spyware programs.
The businesses most often accused of distributing spyware, including privately held Claria Corp., WhenU Inc. and 180Solutions Inc., say they are providing legitimate "adware" services to customers who approved the installation. But their disclosures are often misleading or buried: A recent Claria license ran for more than 60 electronic pages, first mentioning the phrase "pop-up" on page 18.
Much spyware arrives bundled with programs such as screensavers and file-sharing software.
"The part that worries me most is the tremendous amount of money that can be made by tricking people into installing junk on their computers," said Ben Edelman, a Harvard graduate student who has testified against spyware companies. "It's a great business."
The defenses remain scattered. Windows PCs often don't come with antivirus software installed. Firewalls and spam blockers are usually separate too, and there are dozens of small companies offering what they describe as anti-spyware products — some of which are actually fronts that install spyware.
"Staying safe online has gotten too complicated for the average user to do by buying individual products and making them work together," America Online spokesman Andrew Weinstein said.
Realizing that such fragmentation is making matters worse, some companies are rounding up the pieces of a more complete resistance.
Microsoft recently bought both an antivirus company and an anti-spyware software maker. Time Warner's latest version of AOL checks for spyware and offers to delete it. And where Dell's online guide for configuring a PC used to suggest a combined antivirus and firewall program without saying why, it now explicitly warns buyers to protect themselves or face potentially costly problems in the future.
Legislation that would have required more direct warnings by spyware companies to consumers and ensured that users could delete the programs made headway in the last session of Congress, despite objections from top computer-security company Symantec Corp. and other software providers. Ari Schwartz, an anti-spyware lobbyist with the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, put the odds of some legislation passing in 2005 at better than 80%.
The FTC last fall filed its first case against spyware companies accused of using a security flaw in Internet Explorer to cram system-glutting programs into the machines of website visitors. The companies named were Seismic Entertainment Productions Inc. and SmartBot.net Inc. But current fraud laws allow regulators only to recover ill-gotten gains — no matter how much damage the bad guys have inflicted.
Enacting new federal bills "would be helpful," said Lydia Parnes, acting director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. Spyware "needs to be understandable to consumers, and it needs to be presented in a way that's kind of visible to them."
Even if a strong law passes, Parnes said she didn't know whether the average computer user would be any better off in three years.
If it's worse, Seemayer probably won't be the only one on his block with a PC cut off from the Internet.
"It's great for anything you can do on your own," he said. "It seems to me an incredible typewriter — and that's it."
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Buying A New PC
Most people buy "too much PC". In other words, they load up on features and functionality that they will never use. Before buying a PC one should carefully think about what you are going to use the PC for. Most people are only going to surf the web, do email, and maybe burn the occasional CD. For most buyers there is no need to get the "latest and greatest". There is only one exception to this rule: buy as much memory as you can afford. Memory drives the PC's performance and it's relatively cheap now. I recommend a minimum of 512 MB of memory. In the following article the author gives some excellent suggetions for PC buying.
There are plenty of good, inexpensive computers on the market, and buying one doesn't have to be an exercise in frustration. For as little as $600, you can get a perfectly good system to handle the basics - word processing, Web browsing, e-mail and financial record-keeping. For a few hundred dollars more, you'll get a system that's fine for digital photography, music and other forms of entertainment.
Just remember that PCs are a lot like cars - they start off with basic equipment and add options. And just like a car, a PC has a sticker - on the shelf or the side of the box - that tells you exactly what's under the hood. If you order online, you can often build your own sticker.
So let's get down to details and discuss what you'll see on that sticker - so you can decide exactly how much PC to buy.
MICROPROCESSOR: Also known as the Central Processing Unit or CPU, the microprocessor is the heart of a computer - the chip that does the computing. The faster and more sophisticated the processor, the better a PC will run - within limits.
If your PC usage is limited to the basics, the fastest processor on the market won't do it much better than the slowest. On the other hand, if you're shopping for a serious gamer or budding video producer, a fast CPU is definitely worth the expense.
Processors are labeled by manufacturer, model and speed - measured in gigahertz, or billions of cycles per second.
Intel has the lion's share of the Windows CPU market. Its flagship processor is the Pentium 4, but many entry-level PCs use the lower-end Celeron.
To confuse things in time for Christmas, Intel has relabeled its Pentium line with three-digit model numbers that take into account factors other than pure clock speed. These include the chip's architecture, the size of the on-board memory cache, and the speed of the front-side "bus," which carries data between the CPU and other key components.
This has made life harder for shoppers, especially when Intel's Web site says that "processor numbers are ... not a measurement of performance." Luckily, most manufacturers still mention processor speed in advertising and on stickers.
Intel's main competitors are AMD Athlon 64 and Athlon XP chips, which are roughly equivalent to higher and lower levels of the P4. Athlons are compatible with Intel chips, so it doesn't matter which manufacturer's CPU you buy if they're within the same performance range.
P4 chips run faster than Athlons, but Athlons get more work done with each clock cycle, so you can't compare that directly. Athlon uses chip numbers, which are roughly multiples of the equivalent Intel clock speed. So an Intel P4 running at 3.2 GHz and an Athlon XP 3200 will provide similar performance.
For basic PC use, even a Celeron in the 2-GHz range will do fine. If you're interested in multimedia, games, or digital video, go with a P4 in the 2.8- to 3.2-GHz range or equivalent Athlon. You'll pay a stiff premium for faster chips, so unless you're a crazed gamer or you're willing to pay for bragging rights, stay away from the fastest CPUs.
MEMORY: Often referred to collectively as RAM (random access memory), these chips store programs and data when the PC is running. Their capacity is measured in megabytes (MB), or millions of bytes. With more memory, your PC can run multiple programs with less effort and a smaller chance of crashing. Get a minimum of 256 megabytes and 512 MB if you can afford it. Serious digital photographers and video buffs may want more.
Most computers use a type of RAM known as DDR (double data rate). More advanced machines use something called dual channel memory, known as DDR2. You might notice the difference if you're a power freak.
HARD DISK STORAGE: Often confused with RAM, your computer's hard drive stores programs and data permanently - and constantly feeds and retrieves data from the CPU when the machine is turned on. Hard drive capacity is measured in gigabytes, or billions of bytes. You want a drive that's big enough to hold all your stuff and fast enough to move around without slowing down the machine's operation.
Luckily, hard disk storage is dirt cheap. For general-purpose computing, 40 gigabytes is fine, while an 80-gig drive will store plenty of music and photos. But if you're into video, look for at least 160 gigabytes. For the best multimedia performance, look for a drive labeled Ultra-ATA 133, or even better, one that uses the new Serial ATA standard (you'll pay for it).
VIDEO: Your computer's video circuitry produces the image on the monitor. For basic computing, whatever comes with the PC is likely to be fine. Lower-end machines generally use Intel video circuitry built into the main circuit board. This setup usually "shares" part of the computer's main memory, which might degrade performance. Avoid it if you're interested in serious digital photography, video or gaming.
For better performance, look for video circuitry from nVidia, ATI or another major manufacturer, with at least 128 megabytes of dedicated video RAM. If it's inside, the sticker will say so. A good video card with decoding software built in can also give you smoother playback with DVD movies.
CD/DVD: All computers have some variety of a compact disk-based drive, or two. They're used universally to install new software, and increasingly to back up data and create music or video disks.
At the very least, make sure your computer has a CD/RW drive, which can read data disks, play audio CDs, and create both types of media. A DVD-ROM can play CDs and commercial movie DVDs, which use much higher capacity disks. If you or your favorite student wants to watch movies on a PC (very big in college dorm rooms), look for a PC with both types of drives, or a combination drive known as a DVD-CD/RW, which can play DVD movies as well as read and write standard CDs.
To create movies on DVD, you'll need a DVD writer, which will add $100 to $150 to the cost of a system. They're easier to use and more reliable than last year's, but DVD writers are still troubled by competing industry standards and buggy software. But they'll handle reading and writing to CDs and DVDs. For maximum compatibility with external DVD players, look for a drive that can handle DVD+RW and DVD-RW formats.
SOUND: Since PCs have become entertainment centers, most arrive with decent audio circuitry for playing audio CDs or digital music files stored on the PC. But if you're an audiophile, a music producer or a gamer who wants the latest Dolby 5.1, surround-sound home theater reproduction, look for a computer with Creative Sound Blaster or Turtle Beach sound technology.
Low-end machines, and even those with higher price tags, often come with tiny, two-speaker systems. If you're serious about audio, consider buying a three-speaker setup with a subwoofer for music or a five-speaker system for games and home theater sound.
Oh, yes. If you buy a teenager a speaker system, don't forget headphones with an extension cord. Then you can tell him to turn the speakers off when the house starts trembling.
PORTS: The back of a computer can be a confusing place, because that's where most manufacturers put the "ports," or receptacles for gadgets that plug into the PC, including the keyboard, mouse, printers, scanners, cable modem and so forth.
Most peripherals, including digital cameras and music players, hook up to the PC through Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports. More USB ports are better - some PCs come with as many as eight. But look for one that has USB, headphone and other multimedia ports on the front panel - it's much more convenient than crawling behind the PC to plug stuff in.
One item that's not standard equipment on all PCs is the IEEE 1394 port, also known as FireWire. This is the port that digital camcorders require - so if you're going to edit digital videos, make sure the PC has at least one.
CARD READERS: The hot built-in this year is a multicard reader that accepts the flash memory cards used by digital cameras and music players, making it easy to copy photos and other material to your computer without special software. While it's convenient, a card reader, or lack of one, shouldn't be a deal breaker. You can buy a card reader that plugs into a USB port for as little as $20.
MONITOR: Flat panel, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have taken over the monitor market everywhere but the low end. Using the same technology as laptop screens, they're only a couple of inches thick, so they occupy a fraction of the front-to-back room of a monitor based on a cathode ray tube (CRT). Flat panels also use a lot less electricity than CRTs and look much cooler.
An LCD screen will add from $100 to $500 to the price of a system, depending on the size - larger LCDs are far more expensive than smaller models. Bargain systems with LCDs usually offer 15-inch screens, which might be a bit small for older eyes. So it might be worth upgrading to a 17-inch screen, or a 19-inch monitor if you're feeling flush.
Flat panels vary greatly in quality. Look for one that has good brightness and contrast controls that work - and make sure the brightness doesn't drop off a cliff when you view the screen from an angle.
Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun
Be not dismayed; good buys are out there for PC shoppers
Mike Himowitz
|
|
Just remember that PCs are a lot like cars - they start off with basic equipment and add options. And just like a car, a PC has a sticker - on the shelf or the side of the box - that tells you exactly what's under the hood. If you order online, you can often build your own sticker.
So let's get down to details and discuss what you'll see on that sticker - so you can decide exactly how much PC to buy.
If your PC usage is limited to the basics, the fastest processor on the market won't do it much better than the slowest. On the other hand, if you're shopping for a serious gamer or budding video producer, a fast CPU is definitely worth the expense.
Processors are labeled by manufacturer, model and speed - measured in gigahertz, or billions of cycles per second.
Intel has the lion's share of the Windows CPU market. Its flagship processor is the Pentium 4, but many entry-level PCs use the lower-end Celeron.
To confuse things in time for Christmas, Intel has relabeled its Pentium line with three-digit model numbers that take into account factors other than pure clock speed. These include the chip's architecture, the size of the on-board memory cache, and the speed of the front-side "bus," which carries data between the CPU and other key components.
This has made life harder for shoppers, especially when Intel's Web site says that "processor numbers are ... not a measurement of performance." Luckily, most manufacturers still mention processor speed in advertising and on stickers.
Intel's main competitors are AMD Athlon 64 and Athlon XP chips, which are roughly equivalent to higher and lower levels of the P4. Athlons are compatible with Intel chips, so it doesn't matter which manufacturer's CPU you buy if they're within the same performance range.
P4 chips run faster than Athlons, but Athlons get more work done with each clock cycle, so you can't compare that directly. Athlon uses chip numbers, which are roughly multiples of the equivalent Intel clock speed. So an Intel P4 running at 3.2 GHz and an Athlon XP 3200 will provide similar performance.
For basic PC use, even a Celeron in the 2-GHz range will do fine. If you're interested in multimedia, games, or digital video, go with a P4 in the 2.8- to 3.2-GHz range or equivalent Athlon. You'll pay a stiff premium for faster chips, so unless you're a crazed gamer or you're willing to pay for bragging rights, stay away from the fastest CPUs.
Most computers use a type of RAM known as DDR (double data rate). More advanced machines use something called dual channel memory, known as DDR2. You might notice the difference if you're a power freak.
Luckily, hard disk storage is dirt cheap. For general-purpose computing, 40 gigabytes is fine, while an 80-gig drive will store plenty of music and photos. But if you're into video, look for at least 160 gigabytes. For the best multimedia performance, look for a drive labeled Ultra-ATA 133, or even better, one that uses the new Serial ATA standard (you'll pay for it).
For better performance, look for video circuitry from nVidia, ATI or another major manufacturer, with at least 128 megabytes of dedicated video RAM. If it's inside, the sticker will say so. A good video card with decoding software built in can also give you smoother playback with DVD movies.
At the very least, make sure your computer has a CD/RW drive, which can read data disks, play audio CDs, and create both types of media. A DVD-ROM can play CDs and commercial movie DVDs, which use much higher capacity disks. If you or your favorite student wants to watch movies on a PC (very big in college dorm rooms), look for a PC with both types of drives, or a combination drive known as a DVD-CD/RW, which can play DVD movies as well as read and write standard CDs.
To create movies on DVD, you'll need a DVD writer, which will add $100 to $150 to the cost of a system. They're easier to use and more reliable than last year's, but DVD writers are still troubled by competing industry standards and buggy software. But they'll handle reading and writing to CDs and DVDs. For maximum compatibility with external DVD players, look for a drive that can handle DVD+RW and DVD-RW formats.
Low-end machines, and even those with higher price tags, often come with tiny, two-speaker systems. If you're serious about audio, consider buying a three-speaker setup with a subwoofer for music or a five-speaker system for games and home theater sound.
Oh, yes. If you buy a teenager a speaker system, don't forget headphones with an extension cord. Then you can tell him to turn the speakers off when the house starts trembling.
Most peripherals, including digital cameras and music players, hook up to the PC through Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports. More USB ports are better - some PCs come with as many as eight. But look for one that has USB, headphone and other multimedia ports on the front panel - it's much more convenient than crawling behind the PC to plug stuff in.
One item that's not standard equipment on all PCs is the IEEE 1394 port, also known as FireWire. This is the port that digital camcorders require - so if you're going to edit digital videos, make sure the PC has at least one.
An LCD screen will add from $100 to $500 to the price of a system, depending on the size - larger LCDs are far more expensive than smaller models. Bargain systems with LCDs usually offer 15-inch screens, which might be a bit small for older eyes. So it might be worth upgrading to a 17-inch screen, or a 19-inch monitor if you're feeling flush.
Flat panels vary greatly in quality. Look for one that has good brightness and contrast controls that work - and make sure the brightness doesn't drop off a cliff when you view the screen from an angle.
Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Borrow Your Neighbor's WiFi
If you don't abuse it, your neighbor won't even notice that you dipped into his stream of WiFi data.
How To Steal Wi-Fi
And how to keep the neighbors from stealing yours.
By Paul Boutin
When I moved into a new neighborhood last week, I expected the usual hassles. Then I found out I'd have to wait more than a month for a DSL line. I started convulsing. If I don't have Net access for even one day, I can't do my job. So, what was I supposed to do? There's an Internet café on the next block, but they close early. I had no choice—it was time to start sneaking on to my neighbors' home networks.
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109941/
How To Steal Wi-Fi
And how to keep the neighbors from stealing yours.
By Paul Boutin
When I moved into a new neighborhood last week, I expected the usual hassles. Then I found out I'd have to wait more than a month for a DSL line. I started convulsing. If I don't have Net access for even one day, I can't do my job. So, what was I supposed to do? There's an Internet café on the next block, but they close early. I had no choice—it was time to start sneaking on to my neighbors' home networks.
Every techie I know says that you shouldn't use other people's networks without permission. Every techie I know does it anyway. If you're going to steal—no, let's say borrow—your neighbor's Wi-Fi access, you might as well do it right. Step one: Lose the guilt. The FCC told me that they don't know of any federal or state laws that make it illegal to log on to an open network. Using someone's connection to check your e-mail isn't like hacking into their bank account. It's more like you're borrowing a cup of sugar. (Unless you hog their bandwidth by watching lots of streaming video—that's like hijacking a sugar truck.)
In the end, it's your neighbor's Internet service provider—not your neighbor—who will pay for the added traffic, and the ISP has already factored a small amount of line-sharing into their price plan. It is true that your surfing could cause the folks next door to break their service contract—many broadband providers do specifically forbid home customers from sharing a connection. But let's deal with those abstract ethical issues later—you have important mail to answer!
If you want to find a Wi-Fi network, don't start by looking on the sidewalk for chalk marks. "Warchalking," a technique for writing symbols in public places to alert neighbors to nearby wireless access points, is a cool concept that's been undermined by the fact that no one has ever used it. The best method to find some free wireless is to treat your laptop like a cell phone. Since Wi-Fi and cell phone signals travel on a similar radio frequency, the same tricks you use for getting a better phone connection might work on your computer. Sit near a window, since Wi-Fi signals travel better through glass than through solid walls. Stay away from metal objects. Pay close attention to your laptop's orientation—rotating your machine just a few degrees could help you pick up a network that you couldn't see before. Raise your laptop over your head, put it flat on the floor, tilt it sideways while leaning halfway out the window—get out the divining rod if you have to. You might get a reputation for being some sick laptop yoga freak, but isn't free Internet worth it?
If you live downtown or in a suburb where the houses are close together, a few minutes of laptop gymnastics will probably reveal several Wi-Fi networks. Certain names are a giveaway that a network probably won't be password-protected. Look for "linksys," "default," "Wireless," "NETGEAR," "belkin54g," and "Apple Network 0273df." These are the default network names for the most popular wireless routers. If a network owner hasn't taken the time to change the default name, that's a good clue that they probably won't have a password either. You should also look for signs of hacker culture. Since hackers love giving away Net access, an all-lowercase name like "hackdojo" is most likely an invitation to log on. On the other hand, a name in all caps is typically a network under corporate lockdown.
If you do get prompted for a password, try "public"—that's the default on many of Apple's AirPort units. You can also try common passwords like "admin," "password," and "1234"—or just check out this exhaustive list of default passwords. You should also try using the name of the network in the password space. A generic password could mean that the network's owner didn't have the sense to pick something less obvious or that they've decided to welcome outsiders. But who cares? You're in. And again, there's no specific law barring you from guessing the password, as long as you don't crack an encrypted network and read other people's transmissions.
You can tell that you've successfully joined a wireless network when your laptop's IP address changes as it's assigned a local number by the network's router. To watch it happen on a PC, keep the Network control panel in Windows open; if you have an Apple notebook, look at the Network section of the System Preferences program. (And if you're running Linux, I don't need to tell you where to look.) Once your laptop has an IP address, your next hurdle is getting DNS to work. DNS stands for Domain Name Service—it's what translates Internet domains like "slate.com" into IP addresses like 207.46.141.216. On most networks, DNS works automatically. But if you get a browser error like "Cannot find server," go back to your network menus and configure your laptop to use a public name server—144.162.120.230 in Dallas, for instance.
Once DNS is working, you should be good to go. While you should be able to surf the Web with no problems, you may have trouble sending mail from Outlook or other desktop programs because of restrictions on e-mail routing that have been set up to stop spammers. If you have problems, just use a Web-based mail service like Hotmail or Gmail instead.
Keep in mind that the neighbors may not be thrilled that you're sharing the line. One guy next door to my new building shut off his network the day after I moved in, probably because he got spooked by all those blinking LEDs on his router. Even neighbors who are happy to share may see you in a different light if they check their router's URL logs and find a few hundred hits on porn sites. While your browsing will show up under an anonymous address, the short range of Wi-Fi means that they'll at least be able to figure out that one of the laptop owners within 100 feet of their living room is a stuffed animal fetishist. (As a San Franciscan, I need to point out that a stuffed animal fetish is perfectly normal. It's your neighbors who have the problem.)
Since everyone isn't as eager to share their network as I am, it's only fair to explain that there's an incredibly easy way to keep neighbors and drive-by geeks off your network. All you have to do is set a password that isn't as obvious as "1234." There's an eye-glazing list of Wi-Fi security measures you can implement to block overachieving Russian teens from monitoring your keystrokes, but in real life the only people sniffing your wireless signal are jerks like me who need a place to log on until the phone company wires the apartment. An unguessable password sends as clear a message as a shot of Mace: Go find a Starbucks, creep.
Clarification, Nov. 22, 2004: There are some laws that could be used to charge you with unauthorized computer use, but my legal sources say that because there are so many networks left open to the public on purpose, it would be tough for an individual to make the legal case that their intent was to keep everyone off their network if it's not password-protected. If you stick to surfing the Web and not other people's PCs, you'll probably be safe from prosecution.
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109941/
A Review Of Desktop Search Programs
Now it's possible to find those lost files, tunes, emails etc. The reviewer gave the highest marks to Copernic.
Keeper Finders
Five new programs that let you search your hard drive without having a seizure.
By Paul Boutin
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111643/
Links
Copernic
Google Desktop Search
MSN Desktop Search
HotBot Desktop Search
Ask Jeeves Desktop Search
Keeper Finders
Five new programs that let you search your hard drive without having a seizure.
By Paul Boutin
I can find anything online in under a minute, but it takes me days to find an e-mail address on my PC. Lucky for me, the leading Web search companies are falling all over themselves to create free programs that dig through your hard drive. Google, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, and MSN have all released desktop search programs in the past few months. (Slate and MSN are both owned by Microsoft.) AOL's application, which is based on software from a company called Copernic, is now in customer trials, and Yahoo will join the fray early in 2005.
Desktop search applications work a lot like the search function that's already built into the Windows Start Menu, but they're much quicker. They're also smarter about sifting through your e-mail, music files, browser history, and other special data formats. You probably won't find all the Steely Dan songs in your iTunes library or every PDF with the phrase "owner's manual" using the Windows search. If you use the right desktop search application, it's a snap.
How's it possible to make searching through files on your desktop as painless as finding results on the Web? Memorize the contents of the hard drive in advance. In simplest terms, a desktop search program works by pre-scanning files on your computer—e-mail messages, Web pages in your browser's cache, spreadsheets, etc.—and compiling a list of the words and phrases it finds. (Depending on the program, the initial indexing process can sideline your computer for anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours.) This index of your hard disk's contents gets stored as a compact file or folder that's optimized for fast access. When you punch in a term like "invoice," you'll get results in a fraction of a second because the program already knows every file to look in.
Since running more than one of these programs at once will slow your computer to a crawl, I installed each of the five applications separately and then went hunting for representative data: e-mail messages and attachments, phone numbers, instant messages, PowerPoint presentations, MP3s, photos, PDF and PostScript files, Web pages, and Word and Quark files. Speed and accuracy weren't an issue for any of these programs even on a minimally equipped PC, so I evaluated each program based on the following criteria:
Interface: Is it a stand-alone application, a browser-based tool, or does it just add search bars to your screen? Since different users prefer different approaches, what matters most is how well the chosen interface works.
What can it search? Every program I tested does full-text searches of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files and e-mail. Most of them search music, image, and video files, as well as Web bookmarks. But if you want to look through e-mail attachments, instant messages, your browser history, and non-Microsoft-Office files—or if you use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer—the field narrows quickly.
Best feature(s): What distinguishes the program from the rest of the pack?
Worst feature(s): What's the most frustrating thing about the program?
The results, from worst to best:
Interface: A stand-alone application with a simple layout that doesn't flicker or reshuffle. Compared to its competitors, Jeeves is easy to understand and relaxing to use.What can it search? Not enough. Jeeves does full-text searches of Microsoft Office files, Outlook messages, and multimedia files but doesn't search browser cache, instant messages, Outlook Express e-mail, or Outlook mail attachments. Even worse, it doesn't let you work around its limitations by adding new file types or folders manually. Jeeves also thumbs its nose at customization, limiting users to two indexing options: You can scan either the My Documents and Desktop folders or the entire disk, nothing in between.
Best features: Listing search results in tabbed categories like "Pictures," "Office Documents," and "Internet Bookmarks" makes it easy to eyeball what kind of files you've found. A preview pane also shows you the first few lines from Word files and a few other types, so you needn't waste time opening them.
Worst feature: Can't add new file types.
Grade: D. Although it's easy to use, Ask Jeeves won't let you search as many files as the competition. The best thing I can say about Jeeves is that adding file types is easier than what they've already accomplished—building a great user interface. Jeeves will become a front-runner if it adds more data types in the near future, but for now it misses too much stuff you'll want to search.
Interface: An Internet Explorer add-in along the lines of the Google toolbar. When you type in a search term, the results are displayed in a sidebar that slides in from the left edge of the browser.What does it search? HotBot won't index image, music, and movie files or e-mail attachments. On the plus side, it does full-text searches of PDF files, RSS feeds, and the Internet Explorer history and joins MSN as the only program to index Outlook calendar entries, events, and notes. HotBot also lets you add oddball and custom file types—pretty much anything other than .JPG, .GIF, .MP3, or .MOV. You can also specify which folders on your disk to index or to ignore.
Best feature: You can choose separate indexing schedules for e-mail, RSS feeds, Web history, and anything else to minimize the amount of time HotBot spends crawling over your hard disk.
Worst feature: Too many important files—e-mail attachments, pictures, movies, music—aren't searchable, even by file name.
Grade: C. The HotBot Desktop is the only entry other than Copernic that doesn't call itself an unfinished "beta" release, but it still feels like a work in progress. It gets a low grade because it doesn't index attachments or music files and is full of little annoyances like a restriction on scheduling the e-mail index to update more than once an hour. HotBot developers say these restrictions were necessary to minimize the program's processor and disk space usage. I would have preferred to make those decisions myself.
Interface: Browser-based search and results pages that look like the Google Web site you know and love.What can it search? Google can index your AOL Instant Messenger sessions as you type, so you can search them later without having to save each one to a file manually. It also reads your browser cache (if you use Internet Explorer), Outlook attachments, and Outlook Express e-mail. It won't search Outlook Express attachments or contacts, PDF file contents, or, surprisingly, your Gmail account.
Best features: Desktop search results can be included at the top of Google Web searches just like headlines from Google News. Browser history results include Web page thumbnails. Privacy lovers can exclude specific folders and remove individual results from the index. And unlike the competition, store and search Web history pages from the secure servers used for online banking and e-commerce transactions.
Worst features: There's no way to manually add folders to be indexed. It appears that Google restricts searches to your personal folders.
Grade: C+. Google's desktop program has been plagued by questions about security problems that could let remote hackers search your PC. But the real problem here is that you can't search your entire PC. The program not only restricts searches to a preset list of folders, but it also won't match partial filenames. Google's desktop search is perhaps the least geek-friendly of the bunch, save Ask Jeeves. It doesn't have any of the special search syntax ("paul NOT boutin") or smart results sorting that Google's Web search is known for. If your photos have names like paul001.jpg, paul023.jpg, searching for "paul" or "paul*" won't turn up anything. If you don't know a wayward file's exact name, or if it's hiding in some backwater of your disk, you're simply out of luck.
Interface: Adds search boxes to the Windows taskbar, Internet Explorer, and Outlook. Searches from the taskbar pop up a special window; searches from IE and Outlook show up inside the application window.What can it search? Outlook calendar, events, and notes, Microsoft OneNote files, MSN chats, and Hotmail accounts (via Outlook Express). Oddly, it won't search your Internet Explorer history.
Best features: The taskbar search box shows results while you're still typing, with impressive speed. Command-line fans can use advanced query syntax such as "author:Josh OR author:Mark" to refine searches.
Worst feature: MSN doesn't let you add new file types like PostScript or Quark files.
Grade: B. If Outlook is your life, this is your search tool. While the number and variety of windows almost sent me crying for Ask Jeeves, MSN's search finds much more data than most everyone else. The multiple search bars and results screens it adds to your desktop and applications can be annoying, but it's not that hard to turn off the ones you don't like. MSN would probably get an A if it searched more stuff.
Interface: A standalone application that also adds a search box to the Windows taskbar. It looks similar to Ask Jeeves but doesn't have the handy tabbed results summary at the top of the screen, nor will it let you search every data type at once. The preview pane displays a wide range of file types and will automatically scroll to and highlight the location of your search terms within a file or message.What can it search? Any file type you add using its Advanced Options settings, in any folder you want. It's also the only program that will search Firefox browser histories and bookmarks, not just Internet Explorer.
Best features: You can add extra file types and folders to the index without any of the other programs' restrictions. The search box supports Boolean phrases ("Slate NOT Webhead"), and its graphical interface has options to refine results, such as e-mail headers ("From: Josh, Subject: deadline") or date ranges ("from July 29 to November 2, 2004"). Much of the index can be updated in real time as files are changed and new messages arrive, rather than at scheduled intervals.
Worst feature: You have to click through each category of results ("Emails," "Bookmarks," "History") separately, rather than being able to see all of them at once. If it only listed the number of results for each category, like Ask Jeeves and Google, you'd instantly know which categories to bother clicking on.
Grade: A. Copernic has almost as many configuration options as the rest put together but lacks some of the best features of the lesser tools: Jeeves' all-categories-at-once search and tabbed results, Google's live AIM indexing and Web page thumbnails, MSN's advanced search syntax and index of Outlook info, and HotBot's RSS search. Still, Copernic finds more than any other desktop search and gives you control over how it indexes your computer. Search Engine Watch has confirmed that AOL's still-under-wraps desktop search is "powered by Copernic," but you can download Copernic for free right now without joining AOL. At the price, it's one heck of a deal.
Paul Boutin is a Silicon Valley writer who spent 15 years as a software engineer and manager.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111643/
Links
Copernic
Google Desktop Search
MSN Desktop Search
HotBot Desktop Search
Ask Jeeves Desktop Search
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Tools To Make Your Hard Drive Forget It's past
Text of New York Times Article
By RACHEL DODES
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
December 30, 2004
Tools to Make Your Hard Drive Forget Its Past
|
|
PAPER AND PEN Make a list of all hardware components, software registration codes, and tech support phone numbers for your Internet service provider and computer maker, just in case you encounter problems when you rebuild your system.
SOFTWARE DISCS If you do not have the original discs for all of your software, make sure you burn copies for reinstallation later. If you do not have the Windows installation discs that came with your computer, you will have to buy them ($300 for the full Windows XP program; $80 for an update) or contact the computer maker to get new ones; sometimes there is a fee.
STORAGE DISCS Writeable DVD's, CD's or any other form of storage media can be used to create a second backup of your files. If you are using DVD's, make sure that the format (DVD+R or DVD-R) is compatible with your own burner or the system on which you will be doing the burning.
CD OR DVD BURNER Use this to back up everything onto a disc. Zip drives will also work, but because of Zip discs' smaller storage capacity (250 megabytes), it will take much longer to save an extensive music collection.
EXTERNAL STORAGE UNIT If you will be using a second PC to burn backup discs of your files, an external storage unit can be an intermediary. Either a keychain drive or an MP3 player will do. (If you are on a network this is unnecessary - just save your files to a networked folder.) BACKUP PROGRAM After you rebuild your system, use a backup program. Norton Ghost ($70) features scheduled incremental hard-drive backups so you can restore to an earlier point if it gets re-infected. I.B.M. users have the luxury of Rapid Restore, which does the same thing. (If you have an older I.B.M. model, you can download this free at www.pc.ibm.com/us/think/thinkvantagetech.html).
SECURITY SOFTWARE Lead a virtuous virtual life: make sure that when you get back online, you are operating with a firewall and updated anti-virus software, or this whole effort will be in vain. Personal security packages, which include anti-virus and a firewall, generally cost $70 to $100. Brands include Zone Alarm (www.zonelabs.com), Norton (www.symantec.com) and McAfee (www.mcafee.com). An external router is also recommended, especially if you are conducting any business transactions on your PC; good ones cost less than $100.
A SHOULDER TO CRY ON A tech-savvy friend is an invaluable resource should anything go dreadfully awry. Rachel Dodes
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Friday, December 31, 2004
Another Firefox Rave
Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal tends to limit his recommendations to mainstream products. But Walt breaks out and highly endorses the upstart Firefox web browser over Microsft's Internet Explorer.
PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
December 30, 2004
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser is one of the most important, and most often used, programs on the world's personal computers, relied upon by more than 90% of Windows users. But Microsoft hasn't made any important functional improvements in Internet Explorer for years.
The software giant has folded IE into the Windows operating system, and the browser only receives updates as part of the "Windows update" process. In recent years, most upgrades to IE have been under-the-hood patches to plug the many security holes that have made IE a major conduit for hackers, virus writers and spyware purveyors. The only visible feature added to IE recently: a pop-up ad blocker, which arrived long after other browsers had one.
Meanwhile, other people have been building much better browsers, just as Microsoft itself did in the 1990s, when it challenged and eventually bested the then-dominant browser, Netscape Navigator. The most significant of these challengers is Firefox, a free product of an open-source organization called Mozilla, available for download at www.mozilla.org1. Firefox is both more secure and more modern than IE, and it comes packed with user-friendly features the Microsoft browser can't touch.
Firefox still has a tiny market share. But millions of people have downloaded it recently. I've been using it for months, and I recommended back in September that users switch to it from IE as a security measure. It's available in nearly identical versions for Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and the Linux operating system.
There are some other browsers that put IE to shame. Apple's elegant Safari browser, included free on every Mac, is one. But it isn't available for Windows. The Opera browser is loaded with bells and whistles, but I find it pretty complicated. And NetCaptor, my former favorite, is very nice. But since it's based on the IE Web-browsing engine, it's vulnerable to most of IE's security problems.
Firefox, which uses a different underlying browsing engine called "Gecko," also has a couple of close cousins based on the same engine. One is Netscape, now owned by America Online. The other is a browser called Mozilla, from the same group that created Firefox. But Firefox is smaller, sleeker and newer than either of its relatives, although a new Netscape version is in the works.
Firefox isn't totally secure -- no browser can be, especially if it runs on Windows, which has major security problems and is the world's top digital target. But Firefox has better security and privacy than IE. One big reason is that it won't run programs called "ActiveX controls," a Microsoft technology used in IE. These programs are used for many good things, but they have become such powerful tools for criminals and hackers that their potential for harm outweighs their benefits.
Firefox also has easier, quicker and clearer methods than IE does for covering your online tracks, if you so choose. And it has a better built-in pop-up ad blocker than IE.
But my favorite aspect of Firefox is tabbed browsing, a Web-surfing revolution that is shared by all the major new browsers but is absent from IE. With tabbed browsing, you can open many Web pages at once in the same browser window. Each is accessed by a tab.
The benefits of tabbed browsing hit home when you create folders of related bookmarks. For instance, on my computer I have a folder of a dozen technology-news bookmarks and another 20 or so bookmarks pointing to political Web sites. A third folder contains 15 or so bookmarks for sites devoted to the World Champion Boston Red Sox. With one click, I can open the entire contents of these folders in tabs, in the same single window, allowing me to survey entire fields of interest.
And Firefox can recognize and use Web sites that employ a new technology called "RSS" to create and update summaries of their contents. When Firefox encounters an RSS site, it displays a special icon that allows you to create a "live" bookmark to the site. These bookmarks then display updated headlines of stories on the sites.
Firefox also includes a permanent, handy search box that can be used to type in searches on Google, Yahoo, Amazon or other search sites without installing a special toolbar.
And it has a cool feature called "Extensions." These are small add-on modules, easy to download and install, that give the browser new features. Among the extensions I use are one that automatically fills out forms and another that tests the speed of my Web connection. You can also download "themes," which change the browser's looks.
There is only one significant downside to Firefox. Some Web sites, especially financial ones, have chosen to tailor themselves specifically for Internet Explorer. They rely on features only present in IE, and either won't work or work poorly in Firefox and other browsers.
Luckily, even if you switch to Firefox, you can still keep IE around to view just these incompatible sites. (In fact, Microsoft makes it impossible to fully uninstall IE.) There's even an extension for Firefox that adds an option called "View This Page in IE."
So Firefox is my current choice of a Windows Web browser. It is to IE in 2004 what IE was to Netscape in 1996 -- the upstart that does a better job.
PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
December 30, 2004
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser is one of the most important, and most often used, programs on the world's personal computers, relied upon by more than 90% of Windows users. But Microsoft hasn't made any important functional improvements in Internet Explorer for years.
The software giant has folded IE into the Windows operating system, and the browser only receives updates as part of the "Windows update" process. In recent years, most upgrades to IE have been under-the-hood patches to plug the many security holes that have made IE a major conduit for hackers, virus writers and spyware purveyors. The only visible feature added to IE recently: a pop-up ad blocker, which arrived long after other browsers had one.
Meanwhile, other people have been building much better browsers, just as Microsoft itself did in the 1990s, when it challenged and eventually bested the then-dominant browser, Netscape Navigator. The most significant of these challengers is Firefox, a free product of an open-source organization called Mozilla, available for download at www.mozilla.org1. Firefox is both more secure and more modern than IE, and it comes packed with user-friendly features the Microsoft browser can't touch.
Firefox still has a tiny market share. But millions of people have downloaded it recently. I've been using it for months, and I recommended back in September that users switch to it from IE as a security measure. It's available in nearly identical versions for Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and the Linux operating system.
There are some other browsers that put IE to shame. Apple's elegant Safari browser, included free on every Mac, is one. But it isn't available for Windows. The Opera browser is loaded with bells and whistles, but I find it pretty complicated. And NetCaptor, my former favorite, is very nice. But since it's based on the IE Web-browsing engine, it's vulnerable to most of IE's security problems.
Firefox, which uses a different underlying browsing engine called "Gecko," also has a couple of close cousins based on the same engine. One is Netscape, now owned by America Online. The other is a browser called Mozilla, from the same group that created Firefox. But Firefox is smaller, sleeker and newer than either of its relatives, although a new Netscape version is in the works.
Firefox isn't totally secure -- no browser can be, especially if it runs on Windows, which has major security problems and is the world's top digital target. But Firefox has better security and privacy than IE. One big reason is that it won't run programs called "ActiveX controls," a Microsoft technology used in IE. These programs are used for many good things, but they have become such powerful tools for criminals and hackers that their potential for harm outweighs their benefits.
Firefox also has easier, quicker and clearer methods than IE does for covering your online tracks, if you so choose. And it has a better built-in pop-up ad blocker than IE.
But my favorite aspect of Firefox is tabbed browsing, a Web-surfing revolution that is shared by all the major new browsers but is absent from IE. With tabbed browsing, you can open many Web pages at once in the same browser window. Each is accessed by a tab.
The benefits of tabbed browsing hit home when you create folders of related bookmarks. For instance, on my computer I have a folder of a dozen technology-news bookmarks and another 20 or so bookmarks pointing to political Web sites. A third folder contains 15 or so bookmarks for sites devoted to the World Champion Boston Red Sox. With one click, I can open the entire contents of these folders in tabs, in the same single window, allowing me to survey entire fields of interest.
And Firefox can recognize and use Web sites that employ a new technology called "RSS" to create and update summaries of their contents. When Firefox encounters an RSS site, it displays a special icon that allows you to create a "live" bookmark to the site. These bookmarks then display updated headlines of stories on the sites.
Firefox also includes a permanent, handy search box that can be used to type in searches on Google, Yahoo, Amazon or other search sites without installing a special toolbar.
And it has a cool feature called "Extensions." These are small add-on modules, easy to download and install, that give the browser new features. Among the extensions I use are one that automatically fills out forms and another that tests the speed of my Web connection. You can also download "themes," which change the browser's looks.
There is only one significant downside to Firefox. Some Web sites, especially financial ones, have chosen to tailor themselves specifically for Internet Explorer. They rely on features only present in IE, and either won't work or work poorly in Firefox and other browsers.
Luckily, even if you switch to Firefox, you can still keep IE around to view just these incompatible sites. (In fact, Microsoft makes it impossible to fully uninstall IE.) There's even an extension for Firefox that adds an option called "View This Page in IE."
So Firefox is my current choice of a Windows Web browser. It is to IE in 2004 what IE was to Netscape in 1996 -- the upstart that does a better job.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
How Fast Is Your Internet Connection?
See if you are getting the connection speed that your Internet Service Provider promised. I really like the University of Michigan Speedtest. More tests casn also be found at Broadband Reports.
An Account of Spyware Removal
This is how one woman solved her spyware problem...she did a clean reinstall of Windows XP. A lighthearted account of this (sometimes necessary) process.
By RACHEL DODES
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
December 30, 2004
Terminating Spyware With Extreme Prejudice
|
|
Sure, it was a drastic move, but my two-year-old I.B.M. ThinkPad - equipped with a 1,000-megahertz Pentium III processor, a high-speed Internet connection and 256 megabytes of memory - was running about as fast as the Apple IIE I used in the mid-80's.
After six months engaged in mortal combat with spyware - parasitic software that tracks your browsing habits, sends out pop-up ads and can even send your private information to an organized crime ring in Guam - I had two options: shell out $1,200 for a new ThinkPad, or wipe my hard drive and start from scratch - a huge production with potentially cataclysmic results.
Since I enjoy new challenges (and more important, since I lack the funds to buy a new laptop), I decided to shoot for the moon and delete, delete, delete.
It did not have to be this way. I can trace the decline of my computer's performance to an ill-advised download over the summer. In a pop-music-induced frenzy, I am embarrassed to admit, I went to www.kazaa.com, downloaded and installed the free file-sharing service, then proceeded to download (a k a steal) Britney Spears's and Madonna's collaborative effort, "Me Against the Music."
I was about to get my karmic retribution.
In downloading Kazaa, I had inadvertently opened the floodgates to all manner of spyware. By the end of the summer, even after I had deleted Kazaa and installed Norton AntiVirus 2004 - which took care of the virus-related part of the problem - I was unable to open Internet Explorer without being deluged with pop-ups enticing me to buy everything from herbal weight-loss pills to obscure business publications.
My home page would mysteriously try to redirect itself to a site called badgurl.grandstreetinteractive.com. Little gray dialog boxes would pop up in the center of my screen to inform me, shockingly, that my computer might be infected with spyware. Then it would crash.
Spyware is "definitely the most annoying problem," said Tim Lordan, staff director of the nonprofit Internet Education Foundation, which joined with Dell Computer this year to mount a spyware awareness campaign (www.getnetwise.com). Spyware is also ubiquitous: in October, a study by America Online and the nonprofit National Cyber Security Alliance found that 80 percent of computers were infected with it.
As my frustration mounted, I sought the advice of fellow spyware sufferers. My friend Jesse, a lawyer at a large New York firm, told me he was forced to wipe his hard drive when his Dell Latitude laptop transmogrified into a purveyor of pornography advertisements. He sheepishly confessed that against his better judgment, he had downloaded a virus- and spyware-addled copy of the Paris Hilton sex video.
"I contracted a sexually transmitted computer virus from Paris Hilton," said Jesse, who requested that his last name not be printed. (He feared his law firm - and his wife - would not be too happy about the download.) "It was chronic."
Downloading dubious files is a surefire way to get spyware, but it can also be transmitted through seemingly innocuous e-mail, by clicking on a banner ad, or from wholesome Web surfing. The programs install themselves in several places on your computer, making it difficult to find and delete them.
What's worse, even if you do delete them, many are programmed to reinstall themselves automatically when the computer is rebooted.
What really distinguishes spyware from other computer security threats (viruses, worms and Trojans) is that it often seems to defy the products meant to exorcise it. McAfee introduced an anti-spyware program - aptly called McAfee AntiSpyware - in February, but it has met with mixed reviews.
Symantec, the maker of Norton security software, will release its first anti-spyware product early in the new year. (Norton AntiVirus can detect some forms of spyware, but cannot get rid of it.) Microsoft also announced that it would release new anti-spyware software by the end of January.
For now, though, computing experts recommend what they call a "multilayered approach" - translation: ad hoc, complicated and largely ineffective.
I tried everything the experts suggested. I switched my default browser from Internet Explorer - the target of most spyware programmers - to Mozilla Firefox (available free at www.mozilla.org) and downloaded and ran free expert-sanctioned software with all sorts of renegade names (CWShredder, Spyware Search & Destroy, AdAware and HijackThis).
I submitted my "HijackThis log" - a three-page list of potentially dubious files - to a reputable online help forum and, following the experts' advice, manually performed a perilous bit of surgery on my computer's vital organs, deleting several keys from its Windows registry.
The pop-ups continued unabated. A Norton AntiVirus scan informed me that despite my efforts, 77 spyware programs were still lurking on my hard drive. (Before this daylong production, I had more than 100 pieces of spyware on my computer, so indeed, it was an improvement.)
Erasing my hard drive, long considered a last-ditch measure, was becoming more and more appealing with each passing virus scan. My friend the bankruptcy lawyer finally convinced me: "The catharsis cannot be understated."
He recommended I talk to his friend Larry Wagner, an independent technology consultant who has become a self-styled sherpa in hard-drive erasure. At last count, he had helped six other people (including his in-laws, his parents, a colleague from work and my friend) deal with spyware problems. Mr. Wagner is particularly enthusiastic about deleting - and upon hearing my sordid tale, requested that I wipe my hard drive under his auspices.
"It's like a baptism for your computer," Mr. Wagner said. "You cannot truly live a good life until you've taken that first step."
I arrived at Mr. Wagner's Upper West Side apartment on a December evening with my laptop, a list of my computer's components, my original Windows XP Pro installation discs, a 20-gigabyte
It is important to note that some computers, including my own, contain a hidden, manufacturer-installed hard drive "partition," which houses operating system software that can be deployed in an emergency. But since not all computers have this feature, I chose to use the XP installation disks instead. (Some people will want to upgrade their operating system in the process - from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, for example - which requires installation disks anyway.)
The first thing Mr. Wagner and I did, since my computer lacked a CD or DVD burner, was to save everything to an external hard drive. (You can buy a plug-and-play keychain drive for $20 to $250, depending on how much storage you want, but an MP3 player also doubles as a nice portable hard drive.) I decided to use my iPod, which was only half full.
I simply plugged it into my laptop (it shows up as an "E" drive under My Computer), and copied onto it all of the files contained in My Documents, My Pictures and My Music. I then transferred the contents of my iPod to Mr. Wagner's desktop, on which we created a folder called Backup. The process took about 90 minutes.
Then, using Mr. Wagner's DVD burner, I saved the entire Backup folder onto a five-gigabyte DVD. (If you are not so lucky as to know someone with a DVD burner, you can do the same thing using a regular CD burner and several CD's, which typically hold about 700 megabytes each, or many, many Zip disks, which hold 250 megabytes each.) I could have simply kept my files on the iPod or another external hard drive and transferred them back to my pristine hard drive after the procedure was over, but it would have been riskier, and I would have ended up with no backup discs.
Now I had a backup of everything. Make that two: Mr. Wagner believes in what he refers to as "Noah's archiving," saving two copies of everything, just in case.
Then I took a deep breath, toasted the New Year, and inserted the XP Pro CD-ROM installation disks into my own computer. My computer asked me if I wanted to reformat my hard drive (yes), and warned me that if I continued all files would be deleted (good). It took about an hour for XP to reformat my hard drive and install itself, and I just sat back and watched while the screens became progressively more colorful.
When my computer rebooted, it had total amnesia. It was like the Kate Winslet character in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," who has brain surgery to erase the memories of a painful relationship. My computer asked me to enter my time zone, country and type of Internet connection I would be using (LAN, dialup, etc.). It thanked me for buying an I.B.M. and asked if I wanted to register my product. (I said I would do it later.)
Now that I had a clean slate, I went online and downloaded all of the XP patches and updates from Microsoft's Web site (windowsupdate.microsoft.com). I made sure I connected to the Internet using an external router with a built-in firewall - after all this, I did not want spyware to sully my pristine hard drive.
I plugged my computer into Mr. Wagner's network, and downloaded all of the necessary Microsoft updates, including Service Pack 2, and restarted my computer. This step took about 40 minutes. Now it was 12:30 a.m., so I thanked Mr. Wagner for his help and went home.
The following morning, I was ready to reinstall all of my software. In keeping with the hypervigilant theme, I started with Norton AntiVirus. After installing it, restarting, and scanning my computer, I was elated to discover I had a clean bill of health. Not a rogue program in sight!
Emboldened by this development, I reinstalled all of my programs - Microsoft Office, iTunes, FinalDraft - and all of my external components, like my printer, camera, CD burner and iPod. Fortunately, I had all of my software discs and their necessary registration codes in a file cabinet next to my desk. The drivers for the external components were not even needed because XP can recognize just about anything and procure the necessary driver online.
The software installations took about eight hours over the course of two days, and involved downloading certain things, like Adobe Reader and Mozilla Firefox, from the Web. Between each installation, I restarted my computer, which made this process annoying and time-consuming. (For those who have tons of software, the prospect of reinstalling everything might be worse than the idea of peacefully coexisting with spyware.)
Finally, it was time to upload all of my saved files. I plugged in my iPod, and just for good measure, deleted "Me Against the Music" from my music library before putting my songs back on iTunes. After all, it's almost 2005, and I did not want any ill-gotten gains to taint my perfect computer.
Two weeks later, still no spyware. Yes, it was a huge production, but after struggling with spyware for the last six months, I have to say it was well worth it.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Amazon Customer Support Telephone Number
Amazon.com refuses to put it's customer support telephone number on it's website. This link contains the number.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Monday, December 27, 2004
Clean Software
This site hosts links to many categories of no cost software that are supposedly free of adware, spyware etc. Cleansoftware.org
Monday, December 20, 2004
DVD Player / Recorder Buying Gude
Tech Buying Guide: DVD Players and Recorders
Washington Post
Tuesday, December 7, 2004; 3:31 PM
Washington Post
Tuesday, December 7, 2004; 3:31 PM
DVD players: Buying a DVD player shouldn't be a problem these days, but understanding all the features crammed into it may be.
Almost all the under-$100 models you'll see in stores pack in former top-of-the-line extras such as progressive-scan output -- plug the player into a high-definition television with the right cables and you'll get a notably sharper picture -- and MP3 compatibility, meaning they can play MP3 files that you've burned to CD with a computer (many DVD players also support Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format). Photo support is almost as widespread; look for a "JPEG" label on the front, short for the Joint Photographic Experts Group standard that defines digital pictures, and you'll know that the player will display photo files on data CDs—handy for the next time you want to show off vacation pictures to friends.
If you're an audiophile or suspect you might become one, look for three different higher-fi standards. HDCD (High Definition Compact Disc) support brings out some extra details in compatible CDs. SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc) is a would-be-successor to the CD format; if you've bought a remastered Rolling Stones album lately, you already own an SACD (those discs include an SACD layer and a regular CD layer for existing players). Last, and least relevant, there's DVD-Audio, which allegedly offers the same ultra-high-fidelity sound as SACD, but which has had a slower start. (Both SACD and DVD-Audio have gone approximately nowhere in the non-audiophile market, which is why these details aren't worth losing sleep over.)
DVD recorders: Some DVD players can also record. This year, prices of DVD recorders plummeted through the $300 barrier, but this particular market remains in the grip of one of the most senseless format wars ever. There are still three largely incompatible rewriteable formats around: DVD-RW, DVD-RAM and DVD+RW.
I'm puzzled as to why. Two of the three formats suffer major defects: DVD-RAM offers the most flexible recording options (almost like a disc-based version of TiVo), but can't be played on almost all existing DVD players, while DVD-RW doesn't allow easy editing or erasing of discs (unless you select a special recording mode that makes them about as unplayable on older DVD hardware as DVD-RAM). DVD+RW isn't perfect, but it does let you erase one recording among others on a disc without wiping the entire disc, and it should work in almost all DVD players made since 2000 or so. (If you don't need to re-record on a disc, there are only two standards to choose from; both DVD-R and DVD+R should work quite well.)
Bonus features to look for on a DVD recorder: A hard disk drive for short-term time-shifting, and an "IR blaster" that mimics the remote control units for your cable and satellite boxes, allowing you to program recordings.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Another Guide To Safer Computing
New Computer? Six Steps to Safer Surfing
By Rob Pegoraro
Washington Post
Sunday, December 19, 2004;
To see the e-mail I get every day from readers about security issues is to develop a deep discomfort with the state of computing today. Keeping a Windows PC safe can demand a high degree of vigilance -- if cars needed the same constant care and feeding, the Beltway would revert to a country byway.
And yet all these attacks by viruses, worms, spyware and browser hijackers could have been prevented with some initial effort. It's completely feasible to put a computer on the Internet -- even one running Windows, the most attacked, least secure operating system around -- and never suffer a single successful attack.
Here's what to do to make that possible, starting -- as many people will this week -- when you take it out of the box and plug it in. Most of these steps apply only to Windows, but some pertain to Mac OS X as well.
Step one is to barricade your Internet connection with a firewall. Without this, network worms such as Blaster can try to sneak onto your computer the instant it goes online, even if you don't run a single Internet program.
On any Windows XP machine running Microsoft's Service Pack 2 update, a firewall should be on already. (If a new Windows computer doesn't have SP2, as evidenced by a Security Center control panel, take it back to the store -- there's no excuse for that not to be preinstalled.) On an older Windows machine, open the Network Connections control panel, right-click the icon for your connection, click the Advanced tab and click the checkbox under Internet Connection Firewall.
On a Mac, the built-in firewall must be switched on: Open the System Preferences window, select the Sharing category and then click the Firewall tab.
Step two is to download and install every security patch available. Don't do anything else online until the process concludes. In Windows, select Windows Update from the Start Menu's All Programs listing; in Mac OS X, select Software Update from the Apple-icon menu. Then set your computer to download future fixes automatically (you should need to do this only in pre-SP2 versions of Windows XP, where you'd open the System control panel and click the Automatic Updates tab).
The next three steps apply only to Windows; Mac users can skip ahead.
Step three is to activate and update the antivirus software on your computer. Most new PCs include only 90 days of updates, after which your protection will evaporate -- without a rap sheet on the latest viruses, your antivirus software can't identify them. Find out when your free coverage will end, then make a note in your calendar to renew your subscription before then. (If paying $20 or so for a year of virus protection bugs you, try repairing an infection.)
Step four is to update three core Internet programs, since older versions can suffer from security flaws. Get the latest versions of Microsoft's Windows Media Player (www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/), RealNetworks' RealPlayer (www.real.com) and Sun Microsystems' Java software (www.java.com).
Step five is a big one: Download the free Mozilla Firefox Web browser (www.mozilla.org) and use that instead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer whenever possible. Firefox is not only simpler and more convenient than Internet Explorer, it's also much more secure -- since it's not hooked so tightly into Windows, it can't act as a transmission belt for viruses. And by not running Microsoft's ActiveX software, Firefox blocks a common route for spyware.
One thing you don't need to worry about on the Web -- contrary to what some security programs suggest -- is browser cookies. These small, inert text files are placed on your computer by most Web sites to customize your use of them; for example, The Post's site uses cookies to store registration info. These site-specific cookies are harmless.
Other, "third-party" cookies are set by ad networks to track ad viewership across multiple sites. They also pose no security threat. They do raise some privacy issues, but they can be easily blocked by any new browser without impeding your Web use. In either case, fretting over the nonexistent threat of cookies is a pointless distraction.
The sixth and last step is to use the most effective security mechanism ever invented, the human brain. In two words, be skeptical. Don't open unexpected e-mail attachments -- even if they come from a friend's e-mail address, since viruses scour infected PCs for e-mail addresses to impersonate. If you get an e-mail allegedly from your bank, ignore any links in it; log in by typing the bank's address into your browser yourself.
Most important, think twice about adding new, unknown software. What makes a program trustworthy? If a computer-savvy friend or a trusted publication says it's safe, that helps. If the program is available as "open source," meaning its programming code is free for anyone to inspect, that's another selling point.
If, after all these precautions, a malicious program does find its way onto your computer, Windows users can try using the System Restore utility to reset the computer to an older configuration (go to the Start Menu, select All Programs, then scroll up to the Accessories folder, then select its System Tools sub-folder). You can also limit the ability of other people to install software by giving them separate user accounts with limited access rights (select the Users system-preferences pane on a Mac, the User Accounts control panel on Windows).
But there is no replacement, on any computer, for common-sense caution, the same thing that keeps people safe in the face of far worse dangers in the real world
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
A Guide To Safe Computing
In this CNET article Bruce Schneir provides some excellent suggestions for keeping your computer safe.
By Bruce Schneier
I am regularly asked what average Internet users can do to ensure their security. My first answer is usually, "Nothing--you're screwed." 
Who says safe computing must remain a pipe dream?
I am regularly asked what average Internet users can do to ensure their security. My first answer is usually, "Nothing--you're screwed."
But that's not true, and the reality is more complicated. You're screwed if you do nothing to protect yourself, but there are many things you can do to increase your security on the Internet.
Two years ago, I published a list of PC security recommendations. The idea was to give home users concrete actions they could take to improve security. This is an update of that list: a dozen things you can do to improve your security.
General
Turn off the computer when you're not using it, especially if you have an "always on" Internet connection.
Laptop security
Keep your laptop with you at all times when not at home; treat it as you would a wallet or purse. Regularly purge unneeded data files from your laptop. The same goes for PDAs. People tend to store more personal data--including passwords and PINs--on PDAs than they do on laptops.
Backups
Back up regularly. Back up to disk, tape or CD-ROM. There's a lot you can't defend against; a recent backup will at least let you recover from an attack. Store at least one set of backups off-site (a safe-deposit box is a good place) and at least one set on-site. Remember to destroy old backups. The best way to destroy CD-Rs is to microwave them on high for five seconds. You can also break them in half or run them through better shredders.
Operating systems
If possible, don't use Microsoft Windows. Buy a Macintosh or use Linux. If you must use Windows, set up Automatic Update so that you automatically receive security patches. And delete the files "command.com" and "cmd.exe."
Applications
Limit the number of applications on your machine. If you don't need it, don't install it. If you no longer need it, uninstall it. Look into one of the free office suites as an alternative to Microsoft Office. Regularly check for updates to the applications you use and install them. Keeping your applications patched is important, but don't lose sleep over it.
Browsing
Don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer, period. Limit use of cookies and applets to those few sites that provide services you need. Set your browser to regularly delete cookies. Don't assume a Web site is what it claims to be, unless you've typed in the URL yourself. Make sure the address bar shows the exact address, not a near-miss.
Web sites
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption does not provide any assurance that the vendor is trustworthy or that its database of customer information is secure.
Think before you do business with a Web site. Limit the financial and personal data you send to Web sites--don't give out information unless you see a value to you. If you don't want to give out personal information, lie. Opt out of marketing notices. If the Web site gives you the option of not storing your information for later use, take it. Use a credit card for online purchases, not a debit card.
Passwords
You can't memorize good enough passwords any more, so don't bother. For high-security Web sites such as banks, create long random passwords and write them down. Guard them as you would your cash: i.e., store them in your wallet, etc.
I'm suspicious to the point of near-paranoia about e-mail attachments and Web sites.
Never reuse a password for something you care about. (It's fine to have a single password for low-security sites, such as for newspaper archive access.) Assume that all PINs can be easily broken and plan accordingly.
Never type a password you care about, such as for a bank account, into a non-SSL encrypted page. If your bank makes it possible to do that, complain to them. When they tell you that it is OK, don't believe them; they're wrong.
E-mail
Turn off HTML e-mail. Don't automatically assume that any e-mail is from the "From" address.
Delete spam without reading it. Don't open messages with file attachments, unless you know what they contain; immediately delete them. Don't open cartoons, videos and similar "good for a laugh" files forwarded by your well-meaning friends; again, immediately delete them.
Never click links in e-mail unless you're sure about the e-mail; copy and paste the link into your browser instead. Don't use Outlook or Outlook Express. If you must use Microsoft Office, enable macro virus protection; in Office 2000, turn the security level to "high" and don't trust any received files unless you have to. If you're using Windows, turn off the "hide file extensions for known file types" option; it lets Trojan horses masquerade as other types of files. Uninstall the Windows Scripting Host if you can get along without it. If you can't, at least change your file associations, so that script files aren't automatically sent to the Scripting Host if you double-click them.
Antivirus and anti-spyware software
Use it--either a combined program or two separate programs. Download and install the updates, at least weekly and whenever you read about a new virus in the news. Some antivirus products automatically check for updates. Enable that feature and set it to "daily."
Firewall
Spend $50 for a Network Address Translator firewall device; it's likely to be good enough in default mode. On your laptop, use personal firewall software. If you can, hide your IP address. There's no reason to allow any incoming connections from anybody.
Encryption
Install an e-mail and file encryptor (like PGP). Encrypting all your e-mail or your entire hard drive is unrealistic, but some mail is too sensitive to send in the clear. Similarly, some files on your hard drive are too sensitive to leave unencrypted.
If the secret police wants to target your data or your communications, no countermeasure on this list will stop them.
None of the measures I've described are foolproof. If the secret police wants to target your data or your communications, no countermeasure on this list will stop them. But these precautions are all good network-hygiene measures, and they'll make you a more difficult target than the computer next door. And even if you only follow a few basic measures, you're unlikely to have any problems. I'm stuck using Microsoft Windows and Office, but I use Opera for Web browsing and Eudora for e-mail. I use Windows Update to automatically get patches and install other patches when I hear about them. My antivirus software updates itself regularly. I keep my computer relatively clean and delete applications that I don't need. I'm diligent about backing up my data and about storing data files that are no longer needed offline.
I'm suspicious to the point of near-paranoia about e-mail attachments and Web sites. I delete cookies and spyware. I watch URLs to make sure I know where I am, and I don't trust unsolicited e-mails. I don't care about low-security passwords, but try to have good passwords for accounts that involve money. I still don't do Internet banking. I have my firewall set to deny all incoming connections. And I turn my computer off when I'm not using it.
That's basically it. Really, it's not that hard. The hardest part is developing an intuition about e-mail and Web sites. But that just takes experience.
Copyright ©1995-2004 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
Monday, November 22, 2004
Google Versus Microsoft
Google is changing the computing paradigm. Their release of applications such as Gmail and the Google Desktop Search Tool, coupled with their purchase of companies such as Blogger and Picassa, show their intent to render the operating sytem irrelevant. The message: you can get all of your work done on any kind of PC. A Google alliance with Mozilla Firefox further erodes the erstwhile Microsoft dominance.
Associated Press
Google Muscles Into Microsoft's Turf
Monday November 22, 1:54 am ET
By Allison Linn, AP Business Writer
Google Muscles Into Microsoft's Turf, Rolling Out New Products, Including Computer Desktop
Associated Press
Google Muscles Into Microsoft's Turf
Monday November 22, 1:54 am ET
By Allison Linn, AP Business Writer
|
|
SEATTLE (AP) -- Not too long ago, Google Inc. seemed little more than a pesky insect to Microsoft Corp.'s 800-pound gorilla. No more. As Google rapidly rolls out new products, the company best known for its wildly popular search engine is muscling into the software giant's turf, including its stronghold: the computer desktop.
Analysts say Google's aggressive ambitions could pose a formidable threat to Microsoft because it gets to the heart of what drives Microsoft's dominance: its control of the user experience through the Windows operating system.
If successful, Google could help refashion computing, making people less reliant on storing information on the Microsoft-powered PC on their desk and more dependent on free Web-based e-mail and search functions that can be accessed anywhere from any device regardless of the operating system.
Under such circumstances, the risk for Microsoft is that the computer desktop as we know it could cease to exist, said David Garrity, an analyst with Caris & Co. The question, Garrity said, is whether computer buyers may one day decide that they no longer even need a Microsoft operating system.
The two companies are already battling it out on fronts including Web search, free e-mail and better ways for searching individual computers. Analysts say that's evidence Microsoft should -- and likely is -- taking Google much more seriously.
"They'd be mad not to," said Niki Scevak with Jupiter Research.
Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products, said the company's goal is to organize information and make it universally accessible, and that goes far beyond search.
But she downplays the suggestion that Google's tools could eventually overtake Microsoft's ubiquitous software, saying the company doesn't currently have such plans but "it's hard to speculate" what the future might bring. Chief executive Eric Schmidt has, however, ruled out developing a Google browser to compete with Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer.
The Google-Microsoft competition is good news for consumers because it means more choices and better products.
For instance, Google's expansion into e-mail already has forced Microsoft and others to dramatically increase free storage. Analysts say it's also prodding Microsoft to improve products customers have long complained about.
As it became clear that Google and other search engines were increasingly gaining control over people's time online, Microsoft's MSN online division rapidly began developing its own search technology. Microsoft had previously outsourced that job.
Web search isn't the only place where Microsoft is playing catch-up. In June, Microsoft launched an Internet browser toolbar that blocks pop-up ads and enables search, years after Google had created its own.
And after Google announced plans for Gmail, a free e-mail service touting massive amounts of memory, Microsoft said it would boost free memory on its Hotmail accounts. Adam Sohn, a director with MSN, said to expect more Hotmail improvements soon, but he wouldn't provide details.
Microsoft also has promised its own system for searching desktop computers, responding to frustrations over how difficult it is to find things like e-mails and family photos on increasingly cluttered computers. Google launched its desktop search product last month and said users should expect more improvements to that product.
Then there is ad delivery, where Microsoft recently extended through June 2006 a contract for Yahoo Inc. to place relevant ads alongside its regular search results. Ad placement alongside search results is Google's main cash cow.
David Smith, a vice president with Gartner Inc., says the chain of events illustrates that Google is proving to be customer-driven while Microsoft tends to be more driven by competitive threats.
Microsoft denies that Google has been the impetus for improvements in its products. Sohn says the company is simply responding to customer feedback. He also downplays the Google competition, saying Microsoft has always faced plenty of foes.
"There's lots of innovation and competition, and it's way bigger than just Google, who I think everybody's excited about and focused on because they're a little bit newer," Sohn said.
Google, meantime, has signaled that it will fight Microsoft's moves into its turf. The day before Microsoft launched a test version of its Web search engine, Google said it had nearly doubled the size of its search engine index. And this week, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google opened an office in Kirkland, not far from Microsoft's Redmond campus.
Mayer said the goal is to attract employees who don't want to leave their hometown.
Asked if that meant the company was recruiting Microsoft workers, she said: "Not in a specific or targeted way, but we are looking at technical workers in the Seattle area who are interested in working for Google."
Still, Scevak said it's still too early to say if Google will ultimately be able to pull off a massive shift in allegiance. While many people turn to Google for search, he says plenty of others could see no reason to leave Microsoft products, such as Hotmail -- especially if Microsoft is willing to match Google's improvements for free.
And while Google has been the first to desktop search, he says many users may still prefer to wait for Microsoft's more familiar product.
"It's a very, very early stage," Scevak said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)