“Internet Explorer users can be as much as 21 times more likely to end up with a spyware-infected PC than people who go online with Mozilla’s Firefox browser, academic researchers from Microsoft’s backyard said in a recently published paper.”
Read more here.
I know that I never get spyware anymore, just a few innocuous tracking cookies.
Last week Mom sent me an email. She has started doing the daily “Sudoku” puzzles in the local Tribune newspaper , but she asked me if I could create a computer program to make it easier for her to play them. She complained that she was erasing holes in the paper!
So I threw something together, and here it is, complete with help file and 5 games to practice on.
As I developed the program I had to play the games to make sure it worked, and became intrigued by them. They are more interesting than I thought at first glance; some careful logic can usually solve them pretty quickly, though for the more difficult ones I’m sometimes reduced to trial and error in places.
Anyway, give it a try and you might find that you enjoy them too.
If you installed the new 1.5 version of Firefox, you may have noticed a bug. If you print a selection, or a selected set of pages, images don’t print correctly. They come out all black, or black and grey stripes.
The developers are aware of the problem and there’s a Release Candidate version available that fixes the problem. I installed this version and that problem has gone away, but as an RC it might not be completely stable, and there are risks of other bugs
However, if this printing problem bugs you as much as it bugged me, you can download the RC 1.5.0.1 version here.
The Mozilla Foundation has released a new version of their Thunderbird Email client, Version 1.5.
The release notes are sparse and vague. Looks like mostly security and stability improvements, with a few new features. One improvement is that it will recognize headers set by Spam Assassin on your mail server, and automatically classify the message as junk.
I downloaded it and ran the install, and it found and replaced my version 1.07 with no problems.
I just saw that you can set a filter to automatically delete messages from the POP server based on criteria you set. I set up a filter that will delete messages that have “****SPAM****” in the subject, so I guess I don’t even need the “recognize SpamAssassin” improvement mentioned in the paragraph above. Don’t do this unless you are comfortable with the way your filters are set on SpamAssassin, or you will lose valid email!
I have a nice insulated coffee cup that has a screw-on cap with a rubber O-ring seal. Putting the cap on has been very frustrating for me over the two years I have owned it. Sometimes I gently screw the cap on, and the seal is good, no coffee leaks. Other times no matter how hard I twist it on, the lid leaks. I can remove and replace it several times, and it still leaks. I thought the problem had gone away around last April, but it came back again a couple of months ago.
I have been putting up with this all this time, and then the other day I happened to remember the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, and a simple demonstration that Richard Feymann did to show what had caused it. He placed a piece of the shuttle O-ring into a glass of ice water and when he pulled it out, the O-ring was brittle and hard. The cold morning of the Challenger flight had made the O-rings inflexible, thus allowing gases to leak and ignite, causing the explosion.
The same thing was happening to my coffee cup. If the lid (and O-ring) was warm, which usually was the case in the summer, the seal was good. But on these cold winter mornings the O-ring is inflexible and doesn’t seal well. I’ve gone to running hot water over the lid, especially over the O-ring, and now I get a good seal every time.
Physics at work in every day life!
Gisele got a new computer for Christmas, with a “Dual Processor” CPU. The technical details: It’s an Intel 820, which runs at 2.8 GHz. She has 1Gig of Dual DDR2 RAM, and a fast SATA hard drive.
I did some playing around with it to see if I could tell any difference between her computer and mine, which is a 2.6 GHz (single CPU) with similar RAM and hard drive. Both computers are running Windows 2000. Of course, hers has a newly installed OS, while mine has accumulated stuff for two or three years, so it’s not a completely fair test, but anyway…
The dual CPUs are supposed to divide the work between the processors, with (as I understand it) one focussing on whatever you have in the foreground, while the other handles the background tasks. If the foreground program is written to take advantage of the dual processors, then that program can also see performance improvements, but not many programs are so written.
I did a couple of qualitative tests:
1) Just running single applications, I didn’t notice much difference. Opening and running Firefox or Open Office seemed to take about as long on either computer.
2) You know how during startup, while the system is putting icons on the tray, loading the virus scanner, etc, you can click on the start button or an application and it pretends to acknowledge you, but it takes a long time for anything to come up. With Gisele’s computer it seemed to respond much more quickly, while the booting continued in the background.
3) I started the virus scanner doing a full system scan in the background, then ran various programs in the foreground (Firefox, Open Office). I couldn’t even tell the virus scan was running. Everything was fast and responsive. On my computer the foreground slows down perceptibly while scanning for viruses.
Next year Intel is coming out with new versions of the dual processor CPUs, which are supposed to share memory better and therefore perform even better. Quad processors are due out soon after that, but Windows 2000 can’t handle a quad (or more) processor and I’m loathe to install an activation-required OS from Microsoft. However, along with these multi-processor CPUs, there will be new software for running multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single computer, so that might be the time to start phasing in Linux. I’ve tried VMWare on my current computer, but the background OS just takes up too much of the CPU and slows down the foreground OS too much. But with dual processors, that shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll see!
I’m pretty happy with my old Toshiba 50″ rear projection (CRT) TV, and have been for several years (is it 5? 7? More? Not sure.)
I’ve continually said that the new DLP, Plasma and LCD HDTVs are nicer, but until I can get a larger display that is “significantly” better than what I have, I won’t bother to buy anything new. The latest 60″ – 65″ DLP’s from Samsung, Mitsubishi, Toshiba etc. are close, but I still see some artifacts there that put me off.
Yesterday I saw the new Sony 60″ Grand WEGA SXRD Rear Projection HDTV in Best Buy, and I think I’ve seen my next TV. It was sitting next to a 61″ Mitsubishi DLP and the difference was big. Colors and artifacts were noticeably better on the Sony. Details that I couldn’t make out on the DLP were clear on the Sony. At 1920 x 1080 native resolution (almost twice the others), you would expect that it would look better, but it wasn’t just the resolution. With DLP I sometimes feel like I’m looking through a film at the picture. With the Sony, I felt like I was looking through a clean window.
OK, so now I know which TV I want, but it will have to come down in price a little first. $5000 is a lot of money for a TV! Unless one of you want to buy me a nice Christmas present?…
Between helping people repair their computers and spending time every day browsing and searching, I’ve come up with some good programs that people might be interested in. Most of these are open source; all of them are free.
1) Firefox Web Browser
Much better for web browsing than Internet Explorer, and much less likely to provide a pathway for spyware to enter your computer. Tabbed browsing and easy-to-add extensions such as AdBlock make browsing easier, less irritating and safer.
2) Open Office Office Suite
A very good full-featured replacement for the Microsoft Office Suite. Although it is very similar to MS Office and most people will pick it up with no problem, there may be a short learning curve for some of the more complex operations.
3) AVG Anti-Virus Software
Background scanning of all file operations, daily updates and daily full system scans. AVG has served me well for the last two or three years.
4) Thunderbird Email Client
An excellent replacement for Outlook Express. It has built-in “Bayesian” spam filtering which is the best spam filtering I’ve seen or used. Unfortunately it’s on the client, so the spam still gets downloaded, but 99% of it gets moved to the spam folder before I even see it. Thunderbird also has some security advantages over Outlook Express, such as not displaying images from unknown sources unless you OK them. It’s not a complete replacement for Outlook, since it doesn’t have a calendar or task manager, and won’t sync with a handheld.
5) ZoneAlarm Firewall
Perhaps the best Firewall on the market, and it’s free. No broadband connection should be without a firewall of some sort. Most broadband routers have hardware firewalls built in, which do a pretty good job of protecting you from the outside, but ZoneAlarm also prevents malicious programs that have snuck onto your system from connecting out.
6) Spybot and AdAware
These two programs do a pretty good job of removing spyware and adware. Currently I think Spybot (version 1.4) is a little better, though next month AdAware may leapfrog it again. For the harder jobs I sometimes have to resort to Spy Sweeper, a commercial program. You can download a two-week trial and clean out your system, but if you want to keep it you have to pay.
7) Gaim Instant Messaging
This program is compatible with ICQ, AIM, MSN-IM and several others. No ads, just simple instant-messaging. It seems to lose it’s connection once in a while and doesn’t always reconnect automatically, but it’s easy to reconnect manually. All in all I like it better than the alternatives.
8) GimpShop Image Editing
This is a very full featured image editing program. This version is a “skin” for the original “The Gimp” to make it more of a PhotoShop clone. I’m more used to Paint Shop Pro, and both PhotoShop and GimpShop handle some things differently, so I’m not completely at home using this. I can’t really personally comment on it’s stability or effectiveness, but I’ve read a lot of enthusiastic reviews. I’m trying to learn it now.
9) Filezilla FTP Client
A very nice full-featured FTP program
10) MyACDSee Image Browser and Viewer
If you already have the “real” ACDSee, there’s no reason to switch, but this is a pretty good free clone.
11) LogMeIn Remote Control
Not really a program, but a free service. The best remote control software I’ve seen, and all you need on the controlling end is a web browser. You can view the screen and control the mouse and keyboard of the host machine. Very fast screen updates, very responsive.
12) FoxIt PDF Reader
I like this much better than Adobe Acrobat. It loads much faster, and doesn’t have to install lots of pieces all through the registry. So far I’ve found it completely compatible and just lots nicer to use.
13) 7-Zip File Archiver and Compression Manager
A good replacement for WinZip. Seems fully compatible, and with more compression modes.
I could list more, such as CWShredder (for removing the Cool Web Search family of hijackers) or HijackThis (for viewing and removing IE add-ins, including malicious ones). Azureus is a good bit-torrent client, and Free Agent is a pretty good News Reader. Angry IPScanner is good for viewing all the connections on your network. If you know what “Grep” means, you might want to try Agent Ransack.
These are some of the main free-ware programs I use.
Anybody else have any favorites?
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