Recent Comments Posted

I ran it through Virus Total. (Again) Someone ran it on 5/31

Results:
SHA256: 68b28e5dcee5a3e97e020f2fd1ba0b39a3271899f1d1e9c5214fb221779abe19
File name: ShouldIRemoveIt_Setup.exe
Detection ratio: 1 / 47
Analysis date: 2013-06-01 19:35:43 UTC ( 0 minutes ago )

DrWeb Trojan.SMSSend.4041 20130601

ALL of the others detect nothing wrong.

This is useful. Similar to what Soluto does.
As more people use it and add ratings, this should improve.
I'll give it a 4 right now because it worked with no problems, and it found my "most useless" program, another one that I installed and never used.

Further feedback: Should Remove It quickly and easily uninstalled the program when I selected that option. It also let me go to the program's website for feedback.
This program "Should Remove It" worked flawlessly for me.
I don't know how useful, or how often I would use it, but it clearly works as intended. C22

About AEdit SX (v4.0-SX r2)
http://www.angelfire.com/art2/axart/english.html

I gave it a try. You are partly correct about the small size and spell checker.
The spell checker is NOT included. You have to download it separately, which the program would not do for me after several tries.
I also got the "Print module not found" error when I tried to print.
That must be downloaded also, and would not work.

It will do many fonts and sizes, a big plus for me.
It won't save as doc file. Compatibility with Open Office is vital.
I can easily go back and edit with MS Word, or Open Office with doc files. (and run spell checker)
Not needed in a txt file which I use for just taking notes.

Avira generally is lighter on resources than MSE, but I don't think it's a major concern with your computer. Using frequency of versions as a basis for judging AV's is probably not the most reliable. :) If you find the pop ups too intrusive, Avast or MSE are both good choices.

The tests at Raymond were done on a fairly good system, and these results may not reflect on a low end system in a similar fashion. Even though Firefox gets the lowest memory usage in the tests it's nearly unusable on a low end system running WinXP and less than 512 MB RAM.

Chiron, I had not previously read your "How to Report Spam" article. I just did and rated it a 5.

Your article, "How to Avoid Spam", is written at a more basic level, which is appropriate for the non-technically oriented email user. "How to Report Spam", is written for the next level up, i.e. the person who is concerned about making the internet better for everyone, and not just about protecting himself. (No insult to the beginning person intended. Everyone starts there.)

The time required and the carefulness to make a point with a reputable firm while avoiding adding your name to a spam roster makes direct complaints to companies something which requires careful consideration. But complaints from SpamCop might not have as much weight as personal complaints, particularly when backed up by a comment about the business'es reputation from another businessman. Note that you also have to expend the time to be polite and to make a business case for the avoidance of spam usage. That means it has to go to the firm's bottom line, i.e. "Sending spam to people who have not subscribed builds an unfriendly reputation, not the reputation that your business wants."

In short, it could be something given mention as an additional tactic in your, "How to Report Spam", article for those who are really annoyed and are willing to spend the extra time.

Thanks again for all your work.

Oh I understand that sort of frustration. :)
This article at ghacks Chrome's experimental flags are now accessible via direct links - is a good look at some of the not-so-accessible Chrome settings, but I'm not seeing any options that would change the current behavior.

Anyone have any suggestions or tips?

I think it's a great all around site and very useful for anyone who isn't able to travel. :)

A topic that I almost never see discussed regarding login security is the issue of restrictions imposed on that security by the websites themselves. It's wonderful for us to recognize the value and promote the use of long, complex passwords (and safe, reliable techniques for storing and retrieving them), but how many websites limit us to an inadequate password with too-few, all-alpha-numeric characters?

OK, I know from my own friends and relatives that we still have a long way to go to get people to use even moderately safe passwords. But when we do convince someone to use stronger credentials, they are likely to stop doing so as soon as one website refuses to accept the new password.

We are long past the time when inconsistent and inadequate password requirements should have been eliminated by major institutions. I would encourage people who have accounts with such restrictions to tell the customer-service folks at those institutions that we need the ability to use stronger passwords.

I understand the logic of this, and I do recommend something similar to this in my article about How to Report Spam (as SpamCop sends complaints directly to those responsible for the site):
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-report-spam.htm

Please let me know if you think I should add an additional step in spam reporting in the advice I give in that article.

Thank you.

Thank you for letting me know.

I have updated the information in the article. Please let me know if you see anything else which should be changed.

In reference to johnvk's comments last month regarding Tweaking.com's Registry Backup. I've been using it for about 6-months. With very few exceptions, the backup works perfectly. The rare problems have to do with Volume Shadow Copy not working correctly. When that happens, I do get a backup of my account, however, other user accounts are excluded. I've seen one consistent possible problem that I've reported to Shane sometime back and that has to do with Windows Reliability Monitor showing an application error that the program "stopped working". This occurs every day, even though the registry backup and log files are fine. As yet the problem has not been addressed. Check to see if this is a problem on your system as well. I'm running Windows 8 Pro x64. -SA Jack

BS Player displays the Conduit logo when installed. Conduit "... forces the user to use their search engine and [as a toolbar] is difficult to remove". (from Wikipedia).

Thanks IO.Hazard

That makes sense. Thanks for the info.

Thanks Panzer for the many suggestions. I'll try them out one by one once I get time.

Hi Raymond,
Do you know if Fast Copy will spans disks?
i.e. Copying multiple files or simply one gigantic file to a cd or dvd where the files or file will not "fit" on one disk.

Missing categories is more interesting to me than disputes over which game is truly the best.

Best RPG? Perhaps 0ad
Best Sim game? Perhaps Micropolis
Best Tower Defense game? Perhaps CreepTD
Best Racing game? Perhaps TORCS

"Best" is sufficiently subjective that I think you ought to add an Honorable Mention list for those games not the "best" but competitive.

I do appreciate the list and read it every time it comes out. I never fail to find something I'm interested in trying. Thanks for your work.

MidnightCowboy,

This has to be the worst response by you that I have seen. With the smiley face at the end of this statement: "It is also only of benefit to the community if you provide details about the "something" MSE supposedly missed, including the file path, and/or if like many Windows users, you have UAC disabled." you make it look like it is ok to have UAC disabled. That is kind of sneaky. From my reading of other responses on this site by you. It looks like the disabling of UAC is your, I gotcha moment. The only thing is GizmoJr did not fall for it.

Then you go on to agree with GizmoJr with these two statements :
1. In theory, MSE will always perform at a lesser level, especially where heuristic detections are concerned.
2. Certainly for the more tech savy, a program such as AVG offers the possibility for greater overall protection.

Then GizmoJr just blew you out of the water, on your statement about a false sense of security.
In so many words, GizmoJr said that the real false sense of security, is a lack of knowledge. Now that is very true!

Then you fall back on GizmoJr's test results and want him to post it in the forum. Well my question is, where is JonathanT test results? What is the criteria for his findings? Like you said : "It is also only of benefit to the community if you provide details" Where are JonathanT's details?

Then you provide links to articles that you wrote. The average user is not going to go through a lot of those steps that are outlined in those articles. So what the average user needs is a strong antivirus. The only other option is to sandbox everything while surfing the internet, and to never download. Now that is not going to happen with the average user!

So instead of trying to have an I gotcha moment, Why not try and add more knowledge to the discussion about Antivirus programs. In your response you have just added to the average users false sense of security. Becuase there is no such thing as safe browsing, unless sandboxed. Do you think adding WOT is going to help? I don't think so! It is in no doubt the best we have, but it is still average user opinion based.

Now your contact with vendors, is kind of scary. I have contact with vendors every day. I know their tactics. Sounds like you have fallen for those tactics.

Microsoft (again), completely missed the point - and dropped the ball.

I shouldn't have to downgrade, or pay for a third party app to restore the start menu, yet I *am* paying for a third party app to do just that. Compatibility issues have been an ongoing problem as well.

Obviously Microsoft felt that people were getting waaaaayyyy to comfy with using their computers & wanted to throw a wrench into the works.

8.1 is worthless from what I could glean via the review. It's just an overhaul of the crap a lot of us could care less about.

Thanks for restoring the start button though Micro$oft. Not that it makes it any easier to use your computer, but hey...it looks familiar. What more could a consumer want? Usability is overrated anyway.

FAIL

I downloaded Writer's Delight and tried it. I was not impressed. With no spell checker, I rate Writer's Delight a waste of time. AEdit SX (v4.0-SX r2) is smaller AND it has a spell checker. I use AEdit SX instead.

Thanks for the article Chiron, one or two add-ons here which I wasn't aware of before and am trying out now.

So far I like the Startpage search engine, although the Bitdefender Traffic Lights add-on doesn't work with it. Or not for me at least. It's interesting to note the difference in reports between Traffic Lights and WoT, which I presume is down to their working in different ways.

I'm quite curious about this, as Traffic Lights reports "No suspicious elements on this page" which implies some kind of page scan. What's interesting is that it seems to do this very very quickly when compared to, for example, Virus Total or Comodo Web Inspector.

I'd also just add that Google Translator doesn't work on whole pages when a page is https, but the add on that you recommend allows disabling so it's not too much of a pain.

Please also consider http://process-history.co.uk in this list. It is able to monitor 64bit processes.

Thanks

Wow!! Didn't know about it ;) I think it is high time buy good anaglyph glasses ;)

Hello,
CCleaner TODAY... quite indecent from their part to install piggyback "MyPC backup". I did trust that app... Not anymore.
Y.

A good suggestion Australia. APP Lock is now added to the list.

AV-TEST Mar/Apr 2013: 26 home users and 9 corporate AV products tested on Windows XP

http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/windows-xp/marapr-2013/

I have been using Henk Van Loo's WordFormat2 since I found it over a year ago and it has been my "Go To" word processor. The RTF allows me to put pictures in my text and the RTF allows it to be used on any other WP out there. The TXT format of course is also standard editing for SDF data files and such. To have this as a portable and SMALL piece of software is beyond my fondest dreams. Oh, did I tell you he has Spreadsheets (Excel XLS look a like) and Presentation software (Power Point PPT look a like)in his SSuite combination which will RUN ON ANY VERSION of Windows. OMG.

Can you tell that I am very impressed with ANYTHING this man develops. I am.

Meh. I think it was a slow news day for Ars Technica.

The Password list they were cracking used a plain MD5 hash without salting. In other word, sourced from morons.

My advice:

USE A PASSWORD MANAGER from the get-go and don't bother trying to memorize or create complex passwords yourself. 12 random characters probably give more than enough protection if the website is using a competent method of storage, but extra characters are free when you you don't have to memorize them yourself.

12 characters of just letters and numbers gives 4.7E21 combinations. At 1E12 guesses per second, it would take 150 years to test the whole range, assuming someone was willing to devote that much money and effort to you.

Back up your password manager's database in numerous places. It's encrypted, so you should be able to leave it at your parent's place or publish it in a news paper if you've chosen a good enough master password. I have precisely three passwords memorized; my password manager's master password and my primary and secondary web-mail account passwords.

Use a separate password for every site, especially those associated with money or official identity in any way.

Upper-case plus lower-case letters plus numbers give 6 bits of entropy per character. Adding special punctuation characters only increases that to 6.6 bits, so while adding special characters doesn't hurt, it also doesn't add much.

You can get the same protection just by adding one extra character for every 10. A 16 character password without special characters is about the same as 14.5 characters with. This is for those who stress out because their bank won't let them use funky characters.

I had no idea that we have so many options for office suite. I only knew about OpenOffice so far besides the Microsoft Office, of course. I also found this http://www.bestcustomwriting.com resource that listed some alternatives in a paper, I found that interesting.

That's called two-way verification. And that's indeed pretty foolproof and hackerproof. Although never 100%. But at least, in that case hackers need to hack your phone too. (And they are able as the hacking of Wired editor Mat Honan's digital life illustrates)

WinMerge got updated to 2.14.0

Here some added features plus some bug fixes:

Update PCRE to version 8.10
Update SCEW to version 1.1.2
Improve startup time (#2788142)
Add menuitems for selecting automatic or manual prediffing
Add accelerator keys for Shell context menu
Add /xq command line switch for closing WinMerge after identical files and not showing message
Allow setting codepage from command line
Allow giving encoding name as custom codepage
Add options GUI for quick compare limit
Expand/collapse folders from keyboard
Improve detecting XML files in file compare
Lots of language updates

There is also a new player called Diffuse:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/diffuse/

This is a nice product with lots of templates. It is free for up to 5 stored diagrams. When you finished a diagram you can export it in JPG, PNG, SVG or XML format and then delete it freeing up a slot for saved diagram.

Paypal now sends me an sms with a code I have to enter online before I can make a purchase and it only gets sent to the phone number I have registered with them - seems pretty foolproof to me!

Zoolz must have gotten their million free users, because now they're pay-only, and aimed at business users. And no mention of Linux client. Maybe they're still "working on it 24/7".

Thank you for the information. Lektz will be reviewed soon and we'll put it on this website soon enough.

Minetest is an infinite-world block sandbox game and a game engine, inspired by InfiniMiner, Minecraft and the like:
http://minetest.net/

Minetest is an infinite-world block sandbox game and a game engine, inspired by InfiniMiner, Minecraft and the like:
http://minetest.net/

marathon is a minimal bash/unix based launcher that tries to be smart about running or focusing apps:
https://github.com/ronjouch/marathon

Freelan - multi-platform, highly-configurable and peer-to-peer VPN software:
http://www.freelan.org/
http://www.freelan.org/page/faq#comparison_grid

It's not actually targeted towards kids. More towards writers. It's one of those distraction free writers.

Regarding the "Best Free Apps Protection for Android"
I recommend APP Lock by DoMobile Lab. Has excellent reviews on Google Play
I have installed and used it on Samsung Note 2, and it is a rock solid stable app to lock any or all apps you chose
I have no affiliation with this program

I have to say that all of these are junk. I tried them all. None are any better than the default windows defrager. One of them, Ultra Defrag x64 "developmental" froze completely. I mistakenly downloaded the beta because I couldn't find the x64 version. Soundforge's site is pathetic is their deframent s/w.

None of the defraggers listed actually give preference through the GUI to list files at the beginning of the end of the drive. The only exception is Defragger, but it only provides to the end of the drive and it doesn't work. Adding a script file to accomplish a basic user command to defragment a hard drive is hideous. In fact, there is some big debate that there really is no reason to defrag your drive these days any way.

If you want a really good defrag app, go with Norton Utilities. At has a clean and powerful interface. When it comes to defragment apps, you truly get what you pay for.

It isn't, unless you mean "Occasionally you might get a message from Windows indicating the file is too big for the Recycle Bin and it needs to be permanently deleted." That is completely unaffected by whether the delete confirmation dialog box is enabled or not.

are you all crazy?, two steps how
best music to have.
"32 bit potplayer" and the newest "reclock" for bitperfect,
and the music will be now music, its so simple, only "reclock and potpalyer" to adjust,

Peter

Tried it out on a couple of XP machines (both Pro and Home) - doesn't work very well. Menus don't function properly.

Works fine on Windows 7 but the default dark colour scheme is (for me - I'm getting on in years) almost unreadable. There is a choice of alternative skins but (again for me) they both required further customization to be fully readable. This is easy enough to do, but I find it a little hard to warm to software which needs this level of customization.

Designing for accessibility is boring stuff - until you find you need it of course :)

I struggled with this one as well and found a solution on the web. For the sake of others following this excellent tutorial and thread this worked for me:

First install xbacklight with this command:

sudo apt-get install xbacklight

Open "Startup Applications" from the menu and add a new item with the following details:

Name: Brightness
Command: xbacklight -set 40
(Optional) Comment: Sets screen brightness at startup (5 - 100)

Replace 40 in the command line with any brightness value from 5 to 100 of your choice, then click Save. On the next reboot, your system will set the selected brightness level automatically after you log in.

This works in Mint 14 and most likely also in 13 and 15.

David

Different delete confirmation box, i think.

I'll make sure to include it in my update.

thanks

tpg

"... The Gnome Encfs Manager (or short GEncfsM) is an easy to use manager and mounter for encfs stashes featuring per-stash configuration, Gnome Keyring support, a tray menu inspired by Cryptkeeper but using the AppIndicator API and lots of unique features. Whether you want to let it do things as simple as mounting a stash at startup, which is often used in conjunction with cloud-synced folders on services like Dropbox and Ubuntu one, or whether you want to let it automatically mount and unmount your stashes on removeable drives like USB-sticks, SD cards or even network-resources, GEncfsM is designed to do all the work for you ...":
http://www.libertyzero.com/GEncfsM/

Midnight Commander is a free cross-platform orthodox file manager and a clone of Norton Commander.

Features include the ability work with common archive formats as if they were simply another directory, and to function as an FTP client. Midnight Commander also includes an builtin editor/viewer, features include syntax highlighting for many languages, macros, code snippets, simple integration with external tools, automatic indentation, mouse support, clipboard and the ability to work in both ASCII and hex modes.

Midnight Commander can also rename groups of files, move files to a different directory at the same time as it renames them. It lets the user specify the original and resulting file names using wildcard characters:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mcwin32/

how to get windows 7 free

How to get windows 7 free

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlsXe0gYkz8