If you are like me and people ask you to fix their computers, you probably carry a set of applications on a USB drive, your PC toolkit. SARDU, developed by Davide Costa, is a meta-tool, an application that lets you create and customize a bootable USB or CD/DVD toolkit. Get it? It is a tool for making a really cool toolkit. You download and unzip SARDU to your computer. Using a very simple interface, you can add components, as you wish, to create a really powerful and customized bootable USB d...
You can run a safe, secure PC on a limited budget. These are my personal favorites, hopefully readers will contribute more based on their experiences. Browsers Firefox 2 has to be on the list. I use several browsers and I know people have strong preferences, but I still recommend Firefox. Tabbed browsing is now mainstream, with the introduction of IE7, but Firefox still gets the nod, in my opinion. It has a slight edge for security, again in my opinion. You can get it here: Link ...
In 2002, Bill Gates set security as Microsoft's top priority. With the introduction of IE7 (currently in Beta 2) and Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft has come a long way toward fulfilling that promise. Why is it important that Microsoft has taken these steps? I have an anti-virus program that regularly updates itself, programs to protect me from adware and malware, a software firewall and a (relatively) secure browser for some time. Most power-users have these protections. But guess what? M...
I have been trying the new Desktop Search utility from Google. My first reaction is that it is good. Really, really good. The utility lets search for a topic from your email (Outlook or Outlook Express), AIM chat logs, Word Documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets and even web history. Easy to use, easy to configure. A very useful utility. You install the software and it creates an icon in the task tray. It takes a short while to index all the data on your hard drive. The...
Still in Beta, Amazon is developing a new search engine aimed at dethroning Google. Actually the search engine is based in part on Google technology, but boy is it slick! Here are some of the features: A9.com remembers your information. You can keep your own notes about any web page and search them; it is a new way to store and organize your bookmarks; it even recommends new sites and favorite old sites specifically for you to visit. With the A9 Toolbar all your web browsing history wi...
On February 27th, 2004, three United States Senators introduced legislation that, if passed, will go a long way towards making the Internet safe again. The bill, introduced as S.2145, is intended "To regulate the unauthorized installation of computer software, to require clear disclosure to computer users of certain computer software features that may pose a threat to user privacy, and for other purposes." The bill, formally known as the "Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of C...
I didn't know this until today, but Microsoft has a very thorough site devoted to their current research efforts. They list their current research projects, the names of their researchers and links for their recent publications. You can even download some SDK's and Beta versions. I will confess that much of what I found there is WAY over my head, but it is still worth a visit.
At Las Vegas' Comdex event, Chairman Bill Gates announced that Microsoft will soon be offering new products to combat spam, protect computer networks and track information that passes through users computers. The ant-spam solution will be called SmartScreen and is a series of filters designed to work with Outlook and Outlook Express. It is designed to keep spam and malicious attachments from reaching a user's desktop. It will be available in the middle of 2004. Internet Security and Accele...
Princeton doctoral student John A. Halderman published an article about how easy it was to defeat some of the newly implemented anti-piracy measures- in this case as simple as pressing the Shift Key. Now SunnCom is suing him for bringing that defect to light. You can read John Halderman's original article here: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/ It hardly seems like a "pirate manifesto." John said "I find that the protections may have no effect on a large fraction of deployed PCs, and...
Inspired by an email written by a Toronto police officer to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Microsoft is developing new software to aid police in the fight against child pornography. After a particuarly difficult day, a Toronto police officer sent a note to Bill Gates about the difficulties that he faced. "To be real honest, I didn't expect anything back. I didn't even save the e-mail," said Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie, a 25-year veteran of the Toronto force. Much to his surprise, three weeks ...
Software company Symantec, best known for anti-virus and security programs, has talen steps to acquire PowerQuest, the maker of Partition Magic and other storagte programs. By leveraging the strengths of the two companies, Symantec hopes to create a line of disaster recovery programs, tentatively called Active State Management. On the surface, both companies offer complimentary programs. Symantec, for example makes Ghost, a file back-up and recovery program. PowerQuest makes Drive Magic, a...