Daniel Pankiller

Hackers have started on an organized
attack on major search engines with
innumerable keywords resulting in
search results that point to malicious
Web sites. Once clicked, the sites
will cause a download of Trojans, key
loggers, or elicit bogus clicks.

Simply put, damn near any Google
search term–even terms like “hospice”–
can take you to one of these malware
sites. Computerworld quotes Sunbelt
Software CEO Alex Eckelberry as
saying “this is huge.” I’m inclined to
agree, especially considering
Eckelberry’s inventory: “27 different
domains, each with up to 1,499
[malicious] pages. That’s 40,000
possible pages.”

The malicious sites seem to have made
it to the top of the results via
comment, blog spam, and rigging Web
pages with keywords solely for the
purpose of making it to the top list.

The malicious attacks were brought
into focus by security researcher Adam
Thomas of anti-spyware company Sunbelt
Software. The malware from the sites
make use of an iFrame exploit in IE
and also result in the downloading of
Trojans and keyloggers.

Search engines have begun purging the
malicious links from their indexes.

Ranking systems at search engines are
based on proprietary algorithms that
are tuned to avoid bogus links, but
the question remains whether present
day techniques are sufficient to avoid
organized large-scale malicious
attacks in the future.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has
released software that will help users
determine whether their Net connection
is being tampered with by their
service provider.

An excerpt from Associated Press:

“People have all sorts of problems,
and they don’t know whether to
attribute that to some sort of
misconfiguration, or deliberate
behavior by the ISP,” said Seth
Schoen, a staff technologist with EFF.

The new software compares lists of
data packets sent and received by two
different computers and looks for
discrepancies between what one sent
and the other actually received.
Previously, the process had to be done
manually.

ISPs tampering with network users’
connection to crack down on P2P (peer-
to-peer) file sharing has been a major
issue this year. Last month, the
Associated Press in a nation-wide test
confirmed that ISPs like Comcast use
protocol-level inspections to detect
and kill P2P traffic.

Dubbed as the Test Your ISP Project,
EFF is developing software tools to
let users test their own broadband
connections.

The Software will be launched soon.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory,
in collaboration with scientists in
Turkey and Japan, have developed a
portable scanning device based on
terrahertz radiation that detects more
materials without the harmful effects
of X-rays.

An excerpt from VNUnet:

Unlike more energetic X-rays, T-rays
do not have sufficient energy
to ‘ionize’ an atom and cause cellular
damage that can lead to radiation
sickness or cancer. But T-rays are
capable of penetrating many common
materials, such as leather, fabric,
cardboard and paper.

T-rays can also penetrate the human
body by almost half a centimetre, and
have already been used by doctors to
detect and treat certain types of
cancers, especially those of the skin
and breast.

T-rays could not be used earlier for
scanning purpose because of certain
physical limitations of semi-
conducting materials. Researchers had
to deploy several techniques to
generate signals of sufficient signal
strength.

The new technology may find
application in several areas,
including security and cancer
detection.

From supercomputing applications to
financial modeling, graphics chips are
being deployed for a number of
research and development activities.

Graphics chips are great when it comes
to crunching repetitive computational
tasks, which is a reason why they are
making it to diverse applications
beyond gaming. This is in comparison
to desktop processors, which are made
to perform general applications.

The larger number of cores in graphics
chips makes them ideal candidates for
research focused on obtaining results
for various permutations of data for
the same models.

Few excerpts from the article at BBC:

Professor Susan Hagness from the
Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison has turned to
graphics cards to quickly analyse
breast scans to spot cancer in its
early stages.

The financial models that Prof Giles
is running test the same algorithm on
each core but each one gets different
random numbers as input.

PhD student Tobias Brandvik and Dr
Graham Pullan in the Whittle
Laboratory at the University of
Cambridge engineering department and
sped up simulations of turbine blade
designs by 40 times by using a few
graphics cards.

Perhaps it is with this developing
segment in mind that AMD has its focus
settled on delivering graphics
solutions tightly integrated with its
platforms. Don’t forget that it also
owns ATI, a leading graphics chipset
maker.

About a month ago, I discovered Boxbe…
by accident. It was one of those
rare “wow” moments that happens when
you run across something that you
haven’t seen before and that you think
has unlimited potential.

What is Boxbe? The Web site,
http://boxbe.com/ says that you can
think of it as “e-mail by invitation,”
where you can manage the messages that
you receive in your inbox. You can
allow certain senders permission from
the get-go, but other people have jump
through an encryption loop before
their message gets through. In a
nutshell, that means you won’t have to
worry about junk mail getting through
spam filters or worry about legitimate
mail getting filtered out as junk.

Today, November 29, 2007, is a big day
for Boxbe, according to Boxbe’s
official press release:

With the release of Boxbe’s new
service, users of Yahoo! Mail,
Outlook, and Gmail can now create
an ‘email guest list,’ which ensures
that they receive messages only from
those people who matter to them.

This sounds great, doesn’t it? If
you’re anything like me, you’re
wondering what the catch is and how
much money Boxbe is going to cost me
each month. Sure, spam is annoying,
but I’d rather delete junk mail than
have to part with even a morsel of my
hard-earned paycheck. Well, skeptics,
Boxbe’s service is free. If you don’t
believe it, drop on over to Boxbe.com
and see for yourself. For a sneak peek
at Boxbe, view these screenshots.

I had the opportunity to talk to Thede
Loder, the founder and President of
Boxbe, about the service and the
company’s recent announcements.

rGenuine:- This is were you’ve got to buy an original Microsoft Windows CD. Which cost about 300-500RM, Why do we need Genuine Windows?

Because it provides you with update all the time and, it allows the user to download original designed softwares from Microsoft website. Besides using Genuine Windows will prevent some harmful file from getting to Windows and destroying files and folders.

Non-genuine:- It’s the total opposite of (Genuine)

P.S.    I mostly recommend buying a Genuine Windows XP Professional. And I’d like to Warren all of u:- Please don’t install or buy Windows Vista, unless you’re sure to have the following system requirements which are very..very..very hight….considering:- (2GB RAM, 160GB HD, Latest nVIDIA Graphic Card and a 2-3GHz or processor).

Please add  comments if you have anything to ask.

Thank you

Daniel Painkiller

Windows Vista is the latest release of Microsoft Windows, a line of graphical operating systems used on personal computers,
including home and business desktops. Whilst introducing new concepts,
it also has features that a previous Windows user will recognise,
including a taskbar. Before its announcement on July 22, 2005, Vista was known by its codename Longhorn.^[1] On November 8, 2006, Windows Vista development was completed and released to manufacturing. Over the next two months it was released to MSDN, TechNet Plus and TechNet Direct subscribers, computer hardware and software manufacturers and volume license customers. On January 30, 2007, it was released worldwide to the general public,^[2] and is available for download from Microsoft’s web site.^[3] These release dates come more than five years after the release of its predecessor, Windows XP, making it the longest time span between two releases of Windows.

According to Microsoft,^[4] Windows Vista contains hundreds of new features; some of the most significant include an updated graphical user interface and visual style dubbed Windows Aero, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker,
and completely redesigned networking, audio, print, and display
sub-systems. Vista also aims to increase the level of communication
between machines on a home network using peer-to-peer
technology, making it easier to share files and digital media between
computers and devices. For developers, Vista introduces version 3.0 of
the .NET Framework, which aims to make it significantly easier for developers to write high-quality applications than with the traditional Windows API.

Microsoft’s primary stated objective with Vista, however, has been
to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system.^[5] One of the most common criticisms of Windows XP and its predecessors has been their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses and buffer overflows. In light of this, then Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced in early 2002 a company-wide ‘Trustworthy Computing
initiative’ which aims to incorporate security work into every aspect
of software development at the company. Microsoft claimed that it
prioritized improving the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 above finishing Windows Vista, significantly delaying its completion.^[6]

During the course of its development, Vista has been the target of a number of negative assessments by various groups. Criticism of Windows Vista has included protracted development time, more restrictive licensing terms, the inclusion of a number of new Digital Rights Management technologies aimed at restricting the copying of protected digital media, and the usability of new features such as User Account Control.

Windows Vista Ultimate

This edition combines all the features of the Home Premium and Enterprise editions, a game performance tweaker (WinSAT), and "Ultimate Extras". On January 7, 2007, at CES,
Microsoft began to announce what some of these Ultimate Extras will be.
When Vista launched to consumers on January 30, Microsoft immediately
made the following Extras available for Ultimate users: "Dream Scene",
a utility that allows for full-motion video desktop backgrounds;
"Hold’Em", a Vista-customized version of the Texas Hold’Em
poker game; Multi-user interface language packs, designed to allow
individuals fluent in different languages to share the same PC;
BitLocker Online Secure Key Storage, where Ultimate customers will be
offered a secure place to store their BitLocker encryption keys in the
Online Vista Marketplace; and "Digital publications," a collection of
tips and tricks, blog links and other resources for getting the most
out of Ultimate.^[29][30]
After that, many more are expected to be announced through 2007,
including a photo editing and merging tool shown at CES called
"GroupShot". More detailed information regarding some of these extras
can be read at the Vista Ultimate website here
The Ultimate edition is aimed at high-end PC users, gamers, multimedia
professionals, and PC enthusiasts. 64-bit Ultimate supports 128 GB of
memory. Mainstream support for Ultimate ends on 4/10/2012; extended
support ends on 4/11/2017. Another upgrade variant of Windows Vista
Ultimate is the Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade Limited Numbered
Signature Edition, a limited, numbered edition of Windows Vista
Ultimate that features Bill Gates’ signature on the front of the
packaging along with its unique number.

Wireless for Wandering

With
notebooks poised to soon surpass stationary desktop systems in
popularity, wireless networks are seeing a corresponding boost in
popularity. What good is a portable PC if it’s tethered to the network?
Wireless networking lets you drag your laptop to the conference room,
the kitchen, or out to the patio. But wireless doesn’t mean painless.
To go wireless, you’ll need to understand a growing vocabulary of
sometimes incompatible specifications. And all currently available
wireless hardware specs are less secure–much less secure, in some
cases–than "wireline" networks, thanks to sophomoric encryption
schemes.

Fortunately, wireless networking
prices are reasonable enough, so you won’t feel too bad retiring your
equipment once faster and more secure versions appear. Adapters start
at less than $25, access points (hub-like base station units) at about
$50, and routers that connect the network to a cable or DSL modem are
just a few bucks more.

Though it can’t compete with
standard 10/100-mbps ethernet, newer wireless (or Wi-Fi, if certified
standards-compliant by the Wi-Fi Alliance) equipment is generally
faster than phone- and power-line technologies. And it comes with one
other unique benefit: Equipping your laptop with a wireless adapter
could allow you to connect to wireless-network hot spots in hotels,
airports, and coffee shops. For more details about these possibilities,
check out "All About Wi-Fi."

The
most common wireless spec, called 802.11b, transmits data at a
theoretical maximum of 11 mbps (some newer products extend the spec to
22 mbps). PCI and PC Card adapters start at just over $20, and wireless access points,
the wireless equivalent of ethernet hubs, start at just under $50.
Remember that your distance from the access point, and the materials
between you and it, can cause significant drops in speed.

A
faster specification, 802.11a, transmits at theoretical maximum speed
of 54 megabits per second, and these days, doesn’t cost much more.
However, 802.11a and 802.11b equipment can’t communicate directly with
each other. A few manufacturers produce access points that combine the
two specs, letting you network both "a" and "b" devices. And then
there’s a new spec–802.11g–that can communicate with 802.11b but not
with 802.11a, and there are access points that combine "a," "b," and
"g."

Confused yet? The 802.11g spec currently seems to be
the one to get, but even it will soon be replaced by something else in
due time. In the meantime, be sure to choose the wireless network type
that affords you the greatest security against mobile wireless-network
break-in artists, or "war drivers." Because wireless networks broadcast
their availability like a radio station–albeit one with a limited
range–neighbors and anyone parked in front of your house could bum a
ride on your wireless network.

To ward off freeloaders and
snoops, most 802.11b, 802.11a, and 802.11g products have an encryption
scheme called wireless equivalent privacy. Unfortunately, WEP quickly
proved easy to decrypt, so the nice people at the Wi-Fi Alliance
came up with something stronger: Wireless Protected Access. When
shopping for wireless networking equipment, I strongly suggest that you
select products that incorporate WPA security (all elements must
support it). For more information, see "Internet Tips: Play It Safe With the Right Browser Security Settings."

Finally,
you don’t have to select just one kind of network–many wireless
routers also incorporate a wired ethernet hub, for example. Combined
wireless/wired networks allow you to connect stationary computers that
require a faster connection (for online gaming, streaming media, or
large file transfers) by ethernet, while still providing wireless
convenience for other PCs in hard-to-wire or changing locations.
Whichever network type you select, Windows’ networking software should
run handily on it.

Go to "How to Set Up Your Home Network"
for step-by-step instructions on how to set up different types of
networks. For tips on how to enhance your wireless network, see "Wireless Networks That Do More."

"I recently had the pleasure of
visiting the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. to experience Windows
Media Player 11 for Windows Vista.

While there, I got a hands-on, close-up look at the coolest new Media
Player features. I spent time exploring the streamlined interface; I
downloaded music from the upcoming MTV Networks music service URGE; and
I spent hours customizing views, album art size, and song lists. Media
Player 11 had everything I had hoped the new version would and more, as
well as just about everything I’d read from the wish lists of community
newsgroup posters in the past. It didn’t take long to figure out that
this was a total makeover of the last version.

Some of the unique features of Media Player 11 are a deeply integrated
music library for both online and offline content, a new and improved
interface, the ability to connect to additional hardware easily, and
integrated, easy-to-use tools for following the process of any task
(downloading music, burning CDs, synching music, or streaming video,
just to name a few). Media Player 11 has a new integrated feel, too—one
that makes online, network, and offline content indistinguishable.

Many of the improvements are due to the redesigned interface, which
includes simplified trees, helpful shortcuts on the menus and menu
bars, and an advanced and improved media library. There are now Back
and Forward buttons, giving Media Player a web-browser feel; a
lightning-fast WordWheel search tool for getting through the library;
and Xbox 360 support. And I’m just getting started! In this article,
I’ll introduce the features I found most exciting, and features you’re
going to love when you get your hands on Media Player 11.

Reliability, ease of use, and hardware support
Windows Media Player 11 is by far the most reliable, easy to use, and
complete music experience available. In my time with it, I found it to
be extremely dependable. It’s fast too, and it reminded me of expensive
Internet jukeboxes normally found only in nightclubs and bars. As with
those high-end players, the line between what’s actually on the jukebox
and what comes from the Internet is nearly indistinguishable. Media
Player 11, in my opinion, is the best jukebox I’ve ever experienced.

Enhanced, user-friendly interface
The Media Player 11 interface makes finding the media you want easier
than ever. The complicated (and sometimes convoluted) trees that once
appeared in the Media Player Library are gone. Now when you select a
category from the Library, the content in that category appears off to
the right instead of under the category on the left. Finally, no more
long album and artist listings that scroll into infinity!

With the trees gone, Media Player 11 is easier to navigate than any of
its predecessors. There aren’t any lines between the trees, album
information, or CD cover art, and the default album art view now shows
album art and track information in the center of the screen. All of
this makes finding the information you want a lot easier.

Along with enhanced views, the buttons at the top of the interface
contain new shortcuts. Some of my favorites include adjusting format
and bitrate on the fly for CD ripping, and switching back and forth
from audio to data settings for CD burning. With these new shortcuts,
you’ll spend more time viewing and listening to your media, and less
time managing it.

Finally, I love the new playback controls at the bottom of the screen.
They’re large and easy to use, and intuitive enough for anyone to
easily operate. No more fumbling around trying to click those small
controls from the old Media Player, and no more awkward scrambling for
the mute button when your boss enters the room"

by Daniel Painkiller
                   
                    PLEASE DO NOT COPY THIS ARTICLE

Takeaway:
Windows Defender became available to the public in October 2006 as a
download for Windows XP and 2003. Now it’s built into Windows Vista. IT
pro Deb Shinder offers this look at the Vista Defender interface, the
three types of spyware scans, configuration options, and the SpyNet
community.

Spyware is acknowledged by most IT professionals as one of
the biggest problems facing both consumer and business computer users. Spyware
is a type of malicious software that is installed usually without the knowledge
or permission of the user and then collects information from the computer that
it may send back to its maker.

Many varieties of spyware collect information such as Web sites
visited, for advertising purposes. But other types are more malevolent and
steal users’ passwords, credit card, or bank account numbers or even log
keystrokes and capture screenshots of what users do on the computer. Some
spyware programs also display unwanted advertising, and spyware is often
responsible for computer performance slowdowns.

Some jurisdictions have passed laws making certain types of
spyware illegal; however, enforcement can be difficult. To control the problem,
you need a technological solution. A number of third party anti-spyware
programs are available. Early last year, Microsoft released its free anti-spyware
program, Windows Defender, to beta testing. The product was made available to
the public in October 2006 as a download for Windows XP and 2003. Windows
Defender is built into Windows Vista, making it more convenient than ever for
users to defend against this insidious type of malware.

The SpyNet community

SpyNet is an online community in
which you can participate (but are not required to) when you use Windows
Defender. You join the SpyNet community via the
Microsoft SpyNet selection in Tools | Settings. There
are two participation options:

• 
  You can join with a basic membership, in which
  case Defender will send basic information to Microsoft about the software it
  detects and what actions you apply.
• 
  You can join with an advanced membership, in
  which case you get an alert when Defender detects any software that hasn’t been
  analyzed for risk (or changes made by such software). Defender also sends more
  information to Microsoft about detected software. This includes where the
  software was located on your hard disk, filenames, and how the software has
  affected your computer.

Summary

With Vista, you don’t have to buy third-party software to
scan for and remove spyware (although some people will want the added features
of commercial anti-spyware programs). Windows Defender, which is included with
the operating system, can be used alone or in conjunction with other
anti-spyware programs to help keep your computer safe.

       "PLEASE DO NOT COPY THIS ARTICLES…."