sparx

Well, at least they're being honest and up front about it. What are you gonna do? Keep McAfee or ZoneAlarm? I'm most interested in the outcome...Also, let me say that I don't admire the choice you need to make. ;-)Good luck!

I can't really say what the person who receives the email addresses does with them, but it stands to reason that harvesting email addresses in any manner but particularly by way of a worm means the creator is up to no good!

WeaponX: Good info on deleting services. I neglected to mention that because I haven't come across any one who's had any problems after running SymNRT yet. And in my personal experience, I know of at least 30-40 separate instances of the SymNRT being used and then having it wipe all that it's designed to wipe correctly. Thank goodness it works the way it should. Pity we can't always say the same about the other Symantec software, eh?

Personally, it depends on what sort of font is required - fixed width or a font with variable width. Mostly, it's Verdana or Tahoma that I prefer for variable-width stuff. For a fixed-width requirement, the Courier family isn't to my liking, so I prefer Lucida Console or OCR-A Extended Sample OCR-A Extended by Microsoft

At the time of the original post, the GTalk client with avatar and theme support was an ALPHA, so it wasn't available to general BETA users via the automati update version. Soon after, this was incorporated into the BETA and is now available to the BETA community too.

Off-hand, try anewpda.com They have comparison tables for Palm and some PocketPC (Windows Mobile) based PDAs. Also, have a look at Google and Froogle for indicative $ pricing. You haven't mentioned a location or where you intend to purchase from. Also, mention your needs and perhaps I can suggest something. I am, of course, biased toward Palm devices, let me tell you......... :-)

Will Wright tries to make all of us realise the immense intricacies of playing God and he succeeds where most others fail. I've been a fan of Will Wright's games far longer than I have been a Sid Meier game follower. The SimCity series is still higher on my list than the Civ series and don't get me started on the Sims and the countless expansion packs that followed. Note please that I am in no way trying to reduce the impact Sid Meier has had on the gaming industry as a whole. I just loved Pirates! and was delighted with the new 3D version released in 2004.Spore takes bio-engineering and the end user's imagination to whole new heights. having customizable characters now takes on a new meaning when you can just change the shape, dynamics and characteristics of your character.I won't update my PC for Vista. I will do it for newer games especially if they're like Spore

Does the database update automatically? Or is it part of the new Google Earth 4 release?

Darkwolf11235: I find this very difficult to believe. No manufacturer or assembler of computers will ever have a tie-up with more than 1 security service provider (Symantec / McAfee / Trend Micro etc.). Also, no self-respecting techie worth his/her salt is ever going to counsel someone on installing and running more than one antivirus on the same machine concurrently. The old adage that If one's good, two must be better just doesn't hold up in this case ! However, to help with your problems of not being able to remove the software, download and use the Norton Uninstall Tool. A direct link is here, albeit from a non-Symantec but trusted site. If you need further help or you don't trust this info, have a look at the Manual Download Page. Be warned that this tool will wipe ANY AND ALL SYMANTEC PRODUCTS from your system. It will NOT however remove registration info, so don't think for a moment that by using this tool, you'll be able to re-enter a new Product Key and get a free year's worth of updates. More info from Wikipedia SymNRT page

Outbreak Confirmed. JS.Yamanner@m is a worm that is written in JavaScript. It exploits a vulnerability in the Yahoo! Mail service to send a copy of itself to other Yahoo! Mail contacts. Notes: * The worm cannot run on the newest version of Yahoo Mail Beta. Also Known As: JS/Yamanner@MM [McAfee], JS_YAMANER.A [Trend Micro], Yamanner.A [F-Secure], JS/Yamann-A [sophos] Type: Worm Infection Length: 6,377 bytes. Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Yahoo Mail users ae advised to BLOCK all mail from "av3@yahoo.com", although by now, Yahoo admins will have taken care of this server side. Also, use the new BETA GUI (in spite of its clunkish attempts to emulate GMail ;-) ) JS.Yamanner@m arrives on the compromised computer as a Yahoo! HTML email containing JavaScript. If the email is opened within Yahoo! Mail, it performs the following actions: 1. Exploits a vulnerability in the Yahoo! Mail service and executes a script. 2. Scans emails in the personal folders of the Yahoo! Mail account. The worm gathers email addresses that contain @yahoo.com and @yahoogroups.com domains. Note: The personal folders are email folders in the currently logged in Yahoo! Mail account. These include folders such as the Inbox, Sent, and any custom-named folders in the account. 3. Sends a copy of itself to the email addresses gathered. The email may have the following characteristics: From: Varies Subject: New Graphic Site Message Body: Note: forwarded message attached. 4. Redirects the Web browser from Yahoo! Mail to the following Web site: [http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ 5. Sends the list of gathered email addresses to the above URL.

Let's not forget that Google brought out an IPO a few years ago and are a publicly listed company. Mentioned in the company's profile is that their primary source of income is indeed advertising - AdSense and AdWords.

Taken from an earlier post of mine: Steve Gibson's excellent Shields UP! which scans for open ports and recommends optimum firewall settings. ScanIT's browser security test is a reputed site to check for weaknesses. Symantec also has an online virus and internet security check available for free Secunia - the industry leader in notifying and testing of security exploits especially in browsers has lots of feeds and info on these browser holes.

Before the advent of the Google Notebook, I was using a free utility called EverNote. It allows saving of formatted text, images and other multimedia content into different categories and can be searched by date, content and a neat timeline feature. An added advantage is that the data can be kept safe via encyption. Yet another plus point is the ability to lock certain articles so they can't be deleted accidentally. Nice features. Works in both IE and Firefox. ========= Google's attempt is good because it offers portability. I can use it from any machine where it's installed.

Merely moving to Indonesia won't do anything, you need to be working for the Government there on a GOvt. - owned PC. :-)A fairly obvious plot to hold on to the PCs before the governement there decides switching to an alternate OS would be a cheraper and better idea.

Not exactly -- the infected files may have been quarantined, but the actual vector - the files that might run resident in memory might still be hidden away. If the machine is on a network, physically unplug the ethernet cable. No internet access and if there is a firewall installed, turn off all internet access.Now that this machine is isolated from the rest of the world, proceed with the disinfection procedure. Make sure that a backup of the registry is made on separate media (CD / USB flash drive) and then follow the instructions for maximum safety and redundancy.

More likely, you've been tricked. If as you say, you're surfing and a random pop-up appears disguised as a window or a dialog box, saying that you must click here - I caution you not to fall for such inane tricks. If you do want to check out any security holes or exploits that might be existing on your system, visit sites such as: Steve Gibson's excellent Shields UP! which scans for open ports and recommends optimum firewall settings. ScanIT's browser security test is a reputed site to check for weaknesses. SYmantec also has an online virus and internet security check available for free Secunia - the industry leader in notifying and testing of security exploits especially in browsers has lots of feeds and info on these browser holes. Now, regarding the last part of your comments - if you click YES on any of these prompts you are giving your permission for these people to access your machine. Most crackers don't ask for permission while undertaking unauthorised access of remote machines. See the difference? If you're in a computer system in which you should not have access -- you're breaking the law. Simple, wot?

I'm glad to see that some people here know the intellectual difference between a white-hat hacker and a cracker. Similar skills used in different ways. It's the old perennial good v/s evil story...

There's a registry hack to disable the Low Disk Space Notification balloon: Start the registry editor by clicking START > RUN regedit Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer Createa new DWORD value with the name NoLowDiskSpaceChecks Double-click this new value and enter 1 to disable messages or 0 to allow notifications.

Can Gnome or KDE be run on the Windows platform? I know there are other shells ( I did use LiteStep previously ) available for Windows. But on a shared family machine, one must stick to the known interface. When I get me a laptop, I'm gonna install Linux, discard Windows and ask for a refund ! It's been done before - as early as 1998. This is in case the new notebook is pre-loaded with Windows. I'd rather have a blank notebook without any special utils pre-loaded from the manufacturer with a reduction in price.

It actually depends on the subject that you're shooting and the amount of details required. For everyday snapshots, I recommend nothing less than a 3 or maybe a 4 megapixel optical resolution camera. The increasing amount of megapixels being stacked up manufacturers will be akin to somethng like the in-bult memory being offered in cell phones. One of my earliest phones had a 50 name address book and that was aadvertised as its USP. My current phone has the ability to store 10 times as many contacts and with more entries per contact too. How many do I actually use? Just under 50 (so my earlier device would have been enough). In case of digicams, increasing the number of megapixels isn't the only way that picture quality is being improved. Better CCDs and increasing the battery life is definitely on the improvement to-do list.I still maintain that only a digicam SLR with at least 8 megapixels and an exceptional lens will make me get rid of my existing Nikon FM manual SLR. Granted - the longer processing times for getting an image does get to me at times. The amount of configurable options available at 1/3 of the price of a similarly loaded D-SLR stills makes me keep my old and trusty sidekick. For macro and close-ups, I prefer my manual SLR. The 5 MP digicam (non SLR) tha I have is used for snapshots and for when lugging around my full kit is impractical.

I saw him being interviewed on BBC World for their weekly IT program - Click. He mentioned that most of what he was able to accomplish was nothing more than taking advantages of holes and exploits that were allowed to remain unplugged and unpatched. Such a level of ineptitude in terms of computer access security only invites probes from people wanting to know. This guy will undoubtedly become the Kevin Mitnick of this decade. He will be made an example of and possibly be charged with "potential damages", a term used not infrequently in a case of this type resulting from the fear generated by an unauthorised acccess. There's a good line in one of Tom Clancy's earlier novels - "The probability of a secret being known is directly proportional to the square of the people who know it." In this day and age of interconnectivity and shrinking horizons, nothing strikes greater fear in to the hearts and minds of people in possession of knowledge as other people gaining said knowledge.

meebo is excellent for the road warrior who might not have access to his/her own machine ata point in time. With the new registration system, one meebo username/pwd will login to all four services at once, saving on typing time. As regards to IM clients, I prefer using GAIM or the immensely customizable Miranda IM. Both of which are free and OpenSource and can be made "pleasing to the eye", albeit with a little effort on the part of the end user to install themes / icons / sounds / plugins that will make the IM experiece just so. With the new Windows Live Messenger (v8 BETA), MSN networks now support offline messaging Ă la Yahoo / ICQ. Just hope GTalk also gets on the bandwagon.

dbPowerAmp Music COnverter aka DMC available from http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm . Call it the Swiss-knife utility for converting audio formats. Small, quick, and does exactly what it was created to do. You'll need to download and install the appropriate dbpoweramp codecs to enable you to convert to and from your audio formats of choice. Codec Central is the place to get your codecs needed to empower DMC.

It's a theory propounded sometime in early 2004. Not everyone agrees that it exists and it can't really be confirmed. Google has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of any such concept being used in its SEO techniques. Link A sandbox in software terms is a restricted area wherein all activities carried out in the sandbox area REMAIN in that area and don't affect any part of the OS outside this "quarantine zone". In this case, all new websites that the Google search spiders crawl across are put in to this isolation zone. What happens here is that the newer sites are kept lower inthe search rankings for the first couple of weeks pending increased site hits and the ability of the site to remain online. IMHO, this might have been done to discourage the many many AdSense defrauders who put up a few pages filled with keywords but no discernible content, to push up the pages and the sites that they're hosted on up the google search rankings.

circlemodeling: Since you haven't been too specific with your requirements, let me point you to a page which has many chess resources - http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/softeng.htm In case, you'd like to play chess online in a structured and rated environment, you might want to consider using an FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) compliant GUI / program. One of the more notable ones is Babas Chess Quite simple to use and no worries about the default text interface used by the FICS servers.