sparx

Since you're a Firefox user, I'd recommend using the IETab extension. It's derived from the older IEView extension. Essentially, it embeds as an object in a Firefox tab, the page you want to view using the Internet Explorer rendering engine. You're effectively browsing in Firefox but using IE to render the page. Be forewarned that there are certain unresoved issues: > IE's ActiveX enable/disable settings do NOT work > All popup windows open in a new IE Tab > Navigation history list does NOT work > SSL icon does NOT work > Site's favicon does NOT work

A very succinct explanation provided by Houdini !MD5 is what is termed in crypto-speak as a hash. It's used to verify the contents and integrity of a file (usually archives or installation setups) to ensure that the file that you have on your disk is exactly the same as it's intended to be. Even a single byte change will result in a different has being computed. If the hash of the file you get is different from the has listed, you know that the file isn't the original. Either some corruption has taken place while downloading/storing or there has been some intentional tampering or the hash has been incorrectly calculated.MD5 as a hash is going out the window now because of vulnerabilities found in its algorithm in 1996. For security / encryption, the newer SHA-1 hash is/was being used, although some flaws were found in it too in 2004 ensuring that the more paranoid amongst us have switched over to other hashes like RIPEMD160 and the upcoming SHA512. Each of these hashes has a greater length as they have more number of bits:MD5 - 128 bit - near obsoleteSHA1- 160 bit but flaws and collisions have made this now unreliable!RIPEMD160 - 160 bit and holding against brute force attacks (but just barely)SHA512 - the way forward...

DOn't forget Google's RSS reader - https://www.google.com/reader/about/ Google Talk - https://www.google.com/hangouts/ Google Pack - https://www.google.de/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=eUUsVMSaJsqH8QeZ-4HQBg&gws_rd=ssl Google Analytics - to get statistics of your site and pages - https://www.google.com/analytics/ Google Bookmarks - https://www.google.com/bookmarks/&hl=en&service=bookmarks ( although it's more of a search history collector) Google Directory - https://www.google.de/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=RNM1VLHLN4aJ8QfHvID4Bw&gws_rd=ssl Google SMS - https://www.google.com/mobile/sms/ Google Suggest - https://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en&gws_rd=ssl Google Mobile - https://www.google.com/mobile/ Personalised Google Home Page - https://www.google.com/ig Google Toolbar - https://www.google.com/intl/de/toolbar/ie/index.html Google Special Searches - https://support.google.com/websearch/ Google Translation Tools - https://translate.google.com/ Google MusicSearch - https://support.google.com/websearch/ Google MovieSearch - https://www.google.com/movies Writely - https://drive.google.com/ == online word processor+editor Google DeskBar - http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ == desktop toolbar allowing quick access Google Desktop - http://desktop.google.com/ == Desktop Search from the big G Google Code - http://code.google.com/ == lists OpenSource code from Google's developers Orkut - http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ == social networking site Google Finance - https://www.google.com/finance Google Base - https://www.google.com/retail/merchant-center/?gsessionid=bXBT9NksikO8JmoTt_FzIA Google BlogSearch - https://www.google.de/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=ENM1VLveM4SJ8QfL34GoCw&gws_rd=ssl Picasa - http://picasa.google.com/ == Image Organizer The latest addition is Calendar - https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=cl&passive=1209600&continue= http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/= http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Also, the very funny Google Romance - http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Thanks for the replies: Two options currently are both from Creative: The 20 GB Creative Zen Sleek 6 GB Creative Zen Micro Both of the above have an FM Tuner and seem to fulfill my required criteria.

Hello all ! Someone I know is flying to Dubai and has very kindly agreed to get me any electronic consumer goods that I want. Right now, a personal music player is at the top of my "I want this..." list. However, I want to ask the advice of users on the forum as to what particular model they'd suggest. The following parameters are must-haves: At least 2 GB capacity FM tuner ability to play WMA, MP3 - a must. (Plus points if it can also play MP4 / OGG / AAC) good battery life - 10 - 12 hours actual playback (which means a rated life of about 14 hours) I don't need/want a colour screen. Even removable AAA battery would do as I have plenty of rechargeable batteries lying around. Looking forward to your inputs, guys !

That's the old ALT+255 trick where it would embed a blankspace character in the ANSI DOS mode. It would show up as a folder with the _ underscore character in Windows Explorer. An old way to disallow access to a folder.Arpit: You're absolutely correct in mentioning that this trick doesn't work in Win 2000 / Win NT / XP and 2003 versions.

Although a proponent of Open Source software and collaborative development, I have to admit that the IE7 roadmap / feature list is finally bearing some semblance of being a "team player". How is that you might ask? It's because the dev team have sat up and taken notice of what the community has to say... I will say, in no uncertain terms, that IE has the easiest interface to get used to (especially for people for whom the Internet and WWW are unfamiliar territory). IE 7 is making headway in a few departments like RSS and OPMl feed gathering, anti-phishing warnings and the ability to render pages in a sandbox-like environment. Part of this has to do with the fact that Vista and all its allied components are part of the LUA framework or Least privileged User Account. Case in point - the IE dev team sat down with devs form the Mozilla / Opera / other browser dev teams and reps of the W3C and agreed to use a standard icon for RSS feeds - the globally recognized orange icon - The MS Outlook 12 dev team have also agreed to use the same icon in the interests of maintaining consistency between platforms Quite a few people don't like the new large size buttons and other inherent frailties in the interface but no one will deny that it is far better than IE 6. I also agree completely with Transcedum's post - a BETA is exactly that. You're under no compulsion to check it out and use it. Better to have a buggy BETA than an RTM version which is as full of holes as swiss cheese.

Keylogger / Activity Log: Have a look at the freeware section on Snapfiles.com for a wide range of free activity recorders. Some will also take screenshots at regular intervals. Based on your OP and requirements cited therein, I recommend you give TracksRevealer a try...

Dhanesh - In response to your problem re: disabling time changes, by default Guests and Users can't make the changes. Only Power Users and Admins can. ====== Volume Control ======= Use a command line util like -url=http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html] NirCMD[/url] http://forums.xisto.com/ to set the volume to a desired level. You can then place this shortcut in your startup folder or on your desktop, so you can easily mute / set levels as desired. If your users aren't smart enough, you might even consider hiding the Volume COntrol icon from the tray are thru the Sounds / Multimedia Contol Panel applet ===To disable Windows Media Player === In Group Policy Editor, navigate your way to the following entry: LOCAL COMPUTER POLICY > USER CONFIGURATION > ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES > SYSTEM Double-click the entry in the right-side pane DON'T RUN SPECIFIED WINDOWS APPLICATIONS. Select ENABLE and then click SHOW... In the next box, click ADD and type in wmplayer.exe and click OK Also add mplayer.exe and mplayer2.exe That ought to prevent people from starting up WMP and all its iterations. Note that a knowledgeable person can just download the far more capable Media Player Classic or VLCPlayer and play media on the PC. Add all the EXEs that you want users NOT to access. Alternately, there's another policy which allows users to access ONLY certain specified EXEs - this is IMHO far more dangerous as you might end up just locking yourself out. == In all instances, make a backup copy of your registry or take a system restore snapshot before implementing changes ==

Dhanesh: I've got ZA Pro and it does have an option to lock down the prefs with a password. Type Start > RUN control userpasswords2 to open the User Accounts options. Select the user and click Properties. Then click the 2nd tab - GROUP MEMBERSHIP and the last option OTHER - among the various profiles, pick GUEST. In Win XP, GUEST has the least privileges. The theme page can be disabled from the Group Policy Editor. You just have to dig thru all the various options. (Hint: it ought to be in Control Panel-Display)

I wanted to add: Use the Group Policy Editor when in Admin mode to effect changes in an easier fashion. START > RUN gpedit.msc I also recommend using X-Setup, the last freeware version is 6.3 which allows customization of hundreds of options in a safe manner with the ability for a user to rollback changes made.

First, make sure that users other than yourself are described as GUESTS and not just USERS. GUESTS have the least privileges on Win XP. This is more dependent on the software installer program, if it specifies that the program can be installed without Admin privileges required, then you're out of luck You can uninstall WMP entirely. Or use widely available software to password-protect the EXE. So when a user tries to run the EXE, he must enter the correct password or the EXE won't run at all. Example - LockAnExe It's freeware and untested by me. There are many other shareware apps out there which will work well in this regard. Enable Wallpaper REG FileDisable Wallpaper REG File This should be configurable in the "Limited Users" properties page. You can configure your firewall (like ZoneAlarm) to disallow MSN Messenger from conneting to the Net. Then password-protect the options in ZA, so no one else can change them. Again, with ZoneAlarm, disable access for browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera etc. Or, you can edit the connetion options of the various browsers to point them to access the Net thru incorrect proxy servers. In IE > TOOLS > OPTIONS > CONNECTIONS. Click the LAN SETTINGS button and enter some random IP address like 192.168.3 (some IP NOT on your local network) and a random port other than 80 (the default). Of ourse, if the user is smart he might just disable this option and proceed. I'll search around for something that might suit your needs in this case. I suggest you keep an image (Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage) of your hard disk, so it's easy to revert when things get screwed up. If you use software like GoBack, you can set an automatic revert which will revert your HDD's state after a reboot or a preset time.

Finally, after so many many years, MSN has introduced offline messaging - thank God for that! It's so much easier to leave a short message for a perosn on your contact list, rather than having to open up an application (be it IE or OE) to send an email.

There are a few points which I hope you'll clarify for me - are you certain that your actual connection speed is 115kbps or are you going by what the windows DUN connection tooltip shows you when you hover the mouse over it. By default, it's usually the port speed that's displayed - the speed at which data is transferred between your modem (in this case your cell-phone) and the serial port of your computer. In order to display your true speed, enter the following string in your modem's extra settings field. For Win XP: 1. In Control Panel, click PHONE & MODEM OPTIONS. 2. On the Modem tab, select your modem and click PROPERTIES 3. In the new box that opens up, selece the ADVANCED tab and enter the appropriate settings depending on your modems chipset (in your case, try each one to see which one works). 4. Click OK to all dialogs. Chipset ==== Extra Settings Motorola ==== atq=1\v=4 Rockwell PCI ==== at+mr=2 Other Rockwell ==== w2 USR ==== &a3 All ==== at&f1 Use an online speed testing site like BandwidthPlace or this one. That gives you a better idea of actual speeds, although with some compression algorithms, one can see an increase in the speed ratings. Next point - you mention that you're getting only 5 kbps while downloading? That, my dear fellow, would be wholly unacceptable. That's even slower than WAP access unless.... unless you mean 5 KBps. See there's a difference between bits and bytes - 8 bits ( make one byte ( (but I'm sure you knew that ;-) ) Finally, do you use your Airtel connect while on the move or do you usually remain stationary while connecting? Is the performance of the connection dependent on the battery life of your phone? I mean, how long does your battery drain out when using your cell-phone as a modem? I'd like to add to your tariffs table re: BPL Mobile in Mumbai - Although now taken over by Hutch, operations haven't been merged yet, so the old tariff still holds and it's a whopping Rs. 750.00 a month for unlimited downloads and unlimited time per month.

ChessGenius for Chess - superb engine and lots of configurable options. EDGE - Extreme Dungeon Game Experience - the definitive RPG game for Palm OS. A rivetting story-line coupled with intelligent character customizable options, makes this a winner ! Sudoku by Astraware - Neat, crisp interface and the ability to pencil in candidates makes this one a must-have! GTSRacing - Feel the need for speed in superb 3D. Finally - 3D Mines.... Minesweeper in 3 dimensions, makes it that much more taxing on your grey cells! Mind you, I'm all for some of the other games previously mentioned in this thread. These games are ones that haven't been mentioned earlier and are also well worth your time.

Providing space is good enough; what this service will depend most critically on is two varied but crucial points - 1. The bandwidth available to users to upload their files. 2. More importantly, the willingness of users to trust Google to take care of their files. Now there will be people who trust Google implicitly and those of us who believe that the only "eyes" who ought to see my files are mine alone. Never mind that no human will be crawling the content. After all, there are thousands of users of Google Desktop! What's important to note is Google's earning model - it has grown from an internet search company to an advertising behemoth. That's where the cash flows in... AdSense AdWords. The best way for them to earn is to go thru the content provided by the end-users and display relevant adverts. ---------------- GMailDrive is the shell extension (unsupported and NOT recommended by GMail!) that we're talking about. It allows a user to upload files to his/her GMail account, but no hosting possible!

Old News ! The Brits have already played golf in spaceBritain's Prof. Colin Pillinger recently located the remains of his lost Mars Spacecraft Beagle II. The damaged craft was found tucked rather nicely inside a small crater. While a loss to science, he may have earned a place in history with the first interplanetary hole-in-one. <grins>

Abhi: I'm in India too and have alrady signed up for this. Hopefully, we 'll be able to get it before stocks run out. Look out for the fine print on the page towards the bottom of the page. It's the first line. IN any case, here's hoping... I think it's an innovative marketing method, one which I hope other companies follow too.

Here's how you can get yourself a free USB thumb drive from Microsoft : They're stuffing a USB memory stick / flash drive with information and FAQs on licensing, how to get legal copies of Windows, best use practices and other info that the marketing pundits at Microsoft believe at least some people will go thru in return for a free USB thumb drive. Once you get it, you're free to erase the data on it and use it as you wish, I suppose. Otherwise, they might have just burnt the info on a CD and sent that to you. There is a catch though, the site mentions clearly that this offer is limited to one drive per person and that the offer is valid only in the USA.

To all of us who at one time or another have wished that it were as easy to get rid of NAV as it were to install it - I recommend you use the Symantec Nortona Antivirus Removal Tool SYMNRT. Norton Removal Instructions This tool removes ALL SYMANTEC PRODUCTS for the years 2004/2005/2006. No selective scanning here. Use this only when your last resort (for some people) is to reformat your windows installation just to be able to run the Norton Products ! It removes all files and registry entries too. I highly recommend that you follow the instructions on the linked page exactly as mentioned. It goes without saying that you must keep a backup copy of your registry and critical data files to an off-site location as insurance in case something decides to follow the path of Murphy's Law. :wink:

I would in fact recommend to Google that they also release an OpenGoogle pack which also includes OpenSource software as well as software developed by the Google Labs and their subsidiaries. To those who would love playing Devil's Advocate, I know that Google products are NOT open source but at least they support the OpenSource Movement, unlike other industry behemoths which trivialise such collaborative and transparent efforts. organicbmx: OpenSource P2P - Shareaza connects to Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey networks. It can also handle BitTorrent and normal HTTP/FTP downloads.

If you use a shell for IE like Maxthon or Avant, the toolbar ought to take the colour and appearance of your currently selected skin. There aren't any plugins. What sort of plugins would you expect from a tool such as this anyway?

I agree with m^e. Roboform is without doubt the best password filling tool out there. Its ability to integrate perfectly with both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox is one of its greatest pros.Having the ability to directly got to a site of choice and then be logged in is just a one-click affair, and of course it helps when you need to fill in information repeatedly. I just wished it cost a little less so's I could get more licenses. :-)The toolbar is neat and fully customizable and the learning curve is quite short. There's a built-in random password generator which can be used to create hard to guess passwords. The data can be encrypted and backed up from within the software and the user can also export / print out all the details or do so selectively, so you can store it in an offline location like a bank safe or locker.Just remember that this software literally makes you put all your eggs in one basket, so that basket ought to have a really really tight lid (your master password) to prevent any damage.All-in-all, highly recommended! The free version allows you to store 10 passcards only after the initial 30-day trial, but the functionality isn't reduced in any other way.

Virus scanners perform their functions in two modes - realtime and on-demand. A real-time scanner performs a virus check on files as they are created / modified. An on-demand scanner will perform a scan only when a user (or a program) tells it to. There are many free AV scanners which work in realtime mode; In fact 9 out of 10 real-time anti-virus scanners will have the ability to scan on demand! Some of the more well-known freeware and competent ones include: AVG Free: Link here Anti-Vir: Link here Avast : Link here One of the most highly rated on-demand scanners is BitDefender. In its non-freeware guise, almost all of its users rate it above and beyond most of the more popular products available in the market today. It also has a freeware versionavailable here, which offers only on-demand scanning, so it's a good idea to use this manually in conjunction with a product that gives you always-on realtime protection. Note that it isn't recommended to use more than one antivirus solution at the same time as they have a tendency to conflict with each other.

We all agree that SP2 fixes up old holes and also creates new ones. Bottom line is - keep your PC updated with the latest patches. SP2 has been out for quite some time and has had the smallest percentages of install failures in the recorded history of Windows Updates [ barring Win2003Server updates]. As with all major software upgrades, backup to a separate location [ like a CD / DVD ] or another HDD. Prevention is better than having to waste time huntinig and then implementing the cure. If the hole to exploit is absent you won't be infected with the malware designed specifically to look for that hole in your PC.My opinion - take the plunge. Install SP2 but take the precaution of backing up your data.