tansqrx

Interesting idea but I think you are missing some practical problems. I will assume a Microsoft Windows model since I believe that’s what the original post was alluding to.I will agree that the core system files could be protected by setting them to read only. This would have to be a hardware read only switch such as the jumper pin you described because anything that can be accessed by software could also be accessed by malware. Having a super secure software implementation solution doesn’t work because history has shown that if the target is high value enough, it will be broken. But now I ask how you will update Windows on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. You will have to: 1. shut down the computer2. open the case3. set the jumper4. start Windows again5. apply the update6. Shut down the computer a second time7. Set the jumper to read only again8. Close the case9. Start Windows a second timeThis would get tedious for me as a power user really quick and the average user would just laugh and never enable the read only jumper. Good idea but the nine point process makes this impractical.This would work well against the malware that replaces core Windows files to hide itself. But most malware doesn’t touch the core files, they just use them. Using a file such as a DLL can be done in read only mode or not. Most of the malware usually lives in the user profile area, specifically the temp folders or the browser cache folder. Occasionally it will install itself in the Program Files directory.Setting sensitive areas to read only will deter certain types of attacks but you still have plenty of malware that never even rely on privileged Windows files. The trade off for 1% extra security isn’t worth it.

Other because Avast! (https://www.avast.com/index) is not shown in the poll.

I will agree that clearing your browser cache and deleting all temporary files on a regular basis is a good idea, but remember, I am talking about the absolutely bare essentials for non-computer nerds. I am considering it a great success if my users keep Windows updated and have the virus scanner on all the time. I may add your suggestion to a second âpower userâ document but not to the original.

According to a story at Wired.com, Threat Level Blog (https://www.wired.com/2010/10/hacking-captcha/), a US federal judge has decided to let a case involving a ticket reseller to go forward and has set a trial date of March 1, 2011. This case involves a âshadyâ ticket reseller called Wiseguy Tickets and Seats of San Francisco that buys bulk tickets from companies such as TicketMaster and then resells the tickets at a much higher price. The problem is that TicketMaster and other sellers have explicit terms of service statements that forbid buying bulk tickets or in some cases, even reselling the tickets at all. The original ticket sellers tried to thwart these bulk buying activities by implementing a CAPTCHA system which would stop anyone or anything that is not human from buying tickets. The basis of the case is that the defendant illegally accessed the ticket buying site by bypassing the CAPTCHA system. This could have wide reaching judicial impact because a ruling in favor of the prosecutors (the US government) would in essence make the civil act of breaking a contract (in this case breaking the TOS) into a criminal act. This is one of the main reasons that the cyber bulling case of Lori Drew was thrown out.

I never thought of running a Linux live disk to diagnose problems but I will certainly add it to my list of things to try in the future.I would think that running a Linux live disk would not test the hard drive in any way. The definition of a live disk is mounting everything in RAM and the hard drive is never touched. This would prove that there is something wrong the Windows install but there still might be a hardware hard drive problem. I guess I’m splitting hairs on this one.Great idea!

In a pure economic model, the consumer is mostly concerned with price or to the wiser consumer, value, which is a price to quality ratio. Unless there are considerable (or perceived considerable) side effects, the consumer will not care. Marketing does play a role in consumer habits but the by far greatest driving factor is price. I will also point out that there is already considerable EM radiation flowing through all of us right now besides the natural magnetic field. That 1,000,000 watt radio station down the street that can be heard for 300 miles pumps out a considerable amount of radiation that you are never aware of. Of course we also have cell phones, weather radar, and any type of radio that makes our environment a complete soup of EM radiation. I have never been a conspiracy theorist when it comes to EM radiation and a humanâs health (think cell phones and brain cancer). But I also donât think we have all the answers yet. There are reasons that you shouldnât stand in front of a high powered microwave array. As a side note, I used to work with an old navy seamen and he once told me this story. He was on a naval ship in the Atlantic running military exercises, which at the time was during the Cold War with Russia. As was the custom, a Russian naval vassal was also in the area just to make sure the sneaky Americans werenât up to something. This went on for a few days until the order was given to point the shipâs radar at the Russian ship to run it off. Apparently this didnât go over too well with the Russians and they did the exact same thing to the American ship (run a full strength radar beam at the American ship). When the radar hit the ship, and my co-worker, everyone got sick and started puking all over the place. It turns out that standing near a large EM emitter will cause quite violent side-effects. He said that he never wants to go through that again. EM radiation should be fine at reasonable levels (I suppose reasonable could be a loaded word) but it certainly can have side effects.

Reading and understanding Maxwellâs Equations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations), which is the foundation for all electrical engineering, will grant full knowledge of what you are asking. The problem is the understanding part.Basically this is very possible, but as already stated, this is fairly impractical on a large scale. Engineering is the science of practical solutions (this includes, if not dominated by, cost) while pure science concerns all possibilities, practical and impractical. The scientist explains that it is possible but the engineer shows that no one will pay for it.

My top two suspicions would be hard disk and RAM. A bad hard drive sector in a critical Windows directory will get you every time. I have also seen RAM go bad after many years of perfect performance. You would think that since RAM is a solid state device, it wouldn’t go bad but I have seen it one too many times.I would start with the hard drive since it is most likely. Do a full system Check Disk at boot (it’s one of the options). Then do a complete disk defragmentation. This will not fix the real problem but you may get lucky and have the bad sector located to another part of the hard drive with the defragmentation. All current hard drives have built-in spare sectors that are only visible to the hard drive firmware. When the drive sees a bad sector, it moves the bad sector to one of the reserves. The scary part is that this is a basic part of modern hard drives because bad sectors on some of these monster drives not only might have bad sectors, but WILL have them at a fairly high rate. The next step is to use software such as SpinRite (https://www.grc.com/intro.htm) to proactively find the bad sectors. SpinRite is somewhat expensive ($89.00) but it has saved me several times.The second thing to look at is the RAM. Microsoft has a free utility that can stress test the memory called Windows Memory Diagnostic (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/). Windows 7 has this built into the Windows 7 Repair Console. Run the test a few hours and see if it finds anything.Outside this, your job is going to get harder. You may want to reinstall Windows and see if that fixes your problem. If not, strip the hardware down to the bare essentials such as CPU, RAM, motherboard, video card, keyboard, and mouse. Run for awhile and if nothing happens, start adding hardware back one at a time. Change USB ports for your devices. Run with half RAM to see if that is the problem. Borrow a friend’s power supply for awhile. These are all good suggestions that should catch most crashes.P.S. You said you addressed the overheating issue but you might want to make sure by monitoring the temperatures with one of the many probing software packages. I use SpeedFan (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php) and found that my video card was causing some system crashes. The CPU was at a great temperature but the video card get really hot while playing TF2.

First off, I don’t really use anything to diagnose the problem. It is usually fairly obvious. The last one I worked on had more toolbars than browser window and wouldn’t connect to any antivirus sites. I ran Avast! as a boot time scan which fixed enough things to at least get antivirus definitions. From there I ran Avast! numerous more times along with SpyBot and then removed almost every program from the system. I was left with instructions to rebuild as the very last resort. In the end it should have been reformatted but the owner was very excited just to use AOL again (yea I know a completely different story).When I turn the computers over I tell them not to install anything at all because all they need has already been installed. Of course I have no power in enforce this so they always come back loaded with more spyware than a CIA honeypot. I ask if they installed something and they always say their kids or coworkers did. What can you do when it’s not your machine?

Did we take a time warp back to 1996? Let me put this as plainly as possible. Donâtâ use Visual Basic 6 and for that matter you shouldnât even consider using Visual Basic 6. The hard reality is that Visual Basic 6 has been discontinued for at least 10 years. Microsoft doesnât support it and you canât even legally buy a compiler for VB6 anymore. If you are still dabbling with version 6 then you most likely downloaded it from a torrent (no Iâm not passing judgment). The last version to support the old Visual Studio was Visual Studio 6. I have an old copy of Visual Studio 6 laying around just in case and I know that it is hard to install on such a recent operating system as Windows XP. You can forget it on Vista or Windows 7. In fact I had to install it on a virtual machine the last time I used it because Windows not only said no, but hell no. The better choice is to use the ânewerâ (i.e. not obsolete) Microsoft Visual Basic .NET. This way you can learn a programming language that is actually relevant and you can use after you get out of school. VB.NET is different from the old VB6 in semantics but you should be able to pick it up fairly quickly. The best part is a compiler for all of the .NET platforms are absolutely free from Microsoft at https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-express/. I will improvise from Animal House in saying âFat, drunk and programming in VB6 is no way to go through life, sonâ

I suppose you would call my audience the typical office worker. They can do most tasks such as install the latest Texas Hold’em game but can’t do anything to get out of a mess.This is not a formal agreement. These are my wife’s co-workers and boss in a very small office which I am friends with most of them. They all know that I am the computer guy so I do free work just to be nice. The problem is no matter how many times I tell them not to install software, they always do and it ends up trashing their machines. I also don’t want to make a very formal document with a bunch of terms and a glossary because all of them have shot attention spans and will just throw it down.The most recent machine (the one that I was replacing in the previous post) had a bunch of toolbars installed. They are also deep in fantasy football so a lot of sports related junk shows up such as programs that automatically change the background image on your desktop to the latest game day photo.

I just setup a new machine for my wife's co-worker because his old machine has one foot in the grave due to spyware. I decided to type up a "manual" for him and everyone else in the office. Comments are appriciated. Tips for Long Term Computer Happiness Keeping your machine running at full speed and without spyware is 95% user behavior and 5% (bad) luck. The 5% luck part can almost always be taken care of with antivirus tools, regular updates, and spyware scanning. Here are a few tips to keep your machine running at top performance (and not having to bring it back to me). Things to always do 1. Update Windows. Starting with Windows Vista, automatic Windows updating is usually turned on by default but if you havenât done so, check to make sure. This can be accomplished by going to the Control Panel and clicking Windows Update. You should check for updates manually each month anyway because by default Windows will not install what Microsoft calls âoptionalâ updates. Optional updates can be a fix that is not considered critical but should be installed to hardware driver updates which can add features or fix hardware problems. Updates are very important because they represent a bug or vulnerability that has been found with Windows. The worst can cause a bad guy to completely take over your computer without you doing anything or simply visiting a website. With the update you are safe, without you are a sitting duck that WILL be taken advantage of. Research has shown that an unpatched version of Windows XP out of the box will last an average of 6 minutes before it is taken over.2. Run Antivirus. Antivirus programs help to catch things that get in even if you are careful. Microsoft makes good free antivirus program called Microsoft Security Essentials (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14210/security-essentials-download). I also like Avast! which offers a free antivirus program for personal use (https://www.avast.com/index). 3. Use a Hardware Firewall. A firewall is a program or hardware that blocks âunwantedâ network (Internet) traffic from being sent or received from your computer. A software firewall is installed in Windows and usually pops up messages asking if you want to allow some particular traffic. Software firewalls are useful for laptops because you still receive protection even when you are away from your regular connection. A hardware firewall is much better because it is faster and much less prone to let an attack in. You donât need a firewall specific hardware device, any NAT router or switch does the same thing. This includes common consumer products such as the standard Linksys home router. The main thing is that you donât have your machine directly connected to your Internet modem without first going thought a router of some sort. It is also fine to run both a hardware and software firewall. 4. Update Applications. Before about 2 years ago, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office were the two largest attack targets. Currently most of the attacks are against third-party applications such as Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader. There is no easy way to update all of your third-party applications except to pay attention to update notifications within each program. These usually show up in the icon tray and will not install automatically. One way to check everything at once is to use a program like Secunia PSI (http://www.flexerasoftware.com/enterprise/products/software-vulnerability-management/personal-software-inspector/). PSI will scan your computer and compare its results to an online database of outdated or known bad software. 5. Scan for Spyware. There are several good programs you can use but I still recommend SpyBot (https://www.safer-networking.org/). Beware of any program that you have not heard of. âSpyware scannersâ are a current attack vector and Google is full of fake scanners that are nothing more than viruses. Get a spyware scanner recommendation from a live person (not over the computer). 6. Secure Wireless Access Points. WEP is bad but WPA or WPA2 is good for a wireless access point encryption. Currently WEP (which is the earlier standard) can be broken in under a minute. Another vulnerability is not changing your default wireless router password. The first thing a bad guy will do is try a well-known list of default router passwords (for Linksys this is admin/admin). You may be wondering what the big deal is. If a bad guy can gain access to your wireless access point, they can possibly see everything you are doing, including banking, email, and anything else. 7. Backup Your Data. If you have never been a victim of a hard drive failure, you will. Your hard drive, the thing that keeps all of your data, is a mechanical device and will die eventually. Just like the brakes on your car, it has a certain life expectancy. Most experts recommend storing your data in three different places. The first is the original which is already covered. The second is a local backup such as DVDs or an external hard drive. The third is offsite such as at a friendâs house or online. I recommend an online backup service such as Carbonite (https://www.carbonite.com/). The reason for the offsite back up is just in case something happens to your home such as a robbery or fire. If you only have the local back up, it will be taken or destroyed along with the original. Backing up is a pain but just think of what you would lose if your hard drive crashed. The one of a kind pictures, documents, work data? Things to Never Do (Behavior) 1. Click Email Links. This is an oldie but goodie. Never trust anyone that sends you email, not even your mother. The fact is they may have been infected and are sending you your very own copy of their virus. This is the same for any social networking site such as Facebook. The typical suspects are fake back messages, Viagra SPAM, and dating sites. Trust me; Kate, Sue, or Jenny is not looking to hook up. âSheâ wants to take over your computer. If you want to visit a link in email, copy the information into Google and see what it says.2. Donât Download or Install Anything Youâre Not Sure About. Here are the things you should almost never download or install. a. Browser Toolbars. Just donât do it, period. This is easily the best way to get your computer taken over. This means absolutely none including Google. All of the toolbar features are included in the latest browser versions. b. Antivirus/Spyware Scanners. This is another great way for your computer to die a slow and painful death while your bank account is emptied out. Know what antivirus and spyware program you use and what it looks like. If anything shows up on your screen that doesnât looks like them, close the box and restart the computer. The big offender is Antivirus 2010 or perhaps Antivirus 2011 by the time you are reading this. It is actually a browser window that is designed to look like legitimate antivirus software. Itâs far from legitimate. As long as you donât install the program associated with the pop-up, you should be fine. c. ActiveX Controls. I can think of only two reasons you should run an ActiveX control. That is on a Microsoft site or installing Adobe software. Otherwise donât do it, ever! An ActiveX control is a browser add-on that presents itself as a yellow bar at the top of your browser asking if you want to install it. d. Background Changing Programs. Known bad software most of the time. Donâtâ do it. 3. Limit Online Information. Social networks can hold a lot of information about you. Some is good but some can get you into trouble. Just remember this; donât post anything you donât want your mother to see at the trial. Maintenance Schedule Every Day⢠See if there are any program updates in the system tray and update if needed 2 Weeks⢠Check for Windows Updates Monthly⢠Run a full antivirus scan ⢠Run a full spyware scan

From the title the first thought that popped into my head was the Engineer from Team Fortress 2. He always needs more metal. Especially if there is more than one Engineer on the map.

I got a starter and new carbonator kit put on my mower so let’s continue. Security PC Tools Firewall Plus (http://www.pctools.com/norton-offer/pctEOL/) – This is yet another program that is free for personal use but you get some pressure to upgrade to the full version. The full version offers some identity protection (which I believe is total garbage), root kit scanner, spyware scanner, and a few other “value added” products. I am only after a good egress firewall so PC Tools Firewall Plus works fine for me. On my last install I tried to use the built-in Windows 7 firewall but it had no outgoing protection at all and I quickly moved back to a third-party firewall. I still have a few problems with applications like TeamSpeak so I am very much still looking for a replacement. By default there is a set of whitelisted applications that will not give a prompt when they try to access the network but I always turn that off because I want to know exactly what is seeking access. For instance, Notepad will try to get access out when you start it, even if you are only opening a local document. There is no good reason for this and thus Notepad gets the big banned from the network setting even though it is on the default whitelist. Spybot (https://www.safer-networking.org/) – About four years ago Spybot was the only good kid on the block. Now there are several good alternatives for removing spyware but I still like Spybot. I particularly like the Tea Timer and browser protection. This basically adds entries to your system hosts file to black hole and known bad domains. Even if you have no problems, you should run the spyware scanner of your choice at least once a month. Internet Filezilla (filezilla-project.org) – Someone already mentioned this so I will pass. JDownloader (jdownloader.org) – This is a great java program that you can use to download multiple files from the ever popular online hosting services such as Rapidshare, Megaupload, etc. JDownloader can be somewhat of a resource hog but if you have ever tried to download several files from Rapidshare, this is heaven. You can add any premium accounts or use the standard free account and the list of sites that it supports is quite impressive. If you run out of bandwidth for your particular site, it will tell you how long you have to wait till the download will start again.

I’m back at my home computer so I will continue with my list. This is not all of the freeware that I use but it is what I use frequently. Security Secunia PSI (http://www.flexerasoftware.com/enterprise/products/software-vulnerability-management/personal-software-inspector/) – This is a nice program that constantly scans your computer for updates and vulnerabilities. Secunia builds a list of programs on your computer and then checks with its online database to see if there are issues. I am always find problems with Adobe which even the official Adobe Update Tool will not catch. There are links for solutions. Secunia wants you to run PSI all the time as it will catch programs as they are installed and uninstalled but I only run it a few times a month to save CPU cycles. This is highly recommended because I will bet that you have programs that you never know had reported problems. Microsoft Security Essentials (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14210/security-essentials-download) – This is the free antivirus offering from Microsoft that came out almost a year ago. I have found it to be really good. Thinking about moving back to Avast! because of malicious script that some webpages have. Avast! (https://www.avast.com/index) – Free for personal use but you might have to dig for the link. I have already said much about this program so I will not rehash. I like and recommend it as a solid antivirus solution. Slow on scans but still good. More after I fix my lawn mower…

I would like to have the FrontPage extensions removed from my hosting plan because I don’t use them anymore and it is costing me around $2.00 a month. I went into the Client Area but I didn’t see an option to change my plan. I am guessing that this will have to be done manually. If so go ahead and do it.

I personally use DynDNS (http://dyn.com/dns/) and get a hostname that can be looked up to find my current IP. I run a DynDNS client on a spare computer that updates when my ISP IP has changed. I know that many consumer routers (Linksys) even support DynDNS updating on the router.Like the previous poster stated, I have a TeamSpeak server running on the spare computer and I just give all the clients the DynDNS hostname. They never have to change their settings and I never have to work because the update client does all the work.

Multimedia VLC Media Player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) – The universe of media players and video CODECS is a strange and dark one. Sometimes a video will play on one player and flat out refuse to play on another. I have found that VLC plays just about anything that you throw at it and I have assigned to all of my video except WMV files to be played with VLC. I find that some WMV and IV50 files do not play nice so I resort to Windows Media Player for those. VLC will also automatically fix a bad AVI file and even play it while it is being downloaded (AKA opened by another process). If all else fails I will try Media Player Classic (mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/) which is bundled with my next freeware favorite. K-Lite CODEC Pack (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_codec_pack.htm) – This is basically a collection of just about every audio and video CODEC ever created. On a new install I usually install the Mega pack to get every CODEC. Once again the world of CODECS is a strange one so success is not always guaranteed. Winamp (http://www.winamp.com/) – This one may be splitting hairs on freeware but I have never paid a dime and use it all the time. Yes there is a paid version but the free version handles everything I need. I like the interface much better than Windows media Player and I use it to sync my iPod without the concrete block tied around my ankle called iTunes. You need to be careful when you install. I disable all the crap such as the free music services, toolbar, Winamp agent, and even video support. I found that Winamp likes to steal the extensions to video files when you’re not looking so I don’t even give it a chance. Security TrueCrypt (http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/) – The US government and many top companies will not let a laptop out of their building without some form of whole disk encryption on them. This should at least make you wonder why. The reason is if the laptop is stolen, sure the thief gets the hardware but they can’t access the much more valuable data. This is why I encrypt my laptop and even my desktop. Get TrueCrypt now and encrypt everything you value. Of course the desktop is less likely to be stolen but the risk is not zero and I’m sure you have some information on there that you wouldn’t like your neighborhood identity thief to see. As you can see, I like freeware. I have a few more that I may add later. I love freeware because I am cheep and to be honest, in many categories, you can’t buy a better product even if you wanted to.

Let me add my 2 cents. General allSnap (http://ivanheckman.com/allsnap/) – This is a small and free applications that makes Microsoft Windows windows snap together or on the edge of the desktop. I have been using this application since XP and I can tell a huge difference when it is not running. I know that Windows 7 has the Aero Snap feature but I find it annoying because it likes to resize or snap to the entire side of the desktop. allSnap takes the current windows and simply makes it snap. I have had some problems under x64. If you have multiple windows open all the time and like an organized desktop, give allSnap a try. Process Explorer (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx) – This is the Windows Task Manager the way it should be. Process Explorer is made by Sysinternals which was bought by Microsoft a few years ago. These guys are the high gurus of the Windows kernel and it shows in all of their software. Not only do you get all the information the standard task Manager gives you, you get very detailed information on each process such as network sockets and the program directory. Ever wanted to know what spawned those mysterious svchost.exe processes? Just look up the image and find out. It’s best to run as Administrator so you get full control and see all processes. Autoruns (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx) – Another great tool from Sysinternals. This one finds every program that wants to start up when Windows turns on. Did I say every program? I mean EVERY program, down to the Internet Explorer add-ons. It can be complicated but just remember the more egregious offenders are usually located at the top. Programming Wireshark (https://www.wireshark.org/) – This open source network capture is the industry standard for monitoring network traffic. I do a lot of network programming so this is one of the first applications that I install. Fiddler (https://www.telerik.com/download/fiddler) – Fiddler will capture HTTP and HTTPS traffic coming from either Internet Explorer or Firefox. This is great when you are only trying to capture network traffic from a web browser. Additionally, Fiddler will show you the captured traffic in several different views. For example, if you capture HTML, you can view the raw traffic (pieced back together if multiple packets), see the HTML displayed, hex, and many other views. Fiddler also has scripting and statistics reporting which makes this a very powerful tool for the price of nothing. The biggest reason I use Fiddler is to decode HTTPS traffic which is almost impossible with Wireshark. Networking uTorrent (I’m at work and can’t get the URL, just Google it) – Looking for the best way to download all of those completely legal Linux Distros? This is the only program to even consider. uTorrent is small, free, and doesn’t even require an install. I do wish it has blacklist filtering though.

I will certainly have to add this group when I get home. Too bad Facebook is blocked at work.

I used to love to reformat and I did it at least once a year. But as I’ve gotten older, now it’s just a pain in the butt. I do some programming so I have a highly customized environment that takes at least a few days to get back. Even after that I find that I will be finding “mistakes” for another six months. I will agree that it used to be imperative to reformat Windows often but I have found Windows 7 to be very stable. My last install lasted almost 3 years and the only reason I reformatted was to install a failing boot drive with a SSD. In the Windows 2000 era you could tell a speed decline after around six months. Now I can’t really feel a difference even after a year.

I created tansqrx while I was in Calculus II. I needed a login for one of the school’s computer systems, and I was giving this some though during the afore mentioned Calculus class. I always liked tangent because it was the oddball function what looked completely different from sine and cosine. I also liked that you could square a trig function and the 2 was directly behind the function, such as sin^2(x).Thus I created “tangent squared x” or “tan^2(x)” or “tansqrx”.

I fix the computers at my wife’s place of employment frequently. Almost every repair has been centered around one of the employees clicking one of these fake antivirus programs. I suppose this might be a good thing if I got paid, but my work is purely charity. I have almost come to the point of making a clone image of a freshly rebuilt machine. When yet another one of these crapware infested machines graces me with their presence, I will just slap the known good image on the offending machine and send it on its way.If you see one of these pop-us in your browser, don’t worry too much. It can’t do anything to you unless you allow an ActiveX script to run or download program and install it. If you are super paranoid, clear all of the browser cache, run your antivirus, and then reboot.

I don’t speak French (?) so I didn’t really understand what was going on. I could have translated it but I already used the atomic option to fix my problem. I reformatted and put Windows 7 on the machine. There were some other weird problems going on besides just the CD so I decided to just nuke it. There were a few programs that refused to uninstall and the boot time was getting really slow. I’m sure there wasn’t any malware on the system so I still think it was some bad hard drive sectors. Even after a checkdisk there were problems. After 4 years, it’s just time to re install Windows.

I have to say that I really like this idea. The security guy in me wonders if security through obscurity is best, but I canât really find a problem with this scheme. As long as there are no exploits in the PHP script and youâre the only one that knows the correct string, itâs almost like having a shared secret key. I would still prefer AES or better encryption but this actually sounds like a really decent quick and dirty way of hiding a site. I would also recommend making a nice long and nasty string similar to a good password. This way, even if an adversary were aware of your scheme, it would take them a very long time to actually break the code. I can guarantee that âopensesameâ is in every password list known to exist; right next to Admin, sex, god, password, 1234, and abcde. As a note, I would highly recommend you only change the user agent for your site only. I have seen several articles over the past year that shows your user agent HTTP field is very unique and can even be able to track you. Even better than an IP address or Flash cookies. You can test your browser at https://panopticlick.eff.org/ (hosted by the EEF) and read about the Panopticlick project at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. Some more at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/