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Messages - Notok [ switch to compact view ]

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1
I'm not sure that I understand the slippery slope thing here. The UEFI is an independent panel. MS is on the panel, but they're just one voice; I don't imagine them all deciding to make all computer hardware Windows-only. They are basically like the hardware equivalent of SSL certificate publishers. Like f0dder said, Windows 8 certification requires that you be able to disable Secure Boot, and that certification is important to OEMs.

2
It's just different, really. Windows has kept things relatively similar for 17 years, and it's hard to re-learn these things after so many years.

There's plenty of room for improvement, but Windows 8 is the first step for MS along the path to a new way of computing that was laid down by mobile devices. When tablets came around, they started changing how we compute, and it's likely that our desktop systems will be shrunk down into mobile devices at some point in the future, and more and more things will become connected and unified; Windows 8 just provides the framework for MS to keep up as the changes happen. I think that Windows 8 does a good job of balancing new and old; it's pretty easy once you get used to the charms bar and get the start screen customized the way that you want it. I'm actually thrilled to have a full-screen Start screen that gives me a nice clean and organized way to get at the multitude of apps that I install, and having my appointments, tasks, etc. on my start screen as live tiles.

I also think that people's attitude will change a bit when developers start making new and innovative apps. We've got new UI options, and I have no doubt that there will be some brilliant apps to enhance entertainment and productivity. I'm excited to see what Windows Blue will bring, too.

Just before Windows 8 I was starting to think about creating a more unified experience with my mobile devices, PC, HTPC, and so on with network and cloud apps, and when I first booted up Windows 8 my mind started reeling at the potential. I can't wait to see what the future brings!

3
Accidents will happen, but until the average users are willing to take/accept responsibility for their actions/activities online, malware will always be a threat.  Instead folk on the Web want to rely upon third party software to protect them from their own folllies.  Kinda like a drunk driver not understanding why he got a DWI - he was just havin' fun.

When I was on CompuServe many moons ago, there was a guy - Ross Greentree or Greenberg, I think - who challenged virus writers to attack him.  (This was when Peter Norton (nice guy) and Ron McAfee (ego and bad attitude) and Phil Katz (ZIP format author - interesting story tied to that) were just getting started.)  He considered his protections to be superior.  It wasn't.  A lot of folk browsing today have Ross' attitude:  they can go anywhere because they are protected, so they don't have to exercise caution, just have fun - just like that guy with the DWI.

The willingly unaware will always be in danger, for, as Renegade said, "New threats will always emerge."
It's definitely too often overlooked that the person is an integral part of their security. It's just like any RL security: you need to lock your doors, don't park in a bad part of town if you don't have to, don't leave an expensive laptop alone in public spaces, and so on. Part of the problem is that there isn't much education on the matter, though. I've been recently thinking that AV software really should have a "product tour" when installed (like so many other apps) that shows the user what real alerts look like (as opposed to the fake AV popups and such), generally how it works, and things to look out for while using the computer.

With that said, this test was deeply flawed. They used VirusTotal, which does NOT give an accurate picture of how well the software protects the user (VirusTotal themselves state this -- they use the commandline scanner only, which often doesn't include things like heuristics, for starters; see HERE).

AV testing is also something that really requires that the tester be highly knowledgeable on the subject to get meaningful results. Even if they had done things right, though, they didn't use enough samples to be statistically significant. Lastly, it's true that simple file detection is not enough to keep a system protected, but there's more to antivirus software than simple file scanning.

There's a response article HERE.

4
This should be really easy for anyone that knows about adding a small app to Windows explorer.

I use a Mac with Windows 7 (x64) in a VM for my work, and other people here use a mix of Macs and PCs. As such, network paths get sent by email, and sometimes they're Mac and sometimes they're Windows.

I would really like to be able to right-click and copy a path, and have it automatically convert them. All this really means is replacing forward-slashes with back-slashes, and vice versa.

So if I have \\share\directory, I'd like to be able to right-click and copy as //share/directory, and vice versa.

Thanks!

5
I would :D

The server-client app would be preferable, for sure (for all of the obvious benefits, including the ones you stated), but I would be fine with the client-only as well. With that said, I'll leave it to you and your schedule and motivation :)


6
That would be excellent :) A good (and thorough) validator would be welcome, for sure, as long as I can disable components I don't need; I let mine use HTML tidy, but much of what it reports could be considered "noise." It's easy to pick and choose when there's only a handful of "problems" reported, but if you include too many different validators then that noise can add up quickly (I've never seen a validator that didn't include at least some erroneous or superfluous reports, and it can be difficult to disable certain checks without disabling some of the useful checks as well).

For now, maybe someone knows of one that allows you to add custom searches? Maybe with a customizable INI file or something? The company wouldn't be adverse to paying for something, though I wouldn't want to use a big bulky suite that's primarily meant to do things that I don't need.

When I'm at work tomorrow I'll try to remember to post what validator I use, in case it can help someone else. It's a Firefox extension that does the validation locally (most of them send the code to online validator(s), which I'm not comfortable with for obvious reasons) and it does a great job for what it does; it just doesn't seem to do well with empty tags.

If someone does decide to make a custom validator, I would love to throw in a few ideas :) I would also be happy to pick the brains of some of the developers around the office, too (there are lots, including those with varying specialties, but there's a few very good/experienced people that come to mind).

7
Hi everyone!

I am currently working for an ad-agency doing web QA. One of the things that I have to do is to make sure that the HTML code meets specific requirements. I have a pretty good routine for most of it, but there are a couple of things that I would really like to be able to use some sort of tool to automate the process, and I am hoping that someone here might know of some tools :)

1. Finding empty tags - You would think that there would be tools all over the place for this, but I've had a hard time finding any except as part of larger commercial testing suites that I couldn't use; i.e., it wouldn't be worth buying an expensive suite of software for the single function.

Dreamweaver has an option to remove empty tags and I tried using that, saving a copy of the edited version, and using a diff tool to find what it did (my job is to report issues, not fix them), but it's far from perfect and the process was a little cumbersome.

I also use a code validator that utilizes the W3C validator and HTML Tidy, but it doesn't seem to work reliably for finding empty tags.

2. Finding ASCII characters in visible text - Note that it's not just extended ASCII, but anything that's not a letter, number, period ("full stop" for you non-Americans), or comma. Obviously I wouldn't want it to point out everything in the HTML code; just the text that's visible on the rendered page.

8
This is something I've been really wanting for a while now. Unfortunately I don't know how complex this would be, but I'm hoping it will be simple enough for a coding snack :) I wouldn't be opposed to using AutoHotKey if it would be easier.

What I would really like is a small app that would let me click a mailto: link on one computer, and have it open a new email to that recipient on another system.

I use Stardock's Multiplicity; if you know about Synergy, then it's basically the same thing (a software KVM type solution). I keep all of my volatile data like email on a different machine than what I use for most of my browsing.

The system running the web browser would be XP SP3, and the email system would be Windows 7 x64.

Please?  :D

9
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Testing tool that fills up memory
« on: October 06, 2008, 11:25 AM »
So it looks like this pretty much just eats virtual memory. Is there something that will eat up "physical" memory?

10
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Click counter
« on: October 04, 2008, 10:47 PM »
yay, thank you much!

11
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Click counter
« on: October 04, 2008, 10:45 PM »
Any chance someone could compile this for me?

And thank you very much for that :)

12
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Testing tool that fills up memory
« on: October 03, 2008, 11:37 AM »
Aha! Excellent, thank you much! A wrapper might actually be nice.. maybe something that minimizes to the tray with a red "!" to indicate that it's running? If that would take more than a little while then don't worry about it, but it would be nice indeed :) I'm familliar with commandline operation, I just know that I'll end up running it and forgetting about it  :-\

13
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Click counter
« on: October 03, 2008, 11:34 AM »
I think that just one would be fine :) I would actually be looking to use this on programs that don't do multiple instances.

One thing that might be nice would be to have the ability to have it continue on into a new session (of the target app, not the counter), as long as it's not difficult. I would think this to be little more than just requiring the user to reset stats rather than clearing them automatically the next time the counter is started. I could also potentially see this as being a roundabout way to count clicks in another instance, but I digress :)

Thanks!

14
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Click counter
« on: October 02, 2008, 01:04 PM »
Okay, one thing that I'm not seeing, however, is the ability to only track clicks within one program. I see that it shows where you've clicked, but what I'd really like is to be able to set it to count the number of clicks within, say, Word, but not increase the count if I check my email, click the Start button, and so on.

I still do appreciate the suggestion, and will use it for the time being, but if it would be possible to get a program that would count clicks just within a selected app, that would be great :)

15
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Click counter
« on: October 02, 2008, 12:59 PM »
Aha, that will do, thank you :) I looked around but didn't find anything. I guess I just couldn't think of the right keywords.

Thanks again!

16
Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Testing tool that fills up memory
« on: October 02, 2008, 12:55 PM »
Another tool that would be good for beta/QA testing would be a small tool that just fills up your system's RAM, so I/we could test applications under low memory conditions. This would be like those sketchy tools that "free up" system memory by filling up memory with something big (but probably essentially empty) and then unloading it, but in this case it would just keep it there until you tell it to unload. It would be nice to be able to select how much RAM it should try to take by both percentage and MB. I'm thinking it might also be nice if it could fill up memory with a lot of smaller (empty?) files instead of one big one so that it would (theoretically) fill up the page file as well.

Hopefully this isn't too big of a request.

17
Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Click counter
« on: October 02, 2008, 12:16 PM »
This is something that I could really use for some testing that I'm doing right now. What I want/need should be pretty simple (emphasis on "should"). I just want a small app that will run in Vista and keep a count of the number of times the mouse is clicked within a specified program. It should have easily accessible Start, Stop, and Reset buttons. It would be nice if it would show how long it's been tracking clicks and stay on top as well.

18
Hi,

I hope you folks can help me out, I've been looking for something like this for some time now.

I have been using a beta of a network backup & mirroring (sync) program for quite a while now, and I really love it but it has some problems and the developer contact that I had seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. I might be willing to suffer it's shortcomings, but I don't think it works with Vista, and so I'm now looking for something to replace it.

There are plenty of backup and/or sync programs out there that work across networks, but the one feature that this beta has that I'm having a hard time finding is that it can transfer between any directories on any systems that have it installed without having to share the folder. It also allows me to set up everything from the server console, including browsing the folder I want to select remotely. The centralized setup is preferable, but I could live without it if the rest of the program was good enough. This is just for a home network and would be used to backup and sync across roughly 5 or 6 machines in total.

The only other "features" I would want/need would just be unlimited file/folder backups/operations and a relatively low price (around $100 or under). I have FolderShare, for example, but that's too limited for my use and the setup would take forever.

I just hope there is something out there like this for home users (or at least priced within reach for home use). Any recommendations would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

19
Hi all,

I posted about my work's product Prevx1 a while back, but we now have a new major version available for public testing. The beta is moving along swiftly because thus far it has proved quite stable. Indeed, it is actually resolving previous issues that were hard to track down, rather than introducing new issues. The overwhelming majority of people are finding it to run perfectly stable.

Although it is meant to be an alternative to traditional security products that have been having an increasingly hard time keeping up with the volume of malware out there today,

Announcing the new and improved Prevx2!

What's new:

- Improved real time reporting and malware determination
- Faster determination process
- New community database structure
- New rules engine
- New jail functionality
- New policy structure and increase number of security policies
- Improved Registry protection
- New "Sandbox" style analysis engine for analysis or unknown programs
- Improved compatibility with 3rd party products enabling Prevx 2.0 to co-exist
- New Enterprise features and functionality for Corporates
- Support for 200,000+ agents within a Corporate
- Performance improvements
- Enhanced memory management
- Reorganised Jail function
- Implementation of user feedback
- Text changes

You can find instructions and the download link here:
http://www.castlecop...v1_0_0_Build_73.html

If you're using Windows Vista then make sure to follow the link at the very beginning to the Vista version.

We would be grateful for any feedback you might have, just follow the link to Support in the program itself. Of course let us know if you encounter any issues, as well.


The short version of what Prevx2 is about:

Prevx2 is an anti-malware application that uses behavioral analysis, herd intelligence, and automates all the work that makes it so hard for traditional solutions to keep up with the volume of today's malware. It handles all different types of malware to eliminate the need for a bunch of different programs for different kinds of threats. At the same time, it's also perfectly capable of co-existing with your current security software.

Prevx2 uses a "community watch" concept where everyone reports any suspicious behavior that's seen, so the experts can pro-actively track and catch the bad guys before they can harm anyone. Don't worry, it's only technical information about program files, it doesn't have any reason or any ability to look at anything resembling personal info. Prevx2 introduces a strong multi-layered approach that is unlike anything available today. Malware writers like to put hundreds of new costumes on the same malicious programs so your antivirus can't recognize it. Prevx2 looks at them from every angle so that it can see right through the bad guys' attempts to make the same virus look like something new, which means that detection for one item can detect hundreds or thousands of new ones that use the same tricks. More than anything, though, it can recognize that a file is going to harm your computer before it ever runs, even if it's never seen it before. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, we don't need to take a DNA sample to figure out that it's a duck ;)

No system is perfect, but the community watch concept is a tried and true method that works, and it's no different on the internet. The same goes for automating today what we had to do by hand yesterday: things get done much more quickly, and in greater numbers.

Although it is made to suit the needs of those that don't wish to run multiple security products on their system, it's also made to work alongside traditional solutions as well. This new version works alongside other products even better than before, and is better at accommodating technology updates in these products. So you don't have to uninstall what you already have if you want to try it.

20
Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?
« on: February 08, 2007, 08:42 PM »
You could always get one of these :)
http://www.thinkgeek...ets/electronic/7657/

Efficiency does make a big difference. Higher wattage PSU's running at low wattage levels are also more efficient than low wattage PSU's running closer to capacity. PSU's that aren't efficient waste power, releasing the wasted energy in the form of heat - which also causes more errors that need to be made up for, making the computer do more (which is why better cooling can sometimes make a system run a bit smoother.. the difference was noticeable the first time I used RAM heat spreaders).

21
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Prevx1
« on: December 08, 2006, 12:07 AM »
Thanks :) Support is always there if anyone has any questions or feedback. I'll be around the forum as well.

22
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Prevx1
« on: December 06, 2006, 06:10 PM »
Hi,

I work for Prevx, makers of Prevx1. This is a security application that I used (and loved) long before I started working for them, so it goes without saying that I am an enthusiastic supporter as much as I am an employee.

Prevx1 is an anti-malware (anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc.) with a new approach. It's a behavioral anti-malware application that automates the process of discovering and analyzing new malware, and reports it to the central server. When file signatures are compared against the database, this is also done online so you don't have to download updates - you're always up to date, up to the minute. Technical information on how program files (and just program files) are also reported to the central server where heuristic analysis is performed, as well as reviewed by the malware analysts. Prevx1 doesn't detect just bad files, but also good files to make sure that known good files aren't interfered with. This also leaves files that haven't been seen before as "unknown", which tells you that the file might possibly be new malware that hasn't been seen before. It has some behavior blocking so you can block a new file from running if you don't know what it is.

Since everything is centralized, the analysts can see things as they happen in real-time and make changes that the entire "community" has instant access to. In short, this means that everyone running Prevx1 can be protected against new malware within minutes of when it's first released, if the heuristics don't stop it automatically. The heuristics are actually the biggest feature, adding more signatures in a day than other vendors add in a week, which just keeps growing. Ultimately Prevx1 works on the "Community" principal. The more people that use it, the wider the "net" is to catch new malware, which means more people can be protected faster.

It's made as an all-in-one program that can work with the Windows Firewall to protect your system without any further software, but is also made to work along-side other security software if you want as well. Whether you use it on it's own or to fortify existing defenses is entirely up to you.

You can find Prevx1 at http://www.prevx.com/ . Detection is always free, protection and cleanup is on a 30 day trial that doesn't start until Prevx1 actually detects malware.

23
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Ashampoo Burning Studio 2007
« on: November 27, 2006, 04:10 PM »
If you like Ashampoo stuff it is worth going to their offers page. Basically you can say how much you want to pay and they repluy by email to agree or not. I used this in the past and got some good deals ... I don't know if they take past purchase history into account when allowing big discounts.
They didn't used to have much that interested me, but they've got a bunch of new stuff now. Anyone that hasn't checked out their stuff in a while might want to check back.

24
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Ashampoo Burning Studio 2007
« on: November 27, 2006, 11:48 AM »
It does not seem to have any of the features of Alcohol 52%, so I wouldn't expect it to, but since I don't run it I can't be 100% sure myself.

25
Found Deals and Discounts / Ashampoo Burning Studio 2007
« on: November 27, 2006, 03:19 AM »
"Exclusive Computeractive Download Offer - Expires December 13, 2006

Registration is required, but is free for the duration of the offer. Just pay attention during install and it will take you to the website to register. First you put in your email address and it sends you an activation link, at which point you'll create an account (or log in if you already have one) and it will send you the actual license key.

http://www.computera.../burningstudio/index

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