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Recent Posts

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201
General Software Discussion / Re: New Mozilla Firefox user
« Last post by m_s on December 02, 2005, 10:27 AM »
It is mostly okay, but here's not much point in having them all running all the time.  Just make sure you've got some protection in each of the main areas of intrusion protection, antivirus, pestproofing.  I would definitely recommend a good firewall and antivirus program as essential, and then would add some realtime protection - MS AntiSpyware is free and pretty good, though it misses some important things.  I also use Trojan Hunter (www.trojanhunter.com), though I've recently switched off its realtime protection and just scan periodically.  I like very much Online Armor (www.tallemu.com), because it brings together the features of a number of these programs into one package - but I've recently uninstalled it, because it was doing silly things with Gmail and with these forums (I had to press 'Post' four or five times before it would let things through - each time it came back with a 'timed-out' message); the developer tells me he's working on v.2, which will address these issues.  CarolHaynes started a thread on using a Hosts file for safer surfing - search for that, and read the article on the site she points to; it's got some good advice.
202
General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful
« Last post by m_s on December 02, 2005, 09:52 AM »
Here's a full list of my extension (exported using ListZilla - thanks, Crono):


Adblock 0.5.2.039[/color]
AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox 6.5.2
Colorful Tabs 0.3 - gives indidivual tabs a nice pastel tone, similar to OneNote
FlashGot 0.5.9.98
ListZilla 0.7
Tab Preview 0.3
Tab X 0.9.1 - puts a little 'x' on the right of each tab, to close the tab - I really struggle to use Firefox without this extension now.
Tabbrowser Preferences 1.2.8.7
Translate 0.6.0.8

And one I want back as soon as it's updated to work with 1.5:
EverNote Web Clipper 1.0.0.34 - allows capturing text or entire webpages to EverNote for offline reading.


And not listed here are the three OnFolio tools for capturing pages, adding feeds, and opening OnFolio - this is a really great tool for RSS and online research.
203
General Software Discussion / Re: New Mozilla Firefox user
« Last post by m_s on December 02, 2005, 09:41 AM »
Betsy, I'm a little worried that you might have more of a problem than you realise - popups are one symptom of various adware and spyware infestations.  I think it might be worth your while to download a trial version of SpySweeper or something like that and run a test.  I read your list of security apps, but I have had experience of each of these being fallible, so I think it could be worth testing with another reputable scanner.
204
General Software Discussion / Re: New Mozilla Firefox user
« Last post by m_s on December 02, 2005, 06:50 AM »
I can't recall a popup window - what do they look like?  (= irony)  I find that Firefox has completely got rid of them.  Let us know whether you actually had the popup blocking activated, Betsy.  And there is always Ad Muncher, which does an excellent job of stopping bad and/or unwanted things online (with a discount to DC members here: https://www.donation.../Specials/index.html)
205
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: CHIP Online: a different program for free every day!
« Last post by m_s on December 02, 2005, 05:59 AM »
Hey PhilKC, you could also use Opera's built-in translating, or the translation plugin that's available for Firefox - okay, you don't end up with German that my grandmother would understand, but you can more or less make head or tail of it!
206
General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful
« Last post by m_s on December 02, 2005, 05:25 AM »
Two new extensions that have improved my experience of FF are: Tab Preview (http://ted.mielczare.../mozilla/tabpreview/), which uses some new rendering techniques of FF 1.5 to give you a small preview of background tabs; and FoXpose uses similar technology to allow you to see all your tabs in one page (like the Mac's Expose feature, or Otaku Software's Topdesk for PC - http://www.otakusoftware.com/)
207
Finished Programs / Re: Program closer
« Last post by m_s on December 01, 2005, 07:59 AM »
That looks promising, Skrommel, but I have a problem with it failing to find the Task Manager, probably because I use Sysinternals Process Explorer instead...  Any way of working with this?
208
Best Firewall / Re: agnitum outpost v3 - the horror?
« Last post by m_s on December 01, 2005, 03:45 AM »
Here's a link to ZA 5.5 (hosted on a PC World site) - version 6 has received a huge amount of criticism, 5 was much better (and is the version with which I am most familiar): http://www.pcworld.c...d=7228&fileidx=1

Non-ZA: try Netveda too - that seems pretty good... 
209
General Software Discussion / Re: RealPlayer or RealAlternative?
« Last post by m_s on November 30, 2005, 04:59 PM »
Maybe I should have finished off by saying that I now use RealPlayer again...  and Quicktime instead of Quicktime Alternative - with QT it was because you can't have iTunes without QT ( :down:), and RealPlayer because - if I remember correctly - I did encounter a file RealAlternative couldn't work with.  And yes, as Mouser says, so long as it's configured properly, it's not a problem.
210
General Software Discussion / Re: RealPlayer or RealAlternative?
« Last post by m_s on November 30, 2005, 04:17 PM »
RealPlayer works fine in every situation I've tried it, and it's much lighter on resources.  You can also get older versions of RealPlayer, before it became so bloated - I know the BBC has links to it, I think from their Listen Again pages.  As to getting rid of RealPlayer, I always use My Uninstaller, which seems to find things that are missed by the Windows Add/Remove programs - maybe give it a try: http://www.nirsoft.n.../utils/myuninst.html
211
Best Firewall / Re: agnitum outpost v3 - the horror?
« Last post by m_s on November 30, 2005, 06:13 AM »
The best support for Outpost is via their discussion boards - and it really is excellent.  I kept a copy of 2.7, so if you already have a license and find that it's hard to download, p.m. me and I could email it to you.
212
Best Firewall / Re: agnitum outpost v3 - the horror?
« Last post by m_s on November 30, 2005, 05:37 AM »
Because I was looking for a good firewall for a Win 98 machine (which doesn't run KPF), I started this thread at Wilders Security - you might find some good advice there... http://www.wildersse...wthread.php?t=102806

(BTW, Kerio requires very little intervention - that's why I first chose it over ZA, which asks far too many questions.)
213
Best Firewall / Re: agnitum outpost v3 - the horror?
« Last post by m_s on November 30, 2005, 04:52 AM »
Hey, Carol: What about good old Kerio Personal Firewall...  It's got a few weeks left in it, and that should give you a window after Sygate's gone.  And chances are far into the future too.  A lot of people still swear by KPD 2.15.  I would rather use that than ZA.

I have been running Outpost 3 for awhile too, and it cause BSOD several times - with a documented conflict that they've still not fixed.  I now run it in background mode, and it's certainly a lot easier to wok with - i.e. it says a lot less.  Maybe I am less protected than I ought to be, especially since I have temporarily dumped Online Armor because it was just too intrusive...
214
Living Room / Re: Browser Tray Switch
« Last post by m_s on November 30, 2005, 03:56 AM »
I have just started using BTS - on the back of reading this thread, in fact - and I just want to report a) that it's great!, and b) that it's working fine for me for switching between FF1.0.7 (last night), FF1.5 (this morning), Opera, and IE.  Thanks again, Mouser, for a tiny little gem that makes working much easier.
215
General Software Discussion / Re: symantec kills free sygate firewall
« Last post by m_s on November 29, 2005, 10:51 AM »
I have been wondering why Microsoft were (eventually) zapped by the European Commission for anti-competition infringements, when so many machines now come with Norton pre-installed.  I was setting up a new Compaq laptop last week, and it really made it quite difficult for the majority of users to choose not to use Norton.  Surely that's a transgression of similar rules to what got MS into trouble?  But I guess they would argue that they have some partner relationship with Compaq...
216
Living Room / Re: Powerline Networking - anybody had experience?
« Last post by m_s on November 28, 2005, 10:23 AM »
I've had good experiences with wireless, and really bad ones with ethernet!  But that's always going to be the way, isn't it - some things work some of the time in some circumstances for some people, and sometimes they don't.  I'm thinking I might buy in a setup for my own home setup, where I've my main laptop connected to adsl and two other machines that it would be good to share with occasionally...  At least this way I can get a sense of it in operation - it does appear to be much cheaper than wiring the whole building for ethernet.
217
Living Room / Powerline Networking - anybody had experience?
« Last post by m_s on November 28, 2005, 07:08 AM »
I am about to install a shared broadband connection in a very large house - it consists of an office in the basement, a new student library on the ground floor, and then two floors of accommodation above that.  At the moment, there is a wireless connection, but its reception is patchy in the basement - the router is on the first floor, which serves the bedrooms very well (which has been the main community of users, so that has been find until now).  It seems to me that powerline networking might be a really elegant solution to this situation - I would keep the wireless going, which would be fine through most of the house, and certainly okay in the new library, which is directly underneath the router, and we could extend it to the basement via the powerline connection... and the desktop users could ditch their wireless cards, since they need to be plugged in anyway.

Has anybody used this technology before?  Is there anything I need to know?  Or is this just a dumb idea and I don't realise it?  Thanks!
218
Best Dialog Extender / Re: Opinions wanted
« Last post by m_s on November 27, 2005, 06:23 AM »
I had never heard of such things until I read the first part of your review yesterday, Mouser, and I went straight for the open source option, and it's great!  DM2 is very stable and its 'minimize to floating icon' feature is excellent.  I also like the fact it includes virtual desktops, which I have often found useful, but seldom continued to run for more than a few days, because many of the solutions I've tested have been quite resource-heavy.  DM2 runs so light that it's no problem at all just having it there in the background, and I can use the second (third, fourth ... eighth) desktop when I need it.  I haven't tested any of the others, because I don't think it is likely I would pay for this kind of software.  Thanks for pointing out a whole new category of useful programs.
219
Living Room / Re: Odd problem ... Windows Task Scheduler hangs and crashes Explorer
« Last post by m_s on November 24, 2005, 02:50 PM »
I notice it was the NOD kernel process that was hogging, not the AV gui, and I've yet to find a way to turn that off - did you manage it?  Usually, you can disable NOD, but the kernel process keeps running...
220
Living Room / Re: Odd problem ... Windows Task Scheduler hangs and crashes Explorer
« Last post by m_s on November 24, 2005, 12:16 PM »
I can't help, but I can confirm the same thing happens for me.  I never use the task scheduler, so wouldn't have noticed without your prompting (and I'm not much bothered either).  I do notice that NOD is hogging the processor while the scheduler tries to run, so I wonder if it's got anything to do with that?
221
General Software Discussion / Re: Strange sites in my registry
« Last post by m_s on November 24, 2005, 08:59 AM »
Here's another little something from an antiquated discussion on a site called TechWeb (http://www.techweb.c.../fixes/2000/0811.htm):

"For Internet sites, IE assumes they're in the Internet zone unless they're listed in the zone map, which you can find at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap . Of particular interest is the Domain key under ZoneMap. If a domain is listed in the zone map, it also contains the zone number it's been assigned. So, if you put doubleclick.com into the Restricted Sites zone, it would be listed here with a value of 4. There's also a Ranges subkey of ZoneMap that is used to block specific ranges of IP addresses. If you put an IP like "123.45.67.89" (instead of a domain) in the sites list, it ends up here."


So if something is listed in the ZoneMap, it does the same thing - I mean it has the same effect! - as when it's included in the Hosts file and mapped to 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0
222
General Software Discussion / Re: Strange sites in my registry
« Last post by m_s on November 24, 2005, 08:53 AM »
I didn't mean that was its mechanism, but its result.  The sites listed in your hosts file and mapped to 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0 will not be reachable; my guess is that this registry list of strange sites is doing something similar.  
223
General Software Discussion / Re: Strange sites in my registry
« Last post by m_s on November 24, 2005, 08:14 AM »
That's how the Hosts file works, so that's what I figured they must be. 
224
General Software Discussion / Re: Strange sites in my registry
« Last post by m_s on November 24, 2005, 05:55 AM »
I wondered if this might be related to your Hosts file, so I did a Google search on one of the registry locations (yes, I have these URLs in my registry too), and it turns out they are put there by Internet Explorer security settings - here's a link to a MS site: http://support.micro...92121124120121120120
225
Finished Programs / Re: Idea: Movie Cache Viewer
« Last post by m_s on November 24, 2005, 05:19 AM »
Well done, Skrommel - that looks great!  What chance versions for Firefox and Opera?
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