So Murray and his co-host on Thursday ask the question “just what is a bushel and a Peck?” from the broadway musical “Guys and Dolls”.  I googled that question and came across the ultimate “Converter utility”  which converts everything to everything else. Very cool.

Antivirus 2009 certainly looks like the real thing. Very well done screen warnings of virus and trojans, which are false, remember not to click on any of these pop-ups. 

Researchers at TrendLabs have discovered a new set of rogue antivirus software circulating in the wild. Based on initial analysis, these threats arrive mainly via spammed email messages that contain a link to a bogus celebrity video scandal, although we have also received reports that the said link is also circulating in instant messaging applications and private messages in social networking Web sites.

RENOS Trojans are known to have very visual payloads that may further alarm users (for example, they modify the system’s wallpaper and screensaver settings to display BSOD). Thus, users may be more convinced that something’s wrong with their system, not knowing that their new software is the one causing it. (From: http://forums.mcafeehelp.com/showthread.php?p=526322)

Steps to take: If you are using Vista: Close all pop up windows, some you will not be able to close, go to Microsoft.com and search for Safety scanner. Run Microsoft’s online Safety Scanner and make sure your computer is up to date. I am finding that AVG is working better then Macafee. 

Do not click on any of the pop ups! 

Make sure you have good anti virus software. AVG 8.0 from download.com for example.

We talked to Paul, a 10 year old in Frisco who explained how he used his cell phone, to check with mom and dad, and how he wanted to record his music lessons so he could play along with them at home. Paul also suggested that he wanted to program his robot to preform “in Hillbilly” mode. We are awaiting a demonstration. We also talked to grandson Ryan in Park City, Ut where he noted that just “everybody” has cell phones and he needs one bad. Ryan is 9. Then we got a call from 8 year old McCabe who added that 8 to 9 of his best friends all had Cell phones.

We talked about the lifespan of laptops, 2.5 years for business and 3.5 years for everyday use, and not to expect more. Prices seem to range from 399 with educational discounts for very low end machines to 2500 for that powerbook pro. A good business class laptop costs 1300 to 1600 dollars. Workable student laptops can be anywhere from 500 to 1100 dollars. More pricing will be discussed next week.

True Crypt Should you encrypt your hard drive? On the plus side you could lose your laptop and not worry about important data falling into the wrong hands. On the negative side you could complicate data recovery if your hard drive crashes or you need to reinstall your operating system. Should encryption be used and what is plausible deniability ? How good is data encryption? Are there backdoors? PGP and Philp Zimmerman. Aspen Internet conference and Phil’s legal defense fund.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a dangerous legal precedent has just been set which endangers the laws concerning wire tapping of communication. The FBI has long requested and required that ISP (Internet service providers, the phone companies of the Internet) hold email in storage for a length of time and to allow equipment which can scan emails for “keywords” called Carnivore . This system was first deployed in 2000 but did not get wide spread usage for a few years. AT&T and others began working with the department of homeland security in by 2004 to trap all Internet traffic at the large network nodes which see almost all of Internet traffic. Border guards are allowed to take laptop, MP3 players, all electronic equipment at the border and not return them if they feel there is a need to examine your equipment. So it is with some sense of amazement that the US state department has issued a warning to Olympic Travellers about cyber spying by the Chinese government.

CMC Fall classes CIS 115 is Intro to Computer Information Systems (a web course) might be a good starting point. I am listed for three courses, Intro to digital video, Cisco Network Associate and Computer Technician for A+.

How does Google Work? Google applies formulas to web pages which they crawl with small programs called bots or spiders. These programs look for the oranization of information and turn words and website features like headlines into a kind of math picture. Then when someone searches for something and selects that page from the results a second kind of math takes place. How we search and which results we select are also “observed” by Google bots. If a lot of us click on the same link in a search then very likely that item will rise up in page rank. The bots are smart so if the same person goes to their own site time after time that page might actually fall in rank.

But is it a good idea to only go to sites where others have gone? In the early days of the internet almost all travel was by word of mouth or links from one website to another. Surfing was the common way to get around in the mid 1990’s although there were search engines even back then like Alta Vista. But for most of us we would find a web page we liked and then follow the links of that web page author until we found another page that we liked and then we would follow the links of that author. Now Google does it for us. It isn’t really going to sites that others have gone, it is going to sites that others like us have gone.

How should we search? Let’s say that we want to know how to pronounce the word Zietgeist. Google will help with spelling so we just type in the terms “pronounce zeitgeist”. Let’s look at the results.

Listen to how the word Zeitgeist is pronounced.

Now what is Google Zeitgeist

So the important thing to speed up your computer is to keep programs you don’t use from being loaded into your computers memory. This is why bloatware is a problem on new computers. Here is a link to good information from a good source http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10165_7-5554402-1.html

To remove programs which want to load into memory on start up, right click on the start button, left click on Explore, this will take you to a list of items on your computer and opens the start folder first. The items in your start folder are “shortcuts” so deleting them will not delete your actual program. Just make sure you are in the “Start Menu”.

Consider using the “System Configuration Utility” which starts on the run command line (start>run) type in msconfig and click run.  Select the start-up tab and carefully select items which you know you do not want to start.  Generally your antivirus should be left in this list.

Services, the CNET article talks about disabling services which are also shown as processes. These are routines which run frequently or wait in the background for a trigger event. 

CCLEANER from Download.com

Article about computer recycling and E-waste in general.

New Link to scan for malware is Microsoft’s Safety Scanner
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm

This weeks Bits and Bytes will talk about Spam. What it is, we all have a little different view, and why we have Spam. Naturally we will talk about what we can do to solve that problem. For fun we will read some of our favorite Spam messages. We will talk about CAPTCHA’s, and how they have failed so that only the bad guys are using them effectively. Last but not least we will talk about Spambots and Zombie Computers.  

Definitions:

Spam CAPTCHA Getting Rid of Spam Spambots and Zombies

Solutions:

White Listing, Postini, Mxlogic and gmail

Earlier show notes will be added as we go.