With the recent changes software companies are being told they can’t produce software that would let consumers make copies of the DVD’s they’ve already purchased. You might think that makes sense, but have you ever copied a CD so you and your spouse, or kids could listen to the same CD in each of your cars or one for the car, one for the house?

If I had an easy way to do it, I’d make copies of all of my DVD’s and keep the originals stored on a bookshelf like I keep books. When the kids wanted to watch a DVD, they’d pull out the copy of the DVD to use. Then, when they forgot to put it back in the case and it got kicked under the entertainment center, I wouldn’t worry about it getting scratched.

My real dream would be to somewhat of a media jukebox distributed throughout my house. I’d love to burn all of our music and DVD’s into a single computer and storage network and be able to access the files from any TV, audio device or computer from anywhere in the house.

With these recent changes I’d be breaking the law. It seems to me that once I purchase a DVD or CD, that I should be able to do pretty much whatever I want with it except for distributing it outside of my own home or personal property. Nope. I’m a felon instead.

Post from: EveryJoe

Fair Use Just Isn’t Fair Anymore

CCleaner’s primary feature is the Cleaner. First, it will analyze the system, fetch the files that it is going to delete from the recycle bin, browser caches, other application caches, and many other obscure locations. The user can choose which areas to scan for and which to leave alone. Then the files can be deleted using any of the four secure file deletion options, but be warned that the greater the number of passes the fewer the chances of recovery if needed. There are many other customizations that can be made, like specifying the files and folders to be deleted and those to be excluded (apart from the usual set), the cookies to be preserved, and running from the command line.

CCleaner also has a registry cleaner than cleans the registry for any old or unclean or deleted entries. I think this feature can be made more robust. Be sure to save the registry before editing it.

Two other tools that come along are the “Uninstall” and “Startup” tools. The former can be used to uninstall programs. It is faster than the conventional “Add or Remove Programs” in loading the programs and also loads most programs unlike the regular option. The “Startup” tool can be used to disable or delete various startup processes, equivalent to the options provides by msconfig.

One other (unnecessary) feature I like about CCleaner is the way it displays the OS and the processor details when opened.

CCleaner is a regularly updated free software with new versions released every now and then. Download the latest version from the official CCleaner website. It is hardly 3 MB.

Image Source: CCleaner on my PC.

Post from: EveryJoe

Use CCleaner to Clean Your Computer

Post from: EveryJoe

The Pirate Bay Trial Begins

Post from: EveryJoe

Read My Guest Posts

The Google Enterprise Mail is apparently a much-in-demand service too and it has a Google Enterprise “spam squad” who welcome spam so as to analyze and counter them. Nearly a month after the new year started, they have posted a retrospective post “2008: The Year in Spam” which you may go through if you have time. Otherwise this summary will suffice.

Closing the McColo Network culled spam by 70% in Nov, 2008, but it has been growing at a rate of 156% ever since. The highest spam last year, however, was on April 23rd, where one undisclosed customer reported receiving 100 emails per minute per user. The unsurprising bad news is that, “All indicators suggest this trend (read increase) will continue as virus, malware, and link-based attacks become both more frequent and more ingenious.” Sigh.

What I observed in my inbox is backed by the report as another growing trend: “emailing spoofed news alerts with URLs that would link to a website hosting the virus.”

Watch out and defend yourself.

Post from: EveryJoe

From Those Who Welcome Spam

Read the Symantec Report on the Underground Economy or listen to the corresponding Symantec podcast by Zulfikar Ramzan, the Security Technology & Response Technical Director.

Symantec estimates the value of total advertised goods on the underground servers as up to $276 Million and this figure is from only the underground they had access to. Mr. Ramzan said in the podcast how the actual size is extremely tough to estimate, what with the smartest of the criminals remaining in the underground of underground.

It is alarming and interesting to see how the underground economy functions, in ways similar to any other economy. The trends, I believe, will remain upward because cybercrime is still in its infancy even though there are already malicious but very smart people out there.

A person without any knowledge about cybercrime could start by getting access to any of the malicious tools like the Attack toolkits and Keystroke loggers. However, there are specialized roles within cybercrime each of which can’t be done by just about anybody.

Once goods or information are stolen, they are advertised, sold and resold.

Pirated softwares include desktop games, multimedia software, business software suites and OSs. Some of them could be offered for free to establish their credibility, but those with greater consumer demand are also often attached with malwares. The pricing of pirated goods is often proportional to identical trends in the genuine softwares.

However, according to the report, pirated softwares make only one-third of the underworld economy. Sensitive information is more popular. The above screenshot shows a table with the percentage-wise division of the top kinds of sensitive information that the cyber criminals are after. It sends a chill down my spine, especially with the 4th and 5th ranks.

An interesting tidbit: The United States hosted 41 percent of the total observed underground economy servers worldwide, while Romania had the second highest percentage at 13 percent of the total. Romania! Who would have guessed?

Image Source: Symantec.

Post from: EveryJoe

Symantec Report on the Underground Economy

When a blogger posts a blog through Windows Live Writer, it also maintains a copy of the post on the local machine. For regular bloggers, that adds up to a lot of space with time. A “proper delete” through the Open –> Delete makes it clear that deleting a post is equivalent to deleting it from the local machine as well as from the blog.

Some might like the backup, but we won’t mind an option to delete posts from the machine alone, do we? I am currently using a dirty trick to get it done.

All the posts you are working on using Windows Live Writer are stored as .WPOST files in the folder “My Documents\My Weblog Posts” under two sub-folders “Drafts” and “Recent Posts”. Delete the posts you want from them.

There is also a “cache.xml” file in the “Recent Posts” folder. This is the file responsible for keeping posts on the local machine in sync with those on your blogs. It is better left alone.

Please let me know if there is a cleaner way to do this. I am still a beginner user of Windows Live Writer.

Post from: EveryJoe

How To Delete Posts From Windows Live Writer

Jason, celebrating his three-year anniversary at Microsoft Weblog, sees a surge in Zune’s popularity since the 30GB Zune owners started experiencing widespread failure and Microsoft subsequently updating them about its fix. He still wants to buy Zune, but do you recommend it?

Clair introduces us to a cool terminal user whom all lovers of CLI can follow on Twitter and Identi.ca, and teaches two techniques off adding watermark to your images.

Jayvee laments about the closing of Electronic Gaming Monthly and cheers the usage of Youtube by Ohio Police to solve a crime.

Milo lists 4 correct moves made by Microsoft in 2008 and reacts to 5 things that Steve wouldn’t tell about Windows 7.

Post from: EveryJoe

Tech Channel Roundup From Steve Jobs to Steve Ballmer

Here are three problems all twitter users are likely to face on Twitter:

Phishing: Twittersphere is abuzz with tweets about phishing, which prompted me to make this post. There is a phishing attack spreading across Twitter at this moment. It began with what is being called “DM Deception”. User A receives a direct message from User B asking them to check out some URL. You know what happens next. I didn’t face this yet, but I have seen compromised accounts among my followers tweeting messages like, “Check out this cute pic of yours, LOL…” with another URL.

If you suspect that you may have become a victim to a phishing attack, change your password immediately. If it is beyond salvation, bite the bullet and report the user as malicious. Twitter has so far been quick at suspending suspicious users.

Shortening URLs: I am not complaining but I expected this to be more rampant than what it is now. More URL shorteners like TinyURL, Tr.im, Snurl are crowding because of the growth of Twitter. A long URL is shortened to take fewer characters so that it can be shared through tweets. The trouble is that you have no idea about what you are clicking at. It could very well be some link spreading malware. What makes this worse is that these shortened URLs are too similar to be distinguished or remembered; you could click on the same bad link twice on your bad day.

A solution is to enable the preview feature. Tinyurl, e.g., provides a cool preview feature which when enabled shows what the URL redirects to (the original URL that was shortened) and then asks you whether you want to proceed to that site. I wish that all URL shorteners implement the feature.

Twitter Apps: Hundreds of apps are being developed around Twitter. Take a look at this list of Twitter Clients being used and you will know. All these expect your Twitter username and password to login. You might come across a new app that asks you to enter your Twitter username and password to be able to use it, and what if it steals your username and password? This might seem far-fetched but I don’t see why it can’t be done.

I tend to give any new app a day or so before using it, and I keep my ears open to listen to the grapevine until then. When my work depends on trying such apps I try it with a secondary account first.

As of now, I believe that the elite Twitter users are more prone to these attacks and have more to lose. That said, having started using Twitter only a couple of months ago, I find it immensely useful and would like to be prepared to face all possible annoyances. So what other problems do you think we might face?

Post from: EveryJoe

3 Problems We Will Face on Twitter

Follow me on Twitter.

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PC Vs Mac Transformers Video