The logo of social networking Web site Facebook is becoming more recognizable as the number of active members increases.
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Muscovite and Chris Hughes, three Harvard University students, launched a Web site designed to put students in touch with one another, share their photos and meet new people. They called it thefacebook.com, and before long the site became extremely popular on the Harvard campus. A month after the site launched, the creators expanded it to include students from Stanford, Columbia and Yale. By 2005, students in 800 college networks across the United States could join the network, and its membership grew to more than 5 million active users. In August of that year, the site's name changed to Facebook.
Facebook was originally intended for college students, but today anyone can join the network. Although the site's scope has expanded to include more than just students, its purpose remains the same -- giving people a way to share information in an easy and entertaining way. Like My Space, Facebook is a social networking site.
To explore Facebook, you must create a free account on the site. Facebook's terms of use state that members must be at least 13 years old, and any member between the ages of 13 and 18 must be enrolled in school. Facebook requires new members to provide a valid e-mail address before completing registration. Once you've created an account and answered a few questions about where you work, where you went to school and where you live, Facebook will generate a profile for you.
Facebook provides several ways to find friends:
You can browse and join networks, which are organized into four categories: regions (networks that are linked to specific cities or countries), colleges, workplaces and high schools. Once you join a network, you can browse through the list of members and search for people you know. You can sort people by age, sex, relationship status, political views and other criteria.
You can let Facebook pull contacts from a Web-based e-mail account. To do this, you have to give Facebook your e-mail address and password. Facebook uses a program that searches through your e-mail contacts and compares the list against its membership database. Whenever Facebook discovers a match, it gives you the option to add that person as a friend.
You can use Facebook's search engine to look for a specific person. Type the person's name into the search field, and Facebook will display any profiles that match the name.
A worm is a computer program that has the ability to copy itself from machine to machine. Worms use up computer time and network bandwidth when they replicate, and often carry payloads that do considerable damage. A worm called Code Red made huge headlines in 2001. Experts predicted that this worm could clog the Internet so effectively that things would completely grind to a halt.
A worm usually exploits some sort of security hole in a piece of software or the operating system. For example, the Slammer worm (which caused mayhem in January 2003) exploited a hole in Microsoft's SQL server. "Wired" magazine took a fascinating look inside Slammer's tiny (376 byte) program.
Worms normally move around and infect other machines through computer networks. Using a network, a worm can expand from a single copy incredibly quickly. The Code Red worm replicated itself more than 250,000 times in approximately nine hours on July 19, 2001 [Source: Rhodes].
The Code Red worm slowed down Internet traffic when it began to replicate itself, but not nearly as badly as predicted. Each copy of the worm scanned the Internet for Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers that did not have the Microsoft security patch installed. Each time it found an unsecured server, the worm copied itself to that server. The new copy then scanned for other servers to infect. Depending on the number of unsecured servers, a worm could conceivably create hundreds of thousands of copies.
The Code Red worm had instructions to do three things:
Replicate itself for the first 20 days of each month
Replace Web pages on infected servers with a page featuring the message "Hacked by Chinese"
Launch a concerted attack on the White House Web site in an attempt to overwhelm it [Source: eEye Digital Security]
Upon successful infection, Code Red would wait for the appointed hour and connect to the www.whitehouse.gov domain. This attack would consist of the infected systems simultaneously sending 100 connections to port 80 of www.whitehouse.gov (198.137.240.91).
The U.S. government changed the IP address of www.whitehouse.gov to circumvent that particular threat from the worm and issued a general warning about the worm, advising users of Windows NT or Windows 2000 Web servers to make sure they installed the security patch.
A worm called Storm, which showed up in 2007, immediately started making a name for itself. Storm uses social engineering techniques to trick users into loading the worm on their computers. So far, it's working -- experts believe between one million and 50 million computers have been infected [source: Schneier].
When the worm is launched, it opens a back door into the computer, adds the infected machine to a botnet and installs code that hides itself. The botnets are small peer-to-peer groups rather than a larger, more easily identified network. Experts think the people controlling Storm rent out their micro-botnets to deliver spam or adware, or for denial-of-service attacks on Web sites.
You can protect yourself against viruses with a few simple steps:
If you are truly worried about traditional (as opposed to e-mail) viruses, you should be running a more secure operating system like UNIX. You never hear about viruses on these operating systems because the security features keep viruses (and unwanted human visitors) away from your hard disk.
If you are using an unsecured operating system, then buying virus protection software is a nice safeguard.
If you simply avoid programs from unknown sources (like the Internet), and instead stick with commercial software purchased on CDs, you eliminate almost all of the risk from traditional viruses.
You should make sure that Macro Virus Protection is enabled in all Microsoft applications, and you should NEVER run macros in a document unless you know what they do. There is seldom a good reason to add macros to a document, so avoiding all macros is a great policy.
You should never double-click on an e-mail attachment that contains an executable. Attachments that come in as Word files (.DOC), spreadsheets (.XLS), images (.GIF), etc., are data files and they can do no damage (noting the macro virus problem in Word and Excel documents mentioned above). However, some viruses can now come in through .JPG graphic file attachments. A file with an extension like EXE, COM or VBS is an executable, and an executable can do any sort of damage it wants. Once you run it, you have given it permission to do anything on your machine. The only defense is never to run executables that arrive via e-mail.
Open the Options dialog from the Tools menu in Microsoft Word and make sure that Macro Virus Protection is enabled. Newer versions of Word allow you to customize the level of macro protection you use.
By following these simple steps, you can remain virus-free.
Virus authors adapted to the changing computing environment by creating the e-mail virus. For example, the Melissa virus in March 1999 was spectacular. Melissa spread in Microsoft Word documents sent via e-mail, and it worked like this:
Someone created the virus as a Word document and uploaded it to an Internet newsgroup. Anyone who downloaded the document and opened it would trigger the virus. The virus would then send the document (and therefore itself) in an e-mail message to the first 50 people in the person's address book. The e-mail message contained a friendly note that included the person's name, so the recipient would open the document, thinking it was harmless. The virus would then create 50 new messages from the recipient's machine. At that rate, the Melissa virus quickly became the fastest-spreading virus anyone had seen at the time. As mentioned earlier, it forced a number of large companies to shut down their e-mail systems.
The ILOVEYOU virus, which appeared on May 4, 2000, was even simpler. It contained a piece of code as an attachment. People who double-clicked on the attachment launched the code. It then sent copies of itself to everyone in the victim's address book and started corrupting files on the victim's machine. This is as simple as a virus can get. It is really more of a Trojan horse distributed by e-mail than it is a virus.
The Melissa virus took advantage of the programming language built into Microsoft Word called VBA, or Visual Basic for Applications. It is a complete programming language and it can be programmed to do things like modify files and send e-mail messages. It also has a useful but dangerous auto-execute feature. A programmer can insert a program into a document that runs instantly whenever the document is opened. This is how the Melissa virus was programmed. Anyone who opened a document infected with Melissa would immediately activate the virus. It would send the 50 e-mails, and then infect a central file called NORMAL.DOT so that any file saved later would also contain the virus. It created a huge mess.
Microsoft applications have a feature called Macro Virus Protection built into them to prevent this sort of virus. With Macro Virus Protection turned on (the default option is ON), the auto-execute feature is disabled. So when a document tries to auto-execute viral code, a dialog pops up warning the user. Unfortunately, many people don't know what macros or macro viruses are, and when they see the dialog they ignore it, so the virus runs anyway. Many other people turn off the protection mechanism. So the Melissa virus spread despite the safeguards in place to prevent it.
In the case of the ILOVEYOU virus, the whole thing was human-powered. If a person double-clicked on the program that came as an attachment, then the program ran and did its thing. What fueled this virus was the human willingness to double-click on the executable.
Computer viruses are small software programs that are designed to spread from one computer to another and to interfere with computer operation.
A virus might corrupt or delete data on your computer, use your e-mail program to spread itself to other computers, or even erase everything on your hard disk.
Viruses are often spread by attachments in e-mail messages or instant messaging messages. That is why it is essential that you never open e-mail attachments unless you know who it's from and you are expecting it.
Viruses can be disguised as attachments of funny images, greeting cards, or audio and video files.
A virus also spread through downloads on the Internet. They can be hidden in illicit software or other files or programs you might download.
To help avoid viruses, it's essential that you keep your computer current with the latest updates and antivirus tools, stay informed about recent threats, and that you follow a few basic rules when you surf the Internet, download files, and open attachments.
Once a virus is on your computer, its type or the method it used to get there is not as important as removing it and preventing further infection.
Just about fifteen minutes ago I was working on an article for Linux.com when I thought I was going to lose a ton of work. I was writing my last paragraph on a 1,600+ word article (entering the article in their web-based system). I was going back to OpenOffice to copy and paste all of my work before submitting the article when OpenOffice locked up my desktop. After an explicative escaped my mouth I calmly set about to try to recover my work. I succeeded, but only with the help of a virtual console.
Now normally I do frequent saving to avoid such issues. But right now there is no Save Draft function so I rely on frequent saving to OpenOffice. It always works and I rarely have issues. This time, however, I did. When I un-iconified OpenOffice (I am using Elive-Compiz so applications minimize to icons) everything but he cursor and keyboard froze up tight. Or so I thought.What actually happened was that OpenOffice caused an issue keeping me from gaining access to any application. I could move the cursor but that was it. I couldn’t get a menu or interact with any applications.
What happened?
For those that are curious here is the output of my ~/.xsession-errors file:
window managed: 0xc0155b : 0x40abdc, 402 window managed: 0xc01576 : 0x40afed, 402 Unhandled property: 41 font Unhandled property: 41 font _e_container_cb_mouse_down _e_container_cb_mouse_down _e_container_cb_mouse_down window managed: 0xc015dc : 0x14035fe, 402 act fn max max parse: NONE window managed: 0xc01637 : 0x1c0b86d, 402 _e_container_cb_mouse_down efreet_desktop_new error: no Desktop Entry section _e_container_cb_mouse_down window managed: 0xc016f0 : 0x240000a, 402
After a bit of research it looks like it could be an autoraise error. That, of course, doesn’t mention how I got out of this situation. Let’s take a look.
How it worked out
Fortunately I had a good idea which application caused the problem. I assumed this because OpenOffice Writer was the last application I had any interaction with. Even if it wasn’t OpenOffice I had the following applications open that could have possibly caused the problem.
Claws Mail
Firefox
Rhythmbox
GnuCash
xterm
I had to hope that the issue wasn’t Firefox, because that was the data I really needed to save. So, with my list in hand I hopped over to a virtual console to see if I could get lucky.
Getting to a virtual console
Virtual consoles allow you to, effectively, have more than one user logged in. Or you could have the same user logged in with one instance being a graphical desktop and the other a command line desktop. To get to different virtual desktops you enter the Ctrl-Alt-F*keys (Where * is 1-0). When I got to the virtual console I logged in with the my standard user information and was greeted with my bash prompt. Since I assumed the culprit was OpenOffice writer I wanted to get the PID of this application so I issued the command:
ps aux | grep soffice
Which gave the proper PID for the currently running command soffice -writer. The next step was to issue the kill command on the PID like so:
kill PID
Where PID is the actual PID given to me by the ps command above.
When the process was killed I then hopped back to my original console (in my case it was Ctrl-Alt-F7) and, lo and behold, I had regained control of my desktop. I could then re-open OpenOffice, save my work, finish my article, and submit.
Bullet Doged.
Final thoughts
Yes this whole situation could have been avoided with a working Save Draft feature, but that is not available yet. I could have also been using a different desktop. The “what ifs” could go on and on. But ultimately these things happen and it’s always nice to know you have the means to solve the problem, even if you have to get creative to do so.
Gmail’s previous stance on images in emails was to hide them from the user initially because of two reasons. The first was that images in emails could be used by spammers to track if a user read an email or not if the email was embedded in the mail and not attached to it. The second reason was to prevent that inappropriate emails would be automatically displayed to the user. The user would be presented with a choice to display the images.
It usually does not make much sense to hide the images for some contacts of the user like family members, business partners or friends. That’s why Google decided to change the way images are handled in Gmail slightly.
Gmail will now display images automatically if the account owner has send an email to the sender at least twice in the past. It should also be noted that the images will only be displayed if the email is send from an authenticated server such as Google Mail, Yahoo Mail or Windows Live Mail.
Every other email with images will be handled just like before. This new behavior can be changed in the Gmail settings so that images in emails are handled for all contacts like before. To do that click on the Settings link in the top right corner and locate the External content option in the General tab.
The default option should be “Always display external content (such as images) sent by trusted senders”. To revert to the old way simply select “Ask before displaying external content” instead and click on the Save Changes button to save the new setting.
With the popularity of video portals like Youtube came the desire to download the videos to the local computer system to be able to watch them (again) offline or to convert them to burn them to DVD and watch them on TV. Hundreds of applications and software programs have been designed to fill that gap and we already reviewed many of them in the past including popular download manager like Orbit Downloader or the Firefox add-on Download Helper.
Yahoo Downloader is another Firefox extension that has been designed to download videos from portals like Youtube, Yahoo or CNN but also music from sites like Pandora, Last.fm or Imeem. Probably the most interesting feature for many users is the ability to automatically download videos from these websites.
The Firefox add-on places an icon in the Firefox address bar. Some users might not like the location of the icon as it is placed on the left side of the address bar. This can however be easily changed by right-clicking blank space on that toolbar and selecting the customize option. The Yahoo Downloader icon can then be dragged and dropped to another location, toolbar or even removed completely as it is not needed for most of the functionality.
A left-click on the icon will display the window of the download that will list all the videos that have been discovered in open tabs in the Firefox web browser.A click on the download it button will start the download. This can be automated if automatic downloads have been enabled in the options of the Firefox add-on. This setting makes it very comfortable to download youtube videos or videos and music from the other supported audio and video portals.
All videos will be downloaded to a location on the local computer system which can also be changed in the options of the add-on. Yahoo Downloader is a great add-on for users who download many videos or music and want to automate the process as much as possible.
Google fanatics who regularly work with multiple Google services such as Google Mail Gmail , Google Reader, Google Docs, Blogger, Orkut and a few dozens more might find the Gbutts add-on for the Firefox web browser helpful. That is, if they have not created keyboard shortcuts for the Google services that they use or installed an add-on that is already providing quick access to the services that they use.
Gbutts displays a huge list of Google services after installation which can be used to select the Google services that should be displayed in Firefox. The services that have been selected are then available as a toolbar that has to be dragged and dropped to a Firefox toolbar. It can for example be placed next to the address field in the Firefox web browser to provide one click access to the selected Google services.
The selected services can either be displayed as buttons in the toolbar so that they can be clicked on instantly or as a dropdown menu which would save some space in the toolbar if more than a handful of services are selected. The dropdown menu would increase the click count to access one of the Google services to two however.
GButts (that means Google Buttons actually) could be an interesting add-on for users who work with multiple Google services throughout the day and want to access these services as comfortably as possible. Everyone else is probably better of using bookmarks or creating keyboard shortcuts to access the Google services.
A good way of testing new versions of the so called Google browser is by running a portable version of Google Chrome. The only problem that arises is that it can be quite problematic to stay up to date with all the web browser updates that the Google Chrome team releases regularly. Long time Ghacks reader Caschy is regularly creating new portable versions of the Google Chrome browser at his website after official browser updates.
New versions of the Google browser can be regularly downloaded from the website. The browser can then be executed by launching the file ChromeLoader.exe for a normal program start or IncognitoChromeLoader.exe for starting the anonymous mode of the Google browser.
Updates that are released can simple be copied over the existing directory of the Google browser. Users just have to make sure to avoid overwriting the profile directory which stores user related data.
Users who are interested in staying up to date with the portable Google Chrome releases are encouraged to add the RSS feed of the website to their feed reader as this seems to be the best way to be notified of program updates.
Google Mail is without doubt one of the most popular online email services. What makes it so interesting is not only the functionality that it provides out of the box but also its extensibility. The following article contains all the tools and tips needed to make you a Gmail pro. It contains the best Firefox extensions, Grease monkey scripts, desktop tools as well as how toss and other tips that will increase the functionality of Gmail immensely.
Fire fox add-ons:
Better Gmail – Compilation of some of the best Grease monkey scripts for Gmail compiled as a Firefox add-on.
Cookie Swap – Manage multiple Gmail accounts at once with this Firefox add-on.
DragDropUpload – Drop files into attachment boxes easily.
Email This – Emails the current title, highlighted text and link of the active page using email applications like Gmail.
Email Yourself – Use this Firefox add-on to email information about the current webpage to yourself.
GContactSync – Synchronizes the contacts between Gmail and Thunderbird.
Gmail Ad Blocker – Removes the ads that are shown in the Gmail interface to make more room for your messages.
Gmail Agenda – Integrates Google Calendar into Gmail.
Gmail Checker – Checks for new emails automatically in Firefox.
Gmail Manager – Manage multiple Gmail accounts and display new mail notifications.
Gmail Notified – Will monitor a single or multiple Gmail accounts from within Firefox. Displays information such as unread email messages in the status bar.
Gmail Redesigned – A complete new CSS style sheet for Gmail that changes the look and feel of the website.
Gmail S/Mime – Makes it possible to send and receive signed and encrypted emails in Gmail.
Gmail Signatures – Automatically inserts HTML signatures in Gmail messages based on the address the emails get send from.
Gmail Skins – Change the color of the skin of the Gmail website.
GTD Inbox – Increase the productivity and manageability of Gmail with this Getting Things Done add-on.
Integrated Gmail – Makes it possible to display other Google services like Google Calendar or Reader directly in Gmail.
Bookmark lets:
gCompose – Will display the new mail dialog when pressing the bookmarklet’s button.
Have you ever wondered how and why your computer operates as it does? Why does it turn on and load the operating system? It is working because of the computer software that is programmed and installed in it. The program was designed to run your computer and any other program that is on it. How about your car? What makes your car run? Not just the battery and gasoline or diesel. There is a computer in your car that makes it run as it should. Have you ever played a video game, either online or by using a CD or DVD, or with a Nintendo? When we go grocery shopping, the cash registers are programmed to calculate each item. Have you ever downloaded a song from the Internet? This was a software program with music. The song plays on your computer after you download it because it was programmed to do this.
There is a computer in our cars, TV’s, cell phones, our cable boxes, and other electronic devices. Without the software, these electronics would not work as they do. They may turn on, but the programs that we need to use would not work properly without the help of software.
The operating system that came with your computer is a computer software program. All computers come with an operating system, such as Windows XP, Vista, 2000, etc. Other operating systems are Linux and Mac. Without an operating system, your computer will not operate as it should. It may turn on, but it won’t run properly.
There are so many different programs today to do just about anything you want to on your computer. Some computer software program names are Microsoft Word, Microsoft Office, Print Shop, QuickBooks, video games, etc.
Some programs come in the form of CD or DVD, or floppy disks. This software can also be downloaded from the Internet, called electronic download. A software program is usually all set up to run on your computer. Each program will tell you what operating system and other criteria needed to use the program on your computer.
There are programs that will diagnose, troubleshoot, and fix problems that may occur with your computer, without the help of a computer tech.
Some programs online are in the form of a zip file, closed to make the file smaller. Most operating systems have a program on them that will automatically open a zip file so that you can install it onto your computer without a hassle. If you do not have a zip file software program, you can find a free program online. A great place to find free software downloads is at http://download.cnet.com/windows/.
Each program will tell you what the computer requirements are to run the program on your computer. It may specify that the program is only for Windows 2000 or XP, but most programs are available to run with Vista, Mac, and Linux now. http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx offers free trials for a lot of their software programs so that you can try it out before purchasing a copy of it.
Nearly everywhere we go or whatever we do, there is computer software running something. It is a wonderful idea to learn more about the computer world, as it will always be a big part of life. The technology continues to change and improve in most areas. A lot of the local Adult Education centers offer classes for free or at a very reasonable price to learn more about computers. Some local computer technicians also offer tutoring at reasonable prices. The World Wide Web has loads of free information on this topic as well.
Many people say that i was a diligents man! Allright, I can studies in a university with expense my self. Without my parents. It' an evidence! I was a graduated from my university at February last month, cum laude you know!
