I got tired of shelling out $40+ a year for antivirus protection long ago. Aside form the price, what really bugged me was the bloat! It became more and more difficult to find a simple antivirus or rootkit scanner, without system tuning, performance monitoring and benchmarking bloat that the big guys were packaging with their virus scanner.

The great thing is - with all the free antivirus programs available today, you don’t need to shell out any money and most are simply virus protection without the bloat.

Free Antivirus Recommendations

There are many free antivirus programs on the Internet today. I’ve been looking for the best for my home PC, and to that end I examined ClamWin, Avast!, AVG, Antivir. Here are my thoughts on each:

ClamWin.

PROS:
ClamWin has an simple user interface, and is available in a portable version that can run on a USB thumb drive.

CONS:

Doesn’t include an on-access, real-time scanner. This means it’s basically relegated to an “after the fact” scanner - only worthwhile if you suspect you have an infection. This is enough to disqualify it from the running for my purpose, though I do use it on my thumb drive. I might come in handy if I need to diagnose a friend’s PC problem someday, (which actually happens quite a bit to me!)

AVG.

I then moved on to AVG. I have used (and still use today on my laptop) AVG 7.5 for over a year now with no complaints. When I saw they had a new version (8.0), with a slick new interface and a scan engine revamped for speed I figured I’d upgrade to 8.0 and be loving life.

Not so much.

AVG 8.0 would not work when installed on my 2000 desktop. It installed, but would not scan. Neither would it save any settings. There was no error message, it just behaved as though I never issued a command. In short, it blew me off. So I blew it off, and when back to 7.5.

PROS:
The AVG 7.5 interface is simple, not slick but effective. It gets the job done, and uses minimal system resources to do it and that’s a plus in my book. AVG free offers email protection (inbound and outbound) as well as protection against worms, viruses, and Trojans.

CONS:
AVG makes a rootkit detector and anti-phishing software, but offers both of these as separate programs. This might not bother some users, but it does provide a feature gap between its paid for counterparts like Symantec and McAfee.

Perhaps the biggest drawback to AVG 7.5 free is the scheduler. The user can schedule a full computer scan and daily definition updates, but they cannot choose the exact time of each. Instead, the interface offers a time range to choose from. For example, the user can select to have the definition updates downloaded between 6 am - 8 am, and the program will select a random time within that range. This is an annoyance, but could be problematic for users who shutdown their PCs at night.

AntiVir

Since the latest AVG interface was problematic on my older computer, I started my search again for a better option. Next I tried Avira Antivir Free. At first, this was a serious contender offering robust coverage of various types of attack. Then I noticed a serious flaw - no email scanner! Couple that with an obnoxious ad window, and it was on to the next candidate.

PROS:
While AVG offers rootkit detection as a separate product, Antivir includes rootkit detection, as well as protection against worms, viruses, and Trojans. Antivir also includes protection against phishing.

CONS:
Avira Antivir Free does not have an email scanner. This is something that is included with the other packages reviewed here, and it seems like a pretty big gap since email is a major entry point for virus infection. One of the biggest downsides, IMO, is an in-your-face very LARGE ad window that crops up daily. With the other options out there in the free antivirus market, this is enough to make me take a pass on AntiVir

Avast! 4 Home Edition.

The last free antivirus program I tried was Avast! 4 Home Edition. Quite frankly, it’s the last one I tried because it was the best.

PROS:
Avast! includes Anti-spyware and Anti-rootkit built-in. Each is implemented in separate processes for scanning web, mail, P2P, IM, network and on access traffic. Each one of these processes can be stopped, started or disabled so if you don’t have P2P or IM software - you can disable it. This is quite handy on older PCs with less available resources. It also offers Automatic updates, Virus Chest and System integration. The UI is excellent (especially for a free app) and it supports 64-bit Windows and Internationalization.

CONS:
I honestly haven’t noticed any real problems with Avast!. If I had to choose something, I suppose I’d say that it is a bit more heavy on the RAM usage than some of the others, but given the completeness of the features, I don’t think it’s excessive. Besides, the modular scanner architecture allows you to shut down or disable unneeded services.

• Fun with Cryptography Here's a little Friday fun from Monty at MR01001101. He's got Cryptography and Steganography essays and, here's the fun bit, puzzles that take the user through a chain of tests...
• Lessons in Software Development From the Apollo Moon Missions. Monday was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. The story of the Apollo program is an historic and inspirational one, but it's also relevant to software development....
• Google Chrome: the OS. Google announced last Tuesday that it has its sights on dethroning Microsoft as desktop OS king: "The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be...
• How to fake a TreeNodeCollection subclass in .NET If you've ever had reason to try to extend the standard Microsoft web TreeView control, you will have no doubt noticed that MS was quite unkind to you and sealed...
• Microsoft FxCop doesn't like Microsoft generated code! The other day I thought it might be nice to "do the right thing" and give my code a run against Microsoft's FxCop. I ran it right out of the...

• eBook Fishing in California The Complete Guide to California Fishing Download Your 32 Page FREE eBook Are you planning a vacation to California? Looking for a better way to fish the more than 1000 lakes throughout this state? You'll find everything you need to know inside The Complete Guide to California Fishing! We've......
• Health care workers nix flu shots The things they try to slip past you. We were catching up on our reading in the general press, in particular reading a piece in the New York Times about New York state requiring its health care workers to get both seasonal and swine flu vaccines, which has the unions......
• Should You Use Free Blogging Sites? There are certainly many blogging sites online today. It has become the biggest trend in communications for business and for personal reasons. A blog is a wonderful business tool that allows you to build a presence online as an expert in your field and develop a following of loyal readers.......
• Network Marketing - More Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Site. In network marketing there is the sleazy underhanded way to build your business and the correct way to build your business.  There are many folks online using sleazy tactics to build their network marketing business one of these tactics is called email scraping = (Spamming). Recently I brought a product......
• Free Spyware Removal Software I do not recommend using free spyware removal software for many reason but if your going to you might as well use the best free spyware products out there. In the end of this article we will tell you why not to use these programs as your main source of......

If your home computer is connected to the internet, or to other computers that are connected to the internet - you need a firewall. It’s as simple as that.

Hackers and hacker software are constantly probing the internet for computers without a firewall. When such a computer (A.K.A. “victim”) is found, it is targeted with spyware, viruses, trojans, key stroke loggers and anything else a deviant mind can devise. If you don’t want to be a victim, then you need to protect yourself.

How not to be a victim.

Here are 2 really great personal firewall programs that are absolutely free for personal use.

Comodo

Comodo is free for home use. You may be wondering why a company would give away a program for free that is sold for $40 and more by other companies. This thought alone is often enough for many computer owners to skip the free alternative and shell out the money for the “internet protection” software suites.

This is a very normal concern, but here are some things to consider that will probably alleviate those worries.

1). Take a look at those Internet protection suites and see what’s included.
Often times, it’s not just a firewall but anti spyware, anti virus, web filters, system tuning and maintenance - in other words, the kitchen sink! This is because the makers of the all-inclusive software suites know that each piece isn’t worth the full price alone, or they would charge for each piece. So they package them all together and charge one price hoping you’ll need at least one of those products enough to buy the whole suite.

2). Most free alternatives offer a slim feature set in the free version, but increased features for the professional version. Also, the free version is often times only free for indiviual use, not businesses. So the company or developer makes money from business use.

That being said, the free versions of Comodo and Zonealarm are more than enough for most home users.

Comodo Features (courtesy of the Comodo website):

• Complete protection from Hackers, Spyware, Trojans and Identity theft
• Host Intrusion Prevention System stops malware from being installed
• Free Download. No charges or license fees ever
• Powerful and intuitive Security Rules Interface
• ‘Smart’ Popup Alerts
• Application Behavior Analysis
• Automatic ‘Firewall Training’ mode
• Windows Security Center Integration
• Self Protection against Critical Process Termination
• Application Recognition Database
• Automatic Updates
• Improved Firewall Event Logging
• Submit Suspicious Files to Comodo

System Requirements (version 3.9)

• Windows XP - 32 and 64 bit versions
• Windows Vista - 32 and 64 bit versions
• 64 Mb RAM
• 50 Mb free disk space

You can read more about the benefits Comodo Firewall here.
You can download Comodo Personal Firewall here.

ZoneAlarm

ZoneAlarm started as a free only firewall, but experienced significant success and rapidly evolved into a Pro verison. I have used ZoneAlarm on my personal computers for years, with great results. When gathering links for this article, I realized it’s become pretty difficult to find the free for persoanla use version. It seems that ZoneLabs (the maker of ZoneAlarm) has gotten aggressive in promoting their professional (read: not-free) version. so far, the actual software has remained ad free, so I can’t complain too much.

Features:

• Systematically identifies hackers and blocks access attempts
• Automatically makes your computer invisible to anyone on the Internet (Stealth Mode)
• Intrusion Blocking systematically identifies hackers and blocks access attempts.
• Stealth Mode automatically makes your computer invisible to anyone on the Internet.
• Automatic Program Configuration provides safety and simplicity by automatically configuring programs. Automatically decides whether to allow or deny Internet access to individual programs.
• Expert Controls give savvy users precise control over security settings.

You can download ZoneAlarm Free here.

Conclusion

As I said, I’ve used ZoneAlarm for years and love it. I have only been using Comodo for a little over a year on my laptop and have had no problems with it.

The only downside to both is that the learning mode can be confusing for inexperienced users. Often times a popup will display asking the user if they want to allow application XYZ to act as a server. Most inexperienced users don’t know what the hell that means and can get flustered. What I’ve done is after installing the firewall, I run all known internet user apps (browser, IM chat, anti-virus update, email, etc…) to “teach” the firewall that these are certified apps. After that, I tell the user (usually a relative or close friend) if it prompts you in the future click “no” or call me.

Comodo advertises “Comodo Firewall offers the highest levels of perimeter security against inbound and outbound threats” I tend to believe them only because I’ve found that comodo prompts me WAY more than Zonealarm. It seems that Comodo distinguishes how a url was requested by a browser. For example, if the user clicks a link from a word doc, then Comodo will interrupt and inform the user that another application has requested the browser load “.. www.abc.com…” This is great for experienced users, but will definitely be too much for the inexperenced grandma looking to chat with the grand kids… In that situation, I would recommend ZoneAlarm.

• Google Chrome: the OS. Google announced last Tuesday that it has its sights on dethroning Microsoft as desktop OS king: "The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be...
• IE7 WebControl TreeView line gap in quirks mode. I've been writing a subclass of the MS Webcontrol.TreeView control for one of our Web Applications at work. I figured this would be a fairly easy task, since I only...
• How To Control Disk Thrash From ccmexec.exe (SMS Agent). Today started like any other day at work. I sat down, logged into my PC and was greeted by the thrashing sound of my hard drive. I've come to realize...
• 10 Useful, Often Overlooked HTML Tags. Pop quiz: When would you use the <wbr> tag, and what does it do? Yeah, I had no idea either. In fact, I had never even seen this tag before,...
• How to Delete Empty Folders - FREE! While performing a disk cleanup recently, I had cause to locate and delete any empty folders under a root folder. I knew there had to be a batch file command...

• Google software bug shared private online documents Google has confirmed that a software bug exposed documents thought to be privately stored in the Internet giant's online Docs application service. The problem was fixed by the weekend and is believed to have affected only .05 percent of the digital documents at a Google Docs service that provides text-handling......
• Reverse Diet Review Pros - Users felt that this diet was simple for them to understand. Users felt like the food in this diet was tasty. Users felt that the level of exercise required in this diet was acceptable. Users felt that this diet made them feel healthier over all. Users felt that......
• New V-Phone Keychain Device Makes Internet Calls on the Road a Snap Good news for VoIP consumers: A seldom-used, but major feature of Internet phone service just got a big boost: the ability to take your phone with you on the road, to make and take calls from the same number at the same low price.The problem with this idea is......
• Free Photo and Image Editing Software and Online Tools I think baby boomers are developing a greater interest in improving, preserving, and sharing photographs. I know that I am. These include older family photos that may be in print form as well as more contemporary digital photos. The photos we inherit from older family members often need enhancing. So......
• How to Encrypt Your VoIP Network For a Secure Connection The security of VoIP networks have been the subject of much debate. With internet hacking at an all-time high these days, VoIP users have every right to be concerned their user information, phone services or even their phone calls are being listened to. Because of this risk, individuals and......

There was a time in my life when I used security and protection suites like Norton and McAfee, but after a while I grew unsatisfied with them.

“But Norton and McAfee are giants in the industry that pack every last bit of there software with features users never dreamed of! What more could you want?“, I hear you ask.

Well, that’s kind of the point. Over the years, software suites like these just continued full speed down the road to bloatware. They kept accumulating features like a snowball rolling down hill. They’ve got features and functionality I never used, and don’t really need quite frankly. Often times the system tuning and performance components just sat idle, using my system’s increasingly valuable and every more rare RAM.

I did what most people do, I suppose. I bitched incessantly about paying for features I didn’t use, didn’t want, and worst of all had to actively work at removing from my system! Most times that wasn’t even an option, since everything threaded together in a tight knot, with system failure at every turn so that you couldn’t pick and choose the features you needed without having all the needless bloat to go along with it.

Then I realized that some other bright people were experiencing the same headaches and were in a position to do something about it. What they did was create their own programs to solve each discrete problem. In other words my friends, say farewell to bloatware!

So now I assemble a patch work of software products that do what I need. They do one thing, and do it well. I use one free program for firewall protection, another free program for virus protection, and various other applications for system tuning and performance, spyware, etc….

I admit, I was hesitant at first. I had questions about how safe and effect these products were. I thought that they couldn’t be that good if they were free. Why would someone (or a company) produce software for free if other companies could make $40+ selling it?

Well, the answer is pretty simple. Makers of Comodo, and ZoneAlarm (my firewall products) as well as AVG Antivirus make money on the professional versions of their software as well as business users.

The general idea is that they offer a fully functional version free for personal use, and a different version with more features for a price. So far, with Comodo, ZoneAlarm, and AVG Antivirus I have been very satisfied with the performance and feature set of the free versions.

• Arraylist and generics don't mix with IEnumerable(Of T).GetEnumerator. The other day I was writing an in-house tool to assist in some upgrades we were performing on client installations. This tool was supposed to perform its operations on a...
• Microsoft FxCop doesn't like Microsoft generated code! The other day I thought it might be nice to "do the right thing" and give my code a run against Microsoft's FxCop. I ran it right out of the...
• 10 Useful, Often Overlooked HTML Tags. Pop quiz: When would you use the <wbr> tag, and what does it do? Yeah, I had no idea either. In fact, I had never even seen this tag before,...
• Window.scrollTo Fails Under OVERFLOW-Y: auto Style. I was trying to subclass a Web Treeview control for my own evil purposes and ran into a sticky problem - scrollTo not working! Just for background, my evil purpose...
• How to fake a TreeNodeCollection subclass in .NET If you've ever had reason to try to extend the standard Microsoft web TreeView control, you will have no doubt noticed that MS was quite unkind to you and sealed...

• WP e-Commerce UPDATE: My client's site is now live! Link: http://www.stringcollector.com I have recently been developing an e-Commerce website for a client using WordPress and the free WP e-Commerce plug-in. In this post, I'd like to talk a bit about the plug-in and some of my thoughts and opinions about it as......
• The Truth of Green Product Claims If you are confused when it comes to green building products and the claims that are being made by their manufacturers, you are not the only one. Navigating the complex world behind green products and the claims that they make is not always easy, but it has become necessary in......
• FREE Seo Tools Software TUTORIAL | **$1,238 FIRST MONTH POTENTIAL!** www.chews4healthtrafficpro.com . Free SEO Tools Software Teaches You To Finally make money from home, to finally drive massive traffic to your website, to finally start to learn what it takes to build a successful business online! Learn how to use an excellent keyword search tool to optimize your website,......
• Trojan Hits Macs Through Pirated Software Appleinsider reports that tens of thousands of Mac users have been infected with a trojan horse when installing pirated software. A hacked copy of Apple iWork '09 and Adobe CS4 have been floating around through bit torrents and P2P softwares that installs some extra software that checks in with a......
• Property Management Software [/caption] Greetings from the metropolis of Cedar Crest New Mexico. VBS (Vacation Bible School) is on my agenda every morning this week....and I could not be happier.  I have the 4th and 5th graders and they are just too cool.  Reminds me of what is important....or at least what......

Today started like any other day at work. I sat down, logged into my PC and was greeted by the thrashing sound of my hard drive. I’ve come to realize that the bottleneck in my work PC is by far the hard drive. I don’t need any bench marking software, I simple try to access a file or two. Sometimes, I simply open windows explorer and wait.

I finally got so disgusted I fired up procman and dug through the activity to find the culprit.

I had to scroll down to the bottom of a couple thousand lines of activity before I saw a clear pattern, but lo and behold what I saw was incredible!

There were literally thousands of disk writes to my pagefile - and all I had done was log in!

The bizarre part was that the files being read and written to the swap file were files I was not touching.

I saw that the process performing all this thrashing was something called “ccmexec.exe”. I’d actually never heard of this process, but after some quick googling I discovered its the exe for the SMS Agent service.

This service (the  Systems Management Server service) performs an indexing or cataloging of all the files on the disk so that windows update will have the latest info on versions of OS files that may need patching. Sounds great, but I’m not sure it’s worth the cost considering the downtime and aggravation I experience waiting for this thing to chew through my 150GB drive.

My first instinct was to disable the service in the services control panel applet, but I figured that the corporate IT staff would eventually get a tad upset when they realized my system didn’t have the latest patches installed because I disabled the service.

So, I was faced with my own kobayashi maru scenario : I was ineffective while this thing chewed threw my file system, but I couldn’t disable the service without sending up corporate red flags that I was a bad citizen.

Then I hit on a solution - a scheduled task to ensure the service did run, just not when I was busy working. I actually used two batch files, one for each task of starting and stopping the service.

Open up notepad (or your text editor of choice), and type the following:

net start CcmExec

save the file as “SMS Agent start.bat”

Now, start a new text file and enter:

net stop CcmExec

save the file as “SMS Agent stop.bat”

Note: you can also replace “net” with “sc”, to use the newer Service Control manager command line tool.

Then, set the startup type of the SMS Agent Host service to “Manual” in the services control panel applet.

Next, create a scheduled task to run after hours that runs the “SMS Agent start.bat” file, and another task that runs the  “SMS Agent stop.bat” before you get into the office.

The best of both worlds - you remain productive and a good corporate citizen (after hours)!

• Microsoft FxCop doesn't like Microsoft generated code! The other day I thought it might be nice to "do the right thing" and give my code a run against Microsoft's FxCop. I ran it right out of the...
• Annoying "next message" behavior in Thunderbird, and how to stop it! I love the Thunderbird email client. I use the portable version on my thumb drive, but one thing has always bugged the hell out of me when I use it:...
• 10 Useful, Often Overlooked HTML Tags. Pop quiz: When would you use the <wbr> tag, and what does it do? Yeah, I had no idea either. In fact, I had never even seen this tag before,...
• Lessons in Software Development From the Apollo Moon Missions. Monday was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. The story of the Apollo program is an historic and inspirational one, but it's also relevant to software development....
• How to Delete Empty Folders - FREE! While performing a disk cleanup recently, I had cause to locate and delete any empty folders under a root folder. I knew there had to be a batch file command...

• Photoshop Tips & Tricks which will be found only here Publish at Scribd or explore others: How-To & DIY eBooks Technology-General Photoshop ......
• An Overview of Wireless Networking Whether you want to make a phone call from your mobile, receive a message on your pager, or check your email from a PDA, we have come across a wireless data or voice network. If a user or a company wants to make data portable then Wireless networking is......
• What is Bankruptcy? Understand the process of bankruptcy before you file the forms by yourself or with an attorney. To start the process of bankruptcy, a person with an unwieldy amount of debt files for bankruptcy in the nearest court. This process is normally done with the help of attorney, a person is......
• How to Catch Ling Cod If you have never heard of the Ling Cod before, this is a fun fish to try to catch that can be found anywhere along the California coast, as far south as Baja. This is a popular fish that gives a lot of sport and the size is well worth......
• 4 Flash Games sites to cure your Boredom Flash game is a video game that is played on a web browser. Not only fun to play, plus load fast enough on your web browser. It rely on JavaScript or common plugins such as Java or Flash Player. You can get addicted with these flash games and kill your......

Monday was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. The story of the Apollo program is an historic and inspirational one, but it’s also relevant to software development.

To understand the significance of the Apollo program from an engineering standpoint, we must begin at the beginning…
Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee were killed on the launch pad when the Apollo 1 capsule burst into flames just prior to the launch test. What happened? Well, according to Wikipedia (I know, far from an unimpeachable source, but bear with me here):

“Although the ignition source of the fire was never conclusively identified, the astronauts’ deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal design hazards in the early Apollo command module. Among these were the use of a high-pressure 100 percent-oxygen atmosphere for the test, wiring and plumbing flaws, flammable materials in the cockpit (such as Velcro), an inward-opening hatch that would not open in this kind of an emergency and the flight suits worn by the astronauts.”

In short, no one knows for sure what specifically caused the fire, but everyone agrees that some fundamental errors led to the conditions (whatever they ultimately were).

what really went wrong was at the planning and design stage. NASA was in such a rush to make up lost time in the space race with the USSR, that they got cocky after early successes, cut corners and went full bore toward a fully manned, Apollo capsule before they were really ready.

The precursor missions to Apollo were the Mercury and Gemini projects. These projects had highly specific mission statements and each was directed toward a discrete piece of the overall lunar landing mission. Project Mercury was directed toward getting a man into space, and back again. The goal of project Gemini was to perform extra-vehicular activity (pre-cursor to space walk), and docking maneuvers.

NASA began the mission to the moon with an iterative approach, but switch to a more waterfall like approach where they tried to construct a whole new capsule module from scratch, with the intent of landing on the moon and returning. They used the knowledge gained from the earlier Mercury and Gemini projects, but constructed new - and untested - equipment for Apollo.

The parallel to software development is using an iterative approach to develop phase I of a project, only to throw it away and start over on phase II. The whole purpose of the iterative approach is to focus on small, achievable parts of a greater whole to maintain momentum but also to limit what must be tested and hence limit (theoretically) the universe of possible bugs.

I think the 2 most important software development lessons we can learn from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions are:

1. To be successful, have clear and concise mission objectives (goals).
2. Start small, and build on each success.

This is what made the Gemini and Mercury missions so successful, and ultimately made Apollo 11 possible and it will drastically improve the odds of your next software project being a success as well.

• Google Chrome: the OS. Google announced last Tuesday that it has its sights on dethroning Microsoft as desktop OS king: "The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be...
• Free Firewall Recommendations (Protect Yourself Online With These Free Firewalls) If your home computer is connected to the internet, or to other computers that are connected to the internet - you need a firewall. It's as simple as that. Hackers...
• Are Free Antivirus and Firewall Products Really Any Good? There was a time in my life when I used security and protection suites like Norton and McAfee, but after a while I grew unsatisfied with them. "But Norton and...
• How to fake a TreeNodeCollection subclass in .NET If you've ever had reason to try to extend the standard Microsoft web TreeView control, you will have no doubt noticed that MS was quite unkind to you and sealed...
• Arraylist and generics don't mix with IEnumerable(Of T).GetEnumerator. The other day I was writing an in-house tool to assist in some upgrades we were performing on client installations. This tool was supposed to perform its operations on a...

• Offshore software development services have been developed with challenging tasks for many years With the advent of Quality System Standards, outsourcing firms as well as the outsourcer have to accomplish different objectives regarding the quality of the software. To sustain itself in the tough competitive field, businesses need to be exceptionally good in quality, promptness and accuracy. Today, there are many firms that......
• Open Source: The Importance in the New Millenium What is Open Source? Generally, open source signifies any program for which the source code is available for modification or change by the developers according to necessity. It is chiefly available for public use and therefore people are free to use it. As a Certification Mark: Open Source is regarded......
• Progress in Software Development – Scaling New Heights Software development is no less than a revolution in the history, as it has entered each and every profession and industrial field. The demand for variety of software systems is experiencing high times and the credit goes to four different set of individuals. The following discussion will highlight the contribution......
• How Home Improvement Software Can Help You Out If you are interested in home improvement these days, you also need to be interested in what the modern world can do for you as far as home improvement is concerned.  There is no type of handyman in today’s world that does not use the conveniences of modern technology to......
• Web Development India A mission to be a globally preferred provider of web, software and business support solutions inspired our mentors towards the making of Nomi Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Hard toil mixed with intensive research work focusing on effective solutions for your business is the simple philosophy leading to evolution of NOMI. Internet/Client......

Here’s a little Friday fun from Monty at MR01001101.

He’s got Cryptography and Steganography essays and, here’s the fun bit, puzzles that take the user through a chain of tests through his site.

Puzzles range from simple alphabetic substitution to symbolic images to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Fun stuff, and it’ll give your brain a workout too.

Wonder what’s behind the cryptic sounding name of MR01001101 ? Well, it’s not as mysterious as it sounds:

“Why 01001101? It is binary for M and it arrived when I signed up for my first geocities site drunk. I also bought this domain intoxicated. Will I ever learn?”

• Are Free Antivirus and Firewall Products Really Any Good? There was a time in my life when I used security and protection suites like Norton and McAfee, but after a while I grew unsatisfied with them. "But Norton and...
• Google Chrome: the OS. Google announced last Tuesday that it has its sights on dethroning Microsoft as desktop OS king: "The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be...
• How To Control Disk Thrash From ccmexec.exe (SMS Agent). Today started like any other day at work. I sat down, logged into my PC and was greeted by the thrashing sound of my hard drive. I've come to realize...
• Arraylist and generics don't mix with IEnumerable(Of T).GetEnumerator. The other day I was writing an in-house tool to assist in some upgrades we were performing on client installations. This tool was supposed to perform its operations on a...
• Annoying "next message" behavior in Thunderbird, and how to stop it! I love the Thunderbird email client. I use the portable version on my thumb drive, but one thing has always bugged the hell out of me when I use it:...

• Why Membership Sites Suck and Why FTM Sites Rock? Why Membership Sites Suck and Why FTM Sites Rock? By Deep Arora If you are reading this, then you are likely aware of the tremendous profit opportunities that membership sites offer. It is no exaggeration to say that income streams that continue to churn out cash even when you sleep......
• The Guide For Finding A Good Free Online Games Site by Roy Tzayag Looking for puzzle, arcade or even action games and brain teasers but don't know where to look? There are many places to locate free online games around the net, the question is, where can you find the interesting ones? well, a question rises - Where can we......
• Hard Truth Week in Review- Memorial Day Edition Mrs. ToughMoneyLove and I are spending the long weekend at the lake with family (and rain, unfortunately). So this time is about enjoying the fruits of financial planning, all while remembering and appreciating the sacrifices of our fallen veterans. I did read a few things this past week that I......
• Why Using Long Tail Keywords is Key For DubLi SEO Why Using Long Tail Keywords is Key For DubLi SEO By Daniel D. Understanding the basics behind keyword research and types of keywords is necessary before attempting to optimize search engine ranking. Keywords are commonly split into two broad categories, short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords. Originally coined by Chris Anderson......
• Save Time, Money and Space in Over 80 Ways If you're looking for handy gadgets, tools and various items that can save you time, money or space (or all three!) this list of more than 80 top products is just what you need. Everyone's got saving money on their minds these days. Some of us are always looking to......

I stumbled upon (quite literally) an article by Tom Van Vleck titled Three Questions About Each Bug You Find today, and thought I would share it:

“The key idea behind these questions is that every bug is a symptom of an underlying process. You have to treat the symptoms, but if all you do is treat symptoms, you’ll continue to see more symptoms forever. You need to find out what process produced the bug and change the process. The underlying process that caused your bug is probably non-random and can be controlled, once you identify what happened and what caused it to happen.”

Tom uses these questions to get to the heart of the matter and weed out the root cause of the bug.

1. Is this mistake somewhere else also?

You want to know if this bug was unique, or due to a problem in a pattern of approach to the specific problem. If it’s unique, you can move on to the next question, but if it’s systemic, you’ll need to address your approach to the development problem the code was intended to solve and devise a new pattern or correct the one in place.

2. What next bug is hidden behind this one?

Often times a bug will either halt the execution of code, or cause the lines after the bug to be bypassed. once you fix the bug, those other lines of code will begin to execute. Be sure to check those for any bugs. Also, consider whether your fix to this bug could cause any new bugs to be introduced.

3. What should I do to prevent bugs like this?

Learn from this mistake. Could the problem be avoided by adding a new test condition to your NUnit test(s)? Should you implement a change to your pattern to check for null reference or out of bounds exceptions sooner? Bugs happen, but if you can use them as teachable moments and learn from them, then they will at least provide some value and make you less likely to run into the same bug in the future.

It’s not always an easy process, mostly because it requires a sort of detached introspection and willingness to be critical and objective when looking at your work. These character traits are not always in high supply, and we humans can often get in the way, but if you can master these techniques you will go far young padawan.

• Annoying "next message" behavior in Thunderbird, and how to stop it! I love the Thunderbird email client. I use the portable version on my thumb drive, but one thing has always bugged the hell out of me when I use it:...
• Free Firewall Recommendations (Protect Yourself Online With These Free Firewalls) If your home computer is connected to the internet, or to other computers that are connected to the internet - you need a firewall. It's as simple as that. Hackers...
• Window.scrollTo Fails Under OVERFLOW-Y: auto Style. I was trying to subclass a Web Treeview control for my own evil purposes and ran into a sticky problem - scrollTo not working! Just for background, my evil purpose...
• Microsoft FxCop doesn't like Microsoft generated code! The other day I thought it might be nice to "do the right thing" and give my code a run against Microsoft's FxCop. I ran it right out of the...
• Fun with Cryptography Here's a little Friday fun from Monty at MR01001101. He's got Cryptography and Steganography essays and, here's the fun bit, puzzles that take the user through a chain of tests...

• Early Breast Cancer Detection Breast cancer detection can be difficult because the symptoms associated with breast cancer are capable of varying quite widely. Some people experience lumps while others experience swelling, and other people experience changes in their skin. Many people that have breast cancer do not experience any obvious symptoms at all, and......
• Baby Development Milestones at Week 5 After weeks' worth of rapid cell development, one of the biggest baby development milestones during this week is that your baby is taking on a much more distinct form. During your fifth week worth of pregnancy, here are some of the things that are happening inside of you: Your baby's......
• Real Grooves and CLASH45 presents Bunka Vibe @ ageHa on Saturday July 4th L&G, Keen to celebrate Canada-Japan musical relations this Canada Day weekend? Well, Rotation is celebrating its 10th anniversary and getting back to its roots by bringing several of its original Canadian artists into a mini festival of sorts here in Tokyo at Ageha.  If you're keen to check it out,......
• Home Network Security [/caption] Home Computer security 1. What is computer security? Computer security is the process of preventing and detecting unauthorized use of your computer. Prevention measures help you to stop unauthorized users (also known as "intruders") from accessing any part of your computer system. Detection helps you to determine whether or......
• Stoic Fate There is a missing element that modern Stoics don’t usually embrace. The Hegemon, or logos, is still alive and aware in the world. The world is itself possessed of intelligence in the original Stoic view.  They saw life as a constant dialogue, a "debate" if you will, with that intelligence.......

Google announced last Tuesday that it has its sights on dethroning Microsoft as desktop OS king:

“The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google’s Web site, will be based on the company’s nine-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin running computers in the second half of 2010.”

Google is focusing on the Netbook market, which is a smart first step. I’m not sure how successful they will ultimately be beyond that though. Netbooks are perfectly suited to a browser based OS - they’ve got inherently less RAM and CPU power and are targeted specifically to the Internet/e-mail user. I don’t see any wholesale switch from Windows anytime soon for one of Microsoft’s major demographics - business users.

Also, gamers and developer are likely to stay with Linux and Windows, at least for the time being. But, having said that, Google’s OS is built on Linux, so there probably wouldn’t be that big a change from, say Ubunto to Chrome (or whatever they end up calling it)..

Of course, I’ll still have to give it a try when it comes out… just for curiosity’s sake!

• Annoying "next message" behavior in Thunderbird, and how to stop it! I love the Thunderbird email client. I use the portable version on my thumb drive, but one thing has always bugged the hell out of me when I use it:...
• Window.scrollTo Fails Under OVERFLOW-Y: auto Style. I was trying to subclass a Web Treeview control for my own evil purposes and ran into a sticky problem - scrollTo not working! Just for background, my evil purpose...
• Dude, Where's my Folder treeview?! After a wee bit O' overzealous registry cleaning last week, I had a minor panic. Well, a picture being worth a 1000 words, here's what I saw when I opened...
• How To Control Disk Thrash From ccmexec.exe (SMS Agent). Today started like any other day at work. I sat down, logged into my PC and was greeted by the thrashing sound of my hard drive. I've come to realize...
• Are Free Antivirus and Firewall Products Really Any Good? There was a time in my life when I used security and protection suites like Norton and McAfee, but after a while I grew unsatisfied with them. "But Norton and...

• Video demo of Google Chrome OS, Taken At Mountain View Debut A Video demo of Google's Chrome OS......
• Five Reasons the Google Chrome OS Will Flop Five Reasons the Google Chrome OS Will Flop - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership By Tony Bradley Yesterday Google hosted a press event at its Mountain View campus to reveal a first glimpse at the Chrome OS. The excitement around the operating system has led to rampant rumors and speculation,......
• Google shows off Chrome OS tablet ideas [/caption] By Stephen Shankland - CNN Tech Who could resist the months of hype that paved the way for Apple's iPad debut last week? Apparently not Google, which has shown its interest in tablet computing with its browser-based Chrome OS. On Monday, Glen Murphy, a user interface designer for Google's......
• Will Windows 7 is dominated by about Snow Leopard and OS Chrome? After the release of source code for Google Chrome operating system to developers, the software giant, Microsoft’s Windows 7 and Apple’s Snow Leopard, who leads the operating systems market, had received reasons to respond for the growing competition from the search giant. However, Google will launch the stable release......
• Google and HTC Working On a Chrome OS Tablet Courtesy of Gizmodo... Original post here Everyone is clamoring about tablets these days—ourselves included—so it's not too surprising that Google and HTC are set to join the fray. They are reportedly working together on a Chrome OS Google Tablet. Smarthouse, an Australian publication, reports that HTC and Google have been......

After a wee bit O’ overzealous registry cleaning last week, I had a minor panic. Well, a picture being worth a 1000 words, here’s what I saw when I opened windows explorer:

The good news (I suppose) is that I knew the instant I hit the Delete key that I had selected the wrong key. The bad news was that I had no way of finding out what key that was.

So, I did some Googling for various permutations of “missing windows explorer folder treeview” and eventually stumble upon the following registry edit:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{EFA24E64-B078-11d0-89E4-00C04FC9E26E}]
@=”Explorer Band”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{EFA24E64-B078-11d0-89E4-00C04FC9E26E}\InProcServer32]
@=”C:\\WINNT\\SYSTEM32\\SHDOCVW.DLL”
“ThreadingModel”=”Apartment”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{EFA24E64-B078-11d0-89E4-00C04FC9E26E}\Implemented Categories]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{EFA24E64-B078-11d0-89E4-00C04FC9E26E}\Implemented Categories\{00021493-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]

I saved that to a new notepad document, saved it with an “.reg” extension and double-clicked it. Voila, my missing treeview returned!

It sure beats reinstalling the OS for something so simple.

• How To Control Disk Thrash From ccmexec.exe (SMS Agent). Today started like any other day at work. I sat down, logged into my PC and was greeted by the thrashing sound of my hard drive. I've come to realize...
• IE7 WebControl TreeView line gap in quirks mode. I've been writing a subclass of the MS Webcontrol.TreeView control for one of our Web Applications at work. I figured this would be a fairly easy task, since I only...
• Microsoft FxCop doesn't like Microsoft generated code! The other day I thought it might be nice to "do the right thing" and give my code a run against Microsoft's FxCop. I ran it right out of the...
• How to Delete Empty Folders - FREE! While performing a disk cleanup recently, I had cause to locate and delete any empty folders under a root folder. I knew there had to be a batch file command...
• The 3 Most Important Questions You Should Ask About Each Bug You Find. I stumbled upon (quite literally) an article by Tom Van Vleck titled Three Questions About Each Bug You Find today, and thought I would share it: "The key idea behind...

• Even More Tips for Serving Here are some more useful tennis tips for improving your serving game. If you want to make improvements in your ability to serve, these tips will prove useful. Tip #1: Serve well enough that you can control the rally. One of the more popular axioms that has to do......
• Ground Strokes Guide pt 2 Continued from part one. 3 - Standing Sideways Whenever it is possible to do so, you should play your ground strokes from a hitting position that has you standing sideways. You should be standing as if you are a write handed batter if you are hitting a forehand shot, or......
• Chrome Compared With Explorer Google in the browser space with its Mars 'Chrome'! I was pleasantly surprised that almost immediately after starting a download link for Google Chrome appears on the search site Google, which is my home page my default Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) browser . Without hesitating how to link to my......
• Maximizing your betting profit,not as hard as it sounds! [/caption] One of the most frequently asked question from all sports bettors is "How can I maximize my profits?". There isn't really one answer to this question. You might see a lot of tips,tricks even strategies on how to do that, and most of them work probably if you follow......
• Microsoft: No, WinMo 6.5 devices will not be upgraded to Windows Phone 7 Microsoft: No, WinMo 6.5 devices will not be upgraded to Windows Phone 7 by Greg Kumparak on March 1, 2010 Cue the sad trombone, folks. If you were waiting around with your Windows Mobile 6.5 device with hopes that Microsoft would one day bless it with a new chance at......

Pop quiz: When would you use the <wbr> tag, and what does it do?

Yeah, I had no idea either. In fact, I had never even seen this tag before, but it’s a list of 10 Rare HTML Tags You Really Should Know from Nettuts+

I have to say that most of these I hadn’t heard of, but they are actually quite useful. Granted, I do most of my work in the .NET code behind and middle ware layers, but I do occasionally get to sling a bit of HTML, and I think I may start using some of these…

Oh, I almost forgot - the <wbr> tag allows you to specify a place where you think a line break might be useful, if needed.

• The 3 Most Important Questions You Should Ask About Each Bug You Find. I stumbled upon (quite literally) an article by Tom Van Vleck titled Three Questions About Each Bug You Find today, and thought I would share it: "The key idea behind...
• IE7 WebControl TreeView line gap in quirks mode. I've been writing a subclass of the MS Webcontrol.TreeView control for one of our Web Applications at work. I figured this would be a fairly easy task, since I only...
• Annoying "next message" behavior in Thunderbird, and how to stop it! I love the Thunderbird email client. I use the portable version on my thumb drive, but one thing has always bugged the hell out of me when I use it:...
• How to fake a TreeNodeCollection subclass in .NET If you've ever had reason to try to extend the standard Microsoft web TreeView control, you will have no doubt noticed that MS was quite unkind to you and sealed...
• Google Chrome: the OS. Google announced last Tuesday that it has its sights on dethroning Microsoft as desktop OS king: "The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be...

• Guidelines for Good Title Tag What is a Title Tag?A title tag is a piece of HTML code that describes a specific web pages content through a keyword query that a person types into a search engine. Title Tags are a very important guide for all search engines in determining what is in the......
• Some tips to think about when deciding to have a web site built Judith Palfrey is a professional web site developer for 14 years and has developed some special websites to help small businesses advertise in their local community using the Internet. She is also the President of Shopping Portals, Inc. affiliated with Palfrey Associates. To learn more about her services visit: www.ShopGaithersburg.com,......
• Home Network Security [/caption] Home Computer security 1. What is computer security? Computer security is the process of preventing and detecting unauthorized use of your computer. Prevention measures help you to stop unauthorized users (also known as "intruders") from accessing any part of your computer system. Detection helps you to determine whether or......
• Take Back America Election Clock The Take Back America Election Clock (seen at right) is inspired by Ray Stevens' hit song We the People. "You vote Obamacare, we're gonna vote you outta there" goes the song. Who are they? To help all of us remember who voted for Obamacare the NIP has developed the Countdown......
• Mining for Keyword Gold! Over the years, our keyword selection process has become quite refined. Looking over the research we've done in years past, most is good, but doesnt live up to the 5-phase keyword research and selection process my company uses today. The first and most important step in our research process......