Offtakes on Web-related software, services 'n tips
Archive for January, 2006
All About AutoPatcher
Jan 29th
This week let’s revisit security issues. No not about viruses as most of these have pretty much been corralled successfully. Either by improved and more efficient detection techniques. Or because most users are now “aware” of the issue. Nor is this about spyware. It’s about operating system security in general. And installing of patches in particular.
It’s a stated fact that the most predominant operating system (OS) today is Windows. And of this the largest chunk is occupied by Windows XP. As well as its Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Service Pack 2 (SP2) variants. And of all the Windows XP More >
20 Years Ago Today…Birth of THE Virus
Jan 22nd
A dubious anniversary at best is the birthday of the first computer virus. Dubbed (Pakistani) ‘Brain’ it was developed by the (real) brothers Basit and Amjad. And affected the boot sector of floppy disks. Infected disks had their disk volume re-written as ‘© Brain’.
And if I recall correctly the virus caused the in-screen characters to slowly decay. Falling downward in rapidly fading jumbled streaks of green and amber; depending on the monochromatic monitor. For a more recent generation, something like the screen effects of the Matrix and Matrix Revolutions. And for a complete time line of the cyber virus evolution, More >
Thunderbird 1.5 Hot GMail Manager Even Hotter
Jan 14th
The hottest news this week is release of Thunderbird 1.5. If you have installed one of the two RC (Release Candidate) builds, you should soon receive an update alert. Thunderbird 1.5, like Firefox 1.5, includes a program auto-update feature. However, my Thunderbird 1.5 RC2 when manually prompted is unable to find an update! Which seems quite strange. Inversely, its possible that RC2 is so close to the final build that it doesn’t really need to be updated.
While Thunderbird 1.5 offers lots of productivity-oriented features. Many extensions built for earlier versions are incompatible until their developers upgrade the max version More >
Personal P2P Software
Jan 10th
Working on the oft-seen (at least in India especially on highways) premise that better late than never. Here’s this week’s Freeloader. And yes, in the new year there are several (relatively) sexy tools available for you to use.
Just this evening I chanced across Nakido a free Windows Explorer file sharing plug-in. It imposes no file transfer size limits unlike Pando that limits total transferable file size to 2 GB. Or restrict the number of files available for upload or download. All it asks is that the host computer be powered on and connected to the Internet.
There are two Nakido components. The first More >
Happy New 2006
Jan 8th
Hi there! Wishing all my readers a Happy New 2006. Along with apologies for the missed column. I’ve been away enjoying the holidays far from the Internet. Yes, indeedy there are some parts of India where the Internet has still not established its presence.
I’ll strive to deliver something interesting later this week.
Stay safe until then.
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