Inauguration Day – Take diapers, respirator mask and your iPod…

This topic is really “off topic” for the content of this blog; BUT, it is my nature to help warn and prepare people for the inevitable.  If you noticed I did at least throw “iPod” in the title to keep the topic (somewhat) connected to the subject matter of this blog.  You will also notice further in the article, that I did make an effort to throw in some technical language and comparisons.

The inauguration event for the swearing in of President-elect  Barack Obama is predicted to draw over 2 million people to the nation’s capital (Washington, D.C.).  Washington D.C. is approximately 61 square miles (158km).  In computer terms that is about 2 megabytes on a 0.1543 megabyte drive.  Some major file compression is being pulled off here to make this event work; not to mention the layers of security that will be in place.

My wife was telling me that she heard on the news that people are going to be wearing diapers to the event, due to long hectic waits in lines.  I started thinking about this and did some research to prepare people for this event.  Some of this you can take in humor, BUT some of it could potentially be real.

First you need to know this-

The Institute for Liberty, a conservative think tank, estimated recently that the millions of people coming to the inauguration will generate a half-billion pounds of carbon dioxide — 260 million pounds from the 600 private jets that will come to Washington, and another 260 million pounds from personal vehicles.

It says the pollution amounts to more than 575 million pounds of CO2, which would take the average U.S. household 57,598 years to produce.

CO₂ in concentrations of 7% to 10% cause dizziness, headache, visual and hearing dysfunction, and unconsciousness within a few minutes to an hour – Wikipedia

Secondly, I found that U.S. News and World Report published an article “Your Inauguration Day Survival Guide” (clip reflected below) which provides 6-six things you should have in hand if you attend the inauguration.  I do recommend that you take your iPod in addition to the the items listed (along with your diapers).

clipped from www.usnews.com

Your Inauguration Day Survival Guide

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January 13, 2009 09:04 AM ET | Kimberly Palmer

For native Washingtonians and visitors alike, Inauguration Day is likely to be crowded, hectic, and short on key supplies. With as many as 2 million people expected to descend on the capital, there will probably be long lines at ATMs, runs on beer, and shortages of useful items such as adult diapers, which some viewers plan to wear given the limited bathroom facilities.

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Gas

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Cash

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Beer

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Food and water

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Toilet paper

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Adult diapers

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PC MAG’s “Best Free Software of 2009”…

If you enjoy freeware and open source software, as I do, then you will love the list of free software (and cloudware) that PC Magazine has recently compiled. As a matter of fact the list consists of 173 different apps, from App Launchers to Video Apps… For your convenience, a category listing of the software is listed below. You can click on the links in the category listing and you will be redirected to PCMag’s site for that category.

clipped from www.pcmag.com

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The Best Free Software of 2009

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The best things in life often actually are free. Here, a list of 173 of the best things in life – free software, for launching apps, networking, backup, synchronization, entertainment, and more.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Why pay? You’ve already shelled out money for a computer, so there’s no reason that what’s running on that pricey PC should cost a darn thing. Not in this day and age of amazing freebie software and Web apps. That’s why every year PCMag.com presents a look at the best programs you can download or access online at no cost. All are worthy replacements for your ancient and sometimes forgotten desktop applications, and they’ll save you thousands of dollars to boot.

App Launchers
Audio/Music

Backup
Blogging

Browsers
Calendar/PIMs

Communication/E-Mail
Conferencing

File Transfer/Download
File Viewers/Converters

FinanceFun/Home

Graphics
IMs

Interface Enhancers
Local Search

Office
Operating Systems

Networking
RSS Readers

Synchronization
Video

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Solid-State Disk (SSD) – The future in hard drives is here…

According to this clip from “ComputerWorld”, solid-state disks or drives (SSD) will be comparable in price to today’s spinning hard drives, within 3-three years. Once the prices reach that threshold expect manufacturers to adapt to this technology by making SSD technology the standard in new PC’s…

To educate my readers, solid-state disks are stationary electronics (no mechanical action) that is the future replacement to the hard drives we have in our PC’s today. In actuality, SSD is not disks as we know them today. SSD’s uses solid state electronics and memory to store data (very much like our portable flash drives). The hard disk drives in our PC today consists of rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces to store encoded data.

clipped from www.computerworld.com

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What your computer’s drive will look like in 5 years

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Hard disk drives may soon be replaced
by solid-state disk (SSD) drives

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January 16, 2009 (Computerworld) As solid-state disk (SSD) technology closes in on hard disk drive (HDD) capacity and price, experts say it may not be long before spinning disks are a thing of the past and a computer’s storage resides in flash memory on the motherboard.

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Economy gets the best of “Circuit City”…

www.circuitcity.com

What’s going on at Circuit City?

Due to challenges incurred as a result of the the continued bleak economic environment, Circuit City is going out of business and the company’s assets will be liquidated to pay off creditors.

Liquidators will start arriving in our 567 stores across the U.S. over the weekend, and closing sales will start as early as Saturday, January 17.  Closing sales will run as long as it takes to sell existing inventory, but are expected to wrap up by the end of March.  When the liquidation sales are completed, the stores will be closed.

This is one store I’m going to miss…

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Is your system infected with the Downadup Worm, Conficker or Kido?

I cannot stress enough, the importance of maintaining and managing your Window’s Updates or any software for that matter…  Microsoft normally issues patches or fixes on the second Tuesday of each month; however, in this case (reflected below), due to the immediate nature of the threat, an “out of cycle” critical update was issued (back in October).  This is an example of where systems were compromised as a result of people failing to update their systems.  If you updated you should be fine; if not, it is recommended you install the October update, then run the January edition of the MSRT to clean up compromised computers.

clipped from www.computerworld.com

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Researcher: Worm infects 1.1M Windows PCs in 24 hours

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January 14, 2009 (Computerworld) The computer worm that exploits a months-old Windows bug has infected more than a million PCs in the past 24 hours, a security company said today.

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Early Wednesday, Helsinki, Finland-based security firm F-Secure Corp. estimated that 3.5 million PCs have been compromised by the “Downadup” worm, an increase of more than 1.1 million since Tuesday.

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The worm, which several security companies have described as surging dramatically during the past few days, exploits a bug in the Windows Server service used by all supported versions of Microsoft Corp.‘s operating system, including Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008.

Microsoft issued an emergency patch in late October, fixing the flaw with one of its rare “out of cycle” updates.

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Uninstalling Programs on your computer to recover from the “shotgun effect”…

When you install software on your computer, a whole process of things can take place… I call it the “shotgun effect”. Many users have the impression that the install process only installs files and components of the program in one common place. In Windows, most installs, will in fact do that; however, the “shotgun effect” can also take place where other files will be written (scattered like BBs in a shotgun shell) to the Windows folder, the System folders, Users folders, desktop, etc… Furthermore, the Windows registry, will also be written to, as well. The point being here, is that there is a systematic, orderly and precise process that occurs during the installation of software AND there is more than one location on the computer where the program files will be written to.

The uninstall of software is another matter. I have seen users delete program shortcuts on their desktop, thinking they just removed the program. Removing the shortcut icon to the program on your desktop will not remove the program. Uninstalling is like reverse engineering and it is a whole other process in itself. The problem with the uninstall process is that it is not as systematic, orderly and precise as the install process. In Windows your options to uninstall, is either an “uninstaller” provided by the software maker (usually located on the Start Menu with the program) or by using the “Add/Remove” component (in Windows XP) or “Uninstall or Change a Program” component (in Vista, which is under “Programs and Features). Both of these components can be reached by using the Windows “Control Panel”.  These options are about 90 percent on target with the uninstall process; however, they leave traces of the program behind (such as the program folders, user folders, writes to the registry, stray files, autorun entries, etc.). Most users do not know where or how to look for the debris left behind. Installing and Uninstalling software can have a cumulative negative effect on the overall operation of your computer. This is one of the reasons I personally will look for and use portable software options, when available, to eliminate this shotgun effect.

To assist users with uninstalling software on their computer, a program that I have had good results with is a program, which is “FREE”, called Revo Uninstaller. Revo Uninstaller will drill deep to find the debris and even has a component (for experienced users) to preview and remove any obsolete registry entries. I currently use the portable version of Revo Uninstaller; which is on my flash drive and allows me to take it with me to help others.  You can preview and download Revo Uninstaller by clicking on any of the links below.

clipped from www.revouninstaller.com

Revo Uninstaller – innovative freeware uninstall utility

Uninstall software, remove programs and solve uninstalling problems

Portable version of Revo Uninstaller is also available!

Revo Uninstaller helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from “Windows Add or Remove Programs” control panel applet.

Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to “Windows Add or Remove Programs” applet!

Revo Uninstaller gives you another 8 handy and powerful tools to clean up your system.

Here is the list of the tools and utilities included in Revo Uninstaller:

Auto Start Manager – Stop programs that start automatically on Windows startup; speed up loading of Windows!

Windows Tools Manager – Handy and useful tools bundled with every version of Windows; easily find useful system tools and options!

Junk Files Cleaner – Find and remove unnecessary files from your computer; free up disk space and delete files you do not need!

Browsers History Cleaner – Erase web browser history, visited pages history and temporary internet files of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape and Opera web browsers; free up a lot of disk space by deleting temporary internet files like temporary saved videos, temporary flash files, temporary pictures etc!

Office History Cleaner – Remove the history of most recently used files in MS Office; remove your tracks by deleting the list of last opened MS Office documents!

Windows History Cleaner – Remove the history of recently opened files, delete temporary files, remove usage tracks and other history items that are saved by Windows; remove your tracks saved by Windows for a lot of operations!

Unrecoverable Delete Tool – Erase files and folders forever; be sure that nobody could recover your files and folders after deleting!

Evidence Remover – Make sure already deleted files, folders and other data are unrecoverable; securely erase your data!

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Cyber-Crooks are using jealousy to trick you…

Bill Mullins, who maintains the blog “Tech Thoughts”, wrote a very interesting article titled, “Jealous?  Cyber-crooks have your number” (see clips below). For some reason this article, by Bill, really jumped out at me due to the deceptive tactic, he points out, that cyber-crooks are using to trick people. This one is a good one and is crafted in such a way that it could even trick a seasoned computer user. I strongly encourage all my readers to read the article to protect yourself from this deceptive tactic (click on any of the links below) and to learn from Bill simple safeguards you can put into place.  It demonstrates how cyber-crooks are using a “human emotion” to trick us.  As I always say, “believe nothing and verify everything”…

clipped from billmullins.wordpress.com

Bill Mullins’ Weblog – Tech Thoughts

Jealous? Cyber-crooks Have Your Number

Jealousy is a human emotion that surrounds us. Arguably, it is an experience with which we are all familiar.

It’s no surprise then, that Cyber-crooks are now using jealousy as a social engineering email hook, to entice potential victims to click on an email containing enclosed links which can lead to the installation of a banking Trojan on the computer.

“Hello,

I apologize for my frankness. I’m sorry for not being able to speak to you in person, but I can only talk to you via email and I feel obliged to notify you to open your eyes, you are being betrayed.

I know it is difficult to prove, but every picture tells a story, I’ll send you these pictures so that you can see it with your own eyes. Take care…big hug

From a good friend who is very fond of you

View photos here”

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