Do you know all of the programs that are running on your computer automatically? Chances are there are numerous programs and services running on your computer that you don’t even know about. Other programs are probably used by you but don’t need to be running all the time. These unwanted applications and services take up valuable resources on your computer and can hamper its performance. A nifty little program called Autoruns can help you discern what exactly is running on your computer. It is a free program that can be downloaded from Microsoft here.
It will also show all scheduled tasks, DLL files, drivers and browser objects. The program runs by merely clicking on its executable file and displays a GUI menu from which you can simply check and uncheck which items you want to run automatically. As with all computer configuration utilities, don’t turn off anything unless you can verify that your computer’s operating system isn’t dependent on it.
Gamers are going to go crazy when Natal is finally released. It’s nice to see that the Xbox engineering team are not becoming complacent and remain focused on innovation.
In the past I have written about the importance of running Microsoft Updates all the computers in your network. This means more than just Windows security updates. A case in point is the recent compromise to the nation’s power grid. Earlier this year, hackers from China and Russia and elsewhere penetrated the U.S. power grid, extensively mapping it and installing malicious tools that have the potential to be used to attack our nation’s electrical infrastructure. So how did this happen?
The answer is somewhat astonishing. The hackers were able to penetrate the grid via a known exploit in Microsoft Office. Yes, you heard correctly, out nation’s power grid was compromised by an exploit in Excel or Power Point.
This attack occurred prior to the release of the updates were released to deal with this exploit. This is called zero-day exploits in the industry. Microsoft occasionally releases security advisories for unpatched exploits that are being taken advantage.
Microsoft usually releases its updates on the third Tuesday of each month. Be sure to install these updates as soon as possible.
Despite the fact it won’t be released until later this year, Google Wave is already be hailed as the latest in disruptive technological innovation. Perfectly in sync with online communications’ accelerated merge towards singularity, Google Wave is an integrated email, web chat, IM, and project software. Welcome to the latest advancement in the new communication paradigm.
Even late adopting Twitter cynics might need to listen up as Google’s Larry Page recently admitted that the world’s most powerful technology company is currently falling behind Twitter in the “real time” information wars. Beyond the celebrity hype and media obsession, Twitter is at its’ core a paradigm shifting information communications tool, one that is playing a radical role in the development of tomorrow’s semantic web environment. Check out the following article to learn more and be sure to follow Ashworth College on Twitter as well!
As someone who floats through the real-time stream to service, inform, and share information content with our various Ashworth College student communities, I’ve had an opportunity to watch the Internet literally being reinvented as it happens. As with any other paradigm shifting technology, the revolution in web and mobile communications, essentially still in its’ beta stage, is placing an incredible amount of pressure on traditional web sites/pages to evolve their services, features, and interface designs to compliment the speed of the the stream. The following article from Techcrunch provides a great overview of the challenges being faced and the “big picture” implications of the real-time stream.
If you’d like to keep up with Ashworth College in the stream, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Thanks…
Just when you think that Google might have a search competitor in the highly hyped, but yet to be released computationally driven semantic search engine, WolframAlpha, the stealth masterminds at Google are primed to launch a data structuring monster known as Google Cubed. Check out the video above and read Michael Arrington’s blog over at Techcrunch to learn more. Somebody stop them!
Due to incidents such as the hacking of Sara Palin’s email last year and others like it, Yahoo is refining their password recovery process. The incident last year is a perfect example of how security is compromised in the simplest of ways usually. One doesn’t need to have access to encryption/decryption tools or proxies to intercept https packets. To hack into Yahoo mail, at least until recently, one only needs Wikipedia and Google. Check out the explanation from the culprit himself as to how he hacked into Sara Palin’s email using the password recovery wizard of Yahoo. One detail left out from this explanation was the fact that he did this using a public proxy, in this case ctunnel.com, in order to hide his IP address.
“After the password recovery was re-enabled, it took seriously 45 mins on Wikipedia and Google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on Wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from Wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!) The second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” I did some research, and apparently she had eloped with Mr. Palin after college. I found out later through more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…”
In response to this attack and others like it, yahoo is changing their password recovery process. From now on, users will be asked to provide an alternative email address or cell phone number to which the password will be sent to rather than asking a series of questions that a culprit can research.
Perhaps another lesson from this is to never tell the truth on password recovery questions.
There’s no question that Obama has an infinitely better grasp on Internet technology and culture than either of the past two Presidents. This isn’t simply the result of his chronological placement on the Internet history time line or a generational difference; his overall political philosophy (what we know of it) closely mirrors many of the fundamentals principles that drive the Web 2.0 revolution.
Let’s see if our new government utilizes these technologies to increase transparency. I doubt it, but we the people can continue to empower ourselves and support a free Internet regardless…
According to a stunning report released by Nemertes Research last week, the Internet is running out of bandwidth. The report predicts that consumer demand, already growing at 60 percent a year, will start to exceed supply as early as 2010 because of more people working online and the soaring popularity of bandwidth-hungry Web sites such as YouTube and services such as the BBC’s iPlayer. This is not the first industry based report to announce this approaching dilemma. U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T released identical findings last April in a presentation made in England. At the same time, AT&T reported that they alone are spending 20 billion dollars to upgrade its backbone network, this only part of the 130 billion dollars being spent worldwide.
Another recent study by the University of Minnesota also estimated that traffic was growing by at least 60 per cent a year, although that did not take into account plans for greater internet access in China and India. So with all this money being spent on infrastructure, why are we seemingly running out of bandwidth?
The answer according to experts is streaming media. YouTube it seems has changed everything. According to the Nemertes Report, the amount of traffic generated each month by YouTube is now equivalent to the amount of traffic generated across the entire internet in all of 2000. A perfect example is the fact that 100 million people have streamed the Susan Boyle’s video alone in the past couple of weeks. Another so-called “net bomb” being studied by Nemertes is BBC iPlayer, which allows viewers to watch high-definition television on their computers. In February there were more than 35 million requests for shows and iPlayer now accounts for 5 per cent of all UK internet traffic. Again, AT&T reported similar statistics in their report last April. Their report stated that eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon, and HD is 7 to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today.
Indeed the amount of traffic generated on the Internet today is inconceivable. Analysts express such traffic in exabytes – a quintillion (or a million trillion) bytes or units of computer data. One exabyte is equivalent to 50,000 years’ worth of DVD-quality data. Monthly traffic across the internet is running at about eight exabytes.
The analysts behind these predictions are not stating that the Internet is going crash. What they warn of is the possibility of Internet brown outs throughout the world. Computers will be disrupted and will be clipped from the Internet for several minutes at a time throughout the day. At a time though when many businesses are moving their IT operations to a “Cloud Computing” model, Internet dependability will be critical.
There are a number of experts who question these dire predictions but no one questions the idea that future Internet demand is growing exponentially. Says one AT&T Vice President, “In only a matter of years, the Internet traffic generated by twenty household will exceed the total Internet traffic of today.”
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