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"'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
- Abraham Lincoln"

Corporate Stop Sign Design

Olympics Medal Tracker

Olympic Medal winners at NBC Olympics.com!

LHC Nerd Rap

Ten Alternative Engine Sounds for Hybrid Cars

Cub Scout Pack 180 Calendar

The murals in restaurants are on par with the food in museums.
Peter De Vries

Think Your PC is Infected?

From Gizmo Richards' excellent Support Alert Newsletter:

Here's Gizmo's simple, zero-cost, three-step procedure to follow next time you feel your PC might have become infected as the result of installing a program you downloaded.

(a) First, upload the installation file of the program you installed to Jotti.org [1] for a free scan. Jotti will then run it through more than a dozen malware scanners and let you know if there is a problem.

If Jotti determines that your file is clean, it doesn't mean that there is no infection. It simply means that it's unlikely there is an infection, and that folks, is a very comforting finding.

(b) Download and run the free Panda Rootkit detector [2]. Again, a clean scan is not a 100% guarantee of no infection, but should add greatly to your confidence. Panda doesn't run on Vista, so Vista users should use the BlackLight [3] anti-rootkit scanner instead.

(c) Finally, download HijackThis from this page [4], and follow the instructions on the same page which tell you how to create a log that you can paste to web forums.

There are several forums where you can post. You can find two here [5], [6] and many more by doing a Google search on "Post HiJackThis log". Tell the forum helpers you have already done a Jotti scan and a rootkit scan, and let them know what the results of these scans were.

The folks in the forum will then let you know if you have a problem. If you do, they will also be able to tell you how you can get rid of it permanently. And it won't cost you a cent.

Now in most cases you will find that nothing shows up with Jotti, the rootkit scan or HiJackThis. That's good news. OK, you have spent some of your time chasing a false lead, but that's a lot better than having an infected PC and doing nothing about it.

[1] http://virusscan.jotti.org/
[2] http://www.majorgeeks.com/Panda_Anti-Rootkit_d5457.html
[3] http://www.antirootkit.com/software/F-Secure-BlackLight-Beta.htm
[4] http://www.whatthetech.com/hijackthis/
[5] http://www.techsupportforum.com/security-center/hijackthis-log-help/
[6] http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showforum=12

LCARS-esque touchscreen controls home, excites Trekkies

za9000's LCARS-like touch panel isn't quite ready to hop aboard any spacecraft, but it sure seems to do a fine job of controlling his home. Truthfully, detailing this thing in words wouldn't do it justice, so we'll leave it to you to don your best Spock face and check out the three-minute clip




From Engaget

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 - 2001)