Byte by Bite

County-Phone Company Meeting is Tuesday

by Marv Dealy

Thanks to faithful readers 1 and 2 (hi, Mom and Dad) I can pass along a clever Web game that you’ll find quite fun and addictive. Takes just a few seconds to play; supposedly the game is used to help train fighter pilots but that sounds sort of like an urban legend. In any event, check it out at http://members.iinet.net.au/~pontipak/redsquare.html

When the web page opens, you’ll see a black border around a white box, in which are placed four blue objects and one red square. Your task is to click and hold on the red square and move it around with your mouse so as to avoid being touched by any of the blue objects and without bumping into the black border. As soon as you click on the red square, the blue thingees will start trying to touch your red square, counting you “out.” Whooee, this is pretty durned hard. The web site says if you can make it 18 seconds without getting creamed you’re “doing brilliantly.” Have at it.

Attention MacHeads – if you’re using Tiger, Jason Parker, staff writer at CNET Download.com says do the 10.4.6 update. You could use the Software Update but you might want to check out the potential “gotchas” that Apple has to say about the update. For example, if you use iSync, you’ll want to fully sync your devices prior to install. Read this and other cautionary tales in Apple’s “About the Mac OS X 10.4.6 Update (delta)” article at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303411

On a more entertaining note, MacHeads may want to try Burning Monkey Solitaire, described by Parker as follows: “Games are supposed to be entertaining, and this funny twist on the classic card game just keeps getting better. It features all the most popular solitaire variations, but its most charming feature is its presentation. Your cards sit in a junglelike setting with an audience of monkeys that each have something to say as you play your game. One will even sing you a little song at the click of a mouse. Updated 32-bit graphics make this fun game look even better than before. We laughed out loud at some of the monkey's voices, all the while playing a great game of Freecell. If you're a solitaire fan or you just like to laugh, this game is a definite must download.”

Get the free-to-try, $25-to-buy game at http://www.download.com/Solavant/3000-2286_4-10521533.html?tag=nl.e414

In a cheery note to PC users that MacHeads can smugly ignore, a Microsoft official said recently that sometimes it’s best to just format your hard drive and start from scratch if your computer gets overwhelmed with scourgeware (for you new readers, that’s malware, spyware, and other bad-stuff-ware).

Ryan Naraine in an article at eWeek.com (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1945808,00.asp ) quotes Mike Danseglio, program manager in the security Solutions group at Microsoft: “…the only solution is to rebuild from scratch. In some cases, there is really no way to recover without nuking the systems.”

The stuff the bad guys have unleashed that Danseglio particularly singles out are called rootkits, which can be used to hide malicious software programs on your computer and maintain a virtually invisible presence on an infected computer. Naraine says in his story that “Offensive rootkits…have become the weapon of choice for virus and spyware writers and, because they often use kernel hooks to avoid detection, Danseglio said IT administrators may never know if all traces of a rootkit have been successfully removed.”

Rootkits come in various forms, including persistent rootkits, memory-based rootkits, user-mode rootkits and kernel-mode rootkits. Just wonderful.

Naraine goes on to tell a tale of a branch of the US government who found some 2,000 computers so badly infected that the only solution was to reformat and reinstall stuff. Naturally, the government didn’t have an automated system to accomplish this, and one had to be whipped up in a hurry, probably at appalling cost, although that isn’t noted in the article.

Since these types of infections won’t necessarily make your system freeze or crash, you’ll often have no idea it’s even infected. Free utilities are available that will help root out the bad stuff, including SpyBot Search & Destroy (http://spybot.safer-networking.de/), RootkitRevealer (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html) and Microsoft’s Windows Defender (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx).

I use SpyBot to bring PCs back to life quite routinely, and use the inexpensive SunBelt Software’s CounterSpy (www.sunbelt-software.com) to keep the bad guys off my computers both on the road and in the shop.

You can find reviews and ratings of 10 different anti-spyware programs that range in price from $25 to $41.91 at Anti-Spyware Review (http://anti-spyware-review.toptenreviews.com/). CounterSpy came in third place, with Spy Sweeper (http://anti-spyware-review.toptenreviews.com/spy-sweeper-review.html) coming in first and Aluria Anti-Spyware (http://anti-spyware-review.toptenreviews.com/aluria-anti-spyware-review.html) placing second.

Friday Freebie – if you’re like some of us, you have lots and lots of stuff on your computer’s desktop. That’s what you see on your screen when Windows XP finally decides to start up. If you’re limited to working on one screen on your computer, you ought to try working on multiple screens (stop by my shop and take one for a drive) or at the very least add the Desktop toolbar to your tool tray. Right click in your tool tray (that’s the thing at the bottom of the screen, with Start on the lower left and the clock on the lower right). In the menu that pops up choose Toolbars, and in the submenu choose Desktop.

You’ll see a new icon added far right in your tool tray, labeled Desktop and with a little >> symbol to the right. Click on the >> and a menu will pop up on top of whatever you have open on your screen, showing the contents of your desktop. I find this particularly handy as I have lots of items coming and going and they all have a tendency to live now and then on the desktop.