Flash drives are very convenient and prices have been coming down for them. I just had to get this 16GB drive for just under $25. Sounded pretty high quality considering its got a aluminum casing and lifetime warranty. So although I have never really played with this brand I decided to give them a chance.

(continue reading…)

Was just having to clean up a couple of spam emails that made it through today and thought maybe I should post up a few tips that will help keep things as hassle free as possible.

friends, relatives, and customers tend to ask me for suggestions for best solutions to block spam. I tend to like the Yahoo e-mail built in spam filtering but that doesn’t mean that spam filtering is hasslefree. I think this is where people tend to make a mistake by assuming that spam filtering somehow reads all your e-mail and comprehends it all then logically put things into spam box. This is not the case and spam filtering to a large extent depends on you in order to maintain accuracy.

Tip #1: Do not immediately delete spam e-mail that has arrived in your inbox.  Spam filters will have a button that you can click on while the spam e-mail is selected which does much more than just simply move the e-mail from your inbox to spam box. It will allow the spam filter to acknowledge that it failed to filter that spam mail. The spam filter will then attempt to learn and block future similar e-mail.

Tip #2: If you continue to get spam mail that is nearly identical search your inbox for additional instances that you and the spam filter may have missed. The missed instances can confuse a spam filter when comparing instances in your inbox that you did not mark as spam since it believes that these are good instances.

Tip #3: Always skim through your spam box to make sure that the spam filter has not falsely flagged non-spam mail as spam. Spam filtering software will have a ” not spam” button to do this and will allow the spam filtering software to learn from its mistake. This will reduce the chances of it making the mistake a second time.

As you can see spam filtering solutions depend heavily on the user in order to learn when it has made a mistake. If you simply delete spam e-mail or fail to let it know that it falsely flagged e-mail as spam not only will it continue making the same mistake but over time will become more confused over what is good and what is bad. It then becomes extremely unreliable and a huge annoyance to deal with.

This is old news but figured it posted anyway.

The LimeWire client has been hacked just a few days after LimeWire was supposed to shut down the service. The hacked version has been cleaned up of any bloatware and unlinked from LimeWire servers. This means that the new version of LimeWire has been modified by hackers so that it is no longer depends on LimeWire servers in order to operate and third-party software that would be normally offered as an optional install has been removed.

LimeWire has publicly requested that the parties involved cease-and-desist. It is very likely though that LimeWire has only made this request in order to cover their own butts legally.

Well not exactly. The LimeWire client is anyway but Limewire as a company will continue.

LimeWire has shut down P2P service do to a court-ordered injunction. In some ways this is good news for me anyway because I am sick of clueless people that expect me to clean up their system after downloading some infected files. In other ways this is a very sad day for the rest of us whom may have not abused the system and had enough common knowledge to know that 100kb file is probably not that video or song they were looking for.

LoL got a good laugh out of this

Read his post HERE

3DGameMan has teamed up with NZXT for a give away. Please visit site HERE and click on top right NZXT Give Away #56.  Below is what is on the table for the give away. Good luck!

• 1 x NZXT Beta EVO Case (1 winner) – Watch the Video Review
• 1 x NZXT Temest EVO Case (1 winner) - Watch the Video Review
• 1 x NZXT Hades Case (1 winner) - Watch the Video Review



Tomorrow is October 1st making today the last day before Bloglines (my favorite feed reader) pulls the plug on their service and I’ve managed to migrate over to Google Reader just in time.

Now my favorite bookmark synchronizer has also announced that they will be pulling the plug on their service. They plan to pull the plug on January 1st, 2011 however there’s a small chance of keeping the service alive. XMarks is taking pledges for anybody willing to spend $10 a year to keep Xmarks alive. I suspect that if they have enough pledges they will continue to keep the service alive as a fee based service.

XMarks explained that although they have a large installed base they have failed to create revenue in order to keep the service alive which is why they will be shutting the service down.

That’s just a few cents a month which I definitely do not mind forking over in order to keep the service alive. Just under 3 cents a day

I think hell has just frozen over or someone forgot to tell me 4th of July has been rescheduled this year. Now I realize the wording here is a bit open yet but here is what Robert Kotick said

“What we realized is our customers are paying $60 for a game or paying a monthly subscription fee and they don’t really want to be barraged with sponsorship or advertising”

“So being very respectful of our audiences, unless it’s something that’s really authentic and will enhance the game experience, we’re generally not going to include something in the game.”

My favorite RSS is shutting down on 10/1. Been a long time user and have never found anything that would in my opinion compare to this service even with the occasional site access issues. Why they are not selling the service to another company or open sourcing the project is beyond me.

RIP Bloglines. Now I need to find something else.

Any suggestions?

Many sources are reporting a virus which is sent via E-Mail. The virus was named after its subject line which reads “Here you have” but may also have “just for you” subject line. Its is recommended if you receive such a E-Mail even from a trusted source to delete it or at least confirm with sender that they in fact sent a E-Mail to you with this exact subject line.
Opening this E-Mail will infect your system and forward it self to everyone in your contact list.
This new Virus is spreading fast and a lot of big companies have been affected. Comcast had to take their E-Mail servers and seems to have Anti-Virus companies in a bit of a panic. McAfee has reported that there is already many variants sprouting which makes Anti-Virus software less likely to detect a unknown variant.

Funny I had just posted Adobe uninstall advise if not needed until next version. Further research seems to indicate that this infection is using a Adobe Reader exploit to install it self.  Adobe Systems has issued a statement saying that their Adobe Reader Software has some loopholes which is how this email containing a PDF file is able to launch it self. How ever looks like Adobe is not to blame completely as there is another step needed. The PDF file will get the user to a rogue site. The user is then asked to download a screensaver file (.scr) which will complete the install.

From what I can tell (but unable to verify) this infection seems to be targeting Windows only.