Last week, I described the dangers of downloading applications from what was once the premiere location to find and download open-source software, SourceForge. I heard from a reader (Thanks, Matthew!) about a service called Ninite that can handle updates for many popular programs and utilities. This week, we'll look at that service and, while we're on the subject of utilities, we'll take a look at some other useful programs. Most of them are free or very reasonably priced.
The company offers an automated procedure that can be used by system administrators to update applications across an entire corporate domain. The cost ranges from $20 per month (up to 100 computers) to $185 per month (for 501 to 1000 computers), but there is also a free manual version and an automated version for home use that costs $10 per year.
Besides keeping systems up to date, Ninite offers the advantage of automatically eliminating the adware, spyware, and malware that might be packaged with applications. Even Adobe and Oracle try to install unwanted applications with the programs you need.
The service's website explains that the free service allows users to select applications that they want to install or update. Ninite generates an executable file that downloads and installs any new applications you've selected and checks the others for updated versions of the software.
When updates are found, they're downloaded and installed without any of the "add ons" that you don't want.
Choose from browsers (Chrome, Opera, and Firefox only), media players, office suite applications, security programs, and more. When you've selected the applications, clicking the Get Installer button downloads a single executable file.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
Press Esc to dismiss the larger image.
The download process illustrates which programs the installer will locate and install or update and explains how to use it.
The explanation is really easy: Run the file.
During the update process, Ninite explains what's happening. Some applications may be skipped because the version on your computer is already up to date, because the program is in use, or (if you're running a beta version of an application) because the installed version is newer than the version that the developers offer for updates.
Overall, it's a painless process and it gets better. The fully automated Ninite installer is available for $10 per year ($25 if you want to use it on up to 5 computers) for home or small business use. It could be used in larger corporations, too, but a better option is NiNite's corporate applicaton that can manage all Windows computers within the domain.
Sometimes all you need is a text editor. Writing works best as a 2-step process: First, get your thoughts down on "paper" (in this case "paper" can be the screen) and second, perform the editing and formatting steps. That second step could be split into two parts, too, editing and then formatting. Almost everyone writes better, though, without the distraction of formatting. A word processor (whether Word, WordPerfect, or Write) distracts writers with formatting tools.
That's why I recommend starting with a text editor. It's also why I often start the articles I write with UltraEdit Studio. But you might not want to spend $80 or more for a program that you would use only occasionally to create a plain-text file. That's where Notepad++ comes in.
Notepad++ doesn't have all of UltraEdit Studio's features, but most of those extra features are ones that programmers will appreciate. And because Notepad++ doesn't have all of UltraEdit Studio's features, its a faster and smaller program.
How many programs start when Windows starts? Even if you haven't added a lot of programs on your own, you might be surprised. If you eliminate some of them and delay ones that you won't need right away, the computer will start faster and be ready for you to use sooner.
Startup Delayer gives you control over which applications start and when they start. The screen shot of what starts when my desktop system starts may appear overwhelming because the list is so long. Some of the items are protective software (Avast) or apps to control devices (Logitech). Some provide essential services (Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Drive Sync, MalwareBytes Anti-Malware). Others are just programs that I prefer to start automatically so that they'll be there when I need them (GoodSync, ColorMunki, DS Clock).
Depending on how many applications you want to load, how fast the computer's CPU is, and what the data transfer speed is for the disk subsystem, delaying some of the applications could significantly improve the startup process.
StartUp Delayer's interface consists mainly of the list of programs and services that start when the computer starts. Any given program or service may be delayed for a few seconds, a few minutes, or even a few hours.
As helpful as all that is, Startup Delayer can also be used to identify system problems because you can turn off programs at any time, temporarily stop them from launching, and even disable them.
I can't prove this, but it seems to me that people are reading more these days than they have for a while. Tablets, particularly the one with sizes that are about the size of a paperback book, are handy reading devices. Some people read on computer screens. Some even use a smart phone for reading. In all cases, the electronic device can take the place of dozens or even hundreds of books. No longer is there a stack of books on the floor by the bed waiting to be read. Now there's a long list of books on an Android tablet. Because those books are always with me, I'm reading more and the books don't have to wait as long.
Two applications, one on the computer and the other on my tablet, make the process easy.
Calibre on the desktop (Windows, Mac, or Linux) is the best way to manage and organize e-books. It's also a reader, but Calibre's primary functions are all about organizing books and making them accessible.
Calibre supports more than a dozen e-book formats and that's important because publishers use a variety of formats, some with digital rights management (DRM, also known as "copy protection") and some without. Calibre makes it possible to convert most books from the format they're in to the one that your reader device prefers. EPUB, PRF, and MOBI are the most common formats.
DRM makes file conversion more difficult, but extensions are available for Calibre that remove the copy protection and allow you to convert a book that you purchased in PRF format to EPUB for use on a device from another publisher.
This feature is intended to make books easier for you to use, not to allow you to buy one copy of a book and hand it out to your 10,000 closest friends!
My favorite reader application for Android is the Universal Book Reader.
The free version is good, but spending a few dollars for the paid version eliminates ads, enables a text-to-speech feature, and includes a few other useful features. The Universal Book Reader supports EPUB, ACMS, and PDF formats, so you'll need Calibre to convert the other formats to ones that the program can handle.
The bookshelf metaphor makes finding books that you've imported easy and the ability to create multiple bookshelves within the program make organization easy. Unlike with physical books, you can adjust the color of the paper and the size and face used for the type. That's a feature that most electronic book readers provide.
The transition effect (my preference is a page flip) makes the ebook look like a paper book even if it doesn't feel like one. The reader can add bookmarks, highlight text, and copy text to share via e-mail or social network.
I've tried several book readers in the past few years and this is the one that I use, recommend, and was willing to part with $3.50 for to obtain the paid (ad-free) version and support the developer's work.
Some people still buy CDs. If you're one of them and you still want to convert the CDs to files that you can carry along on an MP3 player or tablet or phone, but you don't want to tie your music to a proprietary player, two applications will make your task a lot easier: FairStars CD Ripper to convert CD tracks to MP3 files and MP3Tag to organize and improve the embedded meta-data that travels with the music files.
FairStars CD Ripper is a free application for ripping audio CD tracks to WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV formats files on-the-fly. Free CDDB is supported, both for queries and submissions. It supports normalization when ripping and also supports ID3 tag. Although I don't use it, the application includes a player function.
Setting the defaults is divided into two primary sections: General and file type. The General classification determines whether volume is normalized (I turn this off) and other options such as enabling ID3 tag, displaying a message when the process is complete, and creating an M3U playlist. Options for individual file types are specific to the features supported: sampling rate, bits per sample, and channels for WAV files and sampling rate, channels, constant/variable bit rate, and bit rate for MP3.
The ripping process is easy. Insert a CD and FairStars queries CDDB to obtain a list of tracks. In some cases, CDDB may return more than one listing so that you can choose the one that's most appropriate. Press Extract and watch as the program zips through each track on the CD. You also have the option of specifying how CD tracks are named and where the files are stored.
Download it from the FairStars website.
FairStars uses CDDB to obtain track information, but sometimes the information is wrong (or at least I disagree with it). Additionally, you might want to include the cover art with the CD tracks. You could scan the CD cover, save the image, and then import that into the track's meta-data. Or you could use MP3Tag.
Track information can be edited individually or for multiple tracks at once. For example, if I converted a Natasha Beddingfiled CD to MP3 files and felt that "rock" or "female vocalist" was more appropriate than "pop", I could simply select all the tracks, type my preferred description in the Genre box, and save the changes.
Even if I agree with the genre, I might want to add cover art. This can be obtained automatically from Amazon. With all of the tracks selected, select the appropriate cover art source and MP3Tag will return all of the images that it believes might be associated with these tracks.
Select the cover art you prefer (older CDs that have been reissued several times often return a choice of several covers).
MP3Tag inserts any new information you add, along with the cover art, into each MP3 file so that no matter what device you use to play the file, your information will be present.
Download it from the MP3Tag website.
Call it what you want — God Mode, Devil Mode, FoonBlatt Mode. It doesn't matter. What does matter is the globally unique identifier (GUID) that you use when creating the directory.
First how, then why.
How: Create a directory. The location doesn't seem to matter, but it's probably best not to create the directory on the computer's desktop. Name the directory something and at the end of the name, add this (including the braces):
{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
Why: When you open the directory, you'll find more than 150 Windows control functions, some of which aren't available even in the Control Panel, at your fingertips. Ah, at your mouse cursor.
God Mode (or whatever you prefer to call it) used to be a hidden trick that developers could use. First available in Windows 7, it remains available in Windows 8 and 8.1. Although it doesn't reveal any functions that can't be reached via other means, it does place all these tweaks and controls in a single, convenient package.
If you're looking for a comprehensive resource for just about everything geek related, take a look at GEGeek and you'll find links to hundreds of useful resources.
The GEGeek, who doesn't reveal his name, says this about his site: I worked for GE Medical Systems 25 yrs as a X-Ray⁄PACS Field Engineer and now as a PACS⁄IT Director for a Medical Imaging Center in NJ. Been trying to fix "Windoze" ever since the IBM AT⁄XT was 1st introduced back in 1983, when I worked for a small PC repair shop. I have a 2 year Technician's Certification and Bachelor's Degree in Electronics Engineering, as well as numerous IT certifications throughout the years. I don't see myself slowing down any time soon. God help me I still love it.
Check out GEGeek.
Some relatively early tablet computers have tiny hard drives. The original Acer Iconia, for example, shipped with a tiny 64GB hard drive that provided only about 57GB for the operating system and applications. Eventually the time came when Windows updates couldn't be installed because there wasn't enough space available on the disk.
The examples here are from a desktop system that still had sufficient space remaining when I ran WinDirStat. This is a program I've described previously that illustrates exactly what's taking up the most amount of space on one or more disk drives.
WinDirStat tells you exactly what's consuming the space, but it's hazardous to remove files from the Windows installer directory. Some of the files are no longer needed but are left behind by an inefficient Microsoft process. What's needed is a utility that can sniff out the files that are no longer in use.
WiCleanup is such a program. On the desktop system, it identified 20GB of installer files that were no longer needed. The program is a bit cumbersome to use because the user first needs to check the box beside each file (select all the files and press the space bar) and then manually confirm each deletion (this can be a bit tedious if you have 1000 or more files.)
The other problem is that the developer of WiCleanup seems not to support it any longer and it cannot be downloaded from his website. It can be found on the Internet, but be careful to obtain just the file itself.
In fact, if your boot drive has sufficient space, leaving the unnecessary installer files does no harm. Except for the need to illustrate this article, I would have left the excess installer files on the desktop machine alone. 20GB might seem like a lot, but it wasn't a significant issue on this machine.
A scan after all of the unneeded installer files had been removed showed that all remaining files were still needed.
WARNING!
This is not a utility that you should use unless your computer's C drive is completely out of space. Although the developer has attempted to ensure that essential installer files are not touched, there is no guarantee.
Two facts that should be noted at the beginning: Kaspersky Lab is located in Moscow and the company's founder, Eugene Kaspersky, graduated from the Technical Faculty of the The Higher KGB School of Order of the Red Banner. The school specializes in cryptography and communications.
Although headquartered in Moscow, Kaspersky's holding company is registered in the United Kingdom. It employs nearly 3000 people and has offices in 30 countries. Kaspersky's products are used by more than a quarter million corporate clients worldwide and it focuses on large enterprises with additional products for small and medium-sized businesses.
So is Kaspersky trustworthy? The organization is well respected by European and US security experts. Additionally Kaspersky Lab identified the Flame malware in 2012. The reports were validated by other researchers. Flame infected 1000 to 5000 computers.
This week Kaspersky Lab held a Security Analysts Summit in Mexico, where it revealed the existence of what it calls the "Equation Group". The Kaspersky Lab report says the group has been active since at least 2001 and is responsible for malware that Kaspersky has code named "EquationDrug" and "GrayFish". The most alarming part of the report says that the malware is capable of reprogramming firmware inside computer hard drives. The US National Security Agency is believed to be the primary operator.
At this point, it might be worth noting that the United States would condemn actions such as these had China or North Korea or Russia been identified as the perpetrator.
Kaspersky Lab characterizes the Equation Group as "a threat actor that surpasses anything known in terms of complexity and sophistication of techniques." Even though it has just been identified, the Equation Group has been active for almost two decades.
According to Kaspersky Lab researchers, the group is unique almost in every aspect of their activities: they use tools that are complicated and expensive to develop when they infect victims, retrieve data, and hide their activity in an "outstandingly professional way." Kaspersky says the organization uses "classic spying techniques" to deliver malicious payloads to the victims.
By "classic spying techniques", Kaspersky is referring to spycraft that plants malware on computers that are not connected to external networks. The report says that the group uses an arsenal of Trojans. Some of these have been identified and Kaspersky has given them code names: EquationLaser, EquationDrug, DoubleFantasy, TripleFantasy, Fanny, and GrayFish. It expects to find more.
What's both unique and disturbing about this organization is that it has developed modules that allow hard drive firmware to be reprogrammed. It works with hard drives manufactured by more than a dozen companies. In other words, nearly all disk drives would be vulnerable.
Rewriting the firmware in a disk drive gives the Equation Group's malware the ability to survive even if a user formats the hard drive. To avoid discovery, the malware restricts access to a section of the disk drive so that standard scanning software cannot see it.
The GrayFish malware becomes active immediately at boot time and is therefore able to capture encryption keys and other information that has generally been considered beyond the reach of malware.
Once installed, the malware reaches out to other computers -- even those that are not attached to an internal network. The Fanny worm can reach across "air-gapped" networks (machines that are not physically connected to each other) to map the topology of a network that cannot be accessed directly, and to execute commands on those isolated systems. Fanny uses a USB-based command and control mechanism that allows the attackers to pass data back and forth on air-gapped (also called "sneaker net") networks.
The computers that are known to be infected are located in more than 30 countries at government and diplomatic institutions, telecommunications facilities, aerospace offices, energy distribution, nuclear research, oil and gas exploration, military bases, nanotechnology research labs, Islamic activists and scholars, mass media, transportation, financial institutions, and companies that develop encryption technologies.
I have to wonder how long it will be until someone creates malware that will race around the world like viral plagues of history and indiscriminately wipe out every computer in its path.
There's a pleasant thought to ponder.
Kaspersky Lab (this must be their week to be highly visible) says that clues about a massive bank job began to appear in 2013. An automatic teller machine in Ukraine occasionally dispensed cash even though nobody was using the machine. The bank called on Kaspersky to investigate and that revealed a far larger problem.
What they found is that remote cyber crooks had made off with $300 million of deposits, possibly more. Possibly a lot more. Possibly more than $1 billion. The bank's computers had been infected by malware that sent information back to the crooks who then were able to impersonate bank officials and transfer money from banks primarily in Russia, but also in the United States, China, Japan, Switzerland, and Netherlands to their own accounts.
Kaspersky says the attack began in 2013 and the vector used to plant malware was the most common one: E-mail that contained malware. They sent hundreds of infected messages to bank employees. Inevitably, some people opened the messages and the bank's electronic security system wasn't sufficient to catch the infection.
Once installed, the malware recorded keystrokes and captured screen shots that were sent back to the crooks so that they could learn about each bank's procedures. Once they had that information, they were able to impersonate bank employees.
Kaspersky says the crooks manipulated account balances so that, for example, an account that contained $1000 would show a balance of $10,000. The crooks would then transfer $9000 to their shadow account and leave the expected $1000 balance in the account.
For a malware attack such as this to succeed is one thing, but it's quite another for the process to go unnoticed for 2 years as millions of dollars silently disappeared. How could the disappearance of possibly as much as $1 billion not have triggered a warning?
While learning each bank's procedures well enough to mimic bank employees, the crooks set up accounts in the US and China to receive the money. To avoid detection, the crooks generally waited several months to start extracting funds from the shadow accounts.
