Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts & Bullsh!t |

We Call Them As They ARE!

Get Wired Into Windows Vista With Vista Rewired

Tuesday Mar 11, 2008



In the course of writing CITB we read and research a LOT of web sites. While surfing the web today I saw a link to VistaRewired.com. I no longer am a Microsoft Windows user having made the move to Linux several months ago. But, in my humble opinion, no Microsoft operating system is more bloated and convoluted than Vista. When I visited Vista Rewired I knew I had found a site that was a gold mine of simple, easy to use, solutions to the mysteries of Windows Vista.

Vista Rewired was created by two aspiring young entrepreneurs with the intent of solving the headaches of Windows Vista users, and to educate them on the operating system. The easy to use tips and tricks will help Vista users so they can use the operating system to its full potential.

Here is a LIMITED selection of links to Vista Rewired articles that I felt many users would find helpful.

The complete index of articles on the site can be found HERE. Remember that this site is adding important information and growing daily. Be sure to bookmark it or subscribe to their RSS feed to stay updated on this VALUABLE resource to Windows Vista.

We give this site our HIGHEST recommendation. We think it such a valuable resource that we have added it to our permanent list of Important Blogs on CITB's sidebar.


CITB Quote of the day: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work!"- Thomas Edison

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Proof Smoking Crack Kills Brain Cells???

Thursday Feb 7, 2008



Well, it had to happen... Somebody had to be the first to receive the honor of falling in to the category of "bullshit". And the winner is... Control C. The idea behind this site in our humble opinion is proof that smoking crack and developing great new innovative web sites do not go together. So you ask what is Control C?

FROM THEIR WEB SITE:

How many times a day do you copy and paste something? How often do you later wish you had saved what you copied to your clipboard for later use, or find yourself going back to look for that same content? Control C is an automated solution that will monitor your clipboard and store the data for you so you can later share or retrieve for yourself contents copied to your clipboard that otherwise would have been lost forever. All content uploaded from your clipboard is encrypted to protect your data completely. You can optionally, however, unencrypt (sic) and permanantly (sic) (EDITORS NOTE: You are not instilling much confidence with mis-spellings! Use a spell checker, Dude!) store the data in your account, and share it with the world.

In writing this review I sought out opinions from multiple sources to make sure I was not missing something, and the universal opinion was "Why would I want to do that?" First off, much of what we copy to the clipboard is one time or seldom used information like... Let's see... I know... like PASSWORDS. As if I'm sure that what I want to do, and what I think is a safe computing practice, is to send that kind of data unencrypted to a 3rd party site (run by who?), where I have NO IDEA who has administrative access.

The entire concept SCREAMS "HACK THIS SITE!" Unless perhaps this site was devised by lazy Russian Hackers who realized that Americans are so enamored with the term "Social" if they paired it with the word "Clipboard" they could get us to send our passwords and other confidential information voluntarily!

EDITOR CLIMBING ONTO HIS SOAP BOX: Have we become Comp-idiots, or has every crack smoking programmer in America decided that any term that the word Social can be put in front of is a viable idea to bring to the Internet? ANYONE who thinks ANY part of this idea, is a GOOD idea, is in my humble opinion, PROOF that smoking Crack permanently kills brain cells.

We have recently given several sites our highest recommendation. Our recommendation on this site is "RUN DUDE, RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION - SAVE YOURSELF WHILE YOU CAN!"

Our slogan here at CITB is "We Call Them As They Are!" and this one is Bullshit!

Disclaimer: We have no actual knowledge that anyone connected with Control C uses crack, or any other illegal substance, or is a lazy Russian hacker. We were just trying to figure out what would possess anyone to come up with such an insane idea, and those where the first things that came to mind.

TWB - Editor


CITB Quote of the day: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover" - Mark Twain

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Security Does Not Exist in Nature…

Sunday Mar 23, 2008



"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure." - Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)


CITB Quote of the day: "Just because someone is related to you by blood that doesn't make them family. UNCONDITIONAL love, loyalty and support is what makes one family in our brotherhood. All of you judgmental self-righteous hypocrites wonder why we are so strong and how our numbers keep growing. We offer a loyal family structure for the true warriors that are often condemned by your so called society." - Sunny Barger

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All That Glitters Is Not Gold!

Thursday Mar 20, 2008



I have found our second candidate in the "Bullsh!t" category. The site is called Glittericio.us and just about the only positive thing I can say is the name is appropriate, and perfect from a marketing perspective.

 

Now you may say, "But it's cute!" and to that I reply, "Cute doesn't pay the bills". Especially when you realize that this site ALSO serves or hosts each of the individual images, each time someone views a site they are on. That is a lot of bandwidth. In this story alone there are 46 individual images served from Glittericio.us.

 


The answer to this question is found in the images below:

This site is ad sponsored. An advertising sponsored site in its self is not an issue to us. CITB is an advertising sponsored site. Our issue with Glittericio.us is the TYPE of products that make up the MAJORITY of their advertisements. Most of the advertisements on this site are for products which on their face do not seem harmful to the average user. BUT, THEY CAN BE!

This site is targeted to teens and pre-teens with MySpace.com and other "Social Networking" site pages. They find this site and think "How Kewl Dude! My page will look so sweet with this!" Then they see an ad like the one highlighted above. When this link is followed, it offers a "free" add-on to your browser that will allow you to add 3-D and other types of effects to text for your website or social networking page. It seems like a great thing - a FREE tool for my web browser. But, often these add-ons contain spyware known as "ad-ware".

Advertisements and Spyware

Many spyware programs display advertisements. Some programs simply display pop-up ads on a regular basis; for instance, one every several minutes, or one when the user opens a new browser window. Others display ads in response to specific sites that the user visits. Spyware operators present this feature as desirable to advertisers, who may buy ad placement in pop-ups displayed when the user visits a particular site. Also, one of the purposes of some spyware programs is to gather information on user behavior.

A further issue in the case of some spyware programs has to do with the replacement of banner ads on viewed web sites. Spyware that acts as a web proxy or a Browser Helper Object can replace references to a site's own advertisements (which fund the site) with advertisements that instead fund the spyware operator. This cuts into the margins of advertising-funded Web sites.

A large number of toolbars, some added by spyware
overwhelm Internet Explorer running on Windows XP

Effects and Behaviors

Users frequently notice unwanted behavior and a degrading of their system performance. These types of "FREE" add-ons often create significant unwanted CPU activity, disk usage, and network traffic, all of which slow the computer down. Stability issues with your browser and system-wide crashes are also common.

Often spyware is not even evident. Users assume in those situations that the issues are hardware related, Windows installation problems, or a virus. Some owners of badly infected systems resort to buying a new computer because their existing system "has become too slow".

Only rarely does a single piece of software render a computer unusable. Rather, a computer is likely to have multiple infections. A 2004 AOL study noted that if a computer has any spyware at all, it typically has dozens of different pieces installed. The cumulative effect, and the interactions between spyware components, causes the symptoms commonly reported by users: a computer, which slows to a crawl, overwhelmed by the many parasitic processes running on it.

Save Yourself With Knowledge!

Here are several links we recommend to help you diagnose and resolve issues related to spyware and system performance:

Lifehacker Article - Is it spyware? Use TaskList to find out

FaceTime Security Labs maintains the popular SpywareGuide.com

CITB EDITORS NOTE: We recommend that ALL Windows users run BOTH of these free software programs at least once a month or if they notice any of the behaviors noted in this story.

Software - Spybot Search & Destroy

Software - Ad-Aware 2007 Free

There is an old adage that goes, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!" The REAL cost of the types of sites like Glittericio.us, which in reality prey on the naivety of teenagers, cause us to put this site and all others like it in the BULLSH!T category. RUN don't walk from this site NOW! Save Yourself With Knowledge! Remember "All That Glitters Is Not Gold!"


CITB Quote of the day: "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." - Albert Einstein

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