Officials at Sunbelt Software, a Clearwater, Fla.-based vendor of antispyware tools, said the company stumbled upon a massive ID theft ring that is using a well-known spyware program to break into and systematically steal confidential information from an unknown number of computers worldwide.

The operation was discovered yesterday during research Sunbelt was doing on a spyware program belonging to a particularly dangerous class of browser hijacking tools called CoolWebSearch (CWS), according to Sunbelt's president, Alex Eckelberry.

CWS programs are extremely hard to detect and remove, and are used to redirect users to Web sites that use spyware tools to collect a variety of information from infected computers.

The CWS variant being researched by Sunbelt turned infected systems into spam zombies and uploaded a wide variety of personal information to a remote server apparently located in the U.S. That server holds a "treasure trove of information" for ID thieves, Eckelberry said.

Sunbelt's research showed that the information being uploaded to the remote server included chat sessions, user names, passwords and bank information, he said. The bank information included details on one company bank account with more than $350,000 in deposits and another belonging to a small California company with over $11,000 in readily accessible cash, he said.

Full Article here |  Removing and detecting

101 Samples for Visual Studio 2005

101 Samples, in both Visual Basic and C#, featuring many of the new features available with Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0. For more samples using Visual Studio 2003 .NET, see this download.

Download all 101 Samples: C# Version   |   VB Version

These samples have been written and tested with Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005

MS Page Here

While Spammers might anger you and frustrate, with the daily barrage of endless garbage. We seriously doubt that murder is the right answer to the problem. In Russia though, it appears to be the answer. The image was the product of a contest urging Russians to kill the spammer in question.

Russia’s most (in)famous spammer, Vardan Kushnir, 35, was dead in his apartment in downtown Moscow on Monday, July 25. Someone repeatedly smashed his head with a heavy object, authorities say, and then ransacked his entire apartment. The authorities have obviously got no clue as to who that someone might have been.

And, as a matter of fact, they don’t seem to really care: every day between 10 and 20 people meet a violent death in Russia’s capital, and a significant part of those crimes remains unsolved (Russia’s Interior Ministry reports 1,935 unsolved murders, 73,000 burglaries and 11,400 robberies between January and May in this year alone). There is no reason for Moscow’s law enforcement officials to give Kushnir’s case any special treatment, so they most probably won’t. But the Moscow-based media is awash with comments and speculations, expounding one simple, albeit largely irrational, theory: someone (ranging from God almighty to an irate IT office worker) finally punished Vardan Kushnir for his seemingly unstoppable spamming activities.

Full Article

Frustrated with all the tag differences with XHTML and do not want to trace all the differences. This little app costs nothing and will help you quickly find the errors.

Amaya is a Web editor, i.e. a tool used to create and update documents directly on the Web. Browsing features are seamlessly integrated with the editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way publishing medium.

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Easy Outlook Express Repair is a utility for restoring damaged folders in Outlook Express. If Outlook Express cannot find your messages in its folders, you can use Easy Outlook Express Repair to get your messages back as well as to recover the damaged Outlook Express folders.
     If Outlook Express data files (dbx files) are somehow damaged and you cannot use Outlook Express to view the messages stored in its folders, Easy Outlook Express Repair will help you to extract messages from the damaged folders and save them to the disk. The saved messages can be viewed in Outlook Express and/or imported to any other mail client. Using the program does not require any special skills. You will recover your lost messages just in 2 steps.

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Apple Computer Inc.'s neglect of the humble mouse is over. It now offers a model that's nimble.

Apple introduced on Tuesday its first computer mouse with multiple buttons, including four sensors and a tiny scroll ball. Although a departure from the company's traditional mouse, the "Mighty Mouse" looks very similar to the single-button model Apple has long produced.

The most obvious difference is the relatively tiny scroll ball at the mouse's head, which can move cursors diagonally as well as up and down across display screens and can be pressed to "click" functions.

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  Mozilla Foundation has set up a commercial subsidiary to cash in on the Firefox browser.

The open-source group on Wednesday announced a major reorganization that includes the creation of the Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit subsidiary to ride the Firefox gravy train.

Mozilla Corp., which will operate out of the Foundation's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, has been set up as a wholly owned commercial subsidiary to generate revenues to support development, testing, and productization of the various Mozilla open-source technologies.

"The broad adoption of Mozilla Firefox has created significant economic value both in Firefox itself and in a commercial ecosystem that is developing around Firefox," Mozilla said in a statement.

Mitchell Baker, who has served for the past two years as "chief lizard wrangler" at the Mozilla Foundation, will assume the title of president of Mozilla Corp. All 36 employees at the Foundation will immediately move over to the Corporation.

Brendan Eich, a co-founder and longtime technical leader of the Mozilla project, is now the chief technical officer of the new corporation, while the board of directors will remain the same except for the addition of Reid Hoffman, chief executive of social networking service LinkedIn Corp.

"[The] purpose is not to generate a return on investment in the financial sense. It is not an investment vehicle or an IPO candidate. It is completely owned by the Mozilla Foundation," Baker said in a blog entry detailing the reasons for the reorganization.

The CodeHound Visual Studio .NET Add-In is designed to make life easier for developers who use Visual Studio .NET. With this free tool, you can search hundreds of Web sites and millions of newsgroup posts without leaving the VS.NET IDE!
 
Our VS.NET Add-In automatically detects which language you're using, whether it's Visual Basic .NET or C#, and directs you to the appropriate search engine. Simply highlight a word or phrase in your code, right click, and select Search CodeHound. Your default Web browser will launch with your search results instantly!

 Download our new Visual Studio .NET Add-In!

As you convert your ASP.NET 1.x applications to the new ASP.NET 2.0 framework, you may encounter issues related to the changes introduced by the 2.0 framework. In this article, we will look at both the conversion process and some of the common issues you may encounter during a conversion.

What Is ASP.NET 2.0?

ASP.NET 2.0 is a major update of the ASP.NET 1.x framework. Not only does ASP.NET 2.0 introduce many new features, it also fundamentally changes the way that an ASP.NET application is designed, compiled, and deployed. Although your ASP.NET 1.1 applications will run on ASP.NET 2.0 without recompiling, you will find that upgrading to use the new ASP.NET 2.0 features both simplifies your development and gives you more options for compiling and deploying your code. If you aren't familiar with ASP.NET 2.0, or the benefits of upgrading, please read Migrating from ASP.NET 1.x to ASP.NET 2.0.

With specific regard to upgrading an application, you will need to be aware of operational issues that affect how an application is compiled and deployed. You will also need to be aware of how new coding features affect your conversion and also give you opportunities to improve your application.

Don't have the money for MS Office?  Want a free alternative?

OpenOffice.org is both a multi-platform and multi-lingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. To help build the community, join us. We have downloaded and tested both v1.1.4 and v1.9+beta both worked nicely. The 1.9 version is a build up to v2.0 and it is a great free alternative. Works on any PC platform and MAC.

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• The stable version (1.1.4)
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Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering, or AA and AF, are some of the most common techniques for improving image quality in games, yet many people don't really understand exactly what those terms mean.

We are going to explain the technology behind the sliders bars but before looking at these in detail, we need to outline the basics of PC display technology. If you already have a handle on DPI's and monitor resolutions.

Bit-Tech has a great walk through detailed explaination on their site. "Click Here"

SAN FRANCISCO, July 25 (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's biggest maker of computer chips, said on Monday it plans to build an advanced, $3 billion semiconductor production plant in Arizona that will begin operation with in two years.

In a statement, the company said it planned to construct a new 300-millimeter (12-inch) silicon wafer fabrication facility, to be known as "Fab 32," which will be located at its existing manufacturing site in Chandler, Arizona.

Intel said construction will begin immediately on the $3 billion project. Production of leading-edge microprocessors is slated to begin in the second-half of 2007 on 45 nanometer process technology, it said.

The technology allows circuits to be built with features that are 1/1,333th the width of a human hair. Forty-five nanometer technology is two generations ahead of the current 90-nanometer technology that is now moving into mainstream production and 65-nanometer technology, which Intel plans to begin using later this year.

Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said the new facility will join one existing plant now in operation and a second plant that is being converted to more advanced technology and should resume production later this year. It will employ 10,000 staff in Chandler with the third facility.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey quizzed online users about their familiarity with Internet buzzwords such as spam, firewall and Internet cookies. The results reflect how many of those terms have worked their way into mainstream consciousness. It appears a few of the latest Internet trends still have a long way to go:

• Only 9 percent of respondents said they had a "good idea'' of the definition of RSS feeds, which lets people who enjoy reading blogs, or online diaries, subscribe and receive the latest post as soon as it is published.

• About 13 percent knew the term podcasting, or programs such as radio shows that are broadcast through the Internet and downloaded onto digital-music players, most commonly the Apple iPod.

• And 29 percent were familiar with Internet phishing, which occurs when unsolicited e-mails pretend to come from a business or a trustworthy person -- such as a missive that purports to be from your bank -- and try to get the users' personal data.

Rick Samona shows enhancements to Visual Studio 2005 that help make applications more secure. Learn fundamental design principles for building secure apps. See how FxCop and Code Access Security help create more secure managed code apps, while PREfast and the /GS switch help secure native code apps.

  See Video presentation.

Microsoft Corp. has announced the official name for its upcoming operating system, previously known under the code name Longhorn. The operating system, now due out in 2006, will be called Windows Vista, with the tag line "Bringing clarity to your world."

The software company also revealed that Beta 1 of Windows Vista will be available to developers and IT professionals in less than two weeks, by Aug. 3.

The first beta will include only some of Vista's promised functionality, such as virtual folders and a new desktop search engine, but will not include much of the graphical user interface (GUI) enhancements of the finished product, said Greg Sullivan, a group product manager with Windows Client for Microsoft.

Those features will be available in beta 2, Sullivan said. He did not disclose a time frame for that release, saying that depends on the feedback Microsoft receives about beta 1.

Microsoft is also widely expected to release more Vista bits to developers at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles in mid-September, but Sullivan said that has not been decided on yet. "There will certainly be more disclosure on features that will be added post beta 1 [at the PDC]," he said.

Microsoft first disclosed the official name for the next version of Windows yesterday at its annual sales meeting, Microsoft Global Business (MGB), in a presentation by Brian Valentine, senior vice president of the Windows Core Operating System Division. The company made the name change public in a Webcast today.

Microsoft has part of its Web site set up for Vista at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

The Web services technology enables cross-platform integration by using HTTP, XML and SOAP for communication thereby enabling true business-to-business application integrations across firewalls. Because Web services rely on industry standards to expose application functionality on the Internet, they are independent of programming language, platform and device.

Remoting is .a technology that allows programs and software components to interact across application domains, processes, and machine boundaries. This enables your applications to take advantage of remote resources in a networked environment.

Both Web services and remoting support developing distributed applications and application integration, but you need to consider how they differ before choosing one implementation over the other. In this article, I will show the differences between these two technologies. I will present samples for each type of implementation and identify when to use which technology.

Full Article here

Create, Edit and Publish RSS Feeds with Software

Existing RSS feeds can be repaired and enhanced with FeedForAll. RSS feeds generated by other means can be automatically repaired, so that they conform to the RSS 2.0 specification.   Existing feeds can be enhanced to contain advanced feed properties, and give them a more professional look. Day to day feed maintenance can be handled simply. Feeds can be exported to HTML, CSV or text files.

Cut Through Outlook Email Overload and Turbocharge Your Email Efficiency

An Essential Collection of Outlook Add-ins 15 indispensable Outlook Add-ins that cut through email overload and make Outlook work the way you want it to work. Increase your email efficiency, take control of your contacts and stay on top of your calendar. You Perform is a collection of 15 essential add-ins that integrate directly into Microsoft Outlook to make using Microsoft Outlook better, faster and easier. You Perform enhances and expands the capabilities of Outlook so your email, contact manager and calendar work harder and smarter, just like you.

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