Thursday, December 20, 2007

Share files and Earn Money



http://www.ziddu.com is another site for sharing big files like rapidshare, sendspace. But what makes it different is that it is offering full free accounts, no premium accounts. You can view picture, audio, and video files on the site itself. You can download them or you can view them on the site.

Apart from being free, you can earn money also. Whenever someone download your file, you will earn $0.001. That means you will get a $1 if your files are downloaded 1000 times. Money will be credited through PayPal. Before crediting you need to earn at least $10.

As a blogger you might be putting images on your blog, even though blogger.com is offering free space for images, you can earn money by uploading the photos to ziddu.com.

Create an account on Ziddu.com

Monday, December 17, 2007

Google Knol aims at Wikipedia: Do you think so?

Google is testing a new tool called Knol, which allows any person to write on a topic they know just like wikipedia. Many are seeing it as an attempt aimed at Wikipedia. But I think Google is not aiming at wikipedia, rather it is just creating a new avenue to display its advertisements, which accounts to more than 90% of its revenues.

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books
have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines,
scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved
without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted.

I don't see any competition to wikipedia in this. Because blogs are already doing just the same thing. Only author can edit a knol, just like in blogs. You can suggest changes by putting a comment again just like a blog. The authors who really care will care to keep the page updated whether it is a knol or a blog. Then what is the difference between a blog and knol. Apart from its wiki style interface, setting a knol may be a little easier than setting a blog with no control on page design.

I will go to wikipedia because those pages will mostly be accurate (some knols which are written by good authors might click, but these will be very few). Since wikipedia pages are owned by everyone, everyone willing to update the page to keep it up to date. We can't expect the same in Knol, moreover author has to check the suggestions and change the page.

Just it is an attempt by Google to create a pile of information for showing its advertisements, nothing else.


Please share your views.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Disabling auto play

You might be facing problem with the auto play feature in windows, especially with pen drives (USB Drives). Because unlike CDs, viruses can copy themselves easily into pen drives, so I disabled the autoplay feature. If you want to do the same thing follow these steps.

  • Goto Run dialog box, type regedit and hit enter.
    • be careful when changing registry, because it might corrupt your system if done wrong. You might choose to take backup, so that you can revert back to your previous settings if anything goes wrong.
  • Navigate to the following key
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
    CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
  • Create NoDriveTypeAutoRun key, if it is not there.
  • If it there, set its value as FF, this disables auto play on all drives.
  • If you have to create this key,
    • right click in the right pane, select new > DWORD value
    • name it as 'NoDriveTypeAutoRun', and set its value to FF.
  • Thats it, you have disabled auto play for all drives.
But even after doing this, don't double click on your pen drives. Because by doing so, you will run the viruses in your pen drive if there are any. Always do right click on pen drives and select right click or open in explorer, select pen drive in left pane to open it.

Update: If you don't want to change the registry manually, download Disable_Auto_Play, unzip it to get registry file. Double click on it, it will ask for the confirmation, click on yes. It will add the key to the registry.

See here for more information.

Even you can do this by using group policy editor. Go to Windows > Run > gpEdit.msc
Go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Turn Off Autoplay.
Enable it and select the option "All drives" in the below pane.

Read more:
Task Manager Disabled?
Access to Registry Disabled?
Important steps when cleaning virus
Backup Dictionary in Word
Firefox: View status bar in full screen mode

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Saturday, December 8, 2007

Funny UST Scandal virus


How I removed Funny UST Scandal virus from my system.


Recently my system infected with a virus. I am using Win XP and using McAFee. But, McAFee did not recognise the threat at all.

Characteristics:
The virus is closing every program it thought might be dangerous to its existence. If I open task manager, virus is minimizing it to system tray. There are processes running killer.exe, smss.exe, lsass.exe. Yes, smss.exe and lsass.exe are system processes, but virus is running two processes with the same name. one process is running with the name smss.exe, while two processes are running with the name lsass.exe, in that one is system process, another one is virus.

I have already installed process explorer, otherwise I would have to download it from another system because when I tried to download it from the Net virus is closing the window. I have used this software to kill the above processes. In the process, before I am killing the processes virus is minimizing this process explorer to system tray, I am opening it from there, and I closed all the processes. Two entries are there for lsass.exe, one is child process for System process, another one is child for explorer.exe, this later one is virus process.

Once virus processes are closed, I took the following steps:

  • Deleted Funny UST Scandal.exe, smss.exe, and killer.exe in Windows folder, Windows\System, and Windows\System32 folder.
  • Checked and deleted root folder of every partition for these files and autorun.inf. In some locations I found xmss.exe also, they all have some icon. So, I recognised them easily.
  • Usually these files will be hidden. You can use “attrib –h –s smss.exe” in command prompt to unhide them and then delete. But, I have used Bullet Proof FTP for locating these hidden files and deleting them. As I have already installed the software I used it, you can download trial version. It is very easy by using this FTP client. With attrib command we have to go every location and issue command and then delete it. This BP FTP is showing hidden files, and I dont need to use DOS commands.
  • Deleted C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\lsass.exe. I have also deleted Desktop.ini files which are placed in every folder of Start menu for every user. I think this file shouldn't in those locations.
  • Used MSConfig command to clean the startup items, I have unchecked all suspicious processes from startup tab.
  • Using RegEdit tool, deleted Auto Play entries which are pointed to smss.exe
  • And then searched for “Funny”, “Killer”, “Smss”, and “lsass”. Be careful when deleting lsass keys as there is an important system process will be running with the same name. System copy of the file will be in the Windows\System32 folder.
If you find this information useful, please leave a comment below.

Related Posts:
Disabling auto play
Task Manager disabled?
Important steps when cleaning virus
What is this process?

This link contain more information
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78794


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