Computer Science Stuff

This is probably the most asked question I have received in my life! So in order for people to have clean PCs and keep my phone calls low. I will develop a guide on this.

A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the owner. That is the purpose of a virus and thats all the common user needs to understand, that its whole purpose is to bring you down.

How to get it off my computer

There are several programs out there to remove a virus off your computer for free. Chances are if you have a virus most likely you have a windows operating system. The reality is if you have windows operating system you are more prone to getting viruses than any operating system in the world and why? Simple because that is the most commonly use operating system in the world. So hackers figure in order to get the most information or money we should develop for that operating system. For supporting info, Check out the Apple Commericals.

Here are a list of free virus programs that can remove viruses off your computer

• Avira
• Avast
• AVG

I prefer Avira but everyone have their preferences in this section so try them out. Even still if you caught a virus and removed it you either need to expand your knowledge and/or spend money on a good program to remove any new ones that may come to your computer. So if you wish to spend money on an anti virus program I would get the premium versions of the programs above or check out the top 10 reviews for antivirus programs. I personally suggest Kaspersky, it is such a great program for catching and removing viruses.

How to prevent malicious infections

The best way to prevent viruses is know the most common ways a virus get on your computer. Some of the most common ways viruses get on your computer is through email, downloading illegal software, music from un-accredited sites. These sources are all because the user is unaware of what it could be and open it unleashing a rogue virus on their system. So if you don’t know where it is from or if the website un-accredited DON’T DOWNLOAD IT! Another way is through peer to peer networks or torrent websites. Hackers take advantage of the venues because they know people will know want free software and music but do not realize that will have to pay with giving up the information to viruses.

I would also recommend for you to have firewall. A firewall blocks attacks on your computer and network from hackers. I would recommend comodo and zone alarm. They are pretty efficient firewalls and get the job done. You can even download comodo for free.

Operating Systems that virus prone

The best way to prevent a virus is to have operating system that is incompatible with a virus (commonly windows viruses). When the virus is incompatible with the virus it will become impossible for you the virus to affect your system. Here is a list of operating systems that are incompatible with windows viruses:

• Linux distributions such Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora, Mandriva, etc – Cost Free
• Mac OS X (Apple products) – Cost High when compared to other operating systems

I would recommend gettiing Mac OS X which comes with any apple computer. It will be the easier transition from windows and the price is pretty reasonable because of the quality. I will even mention that the macbook pro is the best laptop I have ever had.

Conclusion

Here are your choices when it comes to viruses:

Windows Operating Systems

• Either pay/get free for a antivirus and/or firewall and increase your knowledge on viruses
• Or just have your information be sold to the highest bidder

Linux

• Get a free Operating System and incompatibilty to windows viruses, and learn how to work the operating system. Linux is making things easier for Windows users but it is bit of a learning curve for new users.

Mac

• Pay a higher normal price for operating system and hardware and don’t worry about any viruses, and work in a great environment.

You can make the decision all I do is make your aware your choices. It’s either the red pill, blue pill or green pill. Have a nice day!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Of all the years I have been on this planet have never seen Microsoft get so desperate or feel the need to compete at a great level. Now that it is becoming more and more prevalent that they are no longer the big kid on the block anymore they are going on all out attacks now against Google and Apple. This is all because of their steadily declining market share.

Market Share lossage and to who

1. Internet browser(Internet Explorer) – lossage to Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari
2. Operating system (Windows) – lossage to Apple Mac OS X and Linux
3. Search Engine (live.com) – lossage to Google and Yahoo

Not even mentioning other competitors such as Adobe (Multimedia) Flash vs Microsoft Silverlight and Sony (Game Consoles) Ps3 vs Microsoft XBOX 360 vs Nintendo Wii, Microsoft is really feeling the effects of spreading themselves thinner and thinner and producing products of lesser and lesser quality. Even some of the competitors who they are going against have a focus and produce so very nice products. Now they are spending more money creating attack ads against Apple and Google. People see it as strategy but I see it as a act of desperation before the giant falls. If you want a good website for identifying market share go here to see the information for yourself.

What can Microsoft do?

Being that they still have the upper hand in most of their markets they need to create reliable products that cannot be compromised so easily. Firstly with windows it is known for viruses and its price. There are other products out there that are free and becoming easier to use for example linux. Or have little to no viruses and good quality, people go to apple mac os x. So if they can increase the quality of their product, include a higher level of security and speed and present it well I think we can see a nice increase in their market share. To even further back it up ask people who played around with Windows 7. They are impressed with the usability and speed which has increased alot of people’s curiosity and confidence. Now if they can launch a full-spectrum campaign on increasing quality of their products and decrease prices on licenses I guarantee we will see change in market share but only going up.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Ubuntu has been by far the most stable and user friendly linux os I have used thus far. As soon as it was fully installed it adapted to all of my hardware and provided such an enjoyable experience. It even features three different versions on the website for the desktop, server and netbooks! Let’s take a look at some of the main features:

1. X.Org server 1.6
2. Boot performance
3. Linux kernel 2.6.28
4. Ext4 filesystem support
5. Cloud computing
6. GNOME 2.26

All these components are not foreign to other linux distro but they are featured in this distro and has such nice integration in ubuntu. One thing that pops out is the boot time. When installed on my laptop it has a boot time of 20 – 25 seconds.

Stuff I like

I used the Desktop Edition 64 bit version, and the features that jump out me was how you can control the individual speed of each your processors if you have a multi-processor chip. The programs it comes with it, how it can control the brightness of my laptop (ASUS N50), when I needed certain plugins it downloaded them with ease. The linux kernel is definitely making great strides and is becoming more and more dependable for people out the box. This operating system runs pretty fast and efficient other that I have no complaints or do it?

Stuff I didn’t like

I didn’t like the fact that every time I would use hibernate I would get some error message. I also didn’t like that fact I couldn’t perform a software raid. Your best bet if you want to do this is to solve this hardware wise and buy a raid controller. One other thing I realize is that firefox 3.0 would crash a good amount which turned out be annoying from time to time.

Conclusion

I feel as though this is the best linux distro for a windows user or someone starting in linux and for 2009. Ubuntu support is great and continuing to show great strides. I would suggest for users starting out to use th 32 bit version to have more access to programs they would commonly use. I feel comfortable putting this linux on someone computer for their main os now. I still feel as though Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is still slightly better though, but that only because of the better support of hardware for computers. Anyways, look out fo 9.10 in October 2009.

Popularity: 24% [?]

I recently bought a new laptop after some strenous research and came across a company I never expected to come into the laptop realm, Asus! Asus has been one of the top companies during the past few years that stays on top with motherboards. And for them to make laptops is actually quite perfect if you think about it. They should know all about compatibility and how to make the perfect laptop with no hiccups (Happens when you don’t have good compatibility in your hardware). But after researching and flying through the internet, I have found the best price/performance ratio for 2009. Now let me show you. Here are the specs for the Asus Model N50Vn-X5A:

• Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4G’
• NVIDIA GeForce 9650M GT Video Memory 1024MB
• Resolution 1280 x 800
• Hard drive 320GBs 7200RPMs
• 4 GBS of Ram

Guess how much it costs at Newegg.com,

$1,049.99!!!

These are the most general specs I haven’t even talked about the Special Features. The Special Features it has is the Express Gate, Super Hybrid Engine, Smart Logon and the last you have to read to the end!!!

Express Gate

The Express Gate is a Simple Linux operating system that boots up computer in 8 seconds from your computer being completely off. This Linux operating system was designed for people that need to get on their computer real quick and check stuff on the internet, skype, chat and see photos. Here is a video on it!

Super Hybrid Engine

Next up is the Super Hybrid engine. This feature boosts up your performance by 23% and extends you battery life up to 35%. This feature is included on your laptop in windows is designed for running multiple applications and at the same time extending battery life. I use my laptop for little more over 3 hours in high performance, I’m not use to that!

SmartLogon

Next up is the Smart Logon. The smartlogon is feature that logons you onto your computer by recognizing your face. This is very good security even if someone might know your password. You can even have it set to recognize your face and your password to logon. To activate you need to go inside of windows to the smartlogon program and have your computer take pictures of your face. I recommend taking up to 50 photos or more (it takes like 12 or 14 at time so you don’t actually have to press it 50 times) times.

Air Ionizer

I almost forgot one other feature that will blow your mind. It comes with a freaking built-in air ionizer!!! What!!!! What laptop you know comes with an air ionizer? This is built-in to improve the air circulation around you while you work! I mean come on you can’t beat that.

I thought I would share this amazing deal with you because I believe Asus is the next best thing in the laptop world.

Popularity: 29% [?]

For the past 2 years I have been playing around with Opensuse and lately I have felt confident enough to fully switch my whole computer from Windows Vista to Suse 11.1. I actually have been spending all of today migrating all of my information and programs over. Now the question now is why did I do this? Kinda funny I finally switch from Vista for a couple of reasons:

1. Vista is such a memory hog and the 64 bit version doesn’t have enough 64 bit programs
2. I was using the 32 bit version of vista and I have 4 GBs of memory and it was only reading 3 GBs.
3. I feel now that suse 11.1 is the best version of suse released and KDE 4.1 is so nice (KDE 4.2 is a little unstable).
4. Linux runs so smooth compared to WIndows and really knows how to use dual core and multi core processors.
5. The Linux community is getting bigger and to find a solution to a problem is becoming more likely.
6. And I finally got Skype 2.0 video to run without distorted images, lol.

Now the last one is what sealed the deal for me because Skype is a program that I use alot. Now after months of researching I can finally unveil how to get it working.

First off let me reveal my specs.

Specs for my laptop

But the most important spec is my webcam which is a Sony VGP-VCC8. First thing first is getting the webcam detected by Linux which would be detected as video0. I’m using the Linux Kernel 2.6.27.19-3.2-defaultx86_64. There are two ways I know of to get this type of webcam working you can get Ricoh R5U870 Linux Driver and follow the instructions for compiling it or add the community repository for SUSE located in Yast for webcam drivers.

After adding this to your repository you will need to go to Yast > Software Management then install luvcview. After doing so open up the program luvcview. If you can view yourself pretty well on the screen, that means everything is good and we can proceed further, if not you go back to the website follow everything thoroughly and make sure you have your kernel headers installed from software management through Yast.

Moving on we now install Skype. After installing skype and creating account for ourselves or logging in we will go to options and proceed to video devices. You should see the Select video occupied by /dev/video0 and to the right of that see test.

Click on test if the image is distorted or blurry then you may proceed if everything is good then you are good!

If your lost with what is going on so far, I will take time out to explain. We have the webcam working properly on our computer because we saw our picture perfectly in luvcview. Now when we open up skype we see a distorted picture which means something is wrong with skype. Which means we need to configure skype correctly.

Now for the kicker

Go to /home/user_name/.Skype/user_name/config.xml

Open up the config file and input

<Video> <CaptureHeight>480</CaptureHeight> <CaptureWidth>640</CaptureWidth> </Video>

In between the <lib></lib>  and close out skype and open again and you will see the problem fixed. Shaggy? It’s fixed and you don’t know why. The reason is that Skype for Linux 2.0 video works in a resolution of 640 by 480. So improper resolution is the problem with skype not displaying the video correctly it took me a few months to figure this out and after you reading this it will take you less than a day lol. Leave comments about what you think.

Popularity: 32% [?]

When I first heard about the Google Phone, I was a little skeptical about it and saw it as no competition to the Iphone. But after reading and studying the operating system I’m a little impressed. If you check out the news you will see Verizon is even turning to the Android. That is a very big surprise mainly because Verizon keeps it software pretty proprietary.  This also shows indication of desperation or recognizing how superior the Iphone made other phone companies or how superior Google is becoming.

Features

• Documentation for it is beautiful
• Every program is ran independently of each other under a special virtual machine
• Everything application has to be written in Java, lol. (I know I’m going to hear it)
• It uses the Linux Kernel (The backbone of linux which makes it compatible with a large number of hardware) which is a big plus.

This operating system which was first platform on the G1 is actually going to expand into a bigger operating system for the Desktop. So the operating system, Android is actually the new face for the Google Desktop Operating System.

Check it out!

• What is Android?
• Developer section
• Android Blog
• Programs for your G1

Popularity: 24% [?]

Ever since one of my friends saw the iron man movie they have ever been so fascinated with his house causing him to accelerate on one of his projects of building an operating system. Reason being he one day wants a house with its own Linux base operating system to obey all of his commands. So he calls me up one day ask me how does he get started?

I have personally never built an operating system and did some researching and found a voluminous amount of resources. But the best place to  start is at this website http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/. They have a manual which is downloadable on the website that caters to:

LFS teaches people how a Linux system works internally
Building LFS teaches you about all that makes Linux tick, how things work together and depend on each other. And most importantly, how to customize it to your own tastes and needs.

Building LFS produces a very compact Linux system
When you install a regular distribution, you often end up installing a lot of programs that you would probably never use. They’re just sitting there taking up (precious) disk space. It’s not hard to get an LFS system installed under 100 MB. Does that still sound like a lot? A few of us have been working on creating a very small embedded LFS system. We installed a system that was just enough to run the Apache web server; total disk space usage was approximately 8 MB. With further stripping, that can be brought down to 5 MB or less. Try that with a regular distribution.

LFS is extremely flexible
Building LFS could be compared to a finished house. LFS will give you the skeleton of a house, but it’s up to you to install plumbing, electrical outlets, kitchen, bath, wallpaper, etc. You have the ability to turn it into whatever type of system you need it to be, customized completely for you.

LFS offers you added security
You will compile the entire system from source, thus allowing you to audit everything, if you wish to do so, and apply all the security patches you want or need to apply. You don’t have to wait for someone else to provide a new binary package that (hopefully) fixes a security hole. Often, you never truly know whether a security hole is fixed or not unless you do it yourself.

Another tool that will help with you building your operating system is using a virtual machine. This tool also you run multiple operating systems under one environment  you can download the tools for from http://www.vmware.com/ and http://www.virtualbox.org/ (This one runs faster in my opinion).  Also before I set you free on your journey to building an operating system there are some things you might want to take into consideration:

1. Remember this is an operating system which controls your hardware, so it best you test if on spare computer first!
2. Select the main architecture you wish to build it for and go the developer section on their website.
3. Always keep backups of your work
4. Focus on booting it up first and security then you can move onto the cool stuff
5. Have fun!!!

Popularity: 18% [?]