Technology Up To Date

If you are looking for free and handy image and graphics hosting services to use them to host images for Web sites, message boards, forums, blogs, eBay auctions and more here is the list of services which can help you on the way. They support the Web’s major image formats, including GIF, JPG and PNG. So I have decided to start to check them out from freepichosting.com. If you already have used some of them please feel free to let me know which of them, by your opinion, are the best. In case you have any other recommendations please leave me a comment.

So, right now I’ve made an offhand sketch then placed it on PicAttic.com. You can see the result, it seams it is as sharp as a needle No wait, no registration.

PicAttic.com
This is an easy-to-use free image hosting service. PicAttic.com supports files up to 2 megs in size. Files types permitted here include JPEG, JPG, GIF, PNG, ICO, MPG, MPEG and BMP.

Super File Hosting
A free file hosting service with an easy-to-navigate interface that lets you upload an unlimited number of files. Each file you upload can be up to 25 megs in size. Your files will be stored here permanently (as long as they’re downloaded at least once every 30 days).

Upload2.net
A popular free file and image hosting service that lets you upload and share files up to 25 megs in size, with no bandwidth limits or restrictions on file types. Upload2.net stores your files on its servers for one year and there is no limit on the disk space you can use.

FasterUpload.com
This is a speedy, easy-to-use image and video hosting service that requires no registration and lets you host files up to 100 megs in size. FasterUpload.com allows all file extensions and split files are permitted.

Dropfiles.net
An easy-to-use free image hosting service that gives you 250 megabytes of storage and 1 gig of bandwidth per month. The individual files you upload here can be up to 2 megs in size.

SnapDrive.net
A handy free service that lets you upload, share and save files in an online hard drive. The service is easy to use and you’re not even required to register. Anonymous uploading is limited to 20 megs per file. Registered users get 2 gigs of storage and can upload files of up to 100 megs.

ElectronicFiles.net
A free image hosting service that gives you 5 gigs of storage space and 5 gigs monthly bandwidth. You can upload individual files of up to 10 megs in size. All file formats are permitted.

Alkaspace.com
A free image hosting service that offers lots of useful features, including an auction gallery, portfolio, slideshow and a “spin 360″ option. Alkaspace.com gives you 99 megs of disk space and is suitable for image hosting for Xanga, MySpace, eBay, blogs, message boards, and more. Here, you can host JPG, GIF and PNG files.

Piczs.com
This versatile image hosting site (which is available in a free version) lets you share photos and other images with your friends and family, as well as host images for online auctions. Piczs.com lets you create image portfolios, auction galleries, slide shows, and more.

Free My Image
This free image hosting service offers an online photo album that lets you share photos with your friends and family. Here, you get a control panel that lets you easily manage your images. You can also password-protect your images, if you want.

Free Image Home
Here’s a free image hosting service that gives you 20 megs of space and offers 250 megs of monthly bandwidth. Free Image Home lets you browse your uploaded images and the service supports JPG, GIF and PNG image formats.

Img4Free.com
Here’s an easy-to-use free image hosting service that gives you 20 megs of storage space and 200 megs of monthly bandwidth. Image formats supported are JPG, GIF and PNG.

PhotoServer.us
A free image hosting service that gives you 555 megs of disk space and 1,000 megs of monthly bandwidth. At this site, you can create image portfolios, slide shows and auction galleries. Supported file types include JPG, GIF and PNG.

ImageUploads.
Account Types:
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Get 10MB of disk space and 100MB of bandwidth absolutely free!
Silver Account - $2.99/month
Get 50MB of disk space and 1,000MB of monthly bandwidth.
Gold Account - $5.99/month
Get 100MB of disk space and 2,500MB of monthly bandwidth.
Platinum Account - $9.99/month
Get 1000MB of disk space and 10,000MB of monthly bandwidth.

FreeImageHosting.net
This is a new free image hosting service that is easy to use. FreeImageHosting.net is useful for posting images on message boards, online auctions, online classifieds, and sharing pictures with your friends and family. The service supports GIF, JPG and PNG file extensions.
And more, and more…

All of us use antivirus software for save computing. There are several excellent paid professional antivirus software like Norton Antivirus, McAfee, but they are expensive software and require yearly subscription fees for regular antivirus updates. So if some of you prefer to use free ones here is the list of free antivirus software that are available to download right now.

AVG Free edition Free edition of the AVG anti-virus program for Windows and Linux. Tested and recommended by Freebyte.com.
Avira Antivir Free anti-virus software for Windows, Linux, Free BSD and Solaris. Detects and removes more than 50,000 viruses. Free support.
BitDefender Freeware virus scanner for Linux.
Clam AV Freeware, GPL, Linux. Clam AntiVirus is a GPL anti-virus toolkit for UNIX. The main purpose of this software is the integration with mail servers (attachment scanning). The package provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via Internet.
ClamWin Freeware, open-source anti-virus program for Windows.
Comodo Anti-Virus Free anti-virus program for Windows.
Cyberhawk Protects against viruses, worms, trojans and other spyware, designed to be a complement to your current anti-virus software. Cyberhawk does not need to know anything about a virus before it can protect you against it. This is because Cyberhawk looks at the behaviour of an infected program (instead of the contents of the infected file). The basic version is free.
Note from the editors: after testing Cyberhawk we found that it generates a lot of false alarms on legitimate software. Nevertheless we think that this program can be useful provided you know how to interpret these alarms.
FProt Free anti-virus software for Linux, FreeBSD and DOS (personal use). Evaluation version for Windows.
HandyBits Free for personal use. Virus ’scanner integrator’. After performing an auto-search for installed virus scanners, it will scan your files using all found installed virus scanners. This can be useful, since some antiviral programs are good for one type of viruses, other programs for other viruses.
PC Tools AntiVirus Free anti-virus program + firewall for Windows.
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 Tops CNET Antivirus Performance Test
Apple Ships Video iPods with Windows RavMonE.exe Virus
VirusTotal Free Online Scan with Multiple Antivirus Engines
Google Pack : Free Essential Softwares Collection

Free Online Virus and Trojan Scanners.
The virus and trojan scanners in this section do not need to be downloaded or installed, they run from inside your Webbrowser.
VirusTotal Freeware online malware scanner. You can upload a single suspicious file which will be scanned by around 30 well-known virus scanners.
GFI online Trojan Scanner Freeware online Trojan scanner. This program runs in your browser (Internet Explorer only, Windows), no explicit installation is required.
McAfee’s Virusscan Online - Online virus scanner by McAffee
Panda Active Scan - Ffree tool for detecting and eliminating viruses from your computer. Installs as an ActiveX control in your Web browser (Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher).
PC Pitstop - is a large number of online computer and Internet related tests, including a virus scan and spyware test. The free virus scanner installs itself as an ActiveX control inside your Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher.
RavAntivirus is online scanner which can also remove viruses.
Symantec Security Check is a number of online tests (run in your Web browser), including a virus scan. Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher required.
TrendMicro HouseCall is free virus scanner which runs directly in your Web browser (Windows only).
The programs below you can try out for free for a certain time. During this trial period they can be very helpful. You need to spend a little bit of money should you decide to use them beyond that period.
Command AntiVirus Useful 30-day trial versions for Windows, Linux, Netware, DOS, Exchange, Lotus Notes
eSafe Anti-virus software for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP.
InVircible Detects viruses, Worms, Trojans, Hacking tools, backdoors, etc. utilizing generic methods: without needing a virus-pattern database. An example of a generic virus-detection method is: detecting code installing itself to be activated at system startup or ’shell open’. InVircible uses many different generic methods simultaneously.
Solo Detection and removal of viruses. The system integrity checker protects against Internet Worms, Backdoor programs, malicious VB and Java scripts. 30-day anti-virus trial versions.
McAfee 30-day anti-virus evaluation versions.
NOD32 Anti-virus evaluation versions for Windows.
Protector PLUS 30-day anti-virus evaluation versions. Versions for Windows (all flavours), DOS and Netware.
QuickHeal 30-day anti-virus evaluation versions.
Kaspersky 30-day trial versions available for: Linux, DOS, Windows. Protects against: trojans, backdoors, logic bombs, macro viruses, etc.

Norman Anti-virus and firewall trial versions for Windows, Linux, Novell, OS/2.
Norton Anti Virus Anti-virus trial versions.
Panda Software Anti-virus trial versions.

Principal AntiVirus Scans for viruses, trojans, worms, backdoors, adware, spyware and any other type of malware. For Windows.
Sophos Anti-virus trial versions.

The appearance of the scroll blue-sky design concept that takes a format used by medieval town criers have turned it sideways and shoe-horns it into the 21st century by incorporating a mobile phone, hand-held computer, camcorder and sliding LCD screen, gizma.com reports.

The “what might be” concept by Californian based video production and graphic/web designer Seth Haller envisions a 10 mega-pixel camera, 1080p camcorder, 6 watt speaker, wi-fi and Bluetooth enabled phone (and potentially any functionality that modern consumer electronics can offer) incorporated into a double-ended device that slides out to reveal a “solid state” LCD screen. We like it, although in terms of portability you’ve still got a device that’s the size of two-phones to contend with.

Haller, who used Autodesk 3DS Max to model The Scroll, believes a functional design modeled after his design could one day be possible, but at this stage there are no plans to move the concept beyond the drawing board.
Seth Haller can be contacted via the 13 Tech Design site.

A startup is betting that people are tired enough of their cable and satellite bills to take a look at an alternative pay TV system that combines a number of different technologies to deliver programming, CNN reports.

Technical trials are starting soon for Sezmi, a company that hopes to bust into the TV business.
Silicon Valley-based Sezmi Corp. is revealing a system Thursday that amounts to a way for phone companies and local TV broadcasters to team up for an end run around satellite and cable. Technical trials are starting shortly, with full-blown commercial trials in some markets, yet unnamed, later this year.
The carrot for consumers: monthly fees that are about half those of cable or satellite, according to Sezmi founder Buno Pati.
Sezmi’s system takes some explaining. At its heart is a TV set-top box that receives video content in three different ways. Two are available through other means: digital over-the-air local broadcasts, the kind that are available to anyone with a digital TV and a rabbit-ear antenna; and Internet downloads through the home’s broadband connection.

The third delivery method would be unique to Sezmi. It plans to have local TV stations use vacant portions of their airwaves to transmit basic cable channels like Nickelodeon and Discovery. Given the limited spectrum available, the stations won’t be able to transmit a full lineup, and only some of it will be in high definition. Sezmi plans to mitigate that by having stations send out the most-watched shows and have the set-top boxes save them on their hard drives, making them available for viewing on demand.

None of these features are completely original. The set-top box combines the feature of a digital TV tuner, a TV-style digital video recorder and an Internet video box like the Apple TV. The additional over-the-air cable content is reminiscent of a service called MovieBeam, which was started by The Walt Disney Co. When it shut down in December after a four-year run, it had 1,800 subscribers.

“The TV space has been waiting for someone to put it all together much like Apple did for digital music” when it combined its iTunes music store with the iPod music player, said Phil Wiser, chairman and president of Sezmi.

Apart from questions about how well the complex system works, consumer confusion could be one of the obstacles to Sezmi’s success. It took years for mainstream consumers to understand what digital video recorders were good for, for instance.

Sezmi is counting on phone companies, and perhaps also wireless carriers, to market the service as a bundle with Internet service. A cheap TV product would give landline phone companies a way to fend off the encroachment of cable companies, who are rapidly signing up people for their voice services.

The largest phone companies, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., have their own TV services, but they’re expensive to roll out. Smaller companies, like Embarq Corp., have marketing deals with satellite companies, but those yield little in the way of synergies.

Sezmi did not announce any commitments from phone companies, but Jeff Gardner the chief executive of Windstream Communications Inc., said Sezmi creates “a unique opportunity for Internet service providers.” The Little, Rock., Ark., company operates 3.2 million phone lines.

Sezmi executives have a strong pedigree in the technology and media fields. Wiser, the chairman, used to be chief technology officer of Sony Corp. of America. Before that, he founded Liquid Audio, a pioneer in online music distribution. Pati founded Numerical Technologies, which developed a chip manufacturing technology. Other executives have backgrounds at NBC, DirecTV and Clearwire Corp., a wireless broadband provider. On the board is Andrew Lack, chairman of SonyBMG Music Entertainment.

Sezmi was called Building B until coming out “stealth mode” on Thursday. Its funding comes from six venture-capital firms, including Morgenthaler Ventures, which helped Apple Inc. get off the ground.

There are 10 physical the most essential security measures every organization should take, if you haven’t already done so of course.

#1: Lock up the server room
The server room is the heart of your physical network, and someone with physical access to the servers, switches, routers, cables and other devices in that room can do enormous damage.

#2: Set up surveillance
No doubt you need a way to know who goes in and out and when.
A better solution than the log book is an authentication system incorporated into the locking devices, so that a smart card, token, or biometric scan is required to unlock the doors, and a record is made of the identity of each person who enters.

A video surveillance camera, placed in a location that makes it difficult to tamper with or disable (or even to find) but gives a good view of persons entering and leaving should supplement the log book or electronic access system. Surveillance cams can monitor continuously, or they can use motion detection technology to record only when someone is moving about. They can even be set up to send e-mail or cell phone notification if motion is detected when it shouldn’t be (such as after hours).

#3: Make sure the most vulnerable devices are in that locked room
Because it’s not just the servers you have to worry about. A hacker can plug a laptop into a hub and use sniffer software to capture data traveling across the network.
#4: Use rack mount servers
Rack mount servers not only take up less server room real estate; they are also easier to secure.
#5: Don’t forget the workstations
Hackers can use any unsecured computer that’s connected to the network to access or delete information that’s important to your business.

#6: Keep intruders from opening the case
Both servers and workstations should be protected from thieves who can open the case and grab the hard drive.

#7: Protect the portables
Handhelds can be locked in a drawer or safe or just slipped into a pocket and carried on your person when you leave the area. Motion sensing alarms such as the one at SecurityKit.com are also available to alert you if your portable is moved.

#8: Pack up the backups
Backing up important data is an essential element in disaster recovery, but don’t forget that the information on those backup tapes, disks, or discs can be stolen and used by someone outside the company..

Don’t overlook the fact that some workers may back up their work on floppy disks, USB keys, or external hard disks. If this practice is allowed or encouraged, be sure to have policies requiring that the backups be locked up at all times.

#9: Disable the drives
If you don’t want employees copying company information to removable media, you can disable or remove floppy drives, USB ports, and other means of connecting external drives.

#10: Protect your printers
You might not think about printers posing a security risk, but many of today’s printers store document contents in their own on-board memories. Also think about the physical security of documents that workers print out, especially extra copies or copies that don’t print perfectly and may be just abandoned at the printer or thrown intact into the trash can where they can be retrieved.
You have to remember that network security starts at the physical level. All the firewalls in the world won’t stop an intruder who is able to gain physical access to your network and computers, so lock up as well as lock down.

Back in January there were multiple reports about a large number of web sites being compromised and serving malware, wrote Bojan Zdrnja, on the institute’s blog. “While we had a general idea about what they do during these attacks, and we knew that they were automated, we did not know exactly how the attacks worked, or what tools the attackers used,” Zdrnja wrote. Then he proposes some helpful advices to avoid that.

So, the tool does is this:

The user can configure the tag that will be inserted on the compromised web sites. By default, the tool we recovered had the following string embedded: http://www.2117966 [dot] net/fuckjp.js. Sounds familiar? See https://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4139
The tool then checks something with a site in China. My guess at this point in time is that the attackers get paid for this since the tool calls a script pay.asp with an argument SN to verify something.
Now the user can start the tool. It will connect to Google and will search for vulnerable sites with the following query string: inurl:”.asp” inurl:”a=”. The parameter is configurable and the tool can search for many strings. For crawling, the tool uses a built-in embedded browser from bsalsa (http://www.bsalsa.com)
Once the URLs have been identified, the tool tries to attack the web sites with SQL Injection (I still have to analyze this part further to see how it works). The SQL injection string, though, is visible in the file and formatted with the tag defined in the first. Here is how the SQL Injection statement gets formulated
DECLARE @T varchar(255),@C varchar(255) DECLARE Table_Cursor CURSOR
FOR select a.name,b.name from sysobjects a,syscolumns b where
a.id=b.id and a.xtype=’u’ a
nd (b.xtype=99 or b.xtype=35 or b.xtype=231 or b.xtype=167) OPEN
Table_Cursor FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C
WHILE(@@FETCH_STATUS=0) BEGIN exec(’up
date ['+@T+'] set ['+@C+']=rtrim(convert(varchar,['+@C+']))+”
”’)FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C END CLOSE Table_Cursor
DEALLOCATE Table_Cursor
;DECLARE%20@S%20NVARCHAR(4000);SET%20@S=CAST(
%20AS%20NVARCHAR(4000));EXEC(@S);–

The nice thing about this is that we finally managed to confirm that it is SQL Injection that was used in those attacks. The tool has more functionality that we still have to analyze but this is the main purpose.

Check your applications and make sure that they are not vulnerable. We covered this many times in various diaries, so here are few links to online resources that can help with this:

http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2007-A2#Protection

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/09/30/Tip_2F00_Trick_3A00_-Guard-Against-SQL-Injection-Attacks.aspx

http://portal.spidynamics.com/blogs/msutton/archive/2006/09/26/How-Prevalent-Are-SQL-Injection-Vulnerabilities_3F00_.aspx

http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2007/08/sql-injection-is-surpisingly-easy.html

Also “The SQL in question uses table cursors (as variable Table_Cursor) to enumerate all tables on Microsoft SQL server and the respective columns that are of type ntext, text, nvarchar, or varchar AND the table type is a user table and not a system table. The code then proceeds to utilize a cursor while loop to iterate through the returned results updating each table.columname concatenating it’s current value with an arbitrary value (which appears missing in your SQL, it would appear in the [HERE] area of the query part “rtrim(convert(varchar,['+@C+']))+’[HERE]‘”

The code converts the current data to varchar during concatenation to avoid any cast issues and removes any trailing space to the right of the field value.
The cursor is deallocated after update (how nice of them)”

Bojan’s dairy you can find here - http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4294
Thanks him for great submissions.

New software Cyber MC from Orange Dreams will get you the chance to be closer to the Matrix. Can you believe it? There are quite a few things about the Cyber MC brainwave management solution that remain unclear to us, but it’s probably for the best. Korean startup Orange Dreams has apparently concocted some sort of eyewear / software combo that can control your brainwaves and calm your nerves.

There are numerous ways to lose weight or quit smoking, but most of those dated methods require will power and a desire for self improvement. With the new approach Orange Dream is going to help the persons that would rather spend money then exert effort. The Korean companies new Cyber MC glasses aim to help improve your education, loss weight, quit smoking, and relieve stress. If all else fails you can also play games with the glasses.

Details are still thin on how exactly these glasses take advantage of your ‘brain waves’, but it looks as if they flash images in an Orwellian brainwashing fashion. If you are ready to embrace this brave new world the Cyber MC the software and glasses will be available this April.

Mark Russinovich writes in his technical blog covering topics such as Windows troubleshooting, technologies and security about Vista SP1 File Copy problems: “During Windows Vista development, the product team revisited the copy engine to improve it for several key scenarios. One of the biggest problems with the engine’s implementation is that for copies involving lots of data, the Cache Manager write-behind thread on the target system often can’t keep up with the rate at which data is written and cached in memory. That causes the data to fill up memory, possibly forcing other useful code and data out, and eventually, the target’s system’s memory to become a tunnel through which all the copied data flows at a rate limited by the disk.

Another problem they noted was that when copying from a remote system, the file’s contents are cached twice on the local system: once as the source file is read and a second time as the target file is written. Besides causing memory pressure on the client system for files that likely won’t be accessed again, involving the Cache Manager introduces the CPU overhead that it must perform to manage its file mappings of the source and destination files.

A limitation of the relatively small and interleaved file operations is that the SMB file system driver, the driver that implements the Windows remote file sharing protocol, doesn’t have opportunities to pipeline data across high-bandwidth, high-latency networks like WLANs. Every time the local system waits for the remote system to receive data, the data flowing across the network drains and the copy pays the latency cost as the two systems wait for the each other’s acknowledgement and next block of data.

After studying various alternatives, the team decided to implement a copy engine that tended to issue large asynchronous non-cached I/Os, addressing all the problems they had identified. With non-cached I/Os, copied file data doesn’t consume memory on the local system, hence preserving memory’s existing contents. Asynchronous large file I/Os allow for the pipelining of data across high-latency network connections, and CPU usage is decreased because the Cache Manager doesn’t have to manage its memory mappings and inefficiencies of the original Vista Cache Manager for handling large I/Os contributed to the decision to use non-cached I/Os. They couldn’t make I/Os arbitrarily large, however, because the copy engine needs to read data before writing it, and performing reads and writes concurrently is desirable, especially for copies to different disks or systems. Large I/Os also pose challenges for providing accurate time estimates to the user because there are fewer points to measure progress and update the estimate. The team did note a significant downside of non-cached I/Os, though: during a copy of many small files the disk head constantly moves around the disk, first to a source file, then to destination, back to another source, and so on.”

The first new model in the range is the LifeBook E8410, which replaces the E8210, and is Fujitsu PC’s flagship business model, offering the “top of the line” features and is most decidedly “top in performance”. For the discerning business user or consumer demanding the best-in-class performance, the E8410 is a superb desktop alternative offering supreme performance, superior security and truly comprehensive communications capabilities.

Thiss notebook could be recommended for business professionals, casual computing users, and some of the entry-level configurations of this notebook will work well for students or people on a budget. Of course, anyone looking for a quiet notebook should consider the E8410 as well.

The good: Interesting design, particularly for a mainstream business laptop; comfortable keyboard; plenty of ports
The bad: Overpriced; so-so battery life.
The bottom line: Although it’s a solidly constructed business laptop with an appealing design and decent performance, it’s hard to make a case for the Fujitsu LifeBook E8410 because it costs much more than competing 15-inch models.

An international science team from Penn State University in the United States and the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom has developed a process for growing a single-crystal semiconductor inside the tunnel of a hollow optical fiber, physorg.com reports. The device adds new electronic capabilities to optical fibers, whose performance in electronic devices such as computers typically is degraded by the interface between the fiber and the device.

“For most applications, single-crystal semiconductor materials have better performance than polycrystalline and amorphous materials,” said John Badding, associate professor of chemistry at Penn State. “We have now shown that our technique of encasing a single-crystal semiconductor within an optical fiber results in greater functionality of the optical fiber, as well.”

The team used a high-pressure fluid-liquid-solid approach to build the crystal inside the fiber. First, the scientists deposited a tiny plug of gold inside the fiber by exposing a gold compound to laser light. Next, they introduced silane, a compound of silicon and hydrogen, in a stream of high-pressure helium. When the fiber was heated, the gold acted as a catalyst, decomposing the silane and thus allowing silicon to deposit as a single crystal behind the moving gold catalyst particle, forming a single-crystal wire inside the fiber.

“The key to joining two technologies lies not only in the materials, but also in how the functions are built in,” said Pier Sazio, senior research fellow in the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton. “We were able to embed a nanostructured crystal into the hollow tube of an optical fiber to create a completely new type of composite device.”

The research team sees potential to carry the application to the next level. “At present, we still have electrical switches at both ends of the optical fiber,” said Badding. “If we can get to the point where the electrical signal never leaves the fiber, it will be faster and more efficient.”

sourse: www.physorg.com