More and more frequently, we’ve had forum members and even staff receiving warnings from their antivirus program, from McAfee Site Advisor, or some other source of online protection that Geeks to Go is a dangerous site or contains dangerous links.  This is untrue – Geeks to Go is very safe, but we mistakenly get flagged.  This is known as a false positive.  Why does this happen?  There are a few reasons.

Many security suites and protection programs are adding website screening as part of their overall protection, and some browsers also have website blocking built-in to them.  I’ve had Firefox block sites on more than one occasion while doing research, and I’m glad when it does.  Much of the malware we encounter gets installed as a drive-by download, meaning simply visiting the wrong site can infect your computer.  Protecting against these things would seem to be a good thing.  However, these programs are often relying on heuristics to identify potentially dangerous downloads, meaning they’re looking at the characteristics of a file to try and determine if it’s dangerous.  In addition, there are many different security products available, and they all have different means to characterize potentially dangerous downloads.

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It appears Conficker’s long feared payload is nothing more than another rogue antispyware removal application that attempts to dupe people into purchasing it. Don’t buy Spyware Protect 2009, remove it. Read our Spyware Protect 2009 removal guide.

Having followed the activities of Eastern European online cyber crime for several years, there is one thing we are certain about — these criminals are motivated by one thing: money.

How was Downad/Conficker helping them meet their goals? It wasn’t. A very large botnet of compromised computers doesn’t make money if it justs “sits there” doing nothing.

So now we saw — as described above — that the Downad/Conficker botnet has awakened, and perhaps their desire to monetizing their efforts is becoming more clear.

In the latest activity, we see infected Downad.KK/Conficker.C nodes pulling down new Waledac binaries (perhaps for spamming, as Waledac has been known to do)from a fast-flux domain infrastructure, but also now it is also installing Fake/Rogue AntiVirus  (AV) malware, too. See screenshot below:

Spyware Protect 2009

Source: http://blog.trendmicro.com/downadconficker-watch-new-variant-in-the-mix/

Thanks again to HP, and Microsoft for sponsoring this contest. Special thanks to Chris Aarons and Nick White at BuzzCorps for making it possible, and inviting us to participate.

HP has left the “beige box” behind, and is doing some very creative and amazing work with hardware and software. Just take a look at their TouchSmart series, or HP 1000 mini netbook. We’ll have full reviews of these HP products and more posted soon.

If you haven’t tried Windows Vista, you really ought to. Service Pack 1 and improved driver support have made this a mature and solid operating system. The Windows Live products are some of the coolest software to ever come from Microsoft. They’re all online applications (perfect for that new netbook), and they’re free!

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While AMD may not have executed well recently, they have long been an innovator, and have some interesting products launching and in the planning stages. They’re bringing Crossfire technology to the notebook, even marrying integrated and discrete graphics (PowerXpress). In 2009 will have the first integrated GPU+CPU or APU (Accelerated Processing Unit).

We’re excited to be in Austin, Texas at AMD’s new campus for a day of presentations involving current and evolving technologies from both the marketing folks and engineers. A lot of time will be spent with their new Puma mobile platform. Sessions are also planned for graphic and chipsets, Accelerated Computing, Cinema 2.0, performance and measurements, and a facility tour. We’ll be bringing detailed articles and images in future days.

Ok, the cat’s out of the bag. I’m a geek. Not only am I a geek, but I’m a geek with “prominently defined antisocial tendencies” (at least that’s how it was described to me by a medical professional way back when). I’m also a self proclaimed “Social Observer” (read: “That creepy guy in the corner that never says anything but watches everyone else have fun”). These “personality traits” offer me a LOT of “alone time”, often spent inside my own head, giving me ample opportunity to formulate odd theories and observations about our human existence (or at least my personal perception thereof). Some people have called me “weird” because of this. I, of course, prefer the use of the term “eccentric” to quantify my “unique” level of sanity mainly because the term eccentric conveys the perception of one having; A) large sums of money or B) a “higher than average” level of inelegance (the former is unequivocally false while the later is open for debate) .

One of my most prominent “Observational theories” as of late has been the “Best Buy – Circuit City Conundrum”. Don’t let the auspicious title fool you, this theory has nothing to do with Best Buy or Circuit City, I simply use those two stores as the easiest proof of the existence of the model. The basic model (which I will outline further in a moment) can be applied to any “entity” that has a general match partner in the same level of service. So the following model can be applied to stores, hospitals, restaurants, or any other service or retail based establishment that you can think of as long as there is another establishment that follows the same general business plan. Ok, enough babbling (“eccentric ramblings” perhaps?) let’s get down to the model.

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Congratulations wannabe1 for making the 1,000,000 (one millionth) forum post! I honestly never thought this little hobby site I started would ever grow so large. Thanks to the hundreds of staff members, and the hundreds of thousands of members that have made it possible. You deserve all the credit. Here’s to the next million! 😀

View the forums [Geeks to Go Forums]

This is a brief 4 page guide to the world of Linux distributions, primarily aimed at individuals who are new to the Linux scene, and who are thinking about taking the plunge and trying Linux for the first time.
Read the Guide

If you’re a frequent visitor of Geeks to Go, you’ll notice we’ve freshened our homepage! It is powered by WordPress, with a number of plugins, modifications, and skinned to compliment the forums. We’ll likely provide all the details in a future post. We hope you’ll find it easier to use and navigate. Please comment with your thought, opinions, or suggestions for improvement. 🙂

We briefly mentioned back in the spring that Daylight Savings was going to be changing for 2007 under the 2005 Energy Act Policy. This past week we received confirmation: “Under the new regulations, next year people will set their clocks forward three weeks earlier on March 11 and will fall back on November 4.” This is, of course, designed to conserve energy by taking advantage of the daylight. Dr. David Prerau, who was a consultant for Congress on this bill, states that by adding this extra time to DST will shave one percent – 3 billion kilowatt hours – off of the United States’ power bill. Apparently DST has been credited with more than just saving energy. It’s also been known to decrease crime rates and the number of traffic accidents and increase participation in outdoor activities.

News source: TreeHugger.com

Beaming people in “Star Trek” fashion is still in the realms of science fiction, but physicists in Denmark have teleported information from light to matter bringing quantum communication and computing closer to reality.

Until now scientists have teleported similar objects such as light or single atoms over short distances from one spot to another in a split second.

But Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark have made a breakthrough by using both light and matter.

“It is one step further because for the first time it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects. One is the carrier of information and the other one is the storage medium,” Polzik explained in an interview on Wednesday.

View: Full Story
News source: CNN