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There are plenty of reasons why malware is “bad.” Are there any times when malware is valid and legal?

Many shareware programs today come bundled with adware. The premise is this: If you try out the program, and enjoy it, you’ll buy it. Until you pay for it, the programmer is paid through the advertising that the shareware program displays. If the user somehow kills or removes the advertising, then he is also obligated to remove the program that was supported by the ads.

In some cases, the ads are displayed in the actual program, like in a small window or corner of the program’s screen. In most cases, though, the ads are displayed by a totally separate program included in the same installer program.

If the adware is legitimate, then it has to be explicitly displayed in the install, and the user has to have the option of not installing it. This is where adware earned it’s poor reputation. Many adware programs simply install alongside the ad-supported program, without ever informing the user. The user is then surprised by the constant barrage of pop-up ads on his computer when he isn’t even visiting websites and the collection of strange programs on the hard drive that he doesn’t remember installing.

The key factor in whether or not malware is “legitimate:” If the user has no problem giving demographics information for a program he enjoys using, then the spyware that comes with that program is legal and accepted. However, if another user then sits at the same computer–one who doesn’t know the spyware is there–then it’s no longer a legitimate program. The person being spied upon by the spyware, or forced to view the pop-ups delivered by the adware, has to understand and accept what the program is going to do.

Internet Explorer has a way for a website to add itself to the list of favorites. Its a feature Microsoft added so that websites can have a button that says Bookmark This Site! Just Click Here!

Now, if thats all that particular feature did, then there wouldnt be any malware concerns over it. Unscrupulous programmers have taken advantage of it to create Home Page Hijackers.

In a nutshell, a Home Page Hijacker is a program that reaches into your browser and changes your homepagewithout your permission. You might think, Thats easy enough to fix, just change my homepage back and everything is fine.

Unfortunately, the Hijacker wont let you get away with that, thanks to a BHO, or Browser Helper Object.

The BHO is a chunk of code that gets added to the browser. Its meant as a quick and easy expansion to the browser, but when malware programmers get their hands on it, it becomes something a lot more sinister.

A Homepage Hijacker will both change the homepage and bookmarks, and install a BHO. The helpful BHO has been programmed to make sure the homepage hijacker sticks around.

What this means is, every time the computer is rebooted, and/or every time the browser is started, the BHO kicks in for just a second.. It restores the bookmark file and homepage setting.

Homepage Hijackers, with their associated BHO modules, have been known to change the homepage, remove entries from bookmarks, add anywhere from one to hundreds of bookmarks, and even change the default search settings. This way, when a user misspells a web site address, instead of seeing the usual IE “I can’t find that” page, he sees an ad-covered search page.

At their worst, homepage hijackers force the user to go through their web sites and search engines to get to any site on the ‘net.

The Melissa virus was the big story of 1999. Named after a lap dancer, Melissa was the first major emailing virus. Upon infection, it used Microsoft Outlook to send copies of itself to the first fifty names in the address book. March, 1999, saw it spread across the Internet, clogging up email servers everywhere it went.

1999 was a busy year, with the ExploreZip virus appearing in Jerusalem in June. This one had a fake Zip file attached called “Zipped_Files.EXE.” If the user double-clicked the file, it would put up a fake window saying “sorry, this zip file is corrupt.” It would then go on to email everyone in the address book, and follow that by destroying documents and files on the hard drive.

The LoveLetter, or “I Love You,” virus hit in May of 2000. It was another emailing virus, this time using VBScript. The user would receive an email with an attachment usually called “love-letter-for-you.txt.vbs”. Notice the dual extension at the end. Many Windows systems will not display the extension, so the “.vbs” would disappear. The user, thinking he’s looking at a .TXT file, feels free to open it, and thereby infects his system. The LoveLetter virus is widely known as the most expensive virus attack in history, with expert estimates upwards of ten billion dollars worth of damage.

2001 was the banner year for viruses. Sadmind in May, Sircam and Code Red in July, Code Red II in August, Nimda in September, and Klez in October. Sircam randomly selected files from an infected machine and sent them out in emails. Nimda attacked through five different methods, including security holes opened by Sadmind and Code Red II.

Through all of these virus attacks, many computer experts pointed to Microsoft as the problem–because most of these viruses were attacking security flaws in Microsoft programs, especially Internet Explorer and Outlook.

Science fiction writer David Gerrold wrote When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One and published it in 1972. In it, a computer program called VIRUS spreads from computer to computer, before it is finally killed by another program, appropriately called VACCINE. Just like communication satellites, moon landings, and waterbeds, science fiction predicted the future.

The first program to actually spread from one computer to another appeared around the same time. The Creeper virus infected a system across the Arpanet, the network of computers that eventually became the Internet we know today. Interestingly enough, the Reaper program designed to kill the Creeper virus was also a virus.

The first wide-scale virus infection was Elk Cloner on the Apple II computer system in 1981. Since the Apple II kept its operating system on floppy disk, it was very easy to infect the system, and a surprisingly large number of viruses were written for Apple computers.

Five years later, the first PC viruses began to appear, starting with The Pakistani Brain. It was written by a pair of brothers in Pakistan.

1987 saw the first boot-sector viruses, such as Yale, Ping Pong, and Stoned. Boot sector viruses infect a computer if an infected disk is left in the drive with the power off. The Jerusalem virus also appeared that same year, and was one of the first viruses to have a destructive payloadif the virus was running on Friday the 13th, it would ruin all executable files on the computer.

Robert Tappan Morris made computer history in 1988. His computer worm was one of the first to exploit Buffer Overrun errors, and spread rapidly across the network. It would run multiple times on infected systems, eventually crowding out anything else on that system. The worm brought the Internet to its knees until it was found and removed.

After the flurry of viruses that haunted 2001, 2002 was amazingly quiet. Unfortunately, 2003 took off again.

January saw the SQL Slammer worm infect over 75,000 systems in about ten minutes. It attacked a flaw in Microsofts SQL Server, and basically slowed down the entire Internet.

The Blaster worm attacked in August. It was meant to cause a Denial of Service attack against the Windows Update website, by causing all infected systems to flood the site on August 15th. The programmer was convicted because investigators actually found his name in the virus code.

Only a few days later, SoBig attacked. This was another emailing virus. After infection, it searched the files on the hard drive for email addresses and sent itself to any it found.

October saw the release of the Sober emailing virus. Sober was notable in that it would shut off antivirus programs after infection.

The fastest-spreading virus to date was MyDoom, which struck in January 2004. At one point, MyDoom was responsible for 1 out of every 10 emails on the Internet.

2004 also saw the Witty, Sasser, and Santy virus outbreaks, and in 2005, Zotob and Samy.

In 2006, the first Mac OS/X virus was announced, as well as the first MySpace attack, LordoftheNoose, This program changed the names of MySpace profiles, and locked out users to keep the names it set. At one point, as many as 70% of all MySpace profiles were infected.

So far in 2007, another MySpace virus has erupted, and the Peacomm Virus attacked. Peacomm was an email that claimed to be a video clip.

Historically, most viruses have used very similar attack routes. Either they carried an attachment which the user had to open, or they took advantage of a known flaw in the system which had not yet been fixed. The moral of the story is this: Keep your updates current, and be wary of unusual attachments.

Robert Morriss Internet Worm of 1988 was the biggest news in virus history for several years. Until 1992, most virus news was much quieter.

In 1989, for example, Ghostball was released. This was the first virus able to attack different kinds of targets. Before Ghostball, viruses were classified by their attack, like file infector or boot sector virus. Ghostball was the first Multipartite virus, because it could follow several attack patterns.

In 1990, a programmer named Mark Washburn demonstrated a Polymorphic virus.called 1260. This virus could actually change the structure of its own codemeaning, every time it infected a new system, it looked different while doing the same thing. In effect, this kind of virus hides from anti-virus software by wearing disguises.

Michelangelo was the first virus to achieve stardom. It was discovered in 1991, and was predicted to cause incredible amounts of damage when it reached its trigger date, March 6th, 1992 (March 6th is Michelangelos birthday). If an infected system is booted on March 6th, the virus will erase the hard drive. Despite doomsday warnings made by the press and the antivirus industry of at least five million infected systems at risk, only about 10,000-20,000 computers worldwide were hit by the virus.

The Concept virus was discovered in 1995. Concept is short for Proof of Concept, and it was designed to show how viruses could be written in the macro language programmed into Microsoft Word. By 2004, roughly 75% of all viruses are macro viruses.

The CIH virus, later renamed Chernobyl, appeared in 1998. This was a very damaging virus that was not only programmed to erase hard drives but also tried to erase BIOS chips. For the first time in history, a virus had managed to actually damage the hardware it was running on. Fortunately, CIH wasnt very good at it, and only damaged a handful of systems.

Information technology has transformed the way we live and the way we do business. ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning, is one of most widely implemented business software systems in a wide variety of industries and organizations. In this short article, well try to concisely explain the basic yet important concepts relevant to ERP.

What is ERP – ERP is the acronym of Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP definition refers to both ERP software and business strategies that implement ERP systems. ERP implementation utilizes various ERP software applications to improve the performance of organizations for 1) resource planning, 2) management control and 3) operational control. ERP software consists of multiple software modules that integrates activities across functional departments – from product planning, parts purchasing, inventory control, product distribution, to order tracking. Most ERP software systems include application modules to support common business activities – finance, accounting and human resources.

ERP Systems – ERP is much more than a piece of computer software. A ERP System includes ERP Software, Business Processes, Users and Hardware that run the ERP software. An ERP system is more than the sum of its parts or components. Those components interact together to achieve a common goal – streamline and improve organizations’ business processes.

History of ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the evolution of Manufacturing Requirements Planning (MRP) II in 1980s, while MRP is the evolution of Inventory Management & Control conceived in 1960s. ERP has expanded from coordination of manufacturing processes to the integration of enterprise-wide backend processes. In terms of technology, ERP has evolved from legacy implementation to more flexible tiered client-server architecture.

Benefits of ERP – ERP software attempts to integrate business processes across departments onto a single enterprise-wide information system. The major benefits of ERP are improved coordination across functional departments and increased efficiencies of doing business. The implementation of ERP systems help facilitate day-to-day management as well. ERP software systems is originally and ambitiously designed to support resource planning portion of strategic planning. In reality, resource planning has been the weakest link in ERP practice due to the complexity of strategic planning and lack of adequate integration of ERP with Decision Support Systems (DSS).

ERP Failures – We couldnt conclude our brief guide to ERP without mentioning ERP failures. The failure of multi-million dollar ERP projects are reported once in a while even after 20 years of ERP implementation. We have identified the four components of an ERP System – 1) ERP software, 2) Business Processes that ERP software supports, 3) Users of ERP systems, and 4) Hardware and Operating Systems that run ERP applications. The failures in one or more of those four components could cause the failure of an ERP project.

Copryright @2006, 4th-Media Corporation

We will talk about some related to your office daily work. Did you encounter the following situation? You want to send an email with a Word file attachment, but the email cannot be send out cause the Word file is too large. And you waste many efforts in making the file slim. You can try the following methods, which can reduce the size a lot.

1. Save as

In Menu, choose “File > Save As”, and save the file with a new name. You can compare the new file with original one; you will find that the file size of new one is much smaller.

You can also work in this way. Select the whole content of the document, copy and paste it to a new blank document and save it. Again, you will that file size of two documents is different.

2. Delete old versions

If there are many old versions kept in the file, the file size will be larger. In Menu, choose “File > Version”, check to see if there is any old version saved. You can delete those versions with no value to make the file slim.

3. Insert picture wisely

“Insert Picture” is one of the main reasons for the word file get fat. Try to insert a smaller picture. You can use graphic editor to reduce the size of picture before insert into the file. The file format should use GIF or JPG and do not use those high-resolution graphic, like BMP.

4. Don’t “Embed True Type Font”

“Embed True Type Font” will increase the size of word file. In Menu, choose “Tools > Options”, switch to “Save” tab page. Confirm that your word file have no true type font, and cancel the “Embed True Type Font” option. If you embed true type font, then choose “Embed characters in use only”.

Try the above four methods, you will see your word file getting slim.

One of the fun parts of owning a computer is, of course, access to the internet. The worldwide web is chock full of useful information, readily available at your fingertips! It is also home to potentially lethal viruses, many of which can wreak havoc on your system within moments. The following four programs can help you avoid trouble; best of all they are absolutely free.

Firefox a web browser for the ages. Okay, a web browser that beats Internet Explorer by preventing pop ups and harmful scripts from being downloaded to your computer. Lots of nifty features too, including tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, and tons of add-on features.

Spybot Search and Destroy gets rid of adware, spyware, and malware. Blocks the installation of spyware before it occurs; works in conjunction with anti-virus software, not as a replacement for one.

AVG Antvirus offers basic antivirus protection including scanning email attachments for viruses and scanning of all hard drives, removable drives, and external drives on your computer. A paid version does some additional tasks and includes technical support.

Zone Alarm if you dont have a firewall installed on your computer, you are opening yourself up to potential catastrophic security breaches. With Stealth Mode enabled you can search the internet in private, away from the intruding eyes of those who might want to steal your important information.

As with many freeware programs, pro or professional versions of the software are sometimes available to give computer users a maximum amount of protection, for a price. Still, all four of these programs have something to offer and are worth exploring. Your computer safety and privacy is essential, insure it today by downloading the programs that are right for you.

In my line of work, I find myself constantly producing PowerPoint presentations. Sometimes these are just individual slides (like a diagram or case study), sometimes they are templates, and sometimes they are whole, individual presentations. Most of my PowerPoint work is completed at my day job where I am an in-house designer, but my freelancing alter ego occasionally comes across a client needing some presentational pick-up. Over the years, I have built and edited hundreds of PowerPoint files.

I know a lot of people think PowerPoint is the devil incarnate, but in the corporate world, it is an ubiquitous evil. To shake some of the negative stereotypes, I apply traditional design principals to make my company and clients look better than the competition.

We go to 120 trade shows a year, and we present at every single one. We also use Macromedia’s Breeze for hundreds of online demos. Our PowerPoint is often the first thing a potential customer will see from us, so it is critical (and easy) to make a good impression before they even receive a brochure.

PowerPoint is used by nearly sales guy on the planet, with a whole industry of accessories built around the presentation guru / road warrior concept. It is employed for downloadable or live web demos, and it is even used (or abused, depending on your point of view) to pass along copy, concepts and notes between internal team members. With this volume of use, PowerPoint slide design becomes just another facet of a company’s identity program.

From Chuck’s Neighborhood PeeCee Warehouse to Apple Computer, the local cafe with the amazing bagels to Starbucks Coffee, every business benefits from a unique identity, a look and feel that separates them from competition. The company logo is only a small part. Corporate colors, type treatments, illustration styles and repeated graphic elements are all parts of the greater whole. This identity is carried through to stationary, trade show graphics, packaging, advertising and yes, PowerPoint.

The software has become so ubiquitous that I consider it part of a greater paradigm shift in mainstream communication. The only problem is that this evolution is hindering communication. Like text messaging or 200-pixel banner ads, the information is compressed to a set of key buzzwords, crippling the message by stripping the skeleton of any meat. Bullet points become rapid-fire metadata. I give you the words “purple” and “fish” — you figure out what I am trying to say.

* Leverage your existing technology
* Realize rapid ROI
* Streamlined implementation

Is about as meaningful as:

* Parsed cabbage flux capacitor
* Disco glitter manifestation
* Expressive giraffe BLT

Maybe a hundred years ago those phrases denoted something, but by sheer repetition and abuse, the PowerPoint generation has crushed the meaning like 200,000 people at a Stones concert trampling through a flower garden.

In the same way a good logo supports a successful identity program, good PowerPoint transcends half-assed bullet points and reinforces the speaker — their personality, message and purpose. It doesn’t recycle the same, tired messaging over and over. Not only does it look awesome, good PowerPoint hammers home the presenter’s message with unique phrasing, interesting design elements and a certain disregard for the status quo bullshit buzz-speak.

All the flashy backgrounds, painstaking animations and intense clipart research are for nothing if the message has been gutted from the shell. So while I “design” PowerPoint, I design for the audience because I am focused on how they will react to the information.