Dennis Faas

In the context of computer software, a Trojan horse is a malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software. The term is derived from the classical myth of the Trojan horse. In the siege of Troy, the Greeks left a large wooden horse outside ... the city. The Trojans were convinced that it was a gift, and moved the horse to a place within the city walls. It turned out that the horse was hollow, containing Greek soldiers who opened the city gates of Troy at night, making it possible for the Greek army to pillage the city. Trojan horse programs work in a similar way: they may look useful or ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Waseem' writes: " Dear Dennis, Thank you (and especially Nick Tyrrell) for your SpyAxe removal instructions. I did as instructed and now I can sleep in comfort knowing that my system has finally gotten rid of that malicious and ... highly annoying Spy Axe Trojan! Question: Can you please tell me how I can get my computer to load up quickly on start up and open the desktop items more rapidly. It seems as if I'm waiting forever for things to load. My Operating System is Windows XP. " Similarly, Alastair B. writes: " Mostly I just want to say many thanks for your ... (view more)

Synopsis: Get organized the fun and easy way! Say the Time will keep you on schedule by automatically announcing the date, time or both at specified intervals using a pleasant male or female voice. With Say the Time, you can: keep track of important ... time commitments with fully-customizable appointment reminders; transform your boring taskbar time display into a colorful clock that can display both the date and the time; view the time in different parts of the world... and so much more! Truly a very cool application (Dennis gives it 2 thumbs up)! Say the Time v7.0: Screenshots Click to view: ... (view more)

An exploit is a common term in the computer security community to refer to a piece of software that takes advantage of a bug, glitch or vulnerability, leading to privilege escalation or denial of service on a computer system. There are several ... methods of classifying exploits. The most common is by how the exploit contacts the vulnerable software. A 'remote exploit' works over a network and exploits the security vulnerability without any prior access to the vulnerable system. A 'local exploit' requires prior access to the vulnerable system and usually increases the privileges of the person ... (view more)

Die-hard Infopackets Reader Paul B. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have been a faithful subscriber to your newsletter for a few years now. While I immensely enjoy reading your articles (especially the software reviews), I am constantly second-guessing ... myself as to which utilities *I* need to keep my system running smoothly. As a newbie, I would like to know how many of these 'fix all programs' are really necessary? For example, which utilities do I need for: speeding up, uninstalling, defragging, anti-Spyware, anti-spam, firewall, anti-virus, registry cleaning / fixing... etc. I mostly use my ... (view more)

Synopsis: Extract audio from DVD, VCD, SVCD, or MPEG movies and save them into .WAV or .MP3 format for portable audio on the go! With AudiMovie, you can select audio quality and volume, audio language stream/track, Dolby Surround/AC3/DTS, PAL/NTSC, ... and customization of output audio resolution -- and then burn straight to CD! AudiMovie uses the latest video technology and is optimized for Intel and AMD processors. Default settings are provided for beginner users, so ripping the audio from your first movie is a snap! AudiMovie: Screenshots Click to view: Page 1. AudiMovie: Features Drilldown ... (view more)

AdSense is an advertising program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text and image advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on a per-click basis. Google utilizes its ... search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads ... (view more)

Synopsis: Tired of Windows crashing? Sick of having software lock up on you or taking forever to load? The problem might very well be the result of software installations and un-installations that went awry! If you are having problems with your ... system and want to ensure it stays fine tuned and error free, you need Registry First Aid Platinum! Registry First Aid was honored by the industry at the Shareware Industry Conference annual awards banquet in 2003 and again in 2005, and honored with a People's Choice Award. Find out why! Why is it necessary to maintain the Registry? Not all software un ... (view more)

I've only been awake for a few hours, and the day just keeps getting better. At around 10 o'clock in the morning, UPS delivered my 24" LCD Flat Screen monitor ( model 2405FPW ) direct from Dell Canada. I've been waiting -- and waiting! -- for it to ... go on sale. And it was by a complete stroke of luck that I happened to see it at 20% off the retail price! I saved almost $300! I couldn't have been happier than a pig wallowing in its own poop. And if that wasn't a good enough reason to leap out of bed on a cold winter's day, a DHL courier showed up at my door a few hours later with another ... (view more)

In computer engineering, hard disk drive partitioning is the creation of logical divisions upon a hard disk that allows one to apply operating system-specific logical formatting. Disk partitioning is a simple technique which can be viewed as a ... precursor of logical volume management. The purpose of partitioning is to allow a user to have multiple file systems on a single hard disk. Active partition The Bootable Flag determines the active partition. Only one partition can normally be active at a time. The active marker is used during boot: after the BIOS loads the MBR into memory and executes ... (view more)