How to protect yourself from viruses without installing anti-virus software.

You don’t really need antivirus software on your Windows computer. Over the past several years, antivirus scanning has become much more centralized. Most of what you download over email or at work has already been scanned for viruses and malware anyway — why pay Norton or McAffee to have it scanned again once it reaches your hard drive? And why have another program running on your computer, slowing it down and wasting resources?

Running antivirus software on Windows these days is almost like getting a smallpox vaccine. Your individual situation may vary (see below), but very likely you can be both free and safe without antivirus software by taking a few basic precautions and being generally security-aware. You may already be aware of these precautions, but you may not have known that following them may effectively eliminate the need for stand-alone antivirus software on your computer.

1. Use Gmail (or your corporate account) to send and receive file attachments via email. Many free email providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail, scan attachments for viruses and malware for you, so you know the file is clean when it gets to your hard drive. Many businesses, both small and large, do this as well on their own internal mail servers. (If there is a good way of testing and verifying email providers’ attachment scanning claims and abilities, though, I would like to know about it.)
2. Use the Internet from behind a router. Don’t plug directly into your Cable or DSL modem. Plug a router into that thing (a wireless router if that’s how you like to roll) and then use that. Most off-the-shelf routers have built-in firewalls that prevent the most common attacks.
3. Limit the amount of software you download. Get the programs you like installed and then keep your computer the way you like it for a good long while. Don’t be constantly looking for and downloading new utilities.
   • Especially don’t download anything in response to a popup window, ever. If you ever get a popup warning you about viruses on your computer, for example, it’s a lie. Just close it.
4. Don’t use LimeWire or BitTorrent (unless you really know what you're doing out there). As Dylan Boom said in this comment at Lifehacker, “I work at Best Buy for Geek Squad, and the computers that come in with the most viruses, etc. normally have two things on them: AVG as their virus protection software, and Limewire.” It is impossible to verify the authenticity or origin of anything that passes through a torrent service (not counting md5 signatures on Linux distributions etc). Consequently people love to insert malware on stuff and send it on to unsuspecting downloaders as the real deal.
5. Use open-source whenever possible and download directly from the software’s main website.
6. Stick to mainstream, trusted websites and access them through your bookmarks or browser shortcuts whenever possible – don’t get in the habit of visiting the same website repeatedly by typing its name into Google (or any search engine) and clicking on the top result. Stay away from porn sites and any place offering something for nothing. Don’t click on ads.
7. Keep your computer updated. Windows has a provision for automatically downloading and installing security updates and fixes – make sure it’s turned on and that it’s working.
8. Use a more secure web browser such as Chrome or Firefox. Make sure it is fully up to date (instructions for how to do that on Chrome and Fireox).
   • Don’t use Internet Explorer. Even the US DoHS has advised against it. While that security advisory is a few years old by now, the fact remains that IE’s security model is too broken to trust.

Note that if you don't follow most of these practices already, no antivirus program is going to be able to keep you safe indefinitely anyway!

The main principal here is to clean and verify all the ways that you exchange information into and out of your computer: that mainly means email, web browsing, your physical internet connection, and being cautious about installing new software. Note that you may still need antivirus software installed if:

• You need to share files through shared network drives or email accounts at work that you know are not scanned by antivirus software. (this would include things like shared folders on Dropbox accounts, which, as far as I can tell are not scanned for viruses.)
• You regularly exchange files using thumb drives or external hard drives owned by other people.

Comments and proposed changes & additions welcome!

Update, Nov 11 2009 — After I submitted this post a couple of times at Lifehacker, they came up with their own variant: Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft’s Security Tools Are Good Enough [sic]. (Not suggesting there's a relationship there. Well OK maybe I am.) I still believe Microsoft’s security tools are unnecessary, however supremely adequate they may be for the job they're supposed to do, but there are a lot of good points in the article, and I highly recommend it.

Ready for the Desktop

I've been having issues on my Sony VGN TZ190 ever since I installed a certain operating system on it, shortly after I bought it in 2007(Yes, even I have computer problems I can't seem to solve):

• About every seventh time I open a file window, the file browser crashes and complains that it was because of my Bluetooth driver, for which no update is available from Sony. Now it is stupid that Sony has not provided an update, but there is no good reason whatsoever why a Bluetooth driver should be crashing my file browser.


• When I start my computer, and at least once a day, I get a message that says "Sony Vaio Services (sub-module) has stopped working." I have no idea what this is, really, or how it's affecting me.


• The Fn keys for screen brightness do not work at all. The Fn keys for volume control work but do not provide any visual feedback.


• After working for two years both the programs that play DVDs now crash when I try to play a DVD.


• Printing to a network printer is essentially broken. If you try, the program from which you are printing will hang for a good 5-10 minutes before sending the job, and then it will only print half the time.


• Wifi connnects easily to wireless routers, but every once in awhile will not allow connections all the way out to the internet. I have to run a command line program manually to get it working again.

Looking at this list, you'd think I was running a Linux distribution from 2005. No, these are all problems I'm having with Vista, SP2 no less.

By contrast, I recently downloaded Ubuntu Netbook Remix (version 9.04) and gave it a shot, and guess what? Everything worked flawlessly with no configuration necessary, including all the Fn keys on my Sony Laptop's keyboard, which I would have thought would depend on some vendor-specific drivers. And it's speedy, even running off of a Sandisk USB flash drive.

I don't know how long it will take for Linux to be truly ready for the corporate world. But for private persons, Windows and Linux seem to have changed places while I was asleep. It's now Vista that's the haggle-draggle OS requiring command-line fixes and plagued with buggy drivers.

Using LightBox with Image Maps

I ran across this while assembling the website for my brothers' new film The Little Red Plane. Don't ask why I needed to do use image maps in this day and age. But I did.

I decided to use the fairly awesome LightBox script (version 2.04) for certain aspects of the site, but the links that would trigger it were in an image map, which uses <area> tags instead of <a> tags. When I clicked on the links, the page would go dark but no image overlay was displayed.

The solution was found here. Apparently 2.03 worked fine with image maps but 2.04 has this regression.

To fix, open lightbox.js in a text editor, scroll down to the start() function and insert the line highlighted below:

    //
    //  start()
    //  Display overlay and lightbox. If image is part of a set, add siblings to imageArray.
    //
    start: function(imageLink) {    

        $$('select', 'object', 'embed').each(function(node){ node.style.visibility = 'hidden' });

        // stretch overlay to fill page and fade in
        var arrayPageSize = this.getPageSize();
        $('overlay').setStyle({ width: arrayPageSize[0] + 'px', height: arrayPageSize[1] + 'px' });

        new Effect.Appear(this.overlay, { duration: this.overlayDuration, from: 0.0, to: LightboxOptions.overlayOpacity });

        this.imageArray = [];
        var imageNum = 0;       
        
        imageLink.rel = imageLink.getAttribute('rel');
        
        if ((imageLink.rel == 'lightbox')){
            // if image is NOT part of a set, add single image to imageArray
            this.imageArray.push([imageLink.href, imageLink.title]);         
        } else {
            // if image is part of a set..
            this.imageArray = 
                $$(imageLink.tagName + '[href][rel="' + imageLink.rel + '"]').
                collect(function(anchor){ return [anchor.href, anchor.title]; }).
                uniq();
            
            while (this.imageArray[imageNum][0] != imageLink.href) { imageNum++; }
        }

Save the file. Now all you have to do is add rel="lightbox" to your <area> tags, just as you would with normal links.

Fixing AutoCAD error: ARX_ERROR:eNotThatKindOfClass

Some of our users have the old AutoCAD 2005 version, while a lucky few have the newer 2009 version (licenses are danged expensive, you know). We had a case where a drawing was being opened in AutoCAD 2009 and "saved-as" back to the 2004 format so the other users could open it. When attempting to perform commands on the drawing in in the old 2005 version, however, the following error messages would come up:

ARX_ERROR:eNotThatKindOfClass
Command not allowed because drawing contains objects from a newer version of Architectural Desktop

The solution, pointed to by various forum threads (such as this one), is to download and install the Object Enabler hotfix from the AutoDesk support site. Doing this immediately resolved the issue in our case.

Another possible approach, in case that does not work for you, is to use the exporttoautocad command instead of Save As - see this thread on the AutoDesk forums.

Converting MOV files to AVI for use with video editing software

If your camera records in MOV format, you may find it difficult to use with Windows Movie Maker or other Windows-platform movie editors. Fortunately there is a way to convert these files to AVI format.

First, download and install Quick Media Converter. There are a lot of free/shareware programs for this purpose out there, but this one was recommended by the venerable Lifehacker, works well, and is free. The instructions in this post were written for the 3.6.5 version of the software but should work with later versions.

Here is a pic of Quick Media Converter's main screen, with some annotation:

1. Click the DivX button (1) and select the "Win Media Player Compatible" option.
2. Drag and drop your MOV movie clip file into the file list area (2)
3. Click the (i) button (3) to display information about the clip in the pane at right (5)
4. Click the folder button (4) and select a place to save the converted file (e.g., My Documents)
5. In the file information area (5) scroll down until you see Width and Height information, as shown. Ideally this should be 640x480 but if not it's not a dealbreaker :)
6. If necessary, change the output width and height numbers (6) to match the numbers in the info area (5)
7. Click the convert button (7).

The program will then convert and drop an AVI file into your selected folder, for use in the editing software of your choice!

Note that you now have two (likely rather large) copies of the same video clip. Later when you are done publishing your finished video to YouTube or Vimeo, if you feel you want to keep a copy of the original clip for archiving purposes, I recommend you keep only the original one (the MOV or "QuickTime" file) and delete the other. It is easy to convert from MOV to AVI, but hard to go the other direction.

Creating and sharing a video on Vimeo using Windows Movie Maker

These are just the bare basics. Windows Movie Maker comes free with Windows and is simple to use for creating a basic video.

Most Canon cameras record in AVI format. Although you could just upload this file directly from your camera to Vimeo, AVI files are very large, so it's better to convert them to WMV format first, using Windows Movie Maker. This creates a much smaller file that looks and sounds just as good, and also uploads much faster. Plus if you want to edit anything out, or string multiple clips together in your movie, or add music, you can do so easily in this program.

1. Copy the .AVI file off your camera's SD card to somewhere on your hard drive
2. Open Windows Movie Maker and click the Import Media button on the toolbar and import your .AVI movie clip that you just copied.
3. An icon for the imported movie clip will appear in the upper middle area of Movie Maker. Drag the clip down into the Video area of the Timeline at the bottom of the screen.
4. You can play around with adding music, editing and effects to your movie, or combining multiple clips (by simply repeating the three steps above for each movie clip). However, if your whole movie is in this one clip and you don't need to edit anything out, then you are essentially ready to save your movie!
1. Click the Publish Movie button in the toolbar.
2. In the next screen choose This Computer and click Next
3. Type a unique and super-creative name and location for the saved movie file and click Next
4. On the Choose settings for your movie screen, select the Compress to option. You will need to find the right file size for this option, which is easy. Start with a low size (in MB) and go up, keeping an eye on the "Bit Rate" option at the bottom left of the screen. When it reads 1.8 or 1.9 Mbps, you've found the optimum file size ¹.
5. Click Publish!
5. Go to the Vimeo group and upload your newly created movie.
6. Note: If this is a private movie, make sure you click the "Privacy" settings on the left while the movie is uploading, and set the appropriate privacy options! ("Who can see this video: Nobody else" is the simplest; it will still be visible to private group members.)

Vimeo may take some time before the video is ready. Mornings are the best times to upload. Sundays and Mondays are the busiest days, and uploaded videos could take much longer to finish converting on these days.

¹ — the 1.8 Mbps number comes from Vimeo’s compression guidelines for standard definition video.

Bird