Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Macromedia Flash


This morning I was surfing CNN, and I happen to go to the cartoon animation section of the website. The cartoon was on political satire. The cartoon was so funny I wanted to save it and pass it along to my friend. I was unable to do this because the presentation was in Macromedia Flash.

I started to do some research on the web. Being a computer scientist, I notice the extension of the file was . I started searching in Google for SWF saver. I found a myriad of them. The one I thought was the best was from BumperSoft. did exactly what I needed. However I had a problem afterwords. I had to find an SWF to AVI convert. I found a converter from . Finally I was able to view this with a Windows Media player, but the clip did not contain sound. I continued looking for a free converter. I must have looked thru 20 different sites, and installed about 10 or so different converters, and every single one of them had a limitation or trial period. Each of them require that you pay a certain amount. The range was $19 to $199. If you can live with the water drop mark on the video clip, or the limited time trial, then utilization of the different shareware converter is not an issue.
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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Part 2: Free Anti Spyware

Part 2:

A month ago my computer started getting slow again. I did not know what was going on. My SpyBot Search and Destroy was not picking up anything. The software had all its /. Yet my computer was getting slower.

This was really puzzling. I asked my IT friend at work again. I explained to her the situation. It was about how the computer was getting slower and that SpyBot Search and Destroy was not picking up anything. I asked if I should download another free anti spyware program. She said to hold off on it. There was one last thing I can try. She took about 2 minutes explaining this to me.

Later on in the evening I went home and did exactly what she instructed. First I uninstalled the SpyBot Search and Destroy. I restarted the computer. Then I went to the website to download the last version. I reinstalled it, and ran SpyBot Search and Destroy, and it picked up 10 instances of spyware. I selected the option to purge the entries, and SpyBot Search and Destroy executed the command.

I surfed the web for another 10 minutes, did some word processing, and worked on my project from work, and my computer was fine.



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Monday, August 28, 2006

Free Anti SpyWare

A couple of months ago my computer was acting up on me. The computer was less than 2 months old, and for the last month the computer was getting slower by the day. I remember clicking on Internet Explorer, and it took 5 MINS to start the program. I wasn't sure what was wrong.

I spoke with a good IT friend of mine. She suggested that I may have on my computer. Here I have been running the default spyware program which came with the computer when I bought it. I told her I have been running Symantec Internet Security, and nothing is has been detected. I told her nothing is coming up when I do the scan.

Here I have trusted Symantec for years, and paid good money to maintain the support, and subscription. I could not understand why my computer was so slow.

Being a software programmer, I don't have time to keep up with the hot list of Anti Spyware. I work 70 to 80 hours a week on my own software project at a large software firm. I leave IT stuff to the IT people. I worry about programming.

She suggested that I download a free version of an . I downloaded it later on in the evening. The installation was easy. I ran the software for the first time. Spybot detected 20 instances of Spyware, or questionable entries in my registry. I selected the option to delete /clean the questionable entries.

Just to be on the safe side, I restarted the computer. I clicked on Internet Explorer, and this time it took less than 3 seconds to start it.

This goes to show that the old adage you pay for what you get isn't quite true.

You can find by clicking on this link, and select the first entry in the main list.



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