Antivirus:Fun and/or Funny:
- AV Comparatives.org, yet another antivirus review site. You'll note that Antivir is rated quite well..
- AV-Test.org, a good antivirus review site..
- avast!, by alwil, a free (for personal use) antivirus product.
- AntiVir® PersonalEdition Classic by Avira. This is another free (for personal use) antivirus product. Reviews tend to show it to be the best with respect to antivirus functionality. I gave it a try, and it allows exclusions AND scheduling of both signature updates and scans, so it is superior to some other free products. You can manually update the DATs here.I found three downsides to this product so far:
- Slow update downloads due to Europe-based servers. This is not that big a deal, but I mention it to be thorough.
- Limited license time (4 months for me). It seems to automatically update itself, so this is not a big issue.
- Pop-up window advertising that comes up as a result of online updating. I found some solutions on the web, the best of which is here, if your OS supports it.
- AVG, by AVG Technologies (formerly Grisoft), a free (for personal use) antivirus program. Intel bought them back in 2005, so I would not be surprised if it loses its free status at some point.
- Bit Defender, free virus recovery programs.
- ClamWin, an open source and totally free (even for business use) antivirus program. It has fewer features than other free programs, but because it is open source, it can be used literally anywhere (e.g., home, work, church, where ever). ClamWin is just an on-demand scanner; that is, it does not have an on-access scanner (this is a big deal), and is therefore an inferior product.
- E-Trust, a decent antivirus product for the money (it is cheap). While not as full-featured as McAfee or Norton, it is much cheaper. If you have the money, I prefer McAfee (especially the Enterprise edition) or NOD32. Under no circumstances buy Norton; it is bloatware. Trust me.
- HijackThis, another good spyware removal program (free).
- Immunet, a totally free (even for business use, I think) antvirus product that is a combination of ClamAV and Immunet Cloud AV.
Microsoft Security Essentials, yet another free antivirus program. Microsoft bought antivirus company Sybari Software back in 2005, so this suite is probably based off that purchase. It is currently my free antivirus product of choice.
- NOD32 by eset. Very small footprint, fast, few false positives, probably one of the best products available. Although I have not personally used it, it seems like it may be a viable replacement for McAfee. Thus, if you need a commercial product and have the money, NOD32 would be an excellent choice.
- Secunia Personal Software Inspector, a cool utility that will scan your computer for all kinds of vulnerabilities and provide a nice summary.
- Spybot Search & Destroy, the best (free) spyware removal program out there. For the very few items it cannot remove, use HijackThis and/or Ad Aware. Between these three, you can remove pretty much any spy-/ad-ware out there.
- Virus Bulletin, for antivirus software reviews (your software may not be as good as you think...).
Games:
- Calvin and Hobbes snowman collection.
- Crack spider; don't be the biatch.
- The Darwin Awards, a testament to social evolution.
- Great Mobile Homes of Mississippi. If you don't have QuickTime installed, turn up your own copy of "Dueling Banjos" and enjoy.
- Heathrow airport, English people with a sense of humor.
- Olé Olestra -- all of the flavor, none of the calories, and with just a touch of anal leakage.
- Upside-down internet: For when you want to let people steal your WiFi.
- Triumph, the insult comic dog
- http://triumph14.tripod.com/theatre.htm
- http://www.insultcomicdog.com/
- http://www.mavericktimes.com/triumph.html
- http://www.triumphtheinsultcomicdog.com/
- Triumph at the Star Wars premier.
- Videos:
- Ameriquest Super Bowl XXXIX commercial (bloody cat).
- Budweiser Swear Jar.
- Bridgestone Tires MPEG.
- The Lord of the Rings spoof with Jack Black.
- Matrix Ping Pong. You have to see it to understand.
- Nokia's cat commercial.
- The infamous Oregon exploding whale.
- The first and second Suburban trunk monkey videos.
- Stop It sketch from MADtv. Very large (108MB), sorry...
- Terry Tate Super Bowl XXXVII commercial, full length.
- TROOPS: the Star Wars and COPS parody. The creators created TROOPS 2, which got renamed to IMPS - The Relentless
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a free web-based version of the classic.
- PlayStation 3 information, my personal notes on the PS3.
- Starsiege 2845 (free), yet another Tribes game.
- SubSpace (aka Continuum)... think of multiplayer asteroids where you try and kill each other.
- The Underdogs, the site that keeps abandonware alive.
- Voodoo Extreme, the game site with attitude.
- Wing Commander Saga (free). The classic Wing Commander series remade with the FreeSpace 2 engine.
Get your Portable ID!
Hardware:Networking:
- AnandTech, another great place for hardware reviews.
- ArsTechnica, the hardware site with so much technical information it makes my brain hurt.
- Price Watch, for price-conscious people buying stuff via the internet.
- Tom's Hardware Guide, a great place for hardware reviews.
Windows Applications and Utilities:
- Blue's Port Scanner, my favorite free port scanner. No installation needed (just run the EXE); it is simple and wicked fast.
- IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Need information on port number and protocols? Go to IANA.
- LaBrea, a very cool (and free) win32/UNIX utility to trap systems trying to scan/worm their way into your network. Due to legal reasons, the binaries are no longer stored at this location. You can get LaBrea here, but I could not find a link for LaBrea@Home. Bastages. Oh, you'll need to install WinPcap to use LaBrea (simple to install and uninstall). Here is a page that has a LaBrea FAQ and some good information on using LaBrea. Note: LaBrea does not work under Windows XP because it depends on WinPcap 2.3.
- IP Security: A simple way to protect your system by creating secure (encrypted) tunnels, blocking ports, etc. They are relatively simple, and there are many examples on the web; look at this this link for some basic assistance, and this link for more advanced assistance. Here is a great referece on how to use IPSec to block specific ports. Here is a sample SMB rule you can play with; it secures SMB (port 445) using a preshared key for only remote connections, allowing unsecured LAN connections (i.e., local connections will not use IPSec).
- PuTTY, an SSH (secure telnet) client. Also check out WinSCP, a secure copy/ftp (scp/sftp) client.
- SSH (secure shell), a secure telnet server for win32 and UNIX. I prefer copSSH Also, WinSCP is a GUI SCP/sFTP (secure copy) program so you don't need to tunnel FTP, as is FileZilla. Don't forget about PuTTY. All this is free, by the way. Here is my documentation on how to tunnel almost anything, including SMB (really NetBT), over SSH on Windows XP.
- TOR (The Onion Router), a freeware utility originally designed by the U.S. Navy that protects certain network activity (such as browsing) by constantly hiding and changing the route by which you access resources.
- VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is an open-source remote control program. Since it is open-source, there are many varieties, each with their own special set of features. I won't bore you with all the details of my decision, but there are basically three versions I recommend. All three will communicate with each other; indeed, all VNC products should be able to communicate with each other, you just lose version-specific special features if you aren't using the same client and server.
- RealVNC: Considered to be the gold standard of VNC versions. Supports lots of OSes, is very stable, but does not have any fancy features. It is a good vanilla product, but I prefer either of the two below.
- TightVNC: A version of VNC that has special compression that utilizes network bandwidth more efficiently, thereby allowing it to be used over low bandwidth connections (e.g., modems, broadband connections, etc.). It has some special features like file copying, and supports lots of OSes. This is my application of choice for non-Windows systems, or for heterogeneous environments where you want just one flavor of VNC.
- UltraVNC: A Windows-only version of VNC that allows compression like TightVNC, but also has tons of extra features. It even supports Tight compression, so you can use it with TightVNC in low bandwidth situations. It is not quite as efficient as TightVNC, so it does not work as well as TightVNC in low-bandwidth conditions, but it is still pretty good. They also have a "Single Click" version for you to give to your friends for simple installation (just run the EXE, no real installation involved, detailed instructions here, online EXE creator here). Thus, for Windows environments, UltraVNC is probably the best solution, since it can communicate fine with all other VNC products, and can even use the same compression as TightVNC to connect to its clients.
- VNCCon: Not a VNC viewer per se. Rather, it is a free utility that manages multiple VNC connections in a nice GUI, as well as allowing you to deploy VNC executables. Thus, you can use this utility to deploy, manage, maintain, and use a large VNC network.
- WireShark, a freeware sniffer utility (arguably one of the best).
- 7-Zip, a free ZIP utility (my preference).
- Auslogic Disk Defrag, a free defrag utility.
- C-Net Downloads, your one-spot shopping for good retail software, shareware, and freeware.
- 448 Bit Marx Encryption 1, by Marx Bitware. Designed around the Tiger-192 hashing algorithm and the 448 bit blowfish cipher. Very secure. It is newer than there other solutions listed, and I have not tried it out, nor have I seen any reviews regarding performance, functionality, etc.
- BitLocker, available by default on select Windows OSes.
- TrueCrypt, a free utility that is easy to use. It can encrypt an entire drive, which the some other utilities cannot. Here is one user's experience.
- Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, which allows you to change your Windows password if you forgot it (or don't know it).
- Open source alternatives to many retail applications. Some I use, some I do not. This entire section contains alternatives as well (e.g., 7-Zip, Pegasus Mail, etc.).
- Apache instead of IIS.
- Burn Aware (supports Blu-Ray) and/or Infrarecorder instead of Nero.ImgBurn is a simple ISO burning program.
- Dia instead of Microsoft Visio.
- Firefox instead of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
- OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office.
- Paint .NET, GimPhoto, or GimpShop (GIMP being too complex for most) instead of Photoshop.
- Squid instead of Microsoft Proxy.
- Pegasus Mail, a full-featured and free win32 POP3/IMAP mailing client. I have been using it since the 1980's. David Harris was talking about discontinuing the product due to financial problems, but has changed his mind.
- Somarsoft, various useful Windows utilities.
- UltraDefrag, another free defrag utility (my preference).
- UNIX utilities for win32. Also check here for older versions.
- Virtual machine products create virtual computers that allow you to install an OS, configure things, install/remove applications, etc., all without affecting a real system. The virtual system creates virtual devices (NICs, hard drives, etc.), and allows you to install nearly any OS. They are thus ideal for testing and development. They are also perfect for creating honeypots. There are three products I can recommend:
- Microsoft's Virtual PC and Virtual Server, both of which are free. The workstation version supports sound, but not clustering, while the server version supports clustering, but no sound. I use Virtual Server at home.
- VirtualBox, and open source (free) virtual machine product. I have not tried this product, but it I like open source, so I list it.
- VMWare, which has a variety of products, the top-of-the-line version being ESX Server, a UNIX-based commercial application used by companies around the world to virtual production systems because of its robust nature. Their free products include VMWare Server and VMWare Player. VMWare is my application of choice. They have a cool (and free) utility to convert a real system into a VM system called VMWare Converter. Wondering how to create and configure a VMWare Workstation (v4.5.2) virtual machine so that you can cluster Windows 2003 on it? I hunted down and/or discovered the steps.
These pages, and the opinions contained therein, are mine, and do not reflect the views of MCI/WorldCom/Verizon, CISE, UF, the State of Florida, the USA, the planet Earth, the Sol System, the Milky Way, or any other person or organization. Bite me.This page is only occasionally maintained, and is usually coded via a text editor...
© 1996 Joe Granto. All rights reserved.
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