Now open a command prompt window. In Windows 95, 98, or Me, you can do this by entering COMMAND in the Start menu’s Run dialog; in Windows NT 4.0, 2000, or XP enter CMD instead. Enter the command DEBUG BIGFILE.DAT and ignore the File not found message. Type RCX and press Enter. Debug will display a colon prompt. Enter the last four digits of the hexadecimal number you calculated (4240, in our example). Type RBX and press Enter, then enter the first four digits of the hexadecimal size (000F, in our example). Enter W for Write and Q for Quit. You’ve just created a 1-million-byte file using Debug. Of course you can create a file of any desired size using the same technique.

You should now be at an MSDOS prompt screen.

4. Type “ipconfig /release” just like that, and hit “enter”
5. Type “exit” and leave the prompt
6. Right-click on “Network Places” or “My Network Places” on your desktop.
7. Click on “properties”

You should now be on a screen with something titled “Local Area Connection”, or something close to that, and, if you have a network hooked up, all of your other networks.

8. Right click on “Local Area Connection” and click “properties”
9. Double-click on the “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)” from the list under the “General” tab
10. Click on “Use the following IP address” under the “General” tab
11. Create an IP address (It doesn’t matter what it is. I just type 1 and 2 until i fill the area up).
12. Press “Tab” and it should automatically fill in the “Subnet Mask” section with default numbers.
13. Hit the “Ok” button here
14. Hit the “Ok” button again

You should now be back to the “Local Area Connection” screen.

15. Right-click back on “Local Area Connection” and go to properties again.
16. Go back to the “TCP/IP” settings
17. This time, select “Obtain an IP address automatically”
tongue.gif 18. Hit “Ok”
19. Hit “Ok” again
20. You now have a new IP address

With a little practice, you can easily get this process down to 15 seconds.

P.S:
This only changes your dynamic IP address, not your ISP/IP address. If you plan on hacking a website with this trick be extremely careful, because if they try a little, they can trace it back

MaxSpareServers
MinSpareServers
StartServers
ServerLimit

Thrashing where the system is just swapping pages from physical memory to virtual memory (on disk), and vice versa, without doing any real work.
Apache processes with modules (mod_perl, mod_python, mod_php) can easily be 21MB per process.
Can improve with PHP opcode cache/accelerator, then you can make each Apache process take as little as 12MB.
this is where one_liner for RSS sort processes by mem usage

# ps auwxx -- sort rss
# icps "semiphores"

if apache is high mem usage, check MaxRequestsPerChild and keepalives

Barack Obama’s electoral triumph was the first American presidential election won on the Web. If Franklin Delano Roosevelt was America’s first radio president and John F. Kennedy was the country’s first television president, Barack Obama is its first Internet president.
This watershed was largely overlooked during the presidential campaign. While most pundits were focused on the question of race, speculating whether Americans would elect a black man to the White House, Obama was busy defeating his rival thanks to his powerful techno-demographic appeal. His popularity with young voters was especially high.
Obama enjoyed a groundswell of support among the Facebook generation. Obama captures 70 percent of young On Election Day, he captured nearly 70 percent of the vote among Americans under 25. In a word, Obama enjoyed a groundswell of support among the Facebook generation. The vote has even been dubbed the “Facebook election.”
Obama, who was constantly thumbing his BlackBerry during the campaign, had a shrewd understanding of the electoral power of direct Web-based political mobilization. His campaign leveraged not only Facebook and YouTube, but also MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, BlackPlanet, LinkedIn, and other Web 2.0 platforms.
At 47, Obama was older than the average Facebook member, but he proved to be a natural Web politician.
On his personal Facebook profile, he named his favorite musicians as Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan, and listed his pastimes as basketball, writing and “loafing w/kids” (note the hip shorthand).
The 72-year-old John McCain, by contrast, never managed to connect with voters online. McCain: Missing in action on the Internet McCain’s campaign struggled to give its candidate a Web presence, but compared to Obama’s online blitzkrieg, the former war hero was missing in action on the Internet. The cold numbers tell the story.

Obama counted some three million “friends” on Facebook and two million more on 15 other social networking sites. He also boasted 13 million names on an email list and three million receiving SMS messages coming directly from Obama’s famous Blackberry. The MyBarackObama.com Web site was clocking more than eight million monthly visits, including 35,000 volunteer groups that raised $30 million on the site. On YouTube, the Obama channel attracted more than 97 million video views by some 18 million channel visits.
Compare that to YouTube presence: only 330 videos were uploaded to the JohnMcCain.com channel, which attracted just over 28,000 subscribers.
The McCain channel attracted barely more than million visits and some 25 million video views. Obama beat McCain four to one on YouTube. Obama attracted double the Web site traffic and had five times more Facebook friends. On the microblogging platform Twitter, Obama could count on more than 112,000 supporters “tweeting” to get him elected. McCain, for his part, had only 4,600 followers on Twitter. In the world of politics where victories and defeats can be measured with great precision, these stats graphically illustrate how Obama crushed McCain on the Web.
The YouTube coup de grace was the blockbuster “Yes We Can” videoclip. The viral circulation of that video, watched by millions of Americans only days after it was first posted, gave Obama solid electoral credibility in Middle America. Suddenly he was like a pop star on MTV. The video wasn’t even made by the Obama campaign team: it was produced spontaneously by the hip hop star Will.i.am, from the group Black Eyed Peas.
That video offered a classic example of bottom-up civic engagement and its viral network effects. Obama’s masterful leveraging of Web 2.0 platforms marked a major e-ruption in electoral politics – in America and elsewhere. Political campaigning is now shifting from old-style political machines, which are vertical topdown organizations, toward the horizontal dynamics of online social networks.
Web 2.0 platforms like Facebook and Twitter, by their basic social architecture, are a perfect medium for grassroots political movements.
There are no barriers to entry on sites like Facebook and YouTube. Everybody can participate, building social capital online.
Resurgence of social capital For those who a decade ago were lamenting the decline of ‘social capital’ in America, Web 2.0 platforms have emerged as powerful tools of social interaction, civic ngagement, and political mobilization. Unlike traditional means of civic action dependant on complex organizations like political parties, there are no barriers to entry in the Web 2.0 sphere, which as the Obama campaign demonstrated is low cost and high impact.
Web 2.0 networks like Facebook not only allow citizens to organize themselves by bypassing traditional organizational structures, they also allow political and business leaders to engage and communicate directly with their constituencies without going through traditional intermediaries like the media.

President Obama, for example, used his Change.gov site to speak directly to Americans and today a White House blog serves the same purpose.

He is also the first president who, during a White House press conference, has called regarding a question from a Web-only journalist. These are signs of powerful changes. Web 2.0 social networks diffuse power away from institutions and toward people, providing effective platforms for a genuine expression of bottom-up expression of citizen sovereignty.
Web-based citizen empowerment can potentially strengthen liberal democracies and, more importantly, bring democracy to countries currently living under tyranny and despotism in its many forms. Call it Politics 2.0.

Most browsers accept cookies by default. To retain your privacy, set the browser not to accept any cookies other than exceptions you specify. Then only web sites you approve can set cookies on your computer. A few web sites won’t let you interact with them unless you accept their cookies — but most will.
You can also set most browsers to automatically delete all cookies when you exit. This allows web sites to set the cookies required for transactions like purchasing through the web but prevents tracking you across sessions.
To manage cookie settings in your browser, access these panels –

To turn cookies on or off –
Internet Explorer Tools | Internet Options | Privacy | Advanced
Firefox (version 2 on) Tools | Options | Privacy | Cookies
Opera Tools | Quick Preferences | Enable Cookies
K-Meleon Tools | Privacy | Block Cookies
SeaMonkey Edit | Preferences | Privacy & Security | Cookies
To allow specific web sites to set cookies –
Internet Explorer Tools | Internet Options | Privacy | Edit
Firefox Tools | Options | Privacy | Cookies | Exceptions
Opera Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Cookies | Manage cookies
K-Meleon Edit | Preferences | Privacy
SeaMonkey Tools | Cookie Manager
To “clear” (erase) all cookies currently on your computer for the specified browser –
Internet Explorer Tools | Internet Options | General | Delete Cookies
Firefox Tools | Clear Private Data
Opera Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Cookies
K-Meleon Tools | Privacy | Clear Cookies
SeaMonkey Tools | Cookie Manager | Manage Stored Cookies | Remove All Cookies
To automatically clear all cookies whenever you exit the browser –
Internet Explorer Not available
Firefox Tools | Options | Privacy | Cookies | Settings…
Opera Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Cookies
K-Meleon Tools | Privacy | Settings…
SeaMonkey Not available

CookieCentral has more information about cookies and how to manage them. Other similar tracking mechanisms include web bugs, Flash cookies, third-party local shared objects. These are less common than
cookies and rather technical so follow the links and see the Appendix if they concern you.

* Automatic Malware Removal
* Manual Malware Removal

Whether you remove the malware automatically or manually, caution is strongly advised and you should follow a set procedure in doing this.
Cautions and Recommended Malware Removal Procedure

It is wise to be cautious when removing malware because many times malware may modify your system so when you remove it, your system will be crippled. Not being careful could result in the necessary re-installation of your operating system. The following phases for the removal process are recommended.

1. Identification phase – During this phase, you only want to identify any malware or hostile software that may be running on your computer. You can run your anti-virus program, anti-spyware, anti-adware, or whatever product you choose to identify any infection on your computer. You must be sure to set the product to only identify malware on your system and not to remove, delete, or quaranteen it. You can also look through your process list to locate possible hostile malware. See the article called Processes to learn how to do this.
2. Information gathering phase – Gather information about any hostile software running on your computer. Determine whether the uninstall tool for that software may work (some adware or spyware is removable and written by somewhat reputable companies). Find out how the software changes your system. Does it change file associations or make your system require the software to run some executable programs? You can usually find information about processes running on your computer by doing one or more of the following:
* Search Gigablast or your favorite search engine for the name of the process, product name, or company that made the program
* Search your anti-virus manufacturer or anti-spyware manufacturer website to find more information about malware you have and possibly find removal instructions.
* Search your hard drive for the name of the file required to run the process and look at that file\’s properties to see who created it or to determine whether you should be more suspicious.
3. Removal phase – Based on information found in the last phase decide whether it is safe to remove the software manually or automatically.

Automatic Removal
If you choose automatic removal, it is reasonably easy. Just allow your removal program to do the work, but be sure your system is not dependant on the malware program you are removing.

Manual Removal
Follow any the removal instructions that you may have found during the information gathering phase. You may need to edit your system registry, rename files (Initial renaming is recommended in case you need to restore a file to get your system to boot), or manually kill processes. You may need to get an IT professional to do this depending on your level of expertise.

Processes
This page explains what computer processes are and how you can determine what processes are running on your computer. This skill can help you deternine whether you have malware operating on your system.

What is a Process?

A process is a computer program running on a computer. A computer program in simple terms is an executable set of commands for the computer to perform. A process is an actively running program which may or may not be running in the background. A program running in the background is one that the computer user may not be aware of, but it may be providing useful services such as an ability to connect to other computers.

Processes are usually associated with your operating system or a program that is installed on your computer.
Identifying Processes

It is useful to identify processes running on your computer to determine whether your system has any malware or other undesired processes running on it. Also some processes use up valuable resources and can be shut down.

Your operating system task manager is used to identify processes running on your computer for Windows 2000 or Windows XP systems. It can be actived using one of the below two methods:

* Press the combination of keys, CTRL-ALT-DEL, at the same time, then select the “Task Manager” button.
* Right click on an open area of your task bar at the bottom of your screen, then select “Task Manager”.

After the task manager is open, select the Processes tab. This provides a list of processes running on your computer.

In the process list, the ones called “System” or “System Idle Process” are of no concern since they are a normal part of the system. Processes should be associated with one or more.

* Your computer system such as a Microsoft operating system process.
* An application you installed such as your anti-virus software, your file editor, printer software, and other programs.
* An application that was installed without your knowledge (this is where trouble usually comes from).

Processes on the list that you do not recognize can be found using several methods:

* Use one of the following websites to look up the process to determine what kind of process it is.
o Task List Processes
o Windows Process Library
o Do Something about computer crashes
* Search your favorite search engine such as Gigablast to get some clues about what the process is. You can do a web search or a groups search on google and sometimes find discussions that may answer the question about the origin of the process.
* Use the search function on your computer to search for the process name on your hard drive. This may identify the folder the process executable file is in which may give you additional clues.
Once found, navigate to the folder the file is in.

Right click on the file you are checking to open the properties window for the file. Click on the “Version” tab.

All this sounds daunting, but Windows Vista’s Parental Controls make things a bit easier by offering an easy-to-use interface that lets you set all the aforementioned options and lots more.

Setting Up User Accounts for the Kids

Before you configure Parental Controls, you need to create a Standard User account for each child who uses the computer. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Select Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove User Accounts. The User Account Control dialog box appears.
2. Enter your UAC credentials to continue. Vista displays the Manage Accounts window.
3. Click Create a New Account. The Create New Account window appears.
4. Type the name for the account. The name can be up to 20 characters and must be unique on the system.
5. Make sure the Standard User option is activated
6. Click Create Account. Vista sets up the new account and returns you to the Manage Accounts window.
7. Click the account you just created to open the Change an Account window.
8. Click Create a Password to open the Create Password window.
9. Use the New Password and Confirm New Password text boxes to type a password for the account. (Make sure it’s a password that the child can remember. If you think your child is too young to remember a password, skip to step 12 to bypass this portion of the procedure.)
10. Use the Type a Password Hint text box to type a hint for remembering the password.
11. Click Create Password. Vista adds the password to the account and returns you to the Change an Account window.
12. Click Manage Another Account
13. Repeat steps 3–12 to add standard user accounts for all your kids.

Turning On Parental Controls and Activity Reporting
With the kids’ accounts in place, you get to Parental Controls using either of the following
methods:

■ If you still have the Manage Accounts window open, click Set Up Parental Controls.
■ Select Start, Control Panel, Set Up Parental Controls.

Enter your UAC credentials to get to the Parental Controls window, and then click the user you want to work with to get to the User Controls window. You should activate two options here.
Parental Controls Click On, Enforce Current Settings. This enables the Windows Vista Web Filter, and the Time Limits, Games, and Allow and Block Specific Programs links in the Settings area.
Activity Reporting Click On, Collect Information About Computer Usage.
This tells Vista to track system events such as blocked logon attempts and attempted changes to user accounts, the system date and time, and system settings. The Windows Settings section has four links that you use to set up the controls on the selected user. Two of these are security related—Windows Vista Web Filter and Allow and Block Specific Programs—so I discuss them in the next two sections.

• You can create Aliases on a Mac by highlighting the item you wish to alias, then using a keyboard shortcut (Apple Key + L), or go to the “File Menu” and select “Make Alias.”
• On a PC, you highlight the item you wish to make a Shortcut of, then right-click with your mouse. A contextual dialog menu will appear. Within the menu select “Create Shortcut.”

Password
It is important to keep your netID password to yourself, and not share it with anyone. This netID password identifies you as an authorized user on the NU networks. Having your netID fall into the hands of someone who is malicious, can cause you great trouble with accessing the NU network. Therefore, it is important to keep your password secret.

You password should consist of at least 6 (six) characters. Within the six characters, your password should contain one of the acceptable symbols, other than numbers and letters. This will keep your password secure, and make it harder for anyone to copy your password and use it with your netID. You should get into the habit of changing your netID password every three months. This will provide more security for your netID and you. NUIT sends out notices when it is time for you to change your password.
To find out more about changing your password, updating your directory listing, activating/deactivating your email while on vacations, mail forwarding, etc., and policies about your netID, please go to the following URL link: http://snap.it.northwestern.edu

OS and Virus Protection
The best way to prevent your machine from becoming infected with a virus, worm, Trojan horse, or any other type of malicious code, is to always keep your machines as updated as possible. You should have your machine automatically set to check for OS (Operating System, ie…Windows 2000, WinXP, Mac OS 10.3.X) updates on a regular basis. If your machine is not set to do it automatically, or you choose not to have this feature turned on, then you should get into a regular schedule of checking for OS updates. You should also run Norton’s Live Update on a frequent schedule. Running this utility will update your machine’s virus definition file. This file is comprised of a listing of all known virus strings. Keeping this file
updated will help reduce the potential for infection.

Macintosh
• To update your Mac OS software, open the System Preferences (found under the Blue Apple Menu).
• Locate the Software Update icon. Double-click on it to open it.
• Select the “Check Now” button to run the Software Update application. The software will contact Apple’s OS download site and scan to see if any new updates are available for your machine.
• You can set Software Update to check for new software automatically by selecting the “Check for Updates” feature within the dialog window. Once you have checked this feature, you can determine how often you want the software to go out and check for update. It can be daily, weekly or monthly. Weekly seems to be the best selection.

Windows PC
• To update your Window software, go to the Start Menu and open the Control Panels.
• Locate the Automatic Updates icon within the Control Panels.
• Double-click on the icon to open it. Select the appropriate setting for when you want the software to go out and look for updates, and how you want it to react when it finds new updates.
• Windows allows you to download the software and install it, notifies you when software updates are available for download, and/or downloads and installs the OS updates automatically.

Email
When using email, it is important to closely monitor what is being delivered to your machine.
Mail that is not from the NU community, or from someone you know, should be directed to the “Junk” mailbox. Adjusting the “Junk” mailbox properties can be done by accessing the “Settings Menu” from within Eudora. At the left-hand side of the dialog window, locate the “Junk” icon and select it. The dialog window will change at the right, showing you a slide-bar and different features concerning junk mail. You can make adjustments to these settings to filter unwanted and/or unsolicited email to the “Junk” mailbox.
If you receive an email message from someone you don’t know, please do not open it or any associated attachments. Hackers frequently distribute malicious code through e-mail attachments. If you are unsure about a specific email, the best practice is to just throw it away…un-opened. Please do not forward any email that you are unsure of. This can cause an epidemic of malicious code coursing through the NU network community…just throw it away.

Web Browser
There are a few things that you can do to help protect yourself while “surfing” the web. They are; clear your history directory frequently, clear your web cache, and delete Cookies. You can do this by opening the Preferences and/or Internet Options (depending on which browser you are using). Within this dialog window, you can clear out your web disk cache, delete your history (web sites you have visited), and/or delete your Cookies.
The last item in the above paragraph is important. You want to get into a regular schedule of performing the above tasks, especially with deleting Cookies. Cookies are little identifiers for specific web sites. These little applets gather information about your web surfing activities, etc., and send this information back to the site that has downloaded a Cookie to your computer. You can shut this feature down within the Preferences/Internet Options, but you will loose the ability to access some sites. It is best to leave this service on within the browser, and getting into the habit of deleting the Cookies on a regular basis. I would recommend deleting your cache and Cookies at least every other week. This will prevent you from unknowingly infecting your machines, and/or the NU network. Not only do Cookies track user information and activities, they are also being used as vehicles by hackers to deliver malicious code to unsuspecting users. Deleting Cookies will also help in reducing the number of “popups” that appear when browsing. In a lot of browser applications, you can turn this feature off, to block all pop-ups. Depending on which browser application you are using, would determine whether you can turn pop-ups off. It is best to have the latest version of the browser application you are using. You can obtain Netscape, Internet Explorer and Safari at their respective manufacturers’ web sites. You can also obtain them from; www.download.com.

This web site has the current versions of Freeware, Shareware and Paid software available for download. You can also download other browsers, outside form the three industry standards.

Disk Maintenance
It is important to keep you hard disk up to optimal performance. On a PC, you will want to run Defrag.exe on a regular basis. This will defragment your hard drive and help your machine run smoother. On a Mac, you will want to go to your Utilities Folder, found within the Applications Folder, and open Disk Utilities. Launch this application. This application will analyze you hard drive and accounts for any problems, and give you the option to fix, and/or repair any bad items.

You should get into the habit of running these pieces of software of a regular basis. I would recommend running the software at least once a month. While running these softwares, please make sure no other applications are running. This will impair the application and prevent it from making necessary changes and/or repairs. Plan on time. These applications take some time to run and perform their tasks, because they are performing intensive inspections of your entire hard drive. With hard drives much larger than a few years ago, times to run diagnostic softwares has increased. Plan on doing something else while the diagnostic software does its work.

The most effective way to identify the “right” sites to get links from should be based on who is linking to your competition. Better yet, you should be evaluating who links to the #1 search result in Google for the keywords or keyword phrases you’re optimizing for.
If you get the same sites to link to your site, you’ll be in the top position. This strategy is simple but not all that easy to do. It’s very time consuming and requires consistent evaluation and review. I spent year’s trying to do this only my own but didn’t see any results until I acquired SEO Elite to identify which sites to target. In less than 30 seconds SEO Elite tells me exactly which sites are linking to the #1 positioned website and gives me the information I need to contact them and request a link.

Additionally, you also want to identify Authority Websites. These are sites that link to 2 or more of your competitors, other websites optimized for a particular keyword. Again, SEO Elite does all this work for you saving you literally dozens of hours of research. Even if you were to search for these sites yourself, without the proper SEO tool, you may never find the top authoritative websites for your niche.

Another way to build a significant number of links to your website . almost immediately. is through Article Marketing. Article marketing is the practice of writing informational article about your area of expertise and distributing these articles to information hungry websites across the web. The beauty of this strategy is the inclusion of an Author Box. This is a small section at the end of your article that provides information about you, the author, and a link to your website. I have personally used Article Submitter Pro to help distribute my articles to hundreds of article directories, valuable content sites, and article feeds.

Article marketing has created thousands of links back to my website. In fact if you Google my name Michael Fleischner, you’ll find more than 72,000 references. Most of these references are directly associated to my article marketing using Article Submitter Pro. I use this software to virtually automate my article development and distribution. Articles are posted to content sites that repurpose and redistribute my articles across the web including those all important links back to MarketingScoop.com in the Author Box. This tool builds external links and increases my Google results.

Secret #2: Anchor text must include your keyword phrase. When other sites link to you, make sure the link back to your site includes your keyword phrase. Sites that link to your domain can help with overall page rank and popularity, but websites who link to you using your keyword phrase (in the anchor text) are what get you to the top of search engine result lists.

Too often I see clients who claim, “We have hundreds of links to our website but we’re still not ranked”. Ten times out of ten, I find that the link text (the words used in the link) has their company name only. As a result, when I do a search for “XYZcompany” they come up high on the search results. This is great if they are a well known company and people are typing their name into search engines. However, this is not very effective most of the time because their company name is not well known or is not the phrase people are using to search for a particular product or service being offered.

Rather, the link text should include the keyword or keyword phrase they’re optimizing for. For example, if you are selling widgets and you want to optimize for Low Cost Widgets, then the link on other sites should look like this “Low Cost Widgets”. The code would probably look something like this:

Low Cost Widgets

Secret #3: Give people a reason to link to your website. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways including free content such as news or articles, white papers, free tools, etc. Ultimately, it comes down to offering something of value. If you do, other websites will provide one way links which are incredibly valuable for search engine result placement.

Personally, I like to create article directories which provide a wealth of information to website browsers seeking information. For example, I’ve developed a posting of marketing related articles that I have written during my professional career – placing them in a special free articles area of my website. There are a number of other web sites linking to this resource. I make sure to add new articles on a regular basis to keep the content fresh. Doing so encourages other sites to create links to the content from their own web sites.

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