Soooo, you’ve been using IE to visit sordid sites and now your machine is fouled up with all sorts of malware. This mess was avoidable, so clean your machine and put on a browser prophylactic before indulging in your favorite solitary past times again…

What you’ll need:

SeaMonkey
NoScript
MultiZilla/MultiViews [optional]

Overview:

We’re going to be installing the SeaMonkey (SM) browser and it’ll be used to view sites that you don’t trust (you decide what that means in this instance, I’ll define it as anything that would appall your mother). NoScript and Multizilla are add-ons for SM, NoScript will prevent web pages from running scripts (java, etc) and potentially mucking up your machine, Multizilla will give SM some extra clean-up options.

01: Installing SeaMonkey

Download and install SM, I opted to install only the browser, you can perform a complete install if you want to check out all of the open source tools provided in the suite. I also opted not to use Quick Launch.

Following the installation, SM will launch and ask if you want to make it your default browser, answer No.

02: Enhancing/Protecting SeaMonkey

Using SM, open http://noscript.net/getit and click the "Install Noscript latest version*" link. You will be asked if you want to install the software, you do, click the Install button. You will be asked if you want to install NoScript to your profile, click OK. You should see a dialog explaining that NoScript has been successfully installed and will be available to you when you restart the browser. Click OK to dismiss the notification.

Still using SM, open http://multizilla.mozdev.org/installation/installation.html. This page can be a little confusing, don’t install the experimental nightlies, you want to scroll down until you see "Free MultiZilla [Installation] or [Download]", click the Installation button, you will again be asked if you want to continue, click the Install button. The next dialog will tell you to "Select OK, for a single user installation or Cancel, for a multi-user installation", click the OK button. If there are no problems, you’ll be told the install was a success and to restart your browser, click the OK button to dismiss the notification.

03: Configuring SeaMonkey

Close all open SM windows (if you opted to install and use Quick Launch you’ll want to close out of that as well). Now start SM again. It’s going to start with an open sidebar (F9 or View > Show/Hide > Sidebar to kill it) and some extra tool bars which I tend to hide (F12 to hide the MultiZilla bar & F1 to hide the Personal bar).

Now to configure MultiZilla: Choose Edit > Preferences select MultiZilla and click Open Preference Manager. Select the Privacy header and put a check into the boxes next to the options below:

• Clear disk cache on exit
• Clear location bar history on exit
• Clear global history on exit
• Clear all cookies on exit
• Clear download history on exit
• Clear all form data on exit

Now select the Sessions header, on the Save Behavior tab, choose Don’t Save Sessions, on the Restore Behavior tab choose Don’t Restore Sessions.

Note: There are other settings you can tweak to manage cookies and other content both in MuliZilla prefs and SM prefs. It’s up to you how paranoid you want to be.

04: Start Browsing

At this point we’re ready to go. SeaMonkey will clear its cache, history, etc when you exit the program and all scripts are disabled on all pages. You’ll notice that when you go to a page that has a script, a yellow notification bar will open in the bottom of your browser window, in that bar there’s an Options button. Clicking it will allow you to grant that site the ability to run scripts either permanently or temporarily, that way if you really NEED some functionality and NoScript blocks it, you can allow it.

Notes:

From time to time, SeaMonkey, NoScript and MultiZilla will let you know that there’s an update available for them. I would suggest installing the updates as they present themselves. They can add functionality and security fixes.

I’m not promising that this will keep your machine free and clear of malware, but it goes a long way to prevent infection. It’s certainly safer than using IE (switch to Firefox already!). YMMV.

While this was aimed at Windows users, NoScript and MultiZilla work just as well on the Linux release of SeaMonkey, don’t forget to install them if that’s your OS of choice

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=845

Real Player got a slap in the mouth from stopbadware.org. I can’t think of a mainstream program that deserves it more! I’ve had many an issue with the application acting like it owns MY computer in the past. I love to see bad/annoying programs punished.

Long ago I found Real Alternative and I’ve never once looked back or found a single real media file I couldn’t play. If you dread the Real headaches, check out the alternative.

There’s a QuickTime alternative as well, I use it on any Windows machine that has no need for iTunes. Both of the alternatives are great projects and those of you who detest overbearing software owe it to yourself to give them a look. That said, you’ll be responsible for keeping them up to date. There’s no automatic update programs for these solutions (gotta take the good with the bad).

EDIT:  Above was a link to a Knight Rider 2008 trailer on youtube which is no longer available; if you really need to see something similar go to http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Knight+Rider+2008&search_type=

Was this necessary?

At least they aren’t trying to pass it off as a new version of the original, it’s not Michael Knight and it’s a new KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand). When will they learn that sometimes it’s best to leave things as is. There’s a longer clip available here for those interested.

Long live the Hoff!

If all of the blocks off to the right (RSS, Comments, Archives, etc) are pushed all the way down to the bottom of the page, then you’re using Internet Explorer and deserve to have a hard time navigating sites. Download and install Firefox from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ for a better Internet Experience.

I found a few good themes this morning thanks to Smashing Magazine’s 100 Excellent Free Wordpress Themes. I actually found two that I really liked, I put the visually fun one here on this site and a clean easy to read one on Linux Neophyte.

That story couldn’t have come at a better time, I was hating the WP themes I’d been using on both sites and had almost no luck at all finding anything decent on http://themes.wordpress.net/. Oh and navigating that site SUCKS! It really needs an overhaul.

Anyway, if you use WP and want something new, check out the story above

So I’m probably late to the party, but I need to mention Google Trends. You can get more info about it here. In a nutshell, it’s a view of what is currently a hot search term relative to the total number of Google searches over time.

Take a look at my iGoogle page with one of today’s trends (center[ish] of the image):

Being that today is Cyber Monday, I suppose the results are apt. I’ve been watching it creep from Warm around 8:00 this morning, up to to Spicy, all the way to the current status of On Fire. I find it fascinating to see what people are hunting down. Yet another distraction to keep me from getting things done I suppose

Clicking on the results gets you more information, things like related searches, when the search on this particular term peaked and location information. Seems the news that Trent Lott is retiring next month most interests people in DC and NY.

Another worthy widget for your iGoogle page.