Extra Topics (Joe’s Blog Site)

Have you been bothered by the Caps Lock key? Sometimes you’d accidentally press that key instead of the Shift key or the Tab key. Well honestly I didn’t realize that until I came across an article on disabling the caps lock key from The Geek. Maybe I wasn’t really THAT bothered that’s why I didn’t realize it before, but I’d share it to you anyway…

The procedure is quite simple but you’d have to enter a very long value as shown in the graphic above. I’ll save you all the trouble of modifying your registry manually so just download the Keyboard Mappings Registry Tweaks and merge them to your registry.

The zip file contains the following:

• ChangeCapsToControl.reg - Changes Caps Lock to be a Control key
• ChangeCapsToShift.reg - Changes Caps Lock to be a Shift key
• SwitchCapsToScrollLock.reg - Disables Caps Lock and swaps Scroll lock to be Caps Lock
• KillCapsLock.reg - Disables Caps Lock
• DisableKeyboardRemap - Uninstalls the preference by deleting the key

How do you merge a registry key, you ask?

1. Just double click or open any of the desired .REG file mentioned above (or Right-click then Merge).
2. A confirmation dialog will appear asking if you want to add the information to the registry. Answer “Yes”.
   
   

   A confirmation dialog when you try to merge a registry key

3. Restart your computer to take effect.

I recently upgraded to Firefox version 3. Unfortunately NOT ALL add-ons are working. I’d have to wait for new updates on those add-ons. At the time of this writing I’m using RSS Editor 0.0.9.3 and it didn’t work for Firefox 3. That’s why I had to switch back to Firefox 2.

So if you’re asking if you should update to Firefox 3? It depends on the add-ons that you’re using. Check out Firefox’s add-on page to see if your add-ons have updates for Firefox 3. If they don’t have updates yet, then you’d have to stick to Firefox 2 for a while. By the way, Firefox 2 will be maintained with security and stability updates until mid-December 2008.

If you’re not using any add-on, then it’s OK to upgrade to Firefox 3. It has a lot of great new features like:

• Improved performance
• Instant Web Site Id (Avoid online scams, unsafe transactions and forgeries with simple site identity.)
• Improved password manager (no longer pops up and continues to login even if you haven’t made a selection yet)
• And many more, check out Firefox’s features here.

The User Account Control (UAC) is a feature which is new to Windows Vista. It can help you prevent unauthorized changes to your computer. It works by prompting you for permission when a task requires administrative rights, such as installing software or changing settings that affect other users. It is turned on by default and it is NOT recommended to be turned off for security reasons.

This is a good thing but it’s so annoying to most people and for me as well.
The reason why I’m making this article is because I’ve known a LOT of people who switched back to Windows XP because they are annoyed of this feature. They could have simply turned this feature off instead of replacing their Windows Vista.

How to turn off the User Account Control (UAC)

1. Click the Start Menu
2. Go to Control Panel
3. Open User Accounts and Family Safety (or simply User Accounts in Classic View)
4. Click “Turn User Account Control on or off” (type the Administrator password if prompted)
5. Uncheck “Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer”
6. Click OK and restart your computer to take effect.

Please note that this is a security feature, it is not recommended that you turn this feature off. Do this only if you know what you’re doing. Well if you’re willing to switch back to XP which doesn’t have this feature, then I think you probably know what you’re doing.

It’s very common today that viruses utilize the autorun.inf feature to spread themselves by putting a copy of themselves and creating an autorun.inf file on your removable drives. This would make sure that they would automatically execute when you insert your flash drives in your USB ports and infect your computer. I have already created an article on how to disable the autorun.inf from being automatically executed on your computer to minimize the infection.

How do I prevent autorun.inf from being created on my USB drive?
For additional security, you can prevent viruses from creating an autorun.inf file on your USB flash drive. Without the autorun.inf, these viruses cannot automatically execute themselves. To do this, all you have to do is to create a folder named “autorun.inf” (without the quotes) on your USB drive’s root directory. That’s all! It’s sort of immunizing your USB flash drive. The virus cannot create an autorun.inf file if there’s already a folder with the same name.

Why can’t I create a folder named “autorun.inf”?
If you cannot create this folder, it means there’s already a file called autorun.inf existing on your flash drive. You’ll have to delete this file first. This file was most probably created by a virus if you didn’t put it there.

I cannot see the autorun.inf file to be deleted, what will I do?
It’s just probably hidden by the virus. You must configure your Windows Explorer to show hidden and system files. How? Follow these steps:

1.) In you Windows Explorer window, go to Tools->Folder Options…

2.) Click the View tab and below are the Advanced settings.

3.) Find Hidden files and folders, select “Show hidden files and folders”.

4.) Uncheck “Hide protected operating system files”

5) Click OK.

You should now be able to view the hidden and system files so you can delete it then.

There’s no “Folder options…” under the Tools menu of my Windows Explorer?!
There are several reasons why the “Folder options” isn’t there:

• It could be under the View menu if you’re using earlier versions of Windows like Windows 98.
• The administrator has removed it as a security policy. Contact your systems administrator.
• Your system has been infected and the virus has removed it. Run ComboFix to fix this.

Creating an autorun.inf folder doesn’t mean that your USB flash drive will no longer get infected. The viruses can still make a copy of themselves into your flash drive. But without the autorun.inf, they cannot easily execute when you insert your flash drive unless you double click on the executable virus file. So be sure to recognize which files you really did put on your drive.

NOTE: If the autorun.inf file exists and you haven’t disabled the autorun feature on your operating system yet, there’s a chance that your system has been infected already. If your anti-virus didn’t trigger, then you could run ComboFix to clean your system.

I didn’t have a blacklist keywords before when suddenly I received this spam bot comment from ‘lisaxxxgirl’. Now the good thing about this comment is that it included at least 300 keywords included at the bottom of the comment. Now this gave me an idea to put those keywords on my blacklist. Thanks to that stupid spammer! Hehehe!

I selected the keywords because some of the keywords are too short or too common that Wordpress might block legitimate comments. To make my list more complete, I included the lists of Elliott Back, Eric Nagel and Michael Martine.

Here’s my complete blacklist keywords:

125.47.41.166
148.233.159.58
165.29.58.126
189.19.60.94
189.4.80.48
194.68.238.7
195.244.128.237
195.250.160.37
196.207.15.201
196.207.40.213
196.217.249.190
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