M.A.S. Electronics' Blog

When you delete an Outlook item — email message, contact, task, appointment, and so on–Outlook moves the item to the Deleted Items folder. You control whether Outlook then empties the Deleted Items folder when you close Outlook. That’s probably adequate for most of you, but you can override the settings for individual items. To do so, press [Shift]+Delete instead of just Delete. Doing so permanently deletes the selected item instead of moving it to the Deleted Items folder. Microsoft calls…

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Everyone knows that the key to keeping equipment in peak condition — whether it’s a chain saw, a motorcycle, or a desktop PC — is to follow a preemptive maintenance routine. The question is, what sort of maintenance tasks are required? In a shop full of hundreds (or thousands) of PCs, a systematic approach is essential. This list offers basic measures to incorporate into your optimization and maintenance routine. Regularly run Defrag and the Disk Cleanup Tool on client systems…

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OpenDNS and Neustar want to eliminate one of DNS’s most frustrating problems. There is a good chance they may be able to. Domain Naming System (DNS) has been getting a lot of attention lately. Case in point, Google just announced the release of Public DNS, their network of DNS resolving servers that use a concept called pre-fetching. Google claims that their technology will reduce latency throughout the whole DNS structure. Some exciting news, well as exciting as DNS gets, was…

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There’s no need to manually scrawl your way through a paper form. Convert the form to an online image you can fill out using Word. What do you do when someone hands you an application to fill out or when you need to fill out a printed tax form? If you don’t have a typewriter, you probably fill in the form manually, hoping that the recipient can read your handwriting. Fortunately, you can use Word to “type it in” instead….

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Is there anything Google isn’t going to do? Google has recently announced Google Public DNS services for Web engines and other systems to query for address resolution. This makes some sense, as Google crawls the Web frequently and has a good idea of where Web presences are located. The goals of this service are to provide an option for current DNS configuration, reduce ISP loads, and make the Web faster. I have historically used ISP DNS information for all information…

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Flash cookies are a much-discussed , and many users think they are more insidious than regular HTTP cookies. So first, let’s look at how these cookies are different. Regular HTTP cookies are basically a way to track your activity online. They are common and these days mostly harmless. I say “harmless” here, because there’s plenty of information out there to help users delete them and customize the browser settings that control their behavior. On the other hand, Flash cookies seem to…

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1: Don’t click on attachments It should go without saying, but I still encounter clients every month who infect their machines and cripple Outlook (and other applications) because they absentmindedly click on executable files and other attachments received in email messages. One of the best defenses against email borne viruses and infections is to simply avoid clicking on attachments or hyperlinks received within email messages. 2: Empty the trash Outlook stores messages, including large attachments, in one file (typically known…

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How many applications are out there in the wild that you’ve never heard of or tried? Even as a consultant, I come across them on a daily basis. With all those applications, it’s easy for some real gems get overlooked — including a lot of excellent open source tools. I understand that most people associate open source with Linux. But there are quite a few solid applications for the Windows operating system, developed and maintained by the open source community….

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The botnets are arranged in order of spam activity, with the most popular name being listed first: 1: Grum (Tedroo) Grum is the future for spam botnets. It’s a kernel-mode rootkit and thus hard to detect. It’s also sneaky, infecting files used by Autorun registries. That guarantees it will be activated. This botnet is of special interest to researchers. It’s relatively small, only 600,000 members. Yet it accounts for almost 25 percent, or 40 billion spam-emails a day. Grum focuses…

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Legislation that affects the use of Internet-connected computers is springing up everywhere at the local, state and federal levels. You might be violating one of them without even knowing. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the existing laws and some of the pending legislation that can influence how we use our computers and the Internet. Nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice; this is merely an overview of some of the legislation that’s…

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