Ask A Vet Question

Ask Ottawa veterinarian Dr. Marie a question about the health of your pet online. Then continue to converse back and forth with her until you feel your question is answered satisfactorily.

Dr. Marie has been practicing small animal medicine for over 10 years now. She is compassionate and cares for the animals and the wonderful people who own them. She is experienced in treating dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats and mice. She is skilled in surgery, dermatology, ophthalmology, dentistry, behavior and medicine. Dr. Marie has taken courses in Orthopedic Surgery as well. She really enjoys solving complicated medical cases such as animals with difficult diseases like Cushing’s Disease, Addison’s, and those frustrating itchy dog cases that are hard to figure out.

She also has an interest in oncology and gives compassionate and knowledgeable advice whether you are interested in chemotherapy, radiation or simply palliative care.

Her latest venture, this online vet advice site has helped many people who have veterinary questions and need to ask a vet a question and get a response quickly! Need to ask an online vet? Veterinarian, Dr. Marie is here to help.

You can also browse her growing selection of free articles on pet health, including cats, dogs, and hamsters (“pocket pets”).

Ask-a-Vet: Online Veterinary Help for Your Pets is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

In my review of an early release of Microsoft Security Essentials, I noted:

I  installed it on a Dell Vostro desktop computer running Windows XP Pro SP3 with an Intel Core2 2.33 GHz processor and 4 gigs of ram, as well as a Toshiba laptop running Vista Home Premium SP2 with an AMD dual-core 2.4 GHz processor.

I found it was a little slower than Avast on the Vista laptop but tolerable, especially given that it scanned for spyware as well the virus family. My initial impression was uncertain but I was willing to work with Security Essentials for a while on the laptop.

On the desktop it was a very different story. It slowed my XP system to a crawl with almost constant activity that was using 20-50% of available RAM at any given time. I gave it a couple of hours in case this was just an initial scan but even following the Quick Scan I’d requested it continued to churn away. Even switching windows from email to my browser or to Word often took a few seconds.

I recently decided to give it another try to see if there had been any improvements in speed, and I’m happy to report that it is now running smoothly on both the laptop and the desktop.

Recategorized as “Recommended”.

Update: Microsoft Security Essentials is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

This is not the first time Google has asked webmasters to do their jobs for them by ratting out their competitors. Here they go again:

Calling for link spam reports
by Matt Cutts
March 3, 2010

Google has been working on some new algorithms and tools to tackle linkspam and we’d like to ask for linkspam reports from you. If you’d like to tell us about web sites that appear to be using spammy links (e.g. paid links that pass PageRank, blog spammers, guestbook spammers, etc.), here’s how to send us more info. Go to

Webmaster Tools | Spam Report

and tell us about the site that appears to be employing link spam. Be sure to include the word “linkspam” (all one word, all lower-case) in the textarea (the last field in the form).

If that’s too hard to remember, you can also use the shortcut

Webmaster Tools | linkspam

which will pre-populate the text area field to say “linkspam” in it. Note: to use these forms, you must sign in with a Google account. We’re moving away from using the anonymous spam report form.

There’s just something unseemly about this, even of you can get past the issue of Google wanting us to do their work for them for free.

Google seeks more rats is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve seen several articles recently proclaiming loudly that Google’s Chrome browser has taken over the number three spot from Safari (e.g., Google Chrome is Now the No. 3 Browser | Search Engine Journal).

One would think this were a huge accomplishment from all the excitement. But in reality, beating out Safari, the Apple browser, is a small accomplishment, given that it has never had more than 5% market share, especially since this follows the recent release of the Apple version of Google Chrome.

Here is the way the statistics stack up currently, according to Net Applications’ web browser usage data for December:

After all the furious negative publicity over the past 5 years, Internet Explorer still has two-thirds of the market, although that is a slip from 80-90% before Firefox was introduced. Meanwhile, Firefox has risen to approximately one quarter of the market.

So what this all boils down to is that Google Chrome now has about a thundering third of the one-eighth market share left over after Internet Explorer and Firefox have taken their cuts.

That wouldn’t seem to me to be a reason for breaking out the champagne just yet.

Discussion continues at  http://forum.psychlinks.ca/computers-technology-and-the-internet/21364-browser-wars.html.

….

Addendum
 Now, from Computerworld via PC World comes this:

Windows Loses Market Share to Mobile Operating Systems
by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Jan 3, 2010

Microsoft’s Windows resumed its usual losing form in December as the operating system’s usage share dropped by about a third of a point even as the new Windows 7 posted a second straight month of impressive gains, Web metrics firm Net Applications said Friday.

Although rival desktop operating systems — Mac and Linux — essentially remained flat, mobile OSes, including Google‘s Android and Apple‘s iPhone OS, took up the slack created by Windows’ dip. Mobile operating systems, said Net Applications, now power 1.3% of all the hardware that surfs the Internet.

Windows finished the year with a 92.2% share, down 0.3 of a percentage point. It was the eighth month in 2009 during which Windows lost share.

So more people are using mobile operating systems. And Microsoft Windows has “fallen” to a lowly 92.2% share of all operating systems when mobile OSs are included.

Does anyone seriously believe that having a 92.2% market share is going to worry Microsoft or its shareholders?

Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

Microsoft recently released their free antivirus and antispyware product called Microsoft Security Essentials, which appears to be based on the same engine that previously powered Windows Defender for Windows XP and Vista. Security Essentials works for both XP and Vista (and presumably also for Windows 7).

As I’ve noted previously (Basic Computer Security 2009 Part 2), I long ago became fed up with big commercial or freeware suites that hog computer resources in the name of security. I’ve been personally using Avast antivirus and recommending Avira as an alternative.

However, I decided to give Security Essentials a test drive. I installed it on a Dell Vostro desktop computer running Windows XP Pro SP3 with an Intel Core2 2.33 GHz processor and 4 gigs of ram, as well as a Toshiba laptop running Vista Home Premium SP2 with an AMD dual-core 2.4 GHz processor.

I found it was a little slower than Avast on the Vista laptop but tolerable, especially given that it scanned for spyware as well the virus family. My initial impression was uncertain but I was willing to work with Security Essentials for a while on the laptop.

On the desktop it was a very different story. It slowed my XP system to a crawl with almost constant activity that was using 20-50% of available RAM at any given time. I gave it a couple of hours in case this was just an initial scan but even following the Quick Scan I’d requested it continued to churn away. Even switching windows from email to my browser or to Word often took a few seconds.

I have reverted to Avast on both machines. Perhaps the fault lies with an imperfect release candidate (although this is supposed to be a debugged “gold” release) but I’m not willing to struggle with another resource hog when more efficient solutions are available.

Note: See Update: Microsoft Security Essentials.

Review: Microsoft Security Essentials is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

Adobe has a dismal record for addressing security vulnerabilities in their software, some of which, e.g., Acrobat Reader and Shockwave, is widely used. Right on the heels of their announcement that they plan to step up their reactions to security issues, we see this story from ZDNet:

Critical Adobe Shockwave flaw affects millions
by Ryan Naraine
June 24th, 2009

Adobe’s Shockwave Player contains a critical vulnerability that could be exploited by remote hackers to take complete control of Windows computers, according to a warning from the software maker.

The flaw affects Adobe Shockwave Player 11.5.0.596 and earlier versions. Details from Adobe’s advisory:

This vulnerability could allow an attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability to take control of the affected system. Adobe has provided a solution for the reported vulnerability (CVE-2009-1860). This issue was previously resolved in Shockwave Player 11.0.0.465; the Shockwave Player 11.5.0.600 update resolves a backwards compatibility mode variation of the issue with Shockwave Player 10 content. To resolve this issue, Shockwave Player users on Windows should uninstall Shockwave version 11.5.0.596 and earlier on their systems, restart, and install Shockwave version 11.5.0.600, available here: Adobe – Adobe Shockwave Player. This issue is remotely exploitable.

Adobe boasts that 450 million Internet-enabled desktops have installed Adobe Shockwave Player.

Another Adobe Critical Security Flaw – Shockwave is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

Adobe Reader and Acrobat Security Initiative

by Brad Arkin, Director of Product Security and Privacy, Adobe

May 20, 2009

The recent JBIG2 vulnerability (CVE-2009-0658), the associated exploits, and Adobe’s response (APSB09-04) were the subject of much discussion in the security community in February and March. The JBIG2 issue also sparked a lot of conversation internally at Adobe from executives to testers and developers. What started out as a routine incident response expanded to a broader effort by Adobe Reader and Acrobat engineers, culminating in permanent changes to our software security approach for those products.

Since February, Adobe Reader and Acrobat engineers have been executing a major project focused on software security. Everything from our security team’s communications during an incident to our security update process to the code itself has been carefully reviewed. Security is an ongoing process, so while we believe our plan will eliminate or mitigate many potential security risks, we are also working to enhance our ability to respond to externally found vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat in the future.

…

Regular Security Updates – Starting this summer with the initial output of our security code hardening effort, we plan to release security updates for all major supported versions and platforms of Adobe Reader and Acrobat on a quarterly basis.

…more

The amazing thing to me about this announcement is that the author seems proud of it.

Seriously – quarterly updates to security vulnerabilities that can take down someone’s computer? That’s nothing to boast about. That’s not even an adequate response.

But what it does succeed in doing is delivering the message loud and clear that nobody, absolutely nobody, should be counting on Adobe products for security.

Ditch Adobe Acrobat Reader now and replace it with Foxit Reader!

Adobe promises quarterly security updates. Quarterly??!!? is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

Part 2: Keeping Your Computer Safe

 Once you’ve ascertained that your system is clean, or removed whatever malware infections were found, you’ll want to keep it that way. Here’s how to do that.

Install a real-time antivirus scanner

Over the years, I’ve used most antivirus programs and suites. I was for a long time a fan of Norton AntiVirus but as time went on NAV became increasingly bloated and resource hungry to the point where it could slow even the speediest system to a turtle’s pace. Recently, I’ve seen ads for the latest version claiming that it now has a smaller footprint and is less resource-intensive. That may be true but I think Norton lost me as a customer a long time ago.

I also used McAfee AntiVirus for a while. My complaint about McAfee was that it produced too many gave me too many false positives (identifying a file as containing a virus when in fact it was clean). It also seemed to become increasingly bloated and slow as time went on.

Most recently, I gave up on my long-time favorite, AVG. This used to be a very nice, compact, efficient, and fast AV program, available in both a free version and a commercial Pro version. A couple of versions ago, however, Grisoft began to emulate Norton and their product became huge and cumbersome, and,  worse, less accurate in identifying malware in my experience. Interestingly, at the same time they seemed to have gone to some lengths to make it more difficult to find the download link for the free version, although it continued to be available.

I then went in search of a new replacement which would have the following characteristics:

1. It needed to be fast and efficient with a small footprint (i.e., not resource intensive).
2. It needed to be effective at identifying and intercepting malware with a minimum of false positives.
3. It needed to be a stand-alone antivirus program, rather than an all-in-one security suite (more about that below).
4. It needed to offer automatic updates and real time antimalware scanning.

As a result of my research, I narrowed the field down to two or three, including Avast!. I tried Avast first and my experience to date has given me no reason to change (i.e., I never did get to try Avira although it is well rated).

Other antivirus programs that are generally well-rated include NOD32, Kaspersky,  and Avira.

As noted, I recommend against one-size-fits-all security suites. In part, this is a longstanding prejudice against jack-of-all-trades technology, going back to my stereophile days. I prefer to get the best individual components that meet my criteria and my general experience has been that the best antivirus program is not necessarily the best firewall, anti-spam, or ant-spyware solution. Also note that it is not a good idea to have more than one antivirus program active at the same time since they may conflict with one another. If you do install a suite, disable or uninstall any stand-alone products previously installed.

Once you have selected and installed an AV program, do an initial total system scan and then and have it set to autoscan any files that are created, all files from your diskette and CD-ROM drives as they are copied or installed, and all incoming email (if you’ve done everything else right, you really don’t need to scan outgoing email but you can usually set your AV program to do to be extra safe if you wish). Then do a full system scan at least once a month as a safety net, or any time you are concerned that you may have visited an unsafe website.

Activate Windows Firewall or Install a Third Party Firewall

From its introduction in Windows XP, the built-in Windows firewall has been the target of a lot of undeserved bad press, primarily because it monitored incoming connections only, not outgoing connections. On the other hand, the primary reason for monitoring outgoing connections is to prevent unauthorized scripts from accessing the net. If you follow the recommendations in the current series and use a bit of common sense, monitoring outgoing connections isn’t essential, and the Windows Firewall will cloak your ports to external probes.  (To prove this for yourself, you can test your defenses using try the free utilities at Gibson Research, in particular Shields UP!, with all but the Windows Firewall disabled). If you are using any of the various versions of Windows Vista, the version of Windows Firewall shipping with that operating system also monitors outgoing ports.

I am currently using the Windows Firewall in combination with a router. Note that you should not have two software firewalls active at the same time.

Still, there are some who feel that the Windows Firewall just isn’t enough. If you believe you must install a software firewall, I would recommend the free Comodo Personal Firewall which now comes bundled with Comodo’s antivirus program. Previously, I’ve used Norton Personal Firewall (which no longer appears to be available as a stand-alone but must be purchased as part of a suite) and ZoneAlarm. Again, I found that both of these products became bloated and sluggish over time. You can obtain similar products from McAfee and others, again usually as part of “internet security suites”.

 If you use a third party firewall, once it is installed, go through any list of “safe” programs it may have created on setup and delete or disable any entires you know nothing about. If they are legitimate programs, you’ll later get pop-up warnings from the firewall informing you that “program-name.exe” is trying to connect to the internet and asking you if you want to allow that to happen, so if it’s genuine all you have to do is say “yes – it’s safe”.

Activate Windows Defender

Install and run Windows Defender. I’ve found this to be an entirely satisfactory antispyware utility and this runs on startup as my default. If you wish, you can also download and install Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy. Disable real-time scanning for these so they don’t clash with Windows Defender and run them monthly. Another option is SpywareBlaster.

Monitor Programs That Autostart on Windows Boot

For Windows XP, install Mike Lin’s freeware Startup Control Panel 2.8 to easily see what programs are starting up automatically when you boot. Disable any you’re not sure you want (if they absolutely must run, you’ll find out soon enough and the utility allows you to easily re-enable it). While you’re at Mike Lin’s website, also download and install Startup Monitor: this little program sits in the background of your system and warns you when any program tries to install something to load automatically at system boot, with the option of allowing or disallowing that function.

For Vista, or as an alternative or augmentation to Mike Lin’s utilities, download and periodically run Autoruns for Windows or the more comprehensive but perhaps less user-friendly for novices SysInternals Suite, both from Microsoft. Other useful diagnostic utilities from Microsoft include RootkitRevealer, Process Explorer, and Process Monitor. Another option is WhatInStartup from Nirsoft.

You can also install HiJackThis! from TrendMicro. However, be very cautious about deleting things detected by this utility unless you know what they are. HiJackThis! detects both harmful and useful or needed add-ons.

Download and install ShellExView from Nirsoft, a small utility which displays the details of shell extensions installed on your computer, and allows you to easily disable and enable each shell extension. You’ll find a large number of other useful freeware utilities at the Nirsoft site.

Spyware Doctor AV

PCTools Internet Security

Basic Computer Security 2009 Part 2 is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

To mark their current Viva tour, Coldplay is making their new album of live music, Left Right Left Right Left, available free for download until September 19th, as a thank you to their fans.

You will need to enter your email address and country location here to download the album (approximately 55 Mb).

Thanks to Daniel at Psychlinks Psychology Self-Help and Mental Health Support Forum for the tip!

Download latest CD from Coldplay for free is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

After an inordinate and completely unacceptable delay, Adobe has finally issued a patch for  two Adobe Reader vulnerabilities. This betrays a cavalier attitude toward security and is far too late, in my opinion, to reverse the advice to find one of the free alternative PDF readers, such as Foxit Reader.

At the same time, Apple has fixed a whopping 67 security issues in their OS-X operating system. What struck me about this headline is that there would have been a major outcry all over the net as well as in the print and television media had the corporation in question been Microsoft.

See also: Update on Updates at the F-Secure AntiVirus Blog.

Adobe finally patches Reader; Apple patches OS-X is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2012 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.