Software products that you think are really good

[Ineedaride2]

AncientPC:

I've got Hamachi VPN downloaded on my home pc right now, but I'm a little wary of putting it on my work pc. It looks like it would be fantastic for getting files back and forth and allowing my to remotely backup files. However, I'm a little leary of the security.

Is it secure enough for business use?

[Punker]

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For online chess I like 2+2 TimM's
Xboard or Winboard interface

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I used Xboard in the past, as well as Cclient, Blitzin, and now Dasher. I've never really found one I loved.

In any event, if you want to bring up chess, ChessBase is the one and only name that should be mentioned. A bit expensive, but you can't be a serious player without it.

[AncientPC]

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AncientPC:

I've got Hamachi VPN downloaded on my home pc right now, but I'm a little wary of putting it on my work pc. It looks like it would be fantastic for getting files back and forth and allowing my to remotely backup files. However, I'm a little leary of the security.

Is it secure enough for business use?

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I'm not qualified to answer that question, I can only refer you to the Wiki article.

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As with all closed-source or non-thoroughly reviewed applications, several security considerations apply:

* the absence of source code for review
* its beta status (if any) and possible impact of remaining bugs on security

Additionally due to Hamachi's use as a VPN application the following considerations apply:

* additional risk of disclosure of sensitive data which is stored or may be logged by the mediation server- minimal where data is not forwarded
* the security risks due to vulnerable services on remote machines otherwise not accessible behind a NAT, common to all VPNs

Although Hamachi uses strong, industry-standard algorithms to encrypt data [1], the implementation remains closed source and therefore cannot be fully audited by the public for potential security problems or backdoors.

For the product to work, a "mediation server", operated by the vendor, is required. This server stores the nickname, maintenance password, statically allocated 5.0.0.0/8 IP address and the associated authentication token of the user. For every established tunnel, it could log the real IP address of the user, time of establishment and duration as well as the other interconnected users.

As all peers sharing a tunnel have full "LAN-like" access to each others computers, security problems may arise if firewalls are not used, as with any insecure situation. The security features of the NAT router/firewall are bypassed. This is not specific to Hamachi and needs to be addressed with other VPNs as well.

In the Security Now! podcast Steve Gibson described Hamachi as a "...brand new, ready to emerge from its long development beta phase, ultra-secure, lightweight, high-performance, highly polished, multi-platform, peer-to-peer and FREE! personal virtual private networking system ..." and that he had "... fully vetted the system's security architecture ...".[4]

In the following episode, to a question raised by Randal Schwartz: "Hamachi's not open source. How can we trust it?", Gibson replied, "... it's one of the things that made me anxious and continues to make me anxious. I'm going to end up probably over on OpenVPN ...". Later he continued, "But Hamachi is - I'm convinced that Alex has really designed this system exactly as he's told me he has. He's got years of experience with security, implementing IPSec tunnels, you know, classic VPN solutions. I couldn't feel any better about this than I do, short of doing a complete source audit ... which is just not practical. So it's certainly the case though that, well, I mean, you know, we're trusting Bill when we use Windows.", and, "... I'm sure Alex has told me the truth, but I have no proof of it."[5]

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[MrWookie]

I've been playing with GAIM (Pidgin, now) since I've been frustrated with Trillain of late. I can't say I'm sold. There are several things I find frustrating:

1. No metacontacts. If I have the same person as a buddy on AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, I would like to just condense them into a single entry.
2. Along those same lines, I have two AIM names. When I was using Trillian, it just kept a single entry in my buddy list for each AIM buddy, and then I could set a default account I message them with. In Pidgin, I stupidly have two entries on my buddy list for many buddies, one for each AIM account. WTF?
3. No subgroups. I can organize buddies into groups, but I can't further subdivide them into subgroups. I would have deemed this an acceptable substitute for the absence of metacontacts, but this is pretty annoying.
4. Buddy list doesn't indicate whether people are using AIM, Yahoo, or whatever. This is far from a deal breaker, but it was nice in Trillian.
5. Doesn't seem to support audio or video chat. I don't use these much, but some people like them.
6. I like Trillian's sleeker look better.

[XXXNoahXXX]

I have found the cure for my Taskbar ADD.

TaskBar Shuffle

This little program lets you just drag and drop to reorganize your Windows taskbar. This may be a common utility that I was just in the dark about, but whenever I'm doing multiple things at once, I always hate having some research notes way on the left, the file im typing in way on the right, and poker and other things in between, etc.

Anyways, hope someone else shares this strange compulsion and now can rearrange at will. Just be sure to click settings and have it stop appearing as a tray icon.

[mistermuni]

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i keep my browser window at fullscreen. if i wanted to open up my ruby pickaxe book pdf, i would have to grab the mouse, click the start menu, go to my documents, go to tech, an

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Tron's software needs:

Better message board posting software.


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The Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California's hardware needs:

Better wireless [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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can't even get decent wireless in leavey, its pretty sad

[ryanj247]

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Anyways, hope someone else shares this strange compulsion and now can rearrange at will. Just be sure to click settings and have it stop appearing as a tray icon.

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this program pwns. now i don't have to close all 17 apps i have going and re-open them in the order i want them on the taskbar lol

[Kjell201]

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Strong preference for GAIM over Trillian.

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Ditto, Trillian is buggy.

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Me three.

Also use SlickRun instead of Launchy, faster and more configurable IMO (only thing I want from Launchy is the calc).

Most other things I like have been mentioned. Other than the obvious ones like Firefox I use:

Notepad++
ActiveVirusShield (Free, based on Kaspersky)
MediaMonkey. Without competition the best music software (similar to iTunes, just much much more usability and especially organizing functions).
Lightroom + Photoshop for photos. IMO Picasa sucks for anyone above the 'occasional travel, party and holiday photo' level.
MediaPlayerClassic + QTAlternative. Great media player (like VLC) and no need for QuickTime installed with this plugin which is great.
µTorrent. Light-weight, low-resource torrrent software. Love it!

[TheMetetron]

Just re-installed Windows and had to wipe everything from my hard drive. This is what I reinstalled that a normal person might want. A lot of repeats, but whatever.

Firefox - Best web browser
Open Office - Incredibly good freeware, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office
7-Zip - Best archiver (zip, rar, 7z, etc files)
allSnap - Makes windows "snap" into place and line up.
AntiVir Personal - Good, free anti-virus
Foxit Reader - Fast, small, and free alternative to Adobe Reader
GIMPShop - Freeware Photoshop alternative (keeps Photoshop layout with GIMP)
KeePass - Great password safe. Open source and can be run from a thumb drive.
Memento - This thing is just incredible. Basically post-its for your dekstop. Fast, small, and free. Love it.
Newsleecher - $30, but great usenet reader. Combine with Newzbin + Giganews subscriptions.
Videora iPod Converter - Free and great for converting video files of all types to ones that can play on an iPod. Combine with Firefox Videodownloader extension and YouTube.
Skype - Especially great for the international traveler, but no one should be without this. Great VoIP phone service. PC-to-PC calls are free.
Spybot S&D - Great free anti-spyware software. Activate TeaTimer to watch over your registry file changes.
SlickRun - So much better than Launchy; incredibly customizable. Once you use this, you won't want to use a PC without it.
uTorrent - Great, small torrent program.

[astroglide]

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SlickRun - So much better than Launchy

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here's the big difference, as i understand it: both are application launchers. launchy indexes the start menu and/or any folders you want for specific filetypes, like word/excel docs or shortcuts. slickrun forces the user to define aliases for each thing that they want to open, but they create the name themself and can launch with custom options.

based on that, launchy is orders of magnitude better than slickrun for my purposes. i don't mind typing 'thu' to start the word 'thunderbird' instead of 'email', and if i need parameters i can program them into a shortcut. i'm not going to program an alias for a pdf to breadco's nutritional data, i'm not going to redo it if the filename changes, etc. with launchy, 'breadco' will always find it if that's in the filename. the whole point for me is to have total accessibility, not just launch specific frequently-launched things.