FTP and SFTP

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is an older protocol for moving files back and forth over the Internet and other networks. All modern web browsers still speak FTP, which was sometimes used as a substitute for HTTP in the early days of the web. FTP is still used often as a means of downloading large files.

Many web hosts still offer FTP as the preferred way of uploading new web pages to a website. However, because there is no encryption of your password, FTP is not the best choice for this purpose. And since there is no encryption of the files being moved, FTP is a poor choice indeed for more sensitive information.

SFTP (Secure FTP) is a popular replacement. Built on SSL, SFTP is just as secure as HTTPS. And most modern FTP clients, such as the free, high-quality FileZilla program for Windows, support both FTP and SFTP. SFTP offers a set of features quite similar to FTP and will be immediately familiar to FTP users, although it works quite differently "under the hood."

Every Windows, MacOS X and Linux system comes standard with a simple command line FTP client program. And MacOS X and Linux also have command line SFTP clients as standard equipment. In addition, MacOS X supports connections to FTP servers in a user-friendly way, right out of the box (you can find a great tutorial on creativemac.com).
Binary Mode and ASCII Mode in FTP
"Classic," non-secure FTP can move files in two major ways: "binary mode" and "ASCII mode." Binary mode just moves the file down the wire without modifying anything... and this is, almost always, what we want today.

"ASCII mode" is sometimes used for plain-text (usually, .txt) files. ASCII mode, named for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange which determines what byte stands for each letter, number or other character in text, corrects for differences in the way line endings are stored in text files. Windows traditionally uses a carriage return (represented by an ASCII value of 13) followed by a line feed (represented by 10). Unix typically expects just the line feed. And MacOS, at least prior to MacOS X, preferred a carriage return only.

Today, though, most text-editing and viewing programs can view text files that follow any of these three conventions (including Microsoft Word, and the free WordPad program that comes with Windows, but excluding a few annoying holdovers like Windows Notepad). So ASCII mode doesn't do us much good. These days ASCII mode is mostly an annoyance, something people accidentally leave on in a very old fashioned command-line FTP program, or accidentally turn on in a newer one. And when you're moving a program, an image or anything else with an exact file format that must not be modified, that means you get garbage instead of the file you wanted.

The norm today is for FTP to simply ship files unchanged in binary mode.

Once upon a time there was also something called "TENEX mode," to move files between computers that didn't even use the same number of bits to represent a byte. Yes, FTP has been around that long! But TENEX mode doesn't come up as an issue these days, and we're all happier for it.

Preparing to Move Hard Drive to Another Computer

To remove the devices from device manager when taking a HD from one computer to another,simply:

Run Regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ and delete the Enum section

This removes all of the hardware specific settings

Allowing Network Access with Blank Passwords (XP and Vista)

Although you can log in locally without a password, by default, WindowsXP Pro does not allow network users to access the computer without a password. Typically you will receive an Unknown error 31 if this is the case.
To change this setting:

Run gpedit.msc

Go to Computer Configuration / Windows Settings / Security Settings / Local Policies / Security Options

Double click on Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console login only
Disable this option

====> Differences of GSM, GPRS, UMTS and HSDPA <====

1. GSM: 2G Europian standard and the first digital mobile system. It offers only
circuit-switched traffic (i.e voice calls,
SMS...etc) and data transfer at very low
bitrates 9.6kbps.

2. GPRS: also reffered to as phase 2+. It offered packet-switched traffic with
new network components integrated
over the existant GSM core network.
This allowed data bitrates to increase
to 171kbps. It is also considered as the
first step towards 3G networks.

3. EDGE: It was made to cover the delay of delivery of 3G/UMTS network.
It supported data rates upto 384kbps.

4. UMTS: the first 3G Europian standard network. It is the optimal solution for
GSM operators to support 3G services.
The Air interface technique used for
this network is WCDMA. This technique
allowed data rates to reach 2Mbps.

5. HSDPA: It is actually a software upgrade to the UMTS network using
the same air interface technique used
in UMTS (WCDMA) and supporting data
rates upto 10Mbps.

Q: Why is my internet connection intermittent despite full HSDPA signal?
A: The service that you receive on your connection depends partly on how
busy the network is. Voice and text
users take priority over dongle (data)
users, so when the network is
particularly busy, data speeds may be
slow even though signal strength is high. Conversely when the network is
not busy, you may get fast data speeds
although you barely have a signal.
Unfortunately you can only influence
this aspect of service by connecting at
less sociable hours.

Difference Between Core i3, Core i5, Core i7

Difference Between Core i3, Core i5, Core i7

Difference between Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7

Intel will stop selling Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad in 2010. Core is the new range of Intel processors.

Core i3:
* Entry level processor.
* 2-4 Cores
* 4 Threads
* Hyper-Threading (efficient use of processor resources)
* 3-4 MB Catche
* 32 nm Silicon (less heat and energy)

Core i5:
* Mid range processor.
* 2-4 Cores
* 4 Threads
* Turbo Mode (turn off core if not used)
* Hyper-Threading (efficient use of processor resources)
* 3-8 MB Catche
* 32-45 nm Silicon (less heat and energy)


Core i7:
* High end processor.
* 4 Cores
* 8 Threads
* Turbo Mode (turn off core if not used)
* Hyper-Threading (efficient use of processor resources)
* 4-8 MB Catche
* 32-45 nm Silicon (less heat and energy)

How Do I Know if I’m Running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows? [Answers]

Friends and family members seem to ask me all the time whether they are running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows, and I’ve finally realized that it would make more sense to show everybody how to figure it out for themselves. Here’s the two-step process to find out for yourself.
Checking on Windows 7 or Vista
If you’re using Windows 7 or Windows Vista, all you have to do is pop open your start menu, right-click on the Computer item, and then choose Properties.

 

Now you’ll see the System information screen—which you might note that you can also get to from Control Panel if you prefer—and down in the system section you’ll see “System type”, which will say 32-bit Operating System or 64-bit Operating System depending on which version you have installed.

Checking on Windows XP
There’s almost no point in checking on Windows XP, because you’re almost positively running a 32-bit version. If you insist, however, you can right-click on My Computer, choose Properties…

 And then you’ll see the System Properties window—if you are running a 32-bit version of Windows it won’t say anything here other than Microsoft Windows XP, but if you were running a 64-bit version, it would say that on this window.

What’s the primary difference between the two? You’ll notice that my Windows 7 laptop has 8GB of memory—you’ll need a 64-bit operating system to take advantage of the full amount of memory, since 32-bit Windows can only handle about 4GB.

Internet Explorer 9 Released: Here’s What You Need To Know

Microsoft has released the final version of Internet Explorer 9, and there’s just one question you should be asking yourself: Should I bother installing it? Here’s everything you need to know about the latest release of Microsoft’s infamous browser.
Spoiler alert: If you are running Windows 7 or Vista, you should absolutely install IE9 on your PC—even if you prefer Chrome or Firefox, it’s better to have a secure, updated version of Internet Explorer.

What’s New in Internet Explorer 9?

If you want to see the full list of changes with all the original marketing detail, you can read Microsoft’s Beauty of the Web page, but here’s the highlights that you might be interested in.

• Completely New Interface – as you can see in the screenshot above, there’s a completely new interface, designed from the ground up to save space on the screen—in fact, it uses even less pixels than Google Chrome.
• Hardware Acceleration – IE9 is the first browser that taps into the power of your video card to make everything faster, by default. This browser is blazing fast, all around.
• Pinned Sites – While Google Chrome might have started out with their web applications concept, IE9 takes it to another level by allowing site owners to customize the menus for sites pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar.
• HTML5 Support – Microsoft has finally learned from their past mistakes, and focused on getting IE to the point of compliance with internet standards. There’s a lot of whiners out there that say Microsoft didn’t make it work well enough, but I think it’s a good first step.
• Combined Search / Address Bar – IE9 integrates the two boxes together into one, and even adds search suggestions that work quite well, similar to Google Chrome’s combined omnibox.

There’s a ton of other, smaller, features below the hood, but these are the most interesting features. We’ve also highlighted some of them in screenshots below.

Questions You Might Have

You probably want to get to the screenshots, but first, here’s a couple of answers to questions you haven’t asked yet.

• No, Internet Explorer 9 does not work on Windows XP.
• Yes, you can install IE9 over top of the beta version if you had that installed.
• Yes, If you have 32-bit Windows, you should install the 32-bit version.
• Yes, If you have 64-bit Windows, you should install the 64-bit version (which includes the 32-bit version). Not sure? Here’s how to see what version of Windows you have.
• Yes, you should upgrade to this version.
• Yes, if you click this link it will take you to the download page.

Again, even if you don’t use IE as your primary browser, it’s better to have this new, more secure browser than smelly old IE8.

Where Can You Download It?

We’ll have to assume that eventually Microsoft will offer IE9 through Windows Update, but for the moment, you’ll need to click the following link to download IE9. Remember to pick the right version for your operating system.
http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/#/download

Screenshot Tour: Shiny New Stuff!

Alright, so, if you’ve been reading How-To Geek for a while, there’s nothing really changed between this version and the release candidate that we previously covered—but for the rest of you, here’s some pretty screenshots to show what it’s all about.
Want to see just how great the performance is? Head over to the FishIE Tank experiment page, where you can see full hardware acceleration in action. It’s pretty impressive.

The new combined search/address bar is smart, and it’ll provide interesting suggestions right there in the browser itself. One of my favorites is the weather checker, which actually shows an image based on what’s going on outside. You know, cause looking out the window isn’t very geeky.

 f you don’t like the combined Address Bar and Tabs on the same row, you can right-click on any of the tabs and choose “Show tabs on a separate row”. Note that you can also drag the divider between the address bar and the tabs to resize the address bar.

 

I totally stole this screenshot from Microsoft’s marketing page, since it does a great job of showing how the pinned sites feature works. Just drag the tab for any site to the taskbar, and voila! New pinned tab with a fun icon! Right-click on that tab, and you’ve got a custom jump list… at least, if that site has implemented the IE-specific features.

IE9 has what could essentially be considered “FlashBlock” built right in—just head to Safety-> ActiveX Filtering, and turn it on from there…

 

From now on, whenever you go to a site that tries to use an ActiveX control like Flash, you’ll have to click the little icon in the address bar to enable it. Awesome!

There’s a lot more features, but we’re not going to bother with screenshots. Why? Because you should install it and see for yourself!
For the record, I’m a Google Chrome user, and while I do really like the new IE9, I’m sticking with Chrome… but I still recommend that you install IE9 on your PC if you possibly can. There’s just no need to have an insecure IE8 sitting around, and even if you turn off Internet Explorer, there’s still a ton of applications that utilize the underlying components, and you should consider installing it the same as patching your PC for the latest security holes.
And who knows… you might just like it.

Download Internet Explorer 9 from beautyoftheweb.com