Task Manager is a Windows system utility that displays the
tasks or processes currently running on your computer. To
open Task Manager, press Ctrl+Alt+Del. The Applcations tab
lists the applications currently running on your computer.
A single application may actually consist of several running
processes, and many programs that run in the background are
not listed (you can see icons for some of these programs in
the System Tray).

Note: With Windows 98 and Windows Me, Ctrl+Alt+Del will
open Program Manager, which allows you only to close
aplications. However, you can download one of the many Task
Manager utilities from the Web.

The Processes tab displays a comprehensive list of all the
processes currently running on your computer. This can be
very useful for monitoring your system. The process tab
displays information about the processor useage and memory
usage of each process. The problem is, how to identify a
process. Below is a list of some processes you may see in
Task Managers Processes list.

"System Idle Process"  
"System"  The Windows System Process
"SMSS.EXE"  Session Manager Subsystem
"CSRSS.EXE"  Client Server Runtime Subsystem
"WinLOGON.EXE"  The Windows Logon process
"SERVICES.EXE"  Services Control Manager
"LSASS.EXE"  Local Security Authentication Server Service
"svchost.exe"  Service Host
"spoolsv.exe"  The print spooler service
"explorer.exe"  Windows Explorer
"TASKMGR.EXE"  The Task Manager
"regsvc.exe"  Remote Registry Service

"System Idle Process" is basically another name for the
time when Windows is doing nothing. There are hundreds of
thousands of processes that run on a computer, so you will
definitely find names of many other processess that are
not listed above. For a list of well known processes,
visit www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
You can also learn about almost any task by using it’s
name as a search term in google.

Task Manager can also be used to tweak your system if it’s
running slow. The Performance tab displays running graphs
of your computers CPU and memory usage. If the CPU usage
seems to be running over 80 percent most of the time, or if
the memory usage seems to be running higher than the total
physical memory, you may want to shut down some
applications or processes.

On the Process tab, you can identify processes that are
consuming a lot of processor time. Click twice on the CPU
column heading to sort the CPU column so the processes
hogging the most CPU time on top. You can sort the
"Mem Usage" column the same way.

On the Application tab, if you right click on the name of
an application and, in the popup menu that appears, choose
"Go To Process", Task Manager will open the Processes tab
and highlight the process that runs the application. On the
Processes tab, if you right-click on the name of a process,
you can choose "SetPriority" and promote the priority of
the process you need (or demote the priority of a different
process to free up some resources).

If you go to the Application tab and shut down an
application, you will shut down any processes related to
that application. Or, you might choose to shut down a
background process that you can identify. To shut down an
application or process, click on it’s name in the list to
highlight it, then click on the End Task button.

On the Processes tab, if you right click on the name of a
process, you can choose "End Process Tree" to kill the
process and any sub-processes started by the process.

Task Manager can also be used for troubleshooting. If an
application freezes up, you can open Task Manager and shut
down the application. If the entire system freezes up, you
can use Task Manager to shut down a process that is hogging
all the CPU time or memory.

If you spend some time monitoring your computer with task
Manager, eventually you will become familiar with the
processes that commonly run. Then, when you see an
unfamiliar process, you can do a little investigation to
make sure it’s not a virus. For example, if you see
msblast.exe in the process list, your computer is infected
with the Blaster virus. You might be able to detect and
eliminate a new virus before an antivirus update is available.

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When you think about Security, what do you think of? We all have one device or another to assist in keeping us safe. We have pad locks and security systems to safe guard our home, alarm systems to protect the equipment in our cars, parental controls on our cable TV and satellite accesses. We even have ways to protect our loved ones from computer invasions.

But are we protected enough, are we using the best devices to combat the unwanted and dangerous intrusions, not to mention keeping our family from stumbling across those out on the internet?

Let’s face it, without the proper soft ware to protect your computer, you are at risk every time you connect to the internet. There are the viruses, the Trojans and unwanted spam, not to mention the chat rooms where millions fall victim of on-line predators, and let’s not forget the #1 problem on the internet, pornography.

You may be saying, but I have the best anti- spy ware money can buy and my internet service provides parental controls. Here’s the underlying question: How effective are they? Statistics show that 95% of internet users don’t have the adequate security to prevent attacks or control the content the computer user can access. The average computer is scanned by online intruders on average of 12 times a day. More and more victims are realizing the importance of these safety devices. The newest trend for identity theft is to steal information and cash out, out side of the country making it impossible to trace and leaving the victims with nothing to replace the funds.

What do I do, you ask? Let me begin with the basics. There are four steps to take into consideration.

1. Evaluate- There are diagnostic tools to find and identify dangerous threats to your computer. These tools are as simple as popping into you computer and scanning your hard drive. Threats are then identified with the proper recommended course of action to take.

2. Eliminate- Once the threats have been identified the obvious next step is to eliminate. These security tools help scan, eliminate and block threatening spy ware, annoying ad ware and cookies, damaging worms and Trojan horses.

3. Protect- Set up a barrier around your computer. This will keep intruders out and create a fire wall. This is the most effective way to defend you against hackers and avoid identity theft.

4. Control- This final step will create a peace of mind for you, with the knowledge that you can avoid potentially dangerous web sites. You can block undesirable websites as well as avoid ones that try to download spy ware onto your computer.

So what’s the next course of action? Find a security device that will cover these four steps and protect you from all of these hazardous things. There are even programs that will do this and automatically update every month to ensure added safety and avoid any new unknown danger.

My advice, find them, get them on your computer to avoid any heartache that could happen. The average cost for these programs, to completely cover you computer, vary from $40- $120 depending on the collection of software you use. The products that will automatically update usually run $5 - $10 a month to give you the essential idea of, get it and forget it. Too many times we forget to update our securities and fall victim of these malicious acts. Don’t wait, don’t become a victim before you take action. What is the price for your safety?

Tiffany Baron is an independant Internet security consultant, she can be reached at keepyourfamilysafe@hotmail.com

There is a heated debate currently going on over our recent article, which jumped sites like a "California brush fire".

"Will Adobe manage to replace industry work horse Quark XPress by giving Adobe InDesign for free?"

Originally, on or about the 15th of October, the article was posted to the Quark home web page as the top header for their popular In the News Section.

By the 19th of October the article was flamed by the Adobe supporters and empoyees who are currently running a website by the name of QuarkVsIndesign.com.

At fist these individuals were hiding behind the pseudonyms like "soupfighter" and now they have finally exposed their true motives.

So why are all these people in the Quark Forum so upset?

Why is a website dedicated to propagating the war between Quark and InDesign aggressively pursuing and tracking artificially fabricated conflict?

And why, are some individuals (who’s names I will not deign mention because of the inappropriate language they are using) and Pariah S. Burke, with help from good ol’ "soupfighter", using their precious time desperately refuting everything we said in the article?

Why have they blatantly said they are going to cut my links?

Is it the Pot calling the Kettle Black?

I guess they don’t like the competition.

These guys must be paid by Adobe to troll through the Quark website (where our article was placed on the home page as the top header In the News Section) trying to refute anything that might possibly make Adobe look bad.

Now who’s working for whom?

Come on guys, confess. ValorCrossMedia has the right to promote themselves and have done another great job of self-promotion. If you hire us, next time we can do the same for you.

God Bless and remember The Golden Rule Do onto others as you would have done onto you…

Please visit our Valor E-Business Professionals Blog or write to articles@valorcrossmedia.com

About the Author: Galina Arlov is a Creative Director for Valor Cross Media.

Valor Cross Media offers creative website services in all areas. Web Site Design and Hosting, Shop Fronts and Affiliates, Online Marketing and Advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Banner Design and Tracking, Branding, Consumer Research Planning and Implementation, Market Planning, Public Relations and much more.

Valor Cross-Media also offers premium comprehensive Search Engine Optimization Plans to heighten Web Site effectiveness through the use of keywords and competition analysis.

Valor Cross Media, Where Substance Supports Style.

For more information about how Valor Cross Media can help you call 212 288-1866, or visit us at http://www.valorcrossmedia.com

Today we are building robots and computers, which mirror humans and can interact with them. This works very well for many things and can assist humans in accepting their computer or robotic assistant counterparts. Unfortunately when computers attempt to decipher text and meaning and then correspond with humans, the mirroring does not always work.

If the robot or computer is using artificial intelligent software to communicate with a human and use mirroring techniques and scaling of escalation in the conversation, they often will not suffice in keeping the human’s interest for too long. Indeed a chimpanzee, dog or cat maybe willing to continue interaction, non-verbal communication or synthesize mimicking techniques for verbal communication; however for humans it cannot work for very long especially if the human is in search of enlightenment, rather than encyclopedia or dictionary definitional content.

In corresponding with artificial intelligence on a keyboard or through the Internet the human assumes that the entity on the other side is like them; that is to say an organic carbon based human biped. There comes a time when the human is skeptical of the information and correspondence coming from the other side of the screen, often the human will begin to assume that the information comes from an ignorant human or a lawyer’esque type human and thus does not appreciate the information for what it is; pure information mixed in with mirroring conversational composites of chit chat crap.

There are many types of software used today to help un-intelligent humans with correspondence, writing or even term papers, yet what you will find is this software does not work well when the human being used as the target subject actually knows a little about a lot of things or is intimately familiar with the subject matter. For instance in the case of the CIA or NSA trying to get information of profile a target; a professor grading a term paper or a reader of a news article. So often it is obvious that the what appears at first to be a dumb human bluffing or BS’ing their way through a subject matter or the software gives its self away by acting non-human and providing erroneous or irrelevant data to a conversation, story or paper. It maybe fanciful to a human to use a robotic or computer software enhanced correspondence mechanism to save time, do homework, save labor costs or taxpayers money. But if such an artificial intelligent system delivers garbage due to shoddy programming and less than intelligent people putting in the input, then it will not suffice or solve the problem of tricking the individual, enhancing readership or convincing anyone of anything.

So, we must remember that those who program these systems to interact with humans need to be as smart or smarter (artificially that is) than the human they are corresponding to, other wise the human feels that the discussion is irrelevant, rhetoric or simply mirroring semantics. If we are to build assistant robots, they must be careful with their interactions. Now, sometimes humans act in such was, yet when they do, don’t most people simply walk away, shaking their heads? If a human stops the correspondence then you have to start all over. If the human rejects the robotic assistant then you have wasted your money in that system. Sure you can say it is work in progress and call it development costs, but it is a useless hunk of junk you see? Likewise if a student uses a system for their work and if the professor of the homework assignment is unimpressed you get a lousy grade.

Right now this is what I am giving the artificial intelligence programmers right now. Y’all need to go back to the drawing board and do some more research on the human species within a society and study how they interact in groups, one on one and in the larger over all culture. It is not a one size fits all scenario and although it is indeed smart to try to keep it simple, there needs to be more overlay on the various types of people and smarter people doing the programming. Think on that

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

What it is CD ripper?

CD ripper software opens up a whole new world of opportunities in how you listen to music. With CD ripper software, you can take audio CD tracks and place them into audio files on your computer. These audio tracks can be saved as WAV, MP3, OGG, or WMA audio files. The term “ripping” is used to describe this process.

Newer, more advanced CD ripper software is also available that allows you to convert back and forth between these formats. In fact, some CD ripper software is now available that can record vinyl LP’s and cassettes to create WAV, MP3, OGG, or WMA audio files.

Where to get it.

A variety of CD ripper software is available online. Simply typing “CD ripper” into any search engine will bring up a wide variety of available CD ripper software. Most CD ripper software is extremely user friendly and offers a variety of options, but you should do some searching and comparing before deciding which CD ripper software is best for you.

What to look for.

Every type of CD ripper software had its own style and interface. Make sure the CD ripper software you choose is easy to use and to understand. It doesn’t matter how great the software is if you can’t utilize it to its fullest!

When exploring CD ripper software options, be sure to also check out the software’s editing abilities. With most CD ripper software programs, you can select the output format for you music. This includes the bitrate, channels, and frequency. The best CD ripper software will create high quality files by digitally matching the audio bit for bit.

Quality CD ripper software will also tag the encoded audio files with metadata. The metadata contains information about the artist, track number, song title, and album title. This will automatically be input into the WAV, MP3, OGG, or WMA audio file. Some CD ripper software programs will even search online for pictures of album covers and insert this as a thumbnail image next to the file.

Another perk to some CD ripper software is the ability to delete the silence at the beginning or end of tracks. Yet other CD ripper software programs will allow you to edit the songs themselves, giving you full control of the sound provided by your WAV, MP3, OGG, or WMA audio file.

For those traditionalists who still enjoy listening to their music from a CD, a CD ripper can be used to select your favorite songs to create a mixed CD. In fact, some CD rippers will allow you to rip audio tracks directly from a CD and burn them to a new CD, without ever having to save them as a new audio file.

With thousands of people ripping CD’s every day, CD ripping is definitely the wave of the future, and the best choice for music lovers everywhere. Why keep your music stationary on older format CDROMS, when you can rip the music, put it into your favorite mp3 player, and listen on the go?

Mansi aggarwal writes about CD ripper.

There are two basic paradigms for CRM systems: Contact centric or Account Centric. In Contact Centric systems, the primary organization is around independent contacts. In Account Centric systems, there are two levels to the basic organization: a company or account layer to which multiple contacts can be related.

Contact Centric

In a contact centric system, the database is organized around individual contacts. So, if you have dealings with 3 different people all from the same company, you would have 3 different contact records and in each record would be the company name. There may be ways to relate different contacts together, but these will be in the “workaround” class.

A Contact centric organization makes sense if you are dealing with individuals and you do not need to do such things as look at an organization’s combined history. It is very difficult/clumsy to track company related information separately from contact information. For example, if you want to track information about a company (e.g. sic code, # employees, annual budget, etc.) separately from contact related information (e.g. favourite hobby, home phone number, spouse’s name, etc.). there isn’t an easy way to do that:

difficult.

and somehow relate the contacts to it?

Account Centric

Account centric CRM systems have a layer above contact, the organization or account, that can tie multiple contacts together. This has the advantage of being able to track company-related information entirely separately from contact-related information. This approach is usually easier to:

My Recommendation

If you’re working in an industry where you only need one contact record per account, you may want the simplicity of contact centric. However, if you are going to want to track multiple contacts per account then contact vs. account centric becomes a very important consideration and you should give heavy weighting to systems that are truly account centric. This is just one of many considerations that must go into determining whether or not a particular CRM software fits your needs. For a complete step-by-step process for evaluating CRM software, see the Insider’s CRM Success System.

Scott Gingrich, founder of The CRM Coach (http://www.thecrmcoach.com) is the creator of “The Insider’s CRM Success System” (http://www.crminsidersguide.com), the world’s most complete and only CRM Success System guaranteed to save thousands, developed specially for small business.