Tuesday, February 15

Searching for Entertainment

It was the mid-nineties when I first got connected to the Internet and it wasn't long before I discovered that wonderful entity 'the search engine'. This tool was my gateway to hours of entertainment, whereas most people probably used the search engine to diligently seek out vital information, I put it to far better uses. Here's what I would do: -

I'd take a dictionary and starting at the letter 'A', I would find a word that I considered pretty obscure, then enter it into the search engine. I would then go to the first page that showed in the results.
Working through the dictionary alphabetically, I'd find a second word and enter it into the search engine. I'd then go to the second page that showed in the results, and so on. In this way I would spend hours trekking around the Internet, discovering websites that covered a wide variety of subject matter. Little by little I would build upon my bookmarks and slowly increase my vast knowledge of useless facts.

Of course, back in the nineties the threat of spyware, adware and virus's was not what it is today. So if you want to play the search engine game, then I suggest you arm yourself with an arsenal of anti-threatware utilities first. Incidentally there are many good free sources of anti-threatware available for download, here is a list of links to some of the better ones that I have discovered.

Anti-Virus
AVG Antivirus (free edition)
Trend Housecall (free online scan)

Spyware/Adware Removers
Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta (free edition)
Lavasoft Ad-Ware SE Personal (free edition)
Spybot Spyware Remover (free edition)

Firewalls
Zonealarm (free edition)
Sygate Personal (free edition)

Security Fixes from Gibson Research Corporation
DCOMbobulator (closes the DCOM's remote exploit in Windows XP)
Xpdite (Replaces an unsafe file in Windows XP)
ShootTheMessenger (prevents the Windows Messenger Service exploit)
Unplug n Pray (closes the Universal Plug and Play Service in Windows)
Gibson Research Corporation homepage

Enjoy your searching.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

it was the mid-nineties when i first got the net also and i was in amazement when i finally got to look at the the pictures from all the worlds telescopes. I am a big stargazing fan and I loved that the internet could let me look far into the galaxy. I found out there were really big stars to wish upon. lol. minxy

Agnes said...

Same here. Actually I feel that I owe a lot to the internet. I learn a lot of new things, I keep in touch with the rest of the world ... and I met my husband through the internet.

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