G8BPQ has just released BPQ32 v4.10L and the 3rd public beta of BPQMailChat (aka BPQ BBS and Chat Server) version v1.0.3.11 today.

With this latest beta release of BPQMailChat, the progression of this modern packet radio BBS software project continues along at a very nice pace.  Before long the packet radio community will have a modern and feature packed packet radio BBS software package that will be actively developed and supported.

Changelogs can be found here.

BPQ32 v4.10L (not beta) is available via the BPQ32 Yahoo Group here.

BPQMailChat v1.0.3.11 is available via the BPQMailChat Yahoo Group here.

Note:  The download from either group is the same and during installation you choose whether or not you wish to install the BPQMailChat module or just the basic BPQ32 node install.

BPQMailChat is beta software. Features may be missing or incomplete  and you should expect bugs/glitches…duh. Report bugs, but please keep expectations realistic.

The Sun VirtualBox team just announced the availability of VirtualBox v3.0.10 for various OS platforms. Latest downloads can be found here.

Version 3.0.10 is mainly a maintenance release and contains many bug fixes/improvements judging by the changelog here.

UPDATE:  10/21/2009 – noticed they changed domains again to verycleanpc.com recently.  Very Clean PC dot com just appears to be the same old Cyberdefender nonsense.

After hearing advertising for doublemyspeed.com with “interesting” claims in them, some have asked about it and my own curiosity was raised.

There’s a ton of this “speed your PC up” software out there. Often it’s advertised with some pretty great sounding claims but no real evidence to back the claims up. Most of the time, this stuff is simply good at one thing….helping suckers part with their hard earned dollars. Often they do this by getting their advertising to run on various radio and TV networks in an attempt to build credibility.

You know what they say about “if it sounds too good to be true……”

Folks, unless you’ve got serious virus/spyware problems, it’s pretty hard to swallow that any piece of software will make your PC twice as fast. A little common sense goes a long ways here. The performance issues caused by registry errors are often very exaggerated (I’m being kind).

Yes registry errors could be the source of errors, some serious for sure, but major performance impact is rare at best.  Working in IT, far too often I’ve had to go in and fix problems and serious messes created by these registry cleaning tools that can do more harm than good. If this was such a huge problem don’t you think Microsoft would come up with their own tool for this? Who would know the Windows registry better than Microsoft?

Back to DoubleMySpeed.com ….

Double My Speed just appears to be a “re-branding” of the Cyberdefender product(s).  Judging by the user comments  on McAfee’s Site Advisor “cyberdefender.com” page here, you don’t need to ponder for long  as to why they might of changed the name.

Curious about it and an IT guy myself, I took an older Dell laptop that I have handy for such testing. I dropped a known clean and perfectly functional fresh XP Pro install image onto it. This would allow me to check this software out carefully and in a controlled environment.

Next, I went to www.doublemyspeed.com and downloaded their software and installed it. By default it opts you into yet another browser toolbar called “MyIdentityDefender Security Toolbar” which doesn’t appear to be that useful and has an interesting terms of use agreement (what else is new). Normally I’d never install a third party toolbar that tries to automatically opt me into it (box already checked), but wanting to stick to a default install of their software I did so.

When I ran it, the software is clearly labeled as CyberDefender Registry Cleaner Trial. I did not see any sign of anti-virus or anti-spyware capabilities in it.

I run it and wow it strangely comes up with 424 errors. Obviously my Bravo Sierra (BS) detector hit the red zone!  Nice try CyberDefender, Double My Speed, or whomever you are this week. Your results are apparently next to useless and I see nothing here that would help a user with a virus or malware problem.

Figuring what the heck, since this is a test image…I hit the “fix it” button. Of course, like most of this software it immediately opens the web browser and you have to pay to go any further (up-selling). The software stays in the system tray and ran again on reboot with another “you’ve got 424 registry errors” screen again. Would it continue to do so as I use the laptop? I don’t know as by this time I’d seen more than enough from this software.

Folks, IMHO don’t waste your time on this software which I’d have to classify as borderline scareware at best.

Looking over their website I note a few things that always makes me nervous:

1.  Logos that indicate reviews by USA Today, CNET, and Computerworld, yet no links to the actual reviews.

2.   Images of folks saying it “worked great for them” with rather generic looking names, no locations, no links to the email or letter to back this up.

3.  Statements like this in their privacy policy “CyberDefender is not a licensee of TRUSTe’s privacy program but is committed to complying with TRUSTe’s policies and practices.”

4.  Terms of Service that contains provisions like this “All purchasers of the Software are automatically subscribed to the Plan and the original credit card will be charged automatically (or withdraw funds via electronic transfer from your checking account – depending on what payment method you are using)”

5. I’m always gun shy of products and services that use “heavy” advertising day in, day out, month after month. If the product or service is really that great, they would not have to spend all that money advertising now would they?  Advertising isn’t cheap, especially national ads playing all day long. Truly great products and services will sell themselves with only minimal initial and/or occasional advertising to build awareness.

Many things in both their Terms of Service and Privacy policy make me very nervous about this firm and it’s business practices. They may be perfectly fine and legal, but I’m not going to do business with them.

If you just think you must have a registry cleaner, I’m fairly sure there are free ones out there that are better than this software.

The toolbar?

Read the user agreement and the “opt in” screen during the installation and you can make up your own mind if you really want this on your system. This toolbar appears to be by the same company that tells me I’ve got 424 errors on a good/fresh XP install. ’nuff said?

If you want a security toolbar for your browser then you’re probably better off sticking to well recognized ones like McAfee’s, Yahoo’s, or NetCraft’s toolbar offerings.  I highly recommend you consider the NetCraft toolbar here. Your call though.

Personally, neither the Registry Cleaner or the toolbar component will be left on my systems. The test laptop was imaged back to it’s previous state after a post scan image was made.

I will be very curious to see how the user comments on McAfee’s SiteAdvisor page for doublemyspeed.com here turn out over time.  Wonder how long CyberDefender will stick with doublemyspeed.com before changing the advertised domain name again?

All this said, I encourage folks not to rely solely upon my review of it. Please do your own research and form your own opinions of this software’s appropriateness.

Comments (kept civil and clean) are open on this post.

Update:

Some links to folks discussing these CyberDefender products. Granted folks can say/post  anything on the internet, both negative and positive. Also folks behind these products can hide and post positive reviews too…works both ways. So be careful and make your own informed choices:

Discussion on the complaintsboard.com site.

Complaint on RipoffReport.com site.

Another complaint.

Fire up your favorite search engine and try  doublemyspeed.com scam as your search, you’ll find plenty to read over. This is a good idea for any new software you’re considering on your computer. A healthy dose of skepticism will serve you well in today’s world.

You know what they say about “if it sounds too good to be true……”

————-

UPDATE:  10/21/2009 – noticed they changed domains again to verycleanpc.com recently.  Very Clean PC dot com just appears to be the same old Cyber Defender nonsense.

Sun Microsystems has just released Solaris 10 10/09. This is the 8th major update to the Solaris 10 operating system.  Downloads can be found here.

Solaris 10 10/09 (aka Update includes many updates, fixed, and additions such as, but not limited to:

1.  Numerous well tested updates and fixes are included. Think of it as Solaris 10 with “Service Pack 8″ integrated. Saves you time when building up a new server as you need to download/install fewer updates as compared to an installation done with older media. Microsoft could learn some lessons here, especially as they continue to provide fewer and fewer service packs for their products.  SP2 is it for Windows Server 2003, you gotta be kidding me?  Sun supports their OS products for a much longer and reasonable time frames.  Thus every time you turn around you are are not being forced into OS upgrades to perfectly functional production systems.

2.  Support for newer hardware and a continued focus on improving/extending power management features. How fast are your data center electric and cooling bills growing? Getting ugly are they not?  Judging by the increasingly  idiotic energy policy ideas coming out of Washington, unnecessary and skyrocketing energy costs are likely in the near future.

3.  ZFS support for Solid State Drives.  Improvements towards more fine grained file system resource limits.

4.  More streamlined system installation and management. Improvements to system patching/updating. Parallel patching of Solaris Containers (very nice). New automated framework for patching in single user mode (nice). Considerably (up to 4x) faster patching and package installs in many scenarios.

And more, check it out.

UPDATE:  Version 3.0.10 is now available.

The Sun VirtualBox team has recently announced the availability of VirtualBox v3.0.8 for various OS platforms. Latest downloads can be found here.

Version 3.0.8 is mainly a maintenance release and contains many bug fixes/improvements judging by the changelog here.

OpenSolaris Preview 2010.02 (based on build 124) is available as of October 1, 2009.

You can get it here.

PS – For the ham radio guys/gals out there interested in using OpenSolaris for ham radio related needs, feel free to check out the Solaris & OpenSolaris Ham Radio Group. It’s just getting started and we could use both end users and developers interested in getting various ham radio software ported/packaged for use on Solaris/OpenSolaris.

Updated to cover the main Fall & early Winter 2009 VHF/UHF Contests:

September 19-20, 2009:
ARRL 10 GHz and up Contest
http://www.arrl.org/contests/rules/2009/10-GHz.html

September 21, 2009:
144 MHz Fall Sprint
http://www.svhfs.org/fall_sprint_rules_2009.pdf (PDF file)

September 29, 2009:
222 MHz Fall Sprint
http://www.svhfs.org/fall_sprint_rules_2009.pdf (PDF file)

October 7, 2009:
432 MHz Fall Sprint
http://www.svhfs.org/fall_sprint_rules_2009.pdf (PDF file)

October 10-11, 2009:
ARRL International EME Competition
http://www.arrl.org/contests/rules/2009/eme.html

October 17, 2009:
Microwave (902+) Fall Sprint
http://www.svhfs.org/fall_sprint_rules_2009.pdf (PDF file)

October 24, 2009:
50 MHz Fall Sprint
http://www.svhfs.org/fall_sprint_rules_2009.pdf (PDF file)

November 7-8, 2009:
ARRL International EME Competition
http://www.arrl.org/contests/rules/2009/eme.html

December 5-6, 2009:
ARRL International EME Competition
http://www.arrl.org/contests/rules/2009/eme.html

Andy McCarthy has a good piece on the National Review site titled “It Makes Them Nuts that Cheney Was Right” that is an a great read. It also explains so much about why the far left and their media buddies react to Cheney the way the do. Not that Cheney cares, there’s a peace that comes with knowing that you’re right.

Now I’ll admit there are things about Cheney that make me pause at times, but I don’t see him as the evil monster many try to make him out to be. When it comes to foreign policy I’d trust Cheney over the current administration any day. While we can definitely debate the methods used, there’s not much debate that the Bush-Cheney administration kept us safe for 8 years. So if nothing else, Cheney at least has a track record of substance on this topic.

Some good parts of Andy’s article:

“the WPost’s Greg Sargent, who wonders why the famously pro-Cheney media are not tearing into the veep for hyping the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation tactics. As Steve relates, it could be because, by simply reading the reports that were declassified earlier this week, one learns that the coercive methods clearly worked on top terrorists KSM and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (the Cole bomber), among others”

and

“Back in the spring, the Obama administration shamelessly tried to rig the “torture” debate by revealing secret interrogation tactics to our enemies but denying the American people information about the life-saving intelligence those tactics produced. The veep didn’t let them get away with it, publicly insisting that that the intel be released so the interrogation program could be judged fairly. The Obama administration tactically tried to bury the fact that Cheney was right by stonewalling for five months and then, finally, releasing the intel on the same day it disclosed a five-year-old report on interrogation abuses (and AG Holder’s appointment of a prosecutor to look into same). Contrary to Sargent’s deranged read on events, the media are mum because they are trying to help Obama obscure the fact that Cheney was right. But the truth is a stubborn thing.”

Matt Welch has a good piece on the reason site titled “Obama’s Lies Matter, Too.”

I’d post good portions of it, but it’s all pretty darn good reading with many good points and analysis. Matt does sum it up very nicely in this one sentence:

“The president pushes back against health care misinformation, then spreads a bunch of his own.”