The French poet Charles Baudelaire observed back in the 1800s, “Inspiration comes of working every day.” Most people do work every day, and unfortunately it’s not only inspiration that comes of it. Repetitive stress injuries (RSI) are also the result of every day tasks performed again and again while operating a computer. Relief is in sight, however, thanks in part to a particular government agency. This organization is raising awareness and promoting solutions 24/7.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has a mandate to protect employees from being hurt in the workplace. James Hodgson, Secretary of Labor, established OSHA within his department in 1971. This was in response to the Occupational Safety and Health Act, legislation he helped author. For the first time in U.S. history, the government stepped in to make sure that workers were as protected as possible from illness, injury, and death on the job. And OSHA had its work cut out for it. Construction, chemical, and agricultural workers were among the many who needed better safety standards in their industries.

But as computer use rose, and the related RSI grew, OSHA turned its attention to this new problem. In recent years, OSHA has developed a four part program designed to reduce injuries and illnesses associated with computer use on the job. The four parts are

Guidelines, Outreach and Assistance, Enforcement, and the National Advisory Committee.

Guidelines are recommended practices that are developed for specific tasks and industries. These are voluntary, not mandatory. Employers use the guidelines to identify and modify risks in the workplace. Implementing these practices reduces injuries related to the way people do their jobs.

The Outreach and Assistance component of this program is aimed at businesses of all sizes. OSHA wants companies to take a proactive stance when it comes to preventing RSI. To help employers, OSHA designed an extensive array of tools that educate, analyze, and train people regarding the ergonomics of their jobs. Available to the public for free on the OSHA website, the computer workstation portion of the Ergonomics eTools is a comprehensive guide to proper computing techniques.

Included in this section is:

Good Working Position (talks about every part of the body and what the best placement is for preventing RSI)

Workstation Components (all the technology and furniture you commonly use is listed here with possible hazards, solutions, and tips)

Checklist (a great way to evaluate how you’re doing ergonomically while you operate a computer)

Work Process (focuses on the physical movements of computer use, with hazards to watch for, more solutions, and tips)

Workstation Environment (information about factors people often don’t think about such as lighting, ventilation, and glare)

But Outreach and Assistance is more than the Ergonomic eTools. It has industry guidelines, cooperative programs, ergonomic analysis info, and success stories. It even has a checklist with tips for new purchases. It is chock full of valuable information for everyone from the individual computer user to the captains of industry.

OSHA persists in its campaign to help employers and employees prevent Repetitive Stress Injuries. If the folks at OSHA have their way, inspiration will be the only result of long hours of work in front of a computer. Baudelaire would approve

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Managed hosting may best be described as the premium version of Web hosting. Managed hosting takes a lot of the guesswork and administration out of the hands of the client and on to the hands of the managed hosting provider. Managed hosting is much more a customized solution than other pre-packaged basic Web hosting solutions. The price, of course, reflects that.

With managed hosting firms you’ll generally get dedicated servers that are custom built to your firm’s specifications, or configurations with multiple servers. You’ll get top notch 24 hour seven day a week Level three Internet hosting support and a datacenter that has state of the art technology and services.

Managed hosting should offer close to 100 percent uptime guarantee of its network services, and 24 hour security for its datacenter. Included in the standard managed hosting services are managed disaster recovery and backup, security and network services, database services, and administration and monitoring of all your firm’s computer systems.

If a firm has a large volume of online traffic, it may need the load balancing solution that is offered by most managed hosting vendors. This load balancing will improve the performance of the network by efficiently distributing the site traffic. This keeps each server from being overwhelmed by unexpected activity fluctuations. Having this balance on the server load is crucial to a high degree of availability, to fault tolerance and to clustering. All of these provide reliable Internet and corporate network infrastructures.

Firewalls are part of managed hosting, and a crucial security requirement. They prevent unauthorized access to the server as well as from it. Managed hosting vendors can place firewalls in both software and hardware or both. All messages that leave or enter the server or the business network would have to pass through this managed hosting firewall, and those that don’t pass security would be blocked.

Regular managed hosting backup is a must have to prevent catastrophic business consequences to national or other disaster or outage. Managed hosting vendors offer such backup are able to provide reliable and consistent data protection, as well as recovery. Managed hosting firms can also help businesses change their network and systems, upgrading, adding options and extending solutions.

The best managed hosting vendor will include port monitoring as part of its hosting package. This port monitoring services lets business clients configure the host system so that they monitor the client’s server as well as its ports. This configuration and its maintenance are client responsibilities, and the alerts would be sent directly to the client firm.

Should a firm wish to enhance this port monitoring service, the managed hosting package upgrade would provide a greater level of such monitoring. If technicians at the managed hosting firm’s site were to see a system failure they would restart the failed portion of the equipment. The vendor’s staff maintains and configures the port monitoring as part of this enhanced package.

The managed hosting administrator for the host server lets the administrator setup the servers, and manage and control them. Administrators can create their domains, set up e-mail accounts, create file transfer protocol (FTP) accounts, select interface languages, limit the site traffic, create directories chosen for protection, manage SSL certificates, view the statistics for graphics, and manage multiples of both users and databases.

Managed hosting Web site statistics are typically very detailed, configured easily and delivered in HTML format so that they can be viewed with any standard Internet browser. Site statistics are generally flexible and quickly available with a good managed hosting vendor.

Domain licenses are inexpensive managed hosting add-ons, which start at 30 domain licenses, and have no ceiling on the number available.

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Bluetooth technology is a low-power, low-cost wireless technology for short-range radio communication between various fixed and/or portable electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PDAs, cars, stereo headsets, MP3s, digital cameras, PCs and computer peripherals. Bluetooth also refers to the standard communication protocol (IEEE 802.15.1) specifically designed for this kind of short-range wireless communication.

The core of Bluetooth technology lies in a low-cost 9 mm x 9 mm microchip that functions as a short-range radio link when inserted into an electronic device, making the device Bluetooth-enabled. Wireless communication between various bluetooth-enabled devices takes place via these radio links, instead of via cables as used in normal networking. Since Bluetooth technology uses radio signals, which are omni-directional and can be transmitted through walls and other obstacles, Bluetooth-enabled devices don’t need to be in line of sight or be pointing at each other.

Bluetooth radio modules operate in the open, unlicensed ISM (industrial–scientific–medical) spread-spectrum 2.4 GHz frequency band, divided into 79 channels separated by 1 MHz each. To avoid interference from other signals, the Bluetooth signal hops to a new channel every time it transmits or receives a data packet, making Bluetooth connection robust and secure. The communication range of Bluetooth technology varies from 1 m to 100 m, depending upon the maximum power permitted (1 mW to 100 mW). Because of this channel hopping, there should not be a consistent problem with other devices using the 2.4 Ghz frequency band, such as old cordless phones.

Each Bluetooth-enabled device can simultaneously communicate with up to seven other devices within a single personal area network, called a piconet. Each device can simultaneously belong to several piconets. Each device negotiates with each other via a defined device name so that each device can keep track of who it is communicating with. The device name to use when you are setting up your Bluetooth device is typically cleared stated in the accompanying device documentation.

Bluetooth technology offers built-in security with 128-bit encryption and PIN code authentication. When Bluetooth products identify themselves, they use the PIN code the first time they connect, thereafter staying securely connected.

Practical Applications of Bluetooth Networking

Some of the popular applications of Bluetooth technology are in wireless networking between a mobile phone and a laptop/desktop, between a mobile phone and a hands-free headset, between PCs in a restricted space and between the input and output devices of a PC (e.g., mouse, keyboard, printer). Bluetooth technology can also be used to transfer files, images and MP3 files between mobile phones or between MP3 players/digital cameras and computers.

Limitations of Bluetooth Technology

Short communication range (up to 100 m) is the greatest limitation of Bluetooth technology. Also, the data transfer rates are much lower compared to other wireless communication technologies. Susceptibility to interference from other devices operating in the 2.4 MHz band, notwithstanding adaptive frequency hopping, is another limitation. The Bluetooth technology is still not fully developed, so there is plenty of room for improvement.

Bluetooth-Enabled Devices

The Bluetooth wireless technology specification is available free-of-charge to Bluetooth member companies around the world. Many companies are interested in making their devices Bluetooth-enabled in order to avoid the clutter of wires with seamless connections and offer simultaneous transmission of data and voice as in hands-free talking.

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Almost everyone who accesses the Internet and uses e-mail knows about spam. The common definition of spam is e-mail that is unsolicited, undesired by the recipient. Spam is sent out by automated programs to thousands or millions email addresses at a time. In most cases spam emails offer you different services, products (medicines, goods, software programs etc.), and “get rich quickly” plans. You can simply delete them if you receive several unsolicited emails per day. But if you get tens or hundreds spam messages every day, it is a real problem. In order to understand how to deal with spam in your inbox, let’s examine some core questions concerning spam:

Why send spam?

The right answer is to make money. If you have never opened a spam message, you should not think that others don’t do it either. Among thousands or millions people who receive spam you can always find one or several persons who actually purchase services or products the spammers advertise, or join the “get rich” schemes the spammers offer. Of course, they lose and the spammer wins.

How do spammers obtain email addresses?

Spammers use special software programs that search websites, forums, newsgroups and harvest posted email addresses. They can use computer viruses and spyware to steal the email addresses from personal address books. Spammers often purchase lists of email addresses from other spammers, or from some dishonest companies, which do not care about the privacy of their customers’ information.

What danger lies behind spam?

Never buy pharmaceutical drugs such as Valium, Viagra, Cialis, Anatrim, etc. advertised in spam emails. These medications are counterfeited for 99% and can be dangerous.

Viruses - one of the most common computer security threats - can also be spread in spam emails. The worst thing is that viruses slip onto your computer without being noticed. You may think that you will download new free software when you click on a link within a spam message but actually you will get at least one virus infection - most probably a trojan virus. This type of virus can destroy data, steal your personal information such a user name, password, or just download other nasty software onto your computer that will cause more harm. A virus can hide itself in a picture, video or audio file. Certain anti-spam programs such as G-Lock SpamCombat let you preview the messages in a safe mode, i.e. they don’t allow any suspicious pictures to be downloaded nor malicious codes to be executed.

A virus is a nuisance but phishing is a real danger. This type of spam is becoming very popular now. This is a method of tricking consumers with the purpose to worm them out of their personal information such as bank account numbers, passwords, user names, and credit card details. The spammers send a fraudulent email that usually appears to come from financial institutions like Ebay or Paypal saying that there is some trouble with your account and that you need to update it. There is a link within the message that you should follow to update the account details. The web site usually looks like a real company’s web site. But as soon as you start filling the presented form in, the program starts recording your keystrokes and your private details are now disclosed to the spammer.

How to fight spam?

It is prudent to use an anti-spam filter to block annoying, time consuming, and sometimes dangerous spam emails. Anti-spam software checks your incoming emails and immediately moves spam messages into a special trash folder. If you want a good internet security suite that includes a spam blocker, consider BitDefender Professional Plus, Kaspersky Internet Security, F-Secure Internet Security or eTrust Internet Security. For a standalone spam filtering program, look at McAfee Spam Killer, G-Lock SpamCombat, Spam Assassin, Mail Washer Pro or ZapASpam.

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Not a long time ago, most anti-spam products simply used a list of keywords to identify spam. A good set of keywords could catch much spam. However, a keyword-based anti-spam filter requires manual updating and can be easily fooled by tweaking the message a little. Spammers simply examine the latest anti-spam techniques and find ways to bypass them. At the result you’re left with a high number of false positives.

The need in a new effective technique to fight against spam stood up. The experience showed that this new method might adapt itself to the spammers’ tactics that would change with time.

The Bayesian filtering is based on the principle that most events are dependent and that the probability of an event occurring in the future can be inferred from the occurrences of this event in the past. This approach is used to identify spam. If some piece of text occurred mostly in spam emails but not in legitimate mail, then it would be reasonable to suppose that this email is probably spam.

To filter mail using the Bayesian technology, you need to generate a database of words collected from spam and legitimate mail. Then a probability value is assigned to each word; the probability is based on the calculations that take into account how often that word occurs in spam as opposed to legitimate mail.

After the legitimate and spam databases are created during an initial training period, the word probabilities can be calculated and the Bayesian filter is ready for use. When a new mail arrives, it is broken into words and the most significant words are singled out. From these words, the Bayesian filter calculates the probability of a new message being spam or not. If the probability is greater than a spam threshold, say 0.9, the message is classified as spam.

Tip! G-Lock SpamCombat allows you assign the hot keys to the common operations. For example, you can assign F8 to Mark Message as SPAM function and F9 to Mark Message as Clean. Next time when you train the Bayesian filter you can simply use two keys on your keyboard F8 and F9.

It is important to note that the analysis of spam and legitimate mail is performed on the mail the particular user (organization, company, etc.) receives, and therefore the Bayesian filter is adjusted to this particular person, company, or organization. For example, a financial institution may receive a lot of emails with the “mortgage” word and would get a lot of false positives if using an outdated anti-spam filter. The Bayesian filter analyzes the entire message with the word “mortgage”, and concludes whether this email is spam or legitimate basing NOT only on a single keyword “mortgage”. The Bayesian approach to filter spam is highly effective - spam detection rates of over 99.7% can be achieved with a very low number of false positives!

Let’s summarize what benefits we get using the Bayesian filter to catch spam:

1) Much more intelligent approach because it examines all aspects of a message, as opposed to keyword checking that classifies a mail as spam on the basis of a single word.

2) Self-adapting - constantly learning from new spam and new valid inbound mails, the Bayesian filter evolves and adapts to new spam techniques.

3) Sensitive to the user – it learns the email habits of the company and understands that, for example, the emails with the “mortgage” word are not always spam.

4) Multi-lingual and international - being adaptive it can be used for any language. The Bayesian filter also takes into account certain languages deviations or the diverse usage of certain words in different areas, even if the same language is spoken.

5) Difficult to fool, as opposed to a keyword filter - an advanced spammer who wants to trick the Bayesian filter can either use fewer words that usually indicate spam, or more words that generally indicate valid mail (such as a valid contact name, etc). Doing the latter is impossible because the spammer would have to know the email profile of each recipient - and a spammer can never hope to gather this kind of information from every intended recipient.

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