Tested 3 Video converters

I tested these converters using different types of disks.
We tested bot DVD and Blu-Ray.
We tested single movie disks and multi movie disks.
Another tested disk type was that of TV series.

Using for this testing was a i7 4 core 3.5 Ghz computer running windows 10 and Asus DVD and Blu Ray drives.

First tested was WonderFox DVD Video Converter version 15.0.
This is a low cost converter that only does DVDs. It has the ability to output to many formats and the ability to save the entire disk to an iso file.
With this converter you can load a dvd or load files from your hard drive.
You can also edit the video by setting a start time and end time should you wish only to export a section of it.
And you can crop it as to force it to be widescreen by removing the black on top and bottom.
Or you can use the crop feature to remove a smaller section of the film should you wish to do so.
It has a check box that will allow you to merge all loaded files into one video file.
This is useful if you have several vob files which are all from the same video.
The number of output files you can choose is impressive.
Another nice feature is it comes with Ringtone Studio should you want to create a ringtone for your cell phone.
It's quick and easy to use but as of the version I tested it has flaws.
Most noticeable on TV series I experienced the output file excluded about 1 minute of the beginning on a few episodes.
Also I have experienced sections of movies or TV series episodes repeating an earlier scene or scenes that were completely missing.
In addition another problem is it crashes when you click on run in the .
Due to the inability of this converter to produce a reliable export of the DVD I cannot recommend this version.
The cost is very low at $39.95 for a lifetime license and if they were to correct the problems it would be well worth to have.

The next one tested was Acrok Video Converter Ultimate version 6.0.96.1129
This converter can do DVD and Blue ray disks.
It has many of the same features as the Wonderfox Converter.
An added feature is the ability to preview a video in a player on the right side.
Another added feature is a much more powerful editor with abilities to Trim, Crop, add 3D, add an effect, add a watermark, add a subtitle and ability to fade, replace or remove the Audio.
I have run into disks that it wouldn't load proper but you can get around this by loading the vob files from the disk and check the merge check box under settings.
It too is buggie in that it crashes when first launched but after relaunching it tends to be more stable.
For the price of $59.00 it's not bad and the results are pretty good.

DVDFab 10.0.9.0 was the last one tested.
Without a doubt this one is the best one I tested.
It's ability to auto crop the video so that the output is widescreen makes it much easier to use.
It has the ability to Trim, Crop, add a watermark, add Subtitles and adjust the Brightness, Contrast or Saturation of the video.
It's a top shelf product which comes with a top shelf price.
If you are serious on Copying, Ripping or Converting Blu Ray, DVD or Video files then this is the product to get.
The cost for the full package is $369 but you can just buy it in separate parts.
For instance if you only wish to rip DVDs then that part will cost $79 for a lifetime license.
Or you can also get the Blu-ray ripper lifetime license for $119

I find it amusing that there are those such as Jackson Palmer that are crying about how things are going on the crypto market.
It seems he feels his crypto dream was shattered when real world markets took his dream into a different direction.
Well Mr. Palmer if your dream was some far left idea which you entered into a capitalist system I for one can't see why your surprised or upset.
What did you think would happen after all you created a coin which you offered to the public which you say was as a joke.
A joke?
One does not put a coin on the market and expect it to not trade.
So here is this person telling us that due to his phony coin doing well this entire market is a bubble!

There is no bubble in the crypto market!
There are so few people invested in this market which is less than one 70th of the stock market value.
There are few people in it because it's not easy to get in!
Coinbase for instance limits credit card purchases to $700 and requires you to wait a long period of time for bank transfers.
Coinbase only takes orders for 4 cryptos!
Then if one wants to trade for let's say Ripple, Cardona or another coins they must sign up with yet another exchange!
Investing in stocks is ten thousand times easier.
With all the blockades in place making it difficult to invest many people just give up.

There is no bubble as the system itself prevents a bubble from taking place.
Yes there is a long line wrapped around the virtual block waiting for a chance to get in.
But the systems in place cannot handle the demand and have turns many away.

This is not to say there will not be a bubble. I expect the bubble will take place at some point in the future.
This will happen when it becomes easier to trade coins for cash.

The other tool used by these crybabies is they claim that the market is ripe with crime.
Grow up I say as there is no more crime here than that which takes place on the OTC stock exchange.
You can find get rich quick schemes in abundance on the OTC market.
I find it no surprise that the crypto markets are any different.

I for one am not interested in what Jackson Palmer has to say.
As for those that are looking for good investments in the crypto market I wish them good hunting.

The biggest problem now facing the web is many millions of websites which are not running secure.

With browsers and search engines putting web security high on their list has made it so that millions of websites now need repairs.
Browsers have recently made it so web forms and not be filled in if the page is not secure.
They will go even further soon which will make websites that are not secure lose much traffic.
Search engines will rank non secure sites lower.
Although DV SSL certificates are now free by most hosting companies this alone does not solve the problem.
Sites that were not designed for security will have problems such as mixed content and proper redirects.
Most web designers that are not well skilled used full urls for links, images and other items requiring a url.
Best practice is to use relative urls as this neither points to a secure or non secure location.
A relative URL would be as follows for an image as you would put /images/imagename.jpg
This not only solves the secure problem but also solves the speed problem as relative urls are faster since they pull the request from the server directly.

Mixed content

This is a problem when includes, links or images are pointing to non secure urls.
This requires a tech to go over the entire website to fix all the urls and links on every page.
For those using Wordpress or Joomla this is a smaller problem as in most cases it's a quick fix.
Custom built sites on the other hand can require much work.
Problems can be in web pages or in CSS files and redirects need be created to make the secure page the default for all pages.

Advertisements add to the problem

Banner exchanges and ads are a problem also.
A banner ad which is pointing to a non secure page hurts your site.
Any thing on your site which has a link to a non secure site will cause your site to show as not secure!
Most banner exchanges, if not all of them, are not secure and worse have ads which point to non secure sites.
I have often had popups complaining about ads running on Skype as not secure!

How far the they go with this new direction taking place on the web remains to be seen.
One thing is for sure is having an SSL installed on your hosting account and having the secure url as a default is now a requirement.
Along with that is also that you must be sure all content on the site is also pointing to a secure url.

Having your website hacked can be a costly problem to repair and it will have negative effects on traffic.

People may not return to your site if they feel it's not a safe place to visit.

No matter the type of website you are running, keeping it secure is a must.

Popular CMS / blogs like WordPress or Joomla or Ecommerce such as PrestaShop and Magento all at times have security problems.

Once a security problem is discovered hackers will comb the net with their bots looking for the newly discovered problem.

When they find it, they will hack that website and either deface it, install a virus on it or make use of the email service for either spam or the purpose of spreading a virus.
The number of hackers over the past ten years has grown substantially.

Every server on the internet gets hit by hackers every day and the number of hackers per server is growing.

There are an estimated 75 million servers powering the internet and yet the hackers manage to hit every one of them every day.

These servers are not the only target which hackers go after as they also target personal PC's.

To avoid the major problem of being hacked you need be well informed on security problems.

Following these steps will cover the common problems that lead to the disaster of a hacked website.

First is to be sure everyone that has login access to your website is trusted.

Access should only be given to a small number of employees as the fewer there are the less chance of a mishap.

Each employee must have Anti-Virus on their PC which has subscriptions renewed every year without fail.

One of the methods hacker use to gain control of a website is by depositing spyware on a users PC.

That spyware looks for FTP passwords and if found will quickly take control of the website.

A user can be infected by this type of spyware by either email or by visiting an infected website.

Anti Virus programs such as Kaspersky or McAfee do an adequate job of blocking email infections.

To block websites, you will need to adjust your router to use a DNS service that blocks known bad websites.

Comodo, Norton ConnectSafe or Dyn have such features and are free to use.

In addition, quality routers allow you to block websites that you find could be a problem.
Change the settings in your router to use one of DNS services.

X rated websites are one of the number one causes of PC infections.
If you find a user viewing a site that is X Rated and gets past the blocking features of both the DNS service and the router then block it right away.

Have your ISP provide you with a dedicated IP is a must.
Most business accounts from popular ISP's come with a dedicated IP.
If your ISP does not provide it as part of the business package then order it as it will help with security in many ways.
 

Passwords to the website should be changed monthly or sooner and should be somewhat complex so a hacker can't guess it.

Also, they should be changed right away if you had to allow a software vendor or web technician to access the website to repair or upgrade the site.

Should you have to let go of any employee that has access or is suspect to have access you must change all passwords immediately.

A disgruntled employee is something to worry about and to be sure changing the passwords throughout your system is a good idea.

Do not send passwords over a message system such as Skype or your cell phone.

Do not email them over a non-secure email system.

If available for the website software you are using, add a Brute Force plugin / module.

This prevents a hacker from trying thousands of passwords to break into your site.
If the same person, identified by their IP address, fails more than x number of times on a login attempt they are locked out.

Do a search for brute force plugin or brute force module to see if there is one available for your software.

When setting up Brute Force enter your dedicated IP to the ignore list so you don't lock yourself out.
Also set it for three or four times as the limit of failed login attempts.

Install an SSL on your website so that when your login to the admin section you do so by a secure connection.  Make sure that when you navigate to the Admin login that the website automatically switches to the secure URL. This would be https:// verses http://
There are low cost SSL’s that are adequate for secure login which can be purchased for under $30.00
Unless you are also doing credit card sales through your website a higher priced SSL would be required.
The Comodo instant SSL which can be found for about $90 is good for money transactions.

Testing your SSL should be done after installing it and this can be done using this website testing tool -->  

Make sure your website does not allow users to view folders such as /images or /includes and any others that have no files you wish them to see.

This can be done in Linux by setting indexes in your .htaccess file as follows:   Options -Indexes

For Windows, which does not support that method, you need to disable directory browsing in the IIS Manager.

This will prevent users to view your files where you do not have an index file.
Another very simple way to do this is place a blank index file in the folder.
In notepad create a file named index.html and save it.
Copy that file to every folder where you do want visitors to view the files.
When a user go to that folder using this simple method they will see a blank page.

Software security problems take place every so often as software vendors try to keep pace with changes in technology.

When it is found that a new security issue has arisen the vendor will issue a patch to solve the problem.

Upgrading your software is a necessity for both your office PC's and the website software.

You must be sure that every PC is set to auto upgrade in the office.

Most popular website software like WordPress, Joomla or any other software used has online upgrade ability.

Some can be set to auto upgrade which may not be a good idea to do as sometimes upgrading your website may cause things to not work proper.

I suggest a manual upgrade so that you can quickly go back to a backup or quickly resolve the problem the upgrade caused.

Avoid mistakes when either adding new features or redesigning your website.

Software development should be done on a local PC or a different server.

After proper testing, backup your website and upload the new files.

Delete any older files which are not used anymore.

Many software developers make the mistake of moving the older version of the website to a folder named old or something like that.

This is often done also when manual upgrades are applied.

This is only ok if the old files are completely erased right away.

Making the mistake of leaving older versions of your website on your server / hosting account leaves a door wide open for a hacker.
 

Managing your hosting

The server where your website resides also must be updated with the latest patches.

If your website is on a shared server then this problem falls under the control of the hosting company.

Most hosting companies will provide a safe and secure environment for your website.

Things to check would be does your host provide a Mod security or similar firewall?

Does your host provide either a software or hardware firewall?

On a Windows server, a hardware firewall is highly recommended.

The newest version of PHP which is supported by your software should be used.

If your site resides on either a managed server or VPS hosting then you must have someone capable to manage the server.

This person must be able to update the server and install any patches on a daily basis.

The person you designate as your Admin must keep abreast of the latest security problems which can be found here http://www.cvedetails.com/

A check list is a good idea and one can be found here https://www.process.st/checklist/server-security-checklist/

In addition, scans, depending on the server OS, using anti-virus and a Root kit scanner.

Rkhunter is a good software for Linux or for Windows you can use TDSSKiller and Anti-Rootkit.

Only allow your dedicated IP the ability to FTP or SSH into the server.

Your server is your first line of defense and a well-maintained server which is setup properly and checked for updates daily will prevent a good percentage of hack attempts.
 

Last is proper backup.

Backing up your complete website daily with 7 days retention is a must.
This allows you to fall back any of the past seven days should a mishap take place.
I would prefer even more backups dating back further.

I hope this helps with you have a better understanding of the problems you face securing your website.

Using Wordpress or Joomla as a Website builder is now becoming a choice for those that want a simple easy website solution.
Unlike the many services out there that offer website builder services both Wordpress and Joomla are coming up with solutions that maybe a better way to go.

When you signup with a service like Wix or Squarespace your website is locked in with there company.
The site can not be moved without redesigning it as the site is built using their system.
There is no export ability as that would not be good for their business.
Those companies will not make it easy for you to change.
This is not good for one major reason - what if the company you signed up with goes out of business?
If no one takes them over your totally out of luck and no longer have a website.

A better solution to total ownership is build your site with either Wordpress or Joomla!
Both are just as easy to create pages as you will see in the videos below.
Another advantage to a Hosted solution is you get email service with it.
The only downside is that they need maintainence every so often for upgrades and patches.
But should your Web Host not be to your liking then moving your website is easy to do.
In fact you new host might even help you to move it.
So the cost of extra time required to run the upgrades is well worth it for the advantage of having email and total ownership.
 

Ok so lets start with Joomla first. Developers prefer Joomla for it's flexability and structure.
For first time users it will require a bit more time to learn as the cost of flexability is a longer learning curve.

The different builders available for Joomla are as follows:
Quix is a powerful builder
It supports all frameworks and when using Joomla a framework is suggested to use to avoid version upgrade problems.
A good framework will allow you to upgrade to a new major version without destroying the theme used.

Two others are and

Wordpress has several popular builders.

Beaver Builder, Divi and Nexusthemes

With Nexusthemes you pick a design from the many themes they support.

and Website Builders

The best tool to reap the most from your website.

Having looked over LiveAdmins I can say this mining tool along with their live chat does it all.
The power of LiveAdmins is it's ability to give you contact info of those people visiting your website.
Lets suppose that a client visits your site looking for info but never contacts you.
They did although leave their foot prints and with that info LiveAdmins can tell you who it was and what their email address and phone number is!
Well with this info you may have the ability to taylor ads to target their IP address or you can pass it on to your telemarketing people.
Most companies have fixed or what's called static IP addresses and due to this that IP address can be looked up to see who owns it.
The info given not only covers who owns the IP but also covers all known business email contacts and phone numbers.
Not all IP addresses will translate to complete information on who stopped by as only those using a business account with their ISP will be avalable.
For those visitors that visit your site using a personal ISP, home account verses a business account, it will only show who the ISP being used.
No other info will be displayed which is due to home accounts having IP addresses always changing.

In addition to the fantastic ability to garner all that info from visitors they also offer Live Chat. This helps catch a person on your site and trys to comunicate in hopes of selling your product. The Live Chat team is well trained, has basic knowledge of your business and will answer to the best of their ability. For questions they cannot answer they will ask the person if they would like someone to call them back.
When there is a business opportunity LiveAdmins will contact you by Voice mail, Email or SMS.

If you have a mothly budget to cover the cost of this service I think it's well worth it.

Contact us for info on setting up your site with Live Chat from LiveAdmins.

The Revo Uninstaller will remove hard to remove programs.

Have you decided to remove a program you installed many years ago but couldn't remove it. You might have gotten an error stating file not found or the uninstall never starts. This type of problem happens when Windows updates alters the way the windows installer or can happen if you upgraded to a newer version of Windows. In either case the Windows installer / uninstaller may no longer support the install method of that older program on your PC.

What not to do is erase the files of the program as that may cause problems with your PC. When programs are installed they enter information into the Windows Registry about the application. If those entries are also not removed that may cause a system crash depending on what type of  program was installed.

The answer is Revo Uninstall.
Revo Uninstall will first run the normal windows uninstall and then scan the PC by checking the Hard Drive and the Windows registry for any files or entries left by the application. After it finds everything related to the program it will list them for you to look over and allow you to delete them all removing them all from your PC. I have used this program for many years now and find it to be of great value. It helped when I upgraded to Windows 10 where I had a few programs that stopped working proper and had to be installed again. The problem was that when I tried to install them they wouldn't install. So I tried to remove them using the Windows uninstall and also no luck.
Using the Revo uninstaller took out the problem apps and I then had no problems installing them after a successful removal.

Using it is as easier than the Windows uninstaller. You launch it and you get a screen that lists all programs that in listed as installed in your PC. It shows either icons, list view or details view which shows the size of the program, Date it was installed, type (32 or 64 bit), Version, Company name and location of it. For Programs that are not listed it has a Hunter mode which when launched has a small blue box which appears on your screen. Place that box over a desktop icon, a folder in windows explorer / file explorer or over a running program. It will find it and remove it. This is a feature I never had to use but I am sure there is a need for it and it's nice to know it's there.

The program has other features which are nice but I will limit my review to just the uninstall which is the main reason one would buy it.

A video is provided at the company website located here

Revo has a free 30 day trial of the Uninstaller Pro which is available on their website at VSRevo Group.
 

Windows 10 has been released this year and to most people's surprise it is free to upgrade all the way down from Windows 7!

Microsoft is hurting big time.

The new version addresses the features that PC users demand to have.
These were the features that Microsoft decided to junk in favor of targeting Tablets for Windows 8.
The problem is the PC is king but the people running Microsoft seemed to have forgotten it.

So now we have Windows 10 and Microsoft is telling us how sorry they are for forsaking us PC users by giving us a free upgrade.

There is an old saying in the US that goes like this - Three Strikes and you’re Out!

So will the free upgrade be enough to redeem Microsoft?

I think it will as it is better than Win 7 in some ways such as faster starting and faster shut down and is the solution for Wundows 8 which was a major mistake. It also has DirectX 12 which many existing games that were written to support DirectX 11 will not be able to run at all on Windows 10 until a patch is available.

Do not go by the Games list given here as they were tested on a pre release of Windows which did not have DirectX 12.  If you look at the list it contains games that require DirectX 11 to run and the final version of Windows 10 was released with DirectX 12.

Now on to the positives and negatives of Windows 10.
What we have is a faster OS with better start up and shut down time than prior versions.
I have not found any application that ran into problems with this new OS.
Other than games it seems that if it worked on Win 7 then it will work on Win 10 also.

Upgrades have been improved both in the way they are administered and the way they are applied. Hard drive checking has changed as now you will see error checking under tools for properties of a drive. If you click it will tell you don't need to scan this drive as Windows has not found any errors on it. This is due to ReFs which was introduced with Win 8 where disk checking is now done by windows automatically. Last is Microsoft Edge which is a much better browser than Internet Explorer. You may find some websites will not work with Edge and to solve this problem there is a link in the menu to open the page with Internet Explorer. Microsoft has provided both browsers with Windows 10.
The upgrade from Win7 or Win 8 is flawless.

On the downside we have a start menu that is horrible. Microsoft has given us a one dimensional menu that is so backwards I find it hard to believe this is part of the I'm sorry gift!

The best solution is to install the Classic Start Menu which is a free download at Classic Shell.

If you like Card Games you will face another problem. They now want you to login to play them! My guess is they want a new way to throw ads at you or worse they want a better profile of you!
In any event no matter why they pushed this on us I prefer not to login to play solitaire and found that you can install the original Games from Win 7 in Win 10 from this link Winaero.com

The standard control panel is still available to use but we have a mish mosh mix of Win 8 ideas along with Win 7. So you have the new settings screen and the control panel screen.
I can't see why they came up with this settings screen as it's ten times more work to get to what I want.

Having installed it on my PC I find I can live with the problems of this still backwards OS.
I did how ever had one problem which was the calendar did not work.
Turned out I had to remove a entry in the registry in order for it to function.
The solution was found here at answers.microsoft.com and I believe it's an upgrade problem which will not show in fresh installs and also not in all upgrades.
Had Microsoft not come up with Windows 10 I would have moved to Linux.

Open source has advantages as the products much better reflect what the users want rather than what some CEO wants.

In closing Windows 10 has made up somewhat for the horrible Windows 8 move that Microsoft has made. I believe games that were designed to work with DirectX 11 better move fast to create patches as I think the lure of high performance gaming will move most gamers
to Windows 10 quickly.

If you are still using Windows XP you will find that Internet Explorer no longer works with most websites. This is due to it being limited to version 8 which forced XP users to switch to Firefox or Chrome Browsers. This same problem will take place with Windows 7.  The way Microsoft forces you to upgrade is they don't offer newer versions of the web browser or DirectX to the older operating systems.

So we can expect Internet Explorer 11 will not be able to view many websites in the future.
For this reason I think upgrading is something that you have to do.
If you use your PC for games then I would check if your games you like will run on Win 10 and wait if they don't. The main factor is if your current game requires a specific version of DirectX.
My guess is most game companies will have a patch for older games as pressure for DirectX 12 will ramp up by users for both older games and new games.

I have in the past been a Microsoft supporter where I find myself in an opposite position these days. In the past many were against Microsoft and I was for it.
Today most are for it and I am starting to look for other solutions.

I have been upgrading my PC and Windows since Windows version 2.
In each case when I upgraded my PC I would move the Hard drives over to a new one or would restore the drive image to a new larger drive.
The PC I am using today is directly upgraded version by version from Windows 2

Google has decided to use Captcha!

Maybe someone in Google thinks this is a good idea but I doubt they will think that for long. Having run into Captcha several times I started to use other search engines.
If I'm doing it others will do it too. So Wall Street should not be surprised if Google's profit is down in the next two quarters.

Search spam is a problem one which we experienced firsthand. We had invested quite a bit of money in a meta search engine but search spam had become such a problem we decided to drop the meta engine and took quite a loss in time and money.

I can see why Google is addressing this problem but using captcha is not a solution.
There are many ways to prevent some of this abuse but using automated blocking of any kind in my opinion is not the way to go.
Nothing works better than human intervention where a person can decide what is search spam and what is normal search habits people may have.
And if found to be spam then proper action should be contacting the ISP or Host and informing them.

But I guess Google will at some point notice it's ad revenue is down and someone in upper management will be given the task to find out why. That person will have to write a report on what his department found. The report will be presented at a meeting and will include recommendations on what actions should be taken.

In the end someone will lose their job for coming up with an idea that cost the company millions of dollars in lost ad revenue.
A mistake that one would not want to put on their job resume.
In the end Captcha will be gone and a new person will head up that department.

So I guess until then I will use Bing or Yahoo.