Digital Commons Network^™

Is Anti-Virus A Necessary Evil?, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

While everybody is becoming more and more dependent on computers there are some unscrupulous people who continuously try to misuse the technology and get illegal and illegitimate benefit out of this sophisticated environment. Today the Internet is like a busy street or open market place where you find almost everything you want. As there are some obvious risks when you stand or move in a busy street such as you are likely to be pick pocketed or cheated or even knocked out by a rash driving vehicle. Similar threats loom over the head of a user when he is exposed …

Evolution Of User Interfaces For The Visually Impaired, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Physically or mentally challenged people cannot use a computer in the same way a normal people can. For example, persons with disability in hands cannot use a standard keyboard or mouse efficiently. Persons having visual disability cannot benefit from a standard display screen. People having locomotor challenge, visual disability or hearing problem etc. cannot interact with a computer like a normal person. So it is necessary to design the computers, interfacing devices and software interfaces with special features, which can be used by the people with physical challenges.

There are many input/output devices like mouse, keyboard, pointers, and touch screens …

Understanding Secrets Of Sustainability Through Triz Philosophy, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

After creating the weapons that can destroy the world, the next challenge of man is not to win an enemy but to survive the disasters. The modern man realizes that the worst challenges to face are the manmade disasters. While the nature has given us a well-disposed atmosphere to grow we are spoiling the natural resources through various anti-environmental activities. Our partial knowledge on development has taken us through a so-called development, which is neither eco-friendly nor sustainable. It is therefore important to control our own activities and behavior to minimize their negative effects on other adjacent systems and environment. …

Critical Considerations For Developing Mis For Ngos, Umakant Mishra, Kailash Chandra Dash

Umakant Mishra

Although Information Systems and Information Technology (IS & IT) has become a major driving force for many of the current day organizations, the NGOs have not been able to utilize the benefits up to a satisfactory level. Most organizations use standard office tools to manage huge amount for field data and never feel the need for a central repository of data. While many people argue that an NGO should not spend too much money on information management, it is a fact that organizing the information requires more of a mindset and an organized behavior than a huge financial investment.

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-5), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

As the “inventive standards” are really complicated, Generich Altshuller and other creators of “inventive standards” created a set of standards (grouped under class-5) to help using the standards. There are totally 17 standards in class-5. This article will try to simplify all these 17 standards under class-5.

While writing these articles the author realized that although the grouping and ordering of the 76 standards don’t appear to be systematic there is no easy method of regrouping or reorganizing the standards. The author tried regrouping and reordering the standards in various different ways but nothing really came out satisfactory. Much more …

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-3), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

According to TRIZ most problems are “standard” problems. The standard problems are those which are known to have occurred many times in many places. Besides these problems have been solved by different people in different places (may be in different contexts) at different times. As there are many known solutions to such problems it is possible to abstract the rules of solution from the group of individual solutions. TRIZ provides a set of 76 rules to solve such standard problems.

Although “Inventive Standards” (or standard solutions) is one of the most powerful techniques of TRIZ it is hardly used by …

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-4), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although “Inventive Standards” (or standard solutions) is one of the most powerful techniques of TRIZ it is hardly used by any TRIZ practitioner because of its complexity. The objective of this series of articles is to explain the rules in simple language. In this article we will discuss all the solutions in class-4. There are 17 solutions in class-4 all of which deal with the problems relating to measurement and detection. For example some objects may be extremely large (e.g. earth) or extremely small (e.g., atoms) and cannot be easily measured. Some items like germs and viruses are not visible …

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-2), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

In the previous article we discussed all the standard solutions in class-1. In this article we will discuss all the standard solutions in class-2. The standards of class 2 intend to improve the system without inserting too much changes to the system and without increasing the complexity of the system. These standards guide how to use chain SFields, Double SFields and complex S-Field Models.

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-1), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although “Inventive Standards” (or standard solutions) is one of the most powerful techniques of TRIZ it is hardly used by any TRIZ practitioner because of its complicacy. This article describes the rules of “inventive standards” in simple language one by one for all the standards of class-I. The standards of other classes are described in separate articles.

Designing An Mis Database For Selection And Recruitment, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Selection and recruitment is a key HR function and it is often necessary to maintain at least a small database of all the candidates who have been invited in past interviews. This information may be considered as a part of HR MIS and may be maintained by HR department along with other HR MIS such as employee information, transfers, performance appraisals, trainings etc.

This recruitment MIS database includes all the candidates after the preliminary scrutiny is over. When the candidates go through different stages of interviews, the MIS also captures all their interview results. Maintaining this information not only helps …

Introduction To Management Information System, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A Management Information System (MIS) is an information system that is intended to be used by the higher management of an organization. The MIS generally collects summarized data from different departments or subsystems of an organization and presents in a form that is helpful to the management for taking better decisions for the organization.

Management Information Systems Vs. Other Information Systems, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A Management Information System (MIS) is a systematic organization and presentation of information that is generally required by the management of an organization. In one sense MIS is a part or subset of the Information Management System of an Organization. There are different types of information systems such as, Transaction Processing System (TPS), Decision Support System (DSS), Executive Support System (ESS) etc. having some differences and some overlapping.

MIS is different from DSS as the later uses unstructured data to take non-standard decisions. MIS is different from TPS and the later is used for day-to-day transactions of the organization. Thus …

How To Implement Access Rights In An Mis Project, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The MIS data is critical to an organization and should be protected from misuse by wrong persons. Although The MIS data is typically meant for the senior managers each MIS report may not be required by every manager. The access to MIS data is determined by the role of an individual in the organization and controlled by the MIS administrator accordingly. The access is generally determined by the following parameters, (a) the type of user (such as staff or manager etc.), (b) the type of data (whether general data or managerial data), (c) level of access (read/ write/ admin access) …

How Do Viruses Attack Anti-Virus Programs, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

As the anti-viruses run in a trusted kernel level any loophole in the anti-virus program can enable attackers to take full control over the computer system and steal data or do serious damages. Hence the anti-virus engines must be developed with proper security in mind. The ant-virus should be able to any type of specially created executable files, compression packages or documents that are intentionally created to exploit the anti-virus’s weakness.

Viruses are present in almost every system even though there are anti-viruses installed. This is because every anti-virus, however good it may be, leads to some extent of false …

Protecting Anti-Virus Programs From Viral Attacks, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

During a fight between viruses and anti-viruses it is not always predictable that the anti-virus is going to win. There are many malicious viruses which target to attack and paralyze the anti-viruses. It is necessary for an anti-virus to detect and destroy the malware before its own files are detected and destroyed by the malware. The anti-virus may follow thorough testing and auditing procedures to fix all its bugs before releasing the software in the market. Besides the anti-virus may use all the obfuscation techniques like polymorphism that the viruses generally use to hide their codes. This article also shows …

How To Build An Rss Feed Using Asp, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

RSS is a XML based format. The Current popular version of RSS is RSS version 2.0. The purpose of adding an RSS feed to your site is to show if anything new is added to the site. For example, if a new article or blog or news item is added to your site that should automatically appear in the RSS feed so that the visitors/ RSS readers will automatically get updated about this new addition. The RSS feed is also called RSS channel.

There are two main elements of the RSS XML file, one is the header or channel element …

Contradictions In Improving Speed Of Virus Scanning, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although everything in computing industry moves faster, the processor, memory speed, memory size, storage space etc. there is no improvement in virus scanning time. Although the processing speed has substantially increased, a typical full scanning is still taking several hours for an average computer. There is a serious need to improve the scanning time.

Contradiction is a stage of problem solving where the nature of the actual problem is clearly explained in terms of at least two parameters, one improving and another worsening. While emphasizing one parameter strengthens the system position emphasizing another parameter weakens the system.

In conventional methods …

Finding And Solving Contradictions Of False Positives In Virus Scanning, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

False positives are equally dangerous as false negatives. Ideally the false positive rate should remain 0 or very close to 0. Even a slightest increase in false positive rate is considered as undesirable.

Although the specific methods provide very accurate scanning by comparing viruses with their exact signatures, they fail to detect the new and unknown viruses. On the other hand the generic methods can detect even new viruses without using virus signatures. But these methods are more likely to generate false positives. There is a positive correlation between the capability to detect new and unknown viruses and false positive …

Methods Of Repairing Virus Infected Files, A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Some computer viruses damage the host file during infection either partially or fully. These types of viruses are known as “file modifying viruses”. In these cases, the chance of recovery is less, but the anti-virus has to apply various methods with hope. The virus cleaner must know the characteristics of a virus in order to remove that virus. It cannot remove an unknown virus whose methods of infection are not known. If a virus is wrongly detected to be a different virus, then the cleaner will do wrong operations and build a garbage file.

Most viruses are capable of fixing …

Controlling Virus Infections In Internet And Web Servers A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The viruses not only infect the stand-alone machines or client machines but also infect the web servers. When the web servers are infected with viruses, they disseminate infected content and thereby infect the client computers. The conventional anti-virus programs can run only on one machine. There is no way that an anti-virus in the client machine can determine whether the content of a website is virus safe or not. Hence, different methods are implemented to prevent the client computer from being infected by the infected content of a web server.

One proposed efficient method is to get scanned by the …

Inventions On Generic Detection Of Computer Viruses -A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The conventional methods of signature scanning and heuristic testing depend on prior knowledge of individual virus signatures and virus behaviors. Hence these methods are capable of detecting only the known viruses or viruses behaving in known ways. Hence, these methods cannot detect the viruses unless they are created, released and infected the innocent users. This situation creates the need for generic detectors that can detect even the new and unknown viruses.

The generic scanning methods, in contrast, don’t depend on individual virus signatures or behaviors. Hence they are better applicable to detect the new and unknown viruses and viruses of …

Methods Of Scanning Email Viruses - Applying Triz To Improve Anti-Virus Programs, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

An email virus makes use of the email technology and attaches itself to an email to transfer itself from one computer to another. Some email viruses create and send new emails using the address book of the victim computer. The email viruses are a matter of concern as they can spread very fast via emails to different geographical locations.

The conventional scanners are file based and not good for scanning emails as the emails can contain different types of files as attachments. Besides they cannot detect viruses until the emails are downloaded and opened by the recipient in order to …

Implementing Virus Scanning In Computer Networks, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Some viruses exploit the features and capabilities of computer networks to spread, operate and damage network environments. For example, the virus may copy itself to other computers in the network or may increase network activities congesting the network traffic. The conventional anti-viruses are not efficient enough to detect and control viruses in a network environment. As they are file based they cannot scan the data while being downloaded from the server.

Most of the drawbacks of conventional scanning are taken care by a firewall-based virus scanning. But this method requires high-end machines to withstand the load of centralized scanning. There …

Why Is It Difficult To Find A Good Free Web Host, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

This article illustrates how the advertisements on free hosts are deceptive, the evaluations are fake, and the user feedbacks are manipulated. As a search engine cannot differentiate between good and bad free hosts per se, it is likely to serve you a list of free hosts, which are discussed more or advertised more and not necessarily better. Searching a good free host is as difficult as searching a diamond in a coalmine.

Triz And Spirituality: The Methods Of Maximizing Happiness, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

TRIZ is a method of high level of commonsense and can be applied in any field, whether social, economical, technical or spiritual. In this article we analyzed the concept of happiness, the ultimate goal of human being, and demonstrated the application of different TRIZ concepts like Ideality, contradictions, Principles, Resources and Trends in different theories of maximizing happiness.

Should You Use A Free Server For Hosting Your Site?, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Contrary to the general belief that the paid servers provide better service, the services provided by paid servers are often horrible. The matter of the fact is that you may not need much of service from a well-configured server. But the service provider wants to provide you service in order to prove its service efficiency. But how will they provide service when there is no need of service? So they have to create many artificial problems for you (e.g., by changing server configurations etc.) and then solve those problems promptly on your request, in order to prove their service efficiency. …

Parameters Of Evaluating Free Hosting Solutions, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Before choosing a free server, it is important to evaluate its features in order to test its suitability for your hosting. This is particularly important as more than 90% of the so-called free servers are run by commercial hosting companies in order to attract customers for their hosting business. These so-called free servers provide very limited and conditional free hosting services and intend to sell their premium hosting packages to the free hosting customers in due course. Hence, it is important to not get carried away by their alluring advertisements rather evaluate each important aspect of the host, including its …

Overcoming Limitations Of Signature Scanning -Applying Triz To Improve Anti-Virus Programs, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A virus signature is a sequence of bytes that may be found in a virus program code but unlikely to be found elsewhere. Signature scanning is a method of detecting a virus by scanning a target program to detect the presence of any virus signature. If the signature is found then the target program is deemed infected, otherwise the target program is deemed uninfected.

Signature scanning is the most popular method of virus scanning and is adopted by all anti-virus programs. Signature scanning is capable of detecting more than 80% of viruses. It uses a simple logic and uses less …

Solving Virus Problems By Anti-Virus Developers- A Triz Perspective, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The anti-virus developers play a very significant role in dealing with the computer viruses. They analyze the problems of different levels of users and find solutions for each of those problems. Their goal is not just to sell the product and make profit out of it. They undertake much greater responsibility to ensure that their product meets the expectations of the users and deals with the viruses efficiently.

Different levels of users dealing with computer face different types of problems. The developer must ensure that the product meets the needs of various levels of users and network administrators. The developer …

Detecting Macro Viruses - A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The macro viruses are easy to create but difficult to detect. Even for a virus scanner it is difficult to decide which macro is a virus and which macro is not, as a user macro may also create files, send emails and do all such activities that a macro virus can do. It is difficult to differentiate a genuine macro and a virus macro as both of them do similar type of jobs. Suspecting a macro to be virus just because it is “writing to a file” may result in false positives. It is necessary to improve the emulation method, …