Archive for February, 2006
Safety while banking online
I do a lot of my banking on the Internet, including paying bills, and I find it really convenient. Of course, banks are a natural target for Internet criminals so the question of security is very important. PC World has a short article on the subject.
Consumer Action page
There is a federal government site ConsumerAction that has information on many topics. It is full of useful links and lists information on 20 different consumer topics. In addition, it has information on how to contact many different companies and agencies. It’s an excellent resource. I don’t know how much the General Services Administration spent [...]
How to move the “My Documents” folder to another location
Many people use the “My Documents” folder to store their personal data and files. If you are storing large files or a lot of files, you may want to consider moving the folder from its default location \Documents and Settings\{current user}\My Documents to a another partition or a second hard drive. This is easy to [...]
Should software vendors be liable for damages?
In our ultra-litigious society, people sue left and right about almost anything. Make a bad stock investment? Sue! Set yourself on fire by falling asleep while smoking? Sue! Overweight because you eat too much? Sue! Nobody is responsible for their own actions. It’s always somebody else’s fault. Software companies like Microsoft, however, sit unscathed [...]
Avoiding browser hijacking in Internet Explorer
Browser hijacking, taking control of your browser, is a common spyware and Trojan exploit. Microsoft has a page with some tips on how to avoid or undo this when using IE.
What’s a “mashup”?
New words are constantly being coined on the Internet and one that is now occurring more frequently is “mashup”. Personally, I find this to be a rather infelicitous name, reminding me of the way a four-year old might talk about how he eats pudding, as well as sounding too much like “smashup”. Be that [...]
Enough already about Vista
It’s amazing how the Internet columns just keep droning on and on about every word or twitch that comes from Microsoft. For example, I am very tired of the interminable barrage of articles about every little feature that Windows Vista might or might not have. This has been going on for many months (or [...]
More on IE and Firefox safety
We are beginning to get more actual studies of browser safety instead of hand-waving or cooked statistics by vested interests. Internet week reports on an academic study of the vulnerability of different browsers to spyware.
Internet Explorer users can be as much as 21 times more likely to end up with a spyware-infected PC than people [...]
Internet Explorer 7
Microsoft has released a beta preview of its update of Internet Explorer and there are all sorts of articles about it. Anyway, if you are interested in what IE7 might be like, try this article. The authors, led by Ed Bott and Scot Finnie, are knowledgeable experts. This article does comparisons with other browsers [...]
How to make your favorite folder easily accessible in Windows dialog boxes
A number of common Windows tasks use a dialog box listing the folders that are present on a computer. Examples are the file operations “Copy” and “Save As”. If you have a favorite folder that you often use, it is convenient to have it readily available in the dialog box. However, most folders require several [...]