Archive for June, 2006
Once more the promise of bare facts is a trap
I can’t believe that it still works but here we go again. Another worm that hooks people by promising nude pictures. Only this time it’s nude athletic males instead of nubile maidens. PC World reports
Computer Worm Lures Victims With ‘Naked World Cup’ Disguises itself as pictures from nonexistent ‘Naked World Cup.’
Victims receive messages with [...]
Behavioral Advertising
Advertisers are always looking for ways to target their potential customers and the Web opens up all sorts of possible techniques. Search Engine Watch has an article on “behavioral advertising”. This is advertising targeted at the viewer, based on that viewer’s surfing history. This is not a new idea but seems to be getting increased [...]
Thinking of building a robot?
Microsoft seems to want to get into everything. In case you are planning to build a robot, Microsoft wants it to be powered by them. Mary Jo Foley at Microsoft Watch reports
On June 20, Microsoft released a technology preview build of a development platform that targets robots. The framework and related tools allow developers to [...]
Rebuilding a broken Windows XP operating system
Fred Langa has written another of his detailed Desktop Pipeline articles on maintaining and/or repairing Windows XP. This one is XP’s Nondestructive Rebuild Option. He says that Microsoft makes it hard to find and use this method
But it’s worth exploring because this option lets you completely and nondestructively rebuild, repair, or refresh an [...]
One man’s saga of a hard drive failure
David Berlind, columnist for ZDNet, describes what he did when his system wouldn’t boot. He used a Knoppix disk but some of the commentary by others responding to the article recommends the BartPE CD. You can read more about emergency boot CDs at my other site.
System changes for blog
The hosting service for this blog was sold to another company. This weekend an attempt to move the site to a new server will be made. This site may experience intermittent down time.
Tales about Microsoft from inside
Do you like gossip? How about some tattling on Microsoft management? A Microsoft development team manager, Phillip Su, has had a blog complaining about what he thinks went wrong with Vista. Apparently, he has changed his mind a few times about whether to leave it on the Web and has pulled it but the [...]
An easier way to get to Windows Safe Mode
For diagnostic purposes, it is possible to operate Windows with a reduced set of drivers and files. This is called Safe Mode. I have written elsewhere about how to get Windows to operate in this state. The standard way to reach safe mode is by booting up and pressing the F8 key right after the [...]
More on Windows “Genuine Advantage”
The protests over Microsoft’s method of downloading the beta of the anti-piracy software continue. David Berlind gives a description of the download process with graphics in a ZDNet article Images: Microsoft’s shoddy Windows Genuine Advantage Installation Process . It’s pretty detailed and should help you understand what’s going on.
Many Windows PCs turned into zombies
I have said on many occasions that infected PCs belonging to uninformed or clueless owners were one of the biggest problems on the Internet. However, it is even worse than I thought if you believe a recent Microsoft report. They have compiled statistics from their malicious software removal tool that they run every month when [...]