Archive for June, 2006
Use environment variables to access your files more quickly
And just what are environment variables, you ask. You’ve probably seen them; they are those expressions wrapped in percent signs that you sometimes see in file paths. They are shorthand for certain standard system properties. I give a lot of the details at this page but my purpose here is to point out how to [...]
Windows Genuine Advantage Brouhaha
Claiming it to be a critical update, Microsoft has foisted a beta version of its anti-piracy software on people without telling them by making it part of the automatic security update done once a month. It seems to be causing a lot of trouble and Ed Bott has a blog Microsoft presses the Stupid button. [...]
Bashing Symantec
As I have noted before, I used to admire and use Norton products but no longer use them since I think that Symantec has ruined this previously stellar group of products. I am not alone in this view of Symantec. The Gripe Log (now at InfoWorld) has an entry An Invite to a Symantec Bash [...]
No more support for Windows 98/Me
Anyone who is still using Windows 98/Me will no longer receive any support from Microsoft after July 11. Here is the announcement
Effective July 11, 2006, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me will transition to a non-supported status. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide any incident support options or security [...]
Creeping featurism
In a previous entry, I lamented “Why can’t software companies leave good programs alone?” In a recent PC Magazine column John Dvorak complains about the same type of problem, “creeping featurism”.
The urge, so widespread during this technological era, to improve things continually has resulted in a weird sort of entropy called “creeping featurism.” The term [...]
Add-ons for Internet Explorer
If you use Internet Explorer for your browser, you might like the free small utility called IEToys. It adds some useful functions like a Web-based dictionary tool to find the meaning of a word that you select on a page and a tweak that will speed up performance for broadband users. Read about it and [...]
A hidden Internet Explorer feature
Security expert Roger Grimes writes about a feature of Internet Explorer that he and some other Microsoft MVPs just discovered
The trick is that Internet Explorer 6 and 7 beta can be fooled into running Windows desktop shortcuts instead of going to the Internet. For example, right-click your desktop and choose Create a Shortcut. Tell [...]
“Badware”
The proliferation of adware and spyware has lead to the formation of an organization to help consumers be aware of possibly harmful software programs. It is called StopBadware.org and compiles lists of software to avoid. PC World describes the organization
StopBadware.org, (originally called “The Stop Badware Coalition”) is the group formed with Harvard University, Oxford University, [...]