Archive for November, 2006
Is Vista the last hurrah for the PC?
Microsoft announced today that Vista was being released to manufacturing. Interestingly, amidst the hoopla for Vista are some voices saying that Vista may be the last system of its kind. A writer at TechRepublic even says The home PC will be extinct within 5 years. According to this little article:
Having tried out some of these [...]
Maybe a license should be required to run a PC
As malware exploit after exploit comes along that relies on people to do stupid things, I sometimes think that the whole way that computers operate should be changed. Several months ago Lance Ulanoff wrote an item at PC Magazine called Technology for Idiots. I was reminded of it by the latest worm epidemic mentioned in [...]
Trojans cause big increase in spam
If you think that you are getting more spam lately, it isn’t your imagination. Internet Week reports that two wide-spread Trojans are the cause.
MessageLabs on Friday fingered a pair of Trojans for pushing up spam rates, and said the duo use techniques that make it difficult for anti-virus vendors to keep up.
According to the [...]
For really early shoppers
The Christmas shopping season seems to come earlier every year and it’s already begun, at least at CNET. They have put up their holiday gift guide for gadgets and started the countdown of the number of shopping days left. They say:
Forget the malls and deck the halls with some gadget gifts that will delight everyone [...]
UN conference critical of US control of Internet
Periodically, I post (for example, at this link) on the continuing international debate over how long the US is going to have governance over the Internet through its control of ICANN. The Internet is too international for US control to continue forever. However, instead of dealing diplomatically with the growing demands from other countries to [...]
IE 7 being delivered by Windows XP Automatic Update
If you have Windows Automatic Update enabled, you will be getting Internet Explorer 7 sooner or later. Microsoft has begun pushing IE 7 out; they are doing it gradually to avoid server overload and will be slowly increasing the pace. If you don’t want IE 7 downloaded automatically, you can download a Microsoft tool to [...]
Latest security news
Want to see a summary of the latest developments in security? Read Larry Seltzer at PC Magazine’s Security Watch. One of the latest problems- malware pretending to be free codecs.
New version of free AVG anti-virus program
AVG has a new version 7.5 of its free anti-virus program. It can be downloaded here.
The Microsoft-Novell pact
The “blogosphere” continues to reverberate with talk about the latest Microsoft move. There is a lot of suspicion about Microsoft’s motives. Typical is one blog entitled, “The embrace that strangles  Microsoft and Novell and the future of Linux “. The blog opens:
Don’t be fooled by the sense that Microsoft’s deal to cross-license and otherwise [...]
Microsoft moves on Linux
The blogs and newsletters are agog with the news that Microsoft and Novell are joining in a project involving, of all things, Linux. An article in eWeek puts it this way:
Once bitter rivals, Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. entered into an agreement on Thursday to allow open-source Linux software to work with Microsoft’s Windows [...]
Worm attacks again
Just when you think that maybe some headway is being made against worms (see the post on firewalls and worms) the bad guys figure out a better way. The disheartening aspect of the new onslaught is that social engineering is being used. It isn’t a technical failure but the gullibility of computer users that is [...]