Archive for January, 2007
Worst vendors of 2006
Ed Foster writes a regular feature at InfoWorld called the GripeLog, where readers can relate their troubles with various technology-related products. He has recently taken a poll to see who gets voted the worst vendor of 2006. And the winner is Symantec, who very narrowly edged out Microsoft. A regular reader of this blog will [...]
World facts
Want to look up some facts about a particular country? Like to know the annual cotton production for Argentina? Or the median age of the population of Bulgaria? If used properly, standard seach engines like Google or Yahoo are pretty good for finding that kind of information but there are some sources that specialize in [...]
The spam deluge
As bad as the spam problem was, its volume has taken another leap. According to an article at InformationWeek, spam was 94% of all email in December. I don’t know how accurate that number may be but I can attest to the fact that there’s a lot more spam being sent out. I have seen [...]
Google tries to defuse “Google bombs”
A “Google bomb” (also written “Googlebomb”) results when a group of people use the way Google ranking algorithms work to cause a search for some name or phrase to turn up a derogatory or humorous result. A famous one was when political opponents got the search entry “George W. Bush” to show “miserable failure”. Another [...]
How to defend against ActiveX and other malware exploits- Part III
This is a continuation of two previous posts on different approaches to computer security. In the first I discussed configuring Internet Explorer for greater security against ActiveX exploits. In the second the use of “sandbox” software to isolate the browser or other parts of the system to keep malware from spreading was reviewed.
Today I [...]
Sysinternals site
In a previous post I mentioned Sysinternals and all the great free system software that Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell had provided over the years. I noted the sale to Microsoft and wondered what would happen to all the good stuff that used to be freely available. Well, Microsoft has given them a new site [...]
Burning a CD in Windows XP
Windows XP comes with native CD burning capability. It’s not the greatest but it can be convenient. I have found that many PC owners do not know how to use it or are even unaware that the capability exists. A detailed description of using the XP CD burning application is given at this link. [...]
Windows XP Consumer versions get extended support
Microsoft’s intentions for future support of consumer versions of Windows XP have been none too clear. Up to now, it appeared that support for the Home version might end this year. (Support for Windows XP Professional was being continued until at least 2009.) Home PC owners who were thinking that they might have to change [...]
Serious Trojan horse problem
The most serious outbreak of malware-carrying email in a while is now going on. Over 300,000 computers are already infected. I have received quite a few of the so-called “Storm worm” messages. Be alert for emails with various subjects that look like sensational news headlines. There are also other variants, such as stock [...]
Speed up Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP
One of the new features of IE7 is a phishing filter. Unfortunately, checking sites to see if they are possible phishers can slow down your computer. Sites with multiple frames can even use so much CPU time that the system crawls. Microsoft has a patch to help with the problem at this link. Microsoft says
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Perspective from another source
Caroline Baum is not involved with technology except as a user. She is a well-known financial commentator and writer for Bloomberg. Her professional expertise is the Federal Reserve, not Microsoft so I find her comments about computer subjects to be very interesting as an example of a savvy but non-technical computer user. Here is what [...]
