Archive for February, 2008
Microsoft escalates battle with Yahoo
It seems Microsoft will be starting a proxy battle against Yahoo. The New York Times reports:
In an escalation of its fight for Yahoo, Microsoft will authorize a proxy fight at the Internet company this week, people briefed on the matter told DealBook. Unless Yahoo quickly reverses course and enters into talks, Microsoft would then seek [...]
High definition DVD format war ends
Two incompatible formats for high definition DVDs have been fighting it out in the marketplace but it looks like the “Blu-ray” format has won over the “HD” version. Toshiba, the backer of HD, has given up. Buyers of the special players for HD, which won’t play Blu-ray, are unlikely to see many future releases. Ordinary [...]
Phony blogs ripping off legitimate sites
There are a lot of blogs being set up for the sole purpose of scraping articles from sites like this one and collecting advertising revenue. The practice is well described by Raymond Chen at his blog. As Chen relates, original material ends up being credited by search engines to these phony sites and the real [...]
Comparing Vista SP1 with XP
Microsoft fanboys may deny it but Vista is slower in many ways than Windows XP SP2. So I was hoping that maybe Vista SP1 would be an improvement. From what I read so far it looks like Vista SP1 may be a little faster at some things than the original Vista but it still loses [...]
Enable the Desktop Toolbar
Related to the subject of the previous post is the desktop toolbar. It’s all very well to have shortcuts conveniently located on the desktop but in the course of normal work the desktop is frequently covered with opened windows. Then the shortcuts are not so convenient after all. One way around this problem is to [...]
Unclutter your desktop- part 3
Something that is often overlooked is the ability to create your own toolbars. A toolbar can be created that contains any of your folders. Access to that folder is then always available in the taskbar. In part 2 of this series I mentioned making a folder on the desktop to contain shortcuts. You can also [...]
Malware everywhere
Adding to the disheartening reports mentioned in the previous post are the search statistics from Google described at InformationWeek.:
Web browsing and searching are becoming increasingly risky activities, according to a report published by Google on Tuesday.
“In the past few months, more than 1% of all search results contained at least one result that we [...]
Malware attacks from all directions
It’s all rather depressing but the bad guys are trying to get us in many different ways. For example, here are three different modes of attack discussed in recent PC World articles:
Malware in banner ads on legitimate sites
Phishers using DNS server tricks
Instant messaging systems under attack
Security patch for Microsoft Works
If you use the program Microsoft Works, check to see if you need to install the security patch that was part of the monthly Microsoft update on Tuesday. The affected versions are given in this Microsoft bulletin. The problem involves a file converter for the WPS format and also affects certain Microsoft Word versions.
Another review of Vista SP1
Numerous articles about, and reviews of, Windows Vista service pack 1 are appearing. I’m not going to reference most of them but I can’t omit a review from Walter Mossberg. He writes:
However, based on my tests of Vista SP1, I believe that for most average consumers, it will likely be a nonevent, and for [...]
Configuring the ActiveX settings in Internet Explorer
I’ve been over this subject before; in fact, it’s a recurring theme. But it won’t hurt to summarize how to configure some of the security settings in Internet Explorer one more time. The table below gives some relevant pages at surfthenetsafely.com.
Configuring Internet Explorer
Description
Applicable to
Link
Adding Sites to the Trusted Zone
Internet [...]
