Archive for January, 2010
Fake Adobe Reader phishing scam
Adobe reader always seems to need security updates and the phishers are playing on that. PC World reports:
A new phishing scam is trying to fool people into thinking it comes from Adobe, announcing a new version of PDF Reader/Writer. The message is making its way into e-mail boxes now, and the real Adobe urged any [...]
Apple iPad frenzy broke the Internet
The mass frenzy before, during, and after the announcement of the iPad was bad enough as an indication of the paucity of ideas in the blogosphere. Even scarier was the fact that all the activity brought down significant chunks of the Internet. I couldn’t get on ZDNet or some other sites to do some [...]
Review of Thunderbird email client
These days I only use web-based email so I have no experience with the email client Thunderbird from Mozilla. However, I thought I’d point out that Walt Mossberg has just reviewed the new version 3 of Thunderbird. His headline is, “New Mozilla Email Is Easier to Use, But Not Easy Enough”.
Any Thunderbird users out there [...]
Restore missing or disappearing tray icons in Windows Vista
Here’s an annoying Vista problem. Periodically, I would find my network connection and some other tray icons disappearing. A little research revealed that it is a Vista bug caused by some Registry entries filling up. Sometimes rebooting brings the vanishing icons back but not always. You may have to resort to editing the Registry. (Back [...]
Avast 5 problem with Outlook and Word
Recently, I posted about the avast! 5.0 anti-malware program. Note that there is a report that the program is causing a problem with Outlook when Word is used as an editor.
A tale of three browsers
Recently both the Firefox and Chrome browsers have been updated. If you are still using Internet Explorer (IE) as your browser, I urge you to consider trying either Firefox or Chrome. I am aware that many people find the prospect of downloading and installing a browser to be daunting but the procedure is very easy; [...]
The Apple iPad
For weeks, incredible numbers of electronic bits have been consumed by stories on the rumored Apple tablet computer. No one knew for sure what Apple was going to come up with but that didn’t keep the blogosphere from being jammed with post after post full of guesses and useless commentary. All sorts of speculation about [...]
A symbol to help with online privacy
There is much concern about privacy issues associated with methods used by online advertisers and merchants. A small step towards informing consumers about advertising practices is the introduction of a symbol (shown below). The symbol will provide a link that will open a page explaining how the advertiser uses a consumer’s Web surfing history and [...]
Helping computers understand language
One of the things that sets humans apart from other animals is our unique ability with language. Even small children seem to have built-in abilities to understand fairly complex linguistic constructions. Understanding how to program computers to understand even the rudiments of a human language is a major problem. It is an area where Google [...]
The dfficulties of defending against Cyberwar
The Internet and other electronic infrastructure will be prime battlegrounds in any future war. Even today, they are arenas for unfriendly clandestine foreign government activity. The recent attacks on Google by presumed Chinese sources has focused attention on the problems of defending against cyberwar and the New York Times has published a front-page article about [...]
More IE security problems?
A researcher says that he is going to report on another security hole in Internet Explorer. Computerworld says:
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer could inadvertently allow a hacker to read files on a person’s computer, another problem for the company just days after a serious vulnerability received an emergency patch.
The problem was actually discovered as long as [...]
