Author: Dave Farquhar

Windows Vista’s market share is growing. After seeing 8.1, I know why

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows , , , , , , , , , , ,

I installed Windows Vista last week. I need a legal copy of a supported version of Windows to use to VPN in to work and run the corporate Citrix client. Vista fit the bill. It’s better than 8.1, and it’s supported until April 2017. I always hated Vista, but 8 and 8.1 made me realize it could have been a lot worse, and on recent hardware Vista does OK. It still prompts you for admin rights too much and too slowly and makes you work too hard to click yes, but at least you can find stuff. Read more

The Ferguson race riots: An outsider’s perspective from not far outside

Dave Farquhar St. Louis , , ,

A Ferguson police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African-American man, on August 9, 2014. The night after, riots broke out.

Ferguson is an inner-ring suburb in north St. Louis County. As such, Ferguson is now approximately 67% African-American, although the power structure remains mostly white.

I am a native of Kansas City who has lived in suburban St. Louis for a little more than 20 years. As a quasi-outsider, St. Louis has some quirks that I recognize and understand. It helps to understand that St. Louis is very divided, both along the lines of race but also along the lines of class. One of the first questions many St. Louisans will ask you is what high school you went to. This conveniently tells people how much money you grew up with. If you went to a private school, you’re good. If you went to a public school in an affluent area, you’re good. If you went to a public school in a poor area, I hope you’re living in a more affluent area now because there are people who will look down on you.

Sometimes the lines are fuzzy but sometimes they’re very stark. In north St. Louis, there’s an east-west street called Delmar. On the south side of the street are expensive houses. I won’t say they’re all millionaires on that side of the street, but many undoubtedly are. On the north side of the street, the houses that aren’t vacant are occupied by people who have minimum-wage jobs. The haves and have-nots can stare at each other from their windows, separated by five lanes of traffic. This oddity has even caught the attention of the BBC.

Ferguson is a step up from the wrong side of Delmar, but many St. Louisans would have jumped to conclusions about Michael Brown and his Normandy High School diploma for the rest of his life, regardless of how long that might have been. Read more

The clear and present danger lurking at the edge of your home network

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, Hardware, security, Servers and Networking

In 2003, Dan Geer called the combination of Microsoft’s market dominance and the flimsy security of its products a threat to national security.

Today, he’s calling the security holes in consumer routers a threat to critical infrastructure.

These two things are related in more ways than being utterances from the same person. These routers were designed to protect flimsy PCs from the horrors lurking on the Internet. In 2003, they were arguably adequate. But since 2003, Microsoft operating systems have improved dramatically from a security standpoint while routers have stood still. Many of them are still running on the same outdated Linux kernels and userspaces, just on newer, faster hardware. These routers are now less secure than the computers they are supposed to protect. This isn’t a knock on Linux; Linux has improved in the last 11 years too, but router makers generally haven’t incorporated those improvements. So these routers are easy to attack, easy to use to build botnets, and the user will never be the wiser since they keep the devices until they break. The only good news here is that many of them break after a year or two, and that’s supposed to be bad news.

Sadly, these problems are all solvable.

Read more

PCs are dead! Tablets are hot! Tablets are dead! PCs are hot!

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , , ,

In a shocking turn of events, PCs are now outselling tablets. Last year it was the opposite. What’s going on?

Priorities, that’s all. It’s the cycle of events in electronics. It’s happened before and it’s going to happen again as the market matures. Read more

IT personnel and knowing things they aren’t supposed to know

Dave Farquhar Careers
IT personnel and knowing things they aren’t supposed to know

On Slashdot, a newcomer to the IT field asked a really good question: What do you do to avoid seeing things you’re not supposed to see?

Clearly, some people do it better than others, but it seems to me it’s a fact of life that eventually you will see things you’re not supposed to see. How you handle it is the bigger problem. Read more

Vuescan: A review from a non-photographer’s perspective

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , ,

Vuescan is a third-party scanning tool for most versions of Windows, OS X, and Linux. It supports hundreds of scanners, including those abandoned by manufacturers. It’s probably better than what came with your scanner. The pro edition probably costs as much as your scanner too, but comes with lifetime free updates, so you know you’ll be able to use your scanner for as long as it continues to operate, rather than rolling the dice on manufacturer-provided drivers working with your next upgrade. And you can run it on up to four computers at a time, which is nice.

Full disclosure: I bought this software myself. I was not provided a copy for review, nor am I receiving anything in exchange for writing this review. Now that’s out of the way, and you don’t to have to guess about my motives. Read more

USB malware: What you need to know

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , ,

Tomorrow morning on Fox 2: How this USB drive could be worse than the worst malware you’ve ever imagined!

Yes, when a security vulnerability hits TV news, it’s a big deal. It’s probably also sensationalized. And it’s not time to panic yet. Read more

Microsoft releases EMET 5

Dave Farquhar security, Software ,

Late last week Microsoft released a new version of EMET. I’ve written about EMET before and I still recommend it. EMET 5.0 adds a couple of new mitigations, tries to be harder to bypass, and offers improved compatibility, so there’s little reason not to upgrade.

EMET does more than anything else I can think of to protect you from the many things that get past your antivirus software and firewall’s defenses, and it’s free. I can’t think of any good reason not to run it. Of course, the people not running it at all stand to benefit the most from it, but if you’re already running EMET 4.1, upgrading to get better protection is worthwhile, too.

Re-attaching prewar Lionel trucks

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , ,

This past weekend I scored a poorly repainted Lionel #602 baggage car (made from 1915-1923) and an Ives #71 passenger car (made 1923-25) at an estate sale. The Ives was in good shape and original, but one of the Lionel’s trucks was detached and one of the hook couplers was broken. Fortunately I was able to find the loose truck, and the repair was as simple as you can get. Read more

My counterpoint to Forget Frugality

Dave Farquhar Landlording, Saving money , , ,

I saw a reference this week to an editorial by Ramit Sethi called Forget Frugality. While he has some good points, I think some of his advice is counterproductive and even contradictory. He argues that you should focus on earnings and negotiation instead of trying to actively cut costs.

I really think you have to do a combination of the three, and you should start with what you have the most control over, which is your own budget. Here’s what I have to say about his seven strategies. Read more