Author: Dave Farquhar

Throwback Thursday isn’t for the Java Runtime Environment

Dave Farquhar security ,

The Java Runtime Environment is one of the nastiest pieces of software ever foisted upon mankind. It’s difficult to secure when people have the will, and few people have the will to even try. So nasty ancient versions of the JRE live forever.

That’s not to say I’ve completely given up on the Quixotic quest to get rid of it. Earlier this week, I exhorted, “Can we please not use the JRE that Ada Lovelace wrote for Charles Babbage?”

That stopped everyone dead in their tracks with a laugh. “That’s good.”

Hopefully they think it’s a good idea too. Because with all the hacks they would have had to do to get Lovelace’s JRE running on a Von Neumann architecture machine, there’s no way the thing can be stable, let alone secure.

The Bing conspiracy

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized ,

So my buddy Tom was working on a Windows 8 laptop, trying to fix it up, and he needed to uninstall a program. Tom’s been using Windows since about 1992, so he’s no newbie, but he couldn’t figure it out.

He had to resort to using a web search to find out how to do it.

I told him it’s a Microsoft conspiracy to get people to use Bing. But then Tom had to go and ruin it for them by using Google.

How to stop the 30% of ex-employees who want to access company data

Dave Farquhar security

I read on Linkedin this week that up to one-third of former employees are still accessing company data–after their last day.

I wish I could say I was surprised. But I remember on my last day at one former employer, I turned in my badge, mentioned that I still had some paperwork to fill out and asked if I could have a couple of hours before my accounts would be de-activated. The guy laughed, and I won’t say how long he estimated my accounts would still be good. It was too long. Read more

“Please Press 1 to speak with a Microsoft Certified Technician.”

Dave Farquhar scams

I guess the Windows technical support scammers are getting robo-dialers, because I got an automated call over the weekend telling me that my computer was sending alerts to their servers, and to press “1” to speak with a Microsoft Certified technician.

So I pressed “1” to see what tactics this particular scammer would use. Read more

“Windows Technical Support” ups its game–and so do I

Dave Farquhar scams , ,

It was bedtime and the phone rang. “Unknown name,” my Caller ID said, and the phone number was “1.” Sounds legit, right? No? I picked it up anyway. There was an audible delay after I said, “Hello.”

“Hello?” a distant voice said. “Hello?”

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello. My name is ‘Daniel,’ and I’m calling from ‘Windows Technical Support.’ How are you this evening?”

I really wanted to tell him my name was something obviously non-American, but I couldn’t think of anything so I told him I was fine. Next time I’m going to tell him my name is “Dhanesh.” After an introductory ramble, “Daniel” said my computer was sending alerts because it had lots of errors, and it was impossible for me to see them.

Read more

Eliminate wifi dead spots using access points

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

I’ve said before how to eliminate wifi dead spots, but perhaps I didn’t give it the focus it deserves. I think almost everyone has wifi dead spots in their house that they would like to eliminate. It turns out you can do it, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune either.

The idea is to supplement your existing router with one or two additional access points. Read more

The forgotten computer that changed the world

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , ,

A rather hastily written and sloppily edited piece showed up on Slashdot yesterday morning that caught my attention, because it was about the Amiga 2000. The Amiga 2000 is a dear machine to me; in 1991, our family upgraded to one from a Commodore 128. I still have both machines, and there isn’t much that I know today that I didn’t first experience on one of those two machines.

This is an Amiga 2000 that looks fairly pristine. Inside there was lots of room for hard drives, memory, CPU upgrades, and video devices.
This is an Amiga 2000 that looks fairly pristine. Inside there was lots of room for hard drives, memory, CPU upgrades, and video devices.

Although I think the piece was little more than a used computer store’s effort to unload some hard-to-move inventory, I do agree with the premise. For a machine that had a tremendous impact on the world as we know it today, the A2000 is criminally unknown. Read more

Throttling the Raspberry Pi

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

If you run the Raspberry Pi as a small server, you may want to throttle the CPU when it’s not under load to save energy. Throttling the Raspberry Pi is easy and only requires changing a few settings in /boot/config.txt.

Here’s what I did with mine.

Read more

Verizon sabotages Netflix

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , ,

I’m fed up with ISP duopolies. Why? Because Netflix paid Verizon the ransom it demanded, and yet Verizon hasn’t lived up to its side of the deal. To the contrary, evidence suggests Verizon is actively slowing down Netflix, because when Colin Nederkoorn encrypts his Netflix connection so Verizon can’t see what it is, it speeds up.

News flash: Encrypting data via VPN adds overhead, so it ought to slow the traffic down.

I’m starting to doubt whether net neutrality is enough to solve the problem. A better solution is to break these companies up, let them serve whoever they want, and let municipalities compete with them if they want.

Not that that is ever going to happen.

The legend of Mt. Fuji

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , ,

Twenty years ago, I was a promising young–and very unseasoned–columnist for a student newspaper at the University of Missouri–home of the Tigers–called The Maneater. Get it? Tiger? Maneater? Actually, healthy tigers never resort to eating humans, but legend has it by the time the founder learned that, the newspaper was already publishing and it was too late to change the name.

We were a ragtag bunch putting together a newspaper on a shoestring. Our computer network was quirkier than our staff, which took a great deal of doing–trust me, I’m used to being the weirdest guy in the room, and there I didn’t even stand out–but the piece of equipment that probably gives the production crew the most nightmares to this day was an old Apple Laserwriter–don’t ask me the specific model–named Mt. Fuji. Read more