Software

UEFI on ARM illustrates why we still have to watch Microsoft

Dave Farquhar security, Software , , , , , ,

UEFI is a technology that forces a computer to only load a digitally signed operating system. This has some security benefits, as it makes parts of the operating system unbootable if they become infected, since the viruses won’t be digitally signed by a reputable vendor.

Great idea, right? From a security perspective, absolutely. The more attack vectors for viruses we can eliminate, the better off we’ll be. But Microsoft’s policy on ARM systems shows how it can be abused.

Read more

Mozilla goes sane with the corporate ESR version of Firefox

Dave Farquhar security, Software

In what can only be a wise move, Mozilla decided to release an ESR version of Firefox, which will be replaced once a year and patched in the meantime. A six-week cycle is perhaps manageable for home users, but it’s downright lunacy for corporate environments. It’s hard enough to test and deploy pure security fixes in 4-6 weeks, let alone test something that introduces entirely new features and deploy it.

I’m not sure that corporations and Mozilla want each other all that much, but they need each other. It’s a cheap way for a corporation to improve its security posture, as long as testing, deploying, and keeping it up to date isn’t a full-time job for someone.

And now, Excel 2007 has a few nasty surprises

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,

I ran into something maddening today. I have a large number of self-study questions in plaintext format that I’ve been using to prepare for my upcoming test. To weed out the large number of duplicates, I massaged the file into a tab-separated format so I could load it into Excel and alphabetize it by the question wording. It worked nicely, especially in Excel 2003.

I got a nasty surprise when I loaded the same file on an Excel 2007-equipped machine.
Read more

Message says Firefox is already running when it isn’t

Dave Farquhar Software , ,

Earlier this week, when doing an emergency computer upgrade, Firefox gave me a weird problem. I installed Firefox, then when I tried to launch it, I got the popup dialog box stating that Firefox is already running. When, of course, it wasn’t–I’d just installed it.

There are a couple of helpful articles on Mozilla’s knowledge base.  It didn’t quite solve my problem, but it pointed me in the right direction.
Read more

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. New Firefox.

Dave Farquhar Software ,

Firefox 9 is out. I’m running it, but due to an emergency involving a power supply deciding to cook itself, I’m running it on a different system than the one I ran Firefox 8 on. Everything’s faster on this machine–partly because I’m doing some experiments that make it stupid fast anyway–so it’s not fair to call Firefox 9 faster. Netscape 4.0 would be fast on this machine.

Once I’m comfortable that what I’m doing is safe, I’ll share.

But Firefox 9 features a new Javascript engine that’s supposed to be a lot faster, for what it’s worth. You can go get it the usual ways if you want. And if you’re conservative, given a little time you’ll be running it whether you know it or want it anyway.

And in somewhat surprising news, Mozilla and Google renewed their search agreement. Mozilla makes Google the default search engine in Firefox, and Google pays them a lot of money. So much money that Google is essentially funding the operation. Mozilla has a strange relationship with its competitors.

Fixing my boss’ Outlook

Dave Farquhar Office, Software , ,

My boss’ PC went wacky on Tuesday afternoon and wouldn’t let him log in, so he had no choice but to shut down the computer. The computer came back up OK, but Outlook didn’t. He got a lot of weird error messages that I didn’t see, and Outlook created a new OST file on his desktop. But Outlook refused to connect to the Exchange server, and his inbox came up empty.

Like a lot of Outlook problems, the solution was the tag-team of Scanpst and Scanost. Fortunately, you don’t have to have admin rights to run them.

Read more

Adblock Plus adds an option for allowable ads

Dave Farquhar Software ,

Adblock Plus, starting with version 2.0, is going to start allowing acceptable ads, something I see as a good thing.

I’m not against advertising–I use it on my own site. I’d prefer not to have an all-or-nothing approach to ad blocking. In fact, I only started blocking ads when I started getting malware that I expected was coming from booby-trapped ads. I stopped getting the malware when I started blocking all ads, so draw your own conclusions.
Read more

HP open-sourcing Web OS is a gutsy move

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , ,

HP announced this week that it’s not going to sell Web OS–the operating system it bought the remnants of Palm to get–and plans to open-source the platform, as well as re-introduce tablets based on it sometime in the distant future.

The move isn’t guaranteed to work, but I think it’s a shrewd move.

Read more

Don’t write Android’s obit yet

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

PC Magazine’s Tim Bajarin seems ready to write the obituary for Android for tablets which, to me, seems extremely premature.
Read more

How to make a single page landscape in Word

Dave Farquhar Office, Software , ,
How to make a single page landscape in Word

Can I make one page landscape in Word? Yes you can. In Microsoft Word, it’s not difficult, but it’s anything but obvious. Here’s how to make a single page landscape in Word. It takes three steps.

This is useful when the document contains an image that’s wider than it is tall, and you need to make it fill the page to make it easier to see.

There are buttons on the ribbon to switch between portrait and landscape. But they switch the whole document, not your selection or the page you’re on. I’m sure you have already tried that. Here’s how to switch it for part of the document.
Read more