David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
A watering hole attack is an indirect attack on a victim. Rather than directly attacking the victim’s network, the attacker attacks a web site that the victim’s employees are likely to visit. Then the attacker attacks the victim’s network, via its own workstations, from that web site. A former colleague asked me how you protect against watering hole attacks, and I thought this was a good exercise. So here are some strategies for watering hole attack prevention.
Old PCs, especially PCs from the 1980s to the mid 1990s, have a button with the curious label “Turbo.” On some PCs, a number on the front changes when you push it, or an LED toggles on or off. Why did old PCs have a turbo button?
Turbo buttons are a quirk of old PCs, kind of like their beige color that tends to turn yellow, but it served a functional purpose.
I spotted it on page 597 of the 1983 Sears Christmas catalog. “Two big names play the same games,” the headline boasted. Next to the venerable Atari 2600, Sears presented the Coleco Gemini video game system, an Atari 2600 clone.
In 1982, Coleco built an add-on to make its Coleco Vision game system Atari 2600-compatible. Atari sued. Coleco poked the bear by making the Gemini, an outright clone. Sears had sold Atari 2600 clones before, but they were actually real Atari 2600s with a different label on them, supplied by Atari itself. The Gemini was more of a true Atari 2600 clone.
Sometimes it’s faster just to type a command than to dig around in the start menu. That’s especially true for many sysadmin tasks. Knowing the command line for active directory users and computers can save you a lot of time.
Some 90s computer brands are the same as today, but a lot more companies played in the field than now. Profit margins were higher then, so industry consolidation wasn’t the matter of survival that it is now. The most popular computer brands of today were among the most popular brands in the 90s, but some popular 1990s computers no longer exist in any form.
Here’s a look back at some of the brands of old, including some famous PC brands, some not-so-famous, and some notorious. The 1990s were certainly a make or break time for many of them, arguably just as volatile as the merciless 1980s had been.
Someone asked me about laser printer consumables, specifically toner vs drum unit. That’s a fair question. The drum unit is the gotcha consumable that people sometimes forget about.
Someone asked me about using vinyl plank flooring on walls recently. It’s an interesting idea, except for one problem the person brought up: vinyl planks falling off.
The adhesive on vinyl planks works better with gravity helping out. On walls, the gravity is working against it. Here are some tips that will help give you better results with vinyl plank flooring on walls.
If your lamp stops working but the bulb is good, or your lamp cord gets damaged, it’s time to replace it. The cord, that is. Not the whole lamp. Here’s how to fix a lamp cord.
Even if you have to take the lamp completely apart, the project should take less than an hour. The easy fixes only take a few minutes.
It’s just my opinion, but I think 1981 Fleer baseball cards get less respect than they deserve. It ended Topps’ 25-year monopoly on baseball cards and, frankly, I think it’s a nicer set than the Topps or Donruss sets from the same year.
Yes, compared to the smooth and polished Topps, the Fleer set at times looked like amateur work. But they didn’t make as many mistakes as fellow upstart Donruss did. And they tried some things with their set that Topps had been unwilling to do. The 1981 Fleer baseball cards got some critical accolades at the time, and frankly I think it’s an underrated ’80s set. It didn’t contribute a lot to the most valuable cards of the 1980s, but it certainly helped shape the decade.