I’ve been blogging for nearly 15 years, so I’ve seen my share of frustrations over the years. The toughest source of frustration for me to shake has been spam. I have actually had spambot traffic knock my site offline in the past–here’s what I did about that–so suffice it to say that if a computer can’t keep up with it, there’s no way a human can keep up with filtering the amount of spam even a moderately popular blog receives. I’ve used two plugins to augment WordPress’ built in antispam capabilities. Read more
The way home security ought to be
Last week, the show formerly known as Pauldotcom featured the creator of Iguardian, a dead-simple Internet security device. It’s a tiny computer a little larger than a pack of gum that you can plug inline between your router and your modem for extra protection. Basically it does what most people think a router does.
If you want to know what it actually does, read on. Read more
How to cut your water bill
I’ve talked a lot about how to cut your electric bill and how I successfully cut mine 19 percent, but I haven’t talked much about water bills. Part of it is because water is cheap in St. Louis–the two largest rivers in North America converge here–but in some parts of the country, water usage is at critical levels, so cutting your water bill could mean saving real money.
I’ll never forget a commercial I heard when I was in third grade. “Did you know that every time you flush your toilet, you use 5-7 gallons of water?” a guy said with a drawl, before urging people to flush less. Being very juvenile, I thought it was funny.
But if your house is older, your toilet may very well be trickling water all the time, literally nickel and diming your water bill continuously. You can fix that for less than $10. Read more
PDQ Deploy looks like an interesting tool for a Windows sysadmin
I’ve been looking into ways to manage Java where I work, and I have some ideas, but wanted to see how other people are solving the same problem I’m trying to solve.
PDQ Deploy looks like an interesting solution for someone who needs to remotely push a lot of software packages but wants something cheaper than Microsoft SCCM that has an easier learning curve. In a small or medium-sized environment, it looks like something that could save server and desktop administrators alike a lot of time. The $250/year price per administrator doesn’t seem hard to justify in my mind.
I’m sure one thing that’s kept some environments from replacing Microsoft Office with something like Libre Office is the time and effort required to keep it up to date. PDQ Deploy would take care of most of that problem.
Since we have a large investment in other tools at work, I’m not sure PDQ Deploy is really the answer there, but I think it would be helpful for some people.
Why Chinese hackers would be interested in U.S. healthcare data
About a year ago, a vendor mentioned kind of offhand that Chinese companies are extremely interested in U.S. healthcare data. Then he added, “I don’t understand why Asian people are interested in American health.” Then he questioned the appropriateness of the comment.
Appropriate or not, it’s an example of something that, on the face of it, doesn’t make a lot of sense until you dig deeper. Read more
MS14-045 isn’t a reason to stop patching
Last week, Microsoft issued a patch to address a kernel vulnerability in Windows. Then, three days later, they pulled it due to the patch causing blue screens of death and endless reboot loops. Not good.
Predictably, some people are asking whether they should apply security patches.
Of course I say yes. Here’s why, and more importantly, how. Read more
Another breach, more credit-card advice
So Minnesota-based Supervalu, an operator of grocery stores, had a data breach in the midwest last week. If you’ve shopped at Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher’s, Shop ’n Save, Shoppers Food and Pharmacy, or former Supervalu chains Albertsons and Jewel-Osco between the dates of June 22 and July 17, and you paid with a credit or debit card, call your credit card company or bank.
If you need a new card, it’s much faster to let them know than for them to try to figure it out. And in the meantime, continue to use the card for everyday purchases to establish normal behavior. Don’t run up debt, but you want to establish where you are, so if someone buys the card info and tries to use it, it will stick out. And if their small transaction did happen to go through and they tried a larger one, it’s a little less likely to go through if you’ve run the balance up a little. These are little things you can do to make things harder for the criminals and easier for the banks, and potentially make it easier for the authorities to find the criminals.
Someone else’s opinion on the best SSDs
Every once in a while I get a question about what SSD I recommend, since I’ve been buying them a long time. I always recommend the best price you can get on someone who makes their own memory chips, which means the cheapest drive you can get from Micron/Crucial, Intel, Samsung, Toshiba, or Sandisk.
Looks like someone else, in that same vein, recommends the Crucial MX100. The explanation why is good reading.
WMIC invalid global switch – solved
I use WMIC a lot to gather data in my job. Querying computers that have dashes (a.k.a. the minus sign, the “-” character) in the names cause an error message that says “invalid global switch.” Microsoft operating systems use the dash as a reserved character to indicate command options. Here’s how to get rid of the WMIC invalid global switch problem.
Windows Vista’s market share is growing. After seeing 8.1, I know why
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