David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
My Classic Toy Trains subscription lapsed. I decided I wanted to subscribe to the digital edition and see if I liked the paper reduction enough to live with the DRM restrictions. I can always switch back to paper next year, right?
So I went to Zinio.com and tried to subscribe, and had nothing but problems getting them to take my money.
Although I write about passwords about 8 times a week, it seems, it occurs to me that I haven’t–at least not recently, that I can find–written about how to make up a halfway decent password.
So, here’s how to make a decent–I won’t say great–password.
I have two sons. My youngest has been talking for a few months now, and learns a few new words every day. One day this past week, he learned the word “blankie.” It’s probably the most innocent word in the whole English language, but it’s the end of an era to me.
Let me explain.
Seriously, Java and Flash and Acrobat have been updated so many times this year, you could almost make a drinking game out of it. Java is on update number five for the year, and it’s only the first week of March.
Of course, if you uninstalled Java, you don’t have to worry about 0-day vulnerabilities or the patches that come afterward to prevent them. If you installed Secunia PST, you don’t have to worry about the updates; they come down automatically. The ideal thing is to do both.
The Consumerist posted five warning signs that a Craigslist rental listing is probably a scam. As a landlord looking on from that side of it, I generally agree with it. Here’s a landlord’s take on avoiding Craigslist rental scams.
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The Mimic Systems Spartan was an elusive bit of C-64 hardware that made it Apple II+ compatible. It’s one of the more interesting Apple II clones of the 1980s. People thought of it as an Apple II+ emulator for the Commodore 64, though it wasn’t emulation in a modern sense.
Mimic Systems took out full-page ads in all of the Commodore magazines, starting in late 1984, promoting the product heavily.
The problem with it was that you couldn’t buy one, at least not in 1984 or 85. The Spartan finally appeared in 1986, and at that point, not many people wanted one anymore. So Spartans are exceedingly rare today.
But it actually seemed like a decent idea. In 1984, that is.
Longtime reader Dan Bowman–probably my very first reader, come to think of it–sent in this article from Infoworld regarding SSDs and data loss in power failure.
It’s not theoretical. I’ve seen it. I also know how to prevent it.
If you use Avast, either as your primary or as your secondary AV, updating it is a good idea. One critical improvement is that virus database updates happen more frequently now. There’s no such thing as too frequently when it comes to database updates.
Did you know Adobe released three Flash updates this month? And that every last one of them was absolutely, positively necessary? (At the time. They’re cumulative.) Seriously, you need a computer to keep track of all this stuff.
Secunia PSI is a free program to keep track of these updates and pull them down and install them for you. I’ve written about it before, but not in any depth. I downloaded it to a machine that didn’t have it, and it scanned my system, found four out-of-date programs–it knows about 3,000 pieces of software–and updated three of the four without me doing anything at all. It’s dead simple. Download it, install it, accept the defaults, and let it run. If you can’t get by without the four horsemen of the security apocalypse (Quicktime, Flash, Acrobat, and Java), at least Secunia PSI will ensure you’re running the least insecure–I’m not calling any of those security nightmares any word that would suggest they’re good–version of each.
If you’re running Windows, go download it and install it, please. It’s not a substitute for antivirus software, but it’s a tool that can close the security holes that antivirus software can’t protect you against. Really, you probably need both.
My preschool-aged son and I were running errands one evening when his mind tracked towards our dog and the last time we put her in the kennel.
This was a subject of great concern to him, which reminded me of how great it would be to be four again.
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