David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Is the Windows Firewall safe enough? I wish more people would ask that question rather than make assumptions.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard an unsubstantiated statement like “Windows firewall is junk.” I went looking, and the best I could find was this, an editorial that said it doesn’t do enough to address outbound connections, particularly on a program-by-program basis.
OK, point taken. But “enough” is a moving target.
I’m a security professional by trade, with two certifications. I’m not responsible for defending your computer networks, but I want your networks to be secure. There’s a really simple reason for that. If your computer and your network is secure, then it isn’t attacking mine. Or anyone else’s.
Several fellow subscribers to a train-related interest group that I like got hacked recently, and have been sending out spam messages. They’ve received a lot of advice in the hours since. Some of it has been good, and some not as good. So I tried to think of some things that people could do in about 30 minutes to keep the crooks at bay.
Incidentally, the computer crooks won’t be going away. Computer crime happens because the criminals can make more money doing that than doing something legal. The only way to make it stop is to make it too hard, so that getting a real job becomes more profitable. You won’t solve that problem in 30 minutes, but if we all take that single step down that road, we’ll make the world that much safer. So, with that, let’s roll up our sleeves. Read more
The Solidoodle is the first fully assembled 3D printer to hit the magic $500 price point.
Nobody has reviewed one yet, and the device makes some significant compromises in order to get to that price point. Given that, I won’t be among the first to buy one. I’ll reserve that decision for a time when we know what it can and can’t do. But if we look at history, that $500 milestone is important.
John C. Dvorak asks what’s wrong with Firefox, and suggests forking as a possible solution.
It sounds to me like one or more plugins he’s running is causing problems. I run Firefox on Vista (unfortunately), with as few plugins as possible, and I don’t have the issues he describes. Memory usage does spiral out of control if I go long enough between restarting the browser, but restarting the browser once a week keeps it tolerable.
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A reader who will remain anonymous (he can out himself if he wishes) sent me an interesting observation. He was in his doctor’s office last week, and out of curiosity, he ran a wifi scanner on his phone just to see what networks were available and how they were secured.
What he saw wasn’t pretty. Especially considering he was in a building full of doctors, lawyers, and financial advisors. Read more
If you want a way to remove ghost device drivers from Windows 7, or other recent versions of Windows, it just got easier.
What’s a ghost device driver? When you change or remove hardware from a Windows system, Windows keeps the old device driver lingering. You don’t see it in Device Manager, but the time Windows spends chasing ghosts increases boot time, in addition to consuming some memory, registry space, and disk space.
It’s not as much of a problem as it used to be, but if you want your system to run as quickly and smoothly as possible, you don’t want it wasting time managing hardware you’ll never use again. (Don’t worry–if you change your mind and plug the hardware back in, Windows will reload the driver.) Read more
Some time ago, I gave the advice that it doesn’t really matter if you post every day or not.
I think my rationale was that quality matters more than quantity, or at least it should. And although I still believe that in an ideal world, quality should matter more than quantity, now I have around 18 months of data that I can look at.
Here are the trends that I see.
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In Amsterdam, a couple of times a month volunteers meet up in community centers to fix things. Anyone can bring items that don’t work anymore to get it fixed. It reduces waste, people save money, they get to meet their neighbors, and it provides opportunity.
Opportunity? Hear me out.
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From time to time, I have to deal with new revisions of familiar implementation guides or other system documentation, and the authors rarely include a changelog in the document. And of course the first question anyone asks about the new guide is what’s changed. That means I have to find the differences between two Word documents.
This week I found myself collaborating on a long-ish document and needing to synchronize some changes. Word’s tracked changes and comments can help somewhat, but generally I find them clumsy and annoying.
If you have five minutes and a willingness to use a command prompt, you can find the differences easily, then work from there.
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My boss’ boss (I think we’re just two levels of management removed now) spent half the day composing a long e-mail message containing a large number of questions. He sent it to my boss, who forwarded it to us. I read the 10 or so questions that pertain to me.
Then I took a walk. Walking to the bathroom and using the facilities always seems like a good idea before I start writing. Read more