David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
So you replace the hard drive in your laptop with a bigger model, or better yet, an SSD. What do you do with the old drive if it still works?
It’s good to keep the drive for storing backups or for extra storage when you’re working on storage-heavy projects. It’s a lot more convenient for both if you put the old drive in a USB enclosure. Read more
A longtime reader asked me today if it’s OK if he links to me from another forum. He happens to know I don’t especially care for that particular forum, or at least haven’t in the past.
I said that linking to content here is always welcome, and for any purpose. Read more
Micro Center had the Inland warm white A19 LED bulbs on sale this week and had a hard time keeping them in stock. I snagged an 800 lumen (60W equivalent), non-dimmable bulb, which uses 10 watts, for $13. It’s not the state of the art in 10W LED bulbs, but the price is right and it has a 3-year warranty. Read more
The Post-Dispatch ran a piece this morning on how to watch for fake online reviews. It contains some good advice. Read more
Google Drive, on its surface, looks useful. They give me a few gigs of storage that I can access from any computer with Internet access. I could use it like a virtual USB drive.
Except I won’t. The terms of service are too problematic for me. Read more
Andy Black is a former colleague and an Oracle DBA. Several times in the last few years, I ran into problems where I wished he wasn’t a former colleague, because my team got into some jams that I was pretty sure he could have fixed. (And let’s not even mention the time I got blackmailed into building an Oracle server.)
Last year, Andy did a thorough investigation of Oracle performance on SSDs, and observed very favorable results. Read more
Cnet says an SSD price war is imminent as the major makers try to squeeze some competition out of the market.
This could cause SSD prices to deflate a little faster than expected. Read more
Microsoft tried to quietly release a new version of Security Essentials yesterday, then everyone started talking about it. The new version 4.0 claims to be faster and catch more viruses. Of course, that’s everything we want in virus scanning–besides being free.
The most recent data I read stated the old MSE was about 93% effective, so there was some room for improvement there. Read more
If you want the difference between true, honest-to-goodness journalism and blogging, this Slashdot story is a good place to start.
The key is the word “reporting.”
Read more
Sophos claimed today that 20% of the people who’ve installed their free Mac antivirus has malware. That’s not altogether surprising, but it’s also not nearly as big of a problem as it sounds.
One in 36 systems has Mac malware, which means the Mac has an infection that could actually be harming the system itself. That number is low but believable. In my experience, the people who seek out antivirus software are usually the ones who need it the least.
Read more