David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Symantec has identified Mebromi. a piece of malware that not only infects the MBR, but also infects the Award BIOS. BIOS infections are very difficult to detect and eradicate.
By hooking into the BIOS, Mebromi can easily re-infect a system the next time you reboot. Which is exactly what it does. Read more
Check all of the boxes marked “Exceptional Performance.” In the blank labeled Employee’s Comments under Overall assessment, write “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” Print it out, sign and date it, and hand to your supervisor.
Don’t forget to let me know how it goes. Extra points if your supervisor recognizes the above as a quote from Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mine didn’t. He also seemed confused when I wrote “I am awesome sauce!” in one of the other employee comment blanks.
But, tellingly, he did not disagree that I am awesome sauce.
This week, Paul Otellini told journalists he isn’t interested in buying HP’s PC business, elaborating by saying he doesn’t want to compete with his customers.
It makes sense.
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If you’re looking to play around with the Windows 8 developer build that Microsoft pushed out this week, be aware that it won’t run on VMware player or any version of VMware Workstation prior to version 8.
It does, however, reportedly work on Virtualbox if you use the Windows XP compatibility settings. Read more
Gizmodo writes: Someone needs to make a good $100 tablet.
I feel that pain, but it’s not going to happen this year. Or necessarily next year.
When you read the reviews of sub-$200 tablets, the biggest complaints are about the tablet being DOA, having difficulty getting one particular thing to run on it, the tablet just overall feeling cheap, or the screen. Better quality control can fix the first two things. But a good-quality capacitive touchscreen costs $63.50. For the tablet to retail for $100, it needs to cost less than $63 to make the whole tablet.
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Microsoft has five updates and Adobe has two for us on this fine Patch Tuesday, in addition to a patch Mozilla pushed out for Firefox last week.
Don’t get too complacent if you run something other than Windows. If you run Microsoft Office on a Mac, or Adobe Reader or Acrobat on a Mac, or Adobe Reader on Unix or Linux, you’re vulnerable. The vulnerabilities in those affected products are more serious than the vulnerabilities for Windows. So keep that in mind. Don’t be smug about security. It’ll bite you.
The Borders at my local mall is closing today. I’ll miss it.
I still remember when the store was being prepared. It was around the time I got married. My then-pastor said he was really looking forward to it opening. While his wife and his daughters shopped, he could hang out in there. I agreed with him. Nearly every time I went to the mall, I would sneak over to Borders for a while.
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Normally, after you install any version of Windows, you have a ton of patching to do. And that patching takes as long, or longer, than the installation takes, while leaving the system vulnerable to exploits in the meantime. Slipstreaming your hotfixes into your installation media sidesteps those issues, and reduces fragmentation. You get a faster performing system, you get the system up and running a lot sooner, and you save a lot of unnecessary writes to your SSD.
So I wholeheartedly recommend slipstreaming.
I was on my way to work when they said on the radio something was wrong. The details were scarce, but an airplane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Then the other. And as I was pulling into the parking lot, the news came that one of the towers had collapsed.
The day didn’t get any better as it wore on. I remember it well. Looking back at what I wrote on that day, some details faded over the decade, but my recollection of most of the day is vivid. I can tell you more about that day than I can most of the days of the past week.
Dan Bowman sent me the following link and asked me to comment on it: http://lifehacker.com/5467758/move-the-users-directory-in-windows-7
It needs little comment. It’s a brilliant solution to the problem.