excel

Ways to keep your password from being guessed–today

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , ,

Articles like Ars Technica’s Why passwords have never been weaker — and crackers have never been stronger are getting more and more common these days.

In a positive development, I don’t think the story had been live more than an hour or two before people started asking me questions. That’s good, because that tells me that people care.
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Confessions of a hacker for hire

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , ,

A story on Slashdot yesterday encouraged IT departments to hire a hacker, in spite of the stigma.

I’ve been that guy, and I suspect I’ll be that guy again. I’ve also had to clean up after that guy, so I may be able to add some perspective.
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Do you think if software cost less, people would pirate less?

Dave Farquhar Software , , , ,

The BSA says 57% of people use pirated software. A big part of the problem is that software is just too expensive. You can buy a decent computer for $300, and the copy of Windows that comes with it accounts for 1/3 of the cost.

Microsoft Office Home and Business, which includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook, retails for another $280. Office Professional, which includes Publisher and Access, retails for $500.

So even if you opt for the cut-down Home and Business version, you’ve already spent more on software than you spent on the hardware it runs on. Read more

I can save you $99

Dave Farquhar Windows , , ,

Microsoft is willing to install a clean copy of Windows in its retail stores on any PC for a flat fee of $99. (Windows license not included, of course.) They’ll also optionally include Microsoft’s Windows Live Essentials programs, the ad-supported starter editions of Word and Excel, Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus, and Zune media player software.
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One in five Macs has malware–but read the fine print

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, security, Viruses , , ,

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.
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Apply your monthly patches just as soon as you can

Dave Farquhar security, Windows , , , , , ,

There are only six patches in this month’s edition of Patch Tuesday, and only one of them is critical, but it’s a big one.

The critical patch fixes a flaw in Remote Desktop Protocol, something typically only present in the business-oriented flavors of Windows. But if you don’t know whether you’re affected, it behooves you to let Windows update whatever it wants to update. Read more

How to make persistent headers in Excel

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,

My boss and I are compiling a huge Excel spreadsheet that summarizes everything our organization has ever done. It’s as big of a pain as it sounds. What makes it worse is having to scroll all the way back to the beginning to view the headers. The solution: make persistent headers in Excel.

The trick to making a persistent header that shows all the time, even after scrolling, hides in the View tab in Excel 2007.
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And now, Excel 2007 has a few nasty surprises

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,

I ran into something maddening today. I have a large number of self-study questions in plaintext format that I’ve been using to prepare for my upcoming test. To weed out the large number of duplicates, I massaged the file into a tab-separated format so I could load it into Excel and alphabetize it by the question wording. It worked nicely, especially in Excel 2003.

I got a nasty surprise when I loaded the same file on an Excel 2007-equipped machine.
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Happy Patch Tuesday, September 2011

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

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Tom’s Hardware asks: Is an SSD the best upgrade for a slightly old PC?

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

Not surprisingly, they find the answer is yes. Specifically, that a PC equipped with an SSD gets about a 30% across-the-board performance increase.

I don’t agree with everything Tom’s Hardware say in the conclusion, namely, that it’s pointless to put an SSD in a netbook. Indeed, when you put an SSD in a netbook, you get several benefits: improved latency, improved battery life, and much faster boot/resume times, all of which are useful.
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