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Stop whatever you’re doing and uninstall Java. I’ll wait for you.

Dave Farquhar security August 29, 2012mac os x, oracle, os x

For years, standard practice has been to install Java, just in case you need it.

That’s no longer a safe practice. For your own safety, unless you absolutely, positively need Java, you should uninstall it. If you’re not sure if you need Java, uninstall it, then consider reinstalling if something breaks. Read more

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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I’m not sure Google was the good guy, but I’m glad Oracle lost

Dave Farquhar Copyright June 1, 2012android, IBM, mac os x, oracle, os x, unix, WINE

I’m not sure that either Google or Oracle was the good guy in the Java patent/copyright case. But Google was less bad. And it’s hard for me to see how ruling in favor of Oracle could have done anything good for the industry.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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And speaking of SSDs, here’s how Oracle performs on an SSD

Dave Farquhar Hardware April 26, 2012DBA, memory slots, oracle, ramdisk

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

Dave Farquhar

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Don’t call the war on hackers unwinnable

Dave Farquhar security March 31, 2012May 25, 2020antivirus, apple, Bill Gates, cissp, john c dvorak, oracle, passwords, Pearl Harbor, spam

John C Dvorak asks what war we’re waging on hackers. While war may not be the best choice of words, because it’s not exactly a conventional war, there’s no question there’s something going on, and we’re not winning it right now.

The latest salvo is that someone in China is building a botnet using Macintoshes. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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There’s a 61% chance the Adobe software you run at work is out of date

Dave Farquhar security March 17, 2012April 16, 2017Adobe Reader, command prompt, firewall, oracle, pdf files, toolkits, webshots

I read this week that 61% of Adobe Reader installations in workplaces is out of date.

That’s very bad. Very, very bad. Because Adobe Reader is trivially easy to exploit, and there’s more sensitive information to steal on corporate PCs than there is on home PCs.

Dave Farquhar

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HP open-sourcing Web OS is a gutsy move

Dave Farquhar Software December 13, 2011November 19, 2018android, apple, firefox, hp, mysql, oracle, SQL, web os

HP announced this week that it’s not going to sell Web OS–the operating system it bought the remnants of Palm to get–and plans to open-source the platform, as well as re-introduce tablets based on it sometime in the distant future.

The move isn’t guaranteed to work, but I think it’s a shrewd move.

Dave Farquhar

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HP decides to keep its PC business

Dave Farquhar Hardware October 28, 2011October 27, 2011hp, IBM, lenovo, oracle

HP came to its senses this week and decided that ex-CEO Leo Apotheker’s decision to pull out of the PC market he didn’t understand was a bad decision. They’re staying in.

Dave Farquhar

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Pipe output to the clipboard in Windows

Dave Farquhar War Stories, Windows October 23, 2011April 28, 2017command prompt, JPG, net view, oracle, passwords, pdf files, unix, vista, windows 7, Windows XP

Besides all the changes to the GUI that happened post-Windows XP, they also made one useful change to the command prompt. When you run a command, it’s now possible to pipe output to the clipboard.

If you’re like me and write a lot of documentation, or you just take a lot of notes while doing computer maintenance, it’s a big boon.

Dave Farquhar

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We’re just about ready for an era of 64-bit browsers

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows October 7, 2011October 6, 2011firefox, malware, oracle, Pale Moon, Patch Tuesday, windows 7

Adobe released a new Flash player this week. As almost an afterthought, they mentioned there’s a 64-bit version included.

That means Windows users can finally have mainstream 64-bit web browsers without using any beta software. I can put one on my main machine, and Gmail and Youtube and anything else that relies on Flash works the way it’s supposed to work.

What about Firefox? Read on.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Happy Patch Tuesday, September 2011

Dave Farquhar security September 13, 2011Adobe Reader, code execution, excel, firefox, macintosh, Microsoft Office, office 2007, oracle, Patch Tuesday, pdf files, SQL, toolkits, unix, vista, vulnerability, Windows Server, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP

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.

Dave Farquhar

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