General

Check out this article in my new IT Knowledge Exchange blog (a paying gig for a change!). Seems the Air Force (which I’m a veteran of) has set up a new Cyber Command division. I’m sure it’ll be the geekiest place in the military.
Cheers!The Geek

Folks, let me tell you, Techsay.com is bogus. You aren’t going to earn anything unless you lie.  I have been sent five surveys and haven’t qualified for a single one.  Unless you’re Joe Consumer and have no idea about anything related to IT, I doubt you’re ever going to complete a survey, much less earn anything. [...]

Recently, a person I know (who shall remain nameless to prevent embarrassment) had his laptop stolen out of his car. Now, to his credit he had been faithfully backing up his data. Smart guy. He would back up all of his data weekly to a CD and take it home for secure storage. Good plan. [...]

Jessica Foote, one of the PR reps for Zonbu sent me this yesterday:
Hi Ken,
I’m happy to finally be able to share Zonbu’s latest news! Starting today, Zonbu fans can be green and hassle-free on the go. Zonbu is announcing a new Zonbu Notebook. Like the Zonbu Mini Desktop, the Zonbu Notebook is based on [...]

I recently met Dave Hartsock of Dave’s Computer Tips, had a great conversation with him, and decided to jump on board as the contributing editor of his newsletter’s “Security Focus” column. The newsletter is a quality piece of work and you won’t find a nicer guy than Dave.
But Dave has a problem–the writer who committed to [...]

Within the next few years, the personal computer as we know it will be obsolete.�A bold statement, perhaps, but ponder these points:

More and more companies are offering vital business productivity applications as web-based services meaning you don’t have to buy and install software on your hard drive.
PC security is nearly impossible for the average user; [...]

No, I’m not talking about that finger; it’ll become obvious in a moment which finger I’m talking about. First, let me ask a few questions:

Is your car parked, empty, in the driveway right now with its engine on?
Is your shower, with no one in it, running?
Is your stove, with nothing cooking on it, turned on?
Is your attic light [...]

Steve Gibson, creator of Spinrite and winner of the Third Annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards in the Technology/Science category for his Security Now! podcast with Leo Laporte of Twit.tv, has just come up with a super-secure multifactor authentication system. Steve calls it “Perfect Paper Passwords” and you can read all about it on his web [...]

If you’ve been following this series of security maxims, you’re probably pretty careful about what you do on the web. You certainly have strong passwords for all of your logins, all of them different, and you don’t go around telling people what they are or keeping them on sticky notes attached to the monitor at [...]

I’ve been playing with the Zonbu review unit on and off for two months now and I’ve certainly been impressed with its ease of use and clean feel. But I’m a Geek and Geeks tend to be able to set up and play with such toys easily while the average consumer sometimes has trouble. The ultimate ease-of-use test would [...]

Every self-respecting computer Geek hates spam. And most normal people do, too. But if you understand what Spam *really* is, you might just come to love it.
The inventor of Spam confesses and explains at www.spam.com.
Enjoy your weekend.
Cheers!The Geek
Have a question? It can be about anything from cooking to science, whatever you’re interested in: Click [...]

I first heard of this in the latest issue (Vol. 7, #39 - Sep 25, 2007 - Issue #296) of WXP News.
“A security flaw has been discovered in Adobe’s Acrobat Reader, which is installed on a huge number of PCs. The vulnerability allows attackers to compromise Windows computers…. This problems affects Acrobat Reader versions 7, 8.0 [...]

Most people do, of course, and the best cartoons are the ones that make learning  tough lessons a little easier. PC security lessons are hard for the non-geek user to learn and most people learn them only after getting burned by malware, becoming a victim of identity theft, or suffering financial loss from online fraud. We IT security [...]

The latest WXP News reports that you no longer have to call Microsoft support services to obtain hotfixes; you can submit a request via the web:
Until recently, to get a hot fix you had to call Microsoft support services. Now they’ve made it easier by providing a web site where you can order hot fixes you [...]

I get a lot of ”Ask the Geek” emails from people whose computers won’t shut down properly, either hanging up or rebooting endlessly. (Sometimes, nothing at all happens and you have to press and hold the power button.) Rather than trying to answer each question, I figure it’s time I made this tip available.
So, I wrote a [...]

Steve Gibson, author of the best disk recovery and maintenance utility on the planet, Spinrite, developer of the first anti-spyware program, OptOut, and recipient of the People’s Choice Podcast Awards in the Science/Technology category for his Security Now! podcast with Leo Laporte of Twit, wrote the first firewall “leak test.” It has been downloaded 6,715,096 [...]

A friend of mine came up to me the other day and said, “I love your computer maxims, but I don’t have anything to worry about–I have all of my passwords stored on an encrypted thumb drive.” Of course, my retort was, “That’s a good thing. Where do you keep your backups?”
“On my external USB [...]

CardSpace (formerly InfoCard) is Microsoft’s new digital identity meta-system that comes with Windows Vista by default. Now, if you have .NET Framework 3.0 on your PC, you have CardSpace; it’s a .NET 3.0 component. But you probably didn’t know that (I didn’t) unless you’re a .NET enthusiast. There was no fanfare about it.
I’m glad to see it, in a [...]

Depending on which vendor you use, may not be as protected as you think. According to this article on the ClamAV website, only three vendors prevailed:
On August 8th at LinuxWorld, network gateway vendor Untangle performed an all-out public test of different anti-virus vendors to see how they really compare.
In an antivirus “fight club” conducted in front [...]

The Zonbu unit is definitely *not* a toy that takes a Geek to set up. This is good news: A consumer can be confident in knowing that if she buys a Zonbu and follows the provided instructions, it’ll work right out of the box. I followed the instructions and it booted right up when connected [...]