2005 September

Normally when my phone rings, I either take the call or allow my machine to take a message. Today however, my actions were slightly different. For some reason that I am still not clear on, something prompted me to pick up the phone after the first ring. After announcing myself to the caller, I discovered […]

One of my current projects is to re-outfit a local private school’s computer lab. The current hardware is tired; the software is a Swiss cheese maze of security holes. I am the administrator, and I cannot keep up with the dying hard drives and Windows 2000 patches. The work is endless while […]

Windows XP makes it very simple to move from an old computer to a new one. Many people are often reluctant to get a new computer because they do not want to lose their existing files and settings. Fortunately, Windows XP includes a nifty utility that you can use to make the process of changing […]

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The animated TECHTip is available here.
XMPP [eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol] uses SASL [Simple Authentication and Security Layer] client authentication and TLS [Transport Layer Security] for data transmission and client-server processing. SASL is a framework for providing authentication and data security services in connection-oriented protocols via common replaceable mechanisms (that is, make use of […]

OK, so it looks like Google will likely be a major part of our offline lives whether we like it or not. Fair enough, I suppose that I can learn to live with this. See, I am saying this on the heels of the discovery that Google plans on assisting NASA in the near future. […]

Well if you do not, you can now look it up in the dictionary. Yes if you look on MSN Encarta the definition of LOL is now there. It is an abbreviation for ‘laughing out loud’ that is used in e-mail messages. Frightening!
Has this abbreviation become so commonly used in e-mail messages that it has […]

It’s an ongoing battle between IT and the malware low-lifes. Fortunately, we have tools like HijackThis! to help us discover the nasties on a user’s PC. However, it can be a daunting task trying to identify which entries are malware and which are benign. There’s help on the way thanks to a new site built […]

In the latest issue of The Remediator Security Digest, we’ve reached the conclusion of the security gumshoe series. In the final chapter, does Elisa capture the culprit? Does she survive or end up joining Chip in the afterlife? Read on and find out. There are also links to the past episodes and the summary of […]

The animated TECHTip is available here.
In a traditional small business CPE [Customer Provided Equipment] situation, the PBX [Private Branch eXchange] or KS-KSU [Key System Unit] often provided the voice and data interface. While this is complicated, in the following sections, we will review individual elements of the technology and subsystems. Since this subject is […]

Believe it or not, some clients have a hard time hearing the facts of life. No matter how clear you try to make something for them, no matter how hard you work to spell something out, they simply refuse to ‘get it’. Today, I had this experience with such a client who just could for […]

Last week I posed the question, ” What is the function of decision theory?” but never really answered it directly. Instead of a dictionary definition, I gave some examples of difficult decisions, sometimes involving life or death. These examples were meant to show the strength and limitations of classic logical decision theory. I was trying […]

I’ve been quite happy with my 802.11g Wireless network in my home. It started out as 802.11b, but after I placed more of a load on the network with streaming video between my two ReplayTV DVRs, I re-tooled everything to 802.11g. This was over a year ago, and it’s still doing pretty good. I’ve been […]

Before each newsletter goes out, we run it through an application to check the chances of the issue getting shot into the junk folder. One of the results said, “Shouting markup.” No explanation. That was THE explanation. We figured out that it is the use of bold, headers (h1, h2, etc.), and emphasis (AKA italics). […]

The animated TECHTip is available here.
Message (content) and Digital Certificate are encrypted (scrambled such taking words and turning them into unreadable characters like (*&(*^$#^dr u^w$% wsx c(&tudhc @$@rqagxj cf*^r poiy 169 n vjfedy) using a private key or public key encryption methods (see next) and passwords. This creates “hash” (like chopped corn-beef hash) […]

OK, so this mobile TV thing looks like it could catch on. And I suppose some might even argue that the content available is improving as well. Still, I feel that we must ask ourselves whether or not we are going to truly be getting our money’s worth. Let’s break this down, shall we?

For some time now, I have been a big fan of putting clients on some sort of a maintenance schedule. The reasons for doing this are plentiful and mysterious, but mainly it helps to ensure that client computers are running with peak proficiency. Besides all of that, it oftentimes opens the doors for putting your […]

After Katrina hit the Gulf coast, I decided to narrow my computer business down to providing disaster recovery help. Yes, I still do work on people’s computers, but will work on making contacts for the consulting side. In a funny bit of irony, I started a series of articles discussing disaster recovery, and […]

What is a Mail Merge?
Mail Merge is a common term you often hear in Office environments but they can be useful for home users as well. It is used to create a set of documents, envelopes, labels, and so on that is basically the same but need to contain certain unique elements, such as the […]

The animated TECHTip is available here.
As wireless networks evolve more ad-hoc or mesh peer-to-peer (or user-to-user) networks will emerge. Rather than central access devices or server systems, users will access other users’ devices. Frequency hopping also known as multi-hopping provides traffic load-balancing, security and improved management. In addition, these connections can be […]