Practical Technology

for practical people.

September 5, 2011
by sjvn01
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Improve Your Security: Don’t Be Stupid

Two recent incidents brought today’s column topic to mind. The first was when a friend asked for help on a Windows PC that was being eaten alive by malware. The second was when an acquittance gave away some personal information to a link from an e-mail that purported to be from Suntrust bank. What did these two things have in common? If either person had had better than a room-temperature IQ, neither incident would have happened.

The Windows user had never used any anti-virus software. No, I’m not kidding. Never. I’m sure he’s not the only one. If you’re a Windows user, you cannot — I repeat cannot —be on the Internet without anti-virus software. Your system will be infected. It will probably get a case of malware within the first day you’re using it. At the very, very least, get Windows Defender from Microsoft. Better still, give one of the programs I recommend in Free anti-virus software: The best and the rest a try.

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September 5, 2011
by sjvn01
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DNS hack attack mutilates multiple Web sites

When I first heard that The Register, a popular United Kingdom, technology news site had been hacked, I was doubtful that the site itself had actually been cracked. The first headline I saw read, The Register Hacked. That isn’t what I saw. To me, it looked like a typical Domain Name System (DNS) hijack attack. I was right. What I didn’t know at the time, though, that more than a hundred Web sites, several of them major ones, were having their addresses redirected to the wrong location.

So, when you went to The Register, or sites such as Coke-Cola, UPS, or the Telegraph newspaper, you were dumped to a black page stating “TurkguvenLigi” and “4Sept. We TurkGuvenLigi declare this day as World Hackers Day- Have fun;) h4ck y0u”. The message changed several times, but it usually just displayed a similar nuisance message, rather than any attempt to steal information from unwary site visitors.

It appears, according to Zone-H, a site that monitors Web site attacks, that at least 186 Websites were attacked. In addition to the ones I already mentioned, other companies that were affected included Adobe, Dell, Microsoft, Harvard University and, oh the irony, security companies BitDefender, F-Secure, and Secunia.

The fact that even security companies were hit by this attack underlines the point though that while you can secure your own site, you can’t secure the Internet. You need to make sure your Internet partners–ISPs and DNS providers–also have their security act together before you can assume that your customers and clients will be able to safely reach your site.

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September 2, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google Chrome Web browser kicks rump, takes names

Internet Explorer (IE) 9 is probably the best Web browser Microsoft ever shipped. Unfortunately for Microsoft fans, it’s too little, too late. While Firefox has fallen into the doldrums, Google’s Chrome Web browser is slowly, but surely becoming the most popular Web browser of all.

According to Net Applications, Chrome, which just turned three years old, is now up to 15.5% of the market in August 2011. Internet Explorer market share continued its long decline and hit a new low of 55.3 percent from last month’s 56 percent. Firefox continued its decline as well and hit 22.6 percent. Apple’s Safari browser stayed steady at 4.64 percent. The other Web smaller Web browsers also stayed static.

I strongly suspect that Chrome is going to continue to catch up with IE and Firefox and eventually surpass them both. By year’s end, I think Chrome will pass Firefox. It will take until late 2012 for Chrome to surpass IE, but I can see it happening.

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September 1, 2011
by sjvn01
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Coping with September 11 2001 on the Internet

On Sept. 11, the first thing I did after staring at a jetliner taking out the second tower of the World Trade Center on CNN was pray. The second thing I did was to try to reach my friends and family who live in lower Manhattan: Me and about a million other people.

The phone system could no more handle the load than I could run to New York City from my home in the Blue Ridge mountains. So what did I do? I turned to the Internet, of course. And that’s when I heard on CNN that the Pentagon, near Washington, D.C., had just been hit-the area in which I had lived for the last 15 years.

You want to hear a voice first; I tried to call into D.C., though I knew it was futile. Hope over knowledge and knowledge won-the lines were already jammed up. Once more, I kicked on my DirecPC satellite uplink to the Internet and I was on the Internet in a minute.

Five minutes later, I was sending e-mails off my address list as fast as I could type, and the AP news service wire was scrolling in one window while The Washington Post was getting updates every 15 minutes in another.

Information was coming in fast but not fast enough, and then it hit me: instant messaging. A minute later I had my Linux Java-based AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) client up. The first person I managed to reach was my long time friend Mary Jo Foley. Inside of five minutes I knew that most of my friends and family were OK. By day’s end, I knew all of them, including the one who lived six blocks from the World Trade Center, were safe and sound. If it weren’t for the Internet, I still wouldn’t have known more than 24 hours later.

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August 31, 2011
by sjvn01
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Red Hat invites users to help create the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat, the world’s leading Linux company, is asking its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) users to help set the features for its next release RHEL 7. Of course, Red Hat is based on open-source Linux, and, in particular it’s Fedora community Linux operating system. There, the developers call the shots. Now the company is seeking the active help of its RHEL users as well.

This is going to be done in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Ideas discussion group on the Red Hat Customer Portal. According to the company, the “RHEL 7 Ideas discussion group is an extension to the interactive processes already underway with partners, customers and contributors in the open source community. It provides a venue for sharing thoughts and use cases and is invaluable to Red Hat engineering development groups. Access to the Red Hat Customer Portal, which includes a wealth of Red Hat Enterprise Linux information and knowledge, is provided as an important component of every Red Hat subscription.”

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August 31, 2011
by sjvn01
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Life on Jobs-less Earth

No sooner did Steve Jobs announce that he was stepping down as Apple’s CEO then a swarm of stories appeared singing his praises. Fair enough. Other stories pointed out that Jobs made mistakes. OK, I can see that too. What I don’t get is all the people who are saying that Jobs wasn’t that important. That is so wrong. If we could step into a parallel world without Jobs, I doubt you’d recognize it.

It’s true that Jobs was never a great developer or engineer. He hired great developers and engineers. He also wasn’t that original. Jobs’ gifts were fourfold: He could recognize great technology when he saw it; he had a great design aesthetic; once he had a vision, he stuck with it and made it work; and he could persuade others to back it.

Doesn’t sound like much? It was everything. Let’s visit Jobs-less Earth, shall we?

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