We live very different lives than our ancestors did just a generation ago. Many more of us work in some sort of office environment than our parents’ generation. While being a digital device user may not carry as many physical hazards as factory or farm or other industrial work, it is not without any risk at all. Eyestrain, poor posture, […]
Is Your Computer Hurting You?
Is Your Heart Bleeding?
What have you heard about the vulnerability called Heartbleed? More than you wanted to? Less than you needed to? Let me unpack it for you, only the part that you need to know, and then I’ll get a little deeper for those who want to stick around for the full meal. Let’s do a Good News/Bad News thing. What […]
The End of Support for XP–All is Not Lost!
Microsoft ended support for Windows XP today. The camps are divided as to whether that was just another ploy to get you to spend more money on another operating system, or whether it was time for XP to go gently into that good night. Keep reading to the end for a bit of a surprise. Let’s face it, XP was […]
You Can’t Just Surf Anymore
It never was really safe to just surf around and clickety-click on interesting-looking stuff, but it just keeps getting truer and truer (is that grammatically correct?) that you have got to pay attention to what you’re doing on the web. You’ve got to pay attention when you get an email with a link or an attachment. (See Cryptolocker) You’ve got […]
Is Glass Your Next Big Thing?
The short answer is probably not yet. Glass is Google’s latest R&D effort. Okay, it’s a cool concept. Would I like to play with it? Yes, I probably would. Would I spend $1,500 to play with it? Nah. Absolutely not. But let’s remember this: At $1,500, I’m not the target market for this product. Glass is still highly experimental. It’s […]
Well, Money, Obviously
That’s the answer; the question is, what do the bad guys want? Ultimately, the bottom line, at the end of the day, the spam, the botnets, the phishing emails, the hoax sites, it’s all about getting money, either directly or indirectly, from someone otherwise unwilling to give it up that easily. Let’s start with spam, since there’s so dang much […]
How to Verify Security at a Website
There’s a great line from the movie Sneakers, when Robert Redford is in the limo with the Russian guy, and the Russian guy says, “You won’t know who to trust.” If you’re going to do any business online, you’ve got to trust someone, and knowing who the trusted trusters for trusting are is a great place to start. Let’s start with […]
What is “The Cloud” and Should I Be Using It?
This is a very simplified network drawing done in Microsoft Visio, using commonly accepted symbols. Something like this, only much more complex, would be used for planning a new network or an upgrade or change, or to identify where the technology components of a network are. In the center of the diagram, you see a Cloud symbol. This symbol has […]
Before You Send That Resume…
Before you send that resume, you might want to take a look at your social media profiles, and the stuff you’ve put “out there,” and see what they say about you. While I doubt the validity of requiring your Facebook login ID and password would stand up in any court, employers have ways of checking your online life without it. […]
New Wound Care Technology? Sounds Fishy to Me
This may not sound like a techy subject, but without computers and other technology, this would not have been possible. The FDA has approved the use of a “fish skin” to facilitate healing of chronic wounds. Chronic wounds are different from “regular” wounds in the way they heal, and chronic wounds are often the direct result of diabetes or other […]