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 […]
Well, Money, Obviously
How to Tell Who REALLY Sent That Email
Sometimes I’ll get an email that I KNOW didn’t come from the person shown in the “from” column in my gmail online. Most of those are ending up in my spam filter these days, but every once in a while one will look legit enough that Google lets it through. Only by knowing my friends and relatives do I know […]
Cryptolocker–there is no cure, so best prevent
There’s a nasty piece of malware out there called Cryptolocker. You won’t know you’re infected with it until you get the notice that your files are encrypted and if you don’t pay $300 by a certain date the decryption key will be destroyed, causing you to lose all your files forever. At this time only Windows operating systems are vulnerable, […]
The–Blue–Screen-Of–DEATH!!!!!
Every computer system has the capability of crashing. Some self-recover better than others, and some manifest it more elegantly than others. Make no mistake, regardless of what kind of computer you are using, your computer can crash. I am not particularly loyal to one hardware set or to one operating system. I use them all and I enjoy them all. […]
How Safe is Your Password?
A reporter from Wired magazine recently got schooled in password security, which generated a lot of conversation in the tech space on keeping yourself safe in cyberspace. There is one simple thing to do to stay safe in cyberspace: stay out of it. Yeah right. That’s what I thought. So here’s the rundown: Strong passwords, different passwords, different cards, non-obvious […]
More Cores is the Key to Multitasking
Multi-core processing is one of those terms that geeks love to use when they tell people about their computers because having multiple cores means wonderful things. Let’s start on what a processor is: A processor is a component that processes instructions from the different programs and makes outputs. That’s obviously a simplified explanation, but that’s what it is and what […]
Why Does Microsoft Keep Changing Stuff?
If you know me—at all—you know that I use a lot of different forms of technology, from different providers. This gives me the foundation to be able to tell you authoritatively that it is not just Microsoft that keeps changing stuff. Let’s start by saying that, although a horse and buggy is an adequate way to get around and […]
What is “Piracy” with Regard to Technology–and why should you care?
This is a subject that is difficult to get information on that isn’t heavily biased in one direction or the other. I’m going to do my best to present baseline facts and leave it to you to form your own opinion, but I will also try to present the viewpoints of both sides. When we use the word “piracy” with […]
This Thing Called the World Wide Web
I remember when there was no World Wide Web, when the Internet was not called the Internet. For today’s emerging generation of computer users, however, computer use IS the Internet or the Web. The journey from a room-sized machine churning out processed data to global information access from a handheld device weighing less than a pound probably does not fascinate […]
RAM–What “Ewe” Need to Know (pun warning came too late)
what it is–in real people’s terms RAM stands for for Random Access Memory. It’s not storage, and it’s not the hard drive. It’s the thing your computer uses to keep track of stuff it’s working on right now or very recently. Your computer can’t start without it; if you don’t have RAM installed, it simply won’t complete the startup process. […]