Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

I don’t like obtrusive doohickies anyway!

Google Desktop Unsafe!

“The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation said a new feature added to Google Desktop on Feb. 9 is a serious privacy and security risk because of the way a user’s data is stored on Google’s servers.

The new ‘Share Across Computers’ feature stores Web browsing history, Microsoft Office documents, PDF and text files on Google’s servers to allow a user to run remote searches from multiple computers, but, according to the EFF, this presents a lucrative target to malicious hackers.

‘[We urge] consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password,’ the EFF said in a statement.”

Here’s a blog that has daily freeware and shareware reviews and info, pretty nice info… it is cool that they are collecting new “finds” that are out there!

Download Freeware and Shareware Software

It is cool that they are using WordPress as the Blog engine… good taste! ;-)

Everything these days seem to run on batteries! Now, MIT has made a breakthrough in a new type of battery that could change everything!

New Battery Technology

“Joel E. Schindall, the Bernard Gordon Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and associate director of the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems; John G. Kassakian, EECS professor and director of LEES; and Ph.D. candidate Riccardo Signorelli are using nanotube structures to improve on an energy storage device called an ultracapacitor.

Capacitors store energy as an electrical field, making them more efficient than standard batteries, which get their energy from chemical reactions. Ultracapacitors are capacitor-based storage cells that provide quick, massive bursts of instant energy. They are sometimes used in fuel-cell vehicles to provide an extra burst for accelerating into traffic and climbing hills.

However, ultracapacitors need to be much larger than batteries to hold the same charge.

The LEES invention would increase the storage capacity of existing commercial ultracapacitors by storing electrical fields at the atomic level.”

Uh… yeah. This is weird. I know ink jet printers can do a lot of things… but come on! (Maybe it is a new diet craze?!?)

Printing Meat for fun and profit?

“Tissue engineers like Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina, and Thomas Boland of Clemson University, have been printing biomaterials with modified ink-jet printers.

The cartridges are washed out and refilled with suspensions of living cells; the software that controls the characteristics of the ink is reprogrammed and you’re good to go. Boland and Mironov use layers of “thermo-reversable” gel to build up three-dimensional structures like tubes—capillaries, to use the medical term. When the tiny droplets, or clumps, of cells came together closely, they fused; the gel can be easily removed, leaving a tube of tissue.

Just as printers contain inks of different colors, so tissue printers could contain different cell types to create complex structures.

Now, it seems to me that a tube or complex living organ is a pretty complicated structure. Why not practice with a simpler, more two-dimensional form of muscle tissue—like bacon, for instance? Nothing like fresh bacon.”

Uhhhhh… yum.

Why February 3rd? Well, that is the day the Nyxem virus is supposed to “go off.”

Nyxem Virus Set to Destroy on Feb. 3rd

“On that date the Nyxem virus is set to delete Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Acrobat files on infected machines.

Nyxem is thought to have caught out many people by promising porn to those who open the attachments on e-mail messages carrying the virus.

Anti-virus companies have stopped lots of copies, suggesting it had infected a large number of computers.”

Files that will be deleted on infected systems are:
DMP – Oracle files
DOC – Word document
MDB – Microsoft Access
MDE – Microsoft Access/Office
PDF – Adobe Acrobat
PPS – PowerPoint slideshow
PPT – PowerPoint
PSD – Photoshop
RAR – Compressed archive
XLS – Excel spreadsheet
ZIP – Compressed file

So, be sure your virus signatures are up to date and hold on tight!

OK, so Kevin Mitnick and the like made phone spoofing “cool.” What is “phone spoofing,” you ask? Well, you can make a call, while appearing to be another caller (another line) and even charge it to that line. Now, you can do that AND change your voice to sound different as well… and it is a BUSINESS!

SpoofCard

What is the world coming to? What possible purpose (ligit, that is) could it serve?

Well, make it LOOK like a Mac, anyway. See Below:

Here’s Standard XP:

And here is “Mac” XP:



Read the “How To” here, and freak out your friends!

How to Turn XP into a Mac-look-alike