Join Dr. Bill as he examines the wild and wacky world of the web, computers, and all things geeky! Hot Tech Tips, Tech News, and Geek Culture are examined… with plenty of good humor as well!
The Spyware evilness is getting worse! There is a new spike in Spyware activity, especially among infections that lead to pop-ups that say, “You are infected with Spyware… click here to have your system cleaned!” DON’T DO IT! You will then receive a boatload of additional Spyware! These guys should be shot!
May the Great Bird of the Galaxy come to nest in their nose!
First, a disclaimer, I have never cared for Norton Anti-Virus. In fact, it stinks! We use it where I work, but I don’t trust it. I have seen it fail too many times, I have seen it compromised too many times, in short, it is just slightly better than nothing at all. That said, it is now worse! A flaw has been found in Symantec Norton Anti-Virus that allows it to be compromised.
Symantec Norton Anti-Virus Flaw
What would the Doctor do? Switch to AVG or Avast! FREE anti-virus immediately! They are both excellent and free! Gotta love that! Links below:
There are rumors that the StarTrek.com website may go offline on December 31st. This would be a shame! I admit, I mainly go there only for the great Star Trek desktop backgrounds, but still, this would be history being lost!
I hope that the additional rumor that Gene Roddenberry’s son, Rod, will try to take over the site to keep it alive, is true. Rod is already involved in an IPTV version of Star Trek, called “New Voyages” (see the link under my Cool Links section.)
Wow! Talk about your big purchases at Christmas! Seagate is buying competitor Maxtor!
Seagate is the biggest hard drive manufacturer followed by Western Digital, with Maxtor in third place. The market shrinks… let’s hope drive prices don’t go up!
OpenOffice 2.01 is out… bug fixes and updates:
Open Source, Free, and Safe… ya gotta love it!
Microsoft Corp. released to their beta testers Monday a build for both the Windows Vista client and for the Longhorn Server. Both the Longhorn Server and Vista client build number is 5270, testers said. Microsoft made the bits for both Windows builds available simultaneously for testers to download from the Microsoft Connect tester Web site.
Now, the question is, will the final resulting server operating system be more stable than in the past?
OK, so I like web based e-mail because, unlike Microsoft Outlook, web based e-mail isn’t as prone to open virus attachments, and have security issues in general. I use Squirrelmail on my own Linux servers, which is a great Open Source IMAP package using PHP. I also like Gmail, which is very handy free e-mail service and offers large storage and searchable e-mail. However, one thing that is nice about Outlook, or even Mozilla Thunderbird, is that when you get an e-mail, you get instant notification… if you are logged in to your PC. You don’t have to remember to check your e-mail via a web site. Well, as usual, some kind individual has created a free, Open Source utility that does just what I need! It is called PopTray. It sits in your Windows tray, and checks your e-mail on any server, and then pops up and notifies you of incoming e-mail. (Thus the name, “PopTray”, get it?)
PopTray Open Source E-mail Notifier
Download it and configure it as you like.
Features:
Rules that identify a message according to your criteria, then does one of these actions:
Plug-in Support:
Security firm Ironport counted how long it took anti-virus firms to produce an antidote following the first appearance of a malicious program. It found that, on average, anti-virus firms took 17 hours to respond to new threats.
Ironport gathered its statistics from its monitoring system that looks at incoming and outgoing e-mail traffic for more than 100,000 organizations. Come on, guys… let’s get it together!
All us geeks use flowcharts to make important decisions. Now, as a public service, here is a flowchart that will help you buy a really cool gift for your favorite geek!
Help make this Christmas a happy one for your geek… check it out!
Remember the “Soup Nazi?” “No soup for you!” Well, Microsoft is saying to Mac users, “No IE for you!” Microsoft plans to discontinue support for its Internet Explorer browser on Mac OS X at the end of this year.
“While IE for Mac will continue to be available for another month after support ends, Microsoft is advising all users to move to ‘more recent browsing technology such as Apple’s Safari.’ The lack of support for IE is unlikely to be an issue for Apple users, most of whom already use alternatives. The only potential difficulty could lie with some sites that have been designed to work with IE only.”
So, another reason not to develop sites that cater to IE only. Get wit’ the program!