Archive for August, 2008
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
Keyboard Tips and Tricks
Your hard-working keyboard can do much more for you than just let you type stuff. Today we are going to look at a few tricks, and fix some common frustrations, with your trusty keyboard.
To begin, here are a couple of maddening problems that happen to most of us sooner or later (usually sooner!). [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Featured by Syd Tash
Friday, August 29th, 2008
Problem with AVG Program Update
If you are using the AVG 8.0 antivirus program, you may be having problems downloading that big program update that became available a day or two ago. This update alone is up to 4.5MB in size.
There appears to be a problem with AVG’s servers or the update itself. Many of you will not be [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Updates by Syd Tash
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Huge Payout From Verizon – Not!
Has Verizon Wireless offered to pay you $750,000 lately? Maybe they have, but as you can easily guess, it’s a scam. You may receive a letter from a company called Verizon Financial telling you that you have won a sweepstakes, and your payment is approved. A worthless check for $4,500 is even [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Alerts by Syd Tash
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Firefox Update, News and Security
If you use the Firefox browser, you can update to Version 3.0.1 now. Some of your plugins and extensions may not work after the upgrade. Firefox will tell you which these are, and you can decide if you want to go ahead with the update.
Launch Firefox and click Help, Check for Updates. [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Updates by Syd Tash
Monday, August 25th, 2008
Watch Out for This Clipboard Attack
A clever attack has been found, that puts URLs to rogue Web sites into your Clipboard. The Clipboard is a temporary area of memory which holds stuff that you copy and paste. This attack works with both Windows and Mac machines. The source appears to be legitimate Web sites that have been [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Alerts by Syd Tash
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
Turn Off This Outlook Express Feature
Do you use OE? Your messages automatically open in the preview pane when you open OE. This could be dangerous. We all get many HTML email messages these days, right? An HTML email can be just as risky as a Web site. It can contain all sorts of malware, which [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Security by Syd Tash
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
Of Vista SP1 and XP SP3
In the last six months, Microsoft has released service packs for the Vista and XP operating systems. So how are they doing? Are people installing them? Both updates had a somewhat rocky start.
But eventually, Vista users were fairly diligent in downloading and installing their Service Pack 1. According to one survey [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Updates by Syd Tash
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
The Latest Spam Alert
Yep, spam just rolls on, in a never-ending wave (sigh). Doesn’t look like I’ll be out of work any time soon…
OK, here it is. Someone is sending out millions of emails looking like they are from CNN or MSNBC. The messages have headlines of current news, and look authentic. They are [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Alerts by Syd Tash
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Solid-State Drives Are Almost Here
We occasionally talk about backing up your data. You should do this on a regular schedule, to avoid having yourself a bad day if disaster strikes. My favorite media for backups are thumb (USB) drives, or an external hard drive. Between uses, both should be stored far from your PC.
Now Intel has [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in News by Syd Tash
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
How Do You Protect Yourself Against This?
The hackers and scammers are getting more and more brazen. Recently in Northern Ireland, crooks posing as bank service personnel actually walked into stores and replaced the credit card readers with their own models. These new machines, of course, captured the customers’ debit or credit card number and PIN.
Some 10,000 card numbers were [...]
