What Have I Been Up to Lately? Creating IT Ready Futures

For the last eight weeks it has been my privilege to train twenty students in the fundamentals of computer and network support.  I have been working as an independent instructor in association with A Critical Path, CompTIA, and their non-profit foundation Creating IT Futures.  The eight weeks of instruction that I delivered is designed to provide lecture and hands-on instruction in computers, networks, protocols, operating systems, security, user administration, and the like.  All of the instruction ...

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Sunday Funnies: US Gov Seeks to Outlaw Stupidity

Sunday Funnies: US Gov Seeks to Outlaw Stupidity

Money. Image courtesy of Shutterstock.Usually my Sunday submission is a bit more genuinely humorous, but not so much today.  Other titles I considered were “Your Tax Dollars At Work” and “Government Seeks to Tax Cyber-Crime Victims,” but the real title should be:

Congress to Enact Legislation To Make Bad Cyber Security Illegal

This is sort of the same as making being the victim of a mugging illegal.  But ...

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Apple Patched Safari and OSX–But Not Snow Leopard

Apple Patched Safari and OSX–But Not Snow Leopard

Recent security updates to OSX and Safari closed some significant security holes in OSX 10.7, 10.8, 10.9 and Safari 6 and Safari 7.  But it appears that support for OSX 10.6 “Snow Leopard” has been discontinued by the Cupertino firm.  This update cycle included 27 patches that resolved issues that allowed drive by downloads, remote code execution (RCE), and “sandbox escape” exploits.  Also included were a couple of recent ...

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Windows XP–No Support For MS Security Essentials Either

If you read my earlier article about the end of support for Windows XP, it was missing an important fact.  If you are running Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows XP, support for MSE is going to end for you as well.  This is from the Microsoft website:

As a result, after April 8, 2014, technical assistance for Windows XP will no longer be available, including automatic updates that help protect your PC. Microsoft will also stop providing ...

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Addicted to Windows XP? Time to Move On

Windows XP is thirteen year old, which is old for dogs, cats, and really old for computers.  Evidently Windows XP systems still claim about 25% of the active operating systems worldwide.  Several of my business clients still have at least some Windows XP systems running on their network, and a decent percentage of my residential clients as well.  After thirteen years, official support for Windows XP ends Tuesday April 8, 2014.  So what does that mean?

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Solid State Drives–Insuring Data Erasure Difficult

One of the recommended procedures when disposing or recycling a computer or hard drive is to completely erase the existing data on the hard drive by reformatting, overwriting the data or using a drive wiping program.  This works quite well on standard ATA, SATA, and SCSI drives that use spinning magnetic platters.  Apparently, these techniques do not reliable remove data from solid state drives (SSDs).

There currently are no reliable methods to guarantee complete erasure of data on SSDs.  The exception ...

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20th Anniversary of Netscape

20th Anniversary of Netscape

On April 4 1994 the Mosaic Corporation, the company that became Netscape Communications, was founded by Marc Andreessen, a University of Illinois trained software programmer.  Netscape became the way that the average computer user was introduced to the Internet, and was responsible for turning web sites and web browsing into the phenomenon that it has become over the last 20 years.

There is a phenomenal article on the Continue Reading →

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