General

June 8th was the first International IPv6 Day.  Huh?  What is that?

IP or the Internet Protocol, is part of the TCP/IP communications protocol that modern computers use to communicate with each other.  We have been using IPv4 or Internet Protocol version 4 since the early 90’s to provide addressing  and routing on the Internet.  IPv4 uses a 32 bit binary (ones and zeros) addressing scheme that commonly looks something like 207.46.131.43, which happens to be the address of Microsoft’s web ...

Tech support guy:  "Can you still see the cursor?"  Customer:  "No he just left the room!" 

Courtesy of Jerry Nolan

Today is Harmon Killebrew’s funeral.  As fate would have it, the Twins are playing in Phoenix Arizona, and so they are able to participate in the funeral as pallbearers.  How fitting.

As I was listening to Soucheray’s radio show, they kept referring to him as a “hero” and it finally occurred to me that he was and still is my very first boyhood hero.  As a boy growing up in St Louis Park, I had a genuine Harmon Killebrew Louisville Slugger ...

There are a lot of options if you decide to put your documents in the cloud.  Keeping a synchronized copy of your documents in the cloud is a form of backup, for starters.  There are other advantages, too; like collaboration, document sharing, and synchronizing files between multiple PCs or other Internet connected devices such as tablets and smartphones.  Let’s look at three of the better known ones.

First, there is Microsoft’s SkyDrive, 25 GB of free online storage, with a Hotmail ...

Have you ever had a document that more than one member of your staff works on regularly?  Had trouble figuring our who had the most recent copy?  Lots of times you can solve the issue by “sharing” the file across the network.  But what if your staff works remotely, is home-based, or one or more members travels frequently?  How do you keep everyone’s copy of the document synchronized?

My business partner and I had this problem with web site designs that ...

Last month I switched cellular carriers, dropping T-Mobile and switching to Sprint.  I had a very weird echo problem with my Blackberry Bold, and my business partner had the same issue with her cell phone.  Coverage in my service area, the St Croix valley area, had deteriorated as well.   I will not do business with ATT and Verizon is just too danged expensive for my blood.  I am told the coverage is generally better in our area on Verizon, but ...

Epsilon, an email marketing company used by many major companies, reported that their server security was breached early in April, and that thousand of email addresses had been harvested by hackers.  The affected email addresses were from marketing lists for companies such as Best Buy, Walgreens, US Bank, Capitol One, Fry’s, Wal-Mart, TiVo, JP Morgan Chase, Disney Destinations, Marriot rewards, McKinsey, Beachbody, 1-800Flowers, marks & Spencer, Hilton, Lacoste, and presumably others.  If you did business with these companies on-line, you ...

Windows 7 was released on October 22, 2009, and we are approaching the 2 year anniversary of this outstanding Windows operating system.  I can say without reservation that this is my favorite Windows operating system yet, and my user experience goes back to Windows 3.1.  Make 2011 the year you upgrade to Windows 7.

Windows XP users:  Windows XP was released on August 24, 2001, and is close to being a ten year old operating system.  Computer operating systems age on ...

“This is the way the world ends…not with a bang but a whimper.” – TS Eliot

A significant computer security exploit, known as Stuxnet, was released last year against the Iranian nuclear power and weapons programs.  The way it was written was very clever, and extremely well targeted. 

Today, there was a post on Good Morning Silicon Valley that I have copied below:

“The idea behind Stuxnet computer worm is really quite simple. We don’t want Iran to get the ...

People I know who are Apple users are quick to tell me how much better the Mac platform is, from a security standpoint.  I try to point out that this is more a case of security by obscurity than any real inherent security.  What I mean is this – the Windows environment is a much larger target; there are twenty Windows machines for every Mac.  If you are going to writer code to attack and control computers, why wouldn’t you ...