WyzGuys Tech Talk

“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition” – Rudyard Kipling

Sophos has written about a new Firefox security threat.  It comes as an email advicing there is a new update.  The email reads:

Subject: New version released.

Message body:

Important notice
A Firefox software update is a quick download of small amounts of new code to your existing Firefox browser. These small patches can contain security fixes or other little changes to the browser to ensure that you are using the ...

I occasionally will publish a joke in this space.  These are courtesy of Carl Wegener from Glenbrook Lumber.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today!

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you would have $33.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you would have $0.00 today.

But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank ...

A tip of the cap to “Short Lady” on Computerworld’s Shark Tank.

Originally the WWW prefix was used by the scientists at CERN (the European laboratory for Particle Physics) to distinguish Web files from other Internet documents. Today, it’s a completely unnecessary part of a Web address. (Personally, I can’t forget to stop using it 🙂

The word "boot" or "booting" comes from the concept of bootstrapping, or pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. Before PC’s, computer operators would run ...

When I went to the Android mobile phone platform, one of the things that was really annoying was the amount of SPAM messages I was getting in email.  The server side SPAM filter provided by my email host was still catching 90% of the 800-1000 spam messages I receive every day (yeah that’s right – 1000).  That still left 50 to 100 spams getting to my phone, and those of you who have a smart phone know that it is ...

Microsoft offers periodic major upgrades to its Windows operating systems.  These are called “Service Packs” and are usually of a combination of improved security, bug fixes, and feature enhancements.  If you have not taken the latest service packs for your computer, Microsoft has this handy Service Pack Center site.

To find out the service pack version you are running, go to the Start Menu, right click on the Computer or My Computer icon, and select Properties.  The service pack ...

My son took me out for a round of golf yesterday, for System Administrator’s Day, which is tomorrow.  Well, I like to think it was for SysAdmin Day.  We got shoehorned into an afternoon tee time between a threesome that was walking the course, and shooting poorly enough that it was likely we would be waiting for them often.  Behind us was a tournament, champing at the bit to get started.  It looked like it would be a slow afternoon ...

A client of mine sent me the following question:

Bob:

I saw these files on my C drive, created on July 19:

hiberfil.sys 2,095,252 KB

pagefile.sys 4,190,208 KB

WTF??? Should I be concerned?

J

This was my reply:

hiberfil.sys is the file created when you hibernate your computer. It is the image created of your system state, and is always big.

pagefile.sys is the area of the hard drive dedicated to transferring data and applications from the hard drive to the system memory or RAM. The bigger this partition ...

This year I am hoping for a car.

Seriously, though, if you have a computer professional in your life, give them a big surprise and remember them this year on Thursday June 28th.

Personally, I would appreciate a card, beer, pizza, or a golf coupon.  Hint, hint.

Many, many of my clients (too many) have fallen victim to one of the many Fake AV exploits.  This happens when you inadvertently browse a web page that has been infected with executable software code.  The executed code is inserted in the legitimate website one of two ways.  The first requires the cyber-crooks to hack the web server using an automated brute force password attack, and is usually possible because the web master is using weak and easy to break ...