WyzGuys Tech Talk

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 ...

I have been keeping an eye on Android because it seems like an excellent operating system platform for laptops and desktop PCs – perhaps.  Android has already made it into the tablet space,and two laptop manufacturers, Toshiba and Asus, have announced Android based laptops.  This represents a very real edge of the wedge into the operating systems space dominated by Microsoft Windows for two decades.  And with the money, marketing savvy, and technical expertise of Google behind Android, there is ...

This is one of my favorite bits of humor.  Thanks to http://glory4ever.net/public/ministry/humor/cr.htm

Agnosticism – Maybe doo-doo happens, maybe it doesn’t

Atheism – There is no doo-doo

Buddhism – If doo-doo happens, it’s not really doo-doo.

Catholicism – If doo-doo happens you deserve it.

Christian Science – The doo-doo is in your mind

Confucianism – Doo-doo happens when you don’t honor your ancestors

Existentialism – What is doo-doo anyway?

Hare Krishna – Doo-doo happens. Rama Rama.

Hedonism – There’s nothing like good doo-doo happening

Hinduism – This doo-doo happened ...

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 ...