Take all the headlines you see on different websites with a five pound bag of salt.
On that note, I have to pass along what I think is about the best April fools prank I’ve pulled off. One of the places I used to work had a central area for employees to make copies and was one of only two places at that location for copies to be made. Early April 1st, I attached official looking signs to the copiers letting people know that they had been upgraded and now accept voice commands. I put instructions for clearly stating your name, number of copies, department to bill, etc… There were some people that repeated the information 4 and 5 times before someone else let them in on it.
I have several computers at various places around my house and workshop that are always on and serve different functions. My media system, video editing, fileserver, and so on are left on for months at a time so I don’t spend time waiting for the system to boot up. With so many passwords to remember, it’s easy to set a box up, and forget to store the password in my password manager.
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Some “hackers” managed to embed javascript in the forums for the non-profit Epilepsy Foundation causing flashing sequences to appear to viewers last weekend. Epilepsy can be triggered by these flashes and many users reported varying degrees of suffering from it. It’s sad to see people stoop to this to get attention. Hopefully the perps get what’s coming to them for it.
WindowsXP SP2 added a limitation to the number of “half-open” outgoing connections that can be opened in one second. Supposedly, the “feature” was added to limit the speed at which viruses can spread on a network. Unfortunately, it causes other apps to not work as they should. This topic has been covered elsewhere before, but if you have recently rebuilt your system, it may affect you again. Read the rest of this entry »
It turns out that malware installed on servers in Europe, New York and Florida was the tool used by intruders to glean credit card data from Hannaford Brothers. I posted back on the 18th of March about the Hannaford Bros. grocery stores breach but the new details have just recently emerged concerning how the intrusion was accomplished. Evidently the malware intercepted the data as it was transmitted from the point of sale systems to the authorization partner.
Several points of entry are being examined by the store chain but it isn’t know yet exactly how the breach occurred. Among other ways, investigators are looking at lax firewall rules, server vulnerabilities and the possibility of an insider planting the malware.
more info at Infoworld
MySpace, Facebook and other sites like them can be useful, but you may not want your younger children accessing them. You can always buy software that will block categories of websites, but there is an easy way of preventing individual sites from being accessed without buying any extra software. The only drawback to this method is that it requires you to know the address of the site, and only sites that you specify will be blocked. But, then again, it is free. Read the rest of this entry »
Extra advertisement is always a plus for small businesses. Promoting your business is vital to attracting new clients and keeping your brand in front of current clients. I’ve used these tips and found them to yield big returns for the small amount of time and pennies invested. Read the rest of this entry »