Wednesday, I was able to check off another one of those things on the 'To Do at least Once in your IT Career' list by degaussing hard drives. Degaussing a hard drive means using a device that generates a strong electromagnetic field to wipe the data on the drive. This is an important step that I've mentioned before in the 'Before you Recycle/Garbage that Old Computer' article … [Read more...]
A Funeral for IE6
There are many-a people who would like to see Internet Explorer 6 bludgeoned and beaten quit gruesomely to its death, but there is another group (less than 10.2% of web users) that would like to see IE6 continue lumbering on. Instead, IE6 will be quietly put to rest in a somber funeral service on March 4th, 2010. The funeral will be held in Denver, CO and you can RSVP and … [Read more...]
Cohabitating with Computers
If you have more than one person using a computer, things can get a little bit frustrating when preferences, bookmarks, and software might be different between people and accounts. The standard way of dealing with this is to use Windows accounts to log in under your own account or 'switch users'. I'm not a big fan of this approach because it can potentially leave a lot of stuff … [Read more...]
A Directory on Bloatware
I hate it when I download something and it tries to install more stuff than what I asked for. Thus I composed this Directory of Bloatware comprised of software that I've encountered recently that try to install more than what was listed. I know a lot of companies use these additional installations as their revenue stream in order to provide free software, but the 'bloat' label … [Read more...]
Malware Taxonomy
A working group has formed to move towards establishing official language and terminology for describing malware to assist communicating and fighting malware. The working group is trying to establish the Malware Attribute Enumeration and Characterization (MAEC) language. There are a number of benefits to establishing a common malware terminology: eliminating innacuracy in … [Read more...]