October 2009

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My apostasy worsens

October 23, 2009 in Technology | No comments

All right, so let me get this out of the way: I am a sucker for new and shiny things.

That might lead you to peg me as a Mac guy. You’d be half right. I like anything that’s new and shiny. Here’s what I am excited about right now.

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Fascinating times ahead

October 23, 2009 in Technology | No comments

It’s an absolutely fascinating time in the PC industry right now.

First of all, a little known company released a little known operating system. [Perhaps you've heard of it?][win7] It’s kind of a big deal! Vista was a black eye, for a variety of reasons, and Windows 7 is very much an attempt to recover from the loss of reputation and generate interest in their operating systems once again.

In light of Windows 7′s release, you can find a whole heck of a lot of analysis about Vista, Windows 7, and (of course) Apple. Read the rest of this entry »

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Operating systems, banking, and security. Oh boy.

October 13, 2009 in Technology | No comments

Perhaps you’ve seen this article in the Washington Post. Therein, their resident security person (blogger? reporter?), Brian Krebs, gives some advice about how to avoid getting pwned when you want to do some online banking. The advice? Use a Linux LiveCD to do your online banking.

Throwing in Knoppix or running Ubuntu live is a great way to get around this problem. Although I’m sure it’s possible to exploit the OS while it’s running in memory, the current operating system installed base climate means that the odds are enormously against it, even when you set aside the added security of a GNU/Linux OS running ephemerally, in read-only mode.

Ultimately, however, I have such mixed feelings about this situation. Among the worst outcomes I see is that people get really paranoid about doing anything with computers because it could screw them over. That’s bad for everybody in the computing industry, and, frustratingly, it doesn’t have to be that way.

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