While cars aren’t exactly a new target (actually happened in Texas in 2010), two hackers (Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek) say they will publish detailed blueprints of techniques for attacking critical systems in the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape in a 100-page white paper, following several months of research they conducted with a grant from the U.S. government. Relax. These guys are “White hats”. What can they do? “They said they devised ways to force a Toy...

  As part of the series on hard drives, I found this article which might be of assistance in helping you diagnose things when you hear them. I hope you don’t, of course. This is a good article about the sounds sick computers make: LINK . The sounds are those of a sick hard drive, fans, and speakers. Hope it helps. Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2039654/the-sounds-of-a-sick-pc-listen-to-the-noises-that-could-mean-bad-news.html

  Recently, we had a thread about “What to do”. Well, if it isn’t dead, some experts say do a chkdsk first, others say back it up first, then do a chkdsk /f /r. Making a backup first can’t hurt. If the disk is dead due to system file corruption, doing a chkdsk /f /r can’t hurt. If it starts functioning again after that and the report says corrupt files were fixed, I’d say it’s worth doing the backup again to replace the prior copy. Here, Tina Sieber at MakeUseOf.com ( ...

  Nirsoft is a truly great source for utilities. They’re all free. They all work the way they’re intended. BlueScreenView displays all the data from a crash in table form: the minidump filename, the date/time of the crash, the basic crash information displayed in the blue screen (Bug Check Code and 4 parameters), and the details of the driver or module that possibly caused the crash (filename, product name, file description, and file version). There is also a link t...

  Fantastic instructor Dave Cross…free knowledge. Reruns after the end of the day’s course if you couldn’t make it. Enroll (free) at creativeLive.com .

    No. Don’t stop to think. Grab this. You’ll not see it again soon! Acronis is the gold standard for disk imaging. You CAN NOT afford to be without this, folks.   Grab it here:  https://store.acronis.com/325/purl-july-promo-ti2013-deep_en-US   Thanks should go to I.D. for finding this gem. Thanks, Spencer.

  Well, as the song goes, “Another one bites the dust”. There’s no notice about the SourceForge installer (SFI) when you go to download software there. The SFI is only for Windows, not Linux or Mac. I agree that devs need funding, and that’s a valid and good thing but bundling without notification isn’t the way. Pretty much all of us have left Download.com . Confusing installation choices isn’t either. The SFI uses the “Accept” or “Decline” choice leading the downloader to th...

  Just to let you users of 8.1 Preview: There are some updates available for both x86 and x64 systems. To check them out:  http://www.neowin.net/news/another-round-of-updates-for-windows-81-preview

  Interesting. It’s free and has 3 engines: 360 checksum based cloud engine. Machine learning cloud QVM engine. BitDefender local engine. It supports all Windows versions, XP through W8.1 and comes in 32 and 64 bit versions. It is Cloud based and is a 180 MB download. Being Cloud based, it is light on resources. There is a PC and mobile version as well. It’s real time, has url protection (anti phishing protection) and has a privacy protection which war...

  Give it a try… Gizoogle your website, or anything! You can even use the Tranzizzler. Go here to Gizoogle: http://www.gizoogle.net/     And for Stardock:

  For the victims of friends and family’s dreaded phone call, “Help me, my computer’s broken!”. Emsisoft is a well known and reputable security software developer. You can trust this. It should be on a “Rescue USB Drive”. It’s also free for private use. It has: 1. Emsisoft Emergency Scanner which has been improved. 2. Emsisoft Hijackfree which allows you to manage all the active processes (services, drivers, autoruns, open ports, etc....

  Well, that brings it to 22 ‘Critical’ patches this year. There is one “Important” patch for Windows Defender. It’s important to get these patches, as they involve (for IE) zero day remote code execution holes. For Windows Defender, the fix is for an “elevation of privilege” issue. Here’s the summary: You can review the actual bulletin here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-jul This is one you really have to do.

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      He was 88. He believed his work was all about “augmenting human intellect”. To him this meant making computers more user friendly, smaller and given to intuitive use. All to help solve mankind’s problems. Towards that end he developed in the ‘60s and ‘70s a funny little device: The mouse. It started as a wooden shell covering an ‘x’ and ‘y’ wheel, which together determined the screen position indicator (cursor). ...

  Hankers sent me an interesting url this morning. Gadgets were removed in W8 and while a partial Start Button made it back in W8.1, Gadgets were not so lucky. Now, apparently you can get them back and a sidebar as well: Link . So, if you’re so inclined, mosey on over and take a look.