Last weekend we changed our clocks and the batteries in our smoke detectors (if you didn’t, do it now!) which made me think of other things that a person should have around… like a first aid kit, and an emergency duffel which you can grab and run (food, water, first aid, change of clothes, etc.). So then my eyes lighted on me computer…. and decided to get you moving to prepare for the worst. AVG has a really good set of tools available for that “Doomsday” s...
A recent post by RedneckDude ( https://forums.wincustomize.com/413409 ), to encourage and help artists from Community mindedness, gave me the idea for this post: Thanks, Jim. I remember when toolbars first came out. I naively thought, “What a helpful thing!”. They can be helpful, but they have a less altruistic side. I install and uninstall many apps in the course of my job here on WinCustomize. One of the things that I have to deal with regularly are browser toolbars and junk software...
Big news, and a big relief to Apple mobile device owners. Adobe has announced it will cease development of “Flash Player” for mobile devices. Adobe shares fell 11% with this news as it means devs will no longer be developing apps for Flash, and will focus on tools for HTML5 development. This will cause a 7% layoff at Adobe and decreased profits over the next year. The fight over HTML5 vs. Flash started when the late Steve Jobs refused to use Flash in Apple devices ...
Mozilla released Ff 8 today, seven weeks after their last version. So what’s new? Ff 8 features for the new browser releases (Win, Mac, Linux and mobile for Android) include Twitter search integration, on-demand tab group loading, and more WebGL graphics hardware acceleration support. Mozilla has added "support for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), which lets developers load WebGL textures from other domains in a secure way." according to them but Micr...
It’s a neat little free app (1.5 MB) which will tell you given your usage stats, brand and make of SSD when it will be likely to fail. That’s not a guarantee, but if you have an early make and model SSD, you might want to find out and make plans around that rather than one bright day, poof and you’re running around like a crazy person, hunting and posting “What kind should I get?” Forum posts. SSDs from the very beginning have stories about bad life e...
A real quicky for you folks. Microsoft has issued a fix to prevent exploitation of the True Type vulnerability which allows exploitation of the Win x32 true type font parsing engine (the Duqu Trojan/virus rootkit). An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in kernel mode. The attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. The fix is for x486 and x64 systems. It’s a ...
Hope you remember the posts I put up about the phishing, phony and ransom malware. At the time, I didn’t know about this malware removal tool. You remember how they’d advertise a “free scan” and install their malware on your computer that way (either via link in email or by following an “ad”). Others even advertised themselves as AVG, Bitdefender or Microsoft antivirals. Recently in gHacks, I read about a specific piece of software which has
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CBS News has notified that the venerable reporter and commentator Andy Rooney died today. He recently had routine, simple surgery but it complicated requiring readmission to the hospital. Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (January 14, 1919- November 5, 2011) is an American radio and television writer. He is most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney", a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011. His final regular appearance on 60 Minutes aired ...
To complement Island Dog’s recent article “More Ways to Promote Your Skins” I’m posting to help folks understand more about Reddit with a new, free manual available through makeuseof.com which just came to me in email. Reddit can be confusing (an understatement), but the guide is well written, short and explains the site’s organization well. Reddit is essentially a collection of links (so you’d be well served to have an ex...
BigDogBigFeet notified me of the following offer: I started to check up on it and because of URL’s, etc. I thought there might be some phishing going on, or perhaps worse. I checked out the website: http://www.microsofthup.com/hupus/home.aspx?culture=en-US . I checked up on it on MS’s real website. No trace of any such offer. So I called Digital River, and they directed me to Customer Service at MS to ...
I was talking to another grandpa (grandpas have a Secret Society replete with handshake and avatar) who told me about a program his grandkids love. It’s called Tux Paint. It isn’t the only program out there, nor are the age recommendations cast in stone. Qaquarelle (last changed in 10/2010, Windows, Linux) is another, and gpaint (Linux) and Drawing for Children are other, and older - not changed since 2009. There are even more which can be further explor...
I don't know if anyone here is a StubHub customer or not... there is general info here as well as "what to do if" info which might be useful. A brand new email scam masquerading as an order confirmation from StubHub was sent to an undetermined number of people yesterday, 10/27/2011. StubHub is an online ticket broker subsidiary of Amazon.com and it was swamped with calls related to the email fraud yesterday. MSNBC reported that StubHub posted a warning on their ...
EaseUS Partition Master Professional Edition (EPMP 9.1) is an all in one partition solution and disk management utility. I’m reviewing it alone, and its merits but not comparing it to other tools since it really is a composite of three separate tools. To try and sum up all the features, I’d need a website all my own, but EaseUS already has that. You’d be better served to download the trial copy (link at end) read the “Help” file fully, watch the tutori...
Everyone knows I believe Acoronis’ backup software to be the “Gold Standard” of backup and recovery software. No discussion about that. Here’s a great, scary Halloween deal! For half price of Acronis you’ll get that AND - Malware’s Anti-Malware PRO for FREE! Please note: If you use PayPal: Your order MUST BE PAID by 10/31 or it will not be delivered Oh yes…. Once again the ...
Claiming security as the reason, MS’s new OS W8 won’t allow “Dual Boot”. OK, no tragedy, right? OEM systems shipping with Windows 8 will have secure boot enabled by default to only load verified operating system loaders during boot time. This prevents malware from switching the boot loader, but also other operating systems that are not signed from being loaded. According to the gHacks article I read (among others), this is only a issue for UEFI systems, if you plan t...