Computer Tips -Tech Info

Tag: computing

  • Facebook Fan Check Application Virus

    Just as last week, the facebook fan check application virus rumor is making the rounds again. And also just as last week people searching for information on the facebook fan check virus are running into some of the top search results hosting malware. There were several attack sites up last week when I saw this search in heavy duty hot trend mode and it likely is the same this week.

    A word of caution – if you visit a web page that promptly pops up a full screen drawing of my computer or the like and claims to be running a scan on your computer it is probably faked.

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  • The Risk of Cloud Computing, Trust

    There’s a lot of buzz these days about “cloud computing”. You may be asking yourself just what IS cloud computing? The concept is that you are not as reliant on your personal computer, but your applications and data are kept somewhere in the internet “cloud”. So for instance, I use google calendars and gmail for several things. All my calendar data is stored with Google. There are several backup services that work on the concept of online backups. This is a variation in a sense, for all of them you are relying on a server somewhere online to be where your applications or data are stored. Of course, I can hear it now, “I don’t know if I like that idea”. Yes, there are a lot of risks. Recently Charter Communications has been in the news for losing the contents of 14,000 email accounts. That should…

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  • Fab@home 3d printing

    I wanted to make a note here about a recent news story related to a topic that’s fascinated me for the ~10 years or so since I first heard of such things…. For some time there have been 3d printers. Devices that would use a liquid of some sort to “print” a real physical object. Usually these were plastic-ish prototype parts/proof of concept samples. These “printers” cost 10s of thousands of dollars and typically just have one material to choose from. Certainly out of reach for a home tinkerer… But recently I read this article about a desktop fabricator… The project name is fab@home and for ~$2500 in parts YOU can build your own personal fabricator….

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  • Good introductory article on linux

    There is a Newsforge article talking about “Best Practices for the Linux home office”. They cover a lot of ground for the newcomer to linux. But some of their advice is excellent for computing in general. One is to treat your work machine like a production system (not development) the advice here is not to risk your main work machine on that game you’ve been dying to try out.

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  • Wireless ethernet security

    Flexbeta has an article giving a good primer on the different approaches to wireless security that are currently available and what seems to be on track for the next generation of wireless networking. One thing that is worth noting, if it’s transmitted through the air it can be intercepted. Breaking the code is just a matter of time and computing power.
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  • Planning for disaster recovery

    This covers all operating systems really. What would happen if your hard drive crashed right now? What data would you lose? What about if the server room flooded? What if your mission critical system went down. What data would you lose and how long would it take to be back up and running?
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  • Creating a redirect page

    This is one that comes in handy a lot. Like many things in computing there are a number of ways to accomplish this. My favorite though is one fo the simplest. (more…)