CHRISdotTODD

I stumbled across several sites celebrating the 25th anniversary of the PC. Of course IBM has something -- check out their archive page . PC World has a great article that covers many aspects of the days developing the PC at IBM. There is another site, Vintage Computers , ran by Eric Klein. Here is what Eric has to say about his collection, "My vintage computer collection is small by most standards but it contains examples of what I consider to be some of the most significant machines and items from the early days of personal computer history." Mr. Klein has done a great job in providing photos and facts on so many early computers. Another good site for old computers is OLD-COMPUTERS.COM , ran by Thierry Schembri and Olivier Boisseau. I remember my first PC, which I bought used during the summer of 1982. It was a Sanyo MBC-555 that used the 8086, so it was not completely IBM compatible. It came with two 180K floppies, which I could use to run WordStar, and a green monochrome

ZDNet is reporting that the laregest battery recall in Dell's history could cost Sony $85M to $430M. Sony also supplies batteries for Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer and Lenovo. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet says he will folllow the progress on his blog, including any problems with these other manufacturer's laptops. InfoWorld reports that Sony and Dell have been discussing the battery problems for the last 10 months.

You may find that your ISP is already offering tiered Internet service -- mine does (Comcast). If that is the case, you better check and make sure you are getting the speeds you are promised. How might you do that? Try Speedtest.net . You will need Flash 8, though they promise a Flash 7 version for Linux users (this week). Fortunately, I had pretty good results with the testing. I wonder if Comcast keeps up at the higher speeds.

Dell has identified several products (4 million in all) that may contain batteries manufactured by Sony that are defective. The affected products are as follows: Latitude: D410, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D620, D800, D810 Inspiron: 500M, 510M, 600M, 700M, 710M, 6000, 6400, 8500, 8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 9400, E1505, E1705 Precision: M20, M60, M70, M90 XPS: XPS, XPS Gen2, XPS M170, XPS M1710 If you own one of these products, Dell has set up a specific website where you can check your battery serial number and learn what to do next. Is this just one more problem for Sony? They had the rootkit problem; the delay to the PS3 ; Blu Ray vs. HD , with a delay and the first models not being able to play movies -- what's next? Oh yeah -- they are struggling in their launch of a music service for their PSP due to DRM issues .

Are you still using Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)? If so, then you are what I call security ignorant. eWeek recently published two articles on how Firefox adoption has slowed down and that it will be more difficult for Firefox to grow further. (See " Internet Explorer Loses More Ground to Firefox " and " Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 Is No Slam-Dunk ".) Their argument is based on usability, and that Microsoft will release IE 7 as part of a security update. Hmm... that should be a clue right there. Perhaps Firefox is not familiar as Internet Explorer; perhaps Firefox does not display all of your websites the same as Internet Explorer. I say, so what -- security, which includes your privacy, are more important than having to learn a new browser. And if your favorite website looks different or does not work right -- tell the web master and/or find a new favorite site. I have been using Firefox for some time now, I other than visiting Microsoft.com for some Windows updates

Monday I arrived in Denver and rented a car from Hertz. The sales clerk tried several times to upsell me, and I agreed to move up one level from a compact to a new Ford Mustang. The clerk promised to throw in SIRIUS satellite radio for free. I told her, "great, at least make the SIRIUS folks happy." How little did I know how wrong I was. After not finding the car in the designation stall, and finally getting to the car, I found that the SIRIUS satellite radio is permanently mounted on the dash -- I was not getting it for free, and further, the radio was co-branded with Hertz. Okay fine, whatever, back to my original point. While I was waiting for them to find my car, I had looked at the brochure, and I found that they had blues music. So, when I got in the car, I immediately tuned to 74, the blues station. Boy was I surprised (I'm not talking about the two toll booths either). In my hour plus trip to my final destination, I was never able to listen to a complete song. The

PC World’s August 2006 issue has a great article on “The 10 Biggest Security Risks You Don’t Know About,” http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,126083,00.asp. This is a comprehensive article that should scare you enough to ensure your PC is up-to-date with fixes and you have all the necessary protections. The article begins with describing zombie PC attacks. These are unknowing PCs taken over and being used for various crimes, including simply logging your keystrokes to learn your usernames and passwords. They offer the usual tips to avoid this threat: avoid unknown sites and email, be suspicious of email attachments, and use any browser except Internet Explorer. The second risk discussed is having your own sensitive, stolen data available for free on the web. This is really a result of the first issue, with the hackers not securing what they have stolen. Why should they? Additional ways to avoid the original problem includes having a personal firewall such as Zone Alarm – a pr

If you have not replaced Internet Explorer (IE) with Firefox , you are really leaving yourself open to security threats plus missing out on an improved browsing experience. In addition to not supporting ActiveX, which will solve most of your security concerns, Firefox offers hundreds of extensions to improve your security and enhance your browsing experience. Take for example the extension, No Script . With No Script, I specify which domains, if any, can run JavaScript the web page I am viewing. In most cases, I always accept the local domain, but no others. For example, if I visit Pogo.com , which has a lot of free games, I allow Pogo to run JavaScript, but I miss all their ads because I do not allow DoubleClick.com and other domains from running JavaScript. Another great extension is SiteAdvisor , which is now owned by McAfee. Site Advisor displays a green, yellow, or red indicator on search results, as well as on the bottom of my browser window to indicate their rating of the site.

I had posted on June 5th my experience with how Microsoft project 2003 had problems with certain functions due to the security setting in Internet Explorer, My Computer domain begin set to High. On June 14th, Microsoft finally conceded that there is no fix expect to lower the security settings. I can either change the default setting to Medium or Enable five settings, which for all intents and purposes is the same as changing the security to Medium. Here's the response attempting to describe why it's okay that Microsoft has impeded IE into Project: There is a reason we don'’t expose that functionality in IE by default. It used to be there in Windows 2000 Server and Pro, but it serves little purpose, provides no protection against the outside world, and generally only breaks things. Worse, since its set on a per user level, it doesn'’t prevent OTHER users or the system security context from running something '‘bad'’ on the local machine, only the logged in

This Week in Tech (TWiT) , hosted by Leo Laporte, had a great discussion on Net Nuetrality during show 60, posted July 2nd. Of particular interest was the playing of part of a speech from Senator Ted Stevens [transcript] [audio] (R - Alaska). According to Mr. Stevens, he wants business to pay data providers a tax based on savings throught the use of the Internet. His example was services such as NetFlix, and that if movies are to be delivered via the Internet instead of mail, that an additional fee should be charged (above the bandwidth fee already being paid to deliver the movie). Here are the comments I posted on the TWiT website: It was great that you gave so much time to Net Neutrality -- you really helped me gain additional clarity on the real issue, and I have been following it for several months now. I beleive the goal of the data providers is to tax content providers , it was never about the home user. The data providers see all the revenue being generated using their pipes,