CHRISdotTODD

Apparently if you are a user of Symantec's security software, and have not kept your software and virus definitions up-to-date, you have been vulnerable to Spybot -- malware that will use your computer in malicious ways. In November of 2006 , Spybot (a varient of the original Spybot from 2003 ) started showing up on machines with Symantec security products; and a fix had been available since May . Clearly there is an issue with folks not keeping their security software up-to-date. Unfortunately if you are a Windows user, your machine is much more likely to be under attack -- hackers looking for vulnerabilities. And the general user population just want to use a computer, not be a technology geek, which seems to be the requirement. I think it is worse than owning a car. With a car, the buy-in cost is much higher, so in general terms, there is more recognition that maintenance is required. Further, there is an infrastructure in place to make it easy to keep up on basic maintenance.

Windows XP has a tendency for the autorun feature to quit working. It is a great feature, and a big headache if you are not real familiar with computers. I found this easy utility that will change your settings and/or fix your corrupt Registry , so that autorun works again. You can download it from The Software Patch . Run it, follow the prompts, and reboot. That's all it takes. The Software Patch also has a handy tool to help you remove files that Windows XP wont let you delete . Once you tell the tool what file you want to delete, reboot your computer and your file will be deleted before Windows XP starts again.

For the last month I have been using RoboForm to manage my passwords, and I have been extremely happy with it. RoboForm installs as a simple toolbar in your browser (Firefox, Netscape, and IE) as well as an icon in the tray. In addition to storing passwords, RoboForm can automatically complete and submit forms. This is the best tool I have used for form completion -- others I have tried seem to only work part of the time. When I log into a website, if the login is successful, RoboForm will prompt me to save the information. First of all, the fact that it waits to see if the login was successful is a very useful feature. With other tools, they save what ever you type, and if you made an error it takes a lot of extra work to correct it. Once my login credentials are stored, I can select a login from the toolbar, similar to bookmarks, and RoboForm will call the URL and log me in. The toolbar also has a search field. I turned off my Google toolbar and configured RoboForm's toolbar to

After recent concessions for net neutrality by AT&T, " Senators Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, and Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act Tuesday. " This is a repeat of the bill that failed last May in a republican controlled Congress. CNet describes net neutrality as, " ...the idea that network operators such as AT&T and Verizon should be prohibited from prioritizing any content or services that travel across their pipes... " If we are lucky, this will get passed this time through.

I get an RSS feed from FranticIndustries (Stan Schroeder) blog. Stan's most recent post was seven things he missed from Firefox when forced to use IE6. I thought the list was great. Not only did it point out some less common features, but it also explained how to set them up. I'll give you the list, but you will need to visit FranticIndustries to learn how to use them: Multipage home page Selection source Undo closed tabs The test profile Search tricks Quick tabbing and session saving Spell checking

I am generally skeptical about new versions of software. If I have been productive in the version I have, why would I need a newer version? Usually it seems that it is just a money grab by software vendors. In the case of Office 2007, I was additionally skeptical about the replacement of the menus with ribbons. This was partially based on the new Internet Explorer 7 design, which I do not like. Just by chance, today I picked up a copy of PC Magazine's January edition (so I could read it on the plane), and it provided a First Look review of Office 2007. Ironically, I also happen to be listening to an older (Nov 7, 2006) podcast from PC Magazine (called PCMag Radio), which happen to also review Office 2007. In listening and reading, my opinion began to change. If that wasn't enough, today Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal also released a favorable review of Office 2007. All the reviews promise that the changes will be difficult to make for current Office experts, as the

Brian Krebs, blogger of Security Fix , posted some recently completed research that clear shows why none of us should be using Internet Explorer. According to Mr. Krebs' research, Internet Explorer was unsafe for 284 days of 2006 -- 284 ! In case you doubt this number, here's what Brian Krebs had to say about his research methodology. ...individually contacting nearly all of the security researchers who submitted reports of critical flaws in Microsoft products to learn from them not only the dates that they had submitted their findings to the company, but also any other security trends or anomalies they observed in working with the world's largest software maker. Additionally, he also shared the data with Microsoft before posting it on his blog. This chart shows all the vulnerabilities that Mr. Krebs included in his findings. So if you were an Internet Explorer user in 2006, chances are you opened yourself up to compromising your PC. Mr. Krebs reports that the second most