Musings on information systems, security, public policy, and other odds & ends.
I’ve neglected this poor blog for far too long, and I think it’s time I revisit it, rebuild it, and recreate it. I don’t have much to say at the moment, but expect more very soon (perhaps even later today). For now, though, I’m playing around with a new theme and plugins and widgets. Don’t be surprised to see frequent changes throughout the day as I fiddle here and there.
Posted in Blog Matters.
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– April 29, 2012
Information is important. Our information is even more so, yet when it comes to computers so few people seem to take their data/information very seriously. For example, I’ve had several people come to me lately with broken computers. In many cases, the culprit has turned out to be the computer’s hard disk, the home of some of our most precious digital data: our e-mail messages, family pictures, term papers, etc. Hard drives are mechanical devices with several moving parts, and it really isn’t all that hard for a slight bump at just the right moment to bring the whole house of cards crumbling down. Yet how many of us have taken the steps to safeguard this information? I’d put good money on “very few.” Thankfully, backing up our data isn’t really all that difficult once you know what to do and how to do it, and I intended to explain just that.
Posted in Backup.
– June 3, 2010
Let me start today by sharing a short clip with you all. It is from the Star Wars parody Spaceballs:
For those unfamiliar with the movie, “12345″ is the passcode for a protective shield that prevents the Spaceballs (and, well, anyone else I suppose) from stealing the planet Druidia’s atmosphere. This seems to be a trivially simple password for something that allows a planet to support life, but this is a parody after all. No one would ever really use such a password. Right? Unfortunately, that’s wrong.
Posted in Security Tips.
– October 16, 2009
What’s a disk image? Simply stated, it’s an exact copy of the contents of the hard drive of a given computer. Everything is preserved: the operating system, applications, documents, viruses… Large organizations will use disk images to ease deployment of new systems or to simply update old systems, but home users have several good reasons to make these image backups, too. Imagine being able to recover from a hard drive failure in minutes instead of hours or days or easily migrating your programs and data from your old, garbage computer to the shiny new Dell you just picked up for $400 at Wal Mart. You could buy a program like Symatec’s Ghost or Acronis TrueImage, but those cost money. Like most software these days you have some options if you’re feeling frugal. Options like the free, open source Partimage. Unfortunately, Partimage isn’t terribly user friendly, but I think I can help.
Posted in Howto.
– October 12, 2009
If you’re one of my Facebook friends or have been following tech news the past week you might have seen a couple high profile leaks of 30,000 combined usernames and passwords for Hotmail, Google Mail, Yahoo, and other online accounts. My initial assumption was that these companies must have made a horrible mistake and failed to adequately protect a database somewhere from a hacker, or perhaps that disgruntled employees might have made these login credentials public. This turns out to have been a faulty assumption: the owners of these Hotmail, Gmail, etc accounts were in fact apparently victims of phishing scams. Thankfully, phishing is something we users can actively defend against. But exactly what is it that we’re defending against?
Posted in Security Tips.
– October 11, 2009
As I stated in my earlier post, one of the major topics I intend to discuss in this space is computer/network security, otherwise known as cybersecurity. It’s a topic I’ve had an interest in for several years now, and it’s about time I shared some of the knowledge I’ve gathered on the subject. Before we dive into this material it might be a good idea to first explain what exactly “cybersecurity” covers and, more importantly, why we should care.
Posted in Security Tips.
– October 10, 2009
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to my humble web log. There’s not much here now, but that will change soon, and I would like you to stick around to watch this page grow and change as I add content to it.
I thought it would be a good idea to make my first blog post here a simple mission statement of sorts for this blog. In doing so I hope to accomplish two simple objectives: this post will be a guide for myself as I decide what topics to cover here while simultaneously showing you, my readers, what to expect from my musings here. This may also turn out to be an early opportunity for me to get some feedback from you, but it may be some time before that happens.
These days it seems everyone has some sort of online presence whether it’s a personal blog, a Facebook account, LinkedIn profile, or some other social network site. Some people seek to keep in touch with old friends, others hope to use the web to market their talents and skills to the world at large, while still others simply want an outlet to express themselves to the rest of us. These are all possible thanks to the Internet, and the relatively widespread adoption of broadband Internet connections have allowed us to share information faster than ever before. Sites like Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn help us keep in touch with old friends, family, and colleagues. Youtube, podcasting, and blogs themselves now provide outlets for nearly anyone to get their particular message out to the world, and the Internet then enables anyone else in the world to see, hear, or read that message and respond to it. I find this unprecedented exchange of ideas to be truly awesome, and I think it’s time I took a stab at it myself.
My hope is that I can provide useful information to anyone who reads this blog. For example, I’m currently working on a series of articles on computer security targeted at the average home user—a topic near and dear to my heart. Protecting our personal computers (and the data contained within) is an important issue, and I know plenty of people in need of advice in these matters. I intend to cover other topics such as virtualization, network neutrality, Web 2.0, other assorted technologies and the laws and regulations that apply to these things, but I’m sure from time to time I’ll mention something completely unrelated to tech if it catches my eye.
Well, that about does it for now. I have a couple other posts that will be ready very soon, and that should get this thing off to a strong start.
Posted in Blog Matters.
– October 10, 2009
