Jeff Rivett has worked with and written about computers since the early 1980s. His first computer was an Apple II+, built by his father and heavily customized. Jeff's writing appeared in Computist Magazine in the 1980s, and he created and sold a game utility (Ultimaker 2, reviewed in the December 1983 Washington Apple Pi Journal) to international markets during the same period. Proceeds from writing, software sales, and contract programming gigs paid his way through university, earning him a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) degree at UWO. Jeff went on to work as a programmer, sysadmin, and manager in various industries. There's more on the About page, and on the Jeff Rivett Consulting site.
Anyone buying a new HP PC these days will be steered towards Windows 7 instead of the more current – but flawed – Windows 8. It’s not entirely clear what prompted HP to stop selling their computers with Windows 8, but the lack of user acceptance of that O/S clearly played a part. It’s also likely that HP’s support costs have increased markedly for PCs shipped with Windows 8, with common questions being “where the &@*#%$ is my Start Menu” and “how do I find anything in this crappy operating system”.
Meanwhile, it looks like Microsoft might try to turn the tide of Windows 8’s failure by actually bringing back the Start menu in the upcoming Update 1 for Windows 8.1. You may recall that Windows 8.1 saw the return of the Start button, which for some reason was just a button with no useful menu attached, making it basically useless. Will this make a difference to Windows 8.x sales? Maybe. But I’m holding out for Update 2, where – and this is pure speculation, mind you – Microsoft may provide a method for disabling the “Metro” interface altogether.
And the rumours about Windows 9, the next major version of the O/S, are starting to make the rounds. At this point the pattern is clear: every other version of Windows is to be avoided. Perhaps Microsoft has realized this themselves, because Windows 9 is already under development. Code-named “Threshold”, it will supposedly meld the good bits from Windows 7 and 8. Sounds promising. And if the pattern holds, it might actually be a good O/S.
Backblaze, a cloud backup provider, recently completed a series of reliability tests on consumer hard drives from Western Digital, Seagate and Hitachi. The big winner was Hitachi, with Seagate drives lagging notably in a distant third place. Having recently replaced two failing Seagate drives in a client’s PC (while a third drive – a Hitachi – continued operating just fine), my own limited observations would seem to confirm Backblaze’s findings.
It looks like the warnings about passwords are being heard by users everywhere. For years, industry experts have been telling people not to use simple passwords, and not to use the same passwords everywhere. Now, research shows that the previous most-used password, “password” is no longer #1.
Unfortunately, the new #1 password is “123456”. Which was previously #2. It’s difficult to categorize this as progress, since both of those passwords are equally terrible. Don’t use them. Please.
The new version of Cryptolocker can apparently spread itself via portable media such as thumb drives. It is also often disguised as a software activation program for Photoshop and Microsoft Office on file sharing sites. The original Cryptolocker typically arrived in the form of a fake PDF file.
Disguising Cryptolocker as a software activation program is a particularly devious way to spread the malware. Every day, thousands of people who can’t afford the massively overpriced Office and Photoshop look for alternative ways to use that software, and now those people are going to be risking more than the ire of Microsoft and Adobe.
A new version of Chrome fixes eleven security issues and adds some enhancements, including indicators that tell you which tab is generating audio, better blocking of malware files, and stability and performance improvements. The version of Flash embedded in Chrome was updated to the latest version (12.0.0.41) as well.
Included in a massive set of updates released yesterday by Oracle was a new version of Java. Version 7 Update 51 fixes a whopping thirty-four security vulnerabilities in previous versions.
If you use a web browser in which Java is enabled, you should install the new version as soon as possible.
A new version of Adobe’s Reader software was made available yesterday. Version 11.0.06 includes fixes for several security vulnerabilities. All the details are available in the new version’s release notes.
It’s a light month for Microsoft patches, with only four bulletins, none of which are flagged as Critical. The updates fix vulnerabilities in Office, Windows, and Server software.
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