How Hackers Steal Secrets from Reflections

I encourage my students to go over and visit Rick, Paul and Bill’s blog.  Recently Rick posted a link to a Scientific American article on How Hackers Steal Secrets from Reflections.   Great Article.  With our students going through some of the best security courses available, these links are very valuable. 

For the hundredth time thanks goes out to the guys.  They probably never dreamed their blogs would be used in a college level course.

Reversed with Irfanview

Price war: Bargain ATI graphics card for gamers serves notice to Nvidia

Price war: Bargain ATI graphics card for gamers serves notice to Nvidia

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Cloud computing a ’security nightmare,’ says Cisco CEO

Cloud computing a ’security nightmare,’ says Cisco CEO

How could you not agree.  When you rely on vendors and your team becomes ’split’, security becomes an extreme issue.  What is your Cloud Computing vendor’s -  hiring policies? – background check policy? - security policy? – backup policy? – recovery policy?  - is their team really a part of your team? – how often are they audited? 

The questions go on and on. 

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Cyber Attacks are Real

Everyday, Mike and I check logs, backups and go through our little routine.   Just several days ago we had an FTP server get hit for 10 hours.  We could have stopped it but we looked at their methodology and are looking at making the log public for teaching.  When you hear about cyberattacks (especially with critical data), you should be ready.  Hardware firewall, software firewall, updates, application updates, logging and monitoring.  There are a million other ways to protect your computer.  This post is just a reminder to monitor (live) your network and you should be ready to shut it down at anytime.

FAQ: How to upgrade XP to Windows 7

FAQ: How to upgrade XP to Windows 7

Above is a good article on the upgrading of XP to 7.  I recently had to go from XP, to Vista to 7.  What a pain…

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Free Typing Tutor

Link to Kiran’s Typing Tutor

50 Places for Free Books

Excellent Post .  Link

Free Harvard College Course – Introduction to Computers

Available in different formats.  Link

Windows 7 Resource Monitor

I wrote for a professional organization on the features of Windows Vista’s Resource Monitor.  After seeing Bart run the monitor, I had to take a closer look at Windows 7.   To say the least, I am very impressed.  Windows 7’s resource montitor offers.

With the ability to see what ’svchost.exe’ is doing what, this feature makes looking at processes and understanding what really is running.   With Windows XP, processes were clumped under svchost and users would have to do a little digging to see exactly what was running.

Now you can view all activities that are taking place on your computer including the open and listening ports.  Excellent tool for Windows!

           

 

(If you missed the Windows 7 video, you need to see just how fast 7 is.  Link.  I don’t know why several reviews have showed Windows 7 as being = to Windows XP.   I think applications are blazing fast.)

VirtualDub Allows You to Edit Your Movies

VirtualDub is one of the many amazing programs at SourceForge.  With VirtualDub, you can edit your movies by cutting, adding titles and everything you would want to do to any movie.  Excellent software at an excellent price. Free.  Link

Change Network Profiles Instantly on your Netbook or Laptop

Pat and I started looking for this type of software several months back.  While there have been several different software apps out there that did this, this is probably the easiest.

Netprofiles now open source on Google allows you to change your IP address on your laptop instantly.  This software helps to speed up changing of your network settings.  Our server room requires a static ip address for the IT staff to use this resource.  With this software changing is a snap. NetProfiles

Installing an Operating System on Your Netbook

Here’s a some good posts on installing Window XP and OSs on Netbooks.

Link One

Link Two