BRUCEB NEWS
Colonial Pipeline And The Business Of Ransomware
Ransomware is big business. I mean that in the most boring way possible. Have you been following the news about the Colonial Pipeline hack? There is a nuance that sheds much light on the modern world, but to get to it I need to be sure you have the basic facts of...
MORE PATCH THOUGHTS
I recently reformatted a hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP from scratch, using a CD for Windows that included Service Pack 2.The next step was to download the patches and...
LIFE WITHOUT THE NETWORK
From Max Barry's marvelous book Company, about corporate life in the weeks after the computer network goes dead:"Two weeks ago the network went down; soon after Senior Management...
PATCH CRAZINESS
Patches/updates/upgrades are a mess. That's nothing new, and certainly some steps forward have been taken - Microsoft's automatic update system works remarkably well. Many of the...
THE IT CROWD
The IT Crowd is my new favorite TV show. The first season's six episodes can be downloaded pretty freely - here's one collection of links to downloadable files, for example. Much...
UNINSTALLING OFFICE 2007
I finally received a copy of Office 2007 and installed it on my Vista computer a couple of weeks ago. This afternoon I irritably uninstalled it and went back to Office 2003.It...
OUTLOOK SIGNATURES
Outlook 2003 occasionally throws up error messages when a message contains a formatted signature. People who have scanned their handwritten signature or want to use a graphic are...
VISTA UPGRADES GONE WRONG
By coincidence, I ran into two stories about miserable experiences upgrading from Windows XP to Vista: a tale of woe from a BBC journalist and a similar story from a PC Magazine...
MOZYPRO ONLINE BACKUP
Online backup has been a tempting possibility for years. Your files are automatically copied to safe online storage and kept up to date automatically at a reasonable price....
WINDOWS DESKTOP SEARCH 3.01
Windows Desktop Search 3.01 is a brand new release of Microsoft's tool for indexing mail and documents for instant searches on Windows XP. There were some growing pains as they...
MICROSOFT HMM MOMENTS
Two Microsoft things have turned up in the last week that have made me say, Hmmm. There's no point to these and nothing special to do - just odd geeky things that caught my...
NEW PRODUCT OVERLOAD
The post-holiday lull has ended, Vista is out the door, so we're back to a nonstop barrage of new products and services. Here's what stood out in the last week.Adobe will offer a...
DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME – BE CAREFUL!
Daylight Saving Time will start on March 11, three weeks earlier than usual, and it will end on November 4, 1 week later than usual. This causes some interesting problems for...
HIDEOUS ONECARE BUG
Here's a tale that will send a chill down your spine, about one of the worst software bugs I've ever run into. This is truly hideous, confidence shattering stuff.The buggy...
VISTA COMPATIBILITY
The PC industry is in a state of flux as hardware and software developers wrestle with Vista. The security improvements in Vista go deep into the system and the developers are...
SECOND THOUGHTS ON SECOND LIFE
Second Life looked like it was poised to be the Next Big Thing when the media gave it blanket coverage a few months ago. (I got caught up in the hype and wrote a description of...