Friday, January 29, 2010

Review: Kingston's new USB drive offers public and encrypted partitions

DataTraveler drive is fast and easy to use and allows users to safely lend them to colleagues

Computerworld - USB sticks have offered pretty much the same functionality over the past year or so. So when Kingston announced a new DataTraveler Locker USB Flash Drive that offered partitioning capability, I took notice.

Kingston's new thumb drive offers the somewhat stand-out capability of allowing a user to set up an encrypted partition to safeguard some of that data, while allowing the remaining drive space to be open and accessible by anyone. I find this useful because I'm often lending my USB drive to friends who want a simple way to transfer files or temporarily save some data.

Sure you can trick a Windows system into creating partitions on a USB stick by flipping the Removable Media Bit, making it appear as a permanent or fixed drive, however, it's possible that solution could render your drive unusable.

So I liked that this product offers a reliable way to quickly set up a partition on a USB stick.

Read the full review by Lucas Mearian

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Attention Members of the dark side. The Evil emperor has given you a gift

So do you use Microsoft Windows? Do you want to help stop your system from being hacked or getting a virus? If you use Windows 7, Vista, XP then Microsoft is offering you free software called Microsoft Security Essentials all you have to do is download and install it and yes it's free!

Change your default web browser
After you install Microsoft Security Essentials you should download and start using FireFox or Google Chrome even Safari as your default web browser.

Lock down Internet Explorer
After you have your new web browser installed launch your copy of Internet Explorer. Just launch if it's in the tray, or you use Windows Update, however it is you get IE going. And then under the Internet Options icon, which generally most recently has looked like a little gear, you open that, go to the bottom line on the menu, which is Internet Options, and then choose the Security tab. That's where it shows you those zones. Now set your security to high. So you then need to, on the trusted zone, add *.windowsupdate.com and *.microsoft.com. So essentially what you've done is turned IE into a browser only useful for going to Microsoft and using Windows Update. You've also locked it down so that in Outlook there's no scripting and no permissions to run ActiveX controls and none of these things that are dangerous. So if you're going to view email, it's as safe as it could be using Outlook by having IE locked down.

Other Security issues
After Windows (remember Microsoft update is your friend) and Explorer hackers often get into your system via outdated Adobe software. So go and update your Adobe Acrobat reader and Adobe Flash software.


Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Wife gets creative with lunch

























Ukrainian Black Lung Death Toll Over 1000, Over A Quarter-Million Hospitalized






Girls may learn math anxiety from female teachers

"WASHINGTON – Little girls may learn to fear math from the women who are their earliest teachers. Despite gains in recent years, women still trail men in some areas of math achievement, and the question of why has provoked controversy. Now, a study of first- and second-graders suggests what may be part of the answer: Female elementary school teachers who are concerned about their own math skills could be passing that along to the little girls they teach.

Young students tend to model themselves after adults of the same sex, and having a female teacher who is anxious about math may reinforce the stereotype that boys are better at math than girls, explained Sian L. Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago."

Read the full story

Friday, January 22, 2010

Earthquake Survivor Calls iPhone a Life Saver

Man said he used health app on his iPhone to treat his injury while stuck under rubble

Usually, when someone says their iPhone is a life saver, they are talking about the phone helping them find a good takeout spot or an emergency bathroom.

When Dan Woolley says it, he really means it. He used a medical app saved on his phone to treat a leg injury after the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince collapsed around him.

Woolley used the light from his iPhone to show him his injuries and diagnosed it properly as a broken foot. Then, he used the instructions from the app to treat the excessive bleeding from cuts on his legs and the back of his head.

Read the full story

Amazon Fires Back At Apple With Kindle App Store

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Thorium power

ABSTRACT Presented by Dr. James Grossnickle Nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun, can also be harnessed for power on Earth.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

mPower Emergency Illuminator(TM) to Light Up International Consumer Electronic Show

Breakthrough Battery Technology Features 20-Year Shelf Life, Provides Bright Light and USB Power for All Situations

mPower Technologies, Inc., the consumer products division of mPhase Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: XDSL), announces the debut of the mPower Emergency Illuminator(TM), a personal lighting device with a battery shelf life of more than 20 years, at the 2010 International CES. The International CES is being held in Las Vegas, NV, and is the world's largest consumer electronics show.

Inside the battery, a custom-designed internal barrier and triggering mechanism is used to prevent the liquid electrolyte from interacting with the solid electrodes until the battery is manually activated. This gives the battery a shelf life of at least 20 years prior to activation. Once activated by a simple twist of a knob, the battery ramps immediately to full power.

Monday, January 18, 2010

So, just how did Google get hacked?

Security expert Graham Cluley asks whether infected PDFs were to blame

UPDATE: The vector for the attack on Google has since been confirmed as Internet Explorer.

Earlier this week the internet was rocked by a blog post from Googlerevealing that it had been the victim of a targeted attack from Chinese hackers, and was planning to express its outrage by no longer censoring the Chinese version of its search engine.

Google said that it and at least 20 other large companies had been on the receiving end of the "highly sophisticated and targeted attack", which resulted in the theft of intellectual property and the attempted access of Gmail accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists.

Although targeted attacks are nothing new, it is very unusual for a corporation to be so upfront about an attack, and to pinpoint the blame in a clear direction.

Google, however, must be feeling fairly confident about its facts to so clearly imply that the Chinese state may have been responsible for the hacking attempt.

But how did the hack happen, and how can other companies and individuals protect themselves from similar attacks in the future?

Read the full story

Microsoft admits IE fault in Google China hack

"One of the vectors..."

Microsoft has confessed that a flaw in Internet Explorer was "one of the vectors" used in the attack on Google, with an investigation by McAfee revealing some of the details.

McAfee has been brought in by a number of companies attacked, and they insisted that there was nothing to substantiate the claimsthat Adobe's notorious PDF software could be responsible.

"We have never seen attacks of this sophistication in the commercial space," said Dmitri Alperovitch, a Vice President of Research with McAfee.

"We have previously only seen them in the government space."

German government warns citizens off IE!

"Don't use IE 6, 7 or 8 and switch browser," says Federal Office


"The German government's Federal Office for Information Security is warning computer users in the country NOT to use Microsoft Internet Explorer due to recent security scares.

The state organisation has issued the warning following Microsoft's admission that IE was a 'vector' in the recent attacks on Google in China.

The German government is thus advising its citizens to use alternative browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari or Opera."

Read the full story