You’ve Been Warned

Antivirus Software? Yeah, Sure.

If you want your Windows PC to be secure, here are the essential steps.

1. Use a modern operating system. Sorry, folks—Windows XP simply isn’t secure enough for ordinary people to use today.

2. Keep your OS up to date and backed up. Turn on Windows Update and make sure it’s running properly.

3. Keep applications updated also. Remove unwanted programs that could represent a security threat.

4. Be suspicious of any new software. If you’re not sure a program is safe, don’t install it.

5. Set up standard non-administrator accounts for unsophisticated users. With a standard account a user needs to talk to you and convince you to enter the administrator’s password before installing any new software.

6. Use a modern browser. If you’re still using Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6, stop it.

7. Install an antivirus program and keep it up to date. I recommend the free Microsoft Security Essentials, which is available for download or as an optional update on systems where Windows does not detect an antivirus program.

And one final word: Don’t be paranoid.

The article (Do you really need antivirus software?) is more substantial than what I’ve quoted above. That said, it’s not long and well worth your reading time.

Boasting: The Smartness of Refraining

Do you hate pride?

This is a bit of counsel I have learned the value of. It is not smart to slip into your conversation little boasts about yourself—the college you went to, the degrees you earned, the plum positions you held. First of all, it sounds proud and diminishes you ever so slightly in the eyes of the other person. Secondly, it sets a trap for your own feet, because eventually (think about it), if you develop a relationship with the person you are speaking to, he or she will find out your true measure. If you have presented yourself too highly, your fall in his esteem will be the worse.

If, on the other hand, you have wisely refrained from boasting, your new friend will be continually delighted with pleasant discoveries about you, which will be all the more pleasing to him because you did not brag at all.

That is so true, Andrée Seu. Thank you!

PS: Click her name to read the full piece. It’s short.

Launch Button; Panic Button?

Wait a minute. Something like this shows up abruptly…

Mysterious missile launch off California

and nobody thinks it’s a warning shot to the USA?! 😯

And if it had been targeted on Los Angeles, they would have had no forewarning to speak of.

Well, never mind me and my Conspiracy Bait and whatever else this is.

Few details are surfacing about the mysterious missile launch seen Monday night Nov. 8 from a point just off the southern coast of California, with aerospace and defense officials trying to find out exactly who launched it and why.

“We’re looking into it,” Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, told SPACE.com.

CBS affiliate KCBS caught the launch on camera and reported that military officials were “tight-lipped over the nature of the projectile.”

In the video, a long plume of exhaust can be seen as the missile rockets into the evening sky. The launch occurred about 35 miles out at sea, west of Los Angeles and north of Catalina Island.

Source: Mysterious Missile Launch Off Calif. Coast Sparks Investigation

So there you are. No big deal. Nothing here. Move along now.

I’ve launched model rockets before as well. 🙄

Do You Trust Google?

It turns out Google’s Street View cars found out more about Internet users than previously acknowledged. Last Friday, the company said the cars, which roam the world taking pictures for its location-based applications, scarfed up e-mail addresses, URLs and passwords from residential Wi-Fi networks they passed by in dozens of countries.

[…]

Some privacy advocates say Google’s admission highlights a common attitude among high-tech firms that rush to get out new technologies without enough consideration of how consumers may be harmed in the process.

“First they said they didn’t gather data; then they said they did, but it was only fragments; and today they finally admit entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords,” said John Simpson, director of consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. “Maybe some Google executives are beginning to get it: privacy matters. The reality, though, is that the company’s entire culture needs to change.”

Source: Google ‘mortified’ that Street View cars scarfed up e-mail, passwords; privacy criticism intensifies

If they’re stealing and abusing data from people, what are they doing with the data people give them willingly?

Think: Gmail, Buzz, Maps, Docs, Search, API, and on and on!

Oh, and let this be another reminder to secure your wireless networks, OK?

Facebook Privacy: Oxymoron?

Just askin’, OK? 😀

Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.

The problem has ties to the growing field of companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online—a practice the Journal has been examining in its What They Know series. It’s unclear how long the breach was in place. On Sunday, a Facebook spokesman said it is taking steps to “dramatically limit” the exposure of users’ personal information.

Better read the whole article, I suppose: Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information.

Alzheimer’s: Your Teeth, Your Brain

I know the quote below starts by referencing a here-unidentified attitude….

Dr. Henry Chiang, a Newport Beach, Calif., dentist who has launched a 2010 Oral Health Campaign for Seniors, wants to reverse that attitude.

His efforts to make seniors more aware of gum disease and denture care comes at the same time that New York University dental researchers have found the first long-term evidence that periodontal (gum) disease could increase the risk of cognitive dysfunction associated with Alzheimer’s disease in healthy individuals as well as those already impaired.

The NYU study offers fresh evidence that gum inflammation might contribute to brain inflammation, neurodegeneration and Alzheimer’s.

Dr. Chiang adds dry mouth conditions can exacerbate the problem. “For patients who suffer from dry mouth, contaminated dentures pose potential health risks. Dentures are porous and can harbor a huge number of harmful bacteria.

“In addition, the likelihood of dry mouth increases with the number of medications a person takes. Since people over 65 use an average of three prescriptions and two over-the-counter medications per day, they stand a good chance of suffering dry mouth. Denture wearers with reduced salivary flow should be particularly concerned about the cleanliness of their dentures and serious health risks associated with contaminated dentures.”

For the rest: Neglecting your teeth may lead to Alzheimer’s

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Above all, love God!