Jeffrey A. Setaro

Political & Cultural Commentary from a Constitutional Conservative.

Computers

U.S. Charges Five Chinese Army Officers With Hacking

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From the Wall Street Journal: The Justice Department indicted five Chinese military officers, alleging they hacked U.S. companies’ computers to steal trade secrets, a major escalation in the fight between the two superpowers over economic espionage. The indictment, unsealed Monday, marks the first time the U.S. government has publicly accused employees of a foreign power […]

This Time it’s Going to be Different… Trust Me…

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Ouch, that’ll leave a mark. Seriously though, don’t get up caught up in the “Macs are better PCs” or “PCs are better macs” games… Computers are productivity tools it doesn’t matter whether you use a PC or Mac, if you can accomplish everything you need to accomplish with it that that’s all that counts. I’ve […]

First Impression: Windows 7

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I installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate on a roughly 4 year old laptop yesterday primarily because I wanted to see how it would preform on older slower hardware. Windows 7 runs surprising well on on my old HP DV4155cl with a 1.6Ghz Pentium M processor and 2GBs or RAM… Overall my first impressions of […]

Malware For Christmas?

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The Register is reporting that some versions of Samsung’s SPF-85H 8″ digital photo frame shipped with a CD-ROM contaminated with the W32.Sality.AE virus. The CD contains drivers needed to use the frame as a USB monitor on systems running Windows XP. Amazon.com has posted an advisory for it’s customers: Greetings from Amazon.com. We have recently […]

Microsoft Patches Critical IE Bug

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Microsoft has released a special out of cycle update for its Internet Explorer web browser. The update, described in Microsoft’s security bulletin MS08-078, fixes a flaw present in all available versions of the popular browser, including IE5.01, IE6, IE7 and IE8 Beta 2. Computerworld has more on the story here. On a related note Mozilla […]

Julie Amero’s Four Year Nightmare is Finally Over

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Alex Eckelberry has the details. After 4 years and 2 months, Julie Amero is now free. You’ll recall that Julie Amero was convicted of 4 felony counts, each count carrying a maximum of 10 years, for exposing school children to pornography. The reality is that Julie, a 40–year old, pregnant substitute teacher, found herself in […]

HP, Dell, Toshiba Recall Laptop Batteries

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Computerworld is reporting that HP, Dell & Toshiba are recalling approximately 100,000 Sony made laptop batteries. October 31, 2008 (IDG News Service) Three of the biggest laptop computer makers are recalling certain batteries because of a risk they may overheat and catch fire. Sony Corp. made the batteries. The recall mirrors, yet appears a lot […]

Computer Crime…

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Here an interesting video from Mikko Hyppönen at F-Secure that talks about one of the common misconceptions about computer crime and viruses. A lot of people think that since we haven’t had a major virus outbreak like the Melissa or Sasser worms in quite awhile the situation is getting better… As Mikko points out it’s […]

Apple Tops in Tech Support?

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I first saw this Computerworld article several days ago and I forgot about while I was dealing with more pressing issues. But it popped up in my inbox again today saw I thought I’d put my two cents in. Personally, I don’t put much stock in much of what Consumer Reports says but I have […]

First Impressions: Windows Vista Business SP1

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I installed Windows Vista Business SP1 on a couple of test PCs recently and I’ve been putting it and Office 2007 through their paces over the last couple of days. For the most part I’m happy with them… Vista’s Aero interface is such a radical departure from Windows XP that it takes a little getting […]

Secure Computing Follow-up

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I came across a few interesting articles and resources anyone who attended last nights presentation might be interested in. First is an article by David Harely on Macs & Malware. Second the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its annual report on cyber crime. IC3 is a partnership between the FBI and the National […]

Products & services mentioned during presentation to DACS

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Alternative Web Browsers Firefox Opera Information on Hoaxes and Urban Ledgeneds Vmyths Hoaxbusters Snopes Must Have Tools Acronis True Image PE Builder (Bart PE) Trend Micro Sysclean Anti-Virus Software F-Prot Anti-Virus F-Secure Anti-Virus or Internet Security Kaspersky AntiVirus or Internet Security Nod32 Anti-Virus or Smart Security Anti-Spyware Software Ad-Aware 2007 CounterSpy SpyBot Search & Destroy […]