Archive for the 'Security' category

Even more when you unload a tank rail car. If you let the hot gazes cool down into the tank, here what can happen. Always check the security valves, or be ready to pay the price: $22,000 to $80,000 used (but usable).

You should protect your computer when navigating on the Internet. However, Microsoft would have you thinking that the embedded firewall provided by Windows is good enough. Actually, there is much better software to replace it. And not everything is expensive:

• Comodo Firewall Pro (Freeware): Free and powerful, what do you want more? It’s also clean, simple, yet feature-loaded.
• ESET Smart Security (Shareware) is expensive at $60, but has a very small memory footprint.
• ZoneAlarm Free Firewall (Freeware) also checks your PC’s activity when you go to the Internet.
• Your router’s built-in firewall: If you have one, this is one of the best and cheapest solution. And it’s already working for you.
• Windows Firewall: It’s not that bad and it’s already included in Windows. But don’t try to get it doing exactly what you want, it has a mind of its own.

Recommended from LifeHacker [Hive Five].

You probably remember the impressive unloading of an excavator from a truck, without using a crane or even a ramp:

But here come some more, a lot more, fun with cars, trucks, excavators and other big chunks of mechanics.

Starting with a 15-ton Caterpillar playing along.

But should the Caterpillar stay on the ground? No, and this is what Dark Roasted Blend shows us:

But unloading an excavator seems much easier than unloading a car from a truck:

This means that you must be ready to repair your new car in all conditions. And some people really mean it. Here is the story of this rally race team. They had their car stopped by a broken throttle cable. So, in this case, what would you do? Abandon the race? Not these guys. One of them steps under the hood (!) and will handle the throttle from there to the end of the race.

So, this is the crisis, you are not ready to these extreme measures and you still need to buy a car, I advise all of us to chase a really carbon-emission-free truck (from a well-known battery provider):

Microsoft published today a large Security Update for Internet Explorer. This happens nearly every month, but this time, this is really important. Whatever your version of Internet Explorer, you should upgrade now, via Windows Update.

Microsoft is correcting a major bug in all versions of Internet Explorer and it is urgently important that you plug this security hole that could leave your computer totally open to external hackers.

Nota bene: generally speaking, you should try and keep your computer up-to-date for security issues. You may want tot check my previous post about Secunia PSI.

Isn’t it somewhat difficult to continuously check the status of security updates for the many software programs we have installed on our PCs, sometimes not even knowing it? Here comes Secunia PSI to help in this daunting task. It permanently observes the version of the programs on your PC and verifies if there is an available update. Thus, it efficiently protects us against the computer security risks we too often are submitted to.

Secunia PSI

This secret is almost public: PDF documents protected by a password (to prohibit cut-and-paste or print functions) are badly protected. As a matter of fact, there is even a fereeware utility program available for Windows whose only aim is to run around this protection. Freeware PDF Unlocker, even if it does not do much and is more limited than its commercial equivalents, merely and simply allows you to cut-and-paste the contents of a password-protected PDF file. Simple, efficient, recommended!

Defragmenting your hard disc drive may not be the latest fad, but it still is useful to improve the performance of a disc drive that’s been used for months or years and now looks more like a mouldy swiss cheese than a nice little techo-gadget. The solution: defragmenter your disc drive(s).

Here are a few ideas of (free) software programs that may be useful here:

• Ultimate Defrag (from DiskTrix) is clearly a defragmenter wet dream. The only trouble? So many options that you won’t be able to sleep.
• Smart Defrag (from IOBit) will help you defragmente several disc or several partitions at the same time.
• Partition Find and Mount will do its best to find again lost data on a damaged hard disc drive.

Some have been surprised by one little habit of mine around my PC (I should say ‘my PCs”): I keep a detailled log of everything I do on my PC in a plain old school paper book. It may be a software installation, a parameter change on another software package, the update of a driver. Everything goes in there.

Main advantage: When my PC stops working perfectly, I can easily recognize what changed. Usually, I (like everybody else) say that I did not touch anaything before it stopped working. Bit when I check, I can find wat I did.

It also works for the configuration of a Local Area Network… even in a company. But beware of not writing down passwords that would then be left in an open paper book…

Presented by  Dutch architects NL in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Sometimes a fight outcome is difficult to forecast. Now, if you take an old lady and a (too) fast car. Guess who will be leaving the spot unharmed?

Link to YouTube

• AceBackup: Free Windows backup
• Ad-Aware 2008: Free anti-spyware
• StarBurn: Free disc burning, audio ripping utility (download Nero for free)
• LogoEase: Create your own logo for free
• AutoGK: Rip your DVDs to DivX and Xvid formats
• Opera 9.5: an excellent replacement for Internet Explorer
• Comodo Friewall Pro Free: Free Windows firewall for Windows XP
• Antivir: Free anti-virus for Windows
• Avast: Free anti-virus for Windows
• AVG 8.0 free: Free anti-virus and anti-spyware for Windows
• Replace data backup with data sync, thanks to these articles from Tom’s Hardware: [1] and [2]

Have a good Summer working on installing and testing all these.

I was yesterday evening at the qualification for Le Mans 2008 endurance race. Luckily (as a photographer), I was in the right place to cacth a glimpse of the crash of the Lola Mazda car that went flying in the last minutes of the tests (unlucky for the team).

I was at 1/40s and f/2.8 (on my Minolta APO G 200mm tele-lens), so the image is a little blurry… Usually, I wouldn’t let such low quality out, but the accident is still quite spectacular.

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge it

…with this long list of proxies (unfortunately, some or many of them may not work for all people).

(more…)

Seriously, do you want to land in one of these airports?

Source: Airliners.net.

Here is a startling idea to ensure that your luggage will not be lost at the airport and will receive real good treatment from the airline personnel (that is a rare condition). Matt Brandon proposes to declare the presence of a starter pistol. Right! you don’t need a permit or a license of any case, but it is still classified as a firearm and needs to be delcared on checking-in. TSA and other official authorities will identify your bag and ensure that it is the object of all cool attention (they don’t want any weapon potentially lost in an international airport!)

For once, the a… from security will make sure your bags fly securely.

Source: Jon Udell.

When you have a web site, it becomes quite common that some people feel so easy to just borrow your images that they do not even take the time to make a copy on their own web site. Not only do they use your artwork, but they also use the bandwidth you paid for.

Normally, there is a solution. You can modify slightly your website to ensure that if this happens, the image served is not the original one, but a modified one (either a big red X, or a message to the reader). But it is a little difficult to do by hand. A wbe site tool comes handy for this: HTMLbasix – Htaccess Disable Hotlinking Code Generator.

It is always a bit difficult to actually think about doing backups. Either you spend too much time thinking about it or you forget about it. For Windows, I found a nice free utility program: FileHamster from MOGware.

This small utility will allow you to automatically backup every single file you save or modify. FileHamster will create a full history track of your activity without even the need to think about it. It acts immediately (you don’t have to wait for a daily backup), and keeps everything. Of course, you need some free disk space, but it’s so much of a relief…