Tuesday tidbits

A few items for your consideration.

Uh oh: Air-gapped computers are no longer secure

“To insure security, the thought was to pull the computer off of the network. That is not always the case according to three Georgia Tech researchers who exploit side-channel signals.” Read more..

*  ‘Sexy Girls’ wallpaper app in Google Play store accessed account info

“The “Sexy Girls Wallpaper Gallery” app that was previously available in the Google Play store did in fact offer background photos of women, but it also asked for a permission that granted it access to information from popular accounts, according to Malwarebytes.” Read more..

* Internet of Things: A security threat to business by the backdoor?

“Tech chiefs are worried by the threat posed by IoT devices, which could provide a new way of attacking corporate networks.” Read more..

Other bits:

* Windows 10: You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers

“[Updated] There’s more to Windows 10 than just the revamped Start menu. I’ve been keeping this FAQ up to date with each new build. Here are the latest details after Microsoft’s big January 2015 release of build 9926.” Read more..

* Microsoft: The open-source company

“Microsoft loves Linux, is adopting Docker for its servers, and just bought Revolution Analytics, the biggest open-source R statistical language company. This is not your dad’s Microsoft.” Read more..

Today’s quote: “If ignorance is bliss, there should be more happy people.” ~ Victor Cousin

Copyright 2007-2015 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Open Source Guru Joins WOT

Michael Widenius, founder of MySQL, invests in Web of Trust

Helsinki, Finland (PRWEB) February 16, 2009

Michael “Monty” Widenius, founder of MySQL and a guru for the global open source movement, has invested in WOT (Web of Trust). WOT is a free, community-driven, security add-on that helps Internet users protect themselves against online threats

“When I first learned about WOT, I was intrigued because it answers the common question Internet users have – Can I trust this website? – by uniquely combining a community-driven approach, Internet resources and browser technology. The growth and success of MySQL was in many aspects due to our active user community. WOT’s big and active community shows a similar strength, and I like the fact that through WOT we are helping making the Internet a better and safer place,” said Widenius, who will take a seat on the company’s Board of Directors.

Web of Trust offers Internet users preventive protection against Internet scams, identity theft, spyware, spam and unreliable online shops. The WOT security add-on provides safety ratings to search results when using Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Digg and other popular sites, helping users protect their computers and personal information.

WOT’s Website rating information is continuously updated by the user community and from numerous trusted sources, such as listings of malware and phishing sites. The free Internet security add-on works with Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers and can be downloaded at http://www.mywot.com.

More news Dept: Worm Bounty set by Microsoft ($250,000)

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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How can I open a ".odt" ?

Q: Paul, How can I open a “.odt” ?

A: As I discussed in this article, Cannot open attachment…help!, when you run across a file that Windows does not recognize, and doesn’t know how to open, it is due to the fact that some program was used to create the file that you don’t have.

In this case that program was OpenWriter– the word processor in the free OpenOffice Suite.

Basically, when this happens, you have three options:
* Ask your sender to resend the file, only this time ‘Save As’ it to a more common file type. (such as .doc, or .rtf, or even .txt)
* Install the program on your machine yourself.
* Look for “viewer”, or “converter” tool.

I like the first choice myself (and I’m not always so polite in my phrasing), but most of you will probably prefer the third. (This comes up at least once a week for PowerPoint slideshows!)

A free document viewer for all common word processing formats can be found here.

A free file type converter (all types of ‘media’) can be found here.

.. and for the 600,000th time.. the PowerPoint Viewer is here.

[note: when you come across a ‘dot xyz‘ that you’ve never heard of before and have no idea what might of created it.. go to FILExt.com. There you will be able to look it up.]

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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