Half over

Hard to believe the year’s half over already.. Here are a few items for your consideration.

* Taxis sow traffic chaos in Europe protesting against Uber car app

“Taxi drivers sowed traffic chaos in Europe’s top cities on Wednesday by mounting one of the biggest protests ever against Uber, a U.S. car service whose smartphone app summons rides at the touch of a button.” Read more..

[ Which is it? Adapt or die, or Adapt and die? ]

* Baby you can’t drive my car

“Self driving cars:While the notion has been around in science fiction for at least 60 years, Google wants to bring it into reality.” Read more..

Layer 8: “Human error” contributes to nearly all cyber incidents, study finds

“Even though organizations may have all of the bells and whistles needed in their data security arsenal, it’s the human element that continues to fuel cyber incidents occurring, according to one recent study.” Read more..

A wake up call? Class-action filed against payroll company Paytime over massive data breach

“A class-action complaint has been filed against Paytime, a Pennsylvania-based payroll company that experienced a massive data breach in April. “Paytime failed to safeguard and prevent vulnerabilities from being taken advantage of in its computer system,” according to documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania on Friday.” Read more..

Here’s a change: Technology sites “riskier” than illegal sites in 2013, according to Symantec data

“The “riskiest” pages to visit in 2013 were technology websites, according to data from users of Norton Web Safe, which monitors billions of traffic requests and millions of software downloads per day.” Read more..

Today’s quote: “The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.” ~ Harlan Ellison

Copyright 2007-2014 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.
And please, never forget – one person can make a difference.
Find a way to make someone’s day today.
(Best advice I ever heard? Don’t sweat the small stuff.)

The Numbers Are In

I have, as almost all Websites do, various statistic gatherers and counters, which tell me all kinds of interesting tidbits about this site’s traffic and visitors. (And I confess I look at these statistics frequently.)

I started Tech-for Everyone in June, 2007, and have been writing – 6 days a week – ever since. Today I fiddled around with my stat counter and set it to “all time” mode.. To give me the “big picture”; not only of what you, Dear Reader, seem to like and “click on”, but also to see/sense how the search engines work. The majority of my ‘pageloads’ come from search ‘referrals’.

My Top 10 articles of all time are:

1. How to boot from a CD
2. Manage Startup programs in Vista
3. “My Taskbar disappeared” and other simple tweaks”
4. Scare Tactics
5. Adding programs to your Startup Folder
6. Quick Tip: overcome “access denied” in Vista
7. Find hidden files
8. Adding Firewire to your machine
9. Hibernation vs. Sleep+Vista
10. Yellow exclamation mark question

It seems that there’s an awful lot of people Googling (yes, that’s a word now) “How do I boot from a CD?” Over 50,000 of them so far.. about a hundred a day, average. What does that suggest? Well, I’m not sure.. couple of things leap to mind.

Well, there’s an airport run shoehorned into my schedule, so I’ll wrap this musing up by inviting you to click on any of those articles that might catch your fancy. I’d also like to remind you that this site is searchable too, with its own search box (located over to the right in the widgets column).
There are over 500 answers, tips, and tweaks in my archives..

Did I mention that I look at my stats frequently? Yes? Well, the truth is sometimes I get a little carried away.. and become just a teeny bit “stat happy”. Symptoms of “stat happiness” include: crying when your numbers go down, and spending hours “tweaking” your site’s keywords and metatags.. and thinking of ways to slip “hot” Google words into your text. Like; giveaway, free, sex, hot sex, XXX, Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, secret video, (let’s see.. hmm..) hidden camera, product key codes, crack.. (There. That should help.)

Today’s free link(s):
Fearless New Year’s prediction: Computer crime gets worse. Roger Grimes makes his cybercrime predictions for the coming year, and they’re not filled with good news. Get ready now for a new wave of cybercrime coming to a computer near you.

The new MD5/SSL exploit is NOT the end of civilization as we know it. MD5 insecure? Absolutely. SSL hacked? Sort of, but it’s not broken. CA negligence? What do you think? Tom Olzak examines the roles of each of these players in the recent problems with SSL.

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

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What your car is saying about you*

The auto manufactures are competing to put the most computer into your car. The merging of digital devices and personal transportation is progressing with alacrity. We know this. The fact that there has been “chips” in our cars for a decade or so is also well known. OnStar™ GPS tracking of our movements has been successfully marketed as a benefit to us, and we pay extra for the privilege. And our car has a microphone, to listen for ‘our calls for help’ (but, only when we push the button… Right??).

I read that the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration Consortium, a government “safety and efficiency” program, (there is a detailed description on Wikipedia, I suggest you scroll down to the paragraph titled “public concerns”) has developed a prototype for an on-board vehicle computer designed to interact with the Internet that will use Linux. (These are the folks who want to put radars in cars, “to detect proximity to the vehicle ahead and automatically apply the brakes to avoid rear-end collisions”) And they want to use the Web so the cars can, “provide a direct link between a vehicle on the road and all vehicles within a defined vicinity. The vehicles would be able to communicate with each other (and the cops), exchanging data on speed, orientation, perhaps even on driver awareness and intent.” This, to “improve traffic flow.”
Hmmm…. Driver intent?!?

Of course, this is being touted as a boon to us dumb citizens. We are told, “this will improve the driving experience” (not to mention, make us safer). How could our car accessing the Web be a benefit? The VII-C says, “by alerting cars about approaching emergency vehicles, collecting data to map weather patterns with high precision, and allowing for ‘over the air’ upgrades of vehicle firmware.”

Hmmm… Let me think about that…
1) Don’t approaching emergency vehicles have flashing lights and loud sirens?
2) Weather??? Like, I’m not going to go where I need to go because there’s a cold front developing..?
3) Automatic updates (aka “patches”)? What does this imply? That there’s concern about viruses and hackers, maybe? (You bet there’s concern!)

Of course the key words here are ‘traffic flow’, and ‘transmit its location’. By publishing its onboard data via the Web, some person in some government office will be able to see where every car is, its speed and direction of travel, and by activating the microphone, will be able to listen to the conversations taking place inside.
Think about that. Frankly, it scares the pants off of me.

I want you readers to know that the government already has this ability to some extent. We are rapidly approaching the point where every car being produced has some type of GPS built into it. They track us through the cellular phone signals (but these are “unreliable”). To “get better gas mileage”, we have all kinds of mini-computers on board that record our speed and braking, and store that info for later perusal — this aids in “accident reconstruction”. But these are not enough. They want more and better tracking technology installed. They don’t want “recorded”, they want “reported”.

Do NOT violate the speed limit in a rental car. The onboard computers will snitch, and when you go to return it, you will be hit with a stiff fine. I kid you not. Joyriding is out, too: excessive acceleration, hard braking, and high lateral G’s are recorded and reported too, even if you never top out above 65. Yes, your car is a snitch. Divorce attorneys and Law Enforcement love the GPS recorder.

Let’s tout the boon to mankind: parents can benefit from these automatic recorders too. Want to know how your kid treated the family car? Where they went? If they braked too hard or accelerated too hard? If they parked at Lover’s Lookout? Just buy an adapter and plug in your laptop. You can play Big Brother and see everything the car did. (I’m still working on how you can send the signal that activates the car’s microphone, and listen in on your kid… That will be a money-maker!)

The miracle of technology is in our cars. We are being told it’s for our benefit and we believe it. OnStar is something we all think is great, and we’re convinced it’s a status symbol (remember when only top-end cars offered it?). Sometimes, I think our desire for security makes us kinda dumb, and I think dummies get what  dummies deserve.

I, for one, don’t want a single recorder, chip, microphone, GPS locator, or transmitter on my person or on my car. It’s nobody’s business where I am, where I’ve been, or… my speed and direction of travel. (Did you miss my article, “It’s time to write your Representative”? Click here.)
They are going to do this, folks, and they’re not giving us citizens much say (“not much” = none).

Tip of the day: Use a soft, lint-free cloth, very slightly dampened with plain water to clean your monitor screen. You do not really need fancy, or expensive products to do this.

Today’s free link: Today I’m putting out the call for your input in this section. Is there a free program or tool that you think is fantastic, but you haven’t seen me post it here? Send me your recommendation — the name, not the link — and I’ll run it through my testing. Those that pass will appear here, with accreditation.

For those of you who aren’t at all bothered by this, and have quite the opposite view; in that you want access to this info (perhaps you are the parents of a beginning driver), devices are available now. If your vehicle is newer and GPS equipped, all you need is a special plug (adapter), if your vehicle [or, the one you’re letting the kid drive] is older, you may want to take a look at this Wall Street Journal article: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB110911718132361463.html

Folks– there’s only a few days left. Tell me if you prefer this site’s new look by taking this 1-question survey Click Here to take survey

* Original posting– 8/17/07

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

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