Tech Talk at ShieldsGroup

November 20, 1985 Microsoft release (unleashed) Windows 1 upon the world. I remember it, it was useless. Well with it and a $1000 computer you had all the functionality of a $2 pack of cards. You could play solitaire.

It wasn’t until Windows 3 that it was stable enough to really “use”. The quotes are because it crashed a lot, but work could be done.  At that time at work I had windows 3, for a while. But later we got IBM’s OS/2 which hardly ever crashed. At home I ran Desqview a windows like system, but was much better at running regular DOS programs inside “windows” than the real windows was.

But change of jobs and improvement in the number of programs written to run in windows and the system at work and at home was windows 95. Number of crashes dropped to average of about 1 a day.  That is I didn’t have a crash every day, some days had none, others had 3 or 4. It was the price paid to use windows 95.

I skipped windows 98, Windows 2000, windows ME, then both home and at work got Windows XP.  It was/is very stable, only crashs once every few months.  The system at work is still running it. I have no experience with Vista, but I don’t know anyone that was pleased with it. In the name of security and stablity it apparently continuely asks for verification of any change any program makes.

Now the home system has Win 7. I just got it this week an so I don’t know how stable it is. But based on the past history each version being more stable than the last I have high hopes for it.

According to Shanghai Daily, a virus has affected at least one million cell phone users in China.  The Zombie Virus, as it’s called, disguised itself as an anti-virus app that, when installed actually sends the details of the contacts on the user’s phone to hackers, who then use these contacts as a database for the spread of spam. Additionally, it sends links to infected  recipients phones.

Additionally, when a user follows a link sent by the virus, they find their phones infected.

Be careful out there — especially when you’re adding apps. And just as links received in email should be clicked with care, so those received on your phone should be examined carefully.

Never use the same password for all your accounts. That’s data-security 101. Ha! It’s not even 101. It’s kindergarten level.  I use loads of passwords for different accounts without using a formula to help me remember them. How am I to keep them all straight?

At first I used Password + from DataViz. It was a great little application that I kept on my Sony Clie. However, when I moved to the Windows Mobile world, I needed something to run on that OS. Enter KeePass. Keepass is an excellent little program that runs on a variety of platforms.

Today, I installed it on my Droid.

It is great to have all my passwords on my person whenever I need them.

Now — If I can just remember that master password….

🙂