information – Page 4 – Paul's Tech Talk

Sony recalls 340,000 batteries.

PaulOctober 31, 2008

Sony Recalls Notebook Computer Batteries Due to Previous Fires

The following product safety recall was voluntarily conducted by the firm in cooperation with the CPSC. Consumers should stop using the product immediately unless otherwise instructed.

[ad#ad2-right]Name of Product: Rechargeable, lithium ion batteries containing Sony cells used in Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation, Gateway Inc., Sony Electronics Inc., and Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. notebook computers.

Units: About 340,000 batteries (an additional 3,080,000 battery packs were sold worldwide)

Battery Cell Manufacturer: Sony Energy Devices Corp., of Japan

Hazard: These lithium ion batteries can overheat, posing a fire hazard to consumers.

Incidents/Injuries: There have been 16 reports of notebook computer batteries overheating, causing minor property damage and two minor burns. All of these reported incidents and injuries have been associated with earlier recalls of notebook computer batteries containing these Sony cells. There have been no incidents involving batteries sold by the notebook manufacturers participating in this announcement.

[via U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission]

[ad#ad2-left]This is something that is going to hit Sony hard. The recall affects some Fujitsu, Gateway Toshiba, and Sony Laptops. If your worried about your laptop go to the site and see if your have the right laptop. It only effects people who bought there laptop from Oct 2004 to Oct 2006, before or after that date you will not have to worry. If in Doubt call your manufacture and find out.

Some other things to do is also remember to back up your data and if your not using your laptop battery if at all possible just take the battery out.

Microsoft reveals “Microsoft Azure”

PaulOctober 27, 2008

Windows Azure is part of a set of new and existing technologies behind the Azure Services Platform, a development and execution platform that runs end-user and corporate software on Microsoft’s own servers, accessible over the web. It joins Google’s App Engine and Amazon’s EC2 in an increasingly competitive market.

[Via ZDnet]

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Although, There isn’t much more they have said I am quite curious how they will interegrate this into the cloud computing. According to Microsoft, it won’t run on the company server but Microsoft Datacenter. Now this I can see is a big security problem. Because most companies use what they call an Intranet and not the internet. So that leaves questions on if companies are going to use this system or not. Are you ready to let your information float somewhere over the inernet tht is SENSITIVE and CONFIDENTIAL? These are the questions that Microsoft will have to Answer, before any company will use this on there systems.

Adobe released the latest version of shockwave.

PaulOctober 22, 2008

Just saw this on the net, thought people would like to know where to get the information for the latest updates to shockwave. Some stuff that they improved upon are:

[ad]

New [3D effects]

New [Custom filters and effects]

New [Advanced text support]

New [Dynamic sound generation]

Updated [Drawing API]

Updated [Hardware acceleration]

And much more

Brought to you by Adobe. To see all the features of what is new with Shockwave 10 please click link.

Download it now

What’s with Google trends?

PaulOctober 20, 2008

Having been going to the Google Trends and keeping watching. I am starting to wonder something? Take a look at this and you tell me?

[ad]Can you see how someone might use this to create a Goog-411 and use it to promote there website? It is all about the hits and getting what publishers like to say the eyes on a website. Now is that going to confuse people or make people not want to come to a site. So how would people abuse this?

Very Simple, they’d watch what is trending and post accordingly. Now you as a reader would click on the website expecting to see what you want to see but instead it would popup with advertisements and maybe malware? Check these links to better understand it:

Skype isn’t always safe!

Some Important programs to prevent yourself from having viruses and Malware!!

[ad]
Now even though these are just a few. You can see how someone might want to abuse it and get there site up on Google trends and be able to infect several to even millions of computers before Google sees that or stops. You could in theory take over a website high in Google rankings and do exactly that.

Then I have to ask myself, why would hackers want to do it in the first? One they’d be able to direct people to sites that they could use to phish your information, or maybe make money by you going to these sites. It is all about money, I don’t say that lightly, but it seems to always be true.

So what is Google doing to prevent this? is it right to use Google for your advantage? Do we need it for anything other than to see what people are looking at? Is that a form of them tracking your every click.

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Are you comfortable with them keeping the list of what people searched for last year? if you don’t believe me, go check it out yourself. These are important questions to answer and should be explored.

Are you asking to be scammed?

PaulOctober 15, 2008

As we go further into the economic death, we are faced with the most undesirable aspect of the human culture. That is to say, scammers are going to use the chance to find people to scam. I don’t say this lightly because scammers have become more cunning and dubious through the years. They are actually using the internet as well as most companies. They are going to sites like Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, and other hiring sites to get people to apply for jobs.

<<See Previous Post — Nationwide Marketing Scam

Having said that, I recently had a problem with being tried to be scammed. I applied to a job posted on Careerbuilder and that is how they got a hold of my home address. I did not think about the security problems associated with applying for jobs on line, until recently.

As you can see that is how they got a hold of my information and have made myself vulnerable to scams and also, other potential problems. I am talking about Theft ID and also spam. Although spam is to be expected with anything we do online. I’ve come to the conclusion that we will always have to deal with spam. I wanted to talk about how to be careful when you apply for online jobs and put your information out on the internet. I’ve started taking some steps to prevent this from happening again.

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No Longer am I going to apply for any more private companies — if I can’t see who they are then they have something to hide.

To prevent spam — I am going to make an email address just for my resume. That way I don’t have to worry about spam on my main account.

If it’s too good to be true, it is probably not — I am going to start using that philosophy when I’m about to apply for a job. See picture above, advertising way to much money for a Customer Service rep.

Don’t ever put your Social on your Resume — That is the most crucial part, if you want your identity stolen that is one sure way to get it stolen. Even though that should be painfully obvious it is sometimes overlooked.

I am sure there are more but that is the basic idea of the whole thing. I will probably come up with even more ideas later on but this was one thing that I have been thinking about all day. I also think we have to starting asking the questions before the seriousness of the scammers come to bear. They will never go away but until we get serious, they will always be there to taunt us and laugh us. I am not sure how to do it, Do you? Are we just supposed to sit here and take it or do we fight back and how? These are importantquestions for anyone to consider when you are faced with the possiblity of fraud or being scammed? How do we deal with it in the future? Should scammers be punished serverely or moderately?