Does Microsoft Windows get you down sometimes? Do you ever get frustrated that you always have to watch out for viruses, pay for security software, and deal with other headaches that come with Microsoft Windows? If so I want to let you know you do have another choice, and best of all its a free choice! This free choice will give you freedom! The free choice is Linux.
Top 5 Reasons To Dump Windows for Linux
1. Security – Linux is a very secure operating system. In fact, most distros come with pretty sound defaults for the most part. Since most applications you could ever need are located in trusted repositories signed with pgp keys and checked by community maintainers, you can be sure the software is safe and trusted. There is no need to download programs form untrusted external web sites under most circumstances.
Linux also doesn’t have to worry about Windows viruses infecting your computer, nor do you have to worry about running 3rd party security software to protect your linux system. Clam AV, the open source virus scanner is freely available to scan your email and other files if you wish. It is not necessary however unless you want to scan files you will be sending to your windows using friends. Also, most Linux distros come with some sort of MAC(Mandatory Access Control) like AppArmor or SELinux turned on by default to protect your web facing applications.
2. The OS is Free and Open Source - Linux and most of the applications that come with it are free and open source software. This means you are no longer stuck to a restrictive licensing scheme, or at the mercy of proprietary software activation systems. You are free to install Linux on as many computers as you wish, and you can even give free copies to all your friends and family. Donations of money or time are appreciated, but not required. Even posting in help forums or blog entries on how to do stuff with Linux is contributing. It is set up so each person can contribute to what their knowledge level is, or to cater to the amount of money you can comfortably donate to a Linux based project. It is a win-win for everyone involved.
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The recent outcry in the news media, and blogosphere about Facebook and Privacy concerns is quite telling. The following Google Search will give you tons of information from the news media and Internet on the assault against Facebook due to privacy concerns. If you don’t already know, Facebook has come under assault by privacy advocates, and others about its privacy policy and/or privacy settings. I do question however if these concerns are justified. We must remember, when your the big kid on the block everyone goes after you.
The question remains, Is the outcry against Facebook really justified? or is it more users not reading a terms of service agreement before signing up with the service?
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In this post, we will look at the basics of securing your Windows based computer. I have often times found folks either take security too lax or way too far. So what is a happy medium that can be reasonably used? It is a question that I often get asked so I will do my best in this post to lay it out.
1. Computer Security Basics - The first of the 10 Immutable Laws of Computer Security state:
“If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, its not your computer anymore”
This is single most important aspect of computer security is knowledge and education. If you run an unknown program on your computer, then there is a chance you may lose control of your computer. This is true of any operating system be it Windows, Linux, MAC, BSD, etc. If you ask any Linux system administrator if they would run unsigned/unknown/untrusted .deb, .rpm, .sh, or any other executable format on their systems they would look at you funny. However, it seems with many Windows users they will just blindly click on any link they receive in an email, anything they see on Facebook, or any other avenue without verifying if the files are legitimate. Read the rest of this entry »
May 5th, 2010 in
Computers,
Microsoft,
Security,
blogs,
internet | tags:
antispyware,
antivirus,
firewall,
Microsoft,
security,
windows |
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Twitter has recently announced it will soon begin offering search advertisements in its search results. This means that advertisers and people can pay/bid on keywords, and those tweets will appear at the top of the search results of Tweets on the Twitter service. The Twitter search advertisements will begin as a select beta named “Promoted Tweets”
I knew the day would come when Twitter would have some sort of ads on its site. Afterall, we have been living in Twitter ad free bliss. It looks however that this will be beginning to come to an end as Twitter has decided to monetize their site with an advertising platform which in my opinion is the wrong move for them. Read the rest of this entry »
On Tuesday April 6th 2010, a Federal Court has thrown the future of network neutrality, and the future of Internet regulations in doubt. The court ruled against the Federal Communications Commission(FCC) in its case against Comcast Corp. The case stems from a 2007 ruling by the FCC stating that Comcast could not throttle or interfere with Bittorent traffic. The FCC based this ruling on principles adopted by former FCC Chief Kevin Martin.
The impacts of this case could have far reaching consequences that some experts say could even hamper the government’s plans for expanding broadband in the United States. The U.S Court of Appeals ruled the FCC lacks the authority to regulate the flow of internet traffic over networks. In my opinion this has got to be one of the worst rulings in history of the battle for net neutrality. Read the rest of this entry »
In a previous blog post, I covered the Deep Link Engine which is a WordPress trackback and pingback blog spam plug-in. This plug-in trys to automatically find blogs and pingback/trackback them as a way to build backlinks in a very spammy way. Today, I am going to show you a very easy way to disable trackbacks and pingbacks not only for new posts, but all your previous posts and pages you have written.
If you not afraid of 10 minutes of work, and a little SQL lets get at it.
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