New Page - Security Threat Glossary

Thanks to my friends at Sophos.com, I added a page of Glossary Terms for security threats.  Now you can look up the definition of everything harmful to your system.  At a minimum, you won't have a deer in the headlights look on your face when I talk to you, lol.

Amazon takes on Netflix...and probably will win

With the announcement of the Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon threw something else in that may be bad news for Netflix, Amazon Prime.  

Amazon is offering to bundle the Kindle Fire with a free one-month subscription to Amazon Prime. In addition to free two-day shipping on any purchase from the store, Amazon Prime customers receive "instant commercial-free streaming of over 11,000 movies and TV shows at no additional cost." After the free month is over, Fire owners can sign up for Prime which costs $79 annually.

Let's spell that out: Amazon streaming movies cost $79. Netflix's streaming movies cost $96. And Netflix can't offer the free shipping on a seemingly infinite amount of consumer goods.  For the over one million customers who just left Netflix, they might now have a place to go.  I would have a very difficult time staying with Netflix if I were a member.  Amazon is cheaper, almost the same content and free two day shipping on everything else you buy there.

Amazon takes on Apple, Kindle Fire Tablet announced

It looks like we may have an alternative to the iPad after all.  Many have tried, all have failed to this point to provide a true alternative to the iPad.  Amazon is next up and they may have a winner.  Of course, we will see when it is actually for sale.  They may have a winner for one simple reason, price, $199.  There is a downsize to the cheaper price, no camera, GPS, bluetooth and a smaller screen.  However, most people aren't taking pictures with a tablet camera, your smartphone has GPS, very little bluetooth users exist outside of cell phone headsets and the smaller screen isnt that much smaller.  For $199, it does enough to make you seriously consider buying it.  All the other have failed for one simple reason, they cost as much as the iPad, but weren't as good.  If you are faced with two choices, the same price, you buy the better one.  If you have two choices and one is considerable cheaper than the second and does enough of what you want, you may buy that.  I always thought if anyone could take on Apple it would be Amazon, seems like they are stepping up to the challenge.

Firefox 7 Available now

Feels like I just posted that.  Oh wait,...I did about 2 months ago with Firefox 6.  While I appreciate the continual updating of Firefox, the need to upgrade it so often is too much.  Considering that most of the improvements are "under the hood", Mozilla should just make those updates quietly, like Google Chrome does. The continual updates, check extensions for compatability, etc. is tedious.  On the positive note, one of the fixes is suppose to address the annoying problem of the browser speed slowing to a crawl when multiple windows open.  If this is fixed, I might change my mind entirely over the constant updating.

Now your car is tracking you too...

Apple got into a bit of trouble a couple of months ago when it was revealed (although not really surprising) that the iPhone tracked your whereabouts.  Well, all smartphones do this.  After all, how would your carrier know how to charge you for calls and services you use if they didn't know where you were when you used them?  The rule of thumb is to always expect any connected device to be tracking or keeping some information about you on the device and possibly sending it somewhere, with or without your permission.  The latest example of this is Onstar.  You may be familiar with the commercial, buy a new GM car, get Onstar free for a year.  After the year, you either continue the service by paying a monthly fee or cancel it.  Well, GM recently revealed that when you cancel the service, the service still tracks your movements and reports it back to GM.  Why, well it's a growing trend called "aggregate data".  Companies collect data, any data possible and sell it to interested marketers.  GM claims you can "opt-out" by calling them, however, do you really trust them to stop when they've been doing it without notifiying you for this long?  For more read this ArsTechnica article.

Windows 8 up and running

The installation is complete and I am now running Windows 8 on a Inspiron E1405 laptop.  The first thing you notice is the tiles that occupy the homescreen.  Instead of a desktop, you get a bunch of tiles, similar to icons on your homescreen on your smartphone.  If you click on "Desktop", you get a conventional desktop that is pretty much identical to the Windows 7 desktop.  It's like a marriage between your smartphone and computer.  It's hard to explain, but that is my initial gut reaction.  One confirmed detail that was announced is that Anti-Virus will be built into Windows 8.  No word on what it will be, although it would be a safe bet to assume some form of Microsoft's Security Essentials.  More details as I play around with it some more.