h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not giving up my tech for no-one. Ah wubs mah shinies!

Microsoft Security Essentials is a good program so you weren't misled there However, I do highly recommend you set up weekly scans for your AV (and do a boot scan every month or so) and anti-malware software. Run CCleaner and defrag your drives regularly (I recommend Smart Defrag for this).

Oh, and by the way, here's an article about the "I'm calling you from Windows" scam. It's pretty serious.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/i-am-calling-you-from-windows-a-tech-support-scammer-dials-ars-technica/

>> Microsoft Security Essentials is a good program...<<

Yup, have downloaded it a while ago along with
C-Cleaner which did a lot of cleaning. I can even
see most video streams like the Utoobs with a lot
less fluttering and freezing. Might not have to buy
myself a new laptop for Xmas.


There is one strange side-effect since those downloads.

The computer comes on in the middle of the night - even
if I have disconnected from my wifi network and put the
thing in hibernate mode - (a habit I got into when using
AVG because it would reboot quicker than starting up
from a complete shut down in which AVG ran a full scan
before allowing me to log on. )

I'd wake up around 3am to find its glowing light filling the
room like a phantom presence. A Windows page shows me
'wake-up' options for certain programs like overnight updates
and scans but none of them is set to do so.

I have no idea how the thing was coming to life on its own.

But now the novelty of speculating on divine intervention
has worn off and I'm actually shutting it all down completely
at night and getting uninterrupted sleep with a pretty quick
reboot in the mornings.


~jwf~

Something else you should be aware of are the zero day flaws in Java (Sun have known about them since April but have done nothing about it so far ). It's yet another way for naughty types to riddle your computer with malware and all sorts, but Malwarebytes won't pick them up - you need to do a boot scan for that.

I haven't been following the Quote of the Day sweepstakes. Do they really leave these things up until a new one is procured?

I think it's just a matter of oversight and under-staffing. It's obviously not a priority.

Yup. Pastey said something tantalising about "watch this space!" but that was a week or so ago, still hasn't changed.

Perhaps it should be renamed to "QotITP" (quote of the indeterminate time period).









*And perhaps this should be the next QotITP.

I'd better post something quotable then.

I'm afraid that real life has got in the way of what I was doing, hopefully I'll get back onto it soon.

Real life *always* gets in my way this time of year.