Adobe has been subjecting us to quite the parade of zero-day security vulnerabilities, lately. Here are two steps I took not too long ago to reduce exposure, which I'd recommend to most everyone:

1. Disable Flash except for selected websites.
   
   Flash has become ubiquitous, yet the most common use is for displaying annoying animated ads. This doesn't ( Read more... )

Randomly, and contrary to common expectations, I discovered that Microsoft's newly rechristened Bing fails to suck. In fact, it seems quite decent. I used it to find my recent flights, and it dug up for me a deal on a booking service I hadn't known of which wasn't available anywhere else I could think to look, including the airline's website. And ( Read more... )

To those who don't believe Microsoft's story that plug-ins are largely responsible for IE crashes & hangs, I offer exhibit A:

( Stack trace... )

I finally got my new laptop last week, after a year of "I'll buy one as soon as I finish my thesis", and several rounds of wrestling with Fujitsu. :P

But, it's finally here, and it's working great! Yay!

Of course, Windows Explorer still crashes every so often, just like on every other Windows machine I've ever had. Screwing up the window list  and ( Read more... )