Lance Ulanoff

My Sony VAIO Digital Studio came with two 100GB Maxtor ATA drives. This may seem like a lot, but its probably the bare minimum you need when youre editing video and burning DVDs. I was using Sonic MyDVD 5 for these tasks, and began to notice some disturbing computer activity while working on video projects. […]

Im hooked on Really Simple Syndication (RSS), but it hasnt always been this way. Over the last year or so, while we slowly built a list of RSS feeds for the PCMag.com Web site, I continually scratched my head and wondered, “Whats the point?” RSS technology is a result of the growth of XML and […]

The CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) act recently became law in the United States, and with just a little over a month of it under our belts, people are already passing judgment on this broad and, some might say, groundbreaking law. On the surface, the verdict hasnt been positive. Im still […]

I know this is wrong, but in one respect I was happy to learn earlier this month about the discovery of a significant security hole in the Jaguar and Panther versions (10.2 and 10.3, respectively) of the Apple operating system. I was tired of the “We use Macs because they dont get attacked by viruses […]

Microsofts menu bars are awash in anachronistic images, and its especially evident in the latest edition of the Office 2003 application suite. This struck me as I was authoring my 364th “Inside PCMag.com” newsletter. Clicking on the Save icon, I found myself wondering why its still an image of a 3.5-inch floppy disk. When was […]

We may well look back on these past two weeks as the moment when we finally got serious about system security. The double whammy of Blaster and now SoBig has sent hundreds of thousands of home users and many network administrators reeling as systems crash, servers collapse under the weight of a spam-like e-mail onslaught […]

We read, sometimes on a daily basis, about security and privacy holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Windows, and versions of Windows Server. To its credit, Microsoft generally delivers patches with alacrity, but the vulnerability of the browser and OS is worrisome, to say the least. So imagine my surprise when I read that the new […]

Whats more important than figuring out how to get uninfected? Avoiding infection in the first place. Here are some simple steps you can take to safeguard your systems. Download patch updates from Windowsupdate.com: “Windows NT 4.0 ServerWindows NT 4.0 Terminal Server EditionWindows 2000Windows XP 32 bit EditionWindows XP 64 bit EditionWindows Server 2003 32 bit […]

Spam is everywhere—I mean everywhere. The other day, UPS delivered a small package to my office. The box, which was festooned with labels indicating it had traveled through a number of countries, was filled with shredded crepe paper that covered—lucky me—a can of Hormel Spam. The box had actually come from a PR firm hawking […]

Over the years, Ive seen a handful of news items and at least one documentary on water divining. Usually the practice proliferates during droughts. It involves a tool such as a forked or Y-shaped stick and someone—a dowser—who can use the tool to find water underground. The tail end of the Y bends down when […]

A few days ago, CNNfn scheduled an interview with me about the recent hacking contest in which hackers worldwide were supposed to compete to see who could deface 6,000 Web sites first or the most Web sites in a six-hour period. The announcement of the contest appeared at http://www.defacers-challenge.com/. On July 7, the morning after […]

CAN SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) is an awfully catchy name for a bill. I suspect that Senator Conrad R. Burns (R–MT) and Senator Ron Wyden (D–OR) conferred with some marketing execs to craft that one. The bill is intended to stem the flow of spam onto our desktops, but I […]