Yesterday I wrote about a Chrome extension, “Webpage Screenshot Capture,” that was generating JollyWallet pop-up ads whenever I visited an e-commerce website. This morning, coincidentally, I came across an Ars Technica article entitled “Adware vendors buy Chrome Extensions to send ad- and malware-filled updates.” Someone more tech savvy than I will have to decide whether … Continue reading Ads, malware, and the update vulnerability
I just spent a fair part of my afternoon tracking down the way to get rid of an annoying JollyWallet pop-up ad, and perhaps my experience will save someone else some time. This is not just another pop-up ad because Adblock Plus does not catch it. Others are calling it malware or a virus, and I’m … Continue reading Gone: That annoying JollyWallet pop-up
You may already be familiar with this high tech gizmo. It’s a telecommuting device of sorts, controlled by the owner, who uses an iPad or computer remotely to drive this rolling iPad around his or her office. It becomes the owner’s surrogate in a distant location. When I first saw one of these a few … Continue reading Double, double toil and trouble
It’s old news now, but this interesting chart from the Oct. 24 Washington Post details in simple, non-technical terms why the Heathcare.gov website failed. The text, a sidebar to the main story, Full testing of HealthCare.gov began too late, contractors say, clearly explains why the website failed and how complicated its repair is likely to be. Most interesting and … Continue reading Too many hats, not enough rabbits: Why healthcare.gov failed
Healthcare.gov, the Obamacare website, has so far been an unmitigated disaster. Obviously there are serious programming problems that go far beyond a few “glitches” or bugs, beyond heavy traffic and server overload. Anyone who knows anything about IT development knows a complex program needs to be tested extensively before it’s rolled out. And that didn’t … Continue reading Brook’s law and the Obamacare website
“This disk is used for Time Machine backups” “OS X cannot be installed on ‘Macintosh HD’” Those are the error messages I encountered today when I tried to install the new Mavericks OS X on my early 2008 MacBook Pro (it took more than 3 hours to download, but I’ve been having connectivity issues recently). … Continue reading ‘This disk is used for Time Machine backups’
