Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – November 15, 2009

How to set up an iPod Shuffle – In spite of its unassuming size, the Apple iPod Shuffle is a surprisingly sophisticated MP3 player. With voice feedback, headphone control, playlist management, and podcast support, the iPod Shuffle is in many ways more advanced than the original brick-size iPod.

Tips – Troubleshooting your Wi-Fi

Verizon sends more antipiracy notices – Verizon Communications has agreed to forward copyright violation notices on behalf of Hollywood studios, including NBC Universal. The news comes after Verizon began issuing the same type of copyright letters on Thursday–as part of a test–on behalf of the music industry.

Ex-Employees Pose Growing Security Threat – Reprisals from recently departed employees and a lack of adequate security budgets and resources are becoming major concerns for senior IT professionals, according to the 12th annual Ernst Young Global Information Security Survey. Channel Insider takes a deeper look into this growing problem.

Yahoo Messenger 10 waves bye to ‘beta’ – Yahoo Messenger 10 beta is no more. At least not the “beta” part. This week, Yahoo gave the version 10 beta its stamp of approval, pulling away the “beta” marker and replacing Yahoo Messenger 9 with Yahoo Messenger 10 on Yahoo’s download page.

Experts Only: Time to Ditch the Antivirus? – It’s definitely not the right move for the average computer user, but some security experts claim they have found better security by disabling the AV and relying on other controls and behaviors.

The future of antivirus: Is there a way out of the arms race? – Antivirus software makes Greg Shipley so mad he has to laugh. “The relationship between signature-based antivirus companies and the virus writers is almost comical. One releases something and then the other reacts, and they go back and forth. It’s a silly little arms race that has no end.”

Off Topic:

Top 10 Homemade Remedies for What Ails You – Feeling under the weather? Thinking—as you look around your office—that you might be soon? Hone your home remedy skill set with a look at 10 of our favorite DIY cures for illnesses and your body’s annoyances.

Increase the Quality of Cheap Vodka with a Water Filter – Save yourself some money and improve the quality of a bottle of cheap vodka with a little at-home filtration. Vodka is not a complicated alcohol, and government standards on what constitutes vodka ensures that from the absolute bottom-shelf swill to the top-shelf ultra-premium bottles, what you end up with is, well, vodka. Marketing tactics and slick advertising aside, the real difference between the bottom and top shelf is the amount of filtration and refinement the vodka undergoes.

Man allegedly steals bus, posts YouTube video – A tour bus is stolen in Vermont. A former employee is apprehended for allegedly taking it on a joyride. Now it appears that he made a video of the alleged theft and posted it to YouTube.

Today’s Quote:

“Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both”.

- John Andrew Holmes

Today’s Free Downloads:

Vuze 4.3 – Formerly the feature-rich Azureus, Vuze takes Azureus’ BitTorrent foundation and builds on top of it a network for video discovery and user-created video publishing tied together by social networking.

Foxit Reader – To put it gently, Adobe Reader is a real pain in the hindquarters. It’s monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader 3.0 kills the bloat and throws in some useful features, such as multimedia support and content-sharing options, while still allowing you to quickly access your PDFs.

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