Whiskers Cripple Colorado's Computers

Zinc whiskers - small metallic fibers which grow on surfaces that have been electroplated with zinc - can cause serious problems for computers. The Denver Post reports how they caused computer outages for the last three weeks in the Colorado secretary of state's office. This basically halted business and elections document filings. Zinc whiskers are becoming more of a problem as computers electronics get smaller. NASA has a good reference site which includes a interesting PDF summary paper complete with pictures.

Obituaries Online

Obituaries Online

Curious individuals usually turn to the obituaries when looking for information on the deceased. However, what do you do if you live in a completely different area than the one where the individual died? If this is the case, you may not be made aware of what happened until some time in the future. It only makes sense that you should be able to search through the obituaries for your friends and loved ones. If you live in the United States, turn to ObitsArchive for some help.

You can search through their archive of the nation’s obituaries by name, publication date, or obituary text. If you have a general idea of where to look, narrow your search down to a specific region or state.

Searching through the database is free.

If you wish to view the full text of the obituary, you will be charged US$3.50 per article. Pricing options are also available for a 30 or 90-day pass.

This could be quite helpful to those who are baffled by what happened to a particular person.

For Military Children, Parents, Leaders And Educators

Military Student.org Whether you are a military child, parent, leader or educator, this site contains an abundance of information, tools and resources to help meet your unique needs.

Military Buddy Finder

Military.com has a buddy finder. Search by name and by branch of service. You can also search by unit.

If you don't find who you're looking for, try the buddy boards. Post the name of the person you are trying to find. You may not find him or her but you may run into someone who knows their contact information.

You have to register with military.com to use this service, but it's free.

Danger! Danger!

Last Friday, in response to the latest security exploit involving Microsoft products, the usually staid U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, published a warning strongly suggesting that users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer should switch to another Web browser, due to "significant vulnerabilities" in technologies included in IE.

More.

Gary Schare, director of the Windows Client Division at Microsoft, said that CERT's advice had been misrepresented in much of the press coverage.

"Microsoft certainly respects the work CERT does to help protect the Internet and users. Regarding the consideration that users switch browsers, it is unfortunate that the published articles have misrepresented CERT's suggestions, and we are working with CERT to clarify their advice," Schare said.

But many evidently took CERT's warning to heart and downloaded Mozilla or Mozilla's Firefox, free, open-source Web browsers developed and distributed by the Mozilla Organization, who resurrected the remnants of Netscape after it was purchased by AOL in 1999.

Note: I highly recommend FireFox. It is now the default web browser on all of my computers.