Security

Modern computers contains al lot of software. A fully updated fresh windows installation contains well over 50.000 files - and before it being “usable” with the most common applications, plugins, addons and extensions for the software you use on a daily basis, you’ve probably added so much more, that you’ve completely lost count of what’s been installed.

It’s a pretty bad situation in terms of security and software maintenance/updating.

WindowsUpdate has come part of the way. It’s easy and simple for even common users to use and stay fairly current with the core windows system, but it only covers a small piece of the puzzle. While most windows machines I’ve encountered seem to have Office installed, WindowsUpdate doesn’t cover it - OfficeUpdate does, but how many people know of that? - and run it on a regular basis?

It seems some websites produce horrifically long url’s and others (such as twitter) imposes some strict boundaries, which has created the need for sites such as tinyurl.com. With tinyurl you can post a long (even really long) url on the site and have a short (redirect through tinyurl) instead. It’s pretty smart, but I really don’t like being redirected to a secret destination.

On tinyurl.com they luckily have an option (if you have cookies enabled) which allows you not to auto-redirect. Instead you reach a page on tinyurl.com, are shown the destination and must click proceed to go on to the destination.