November 2014

Welcome to the November 2014 overview of Microsoft Security Bulletins and updates for all company products including client and server Windows operating systems as well as Microsoft Office.

It offers an in-depth analysis of all security and non-security updates that Microsoft has released since October 2014, the last official patch day.

I have been a happy Giganews customer for a very long time and recommend the service still. It is a premium Usenet service on the other hand that is on the expensive end subscription-wise.

New to Usenet? Check out our Usenet Starter Guide here.

You do get great stuff on top of Usenet access though, a VPN account for example with any of the unlimited plans but not everyone needs that.

So Mozilla decided to make the Aurora channel of the Firefox web browser stand out a bit from the rest by rebranding it to Firefox Developer version and moving it out of the release chain.

While it will still receive updates once they passed through the Nightly version, it is tot handing those updates over to the Beta channel anymore after the second six week period.

On top of all that, Mozilla has added distinguishable features to the browser version.

Advertising and marketing companies use tracking to learn more about users that visit properties on the Internet that their services run on.

Knowing more about users increases the profitability of advertisement which is the core reason why tracking is used so widely these days.

Do Not Track was a first attempt to give control back to users but the main problem with the feature is that it is not mandatory.

Advertising companies can honor the Do Not Track setting of a browser but don't have to.

I run the excellent Autoruns regularly to block programs, services, drivers and whatnot from starting automatically on the system.

While I do take good care of that usually during installation, there are always situations where programs are added to the autostart without me having any control over that process.

While I could run something like WinPatrol to be notified about important system changes, I don't usually for a variety of reasons.

Most people have goals they would like to achieve. Lose some weight, gain muscle, learn a language, travel to Australia or Mars.

The difficult thing is not to come up with those goals but to walk the walk.

Most goals are achieved by working on them on a regular basis. If you want to lose weight for instance, you cannot just eat nothing on a day but give up on the idea on the next and eat a super-sized pizza.

Habbits is a free application for Android that tries to motivate you in a special way. The main idea behind the program is to link activities to create chains.

The Firefox web browser is configured to download and install updates automatically. Updates includes the browser engine and core browser files but also extensions and themes.

Firefox users who have not modified the behavior don't need to do anything apart from restarting the browser when the prompt to do so appears on the desktop.

Up until now it was quite difficult to get your hands on a proper installation disc or USB flash drive to install Windows 8.1 on a PC.

While you can buy a Windows 8.1 DVD, you don't get media if you upgrade Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 for example. If you then decide to format the system and start anew or move everything to a new PC, you may have noticed that you need to install Windows 8 first to update it to Windows 8.1.

There are still times where I use text messaging instead of a chat application when I need to contact someone, for instance if they don't use messaging apps.

This can be the case when they don't have a smartphone so that they cannot use WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other apps of that type, or if they prefer not to use those apps.

QKSMS is a free application for Android devices that improves the default text messaging app that these devices ship with.

Internet users have quite a few options at their disposal when it comes to blocking sites on the web. They can use the hosts file for example which blocks them on a system-wide level, configure firewall rules for the same effect, use a DNS provider that allows the filtering, or block specific urls or sites in a program directly.

The last option is not overly effective, especially when it comes to blocking sites so that others, children for instance, cannot access them.