March 2018

There is a terminal command called alias, that many users may not know exists, but likely will be very happy to find out about it.

The alias command, allows you to redefine what you type, to make things happen. It gives you the option to map large commands to an alias that you may run then instead of the large command to execute it.

A very straightforward (although risky) example of this would be:

alias dla="rm -rf *"

The developers of Pale Moon released two new versions of the browser in the past couple of days. Pale Moon 27.8.0 was released on March 2, 2018 and the follow-up release Pale Moon 27.8.1 on March 6, 2018.

Pale Moon users who want to update to the newest version may do so from within the application. A click on the Pale Moon button and the selection of Help > About Pale Moon displays the current version of the browser in a new window. A click on "check for updates" runs an update check.

Windows Firewall Control is a standalone program for Microsoft Windows PCs that extends the functionality of the built-in Windows Firewall and improves manageability significantly.

A free version is provided but you need to donate to the developer to get a lifetime license for the registered version which adds a notification system for outbound connections and an option to create temporary rules.

Microsoft released the cumulative update KB4090913 for Windows 10 version 1709 (Fall Creators Update) on March 5, 2018. The update fixes an issue with some USB devices connected to the Windows 10 device.

Nemp is an open source music player for Microsoft Windows PCs with a rich feature set that runs on very old versions of Windows as well as all supported versions of the operating system.

Nemp, which stands for Noch Ein MP3 Player (Yet Another MP3 Player), is offered as a portable program. You can run the music player without installation, for instance on a USB Drive that stores your music collection.

Windows Firewall Control 5.1 is the latest version of the security program for Windows that extends the functionality of the built-in firewall called Windows Firewall.

We reviewed Windows Firewall Control back in 2009 for the first time and concluded that it was an excellent application for Windows systems that were configured to use Windows Firewall for protection.

Microsoft plans to release the next feature update for the Windows 10 operating system in March/April of 2018. The company switched to a "two feature updates per year" release schedule  which means that it will release a feature update in the Fall as well.

Leaked documents suggest that Microsoft calls the update Spring Creators Update. The company has not revealed the name officially yet, though.

Windows couldn't be installed. We couldn't update the system reserved partition is an error message that you may receive when you try to upgrade Windows.

I ran into the issue on a machine running Windows 10 Insider Builds but users experienced the issue in earlier versions of Windows as well. The error seemed to be common on Windows 8.1 systems that users tried to upgrade to Windows 10.

Internet users from Germany who try to access the international website of Project Gutenberg, a free ebook repository (and audiobooks),  get a "Your IP address is blocked" message when they attempt to load any page on the site with the exception of the homepage.

I’ve been a D&D Player for a long time, but have been without a campaign now for a few years. I’ve spoken to some friends, and there seems to be some building interest in starting an online campaign on such a website like Roll20.