myhealthyspinecenter.com

An overview of the symptoms and treatment of cervical spinal stenosis (compression), as well as information on the link between fibromyalgia and cervical stenosis.

Cervical spinal stenosis occurs when something causes a narrowing of the canal in the upper part of the spine (neck&ltsep/&gt

By Greg George
CEO
Spinal Cord Resources Network

Mailboxes have started to fill up with requests to go to a website and verify your iTunes account which has been under attack. According to the email, there have been too many attempts to access the account and that you will be highly restricted until you type in your iTunes login and password along with a credit card number and your mother’s maiden name. This should be an old tune for those used to watching hackers try to get personal information by using social engineering. Social Engineering is a person trying to gain access to something by pretending they know someone or something and want to give you something for it. In this case the hackers want to give you full access to your iTunes account back in return for personal data typed into a web page. If you get one of these emails you should mark it as spam and make sure it is deleted. Do not click on it if you are running Windows are Internet Explorer as the site may also include damaging content that allows hackers immediate control over your computer.

This is a good time to download and use Firefox to protect you fr0om these kinds of attacks. Firefox looks at the displayed URL vs. what is behind the link to make sure they are the same. Invariably they are different in a hacking attack and Firefox can warn you that you are going to a hacker site. There are also sites that are well known as hacking sites which are checked against by Firefox and you are informed if you try to go to one of those sites. These technologies protect your personal data as well as your computer. Many times hacking sites have damaging code written for Internet Explorer that gains administrator access without any display to the user. Firefox has taken a very important eye toward security which makes it harder to attack it and gain access. Plus, since the source code is free for anyone to look over, there are fewer chances of bad security code being left in the finished product.

Also make sure that your anti virus, anti spyware, and anti malware packages are up to date. There are many ways to break into a Windows computer and the only way to at least be warned is to run these programs. They take memory and CPU speed from your computer, but that is the reward for running Windows. This is also a good time to make sure the latest updates and patches are applied to your computer. There is no reason to be running an old version of Windows that is wide open to many kinds of attacks. Many popular viruses and malware capitalize on people not keeping their computer up to date. Once hackers are in your computer they can use your computer as a download site for illegal software and pornography. Some of this material can get you thrown in federal prison for years even if you had no idea what was going on in your computer. It is not worth jail time to not keep your computer as secure as possible.

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By Greg George
CEO
Spinal Cord Resources Network

Top Tech News has an interesting story about telephone use in the US. Up to this point more people used land lines rather then cell connections. All homes and businesses have been wired for telephone as well as Internet connectivity. Cell phones have been slowly eating away at the number of landlines that were asked for and now most people are going to cell exclusively. Telephone companies have priced themselves out of the land line business with unlimited calls and minutes to anyone in in the US and Canada. With landlines charging fees on top of per minute rates to local calls as well as long distance made it a no-brainer to switch. The switch became even easier when congress made it a law to transfer your telephone number when you moved services. Now you could shop for the best service that fit your needs and always can bring your telephone number with you. It became simple to give cell phones to the kids as well as employees to keep in touch. Now services like Vonage are even further cutting into normal landlines by allowing customers to use their existing Internet connection to make calls. This gave virtually all the same benefits of having a cell phone for home use. Fortunately telephone companies have been investing heavily in cellular and Internet services which has offset the loss of land line customers.

The biggest benefit is that you can carry your phone around anywhere allowing you to be connected at all times. Plus one phone number can do everything. It is now possible to get all your connectivity with one device that works everywhere. The rise of cell traffic has been evident in other less developed countries where it is far easier to build cell towers rather then wiring up every building. In Mexico it can take years to get a land line installed (but not hooked up to the local CU) where getting a cell phone connection takes only a few minutes. Both monetary reasons as well as customer service reasons mark the end of the land line. It is far cheaper to put up a tower to give service to an area that you know  will be used rather then hooking up a land line to a pay phone that may never be used. Plus with landlines still charging per minute for services a customer can pay for a cell phone within a few months of purchasing it. Many young people are only purchasing a cell phone, they never get the land line hooked up in their apartment. It is nothing more then an added expense that is tied to the apartment.

With radio, television and Internet all coming together into a common media, it is obvious that the Internet will be the hub to get everything you want for communications. There will be no reason to drive down to the local movie rental company when you can instantly watch everything that you want on any television in the house. The same cable brings in the Internet connection and telephone service over the net (VoIP). ISPs will be the only players around to get the services you want for your house. It remains to be seen if telephone companies can keep their grip on the cell phone market. The telephone companies tried to use the same per minute business market for the Internet and it failed miserably. No one is going to pay per minute when you can talk forever for a small monthly fee. The advent of the newer smart phones (Blackberry and iPhone) you can have everything in the palm of your hand. It will be interesting to see what services are brought to the home and handheld as Internet speeds get ever faster.

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By Greg George
CEO
Spinal Cord Resources Network

Online backup services are cropping up all over the Internet. They promise to make backups easier to do and storage and maintenance is all handled by the hosting company. This sounds like a real answer to the gigabytes that are never backed up on personal computers everywhere. Those of us that are the computer resource for computer problems routinely are stuck trying to repair dead hard drives because years of letters, data and pictures are stored there. Of course no one ever does backups so we are stuck trying to pry data off of a bare metal drive. Any backup is better then none at all - right? Not when you give all your personal documents to an unknown entity.

All these backup services have some kind of free aspect where you can dump several gigabytes of your most prized possession, pictures, letters and whatnot on their servers. That is very nice but companies must make money to save your mountain of data on their servers for free. How exactly does a company give you 2 gigabytes of space for free on real rack mounted servers in protected air conditioned rooms watched over by high paid technicians? By rifling through your data and then using that information to send you advertisements either through snail mail or spam in your inbox. So now your person information is known by the backup company as well as their “partners”. Are all of these companies trustworthy? Are they safe from hacking and data loss?

None of these companies explain what they can do with your data and what measures they are taking to protect your assets. If there is a break in will the company let you know what was stolen in a timely fashion? Some states have laws that force companies to tell customers when their data has been compromised, but most do not. Plus companies have a nasty tendency to never tell anyone of a break in. Last month the University of Miami lost a backup tape that had the personal information of 2 million patients. The university waited until media sources broke the story to let anyone know what happened. Supposedly they were going to let all those patients know what happened, but some are still waiting for their letter. It is expected that because of HIPAA guidelines medical data is to be protected, but obviously companies and universities don’t care about what happens to your information.

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I had surgery to untether my tethered spinal cord in 2004. Now I am having problems with my left

fist on my lower back below my surgery site that is completely numb. I am wondering if my spinal cord

I have a herniated disc at C6-C7 that is compressing the C7 nerve root and the spinal cord my

spinal cord compression was an absolute emergency . Any thoughts would be appreciated.