SOON AFTER reports emerged of Windows 7's tweaked UAC being a bit of a security risk, Volish developers have done a complete 180 and promptly set in place a few new security measures.

Stuck between a rock and a bunch of angry beta-testers, Vole developers DeVaan and Sinofsky had fallen back on the feature-not-a-bug defence argument to justify the uncovered exploits. However, overnight, they quickly reverted to "we did it this way, and now we're doing it a different way as we intended it from the beginning" argument, and put in place Vista-like security on the 7's UAC.

According to their posting on the MSDN bog, the new-new UAC control panel will run on a higher integrity process, which requires elevation, and changing the UAC level will require confirmation.

Cutting a nuisance feature short, despite the solution sounding like it makes snese, there's no way in Hades that Microsoft will please everyone with this, so expect a flurry of comments from the Pro-UAC brigade...

The bog carries on to say these changes will be put into Windows 7 RC1 toot de sweet, which should be out by yesterday, if Microsoft keeps on this timetable.

 Short answer: Carbonite checks this in the background using something called a checksum. As amazing as it sounds, about every 90 days Carbonite goes through every one of the roughly 25 billion files we have backed up and checks to make sure that the file in our backup still matches what's on your PC bit for bit.

If you are still feeling nervous, try this: Pick any backed up file on your PC (it will have a green dot on it if it's backed up with Carbonite). Delete it. Now open the Carbonite Backup Drive from the icon on your desktop. Find the file you just deleted – the status column will say "Right-click to restore latest backup copy (Original file deleted)." Right-click on the file, and select "Restore." In a few seconds, you'll see a Carbonite pop-up saying that the file has been restored. Go back to your C: drive and open the restored file. You'll see that it's perfect. I'm sure this is true of every file on you've backed up with Carbonite.

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite