Geemodo

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Is IE7 on Vista better and Secure that IE6 on XP?

It is not a security analysis but an attempt to mess up IE7 on Vista. Aptly named "IE7 in toolbar mayhem" .
It took the browser through some interesting turns. What I noticed in this prank is the fact that once you accept ONE UAC prompt in IE7 it disables the protection for subsequent browsing until you completely restart IE7. This would make it easy for malware to install itself without alerting you (too much) that it is doing so.
Other thing is still evident that a less educated user still could get spyware/malware into the system via IE7.
Well M$ I think it is bug that need to fix;) I hope not many others left hidden.
The article took IE7 from this;
to this with much more in between.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

WGA = SPP, SPP=Kill Switch, Killed Vista => Linux Desktop!

All the Linux fans and developers of desktop software should rejoice! Today is the day of the beginning of new era for Linux desktops and distros. The server side of Linux is taking care of itself with the likes of Redhat, SUSE, Centos and the likes. But the desktops are in the form of waking up. Some of them are already in the acceptable form of cooperate desktop.
Well today's blogsphere is awash with news about SPP or the new version of WGA that will come with Vista. Knowing the way WGA behaved, SPP will also will lead to false positives. There is a difference right now. Imagine you are a big cooperation with 1000's of machines running M$ vista. Since M$ is focusing on eliminating piracy of Volume licensed keys, (Volume license allows a cooperation to use a single key on multiple machines), guess what is going to happen!
Lone user of XP that was falsely recognized as a pirated copy may spend time on the phone to get his copy validated again. But a cooperation or business with hundreds or thousands of desktops does not have time to do so. Frustration will build up.
These cooperation's and users are bound to windows because of applications they use. These applications are the life blood of their day to day work. If these applications ran on any platform, I don't think these companies care. So why they are not selecting Linux?
Knowledge!! The Linux distributions like Xandros have done a lot on their distribution and Xandros can run most of the business applications. Most of the other proprietary applications (likes of Oracle etc) are slowly moving to web and dependency on OS is slowly veining.
So Linux should plan to bring about a marketing campaign tied to Vista release. Plan to promote Linux aggressively as Vista is released and bring the campaign to it's peek in about six months after Vista is out.
So the people knows when Vista, goes down, that they have another path. Xandros and like distros could offer two license per single license of Vista at a lower price. Before you know, Linux will overtake M$.

SO back to SPP, There are number of places that you can read about and better written than here are, the best aggregation of the best articles are at Computerworld's IT Blog watch. It give you enough ideas and links to other bloggers that write well on the subject.
I specially liked the way he ended the article;
"But the Best Headline award goes to Harpreet Kaur:

Microsoft To Rip Your Head Off If You Pirate Vista"

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

zunelicious

Zune ads found in New York. And according to the author of the blog, it does not say what Zune is!
He has pictures comparing Zune to iPod and Zune seems to be bigger!
But the best comment on the site and One that made me laugh....

"How often do I have to reboot it?"

Bahahahahaha :)
zunelicious

Firefox vulnerability is a HOAX and Speaker had Dinner with Microsoft !

Update II, People seems to doubt the source of the picture, It is from "Mischa Spiegelmock's" own website and it is from a collection of photos he took while attending " Seattle Mindcamp".

Take a screen capture!

Update; The hoaxer had dinner with Microsoft!, the link at the bottom.

At Toorcon this weekend, two speakers claimed they found vulnerabilities in the Javascript VM. and media was awash with many a gleeful reports. Some even claimed the vulnerability count to 30.

So Mozilla team got to work. and according to Window Snyder of Mozilla team;

"So far weÃ‚’ve been able to reproduce a denial of service issue based on the information they gave during their talk. In some cases this causes a crash based on an out of memory error. Based on the information we have at this time we have not been able to confirm whether an attacker can achieve code execution. "

Since there were not detectable problems, Mozilla team contacted the speakers. After all it turned out to be a hoax. They say it was a joke but I doubt it. Read more because they might be M$ fans.

Here is the full post from Mozilla Developer News;

"We got a chance to talk to Mischa Spiegelmock, the Toorcon speaker that reported the potentialJavaScriptt security issue referenced earlier. He gave us more code to work with and also made this statement and agreed to let me post it here:

The main purpose of our talk was to be humorous.

As part of our talk we mentioned that there was a previously known Firefox vulnerability that could result in a stack overflow ending up in remote code execution. However, the code we presented did not in fact do this, and I personally have not gotten it to result in code execution, nor do I know of anyone who has.

I have not succeeded in making this code do anything more than cause a crash and eat up system resources, and I certainly havenÃ‚’t used it to take over anyone elseÃ‚’s computer and execute arbitrary code.

I do not have 30 undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities, nor did I ever make this claim. I have no undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities. The person who was speaking with me made this claim, and I honestly have no idea if he has them or not.

I apologize to everyone involved, and I hope I have made everything as clear as possible.

Sincerely,

Mischa Spiegelmock

Even though Mischa hasn‚’t been able to achieve code execution, we still take this issue seriously. We will continue to investigate.

-Window Snyder"

But after that I did some searching for "Mischa Spiegelmock" and he seemed to have had dinner wMicrosoftsoft and Amazon, Proof wphotosotos from speaker own site.

The other guy seemed to be non-existant who came for the ride along!, as far as I am concerned.

This is an insane Joke mister.

Monday, October 02, 2006

VOIP IP Telephony: EEK! a mouse in a skype or Mouse with a skype Phone ASG 142

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Seitz / DALSA 160MP monster of a digital camera.

Seitz has released information on a 160MP digital camera. When I first saw the information, I was awed but I think I will stick to my $799.00 8MP Olympus for a while. This monster is around $30000.00. But it is worth at least to go through the details. If you see the sample photos and if you in any way like photographs, you would wish just to hold it and click away a few frames. These few frames will be transfered over Gigabit interface to a tethered Apple Mac mini or similar computer.
For the starters here is a sample image from the product information page which was taken by Alois Stutz;
This is a 6 X 17 image. But I can't get a true size image and this will have to do. Ok lets look at he camera now, no let's see the camera in somebody's hand. It will give you a more perspective how this monster of a hand held camera will behave in your arms.
I think it is a quite handfull!.
Here are some tech information about the camera;

Very high speed and resolution: 300 MB raw data per second!
Special imaging sensor developed by DALSA Corporation exclusively for Seitz for photography applications
Very high sensitivity and broad ISO/ASA range (equivalent): 500 - 10'000
Very high image quality thanks to 48-bit colour depth, low noise, high dynamic range, DALSA anti-blooming feature, Seitz image optimisation algorythms, freedom to use own raw-conversion workflow
Possibility to freely interchange Seitz D3 digital scan back between Seitz 6x17 camera, new Roundshot D3 panorama camera and - in the future - medium or
large format cameras

How about some features;

Create a high resolution 6x17 digital image (160 million pixels) in
one second!
Ideal for use with world-class Schneider or Rodenstock large format lenses (on Seitz lens board) or Linhof Technorama, Fuji and other large format lenses (on adaptor plate)
User-friendly camera system and software with 640x480 pixel colour touch screen for perfect preview, editing, zooming and image control
State-of-the art computer technology with gigabit Ethernet file transfer, powerful portable mini-computer (storage device) and handheld control device (PDA) with IP network WLAN connection
Fully mobile and open system:
- full mobility for outdoors assignments (with camera, portable
mini-computer, handheld control device)
- possibility to use in studio and run software on
computer with free choice of operating system (Mac OS,
Windows, Linux)
Uncompromising precision of camera body and accessories

The Digital 3 scan back sensor has been designed and developed exclusively for Seitz by DALSA Corporation.

In this multi-year project specialists around the world have brought together the best capabilities in digital technology, computer science, image optimisation and knowledge of photography applications to build a camera system that goes beyond the imaginable.

Here is the PDF of the product info and sample images. The Seitz home page is here.

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Pleasant Windows installation experience, two of them, one vista and plain old XP.

David Nielsen at The Gnome commentary have gone through vista RC1, SUSE 10 and Plain old XP installation for a friend. I share his frustration as I am also forced go through the same experience due to one or other reason. Anyway you can laugh or cry after reading his article. I liked it :) If you are a true windows fan, ignore the fact that his blog is hosted on lovesunix.net!!

Friday, September 29, 2006

Google reader goes further

Google comes out with a new google reader, with new interface, that I feel much better than the earlier one. The old interface will face retirement pretty soon, as soon as it is evident that the new interface will provide what users need. If you have a feature that was in the old interface and would like it also in the new interface, send an email to reader lab team via feedback. You might get that feature.
The new interface gives us;

Expanded view and list view
Simplified sharing functionality
Improved read-state management
Infinite scrolling
Unread counts
Mark all as read

.. To name a few. But there is much more. Also there is keyboard shortcuts displayed on the front page as you login, but disappears when you start browsing. I have to find out how to keep it on.
Here is a screen capture of the tips and tricks;

Another feature is that now you can catch feeds on your phone! According to the reader blog;
Google Reader can now be placed in your pocket, your handbag, your backpack, or thrown from person to person in a game of "keep away". We've just released a mobile-friendly interface for Google Reader.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

QUAD Processor introduced by Intel at IDF fall 2006

Intel has informed us in its Fall developer's forum (IDF Fall 2006) in San Francisco, the release of the world's first quad-core processor for its desktops and servers.

The Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor, is set to be released in November and is aimed at gamers and content creators. The quad-core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series, aimed for servers, will also ship this year.

The company will release its mainstream quad-processor called the Core 2 Quad during the first quarter of 2007. Also being shipped during the first quarter of 2007 is Intel's new low-power 50-watt quad-core Intel Xeon processor called the L5310 for blade servers. How about my notebook?

Youtube has a video no its two (I like the second one better) well a bunch of videos depicting the capabilities of the processor in a game environment. I did like what I saw.

DIGItimes reports;

Intel plans to launch its second-generation quad-core processors - the Yorkfield series–as replacement parts for the upcoming Core 2 Quad (codenamed Kentsfield) CPUs in the third quarter of 2007, motherboard makers familiar with Intel's latest roadmap revealed. Intel is on track for a roll-out of its Kentsfield series on November 16, according to the makers, adding that the first-generation quad-core lineup may be considered a transitional product segment due to insufficient design capability.

Since Kentsfield appears to have two separate L2 caches, shared separately by each pair of processors, bus bandwidth consequently increases, the makers said. In contrast, Yorkfield will have one L2 cache shared directly by each pair of chips, enabling more efficient quad-core operation, with less FSB bandwidth, the makers noted.

Intel's Yorkfield will be paired with the next-generation Bearlake chipset family, which will support a 1333MHz FSB and a PCI Express 2.0 interface, according to the makers. The first Yorkfield-based systems, which will utilize the Bearlake X chipset and DDR3-1333 memory, will target the high-end gaming market, said the makers.

Intel's Yorkfield will be manufactured on 45-nanometer (45nm) process technology, the makers indicated.

validity of GPL upheld in German court

District Court in Frankfurt-on-the-Main has for the first time confirmed the validity of the GNU General Public License (GPL) within the framework of leagal proceedings that included a hearing of evidence. Harald Welte, co-developer of the netfilter firewall code in the Linux kernel and founder of the project gpl-violations had filed a lawsuit against the hardware manufacturer D-Link. The court's opinion(in German) (google translation of the news article is here.) and the details of the ruling can now open for public. Albeit it is in German.
Welte said in a statement published at GPL-Violations.org that a D-Link lawyer's statement could be translated as "Regardless of the repeatedly-quoted judgment of the district court of Munich I, we do not consider the GPL as legally binding."
Now, the German court has found otherwise.
As the District Court in Munich had done in 2004 when upholding a temporary injunction against the router manufacturer Sitecom, the judges in Frankfurt-on-the-Main also confirmed the fundamental validity of the GPL: "In particular, the provisions of the GPL cannot be read as a relinquishing of copyright or copyright-law legal positions," the judges wrote in their opinion. The court explicitly confirmed as valid paragraph 4 of the license, which prohibits distribution of any kind in the event of any GPL clause being violated. D-Link had therefore did not have the rights to market the GPL-licensed software without abiding by the GPL license, while Mr. Welte for his part is entitled to send the warning notices and state his claims for reimbursement.
D-Link, which already back in 2004 had had a run-in about a router with gpl-violations.org, argued that the GPL violated antitrust law because it featured a price fixing provision and imposed upon the licensee conditions affecting his/her/its contracts with third parties. These arguments the judges found to be irrelevant: If the GPL as a whole violated antitrust law, they observed, then any right of use to GPL-protected software would be null and void. finding that D-Link is not entitled to dismiss the GPL's legality on the one hand while at the same time enjoying the use of code licensed under it, a practice it reportedly termed "expropriation of the author," according to Heise.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Firefox playing fox with Debian

(Windows users, I still think it is great application and you can get it with google tool bar to make it easy in your day to day browsing.)

It seems now firefox is bent on fighting with other OSS namely debian and it's derivatives, rather than beating IE. It is all because of the firefox logo. Unlike Firefox, firefox logo is not free. The root of the cause is that debian uses alternate logo and calls it firefox, not Mozilla Firefox.
There are some discussions on the net already and I'd hate to see this flair up to be a major issue. That said I do not have a solution to the problem. I think I will watch the following discussions and do my commenting.

Debian vs Mozilla by Peter (Sounds like an old Japanese movie!) discusses and puts his thoughts on his blog, here is the start of it and if you visit the site you can read the rest of it and some links to other discussions on the same subject.

"Basically, the Debian Free Software Guidelines state that Debian can't use the Firefox logo (as it'’s not under the same license as the Firefox code and the license isn't considered Free). So for some time, Debian (and derivatives, such as Ubuntu) have been using Firefox with a custom icon and calling it ‘Firefox, not ‘Mozilla Firefox."

Code Chunk does another article that explains the reasons behind the squabble. Basically it is Mozilla want to either see and approve all the changes Debian make to Firefox, or see that Debian and derivatives stop using the Firefox name.

from Code Chunk;

Firefox has an on/off compile-time switch:
ON: Firefox branding
OFF: Custom branding

The problem is that Debian has it on OFF, but has part of the Firefox trademark in there. Mozilla wants all or nothing. At some point in the discussion the Mozilla developer said it would be okay for Debian to have it ON, only if they used both the name AND the logo, AND they would have to run by patches to the Mozilla developers. The same in general terms applies to Ubuntu.

I think this is crazy. How can this be helping OSS software if we start fighting among the communities?! If Firefox is removed from Debian aderivativesvatives, as peter said, "then it's not exactly going to be easy to convince potential Windows switchers that Linux is better if they can't use Firefox on it (that they might use on Windows already)!"

Hey guys, grow up and find a solution or we have do develop another browser that is completely free.

Monday, September 25, 2006

ZERT has VML patch out! I tested and it works

I was browsing Spamhuntress' (She is a huntress!, check out her banner and articles on her site!) site when I noticed her post about the ZERT's release of VML patch. I am glad for the post, since I was able to go to ZERT site and get the patch and apply it.

To all the Microsoft IE users, (Why aren't you using Firefox? Keep IE for windows update! And the rest you can do very well with Firefox) First go to this page on ZERT's site where you can test if you need the patch.
Warning! If you visit the above test page with an unpatched version of Internet Explorer it will crash.

I needed to patch mine and I did by downloading the patch and tested again. I am fine now!
My only question is, if four people could do this (Thanks ZERT), why M$ is spending time depending it's inability to provide a patch. M$, I know you are busy with VISTA!, but we all are still on XP!

The team who did it!

Got Skype? Then learn how to ... Remove skype, stop skype or detect skype with skypekiller

There is a interesting post about skype problems and removal of it on VOIP IP Telephony blog. It carries you through uninstall process of skype, from your computer or entire network. It can also detect the skype users on your network even if you don't want to remove it. You can keep a tally of users and when boss asks you why your WAN connection is slow, give an instant report!
VOIP IP Telephony: Remove skype, stop skype or detect skype with skypekiller

Sunday, September 24, 2006

New Vista release (5728) released and Hurry up!

Various Blog sites are reporting and I have verified that Microsoft has made available another interim release of Windows Vista. This release is a post RC1 which was made available to download a few weeks ago.
Microsoft is still awaiting user feedback on Vista's interface, this new build does include some "Fit to Finish" work that was recently performed. It also includes the usual handful of bug fixes. The most important feature of this release is its build number which is in the 57xx range. According to Microsoft's Sven Hallauer, any release that begins with "57" is a member of the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) code base.

Microsoft has made available both the x64 and x86 versions of Build 5728, and it is for a short while. So go get it while it lasts, if Vista is your piece of cake.

Friday, September 22, 2006

VOIP IP Telephony: Microsoft ZUNE kicks voip, sorry ! iPOD butt!

Zune wth rumored VOIP is set to kick iPOD butt, according to some bloggers
VOIP IP Telephony: Microsoft ZUNE kicks voip, sorry ! iPOD butt!

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Vista RC1, Hyperlink problems and You still got to reboot for a small change in system setting!

Got Vista RC1, Installed and got it to work. It much better than the Beta release. I like it better than XP but I still got my reservations.
I also installed the Office Suite 2007 and the integration is super. I could integrate outlook with Share Point server and find some gems that I did not have with XP + Outlook 2003 combination. I like the office 2007 in general.
everything worked fine for a few days! And suddenly links from within outlook stopped working. Tried some changes did not work. What did I do to break Vista behavior? None! I was just using the system. Oh wait I did install Firefox! And it works.
I gave up on solving it until I landed on sunbelt blog. I went there for another reason, to get info on VML Zero day exploit that is the exploit of the day now. But I stumbled on to " Sunbelt Weekly TechTips" and there was the solution for my problem. Apparently he/she too had the same problem and has a solution for it;

How to fix hyperlink problem in Vista RC1/Office 2007
I installed Vista RC1 on my computer and installed Office 2007 beta. For the first few days, everything worked fine, but now I can't open links in Outlook email messages or in Word documents. When I click on a link, I get a message that says "The operation has been canceled due to restrictions on this computer. See your system administrator." Of course, I am my system administrator (and yes, I was logged on with an admin account).

Based on recent mail, I'm not the only one who had this problem. It seems that sometime after those "first few days," I installed Firefox. That's when my links stopped working, and after much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, I found out the solution. Even if you have IE set as your default browser, installing Firefox changes your default program settings. You'd think you could just go into IE's options and select it as your default browser, but that doesn't work. Here's what does:

1. Click Start | Control Panel.
2. If Control Panel is in Classic View, click Control Panel Home in the left pane to put it back in Vista default view.
3. Click Programs | Default Programs
4. Click Set Program Access and Computer Defaults
5. Click Yes to continue or enter admin credentials when prompted.
6. Click the little down arrow for Custom.
7. Under "Choose a default web browser," click Internet Explorer, and check "Enable access to this program."
8. Click OK.
You'll have to reboot the computer to apply the change. Now your links in Outlook and Word should work again.

Thanks Sunbelt

Vista RC1, Hyperlink problems and You still got to reboot for a small change in system setting!

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Just Do It! for extra Lives in games, Nike says!

If Nike has its way, we'll have to start working physically for our in-game extra lives, The Guardian reports.
Just do it. One of the most successful marketing slogans of all time, the phrase conjures up images of young titans in Lycra running, jumping, hitting, kicking and splashing their way through life, all with a strange tick shape on their shoes.

Yet look for the champions of tomorrow and, we are told, they prefer to Just Sit, eat crisps and play video games. Especially the video games. The average school pupil fiddles with them for two hours every day and scientists have blamed this for the explosion in childhood obesity. Increased "screen-based entertainment" was highlighted as a pitfall of modern British childhood in a headline-grabbing letter signed by more than 100 experts last week.
Nike has filed a patent on the invention, which it calls "a system for promoting physical activity for video game players". The technology relies on a pedometer, pressure sensors or GPS tracking to record the amount of exercise, and a detachable memory chip to plug into the game console. Slackers and those tempted to cheat by driving their shoes round the block a few times should beware - the patent says the game pod chip could be configured to measure increased heart rate or even blood oxygen content instead.

In a neat twist on survival of the fittest, sweaty activity could be rewarded with on-screen changes to a user's video game character, with extra "virtual strength, endurance or speed" on offer. And games could be made impossible to play until the chip registers a specified level of activity.
So gamers, Just Do It!

Monday, September 18, 2006

Microsoft tries to stop FairUse4WM, sends C&D email

Dugged via digg;
Ars Technica reports that " Last month, Ars reported that Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) digital rights management protection had been cracked, and a program called FairUse4WM had been written that would strip DRM data from purchased audio files. Microsoft was aware of the workaround, but did not seem too concerned, merely stating that "we designed the Windows Media DRM system to be renewable, so that if such events occur the system can be refreshed to address them." Now it seems that the company has gone a little further than that, sending out cease and desist orders to web sites hosting the FairUse4WM program. According to the owner of the web site BG4G, the orders came in via e-mail."
There is are discussions going on at two locations, Arstechnica and the original forum thread at DOOM9.ORG.
Visit and find out more....

Friday, September 15, 2006

Are you Using PDF? Then close these Backdoors!

One reason I an still stuck on Acrobat 5.0 is as versions went up Adobe products became too snoopy like and started to snoop into users affairs. There are enough Open Source PDF utilities that I rarely use Adobe Acrobat.
But this is not to say how I utilize Acrobat but to inform that there are multiple vulnerabilities on Adobe PDF, not bugs but legitimate features could be used as backdoors in to a system.
I learned this via /. And ended up on eWeek site. According to the article, A British security researcher has figured out a way to manipulate legitimate features in Adobe PDF files to open back doors for computer attacks. Then I ended up at a blog entry that provides proof of concept ideas and demos. I did try them and they do what they say at least for one demo. My security stopped the other!
The first back door (PDF), which eWEEK confirmed on a fully patched version of Adobe Reader, involves adding a malicious link to a PDF file. Once the document is opened, the targets browser is automatically launched and loads the embedded link.
A second back door demo (harmless) (PDF) presents an attack scenario that uses Adobe Systems' ADBC (Adobe Database Connectivity) and Web Services support. Kierznowski said the back door can be used to exploit a fully patched version of Adobe Professional.
"The second attack accesses the Windows ODBC (on localhost), enumerates available databases and then sends this information to 'localhost' via the Web service. This attack could be expanded to perform actual database queries. Imagine attackers accessing your internal databases via a user's Web browser," David Kierznowski said.

In response, A spokesperson from Adobe's product security incident response team said the company is aware of Kierznowski's discovery and is "actively investigating" the issue.
Then why did you not fix the issues? Or did you just let it be?
"If Adobe confirms that a vulnerability might affect one of our products, details of the security vulnerability and an appropriate solution [will be] documented and published," the company, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., said in a statement sent to eWEEK.

Microsoft Does Something right! Right? Right!!

According to PUBPAT (Public Patent Foundation) 's blog, Microsoft has done something right. It has made an irrevocable promise yesterday to not assert any of its patents against the implementation of some web based standards. In drafting the promise, MS sought input from several folks within the Free / Open Source Software community,
"[T]he text of the OSP gives sufficient flexibility to implement the listed specifications in software licensed under free and open source licenses." is the response by REDHAT's Mark Webbink.
This is a solid evidence that M$ (my usual reference to Microsoft) is trying to flow with the tide. It is well known that the company is built and bent on hoarding rather than sharing.
It was also well known and accepted that patent restraints on standards are not good for businesses involved with that standard or the public in general.
Welcome to the real world, M$, You still will benefit from the standard that you promise to keep open as well as the rest of the world.

Zune give more info and sings to Music bloggers!

Here are some better photos of Zune, White, Brown and Black!

But have you seen the Samsungs Sensa?

last week Microsoft flew a bunch of music bloggers out to Seattle for an all-expenses paid first-look at the new device. Here's a roundup of some initial reactions:

* Glenn over at Coolfer thinks it feels a little heavy, but that the navigation is intuitive and simple. He likes the brown-colored Zune best, saying that it looks better in person than in pics (which we sure hope is the case).
* Amrit from Stereogum wishes it were thinner, but thinks the Zune's wireless capability is "pretty hot." He concludes that the "Zune is long on ideas, but may be short on time."
* MOKB discovered the one confusing feature about the Zune right off the bat -- the "scroll wheel" which turns out to be a directional pad, but actually liked the navigation once they got the hang of it. What they weren't digging so much was how "big and clunky" the Zune is compared with an iPod. They say that Microsoft danced around questions about combining the Zune and the Xbox into some sort of portable gaming console.
(news from engadget)

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Segway recalls all it's vehicles, personal transporters

BBC reports;
Segway, which launched the self-balancing scooter it said would "sweep over the world and change lives", is recalling all its vehicles.
our earlier article here;Geemodo: Lean to steer a segway's new i2 PT (Personal Transporter)

A glitch in the device's software means the machines, which cost up to $5,500 may unexpectedly change direction, causing riders to fall off.All 23,500 personal transporters - formerly known as human transporters - are being recalled.
Segway has had reports of six accidents causing head and wrist injuries. The repairs will be carried out at service centres around the world.

George W Bush once fell off a Segway, while Tony Blair was given one by the King of Jordan.

Zune is out and comes with a Music service, like itunes.

Previously posted article Geemodo: Where what and why Zune, is bringing more news,

Microsoft this morning officially unveiled Zune, its entry in the portable digital music and entertainment market dominated by Apple Computer's iPod and iTunes.

The Zune, manufactured by Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp, will come with a 3-inch (7.6 centimetre) liquid crystal display screen and wireless connectivity that allows users to send, receive photos, songs and albums with nearby players, Microsoft said.

"The digital music entertainment revolution is just beginning," J Allard, who is leading the Zune effort at Microsoft, said in a statement. "With Zune, we are not simply delivering a portable device, we are introducing a new platform that helps bring artists closer to their audiences and helps people find new music and develop new social connections."

By the holidays, Microsoft expects to have a 30-gigabyte digital media player available in black, brown or white with FM tuner, wireless connection and 3-inch screen. A complementary music service, Zune Marketplace, is billed as "the foundation for an online community that will enable music fans to discover new music."

The wireless connectivity will allow users to share full-length songs, play lists, pictures and other content from device to device. Users will be able to listen to a shared song for up to three times over three days.

But will that be enough to take on Steve Jobs and company? Time will tell, but most bloggers aren't optimistic.

The iPod holds more than half of the digital media player market, according to research company NPD, while iTunes accounts for over 70 percent of U.S. digital music sales. In the United States, the iPod has more than 75 percent of the digital music player market, according to NPD.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Second Life or SL dealt a security blow in real Life!

MMORPG.blog Reports that the Linden Labs is forced to build a fortress around their real life servers, after a hackers compromising SL's servers.
The article state that "The security breach hit their databases, "which potentially exposed customer data including the unencrypted names and addresses, and the encrypted passwords and encrypted payment information of all Second Life users," according to their security bulletin. Credit card information remained protected, fortunately, and they've made the affected system more secure. One other effect of the attack was the resetting of passwords, which also opened up additional ways for users to remember their passwords, just in case."
MMORPG.BLOG site further have published to FAQ issued to all Second Life users. If your Email is lost to your spam gulping software, the head over to MMORPG site and read the FAQ together with comments or go directly to Second Life blog to read the security bulletin, state of the investigation.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Spyware Attacks on the rise! Are you taking care of your PC?

If not, you might be in the 89% percent of PC's that are infected by one or the other spyware component. I was at the site of one of my favorite columnists, Suzi Turner, spyware researcher and consultant, When I noticed the article and link to the report. She always has some good articles on security tools.
All in all it is a good report but I tend to believe it is biased against free anti-spyware tools.
It attributes on of the factors to increase in infections to Free anti-Spyware tools. Well I use two free anti-spyware tools and they are doing very fine and even better than some of the paid for software used by my clients. Namely I use SpyBot Search & destroy together with Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE personal. Between both of them, My PC/PC's are clean and Spyware free. Support and updates outstanding and have been free since I started using them a few years ago. I also use Avast Anti-Virus Home, which is also free with great success. I have used and removed well know solutions by famous software makers. Why you may ask, yes you may. And I would say, they are memory hogs, processor hogs and most of the time inefective. I have run Spybot S&D on a few systems that were protected by a well known Security software producer, and found and cleaned alarming number of Spyware. So those are the reasons that I do not use any of the paid for security software. Many instants these software pieces behave worse than spyware and rootkits themselves.
Want an example, Just google for "rootkits and Symantec" or click here
Then again I read that McAfee has come out with a inaccurate report (according to well laid out article by Security Curve) that put th blame squarely on open source community. According to Darknet's article blaming Open Source, is a load of sh*t.
Webroot says in it's report about the report,
"During the second quarter of 2006, Webroot researchers found that 89 percent of consumer PC's were infected with an average of 30 pieces of spyware Â– a slight increase from the first quarter of 2006 when infection rates returned to alarmingly high levels after a supposed lull in spyware infections during the second half of 2005. According to the report, new distribution channels, advanced spyware technologies and a reliance on free antiÂ–spyware programs are all contributing factors to the startling increase."
Webroot, how accuratete are you? May be I would better read the whole article! Anyway Thanks to Suzi for bringing this up. I think I will write an article about all the free security software I am using to protect my PC's.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

BlackBerry Pearl or Blackberry 8100, You can have it now!

Mobilewhack reports that the long awaited BlackBerry Pearl 8100 is slated to be released nextweek.
The Blackberry Pearl 8100 is a quad-band GSM / EDGE phone which is just about half an inch think, almost the size of a RAZR phone and features an even smaller version of the SureType keyboard.RIM BlackBerry Pearl. Originally known in rumors as the 8100, the Pearl is the first BlackBerry to include a camera and other multimedia features.

Other features of the Pearl are:

* Compact size, just 4.2Ã—1.97x .57" with a 3.1oz weight
* EDGE high-speed data
* 1.3 megapixel camera
* 240Ã—260 display
* Media player, MP3/AAC/MPEG4/H.263
* SureType QWERTY keyboard
* Bluetooth 2.0
* 64MB memory plus microSD slot

The Blackberry Pearl also has a front-facing trackball. Previous BlackBerry models were all had a side facing scroll wheel. The BlackBerry Pearl will begin shipping from T-Mobile on September 12th. Pricing is to be arround $199 with a 2-year service contract.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Sophos anti rootkit software! It is free to download

I have been following the rootkit problem since the Sony DRM rootkit issue mentioned in an earlier post, Geemodo: Sony DRM ROOTKIT, Suncomm, EFF new removal tool, yet the consumer problems don't go away..
Lately I found that Sophos has released a anti-rootkit and downloaded it. I did not test against known root kits but I did check my computers. Alas did not find any valid root kits, that is because I have been vigilant. Not a fault of Sophos anti rootkit. I advise that anyone careful about their computer to download and scan the computers for rootkits as it is gaining popularity in the malware and virus scene.
The user manual is here if you want to read before downloading.

From the read me file that states some feature and other issues;
1. Key features
---------------

* Scans running processes, windows registry and local hard drives for
rootkits.

* Identifies known rootkits and selects, by default, files for removal
which will remove the rootkit component of the malware without
compromising OS integrity.

* Allows users to remove unidentified hidden files, but does not allow
removal of essential system files when hidden by an identified
rootkit.

* Once the user has run a scan, the screen prompts the user through
the necessary steps until every rootkit has been removed.

* Users can switch between the GUI and command-line functionality.

* Both context sensitive and command-line help are available.

2. Known issues
---------------

* Sophos Anti-Rootkit will work on a Terminal Services or Remote Desktop
environment but may produce this warning which can be ignored:
'Unable to flush drive C: (already open by another process)'.

* If the scan is performed while the computer is in use, false positives
may appear in the scan results. This is caused by files or registry
entries being deleted, including temporary files being deleted
automatically. We suggest you close non-essential applications and
re-run the scan.

* It may not be possible to clean up files on a removable drive or USB key.
This is because the clean up component runs before the device drivers
are loaded in the boot sequence. If this occurs, remove the removable
drive or USB key. Next, restart the computer, plug the key back in,
and scan with anti-virus software, such as Sophos Anti-Virus.

* When specifying the location of the clean up log on the command line
(sarcli -cleanlog=...), it must be on a local drive rather than a network
share. This is because the clean up component runs before the network
drivers are loaded in the boot sequence.

* The sarscan.log is cumulative and each entry is timestamped. The
sarclean.log only contains the results of the last cleanup operation
and there is no timestamp apart from the one on the file itself.

* If rootkit components are found on a drive which uses NTFS compression,
it may not be possible for SAR to identify them. In this case they will
be reported as "Unknown hidden file". This situation is not currently
supported by the product.

* Unidentified hidden files cannot be removed via the command line.
Please run the graphical user interface (sargui.exe) and refer to
section 3 of the Sophos Anti-Rootkit User Manual.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Get your self on YOUTUBE, and perhaps be a future animator.

Easy, Cheap, Animated Cartoon in 10 Minutes and the animation on youtube for a little more! Yes, you can do it.
I can not draw for a toffee, but after reading the methods described in this article, I was able to laugh at my own work. It did take me more than 10 minutes but may it was because I was multitasking, washing clothes, browsing through library of congress (true!!) and zillion other things. The most time was spent on finding my long ago discarded webcam!. Anyway I rigged it up as the article says and downloaded the software, MonkeyJam, and spent quite a bit time over at that site too. If you are going to do this, you too better spend some time at MonkeyJam site and if you are rich enough, donate to the creator of MonkeyJam so he can add another line to explanations to his wife about his time on the computer.
The author of the article describes the process in a few steps and if you follow them, viola, you have an animation that you, and perhaps others will enjoy.
By reading the comments on the article, it is obvious that this is a super deal if you have children. I think it is a best way to spend an afternoon. Forget about the 10 minutes. I am sure you will spend more time at the INSTRUCTABLES site.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

The guy who killed Pluto

The critical blow for Pluto came with the discovery three years ago of an object currently designated 2003 UB313. Discovered by Mike Brown and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, 2003 UB313 has been lauded by some as the "10th Planet".
Measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope show it to have a diameter of 3,000km (1,864 miles), a few hundred km more than Pluto. 2003 UB313 will now join Pluto in the dwarf planet category.
Robin Catchpole, of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK, said: "My own personal opinion was to leave things as they were. I met Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto, and thought, it's nice to shake hands with someone who discovered a planet.
Most astronomers were happy to see Pluto cast from the official roster of planets. Professor Iwan Williams, the IAU's president of planetary systems science, commented: "Pluto has lots and lots of friends; we're not so keen to have Pluto and all his friends in the club because it gets crowded.

"By the end of the decade, we would have had 100 planets, and I think people would have said 'my goodness, what a mess they made back in 2006'."

Friday, August 25, 2006

Samsung X830 aka SPH-S4300

The Samsung x830 phone is a size of a chewing gum pack (85 x 29 x 20 mm) and is flick rotate and open (rotating screen) design. GSM connectivity allows to connect to any GSM network. It weighs 2.6 ounces only and sports an 128 x 220 pixels TFT screen.

It is not just a phone, like most of the phones today it supports all popular formats of music encoding, including the Ogg (Open source fans aka Linux users should be happy). The music is transferred using either USB 2.0 or a Bluetooth adapter. There is a 1GB space to save your music and ...

There is more (but less), it comes with a built-in 1.3-megapixel digital camera. A slimline keypad and a thumb wheel let you browse through your contacts or music collection. Go dial a song. It will be available in US in two months (October) and may be will be known as SPH-S4300 and I read about that at the gadget blog. Go check it out.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Patches enters Microsoft Vista's View or ET TU Vista?

While Microsoft has touted Windows Vista as its most secure client operating system yet, (They said the same thing with Windows 98, Windows XP and other server releases too!) the unfinished product is already getting regular security fixes. May be M$ is keeping to it's traditions. I have Vista on a partition and have not logged in for two days, previous updates were only for malware updates.
Anyway M$ is again at the butt end just like after the black hat intro of the Vista.

Two of the seven "critical" Windows updates that Microsoft delivered on Aug. 8 affect Vista, Heaton wrote. These are MS06-042, for Internet Explorer, and MS06-051, which addresses a flaw in the Windows kernel.
Vista is not affected by the Windows flaw that is getting most of the attention among the Patch Tuesday bulletins. That flaw, MS06-040, affects file and printer sharing and has already been exploited in low-risk worm attacks.
But there is a hotfix for the MS06-040 already. Get it if your program uses more that 1GB of memory on 2003 server, which is almost every server program nowadays.
Here is the M$ alert;
"Programs that request lots of contiguous memory may fail after you install security update 921883 (MS06-040) on a Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1-based computer or a Windows XP Professional x64 Edition-based computer"
I have two Oracle servers and I am wondering to uninstall the patch or to install the hotfix!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

New blog on Blogger Beta

Brand spanking new weblog is out on Blogger beta site. I really like the new features on the blogger beta!

Monday, August 14, 2006

Murky clouds of Spyware over movieland! Gets sued by Washington State

I was reading about movie gadgets and then movieland came up. When I was searching about this, I came up to this article by Suzi Turner at ZDnet. When there are any spyware stuff, I usually check what she has written. Although it is not the latest gizmo, It is a good read since most gizmo and gadget aficionados will fall pray to sites like this. Not only they have hijacked users desk tops but an innocent open source software project named Mediapipe.
I went ahead and followed links provided by her and my own searches. Came to a conclusion that I should post this article, even though I have seen culprits lawyers leaving messages on websites.
It is official now! They have been taken to court by Washington State Attorney General McKenna. I think this why;
You will find more info on forums people trying to remove the software installed by Movieland. You should be careful about sites like these. Here are some sure shot info on them;
StopBadware.org Reports;
We find that MediaPipe is badware because it does not fully disclose what it is installing, does not completely remove all components and "obligations" during the uninstall process, and modifies other software without disclosure.

We currently recommend that users do not install the version of MediaPipe that we tested, unless the user is comfortable with the level of risk we identify or until the application is updated consistent with the recommendations in this report. Read the full report and more here.

Counter Spy reports here;
Advice Type Remove
Description MediaPipe/MovieLand is an online content access program that badgers using into paying for the application if they do not cancel the "trial" within a certain time period.

FIOS New multiroom DVR!

Put an end to the days of DVR remote tug of war with our new Multi-Room DVR. It features all the same cool controls as your standard DVR, only with more flexibility because it allows you to watch a recorded show in one room while someone else uses the same DVR in another room. Forget the cost and hassle of having multiple DVRs throughout the house! To top it all off, access to the Media Manager is included so you can play your favorite music and watch photo slide shows from your PC to your TV. Let your DVR rock the house!

The Multi-Room DVR is:

* Simple - Eliminates the need for multiple DVRs throughout the house
* Flexible - Pause a program in one room, continue viewing in another
* Convenient - Watch recorded shows on multiple TVs throughout your home
The launch of Home Media DVR follows the June 1 introduction of FiOS TV
Widgets, a free interactive feature that lets subscribers display
text-based local weather and traffic information on their TV screens. More
information about both services is available here.

Lean to steer a segway's new i2 PT (Personal Transporter)

(AP Photo/Segway, Inc.)

Segway has modified and plans to reintroduce its self-balancing scooter with a gadgets that allows riders to start the device with a remote control and steer it simply by leaning in the direction they want to go.
"Some people describe it as very similar to skiing," the company's chief technology officer, Doug Field, said of the new LeanSteer technology that replaces a set of handlebars as the Segway's means of steering.
Segway wanted to make the new version of the scooter more intuitive and fun to ride, a vehicle that "truly becomes an extension of your body, The best interface is no interface at all" according to Field.
The key to the new steering technology, Field said, is at the pivot point between the stem and the base, where a group of sensors "reads your body angle" and communicates the information to the software that controls what direction it travels.
Since its launch in 2001, the Segway is the top of rich geekines gizmo and the sophisticated software engineering that allows a rider to balance effortlessly on two wheels has been praised many a times. But its too high price is one of the reasons I am still on four wheel personal transportation.

Blue Pill Muddles Vista Security Views?

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Video kills Froogle!

Google, never known to pushdown or withdraws products, is playing favorites. Google has bumped Froogle to a back page. What replaced it was Google Video. If you visit the Google home page, look at the banner just above the search box and you will see Video with new icon attached to it.
Those that are interested in numbers and graphs, hitwise has done some nice work on this topic. What a difference a link makes? A lot it seems, Wednesday's change moved Google Video into the #5 position in the Google Breakdown, while Froogle moved from the #5 to the #7 position. Read more at hitwise blog.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Microsoft promotes Firefox! By driving WGA screws!!

WGA is hard to remove! It is getting tighter!! Remember the article Geemodo: removeWGA released, well according to this article forget about tools, WGA is built into Vista and you can not avoid it, so far!!
But I went ahead and read the original article and a little light bulb flashed! May be M$ will promote FIREFOX by doing this WGA thing. According to the article,
"""We built a set of features and a set of functionality that is only available to genuine Windows customers," Johnson said. "Windows Defender, for example, the anti-spyware for Windows XP and Windows Vista, is available to genuine Windows customers. Windows Media Player 11.0, Internet Explorer 7.0, will be available for download for Windows XP customers who are genuine, and of course those are built into Windows Vista. Future updates to Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player for Windows Vista will require them to be genuine. And certainly there's some premium features built into the Windows Vista operating system that will require genuine validation as well. So we're really trying to amplify the fact that being genuine enables the set of benefits and value to access these types of features and capabilities."""
Well I never depended on Windows Defender, Media Player! I rarely use it and IExplorer ? I have a IE tab for those sites that depend on IE. Anyway the best part is that when people are pressed to find a solution to problems, they tend to let go the status quo and may be these people will find that FireFox is a better solution.
Now that gridtech: Apple Opens up (kernel) and we see no Worm! and better Linux desktops are mushrooming, only Vista M$ might see is the rear of the users running away!

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Color your banana, and keep monkeys away!

Banana Guard, one of the latest gadgets, comes to you from three Canadian Emergency Room Doctors who were extremely concerned about the amount of banana trauma and abuse taking place in the world. Their banana were bruised abused by the time they opened their lunch bags. Only a monkey could eat this browned out banana. Since there are no monkeys around here only garbage cans were the end of the road for the bananas.
The Banana Guard the gizmo was conceived and produced to alleviate this problem. So now you can abuse your banana without bruising them. If you want to know more here is their FAQ about the BG!
To get one or two, click the headline
Q: "Not all bananas are the same size or shape, so how can the Banana Guard fit them all?"

A: The Banana Guard was specially designed to accommodate the majority of banana sizes. Our testing indicates that over 90% of commercially available bananas will fit into the Banana Guard. Highly curved bananas can be straightened ever-so-slightly without harm to fit the Banana Guard shape. The opposite holds true of very straight bananas.

Q: "Will the Banana Guard keep my banana fresh at the end of the day?"

A: Yes, the Banana Guard contains special ventilation holes that allow the banana to ripen at its natural rate.

Q: "How long do the hinges last?"

A: The hinges on the Banana Guard are called "active hinges". In the plastics world this means that the plastic molecules are specially aligned to provide for maximum strength in the thinnest form. As long as the hinges are not twisted they will not break with regular opening and closing.

Q: "You don't have an outlet where I live. How can I get a Banana Guard?"

A: We deliver worldwide.

Q: "Is there a battery attachment?"

A: No. The Banana Guard was designed for its intended purpose only as a device to prevent banana trauma during transport.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Is your life tied to Gadgets and gizmos?

I can't live without IT!
To some IT is a cellphone, to some IT means every gadget! But I think I can do without most of my gadgets! Ha!! Leave that notebook alone. Cell phone, Yes I never answer it anyway unless I know the caller. I never listen to my voice mail, I just erase them! So I use it when I have to call!
Anyway, the story goes like this;
Having the newest technological gadget is important to a large majority of people in Saudi Arabia (87 percent), Romania (65 percent) and India (60 percent). And across all countries, 45 percent of respondents say that the could not live without their mobile phones, particularly Saudis (68 percent) and Thais (61 percent). Laptops are considered the next most indispensable piece of technology across the sample (9 percent), followed by plasma/LCD TVs (8 percent). Not surprisingly, respondents under the age of 35 are most attached to these and other electronic devices such as DVD or MP3 players and TiVo systems.

To get these data, Synovate surveyed 5,500 respondents in Canada, China, France, Hungary, India, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Taiwan and Thailand, asking about their attitudes toward the latest technological devices.

Sony is cited by most respondents as the brand that leaps to mind when one thinks of cutting-edge technology, leading other manufacturers by a wide margin across all age ranges. Samsung and LG are the second most recognized brands amongst respondents under age 35, while Philips is more frequently associated with high technology by those above 35.
Read more at this site.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Top 100 games! in this century!!

If you are a gadget aficionado, then it is certain that you have an arsenal of gizmos to play games with. Be they PCs, gamecubes, playstations, PDAs or phones.
Anyway you have been forking out those hard earned money to bring you virtual happiness or real happiness!.
These bits of electronics and programming have their ranking too! Just checkout gameranking.com. But it was hard to find the top 100! Be at ease, drop that controller and head out to Next-Gen.biz, they have ranked games for consoles totally based on unit sales. The analysis also includes revenues, reviews, commentaries and then some.
The only problem is that you have to scroll, click 13 pages to find out who ranked the first.
I will give you a small dish for reading my tiny article, the numero uno is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Find the rest at the site.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

While Zune battles iPOD, VeriZon fights with LG VX8500 (LG-KG800)

All the news about the battle of pods, iPOD and Zune was filling many a gadget web pages little while ago. Even our site, GEEMODO reported on the same.
Enter the LG-KG800, in to the scene!
verizon has decided to eliminated $15 monthly charge to down load music via it's V CAST VPak. Surely to attract customers to this new and exciting product (gadget) and service. Songs cost as little as $0.99 if purchased from the PC or $1.99 if purchased and downloaded over the air onto a V CAST Music phone. May be it is better if Verizon matches PC price for the songs on chocolate, $1.99 is not a song! But if you are wiser, you would download music to your PC for $0.99 and move to a MicroSD card. So don't forget to buy an adapter if your PC or notebook does not have one. Most of PC gizmos do these days. Mine does.
Now customers can leave all the MP3 players behind and only carry the phone, provided that you are on the Verizon circuit and willing to sign off your phone freedom for two years. Also do not forget that you need to pay $149.99 after a $50 instant online discount.
The phone, affectionately known as chocolate, features a 1.3MP camera with 2x digital zoom and self-timer, color TFT with 240x320 pixels, integrated speaker, video player, mp3 ring tones and microSD card slot with capacities up to 2GB.
This is Verizon's best music-phone so far. You can listen to music via stereo Bluetooth, a must have gadget to go with the phone. It has a roomy 68 MB of on-board memory, in addition to MicroSD memory cards up to 2 GB. Now the hooray!! Finally it can play both WMA and MP3 files natively in Verizon's V CAST Music player. You can put music on the phone by transferring to a MicroSD card, or syncing it via USB cable with Windows PC.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Where what and why Zune

Engadget has published an article describing all we know about ZUNE, the Microsoft's IPOD killer.
Knowing Microsoft, it might be trying to cover the DRM market that Apple is gathering under IPOD and distribution of music. I think it is the music (songs) that made M$ to jump in to the market. As with all Microsoft's hardware ventures, (except XBOX) I hope this might not kill it self! Perhaps it a new way of delivering blue (red) crash screen in small format!
Anyway if you are interested, join the crowd at engadget to read, comment!!

Friday, July 21, 2006

Skype gadget

New skype gadget, a wi-fi phone
There is new wi-fi phone with built in skype software. Fire up your wireless gateway and grab this phone! To read more click on the header or here.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Winternals no more!

When I first saw the blog post by Dwight Silverman and Jim Thompson at techblog, I was surprised and let a long sigh! Just what we need in this buggy windows world. Hope there are more Marks in the crowd!
Remember the Sony root kit saga! That we posted while ago? Yes Mark Russinovich, who discovered that root kit is now a Microsoft technical fellow!Vi
Here is his own words;
" I'm very pleased to announce that Microsoft has acquired Winternals Software and Sysinternals. Bryce Cogswell and I founded both Winternals and Sysinternals (originally NTInternals) back in 1996 with the goal of developing advanced technologies for Windows. We've had an incredible amount of fun over the last ten years working on a wide range of diverse products such as Winternals Administrator's pack, Protection Manager, Defrag Manager, and Recovery Manager, and the dozens of Sysinternals tools, including Filemon, Regmon and Process Explorer, that millions of people use every day for systems troubleshooting and management. There's nothing more satisfying for me than to see our ideas and their implementation have a positive impact.

That's what makes being acquired by Microsoft especially exciting and rewarding. I'm joining Microsoft as a technical fellow in the Platform and Services Division, which is the division that includes the Core Operating Systems Division, Windows Client and Windows Live, and Windows Server and Tools. I'll therefore be working on challenging projects that span the entire Windows product line and directly influence subsequent generations of the most important operating system on the planet. From security to virtualization to performance to a more manageable application model, there's no end of interesting areas to explore and innovate."

Well Sony root kit is not the only thing that Mark discovered, he discovered many a windows problems and provided us with many a tools to fix them. From Administrator's Pak, which I used extensively to autoruns to find and manage the place where most malware and rootkits begin their process.

I was wondering why Mark was so quite after he revealed the Sony rootkit. May be he was busy talking to Microsoft. Anyway I hope that Microsoft bought him out, not to silence him but to improve windows with his abilities. Get all the tools while you can at Systernals, you are going to need them. But will they work with Vista?

Saturday, June 24, 2006

removeWGA released

Guillaume Kaddouch, a French developer, has released a tool to remove controversial Microsoft call home spyware/ipware installed on windows based computers. I have long ago blocked it using my Zonealarm firewall. But not all who knows how to do it. So may be this is for someone who needs the protection from the benevolent software giant. I have a legit copy of windows and other software from Microsoft. I do not mind M$ checking if my computer software is legit, once! As it did previously. But calling home everyday or every boot is a no no.
So click on the headline or here to get the tool.
I will write another article as how to block using the Zonealarm. But now to information on this removeWGA tool.
RemoveWGA is a response to MicrosoftÂ’s revelation earlier this month that the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification program frequently contacts Microsoft,
"That, along the fact that Microsoft used deceptive ways to make you install this tool ...Makess me call [WGA Notification] spyware, Once the WGA Notification tool has checked your OS and has confirmed you had a legit copy, there is no decent point or reason to check it again and again every boot," according to Kaddouch.
Another feature of removeWGA can also be set to run a periodic check in the background, notifying the user if it finds WGA Notification has been silently installed.
WGA will be embedded within Windows Vista and may be Kaddouch should get a beta 2 of Microsoft Vista and help out users.
Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications is different than Windows Genuine Advantage Validation. RemoveWGA only remove the notification part, phoning home, and does not touch the Validation part.
There is an excellent article/ blog post on ZDNET covering all aspects of the WGA block, removal and autorun disable method.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Fedora might be back in the closet with other hats

According to a discussion going on at /.(SlashDot) about an article published on ARS TECHNICA RedHat might take Fedora project under it's control.
The discussion at /. show how people are taking it. GOOD! AAAGH BAD!!, better read it over there.
But my worry is that I use CENTOS in all my projects. Where do you think the source for CENTOS is? Non other than RedHat Source Distribution. I wonder if there would be any changes in this relationship. Under GPL (Am I right?) they are supposed to give the Source but only to its customers. Please donate to CENTOS, so they can buy a RedHat Subscription! :)

Sunday, April 02, 2006

True Democratic online revolution

New gadget or gizmo for online world!
What if I am to tell you that today a webmaster in Manila:Philippines, New Delhi:India, Tokyo:Japan or San Francisco:USA could get paid same amount for doing the same work! Be that person a man, woman or a teenager! You will certainly tell me that I am dreaming. Well dream on, I am pretty awake. Also all those out sourcing opponents can rejoice. No more sweatshop prices.
So who is this employer? It happens to be GOOGLE and all those peoples are Google's shadow employees earning the same through Googles adsense program.
The Program provides any website to promote Google ads and get paid for clicks generated from ones site. So if you have a good site with many visitors, well sign up and start raking in some money.
Like this article says, some people have given up their day jobs, with the income from Adsense.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Gates ridicules $100 PC while Gartner calls Microsoft's UMPC a tweener!

Well it is not a surprise to me. Gates is quoted to as saying "If you are going to go have 30 children share the same computer in poor villages in India, get a broadband connection for Christ's sakes, and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you a’re not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,”. "I think we need at least a hybrid laptop with a overclocked PC and a new power source. Its'"what we really need," said Gates, "but I hear bubble fusion has hit a few bumps lately."
He went further to say ""Hardware is a small part of the cost" of providing a PC, he noted, adding that the biggest costs come from network connectivity, support, and, er, applications." Yes if they were MS applications! This is some funny article I read.
Read more about this saga at the register.
At the same time the much hyped MS ultra Mobile PC seems to be ultra wapor. According Gartnerner, " Microsoft Corp.'s much ballyhooed ultra-mobile PC is more promise than real, as the technology needed to deliver the device envisioned by the software giant is at least two years away, a research firm said."
You can read more about Gartner article here

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

8GB hard disk based Cell Phone, I310

Samsung electronics have released a new hard drive based cellular phone, I310.
Samsung breaks the storage limit in mobile phones by introducing the world's first mobile phone equipped with a 8GB hard disk drive (model: SGH-i310). With the large storage of 8GB, SGH-i310 will change the way people manage and use the mobile phone.

Samsung is the first to adopt a hard disk drive into mobile phones and has launched three models equipped with a hard disk drive; the world's first 1.5GB HDD embedded phone (model: SPH-V5400), the world's first 3GB HDD embedded phone (model: SCH-V7900) and the world's first 3GB HDD Music smartphone (model: SGH-i300).

The i310 works as a perfect platform for users by combining a phone, a digital camera, and a MP3 player with its immense storage capacity. It enables users to carry around 2,000 songs (4MB/song) wherever they go.

The i310 comes with the latest version of Windows Mobile 5.0 for Smartphone which allows users to view files and easily carry their music library with them. This Windows Mobile 5.0 enables users to sync the playlists, songs, and videos from their personal PCs so that the experience with the i310 is identical to the users' personal computer. It also offers USB 2.0 and Plug & Play feature which allows the phone to be utilized as a removable hard disk. Businessmen and students can easily store and transfer files to/from their computers in any format conveniently.