Here’s a followup to one of the first big stories that I posted on… the Sony rootkit – there has been a settlement with the FTC (Federal Trade Commision). It has yet to be approved but, affected customers could see up to $150 to cover cost of repair (rootkit removal/etc.) They(Sony) must also allow the cds to be swapped. Under the settlement Sony does not admit breaking any law.
Month: January 2007
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Free Windows addons and utilities
I’ve spent much of my time the last few years looking at windows support from the linux side of the fence. Certainly linux boot disks and the like are among the most useful utilities that I’ve used. However, I am reminded from time to time that there is a good share of freely available utilities on the Windows side of things. http://www.mdgx.com/ is a site devoted to not just the free windows and dos utilites and add ons… but to quote the site…
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Windows 98 and the upcoming daylight savings time change
Of course, you
- shouldn’t
be using Windows 98 anymore, it’s unsupported (i.e. no security updates.) However the reality is that there are quite a few Win 98 installs out there perking away. But, with the recent law change with regards to the start/end of Daylight savings time in the US… many Windows 98 users may have to resort to changing the time manually. There is another way though..
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Caching downloaded deb files with apt-cacher
It seems silly with multiple machines to download the same file multiple times. At some level it’s not THAT inconvenient. It really depends on your connection speed and the size of the files in question. For Ubuntu and other systems based on the .deb package format and apt-get there is a nice option for setting up proxy’ing to allow a single download of deb files for install on multiple machines. That option is called apt-cacher. There’s a good wrietup here on the setup of this cache -ing software.
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Extended support for XP Home and Media center
I want to make a note of this here… Microsoft has announced that XP Home and Media center editions will get extended support on par with that of XP Pro. Essentially this means security updates for these versions of the OS should be available until 2014. Previously support for XP Home was to have ended as soon as December 2006, but was then extended modestly until after the release of Vista. The “Home” oriented products weren’t given the same length of support as the “Professional” or Business class products at that time. This announcement puts the two versions of XP on par with Pro.
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Handy DNS tools online
There are some tools that I make use of almost daily. Either because something strikes my curiousity or because of necessity to find out a bit more about a computer issue. DNS lookup tools fall into the category of “must have” for the kind of stuff I wind up doing. Whether it’s a whois lookup to see who is a contact for a given domain, looking to see when a domain expires or just looking up reverse dns information to find out where the machine is located that’s been trying to enter the ssh server. Of course, spam blacklist lookups are handy too. I’m adding a few links to the sidebar for some of the more useful of these…
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Vista Upgrade version requirements…
In the past when installing an upgrade version of Windows it meant having your original disk handy to prove that you were REALLY eligible for an upgrade license. What this meant is that if you wanted to follow the advice of MOST in the TECH community you could do a clean install. That’s right, wipe the disc and start from scratch, provide the disks when asked and then the installer would be on it’s way. Well, sorry, the joy is over. (Actually… there wasn’t a whole lot of JOY in it… but… it’s now worse.) Now, with Vista, it is required that you have the previous version of Windows that you are upgrading installed on the disk.
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Offline web browsing script
In the US and Europe and many more developed parts of the world we take our internet connectivity these days for granted. (And some go into panic attacks when it’s not available…) In some parts of the world though internet connections are not as wide/broad and peak usage times can make for very slow viewing, or can interfere with other vital communications. Linux excels at SO many things and this is something we could use linux to help with…
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Unidentified Green lights in the night sky….
Well… there was a news story a few days back about a pilot that had seen a strange orange light in the night sky near Chicago I think and claimed that the light was “not of this world”. It was later found out that it was likely a military flare (suspended by a parachute.) (Reportedly those flares put out 2 million candlepower..) Then LAST night on the local news there was a mention of people calling in reporting a green light in the sky. Today it’s all over the local news….