A few hours back, I updated My first post on the RealVNC 4.1.1 vulnerability and just saw another story that did not specify WHICH variation of VNC was at risk. TightVNC and UltraVNC seem to be immune according to the discoverer of the flaw. And as far as I’ve seen, there hasn’t been any contradiction of that.
Category: Computers
-
The Google Problem Part 2
If you know me…. you know I have a HARD time putting down a problem that’s unsolved. Even if it’s a problem that really doesn’t have a solution (in my control at least)… I have a tendency to look and analyze, turn it over and try and find out as much as I can about it. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to being able to find solutions to problems, or at least workarounds by gathering enough information… Anyway, after saying I was tired of trying to figure out why google doesn’t like a site and tired of trying to fix things “for google”….. well, I’ve spent more time “investigating”… or should I say “wasted” more time… I’m not sure which, but I did discover a couple interesting things.
-
Google Notebook debuts
Late last night there were discoveries of the login page for Google Notebook, then came the Official Googleblog announcement of Google Notebook and of course news of the launch spread like wildfire (along with a direct link there to the plugin download. Yes, Google Notebook is finally reality. I haven’t had a chance to test yet, but I did log in and download the extension for Firefox (I haven’t had a chance to close out and restart firefox yet, too much going on…)
-
Google Calendar revisited
When Google Calendar first rolled out, I took a look and was not overwhelmed. Now, I’ve had a chance to revisit and see a few improvements. First, one of my initial problems was that I couldn’t get to calendar from gmail. The code has now been added in the upper left corner to navigate between the two (or the google homepage, or their “other services”). This was missing when I first looked. I distinctly remember seeing it in one of the testing screenshots. Even immediately after I had started out with the Calendar, the link was still not there. I’m not sure when, but it’s there now. Good.
-
Warner Bros and 180solutions….
I think somewhere along the line, Warner Bros missed the memo that 180solutions is not a brand that many people would jump to associate with. Apparently 180Solutions has started making two Warner Bros shows (a soap opera and animated series) available for download on some of their sites including zango. Of course, the episodes come with bundled adware downloads which, I’m sure, “enhance your web browsing experience” by popping up relevant ad windows on your desktop.
-
Exploit Prevention in software
There’s been a lot of talk about hardware enforced DEP as a mitigating factor in some of the exploits in the last six months. There’s also a new software product that can limit the impact of zero-day exploits. The software is for windows and is called SocketShield. Suzi at Spyware Confidential has taken it for a testdrive on an unpatched XP system through some nasty exploit sites….
-
Would you trust antispyware that installed adware?
There are a couple stories on spywarecleaner’s recent practice of bundling whenu with the free version of their “antispyware scanner”. According to spyware confidential, SpywareCleaner made the rogue antispyware products list and was delisted after they corrected some “issues”. Now, they’ve been relisted due to the adware bundling of WhenU Save.
-
Clickbot – new bot tactic…
There is a new twist on the bot networks that have been the plague of computing in recent years. This one is called ClickBot. The story is from Incidents.org Many sites, (like this one) use adsense to “monetize their content”. The idea is that advertisers bid on “clicks”. So, if I wanted to advertise on the keywords “asheville computer repair” I might bid 5 cents for every click on one of my ads. The problem is many content owners are less than scrupulous.
-
Media player and video codecs made simple…
The biggest problem with Audio and video content is the variety of different codecs that are supported by different players. On Windows this usually means having Windows Media Player, Realplayer and Quicktime installed, plus who knows what else. I was having a discussion yesterday about some videos that I had given to someone that work fine on my linux desktop, (divx format I believe), however Windows media player fails to find a codec. I told him that I’ve always felt Media Player was a bit “snobbish” with regards to codecs. It’s a great idea to be able to detect and download the codec on demand, but in reality, I didn’t recall seeing xvid/divx being among those that would auto-download (may have changed by know I’m not certain.) Anyway, I suggested mplayer as a good multi-format video player. Mplayer will handle most any video format thrown at it.
-
The Google Problem, or why I’m starting to use MSN and Yahoo more.
This weekend has been a bit of an introspective for me on why google is still the primary search engine I use. I know, I’ve been a big “fan(?)” of google for quite some time, I’ve obviously incorporated many of their products into my pages and used Google for 99% of my web searching. In recent months though, I’ve certainly had frustrations from the “site owner” side of the Google relationship. My North Carolina Genealogy site had traditionally been hosted as a subdirectory of averyjparker.com and had always enjoyed the lions share of traffic, so when I gave it it’s own domain, I did a 404 page not found for those following outdated links and I added an automatic 5 second redirect to the northcarolinagenealogy.net page. I soon learned that was a mistake, as the site vanished from Google around the first of December.