Computer Tips -Tech Info

In the struggle between fairuse4wm and Microsoft DRM, it appears that fairuse4wm is out on top again. Just to sum up – the last few weeks saw a release of fairuse4wm that stripped DRM from Microsoft DRM protected media files, then MS fixed their DRM to break fairuse4wm and now fairuse4wm has released a NEW […]

After 12 years of effort FreeDos has reached the milestone 1.0 released. It can be found here. I’ve really found freedos to be quite usable for quite some time as a drop in replacement of MS Dos environments. I’m struggling to remember any dos-based prorams that it wouldn’t run well. *(Possibly some games?)    Send […]

Mozilla is soliciting people to test the candidates for version 1.5.0.7 of both Firefox and Thunderbird, so that sounds as though release is VERY close for that version. It sounds as though there are security issues addressed. (September 7 is the tentative release date… according to this page.)    Send article as PDF   

First, Linspire released the freely available “freespire” release of their operating system (based on debian linux). Now, users will no longer have to pay an annual subscription for the click n run service. That’s now available for free as well. There is a writeup here. Previously the annual subscription fees were $20/$50 per year depending […]

The Java Runtime Environment from Sun has a vulnerability that’s due in large part to a poor approach to updating it. IF you have not uninstalled previous versions of the JRE on your PC, they are likely still there EVEN after an update AND to make things even worse, a specially designed website could specifiy […]

WMV and WMA file formats (Windows Media Video and Windows Media Audio) have been one of those sore spots for desktop linux. Yes, I KNOW mplayer and other players can handle them. (If the codecs are installed.) (and wine can run media player) But, there have been licensing issues there. The fact is, distributions that […]

It was just announced that there is a VMWare image available for download that includes SuSE 10.1 with KDE 3.5.4 installed and it’s also been updated to the most current releases of the other desktop software available for kde from opensuse. VMplayer (at least) is required, which is a free download from VMWare. VMPLayer can […]

I use wget a LOT. Many times in working with a website I’ve got a ssh console opened to the site and if there’s a plugin that I’d like to download it doesn’t make sense to download and then upload, I want to just download it directly from xyz.com webserver to the website where it […]

The Channelinsider is reporting that Lenovo will be the first tier one OEM to preinstall a linux distribution on generally available PC’s. For years, you either had to order large volume, or find a smaller name system builder to get linux preinstalled. Now, Lenovo will start offerning Novell’s Suse Linux on their Thinkpad T60p mobile […]

Again…. this article referring to an exploit related to the cross platform plugin capability in firefox, is a GOOD reminder to be cautious when looking at potential plugins to install for mozilla firefox. In fact, the advice is usually do NOT install software (including plugins) from untrusted sources. By all means, please investigate any piece […]