So, I finally got down to about 5 tabs left in my firefox window and decided I could kill it off and restart it without really losing my place so I could get a good look at the Google Notebook plugin. First impression is that it’s fairly unobtrusive and is in the notification bar with the rest of my plugins (google mail notifier, google calendar notifier, noscript, adsense notifier and adblock…) Clicking on it gives the chance to create a new notebook and then loads a little Web 2.0 looking box complete with resize/close widgets and an Add note button and Actions menu.
Tag: light
-
So many things so little time….
I feel like I’ve done this article so many times in the past…. there are so many things I’m hoping to post and time seems to evaporate before my very eyes. This afternoon I hope to be posting a few things that have been on that list. I also have a few other projects that I’ve been VERY eager to get a start on, which may happen this afternoon (or in whatever’s left of it.) As of late, of course, I’ve been trying to not work through the day, into the evening and late into the night. My pattern of filling all my free time between and after appoinments trying to make posts was quite tiring, maybe I can at some point try to find a balance where I’m not investing toooo much time chasing stories that are already out there.
-
Update on Internet Explorer Exploit in the wild
If you use Internet Explorer to browse the web, I’d suggest finding the instructions to disable active scripting, or drop it and use something else in light of the recent exploit floating around. It seems that in spite of Microsoft’s infinite wisdom that “Microsoft has determined that an attacker who exploits this vulnerability would have no way to force users to visit a malicious Web site. Instead, an attacker would have to persuade them to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link that takes them to the attacker’s Web site”…. the reality is that legitimate sites have been hacked and the malicious code has been added. (Over 200 legit sites…)
-
Sometimes the simplest things solve problems….
How many times have I had this kind of phone call…. “my computers not working”… “the light on the monitor is on, but there aren’t any lights on the keyboard. everything seems connected, but there’s nothing on the screen.” Usually, my first question is along the lines of… “have you tried turning it off and back on.” I sometimes hear “I can’t use the start button” or something like that. At this point, I suggest that they try disconnecting the power and letting it sit for a few moments (5-10 seconds is usually enough.) Plugging it back in and trying the switch.
-
AVG – Cannot Launch AVG Internet Update
Last week sometime I was doing maintenance on an OLD Windows 95 machine (yes there are some still out there….) and noticed the Antivirus had not updated in a good while. They were using Grisoft’s AVG and so I tried to force an update. I was greeted with an error message… “Cannot Launch AV internet update” Which was puzzling since we were online with no connectivity problems. On looking, this is known to be an issue with Grisoft AVG on Windows 95…..
-
Upgrade your mouse
This is going in the basics category. Quite often I visit a computer that has a mouse which is just a trial of patience to use. I mean, you have to pick it up and move it, shake it a bit, turn it over and clean out the lint from the “ball” area…. The good news is that mousing does NOT have to be like this. If your computer has a PS2 (small round plug) for your mouse, or a USB (small rectangular plug) for your mouse, it should be VERY easy to replace that old ball style mouse with an optical mouse.
-
WMF exploit through indexing software
One of the vectors that has been mentioned early on is the infection of a system through the WMF exploit even when the exploited file was downloaded through a dos command shell. At first this seemed absurd, but it appeared that Google Desktop search was indexing files dynamically and once the file was downloaded it indexed the file and triggered the vulnerability. There is word that Microsoft’s indexing service does likewise – although Microsoft has only said that they’re “looking into reports”. Incidents.org is saying that they think this may be the giant white elephant no one is talking about. I certainly would shudder to think if machines on a network are indexing a network share and manage to subvert every machine running an indexing share….
-
Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 14 – Alternative software
There are ways that risks can be avoided. Recently, there was what was called a zero-day exploit for Internet Explorer. As I write this, the exploit surfaced 3 weeks ago and tomorrow there will be a patch. The vulnerability would allow remote code execution through a vulnerability in the way javascript is handled. So, for that 3 week unpatched period, Internet Explorer in it’s default configuration is a sitting duck. Well, truth be told, there are other browser vulnerabilities, many unpatched. (That’s a common method for many spyware bugs to install.)
-
Shortwave Listening – Noise
We don’t live in a quiet world, cars, equipment, alarms, fans, tv’s radios, etc. etc. etc. We have a very noisy Radio Frequency world as well. All sorts of electronic devices can add to the cacophony that is natural RF noise. In my shortwave listening I’ve “crusaded” against RF noise in the house where at all possible and had pretty good results. I mentioned in an earlier post about a couple of “random wire” antennas I’d setup and the one wrapped around the house picked up quite a bit of noise.
-
Improving KDE start time
One of the things about running KDE in linux is it can be a big resource grabber and be slow starting. By contrast “light” window managers can be up and running in a relative flash (xfce). OSnews has a story on SUSE/Novell KDe developers that have managed to get down to 4-5 second start time for KDE (which is fairly impressive.) Here are a few of their blog entries on the matter.