This has been a rough quarter for Office vulnerabilities… there seems to be a pattern, Microsoft patch day, then…. zero-day exploit within a week for an Office component. First Word, then Excel and now this month our vulnerable app is Powerpoint. The Security Fix has some coverage and notes the pattern – the likely motivation is so that there will be more time to exploit before the vulnerability is patched. The moral of the story is to be suspicious of Powerpoint attachments/files from untrusted sources. i.e. verify that you should be receiving an attachment even from KNOWN sources.
Tag: time
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Another attempt at different hardware problems
I mentioned some time ago a frustrating issue with the hardware on my desktop that I had finally solved. I got the new system Which was a 64-bit AMD Athlon on an Asus k8N4-E board and a pci-express nvidia based card (6200 TurboCache), 1 GB of memory… Things worked very nice for a while, rock solid stable and no issues. But the one day, I noticed…. “where did my tvcard go”. There were 2 pci slots, one I had used for a tvcard, the other for an addon sound card.
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VMWare server 1.0 final release
I’ve been keeping an install of Vmware virtual Server through their beta and Release Candidate phase and have seen several places that they’ve released the 1.0 version today. This release is free (as in no charge.) Although support is available….
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Google Maps upgrade
I’ve seen a couple places referring to some improvements in the way google maps handles zooming and so I decided to take a look in Firefox. The zoom handling of Google maps is the one thing that I’ve wished for an improvement in for some time. After noticing MSN’s virtual earth had the capability of scroll wheel zooming, I really wanted it in Google Maps.
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Sony Handycam DCR-DVD405
Well, the Sony Handycam DCR-DVD405 that I ordered from Amazon has arrived today (ordered the 5th of July, arrived the 11th with the “slow boat” free shipping option.) I’ve had it long enough to charge batteries, set time and do a few still pictures and a few short video clips. So, these will be my initial impressions, and I’ll likely follow up later with further thoughts/experience/etc. This was certainly not a small purchase for us and I spent quite a bit of time narrowing down choices. I really wanted a dvd based recorder. The idea of having it already in a format that we could archive was a real plus there. Yes, I might pull it onto the computer for editing, but life will be much simpler if I don’t HAVE to….
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Product Reviews
From time to time I’ve done product reviews on this site and I’m getting ready to do a first impression review on something else. I’d like to take a step back though and give you my thoughts on product reviews in general and their value (or lack thereoff…) I usually take product reviews in a magazine with a grain of salt for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is who pays their advertising bills, maybe the editorial board of a publication is fond of a certain product for financial reasons…. also, they usually get the sample for free, so there’s a disconnect in the VALUE assessment of a product…
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Rsync for easy (and quick) backups
I’ve got to say, I haven’t spent ENOUGH time with rsync to really be fluent in how I could put it to use…. A week or so ago I was reading this list of essential Linux software by a guy that moved from Mac OS X to linux because he detested the DRM that was being shoved down his throat. Anyway, one of his essentials was rsync for backups. Which got me thinking. Why didn’t I use rsync for backups. At one point in time I used unison, but for some reason had stopped and was in need of reorganizing my home backup strategy anyway. I found a few interesting approaches.
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Now we know what’s taking Crossover Office 6 so long…
I just read that Codeweavers has managed to get World of Warcraft working in Crossover Office in their development builds it should be possible. Of course, it’s been possible for some time to run it via Transgaming’s Cedaga. But codeweavers seems to be working on it in their Crossover product as well and are “testing it extensively”…. NOW I know why it’s taking so long for 6 to come out….
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Windows 98 and ME in final days of support (6 by my count)
July 11th will mark the end of Microsoft’s support for Windows 98 and ME. Which means that there will be no further security updates for those systems after that date. In SOME ways, those systems may find comfort in the security through obscurity approach as much malware MAY not run on those systems, but that’s kind of a risky angle to play. For those that are willing to experiment…
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Developers meet Marketing – Marketing developers….
Sometimes you just want to cry… I found this email exchange via sunbeltblog…. Essentially, the product manager and marketing director at some unknown company have just become aware that the “About” box in their program ACTUALLY SHOWS the product version and BUILD number. They think that’s just too much information to give to the customer and may give the wrong impression (that they didn’t get it right the first time.) Of course, the developer thinks it’s slightly important to have the version and build number there. (How else could you support unless you have a tracking number?)