Archive: Software

You know I wrote not too long about about the doublemyspeed.com scam sounding radio ads. It really sounds like MyCleanPC.com is a scam in the sense that it promises a lot but doesn't (or can't) reall…

First off, you should now that I like to study languages. I have studied Spanish for a good amount of time (and have a site related to learning spanish for beginners). I've also studied French and Ge…

Windows users know chkdsk, linux users know fsck... users of each MIGHT have heard of SMART. These are different ways of TESTING hard drives. Well, there's also a utility called TestDisk that looks p…

In ubuntu/debian linux software installs, there are such things as "metapackages" which is a package that just describes what OTHER packages it "needs". For instance in ubuntu, the kubuntu-desktop pa…

I've been looking for a simple windows based web editor to recommend for someone. I use quanta plus on linux and would really have a hard time LEAVING it, but... there's of course dreamweaver and fro…

I don't know if anonymity is exactly acheived, but.... anyway not too long ago I explored/setup tor on my system to play around with, no real reason I suppose, but doing what I do it pays to be aware…

I've just been using miro the last few days and I ought to mention it here. It's a multiplatform program (windows/ mac/ linux) that let's you subscribe to video feeds (much like a podcast catcher doe…

I've had a fun time this week dealing with a STRANGE Vista problem on an HP computer (I doubt it's HP specific, but don't know for certain.) The error goes like this... "A problem has been detected a…

I like the PDF file format for so many reasons - free writer under linux is one of them, usually it's just configured out of the box - openoffice does a nice export to PDF too. Of course, PDF is acce…

For years I've been using smartmontools on my linux-based machines. What I've absolutely LOVED about it is the advance notice I've had of hard drive failures. Two consecutive Decembers I received an …

A few days ago I was researching possibilities for linux boot without rebooting to a cd. I found something interesting in instlux. Essentially, it's a windows installer style download that can bootst…

One recent task was install opengroupware on a dapper drake 6.06 install in a virtual machine. I followed the instructions found here and ran into a slight problem. The default install from Ubuntu do…

I thought I had already posted this, but I looked the other day and didn't find the article, so I'm posting it now... if it's a duplicate, sorry... I'm still using Ubuntu's Dapper Drake 6.06(.1) as a…

You had to know it would be a matter of time. Not long after I wrote about the limitations of Vista's upgrade version I found this. First let me reset. Previous versions of Windows upgrade versions w…

Microsoft Vista is now out, the next version of Windows, successor to XP. While Windows XP will continue to receive updates into 2014 there are many that might be eager to upgrade and move to the lat…

Haven't had the chance to try this one firsthand yet, although I've been watching for this. You may be familiar with ies4linux which is a script that uses wine to download/install multiple versions o…

I thought I had written about this once before, but when I searched the site to find the solution I had come across before, I couldn't find my post.... so, sorry if this is a duplication, but I've ru…

This last week virtualbox announced that they have released a version of their virtualization software as open source. There is a pay version as well with more features. (*read on for features availa…

I like nx server and client, it can really make good use of low bandwidth connections to get a gui link. But, by default it's quick and easy to setup gnome and kde login sessions within nxclient, but…

Mozilla has released the 2.0 release of the Firefox web browser. Among the new features is built in spellcheck and javascript 1.7 support. However, there are critiques that are critical of the User I…

Now... available in Beta form... The Linux version of the Flash player has been stuck at 7 for some time, while many sites require flash 8 for video/etc... (The page to find the beta download is here…

Yikes, what an evening..... it started innocently enough in the afternoon. I have an old Mandrake 10.0 server that I was upgrading clamav on (recent security update). While I was at it, I was reviewi…

Baring big problems, the final release candidate for the new 2.0 version of Mozilla Firefox is out reported here and here. Mozilla.com page for the RC is here.

The first thing I should mention is that this months update from Microsoft is the last for XP SP1 users should plan a migration path to SP2 to keep getting updates to XP. Multiple vulnerabilities thi…

It's kind of interesting to get to do a "browser wars" kind of post where I mention a new release of two browsers coming out about the same time.... The release of IE7 is coming within weeks we are r…

First, I should disclaim that this is going to be a brain dump of the resources and experience of a quick setup of Ubuntu 6.06 on a software raid based storage system. This may be less than ideal, bu…

Several days ago there were announcements of the release of Mandriva 2007, only thing was, the download wasn't available yet. Well, today the download appears available. I haven't looked to see what …

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 …

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 envi…

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…

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 s…

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 lik…

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 i…

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…

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 s…

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 f…

Here is a link to the info page. It sounds as though there are several images available. Mandriva 2007 Beta 1 has Gnome and KDE centric 586 and x86_64 versions of cd images for download as well as an…

Here's the link to Microsoft's advisory. The main workaround seems to be.... Don't open or save powerpoint attachments that you receive from untrusted sources, OR that you receive unexpectedly from t…

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…

On the heels of yesterdays massive update day from Microsoft, Adobe has released an update for the free Adobe Reader. The Adobe reader is one of those ALMOST essential applications that MOST everyone…

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 …

and Internet Explorer use has dropped below 80% in the US. Currently 12.93% of online users browse with Firefox. Almost 40% of German web-browsers use Firefox to view the web. It's nice to see Firefo…

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…

The Freedos has suspended development. It's been a 12 year project and really, Freedos has become THE free DOS implementation around. It's been shipped with "blank" pc's, integrated into several othe…

What follows are some notes taken on vmware server. Most are related to an install on ubuntu-server (NO GUI INSTALLED).... the main point of this is to have the host system take as FEW resources away…

What follows are some notes that I've taken on the Vista beta that I installed into a VM. I've got a lot of toying around yet to do with it (and at least one Internet Explorer bug I want to mention.)…

OK - just fresh off solving the reason I couldn't get vmplayer to start on my 1Ghz AMD 64 1GB of memory machine.... I started looking at vmserver. (RC1). Now, vmplayer is a free download (so is vmwar…

Updates for Windows for the month of June are out today and it looks like some list! 12 updates covering 20 or more vulnerabilities. MANY of these are tagged as critical. (Critical vulnerabilities ar…

I just came across this article about wine-doors which sounds VERY promising. Of course, let me set the stage. Wine is a windows compatibility api for linux. The goal of wine is to allow windows appl…

As you might recall some time back I talked about the release of vmplayer which is a free virtual machine "player" from vmware. Mostly, I wrote about the problems I had running it on my main desktop …

I mentioned the other day revisiting the qemu site to discover new versions of both qemu and the non-redistributable kernel module kqemu (qemu is now at version 0.8.1 and kqemu is at 1.3.0pre7). Ther…

It's quite a dilemma when a software product is billed as more secure than another.... several days back when Mozilla Firefox released v. 1.5.0.4 which fixed a number of security issues, I saw someon…

Google has released a new plugin for firefox that synchronizes various settings from one pc to another making use of a google account. Essentially, it saves certain preferences from your browser to y…

Incidents.org had an entry in the last couple days on a malware infestation that was interesting and showed a couple things. 1) You can't bet on antivirus to keep you safe (the initial installer was …

While I was testing out the "single cut and paste" linux vnc remote desktop sharing script and x11vnc binary.... I spent a fair amount of time booting up livecd's n qemu to test various distributions…

I've tried to ask myself if I'd trust someone enough to let them run a remote session on my own desktop to solve a problem. I think the answer is "it depends". If you think about it, I do tech suppor…

So, I had the script all ready, I've got my x11vnc custom compiled to be as widely compatible as possible, I've tested thoroughly on the internal network. The next step was to test my x11vnc "one cut…

Well, I've got a nice way of doing "easy" one click (or one cut and paste) light desktop support for windows or linux, one uses ultravnc sc, the other uses x11vnc with a special wrapper script. So, w…

I've got to say, one of the things I really like about linux are the myriad of options for remotely administering a system. SSH is the one I use the most, but for the graphical you have x (especially…

As I said in the earlier posts, I was essentially looking for a "Single click" solution for linux VNC remote desktop support. A solution that doesn't require the remote support client to change firew…

So, the idea is that I wanted something "like" the Ultranvnc Single Click download, only for linux. The main idea being is that if someone is looking for a bit of desktop tech support on linux, we do…

It's hard to believe it's time for a version 5 of knoppix, but ... I guess it is. I was just booting up Knoppix 4 in a qemu session last night and already several days behind 5... Anyway, Knoppix 5 w…

I don't know, it seems excessively wine-y to gripe about an operating system that isn't released yet, but I've seen people do that about linux quite a bit.... (why doesn't xyz work in beta 1 of _____…

The Mozilla Firefox 1.0.x series will no longer be supported with security updates. IF you use Firefox as your web browser, make sure you're using the current version in the 1.5 series (currently 1.5…

Microsoft has started releasing details of the hardware requirements for the upcoming release of Vista. It appears there are two categories of requirements. One is a bare minimum for vista, the other…

As reported over the last several days, there is a critical problem with RealVNC 4.1.1, there is NOW an exploit in the wild for RealVNC 4.1.1, that SANS is looking for more information on. There are …

For years, the call has been to open source Java.... it appears that day is, well... coming. Not at hand yet, but for startersJava can now be bundled with Linux distributions.... and is looking for a…

In the last couple days there have been new security releases of both clamantivirus (0.88.2 is now the current) and Mozilla-Firefox (1.0.3 is the current release over there). If you use either of the…

Since, I've still got a few older Mandrake 10 installs that I'm maintaining as mailservers, there aren't supported security fixes for various things anymore... Friday there was news of a new clamanti…

For around 3-4 months now I've had a REALLY annoying problem with the wordpress install on this site. Trackbacks suddenly stopped working. Somewhere around my 800th post or so while the WMF vulnerabi…

Some time back, I was teetering on the brink.... I've used Evolution as my linux mail client for ages (since I switched), because it had the calender integrated etc... However, Kontact has REALLY loo…

While we wait for Microsoft to release a patch for the MOST recent Internet Explorer vulnerability..... it looks as though MS is "planning" to release a patch on their routine patch day of April 11th…

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 …

It's interesting to see the rumor mill around Vista - I saw articles this morning claiming that 60% of the Vista code would have to be rewritten and the Xbox team was pulled to work on Vista - from w…

I should mention a fairly big Windows vulnerability (which involves active scripting). Apparently there are proof-of-concept exploits circulating that do innocent things like open up the calculator. …

This is a good idea.... let's say you want a linux install, but you're very particular. You'd like to have a certain setup out of the box, say a basic desktop with OpenOffice and Firefox/Thunderbird.…

I've made quite a bit of use out of the wikipedia in recent years. I know it has it's flaws (I've run across some first hand), but I've found typos in textbooks as well. However that doesn't mean tha…

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 A…

So, juice (formerly known as ipodder) was a bit too gui-only for my tastes, I took a look at bashpodder which is a bash-script based podcast client. Really, this is very much to my liking as it can b…

I've been playing around a bit with podcast clients the last couple of days. I've been finding online news feeds for the onlineradiotv.com site and for many of those I have bash scripts to handle dow…

Not long ago, I switched from Evolution to Kontact as my primary mail/calendar/addressbook/etc.... program under linux. One of the nice things about the Kontact suite is that you can either open up t…

Mandriva 2006 released without Mozilla Firefox 1.5, it came with 1.0.6 (which included security fixes and other patches from 1.0.7).... anyway, source rpm's for Firefox 1.5 became available in cooker…

I've got a couple of older Mandrake 10.0 servers that I'm still maintaining. They're systems that it hasn't been practical (yet) to do an upgrade to a more recent release of the base operating system…

There are a number of vulnerabilites reported with Apple Quicktime player related to the way it handles various file formats. Quicktime Player 7.0.4 is the current released GOOD version, everything f…

Brian Krebs at the Security Fix has done an interesting study related to how long it takes Microsoft to release a security fix for a problem, starting from the time they are notified of the security …

There has been a bugfix release to Crossover Office, released by Codeweavers. Crossover Office is an offshoot of the Wine project, which is a windows compatibility suite for Linux, to allow Windows a…

Brian Krebs at the SecurityFix has the story. Symantec, has fixed a problem with their SystemWorks and SystemWorks premier software that could allow malicious software to hide in the Norton Protected…

There's a security fix available for a vulnerability in Clamantivirus. Version 0.88 fixes the vulnerability which could allow a remote attacker to control a machine running clamantivirus. The Securit…

For the last week, I've seen various headlines referring to a report from US-CERT that indicated 2005 had 5,198 security flaws reported. Out of those 2,328 were reported for Linux/Unix, 812 for Windo…

This is something you should consider if you are looking to abandoned a pre-Winxp operating system in favor of a flavor of XP. The product life cycle. In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft has differen…

Microsoft has posted a security advisory (912920) on the previously reported "awakening" of the Sober worm, expected January 6th. Systems that are infected with Win32/Sober.Z@mm may download and run …

There's a good review up of both Kubuntu and Ubuntu over at Desktoplinux.com. The writer doesn't seem to find either a perfect fit. Ubuntu is Gnome based, Kubuntu is KDE based. The versions reviewed …

Rumors have been around for some time about Google launching Google OS, an Operating System to compete with Microsoft Windows. Well.... now the rumors are circulating around the Google PC (with Googl…

I had hoped to do an article on metasploit in the not too distant future, but not as early as tonight.... However, I've made a couple of references to it in previous posts which, well, it would be ni…

I mentioned this in my summary yesterday morning as a possible workaround until there are patches for the WMF vulnerability that's been big news the last week. I notice that incidents.org has mention…

One thing I've already mentioned in this serious is using alternative programs like Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, or Thunderbird, Eduora instead of Outlook Express. Even if you're not…

So, I've spent a bit of time talking about flightgear. Here are a couple extra resources that I want to "bookmark" here. There is a Good unofficial how-to here. (Mostly linux flightgear oriented. Als…

This should probably go in the Windows tech support category too... but, as I've talked about before I've spent a good amount of time using different linux livecd's. I've even made a few livecd's of …

Ok - I was thinking I might have been a bit too dismissive of flightgear. So, I took a second look (and a third and fourth.) In fact, I found a source rpm of the 0.99 version and rebuilt it for Mandr…

I remember back when I was running Windows as my primary OS, one of my favorite diversions was Microsoft Flight Simulator (2000?) In fact, I clearly remember circumnavigating the globe in a Cessna in…