Microsoft Virtualization Training

I am a perpetual student. I have been in school forever. I love to take classes and study - most people think I'm sick, but it's just a thirst I have for knowledge that makes me want to learn more and keep up with technology as much as possible. In the IT environment, you need flexible, affordable training channels that allow you to keep up with the fast-paced industry, and allow you to learn the material and get the training you need without having to travel to and from classs, or attend expensive training seminars. Trainsignal.com offers Microsoft Virtualization Training




This post sponsored by trainsignal.com.

New Firefox and Thunderbird Patches

Mozilla released some patches for 5 critical holes, 8 total, for Firefox and Thunderbird software programs. If you are using either one, the updates should come over within the next few days or you can manually check for updates from the Help menu of the program.

Here's the scoop...
Mozilla fixes Firefox and Thunderbird bugs
Bundle of patches for browser and email client
Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 20 Dec 2006

The Mozilla Foundation has released a batch of patches for its Firefox and Thunderbird software. Patches have been released for Firefox 1.5.0.9, Firefox 2.0.0.1 and Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 and are being sent out over the next few days. Eight holes, five of them rated 'critical', have been patched in the new Firefox browser.

"If you already have Firefox 1.5.x, Firefox 2.0.x or Thunderbird 1.5.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours," said the organisation. "This update can also be applied manually by selecting 'Check for Updates' from the Help menu at any time."
The Firefox flaws covered a variety of problems, including the browser's RSS feed, processing remote code and the JavaScript handling software. Mozilla also said that it will continue to support Firefox 1.5.x until 24 April next year, but it strongly advised users to upgrade to version 2.0. Seven flaws, six of them rated 'critical', have been fixed in the group's Thunderbird software. They include mail header processing problems and crashes with evidence of memory corruption.

ClearCube Blade PC

A blade PC, also called a PC blade, is a computer that is entirely contained in a circuit card which is placed in a secure location like a server rack. A cable connects the card to the user's monitor, keyboard and mouse. A blade PC is a complete computer including the components you'd find in a desktop PC like the processor, memory, hard drive, video card and network card. A Blade Server is more expensive to implement, but less expensive to maintain, than typical networks where each station has its own box, since the cards and cabling must be installed prior to implementation. If the company has good planning and money to invest, the blade PC model offers many advantages like lower admin, operational, and maintenance demands. One of the largest manufacturers of the Blade Server is ClearCube.

Email Your Blog Post...

Did you know that you can post to your Blogger Blogs via email? You can setup an email address (that you should keep secret) under the settings tab of your blog's dashboard, then you just write up your post in an email and send it to the address you created. How easy is that? I sent a test post to my photo blogj and it worked. It wasn't instant - probably because of the 49 firewalls and proxy servers it had to go through to get there - but it posted nonetheless...

Cool - now they need to figure out how to include attachments. I'll keep you posted if I figure out anything - perhaps the html can be included in the email?

Office Security System

About 2 years ago, my boss bought a Sony Handycam DVD which cost the company nearly $1000. We used it twice to record some instructional videos, then about three weeks later, we needed to record a video detailing the installation process for one of our new products. We couldn't find the Handycam anywhere and we let our HR department know about it. It was then we discovered a rash of reports of various missing items including cash stolen right out of ladies purses. After it all came to light, the stealing quieted. But now, I'm hearing that a couple of people have reported things missing in their offices - it seems to happen around this time of the year. I think it's time someone install a Security System and use some bait to catch whoever is doing this. There's a portable Security System by LaserShield that is easy to install, expandable, with 24/7 monitoring available at Comp USA, Home Depot, Costco, Kmart, Montgomery Ward, Sears and more; I'm going to let the plant manager know about this before anything else goes missing...

Google Launches Patent Search Tool

Although the US Patent Office has had it's own Patent Search capability for years now, Google launched a US patent search tool which added the ability to search US patent registrations to Google's services. Google is becoming a one-stop-shop for anything and everything. The tool, Google Patent Search, launched in a beta version this week and is currently capable of searching through more than 7 million US patents dating from 1790. Google Patent Search is to add additional patents over time and uses the existing technology of Google's book search.

Data Security

Data Security is extremely important in today's ever changing world of technological advances. I work for a manufacturer that has been delving into outsourcing components and assemblies to overseas markets for a couple of years, now. We have the vendors sign confidentiality agreements and our intellectual property is labeled as such, but who's to say what happens to our data once it arrives on the other side of the world. We've already seen some knock-offs of our products (for which we have US patents) being manufactured and marketed by overseas companies. It's a catch 22 of sorts - manufacturer's almost have to utilize the growing overseas markets, but we're taking a chance in losing some of our market share doing it. What's a company to do? There may just be an answer out there to this burning question...

From the Pinionsoftware.com Data Security website:

Every day business and technical professionals find themselves in a quandary:

How to share high-value, sensitive information and intellectual property while ensuring that it's kept safe and used legitimately. Pinion Software shatters the myth that these goals are mutually exclusive.

We bring digital rights management (DRM) to the world of CAD by way of our Technical Rights Management (TRM) solutions. Simply put, our software lets you secure your information so you can share it with confidence.

Using AutoShred-DWF from Pinion Software which utilizes the DWF platform, manufacturers have the ability to shred or erase files from viewers’ computers
automatically based on set command options, protecting their intellectual property. It's sort of like a spy movie where "this message will self-destruct in 3 seconds" becomes "this document will erase hard drive ." I'm going to pass this along to our IT, Engineering, and Purchasing Departments to get their input...

3rd Zero-Day MS Word Bug in 9 Days

Just a couple of days ago, a hole was found in WMP (see post), and there have been 3 "zero-day" MS Word Bugs reported within the last 9 days. Microsoft "spokespersons" have had a busy week, to say the least, explaining all this to the media. The new unpatched bug was reported Wednesday, and exploit proof-of-concept code has been posted on a Web site.

Here's an excerpt from www.informationweek.com (to read the full story, please click the Post Title above.

By Gregg Keizer
InformationWeek
Dec 14, 2006 01:55 PM

Microsoft Thursday said it was investigating yet another Word vulnerability, the third in the last nine days, while security researchers warned that exploit code to take advantage of it was already spotted in the wild.

The new unpatched bug, or "zero-day" vulnerability, was reported Wednesday by eEye Digital Security, which warned users that exploit proof-of-concept code had been publicly posted on the milw0rm.com Web site.

"Because details are at a minimum for the other two active zero-day vulnerabilities originally reported by Microsoft, it is presumed that this disclosed vulnerability is actually a third and separate vulnerability," the eEye alert read.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company's security team was looking into the new problem.

"Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a possible vulnerability in Microsoft Word [and] will continue to investigate the public reports to help provide additional guidance for customers as necessary," the spokesperson said in an e-mail. "Upon completion of this investigation, Microsoft will take appropriate action, [which] may include providing a security update through our monthly release process or providing an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs."

According to eEye, Word 2000, 2002, and 2003 are affected, as is Word Viewer 2003. A successful exploit of the bug could let an attacker seize control of the PC.

Dell Coupons

Are you planning on getting a Dell Computer for Christmas, or giving one as a gift? Maybe you have a college student that needs an upgrade? I bought my Dell year before last and I love it. If you're planning to purchase a system, check out the Dell Coupons at www.cheapstingybargains.com - they're updated hourly, and the site offers detailed buying instructions as well.

Security Hole in Windows Media Player

A critical security hole has been discovered in Windows Media Player versions 9 and 10. It seems that all a hacker must do is post and .asx file on a webpage and lure visitors to the page since .asx files run automatically. One way to avoid this happening to you is to disable Windows Media Player from auto-opening .asx files. The safest way to do this is Open Windows Explorer and go to Tools, Folder Options, File Types, then set "ASX" to something other than Windows Media Player which is the default player. Click the title link of this post for more from research.eeye.com.

CEO of Apple

I was helping my son do his research for a Business Class Presentation for two Computer Companies - Apple and Dell, and was surprised at how interesting I found the CEO (and co-founder) of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs. Here are some quick bio facts we discovered...

- 51-year old Steve Jobs has been CEO of Apple since 1997. Jobs graduated from high school and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but he dropped out after only one semester. When speaking at the Stanford University graduation ceremony in 2005, Jobs told the graduates that, after dropping out, he remained at Reed auditing classes, including one in calligraphy. "If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts", he said.
- After leaving Apple in 1985, Jobs founded another computer company, NeXT Computer, considered to have played a large role in catalyzing a little event called the World Wide Web since the developer who wrote the code for the WWW did so on a NeXT workstation.
- In 1986 Jobs bought a little company called The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) for 5 million dollars. In January of this year, Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in an all-stock transaction for 7.4 BILLION dollars making him the largest single shareholder of Disney stock.
- Jobs has worked at Apple for several years with an annual salary of $1 (NO JOKE), and this has earned him a listing in Guinness World Records as the "Lowest Paid CEO.” His current salary at Apple officially remains $1 per year.

Now, that's interesting - and you can click the title link to read more about him at wikipedia.org.

PPP Blog

You should know by now that I'm a postie for payperpost.com. Yes, I get paid to blog about the things that I feel relate to this blog. If you have a blog and need to earn some extra cash, you should consider PPP. They don't require you to take specific opportunities or tell you what you have to write about on your own blog, instead, with PPP the choice is yours.

Whether you're a postie or not, you might enjoy checking out the PPP blog while you're cruising through the blogs you read. I've seen things there like the PPP CEO, Ted Murphy, puking after trying to win a pizza-eating contest and once he even transformed himself into a catfish. There's also been a PPP Smackdown Video Challenge initiated by Ted on the blog. Check it out, payperpostie or not, you'll find the videos entertaining.

If you are a postie, you need to be aware of the ppp blog since it contains the latest news, updates and outtages.

Text Messaging: Teens vs. Adults

If my teenage daughter is any indication of the results of this poll,
I already know the answer to this one without even reading the story or viewing the results of the poll. It didn't take me long to figure out that the best way to go with a teen who has a cell phone is to go ahead and add the unlimited text messaging to their phone even if it's $10 or $15 per month - believe me, you'll come out ahead in the long run. Or, you could have text messaging capability removed all together from the phone; I have a friend who had to do this since his son had the unlimited in-network plus an additional 1000 out-of-network text messaging plan, and still went over, way over...

Anyway, here's the poll...
Associated Press
Poll: Nearly half of teens use instant messaging, fyi
WASHINGTON -- Almost half of teens, 48 percent of those ages 13-18, use instant messaging, according to an AP-AOL poll. That's more than twice the percentage of adults who use it.

According to the poll:
Almost three-fourths of adults who do use instant messages still communicate with e-mail more often. Almost three-fourths of teens send instant messages more than e-mail. More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day, and 1 in 5 send more than 100. Three-fourths of adult users send fewer than 25 IMs a day. Teen users (30 percent) are almost twice as likely as adults (17 percent) to say they can't imagine life without instant messaging. When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail. About a fifth of teen IM users have used IM to ask for or accept a date. Almost as many, 16 percent, have used it to break up with someone.

A bow to the traditional: When sharing serious or confidential news, both teens and adults prefer to use the telephone, the poll said. The survey of 1,013 adults and 500 teens was conducted online by Knowledge Networks from Nov. 30-Dec. 4. The margin of sampling error for the adults was plus or minus 4 percentage points, 5.5 points for teens.

Want to Make Text Messaging Easier?

Do you get aggravated trying to type words for text messages using numbers on your cellphone keypad? A lot of people do, especially people who aren't teenagers - they don't seem to mind at all. As a matter of fact, I think my daughter can type text messages using the numeric keypad almost as fast and accurate as I can type on the keyboard. But, if you have trouble like I do with typing multiple numbers to get to the letter you need, then look no further than www.t9.com. T9 stands for text on 9 keys and it's predictive text makes texting faster and easier since it predicts what you're typing by the combination of letters. T9 is pre-loaded with thousands of words, emoticons and punctuation, too. Check out this new program to make your text messaging easier...

While you're waiting for my next informative post you can play this trivia game that demonstrates how T9 works - you can even register to win a Sony Phone, iPod, or BestBuy Giftcard ...

Cleaning Up MySpace

Yesterday, MySpace announced that it will purge anyone listed in the national database of sex offenders from the social network.

From the press release:

"We are committed to keeping sex offenders off MySpace," said MySpace's Chief Security Officer, Hemanshu Nigam. "Sentinel Safe will allow us to aggregate all publicly available sex offender databases into a real-time searchable form, making it easy to cross-reference and remove known registered sex offenders from the MySpace community. The creation of this first-of-its-kind real-time searchable database technology is a significant step to keep our members as safe as possible."

The whole first-of-its-kind, never-been-done-before, thank-God-the-technology-finally-exists thread runs throughout the press release. The language seems calculated to let MySpace escape responsibility for failing to police the sex offenders on its site prior to October, despite the availability of a free online registry demonstrably useful for exactly that purpose.

That said, Sentinel's database promises to be far more powerful than the DOJ registry I used. As described, it'll contain detailed information, including height, weight, eye and hair color, and the complete offense history of each offender -- all completely searchable. It'll be like a Google for sex offenders.

That leaves just one real disappointment in this announcement: How MySpace plans to use the data. With all that information at its disposal, and a "24-hour-a-day dedicated staff" using it, MySpace could seriously enhance its policing. Instead, the company is taking a sophisticated database and wielding it as a blunt instrument, simply banning everyone on the list from registering or keeping a MySpace account, regardless of who they are or what they did.

This is bad because, obviously, banning sex offenders won't keep them off MySpace: it'll just give them a reason to lie about their name or location, even if they aren't up to no good. (My survey found hundreds of past offenders, many with old or minor convictions, whose profiles reflected a seemingly normal life.) Now sex offenders who want to stay on MySpace will all be using false information from the start.

MySpace is essentially refusing an opportunity to detect and imprison active repeat offenders, by moving the entire superset of ex-offenders into the shadows. Does the convicted pedophile have lots of teenagers on his friendslist? MySpace won't know, because he'll be under same veil of anonymity as the flashers and peeping toms.

We know there are some ex-sex offenders who attempt to recidivate from accounts opened under their real names. If you believe they will now stay off MySpace, then the company's policy is good for safety. But if you think they'll simply start spelling their name a little different or lying about their ZIP code, then MySpace has lost the chance to take them off the streets.

MySpace is taking the easy way out. It may be good PR to be able to say that you don't allow past sex offenders of any stripe on your website, but the company should keep its eye on the ball: the goal isn't to keep a former flasher from blogging about his cat, it's to keep current pedophiles from pursuing children. MySpace could tell the difference, if it wanted to. A smart policing effort would use the sex offender database as one of many data points in keeping the site safe. Sometimes zero-tolerance is really tolerance.

Eclipse Business Broadband in the UK

Eclipse Business Broadband offers professional Internet solutions to give peace of mind to businesses throughout the UK. The Internet has become the heartbeat of a company and it's viability is of utmost critical importance. Eclipse offers quality services, and comes highly recommended by experienced Internet users.

If your company is in the UK and you're shopping for quality business broadband, visit the Eclipse website for information regarding products and services from an experienced, national provider of professional Internet solutions.

Other Blogs

I have some other blogs that I'm working on for some of my other interests, and to hopefully spark my husbands interest in computers and the Internet, we are going to collaborate on one as well.

Here are the links...
My Blog at Livejournal is a place for me to rant, rave and remember...

My Photo Blog is where I post some shots that I've taken...

Our blog which will be Jimmy's, I'd rather be fishing...

Braincast Beta is Unforgettable...

I'm always forgetting things. I mean, I can leave one place with the stout determination that there's something I need or something I must do, but by the time I get there, I have no freakin' clue what I was doing. I don't do this a lot, just every once in awhile - probably because I have a ton of things weighing on me at any given time; I have lists here and there for this and that. I'm always calling my voicemail at work to leave myself messages of random thoughts/ideas/tasks I'll need for the next workday. I'm organized, but I still forget things.

There may be hope...

BrainCast Beta powered by viatalk is a free and easy, Internet & phone based message type memo recording and organization system that's compatible with any US-based cellular or landline telephone network system. Users are provided with a toll free number that they can call and instantly leave a voice message that will be delivered to their PC via email within seconds. You can register online and be recording in seconds - that is, if after you've finished registering, you're able to remember what it is that you need to remind yourself. Just kidding, but really, I need to go signup because I almost forgot - here's the link...

BrainCast Beta

A Blog to Check Out...

My friend, sprezz, has a couple of blogs that you might want to check out. He keeps up with the latest news and has a great sense of humor. Check out his Adapt, Adopt, and Improve blog and his Warning Life Under Construction blog, too!

OfficialHomepage.org

Officialhomepage.org is a simple, fast-loading, ad-free homepage that wants to become the preferred start page for Internet users. The officialhomepage.org page is clean and categorzied so that you can navigate to many of the top-rated sites quickly. From the lightning-fast loading homepage, you can jump quickly to top news, sports and social sites as well as check your webmail. There's also no registration to complete to use the site. Make sure you read the About Us and Privacy Policy pages...