The link is to an article at InfoWorld's web site. Roger Grimes got ahold of the purloined password/username lists obtained in the phishing attack when they were posted on the web. He analyses 34k entries for various things like frequency of letter and number use. It is a short and very interesting look into both how passwords fail and how easily they can be made a lot stronger.
As Grimes points out, it is not often a White Hat type gets to analyse such large lists and his doing so makes this article unique. It also points out just how easy it is to have passwords that do fall into "the norm", meaning it is almost trivial for you to tighten up your act as far as passwords go. For me to do it, as well. I was a bit surprised to find that several of my passwords fall directly into line with the poor ones. I spent a fun-filled hour fixing that.
Jack
Update: There are links in the article cited above to a 3 part article on Microsoft's TechNet site. Here are all 3, just in case.
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Friday, November 17, 2006
Linux infringes Microsoft patents, says Ballmer
I'm sure it is possible, but if it is true, why hasn't Microsoft sued anyone or revealed which parts of Linux or the software that runs on it infringe their IP rights?
The response to Ballmer's statement from the open source/free software communities has been overwhelmingly defiant. I think they want Ballmer to back up his words and are not at all afraid of a lawsuit. I cannot make up my mind whether this is just bravado or based on facts. I sense the former but am assured by my FOSS developer friends that if in fact the threats are based in reality, the various developer communities will strip out the infringing code and re-write it in very short order.
One way or another, this is going to get interesting. Remember; Red Hat is suing SCO simply because SCO impugned Linux. RH is seeking a declaration in court that Linux does not infringe any of SCO's intellectual property. It would not surprise me if either they or another Linux company (Canonical comes to mind, here) sues MS seeking the same outcome. There are many Linux companies with deep enough pockets to sue Microsoft and one or more of them just might.
And more than one pundit has wondered aloud how suing over Linux would affect Microsoft's bottom line. Alienating a significant portion of your customer base is never wise and it is a certainty that a very significant portion of Microsoft's enterprise and government customers are running Linux in one form or another.
Jack
The response to Ballmer's statement from the open source/free software communities has been overwhelmingly defiant. I think they want Ballmer to back up his words and are not at all afraid of a lawsuit. I cannot make up my mind whether this is just bravado or based on facts. I sense the former but am assured by my FOSS developer friends that if in fact the threats are based in reality, the various developer communities will strip out the infringing code and re-write it in very short order.
One way or another, this is going to get interesting. Remember; Red Hat is suing SCO simply because SCO impugned Linux. RH is seeking a declaration in court that Linux does not infringe any of SCO's intellectual property. It would not surprise me if either they or another Linux company (Canonical comes to mind, here) sues MS seeking the same outcome. There are many Linux companies with deep enough pockets to sue Microsoft and one or more of them just might.
And more than one pundit has wondered aloud how suing over Linux would affect Microsoft's bottom line. Alienating a significant portion of your customer base is never wise and it is a certainty that a very significant portion of Microsoft's enterprise and government customers are running Linux in one form or another.
Jack
Google improves its AJAX toolkit
Google has some nice web and web application toolkits available. Their AJAX kit, which previously catered mainly to Windows and Linux, has now been expanded to include Macintoshs running OS X.
If you are doing any type of web development at all, I urge you to check out Google's free tools and code offerings. They might save you a lot of work or expand your capabilities.
Jack
If you are doing any type of web development at all, I urge you to check out Google's free tools and code offerings. They might save you a lot of work or expand your capabilities.
Jack
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
World Useablility Day and N@N
I thought this might interest some, I wish I'd heard about it before the actual day... They do have webcasts available, so perhaps there will also be some after the fact audio or video. Check it out. Usability is an issue for everybody.
World Usability Day 2006
I'm listening to Net@Nite and Amber mentioned ChaCha.com a search engine that has "Guides" who will do the searching for you. Amber used an example of looking for the price of a Wii, the expert pasted the link for wikipedia and told her to scroll half way down the page for the price, but they were about $259. So for those of us who might just be overwhelmed by the thousands of links, and just want some help finding results this might be the place to go. And its free! As I was checking it out, I found a way to imbed a search link here, so there it is....
FlashEarth is another cool page that I heard about while listening to Net@Nite, it offers a choice of mapping sources, zoomable, rotateable. Not to mention it'll give you your latitude and longitude, if anybody has a GPS, say.... Liveblogging Net@Nite for you :)
--MissM
World Usability Day 2006
I'm listening to Net@Nite and Amber mentioned ChaCha.com a search engine that has "Guides" who will do the searching for you. Amber used an example of looking for the price of a Wii, the expert pasted the link for wikipedia and told her to scroll half way down the page for the price, but they were about $259. So for those of us who might just be overwhelmed by the thousands of links, and just want some help finding results this might be the place to go. And its free! As I was checking it out, I found a way to imbed a search link here, so there it is....
FlashEarth is another cool page that I heard about while listening to Net@Nite, it offers a choice of mapping sources, zoomable, rotateable. Not to mention it'll give you your latitude and longitude, if anybody has a GPS, say.... Liveblogging Net@Nite for you :)
--MissM
Broadcom flaw could allow Wi-Fi hijacks
Computer users can check if they have the vulnerable driver by searching for it on their system. The driver filename is: BCMWL5.SYS. As a workaround, some people suggest installing the fixed Linksys drivers for protection.
There are times when security through obscurity is a good thing, because I find I have this driver on my laptop. I'd hate to be in a public place with it right now and would probably revert to using my USB wireless, but what a pain that is. I know I'm not the only one with this problem. Since Broadcom has released an update, we need to make sure our manufacturers pass this update on to us.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Sun releases Java under GPL licence
Since Jack isn't/wasn't feeling well (feel better soon!), I'm posting this as an inadequate substitute. (And, its a link from TheInquirer.net!)
Full article
--MissM
SUN MICROSYSTEMS will announce today that its Java language, contrary to the prediction of many pundits, will be offered as pure "Free Software" -as Richard Stallman would say "free as in freedom"- under a GPL version two licence.
Ponytailed CEO Jonathan Schwartz will announce the ground-breaking move in a webcast to be held later at 9:30am Pacific Time. Both Java SE -used on desktops - and Java ME - used on mobile phones and PDAs- will be included. The server-side Java, or Java EE will be available both under the GPL version two licence and the same Common Development and Distribution Licence (CDDL) that Sun has used until now.
Full article
--MissM
Widescreen LCD Links
I had to gloss over a lot today, especially the part about viewing DVDs on a widescreen monitor. Here is a small selection of links to compliment our discussion on today's On Computers Show and podcast:
Computer Display Standards
How LCD Monitors Work
Widescreen Gaming Forum
Monitor Calibration
Anamorphic DVDs
Computer Display Standards
How LCD Monitors Work
Widescreen Gaming Forum
Monitor Calibration
Anamorphic DVDs
Sunday, November 12, 2006
OnComputers Radio show Podcast 11-12-06
This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 11-12-06. You can listen live every Sunday from 10AM to 1PM Pacific thats 1PM to 4PM Eastern. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.
Show Links
Joe's GPS Nice!!
DailyTech - Get Ready for Black Friday
Satellite Tracking System: Orbitron
Mercury transiting the Sun: Bad Astronomer Blog
Thats roughly the first hours urls. I don't want to lose this, so I'm gonna hit publish.
--MissM
Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, is almost here!
Black Friday is just around the corner! If you're not entirely familiar with the yearly tradition, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving that draws mobs of people to wait in long lines to get good deals on just about everything -- it is also the busiest shopping day of the year. Many credit Black Friday as being the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season.
DailyTech - Get Ready for Black Friday
Satellite Tracking System: Orbitron
Mercury transiting the Sun: Bad Astronomer Blog
Thats roughly the first hours urls. I don't want to lose this, so I'm gonna hit publish.
--MissM
Friday, November 10, 2006
Microsoft to patch zero-day XML flaw | Tech News on ZDNet
"Microsoft on Tuesday plans to issue six security bulletins, including at least one with a fix for a security vulnerability that is actively being used in cyberattacks."
Thanks Earl for the update
Thanks Earl for the update
nVidia Announces Early Christmas for Gamers, Power Users
Go ahead, click on the link to nVidia's home page. You'll see the most stunning graphics ever seen from a consumer PC.
The new 8800 GTX GPU is a whopping 400+ mm, giving gamers 631 million transistors worth of DirectX 10 gaming power. The reviews are all gaga, and well they should. Now, you can play with full AA and still have frame rates to spare.
Also announced are the nForce 680i, as in 'i" for Intel, motherboards. Like the previous generation 590 mobos, nVidia has full support for SLI, elaborate as well as push-button overclocking, and a no-cost turbocharge of 20% when an nVidia graphics card (7900 and up) is married to the nForce mobo.
All of this can be yours at about $2,000 and up (way up).
I expect a (long) line for the 8800. Maybe not as long as the PlayStation 3, but long. Why? Because the 8800 has 128 stream processors that can handle vertices or pixel shading. That's how DirectX 10, out soon with Windows Vista, simplifies GPUs and ensures that massive parallelism will be the norm from here on out. One big reason to queue up for an 8800 is the fact that it's very backwards compatible with DirectX 9 games -- at higher performanc levels.
In short, a tour de (n)Force by nVidia. Buy here.
Pete
The new 8800 GTX GPU is a whopping 400+ mm, giving gamers 631 million transistors worth of DirectX 10 gaming power. The reviews are all gaga, and well they should. Now, you can play with full AA and still have frame rates to spare.
Also announced are the nForce 680i, as in 'i" for Intel, motherboards. Like the previous generation 590 mobos, nVidia has full support for SLI, elaborate as well as push-button overclocking, and a no-cost turbocharge of 20% when an nVidia graphics card (7900 and up) is married to the nForce mobo.
All of this can be yours at about $2,000 and up (way up).
I expect a (long) line for the 8800. Maybe not as long as the PlayStation 3, but long. Why? Because the 8800 has 128 stream processors that can handle vertices or pixel shading. That's how DirectX 10, out soon with Windows Vista, simplifies GPUs and ensures that massive parallelism will be the norm from here on out. One big reason to queue up for an 8800 is the fact that it's very backwards compatible with DirectX 9 games -- at higher performanc levels.
In short, a tour de (n)Force by nVidia. Buy here.
Pete
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Particletree | A Guide to Email Roundup
I thought that this had a tip or two for everybody, for dealing with email. How to make it more effective on many levels.
Particletree | A Guide to Email Roundup
[h/t Merlin Mann]
--MissM
Particletree | A Guide to Email Roundup
[h/t Merlin Mann]
--MissM
Anti-spyware anesthetises your OS before going to work
This is not the first time this idea has come up. Loads of live CDs, such as the Ultimate Boot CD do their work from an alternate operating system. In the case of the UBCD it is FreeDOS, if that makes any difference.
With rootkits becoming ever more prevalent, this is obviously the way to build a malware scanner. As the article says; booting to the other OS gives the scanner access to some parts of Windows that previously have been held out of scans. I expect this also gets one around the PatchGuard kernel protection in 64 bit Vista. In fact, this may be the only way third party scanners can assure you of the kernel's health in the presence of PatchGuard. I can imagine a halt in the Vista boot cycle for the alternate OS to boot and scan critical portions of Vista, then hand the reins back to Vista to finish booting normally.
At any rate; this is one to watch and I'm quite sure there will be other such implementations of the idea from other vendors.
Jack
With rootkits becoming ever more prevalent, this is obviously the way to build a malware scanner. As the article says; booting to the other OS gives the scanner access to some parts of Windows that previously have been held out of scans. I expect this also gets one around the PatchGuard kernel protection in 64 bit Vista. In fact, this may be the only way third party scanners can assure you of the kernel's health in the presence of PatchGuard. I can imagine a halt in the Vista boot cycle for the alternate OS to boot and scan critical portions of Vista, then hand the reins back to Vista to finish booting normally.
At any rate; this is one to watch and I'm quite sure there will be other such implementations of the idea from other vendors.
Jack
Download your Blue Screen of Death - from Microsoft
This one was just a bit too cute to ignore.
Enjoy,
Jack
Enjoy,
Jack
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Sun Set To Move On GPL License For Open-Source Java
Sun kept saying "we can't do this very fast", once they accepted the notion of opening the source code for the Java language. Obviously they were bargaining for enough time that when they finally started to take irrevocable actions, they would be perceived as moving very rapidly in relation to their own forecasts.
At any rate; Java as a FOSS product is nearly a done deal and will be official soon. Look for this to re-establish Java as a competitor to Python, .NET and the newcomer, Ruby, in the hearts and minds of developers, or at least their bosses.
In case you are wondering what is accomplished by open-sourcing Java; the move puts the languaage in a place where Sun cannot discontinue or otherwise cripple it in favor of a newer product. That is what happened with Microsoft's Visual Basic. When the .NET version came out, it was incompatible with earlier versions, as were the runtimes, forcing either re-writing code to comply with the new runtimes or sticking with the old and hoping to go on for some time without patches or hotfixes for any issues that might arise. The resentment was palpable at the time and the fact that it happened once has steered several companies I know of away from .NET completely and into the arms of open source platforms.
There are still some licensing issues to be decided, but I think they will all be worked out within a month. Perhaps even less.
Jack
At any rate; Java as a FOSS product is nearly a done deal and will be official soon. Look for this to re-establish Java as a competitor to Python, .NET and the newcomer, Ruby, in the hearts and minds of developers, or at least their bosses.
In case you are wondering what is accomplished by open-sourcing Java; the move puts the languaage in a place where Sun cannot discontinue or otherwise cripple it in favor of a newer product. That is what happened with Microsoft's Visual Basic. When the .NET version came out, it was incompatible with earlier versions, as were the runtimes, forcing either re-writing code to comply with the new runtimes or sticking with the old and hoping to go on for some time without patches or hotfixes for any issues that might arise. The resentment was palpable at the time and the fact that it happened once has steered several companies I know of away from .NET completely and into the arms of open source platforms.
There are still some licensing issues to be decided, but I think they will all be worked out within a month. Perhaps even less.
Jack
Increased spam levels connected with aggressive botnet activities
I had subjectively and objectively, using my spam statistics, noticed an increase in spam here at home. I had mentioned it to other members of the OC crew. Now I think I know what has been happening. At least this explains what it could be.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Every Vista PC to get a domain name
This is kinda neat. It is an access solution for those who are away from their home machines for long periods as well as an expansion of networking capabilities on the local network. MS calls it "Peer to Peer" networking and I was almost refreshed to see them name something descriptively, instead of trying to invent some cool catchword for it.
You won't be seeing this very soon, but you will be seeing it. It is simply too clever to ignore. Existing home and enterprise equipment has only spotty support for IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol. That will change with time and once the necessary hardware is in place.
Microsoft's detailed outlay of how it works is here.
Enjoy,
Jack
You won't be seeing this very soon, but you will be seeing it. It is simply too clever to ignore. Existing home and enterprise equipment has only spotty support for IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol. That will change with time and once the necessary hardware is in place.
Microsoft's detailed outlay of how it works is here.
Enjoy,
Jack
Microsoft Local Live goes 3D
The link above is to an early (and partial) review at The Inquirer. The real deal is here.
I have downloaded it and the insall went flawlessly. As I write this I have been fooling with it for about an hour and I am impressed with what I see and how it works. There are a few shortcomings, but all in all, this one is worthy of your attention.
Jack
I have downloaded it and the insall went flawlessly. As I write this I have been fooling with it for about an hour and I am impressed with what I see and how it works. There are a few shortcomings, but all in all, this one is worthy of your attention.
Jack
Monday, November 06, 2006
New Theme for Windows XP Download
After all these years, MS has given us a new, free theme for Windows XP. It is the Zune theme. It sports a black taskbar and an orange start button. As an unintended consequence of the orange in the color scheme, it looks great on Firefox. It is also pretty cool looking in general. Your less savvy friends may even think you are running Vista if you neglect to tell them. The Zune theme comes with a Zune themed desktop wallpaper; but if you are not a Zunester, you can easily replace it with your own pic. Download and enjoy. Thanks Microsoft.
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