Very first :-) on the Internet

Ever wondered where the first :-) came from? Well now you do. Microsoft research has been nice enough to post the dialog.

"The contents of the "joke" thread on the CMU CS general bboard that led to Scott Fahlman's invention of the smiley are below. This was retrieved from the spice vax oct-82 backup tape by Jeff Baird"

Page 2 of Internet history

--MissM

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SANS - ISC Possible issue with MS05-050 Patch

"If you have manually downloaded and installed the patch for MS05-050, you may want to check again to make sure you have the correct patch. Microsoft has recently released a Knowledge Base article on "The computer may not be updated after you install the "Security Update for DirectX 7.0 for Windows 2000 (KB904706)" on a Windows 2000-based computer that is running DirectX 8 or DirectX 9".

According to the Microsoft, this only applies to:
• You are running Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft DirectX 8.0 or DirectX 9.0 is installed on the computer

This is likely due to the incorrect patch that you have manually downloaded and installed. If you have installed using Microsoft Windows Update website, you should be protected and free from this problem.

To check whether your system is correctly updated, you can verify the version number of Quartz.dll. The steps are detailed in Microsoft KB article 909596."

Also they post info on Exploit Code for MS05-47, I've got all my updates, finally, though they arrived in bunches. Are you all patched??

--MissM

Happy Birthday Email!

Official Google Blog:"It's difficult to pin down the exact origin of email, but in October 1971, an engineer named Ray Tomlinson chose the '@' symbol for email addresses and wrote software to send the first network email."

--MissM

Wired News: Creating the Global Hot Spot

"Telecom giant Inmarsat is weeks away from launching the second in a series of two super-satellites -- designed to be among the most powerful commercial communications spacecraft in orbit -- that will beam broadband data and voice services to almost any location on the planet." Can you beam me Up Now!
Joe

Dude, they gave me a password

Got a login password yesterday, while I was trying to have my lunch! lol. It's only to use the computer locally. To log into the main server, I have to wait until I get trained. (smirk) lol. Looks like I have a P4 2.8 gig. 512 Meg memory, Intel onboard video. 8 mem shared for video. Also got office 2003.
Computer is online and in the right domain. The fun part comes when I can login to the server! Update after I get my "training". ;-).

OpenOffice celebrates turning 2.0 | Tech News on ZDNet

"Programmers released version 2 of OpenOffice.org on Thursday, a major overhaul to an open-source software suite that has recently become a more serious rival to Microsoft Office. "

Guest for this Sunday on the show

This Friday we will be prerecording an interview for the show with Bob Umlas the author and MVP, If you have any questions for this guest please send them to me at Joe@AlaskaJoe.com

Professionals who use Microsoft® Excel know the value of the widely-used spread sheet program around the world. However, they may not know the 85 tips and tricks discovered by Excel guru and author Bob Umlas, now published in THIS ISN’T EXCEL, IT’S MAGIC!.
Bob Umlas will be a guest on On Computers to discuss this tips and tricks of Excel. He was a contributing editor to INSIDE MICROSOFT EXCEL and has written over 300 articles on all aspects of the program. For 10 years he co-led New York City’s PC Excel Special Interest Group and has authored several chapters in various Excel books on "tips and tricks" and array-formulas.

THIS ISN’T EXCEL, IT’S MAGIC! is capturing world-wide attention, with daily sales coming in from all over the globe and reviews from a variety of readers. It is a handy and portable book, full of easy-to-understand graphics and chock full of tips and tricks for getting the most out of Excel.

Security Now! Now featuring episode #9

Superb Podcast on rootkits, with Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson, "la creme de la creme," of explaining technical subjects . They pick one topic a week and talk for about 30 minutes or so, and thoroughly explain the topic. Its a great thing to see two such professionals cooperate on such a desperately uncovered topic, security.

My interest in rootkits was motivated by a post at Sunbelt Blog. This rootkit detector /fixer found a couple suspicious entries, but couldn't fix them. Therefore I need to find out more info, and poof! Leo and Steve do a podcast on rootkits (insert twilight zone theme here (yes, I tried to find the blasted thing, and couldn't)). In addition to the rootkit detector above, Steve Gibson mentioned that sysinternals has one too, I am not going to post the url here, cause anybody who's not afraid to break their computer, can find it :)

I was typing this as I listened to the podcast, Steve says MS is going to, if not already, going to check for rootkits, so this vulnerability is getting more and more attention paid to it, Bravo!

All the posts at sunbelt blog are interesting, its one of the blogs that I subscribe to, in my rss aggregator.

Back to my rootkit research....

--MissM

Why Software Sucks (and what to do about it)

Scott Berkun is a thoughtful essayist and once you've read the one I've linked to above you might want to look at the others he has on his site. He has a knack of simplifying things without dumbing them down.

Starting with the premise that no one sets out to create bad software, Scott explores why they often do. It's interesting to view programming from his point of view and I recommend you take this one in.

Jack

Dude update 3

The link is what dell they gave me. You'll need java to see it. It's a DELL Optiplex GX280 in a small Desktop case. Peter, saw your comment. TY I'll check it out as soon as they give me my password for the thing. :-).

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 10-16-05

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 10-16-2005. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.

Phishing fight may be paying off | CNET News.com

"The number of phishing sites on the Web hit a record high in August, but coordinators in the fight against the prevalent Web scams say they have made some progress. "

Gates to students: Microsoft wants you | CNET News.com

"WASHINGTON--Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday preached the 'magic of software' to a packed ballroom at Howard University here and said it's up to today's generation of college students to drive innovation in the future. "

Free Software from PC Magazine

AMD is on a Serious Roll

With server market share north of 20% and climbing -- up from about nothing a couple years ago, AMD must be pleased to garner more than half of U.S. retail PC sales in the just-ended back-to-school period. With a new fab open in Dresden, Germany, the company has a 50 million microprocessor capacity ramping to 100 million chips a year. Once pooh-poohed as a manufacturing laggard, AMD has been pounding Intel on many fronths for a year now. The results are beginning to tell.

Apple's iPod Nano: Staggering Demand Meets Supply Reality

If Apple can get past the NOR memory supply problem -- they bought 40% of Samsung's global capacity, then I think Apple will sell over 5 million of the Nano iPods a year.

Windows Vulnerabilities Just Keep Cropping Up

The bad guys now pounce on the code for fixing vulnerabilities, decompile it, and build worms to take advantage of the problem. I conclude on the continuing evidence that Windows is a problem that will not be fixed.

Why all the Interest in AOL?

Road kill a year ago, AOL is now meat in the eyes of investment bankers. Who was smart enough to buy the stock in 2004?

Find the Black Helicopters

The satellite data at Google Earth is so good that it is a cause for contests. The recent interesting one is "find the black helicopters" around the globe. Stunning results.

Any suggestions for our own contest?