Showing headlines posted by tracyanne

Windows Vista debuted to muffled applause, followed by lackluster sales. Up until June 30, cash-strapped businesses looking to avoid the cost of upgrading to new Vista-compatible hardware could still purchase trusty Windows XP. Now, however, Windows XP is available only as a costly "downgrade" from Windows Vista--if you buy a copy of Vista, you can install the 6-year-old XP operating system using the Vista license.

The second alpha for Mandriva Linux 2009 is now available. There is information about the new release in various places:

Apple, through its marketing and visual design techniques, is manufacturing an illusion that merely buying an Apple makes you part of an alternative community. But the technology they use is explicitly chosen to divide people into separate digital cells, and to position Apple as sole warden. When your business depends on people paying for the privilege of being locked up, the prison better look and feel luxurious, and the bars better not be too visible.

Not Linux, but pertinent, I think....In what appears to be either a common scenario of "when the security solution ends up the security problem itself" or a Vulnerabilities Antivirus Software 2005/2007 product launch basing its strategy on outlining the increasing number of critical vulnerabilities found in competing antivirus products.

I want to wish all you Yanks a happy 4th of July. - tracyanne

Not Linux, but relevent in light of discussions on security........ One of the cardinal rules of computer programming is to never trust your input. This holds especially true when your input comes from users, and even more so when it comes from the anonymous, general public. Apparently, the developers at Oklahomaâ??s Department of Corrections slept through that day in computer science class, and even managed to skip all of Common Sense 101. You see, not only did they trust anonymous user input on their public-facing website, but they blindly executed it and displayed whatever came back.

OK, so over the past few months I’ve grown from being a Linux skeptic into being quite a Linux fan. I’ve still got lots to learn but it’s great having the ability to roll out a no-cost OS onto systems that don’t need to have Windows on them (I understand that not everyone reading this will need Linux, but I do …). That said, there are a few aspects of Linux that do annoy/frustrate/anger me/make me hulk out* (delete as overall mood dictates), and one of these aspects is so core to an OS that I’m surprised that it hasn’t been addressed already.

The cheap device is more user friendly than others because it may be used with multiple fingers. It is even possible for multiple persons at a time to work on a single screen.

Coming back to the hype, Ubuntu lives up to it only partially (as do Ubuntu's siblings Kubuntu and Xubuntu - I won't be mentioning those explicitly anymore, just fill them in as you please). Whenever it's stated/claimed/implied that Ubuntu is finally the one Linux to take the world, take over the desktop (entice Windows users to take the plunge), where other Linux distributions have failed, I can only say: ehmm, no, not as far as I can tell.

Mandriva Linux 2009, the next version of the popular desktop Linux operating system, will be released in October this year. The first alpha release is due in less than a week's time on June 25. Some of the key issues targeted for the Mandriva Linux 2009 release include improved boot times, automatic removal of 'orphaned' packages and the integration of PackageKit and PolicyKit.

After Hillary Clinton spoke last night I listened closely for what the loudspeakers would play. It was Tom Petty’s hit “I Won’t Back Down.” (UPDATE: Clinton did back down Wednesday, with the official announcement now expected in two stages Friday and Saturday. OOXML opponents, meanwhile, fight on.)

[I love the spin this headline gives to the subject. - tracyanne]

Jeff Yan and Ahmad Salah El Ahmad, at the School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, England recently published a research paper entitled “A Low-cost Attack on a Microsoft CAPTCHA“, demonstrating how they’ve managed to attack the Microsoft’s CAPTCHA used on several of their online services such as Hotmail and Windows Live, with over 92% recognition rate. Here’s a summary of the research :

Some quick background: Researcher Nitesh Dhanjani responsibly reports to Apple than it is possible for a malicious Web site to litter the user’s (Windows) Desktop or Downloads directory (~/Downloads/ in OSX) with executables masquerading as legitimate icons.

Hello to all, my name is jeinner campos, i am from Managua, Nicaragua, i am new at the linux world but i use Mandriva, why? JUST BECAUSE IS THE BEST DISTRO I HAVE TRIED!!! Now, in my country, there are linux groups, SUSE, UBUNTU, FEDORA, DEBIAN and when i went to an install fest, i didnt see any MANDRIVA TEAM... so i say... I GOTTA DO SOMETHING. I got in contact with the linux comunity in my country and i started a project, of a mandriva group. now we have the Mandriva Nicaragua website.

Microsoft has begun privately beta testing a new tool, known as “Windows Advisor,” which is aimed at helping consumers better pinpoint why their Windows machines might not be up to snuff.

Irony at its best. It appears that Redmond - The Independent Voice of the Microsoft IT Community, formerly known as Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine is currently flagged as a badware site, and third-party exploit detection tools are also detecting internal pages as exploit hosting ones, in this particular case Mal/Badsrc-A. What is Mal/Badsrc-A? Mal/Badsrc-A is a malicious web page also known as HTML.XORER, that has been compromised to load a script from a malicious website.

Microsoft has claimed user "complacency" is to blame for malware infections, and denied that its Vista operating system is less secure than Windows 2000.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that if you pay for hardware, you should be able to make full use of it. However, DRM and content protection mechanisms are increasingly making this difficult for people.

According to good friend Robert McMillan of IDG News, Sebastian Muniz, a researcher with Core Security Technologies, has developed malicious rootkit software for Cisco’s routers, which he will release on May 22 at the EuSecWest conference in London.

Updated: Billionaire investor Carl Icahn announced an alternate board of directors for Yahoo in a move that could revive a Microsoft bid. Will Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer bite?