- This week's sign of the Apocalypse, with apologies to Sports Illustrated (the print edition): The BBC reported Friday that the Internet Explorer vulnerability to JPG files has finally been exploited, in a particularly predictable manner: infected images were posted to an indiscrete (we use that word so this newsletter will get by all the censoring software) newsgroup last week. Though technically not a virus (because it doesn't replicate), Symantec and other antivirus companies say it's only a matter of time. Also predictably, the pictures are already beginning to be reported by AOL users. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
- Firefox: Mozilla.org has released version 1.0 of its Firefox browser. The Windows version that's available for download is all of 4.5 mb (that alone makes it worth using), and one has to appreciate the sense of humor the Mozilla folks used on the home page when introducing it: one of the websites they display as a sample is that of theonion.com, which should be on everyone's must-read list.
- Speaking of browsers: If you're frustrated because a certain prominent browser, manufactured by a company occasionally accused of being intent on world domination, isn't necessarily compliant with some style sheet behaviors, while creating behaviors that aren't available with other browsers, a solution might be in the works. Dean Edwards is working on a patch, but it's in the alpha stage, so you use it at your own risk. Still, it's a step.
- Registration: John C. Dvorak, the columnist for PC Magazine (and just about everyone else at one point or another), wrote an article about why news sites require registration, just to read articles. It's not news; the newspaper sites have been wringing their hands for years about the subject. Dvorak's article misses the point on several fronts. First, if you can get the news on a website for free, why would anyone buy the newspaper? Second, he doesn't recognize that newspapers, like so many other sites, want to track the stories a user looks at in order to feed them advertising that's "relevant". Third, and this might be the kicker, is that like the telegraph, the newspaper business is an industry that is structurally inappropriate to a world in which the technology has begun to make it irrelevant; it's a matter of time before the old business models collapse under their own weight, but the costs of changing models is perceived to be too expensive, so the industry tries to shove its round product into a square hole.
- Speaking of the Media: The Media Center at the American Press Institute held a webcast today on the impact of "participatory media" on the 2004 elections in the US.
- Also unemployed: PeopleSoft's board of directors fired CEO Craig Conway and the European Union won't fight Oracle in its hostile bid to take over the company, but Oracle founder Larry Ellison, for whom Conway once worked, won't get the pleasure of firing Conway himself.
- Cyberboss quits: NetworkFusion reported Friday that Amit Yoran resigned from his post as the head of the US Homeland Security department's cybersecurity efforts. Yoran, a former Symantec executive, quit unexpectedly, blaming "political hand-wringing", but later said that he and Homeland Security boss Tom Rich had an agreement that Yoran would hold the job for only a year. Still, interviews with Yoran indicate frustration with the "competing political agendas" at work in the development and implementation of Internet security policy.
- RealPlayer vulnerability: The digital security website eEye released an advisory Friday that says that a wide range of RealPlayer media players have security flaws that not only affect computers with Microsoft operating systems, but those with Linux and Macintosh operating systems as well. According to eEye, the "vulnerability allows a remote attacker to reliably overwrite heap memory with arbitrary data and execute arbitrary code in the context of the user who executed the player." A patch is expected in a couple of weeks.
- Sun rises: Sun Microsystems has rolled out a new version of Java, the most significant upgrade in a decade.
Still open: Speech API select voice under a service
"I have a program that has no visible user interface, as it runs as a service. It does talk Using SPVOICE. I would like to have it speak with a certain voice, but it always selects the default voice. Since there is no user, it can't select the default voice for the user, as there is no user. So, where does it get the voice it selects?"
Points: 500 Sep 29 2004 04:00PM PDT
A very good question for beginners in C#. This one explains the idea of abstract classes and interfaces with some real world examples.
Points: 125 Jan 9, 2004 02:24AM PST
View the solutionArticle: C# Generics
"The single most anticipated (and dreaded?) feature of Visual C# 2.0 is the addition of Generics. This article will show you what problems generics solve, how to use them to improve your code, and why you need not fear them."
TheLearnedOne has over 15 years experience as a VisualBasic programmer, has worked with Access, FoxPro, MS SQL and Oracle, administers both Windows and Novell networks, works with communications electronics, and in his spare time, kicks butt doing Cleanup at EE. He's also a heck of a nice guy.
Registration Date: Aug 23, 1999
Expert Points: 669244
Certificates: Wizard, DotNET; Guru, VB.NET
gregoryyoung, the Page Editor for the C# topic area, is a software architect and football fan. Over the last 8 years he's worked in various fields including pari-mutual wagering, drug/law enforcement, point of sale systems, and satellite imagery. Experience includes many languages in Windows, *nix, VMS, and various embedded environments.
Registration Date: April 7, 2004
Expert Points: 1101111 (how's that for you binary fans?)
Certificates: Wizard, C#, VB.NET; Guru, DotNET
- The number of resources available to users on both sites will increase
- Site relevance is increased within all major search engines when a site provides links to and from quality resources
I spent some time a week or so ago helping out a friend
with her email. She uses Outlook Express, and was complaining about how long it was
taking for things to load -- not that she has the fastest system in the world to
begin with. It turned out that she had never emptied her "Deleted Items" folder, so
she had something like 18,000 messages in there. The easiest way (my other half
showed me this) is to go to Tools/Options from the menu, then to the tab that says
"Maintenance", and check the box that says "Empty messages from the Deleted Items
folder on exit". You can also select the folder, right-click, and then select
"Empty Deleted Items folder".
I was browsing around the other day and found BreakTheChain.org, which suggests that people stop sending out those heartfelt emails and scams that get forwarded to all of us. It's not quite as interesting as snopes.com, but it has a really good list of all of the junk mail. While we're on the subject of junk, two more financial institutions you can add to the list of those that are being phished: SunTrust and Wells Fargo. Don't respond to them, don't click any links, and if you're really worried about your accounts, pick up the telephone and call your branch.
We've all seen the stories about companies hiring hackers to help them beef up the security of their networks. I've always thought that was a lot like having a fox guard the henhouse, but who am I to argue with the CEO of HugeBank, Inc.? But maybe karma is coming back to haunt these guys, because a story at Newsfactor.com says that there were no takers when the authors of the MyDoom virus went job-hunting. I have a job for them; it involves shovels and wastewater treatment plants.
Major kudos go out to ameba (see his section below), who got mentioned, along with Experts Exchange, in an article at Gadgetopia.
| Expert | Certified | in Topic Area |
|---|---|---|
| SidFishes Nestorio cwolves Thogek Colosseo miron MartinCMS sudhakar_koundinya leew rstaveley avizit Fatal_Exception astaec ikm7176 BNettles73 rhandels Yan_west PeteLong geotiger grim_toaster earthman2 DrJekyll | Wizard Guru Master Master Master Guru Master Guru Master Guru Master Sage Master Wizard Guru Guru Master Master Master Master Master Master | MS Access MS Access JavaScript JavaScript JavaScript Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Java Windows 2000 C++ C++ Windows XP Windows XP Exchange_Server Exchange_Server Exchange_Server Exchange_Server Exchange_Server Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle |
| Expert | Certified | in Topic Area |
|---|---|---|
| jaime_olivares pseudocyber scampgb zorvek eternal_21 drichards Vahik avidya duz hart techtonik snoyes_jw sunnycoder blue-genie AerosSaga mmarinov raterus crissand infotrader peter57r PeteLong ColinRoyds | Guru Guru Master Master Guru Master Master Master Master Guru Master Master Guru Guru Wizard Wizard Guru Master Master Master Master Master | MFC Networking Networking Excel C# C# Outlook Web Development Web Development ColdFusion PHP PHP Programming Flash ASP.NET ASP.NET ASP.NET Microsoft Network Microsoft Network Databases Win Server 2003 Win Server 2003 |
| Expert | Certified | in Topic Area |
|---|---|---|
| SunBow EDDYKT RonaldBiemans TheLearnedOne nazirahmed Cyber-Dude jlevie TimYates angelIII For-Soft LucF AlanJDM CaptainCyril yuzh lrmoore RanjeetRain humeniuk alpmoon jlevie rama_krishna580 | Master Master Wizard Guru Guru Master Sage Guru Master Master Master Master Guru Master Wizard Master Master Master Master Master | Operating Systems VB Controls VB.NET VB.NET WinNT Net. Storage Linux JSP Mysql MS-DOS Miscellaneous PHP and Databases FoxPro Apache Firewalls Email Hosting Sybase Unix Net. Web Servers |
It you happen to be one of the people who has had his computer hijacked by malware, you've probably seen the suggestion that you download HijackThis and then post the log.
The log itself can be a fairly intimidating file, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. So rather than clutter up your question with a bunch of information that isn't relevant to your problem, you should post the lot as a text file at one of the free web-space services (angelfire and geocities are examples). You can also run it through a Hijack This analyzer and post the results in your question.
If you do post your entire log file, the Page Editors and Moderators, after you've closed your question, will probably remove all of the irrelevant information from it.
