Slashdot Mirror

My Feeds: Select: All 95 subscriptions, None, Unassigned A to Z Kids Stuff children http://www.atozkidsstuff.com/atoz.xml ABC News: Top Stories news http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/fp_rss20.xml About Computing Center technology http://z.about.com/6/g/pcworld/b/rss2.xml About.com Archaeology Archaeology http://z.about.com/6/g/archaeology/b/rss2.xml All Things Digital technology http://feeds.allthingsd.com/atd-feed/ Archaeology News Archaeology news http://www.topix.net/rss/science/archaeology.xml Ars Technica tech news http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/BAaf ArsTechnica: Security Content Security technology http://feeds.feedburner.com/arstechnica/security BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition U.K. http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss.xml BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition Science/Nature http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/science/nature/rss.xml Boing Boing odd http://feeds.boingboing.net/boingboing/iBag Breaking News: CBSNews.com news http://www.cbsnews.com/feeds/rss/main.rss Breitbart.tv varied news topics http://www.breitbart.com/xml/recentvideo.xml ChannelWeb Complete Feed Computer news http://www.crn.com/cwb/globalcontent/cweball/index.xml;jsessionid=L0I1HBDQISHBCQSNDLQSKH0CJUNN2JVN Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories news http://www.csmonitor.com/rss/top.rss CNN.com - Offbeat odd http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_offbeat.rss CNN.com - Politics politics http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_allpolitics.rss CNN.com - U.S. U.S. news http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_us.rss Computerworld Breaking News technology http://feeds.computerworld.com/Computerworld/News Cool Tools technology http://feeds.feedburner.com/CoolTools Courant.com - Connecticut News Ct. news http://feeds.courant.com/Courant/ConnecticutNews Defense Tech U.S. defense news http://www.defensetech.org/index.rdf Discovery News - Technology technology http://dsc.discovery.com/news/subjects/technology/xdb/topstories.xml Drudge Report news http://feeds.feedburner.com/FeedPalooza/lwDu Dvorak Uncensored news http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?feed=rss2 Engadget robots & gadgets http://www.engadget.com/rss.xml Extremetech technology http://rssnewsapps.ziffdavis.com/extreme.xml Fark.com news http://www.pluck.com/rss/fark.rss FileForum software http://fileforum.b

And, as soon as you look deeper in the site structure you find better passwords, like:

                ftp://ftp.g.ziffdavis.com/2pu8r/overture.xml

(And a host of others...)

Microsoft wants gamers to abandon the PC as a gaming platform and go to the 360.

You might want to let them know.

Unfortunately, AVG came across rather poorly in the recent WMF exploits.

It is true, as F-Secure says, that all versions of Windows back to 3.0 have the vulnerability in GDI32. But most versions of Windows are not quite as vulnerable as they appear.

It has to do with whether the version comes by default with a program that can be exploited or not, and apparently this includes Windows ME.

If that's the case, they chose a dumb place to put it, because the exploit doesn't even work on Windows 2000 and below without some program installed to handle WMF files. From Larry Seltzer's blog (linked from F-Secure):

http://blog.ziffdavis.com/seltzer/archive/2006/01/ 03/39684.aspx

Except for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, no Windows versions, in their default configuration, have a default association for WMF files, and none of their Paint programs or any other standard programs installed with them can read WMF files. One ironic point to conclude is that not until their most recent operating system versions did Microsoft include a default handler - the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer - for what has been, for years, an obsolete file format. And now it comes back to bite them.

That means that unless Microsoft used some OTHER backdoor to install a handler for it, this backdoor is useless. I suspect this is merely an oversight on their part, and that it just ends up looking bad when you view it from the outside. The only way to know is to see the source code and well, we know how likely that is.

A real backdoor would be something remotely exploitable via the network, as opposed to hiding inside a file or something like that.

here is an example.

Let me add to that. I keep track at the following sites:

http://rssnewsapps.ziffdavis.com/tech.xml

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin /secrss.aspx

http://www.mozilla.org/news.rdf

http://feeds.dshield.org/news.xml

http://www.sans.org/newsletters/newsbites/rss/

http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/infofeed/tenalerts .xml

You can get the OPML of my feed list at http://www.shokk.com/opml.opml

"you hereby grant transfer and assign to zdh and its successors assigns and licensees collectively licensee a fully paid royalty free irrevocable perpetual worldwide right and license to publish distribute reproduce transmit use translate display perform modify revise create derivative works of and archive the material in any form or media now known or hereafter developed including without limitation in print magnetic or electronic form on any number of occasions in any form and to sublicense third parties to do any of the foregoing with further right of sublicense the license without compensation to you"

In point of fact, I've written a couple of essays that discuss my work with Nick over the years -- it's hardly a fact I've tried to conceal.

Quite the contrary: I'm proud to "disclose" this relationship. I wish that at age 19, I'd had half Nick's savvy, and I'm confident he'll do great things with his career.

And FTR (in the interest of disclosure), I'm not involved in this suit in any way, shape or form, although I stand ready to testify to Nick's methods and accuracy.

m.

I've found that I'm not the only one that has noticed this... bug?.

We had a similar problem on our ziffdavis.com blogs (like my security blog) and we think we have solved it with with one of those graphic field challenges to the user (enter the value in the nearby graphic).

You may want to correct the title, as PSM (Playstation Magazine) is something completely different than OPM, the Official Playstation Magazine.

Improving Your Odds for Positive Press Coverage

Getting your messages in front of the right audiences requires an integrated approach, blending a range of marketing communications vehicles. So, how do you improve your chances for media coverage that puts your company or product in a positive light? Mary Jo Foley, editor of Microsoft Watch, offers the following advice for those who want press coverage for their products and services.

Glad to see that Ziff-Davis Media's legal department is as incompetent as its writers.

From the same company that brought you PC Magazine and Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine comes this next bit of inanity.

I'm actually surprised the company has lasted this long - the entire corporation seems to exist in a no-competence zone. Ziff Davis shines as a beacon of light to the incompetent organizations of this world, for it proves to the mediocre masses of corporations that talent, skill, and hard work aren't required to succeed in the world of business.

Oh yes - http://www.ziffdavis.com/press/inthenews is pretty much a page full of links to articles on websites that are in the same huge-ass media conglomarate that Ziff Davis is a member of - many of which link to other sites on the internet that AREN'T on their websites.

Durr...

Link link link to the wrong company!!!!

You want..

http://www.ziffdavis.com/

(I think, although this whole story could be made up, for all we know)

I liked that one and I think the Fool's analysis will be shown to be correct when the next quarterlies arrive. Most of the shorts will have left and only the most desperate holders will remain.

What a shame too. Here's an article I thought was remarkably sad when you consider "what could have been" in SCO's waning years.

So, why are they so happy with McBride?

.....

No, they like him--and SCO's people--because he gave them back the brand name, SCO, that they had learned to sell. It's because he's investing in the channel and in upgrading OpenServer, and to a far lesser extent upgrading UnixWare, never very popular with the channel.

.....

And there you have the real key to SCO's continued partner success: SCO knows how to talk and listen to its partners. It delivers updates to its operating system. The company works hard to get the hardware and software support for its operating systems without which SCO's partners can't do business.

Doing all that is right for your channel partners is what keeps you from going under without a peep. Darl could have coasted the company through tough times with a combination of cutting costs to the bone, keeping the channels happy, and looking for a market niche that kept the revenue flowing until better times could be had.

Instead he is destroying a venerable UNIX product line in a Quixotic quest to extort money from IBM and the Linux community.

The worst part is that, as the Motley Fool article you posted points out, the channel partners will eventually get screwed by Darl's tactics. Do the channel partners like the lawsuit?

Yes, Unix on Intel's market share is shrinking. Trust me, these guys know that. Yes, all of the uproar over SCO's Linux lawsuits is making their job a lot harder.

Indeed, when you get a partner in a bar, you'll find that many of them don't like SCO's Linux litigation one bit. For the most part, they just want that to go away.

So there you have it. Not even their partners think this is the best course of action for SCO. But sticking to the business of serving your users and channel partners isn't going to make Darl a multi-millionaire.

Only the Pump-and-Dump will achieve that goal.

Mainstream? Like Forbes, BusinessWeek , Ziff-Davis (and here and here too), CBS News, USA Today, and most have heard of PC Magazine, plus a lot of papers like The Houston Chronicle, The Detroit News, the Syracuse Post-Standard, The Baltimore Sun, and the St. Louis Post-Standard. I have all those links plus others in a list I just send to people. I keep adding to it as I find more. Usually gets the message across that I'm not making stuff up.

How ironic... this gets posted just as finished reading Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols article on dumping IE after seeing a link to it on NewsForge.

The original report was a hoax.

Even the guy who reported it has admitted it and Linksys issued a statement.

The JDS is their Linux desktop system.

Not for long.

Sun has hinted more than once that they'd like JDS to be based on Solaris x86. I would expect at some point that they'll either start pushing a Solaris-based JDS, or even worse, "seamlessly upgrade" Linux-based JDS to Solaris-based JDS and load up a Linux binary compatibility layer to run those "legacy" apps.

Linux is a nuisance to Sun. It's really a shame, because Sun has done (or acquired and re-released) some great things: NFS, Java, OpenOffice... but they're so stuck on Solaris that they just can't handle the fact that it's all about Linux now. IBM "gets it" -- they do AIX when customers ask for it, Linux when customers ask for that, but they're pushing for unified Linux everywhere. But anyone who's experienced IBM's distribution of the GNU toolset on AIX knows that Sun absolutely kicks IBM's butt in terms of integration of the tools into a legacy Unix OS.

Anyway, I'd wager that Sun is going to continue to be schizophrenic about Linux until the board wises up and cans McNealy.

Ask the author himself.

-B

A few months back, I was one of the lucky ones. I updated my PC and found out all my network functionality quit. Oh joy, oh joy. This update caused me several hours of anger.

The truth of it is, we must choose the lesser of two evils.
a) Update the box possibly letting terrors in.
b) Don't update the box possibly letting terrors in.

A catch 22, eh?

I read the article; it said "Embedded in the module is an embedded eCos embedded Linux kernel" -- but it's quite likely that author Mark Hachman doesn't understand this discrepancy. Sure fooled me. If you're concerned about the misattribution, he's probably the person to contact about it -- again, that's Mark Hachman, Mark_Hachman@ziffdavis.com.

I read the article; it said "Embedded in the module is an embedded eCos embedded Linux kernel" -- but it's quite likely that author Mark Hachman doesn't understand this discrepancy. Sure fooled me. If you're concerned about the misattribution, he's probably the person to contact about it -- again, that's Mark Hachman, Mark_Hachman@ziffdavis.com.

Oh, and merry christmas.

- tokengeekgrrl