Robby Pedrica's Tech Blog

Category: Computer Tech

  • Online mail services, security and your identity

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    A number of high profile on-line mail services were hit with a phishing scheme which resulted in the posting on-line of thousands of account details over the weekend. Hotmail seems to have been hit the hardest but both GMail and Yahoo were also targetted. There are 2 serious issues here: many people are still using…

  • The new Browser Ballot Screen for EU Windows

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    This is the latest iteration of the browser for any Windows PCs sold into the EU in the next 5 years.

  • Patents – Eolas strikes again

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    Microsoft fought a patent battle with Eolas for many years, with a number of twists and turns that made Days of our Lives look like a beginner soapy. Eolas originally sued Microsoft for infringement based on their patent ‘906 in 1998, which describes a method for 3rd party browser plugins to run various forms of…

  • Windows and critical systems

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    I’ve blogged previously about using Windows in critical systems ( Win2k in French air-force fighters and British attack submarines ) and my disregard for this platform in these kinds of applications. Honestly, would you really want a Windows machine running your life-support system when in hospital? or the device that decides whether or not a…

  • Tweetdeck on Slackware64 13.0

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    I recently came across this application ( thanks Nic ) so only natural that I try it out ( especially as I have an issue with the plasma twitter widget in KDE 4.2.4 ). Couple of issues though: requires Adobe AIR only 32-bit packaged only for deb and rpm I did some searching and with…

  • Microsoft and its GPL Hyper-V drivers

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    Considering the lack of general attention this has received in the media, Nick asked me to blog on this topic and set a time-line. So here goes: Microsoft first announced they were releasing the Hyper-V drivers as GPL code on the 20th of July 2009. Note this is an announcement and not the actual release.…

  • The SMB2.0 zero-day vuln

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    The SMB 2.0 vulnerability that was found earlier this month, is set to be covered with a patch soon according to Microsoft. Next Patch-Tuesday is only on Oct 13 so one would hope that it comes before. Especially as there is exploit code out in the wild now, with Stephen Frewer of Harmony Security adding…

  • Bind and Nominum

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    I thought yesterday’s article ( well it actually reads like an advertorial ) on ZDNet UK regarding Bind and Niminum’s new Skye offering, was a joke. Then I realised that no, it wasn’t. But why would the ZDNet author, Toby Wolpe, start with such an inflammatory header? Is he actually looking to be flamed and…

  • Virtualisation part 1: OS

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    I had an interesting question from a business colleague of mine today – please spell out what types of virtualisation are available. It’s good to know that, even though it’s fairly pervasive these days, people can still inquire as to what is the reality. Because running virtualisation for production loads can have a big effect…

  • Panda threats of the last 20 years

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    Panda has just released a study of the most severe threats over the last 20 years. This makes for interesting reading and brings back some memories;  however, the most interesting thing about this article ( and other articles on the same topic ) is that nowhere is it mentioned that these are all Microsoft-platform viruses.…

  • The Slackware 13.0 Interview

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    It’s been a while since my last ‘Interview’ with Slackware and we’ve just had the new 13.0 release ( 26th August ), so time to brush up on Slackware as one of the premier distributions in the Linux landscape. I wasn’t quite sure where to start with this article as all the goodness of previous…

  • Thunderbird 3 update

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    Thunderbird 3 is currently at b3 and even so is still in quite a state of flux if you read the development notes. There are a lot of changes from TB2 and quite a few differences in usage as well which may catch some out. This is a short article to mention some of these…

  • Microsoft, Word and the evil patent

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    Microsoft has been recently sued by i4i ( a Canadian developer of sgml software ) for patent infringement, specifically on a custom XML feature in Word. The damages so far amount to $290m which is a considerable amount. That though is not the big problem for Microsoft: the suit includes an injunction against Microsoft selling…

  • Windows botnets take down most of the major social web services

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    Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal and some other social web services were completely taken off the air this Thursday past by a massive DDoS attack aimed, wait for it, at one person – a pro-Georgian blogger called Cyxymu. This user is an activist blogger and someone doesn’t like him! So hoards of virus-infested Windows machines ( about…

  • Corrupted Intel SSDs?

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    Intel has indicated that there is the possibility of corruption on X25m and X18m SSD units related to setting a drive BIOS password. The problem is triggered if a user has set a password, changes or removes the password and then reboots the host computer. Shipments of these SSDs have been suspended however here in…