Mandriva One 2006

May 16th, 2006

I saw earlier today that Distrowatch was reporting that Mandriva One 2006 had been released and pushed to the ftp mirrors . It appears as though Mandriva One 2006 is a combination Live/Install cd based on (of course) Mandriva Linux. It looks as though it may only be available for download by Club members. There are 4 versions based on different languages….

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Open Source Java and Linux distros redistributing java

May 16th, 2006

For years, the call has been to open source Java…. it appears that day is, well… coming. Not at hand yet, but for startersJava can now be bundled with Linux distributions…. and is looking for advice on how to get from where they are to open source Java. So it sounds like they’re enlisting advice from developers on this and the day will at least be coming that Java will be open source.

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Yahoo home page overhaul

May 16th, 2006

Well, overhaul might be a bit extreme…. but Yahoo’s home page has got a facelift of sorts with some Web 2.0 goodness and customizability. It does look nice and has been getting noticed. Good reviews of the new look have tagged it everything from a minor change to a major re-design.

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RealVNC 4.1.2 update to patch security vulnerability

May 16th, 2006

A few hours back, I updated My first post on the RealVNC 4.1.1 vulnerability and just saw another story that did not specify WHICH variation of VNC was at risk. TightVNC and UltraVNC seem to be immune according to the discoverer of the flaw. And as far as I’ve seen, there hasn’t been any contradiction of that.

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The Google Problem Part 2

May 16th, 2006

If you know me…. you know I have a HARD time putting down a problem that’s unsolved. Even if it’s a problem that really doesn’t have a solution (in my control at least)… I have a tendency to look and analyze, turn it over and try and find out as much as I can about it. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to being able to find solutions to problems, or at least workarounds by gathering enough information… Anyway, after saying I was tired of trying to figure out why google doesn’t like a site and tired of trying to fix things “for google”….. well, I’ve spent more time “investigating”… or should I say “wasted” more time… I’m not sure which, but I did discover a couple interesting things.

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Google Notebook debuts

May 16th, 2006

Late last night there were discoveries of the login page for Google Notebook, then came the Official Googleblog announcement of Google Notebook and of course news of the launch spread like wildfire (along with a direct link there to the plugin download. Yes, Google Notebook is finally reality. I haven’t had a chance to test yet, but I did log in and download the extension for Firefox (I haven’t had a chance to close out and restart firefox yet, too much going on…)

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Google Calendar revisited

May 15th, 2006

When Google Calendar first rolled out, I took a look and was not overwhelmed. Now, I’ve had a chance to revisit and see a few improvements. First, one of my initial problems was that I couldn’t get to calendar from gmail. The code has now been added in the upper left corner to navigate between the two (or the google homepage, or their “other services”). This was missing when I first looked. I distinctly remember seeing it in one of the testing screenshots. Even immediately after I had started out with the Calendar, the link was still not there. I’m not sure when, but it’s there now. Good.

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Warner Bros and 180solutions….

May 15th, 2006

I think somewhere along the line, Warner Bros missed the memo that 180solutions is not a brand that many people would jump to associate with. Apparently 180Solutions has started making two Warner Bros shows (a soap opera and animated series) available for download on some of their sites including zango. Of course, the episodes come with bundled adware downloads which, I’m sure, “enhance your web browsing experience” by popping up relevant ad windows on your desktop.

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Exploit Prevention in software

May 15th, 2006

There’s been a lot of talk about hardware enforced DEP as a mitigating factor in some of the exploits in the last six months. There’s also a new software product that can limit the impact of zero-day exploits. The software is for windows and is called SocketShield. Suzi at Spyware Confidential has taken it for a testdrive on an unpatched XP system through some nasty exploit sites….

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Would you trust antispyware that installed adware?

May 15th, 2006

There are a couple stories on spywarecleaner’s recent practice of bundling whenu with the free version of their “antispyware scanner”. According to spyware confidential, SpywareCleaner made the rogue antispyware products list and was delisted after they corrected some “issues”. Now, they’ve been relisted due to the adware bundling of WhenU Save.

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