Patch Tuesday Coming up

By DustinPosted on

This coming up Tuesday, Microsoft is releasing some patches to fix vulnerabilities in Windows and Office. Make sure you get those machines patched, as there are several viruses in the wild taking advantage of these holes.

Proof-of-concept code has been published on the Internet that exploits that vulnerability, which affects older Windows systems running Internet Explorer. Microsoft suggested several workarounds until it releases a patch, including avoiding pressing the F1 key when prompted by a Web site.

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Replacement for Paint?

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft Paint has been the basic image editor built into Windows since, well, for a long time. It has had a few minor updates, but has never really been a usable program other than simple stick figures or shapes. Now, Microsoft is working on Project Gustav, an image painting program that mimics a paint brush and canvas. I think it looks amazing!

Typically the experience of painting on a computer is nothing like painting in the real world. Real painting is actually a very complex phenomenon

Not Enough Choice?

By DustinPosted on

Wow. Most of you recall that Microsoft caved into the EU’s demands to add a browser alternative selection on Windows, so they aren’t “forced” to use Internet Explorer as a default browser. This guy, Mr. Quick thinks that it’s not enough choice. You have IE, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and a few others. The others, he claims, are based on Internet Explorers rendering engine. Huh?!? You can’t win with some people.

“The aspect of a browser that decides what bit to put where on the page, that’s the rendering engine,” said Mr Quick.

Wow. He is quick. So, IE uses the Trident engine. So, he nails Microsoft. What about Mozilla, with 3 products using their engine? Or WebKit (Safari)? This guy needs a clue.

Of the 12 browsers on offer, five use the Trident rendering engine, three use Mozilla’s Gecko, two use WebKit, and one uses Opera’s Presto. Sleipnir can use either Trident or Gecko.

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Confessions of a Windows Pirate Drama Queen

By DustinPosted on

Ed Bott from ZDNet showcases his skills cracking Windows 7. Sure, he uses premade programs that are a simple click and it’s done thing, but he does go into detail on what you shouldn’t do. The majority of ISO’s out there that are pre-cracked are infected with some real nasty malware. Piracy isn’t good at any level, but it does go to show that the Windows activation scheme is aimed at the average Joe Consumer, rather than trying to thwart the pirate community…

In this post, I

The Slow Death of IE6

By DustinPosted on

We’ve all used it, and at one time we probably liked it. Well, at least a little. Ok, IE6 really wasn’t that great, but a lot of web sites were designed to be viewed on Internet Explorer 6, rather than the (at the time) niche Firefox (Netscape was pretty much dead by then). So, times have changed since the year 2000, right? Not according to the statistics. IE6 still holds about 20% of the users on the internet hostage to a 10 year technology. The world wide web came out in the early 90’s. So, not even a decade went by and we went from text to Flash enabled, secure web sites. Technology moves fast, extremely fast. So, why are so many people still using Internet Explorer 6? Popular Science has a few reasons why, all of which I agree full heartedly on.

The post goes on to explicitly recommend moving off of IE6. The problem is, corporate IT departments won

Profile Relocator for Windows

By DustinPosted on

Joseph Cox has a nice program that moves your Windows user profiles to a different hard drive, which can come in very handy if you have an issue with the main hard drive down the road. Sure, the second drive could go out, but the main Windows drive usually is the drive that goes kaput first. Check it out if you have a use for it!

Profile Relocator is a step-based application that allows the re-locating of the Windows Users profile directory. Once re-located, any created profiles will appear in the new location in their entirety. The advantage to doing this allows profiles to be stored in a location that doesn’t reside on the system drive, ensuring that profile data isn’t compromised as a result of re-installation or system failure.

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First Windows 7 Phone Photos

By DustinPosted on

Engadget has a nice photo of the new LG Windows 7 phone. Personally, I like the look of it, but the new UI seems to get away from the Windows format, which was easier for business folks. Only time will tell whether or not the new phone software is a success. Maybe in 2 years, I’ll move from the Android powered HTC Eris I have now to a new Windows phone.

Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman just pulled off a little surprise here at The Engadget Show: he brought out LG’s Windows Phone 7 Series pre-production prototype! The QWERTY slider is the first branded Windows Phone 7 Series device the world’s ever seen, and while the hardware and software are both obviously early, we can tell you a few things about it: it’s just a hair thicker than an iPhone or Nexus One, there are dedicated hardware camera, volume, and power buttons in addition to the back, home, and search buttons dictated by Windows Phone 7 Series, and we noticed a five megapixel camera with a flash on the back, along with a headphone jack.

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The Downside Of Phone 7 Series

By DustinPosted on

With all the recent positive press with the Microsoft phone OS, there has been very little negative feedback. Other than from the Mac guys, but anything Microsoft is horrible, sight unseen. Here is an article that hits on some of the points that I agree with, and mentioned the other day.

Windows Phone 7 Series may prove to be a bad choice for enterprise customers due to lack of control over the device. Also a lot of Microsoft’s fortified technologies can’t talk to a lot of newly evolving Muktware (Open Source) technologies.

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Microsoft Yahoo Deal OK, Says DOJ

By DustinPosted on

For those of you following the Microsoft/Yahoo alliance, the Department of Justice has said that it won’t hurt consumers or advertisers. Good news for many. I’m just hoping it helps with innovation and can bring some more competition into the advertising market. The internet advertising has pretty much crashed to rock bottom, but it should make somewhat of a recovery. Do you click on advertisements you see online? I try to support the sites I visit by clicking the ads. Many times, I know a site advertises a certain company, and will go out of my way to visit that site just to click the ad before I make my purchase. Helps out the site, and I was going to make the purchase anyway!

The antitrust division added the deal “is not likely to harm users of Internet search, paid search advertisers, Internet publishers or distributors of search and paid search advertising technology” and “likely will enable more rapid improvements in the performance of Microsoft’s search and paid advertising technology.”