Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 21, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Make the right browser update: Firefox 3.6

Oh the irony! After one of the biggest IE (Internet Explorer) security fiascoes ever, Microsoft is finally releasing a patch for the IE problem… on the same day that the Mozilla Foundation is releasing the latest and greatest version of its Web browser, Firefox 3.6.

So, you have a choice today. You can either stick with the sickly IE family–6, 7, or 8, it doesn’t matter they all suffered from the same security hole–or you can move to what’s I’ve found to be the best version of Firefox in years. Boy, this is a tough decision isn’t it?

Seriously. How can you justify using IE these days? Just look at is track-record. Every few months a new critical, zero-day IE security bug pops up. Who needs this?

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January 20, 2010
by sjvn01
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Neolithic Windows security hole alive and well in Windows 7

One of the reasons I’ve never liked Windows is that it was never made to deal with the security problems of working in a networked, multi-user world. As a direct result, Windows has been fundamentally insecure for more than a decade. Even so, I was surprised to find that there’s a 17-year old security hole that’s been in Windows since NT and it’s still present today in Windows 7.

Wow. Even I’m shocked by this latest example of just how rotten Windows security is. It just reminds me again though that while Microsoft keeps adding features and attempting to patch its way out of security problems to Windows, Windows’ foundation is built on sand and not on the stone of good, solid design.

Tavis Ormandy, a Google security engineer, uncovered this new ‘old’ hole while digging around Windows. Ormandy found that way back in 1993 in Windows NT that Windows included a ‘feature’ to support BIOS service routines in legacy Windows 16bit applications.

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January 19, 2010
by sjvn01
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Running Ubuntu on an Active Directory network

It’s always been possible to get Linux desktops to work on Windows-based networks. I do it all the time. But, it’s not a job for an average Linux user or a Windows network administrator’s whose MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) certification still has wet-ink. Now, though, Canonical, Ubuntu parent company, is partnering with Likewise Software to make it easier.

Likewise is the creator of LikeWise Open. This is an open-source program that lets Linux and Mac users authenticate against and join Active Directory domains and forests. It also enforces AD (Active Directory) password policies across Linux systems.

You don’t have to take their word for it. I’ve been using LikeWise for years, and it works quite well. Now, Ubuntu is going to be including the latest version of LikeWise Open 5.4, in the next edition of Ubuntu, Lucid Lynx.

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January 19, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Who cares if IE is patched soon?

I’m just barely old enough to remember when people used to patch tires rather than just replace them when they had a flat. But you know why people don’t tend to do that anymore? It’s because a patched tire grew ever more likely to have a total blowout. Guess what? It’s not that different with IE (Internet Explorer).

Microsoft is now promising us that they’ll have a patch for the latest IE security hole … real soon now. So what? This problem, while it’s been exploited the most in IE 6, it exists in all modern versions of IE and it can be exploited in every version of Windows from Windows 2000 to Windows 7. And, I’m supposed to trust that Microsoft will ‘patch’ it right this time and that it won’t blow up on me again? I don’t think so.

Since this security hole has shown up, I’d strongly recommend that people drop IE for all uses. I’m not the only one. France and Germany are both telling users to stop using IE. Even Ed Bott, a long time Windows fan and expert, says that, at the very least, you should stop using IE 6.

We were all saying that before the situation got even worse. Since then, the attack code, which had gone public, is being used in attacks on users who wander onto poisoned Web sites.

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January 19, 2010
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Linux and USB 3.0

Ever get tired of Windows people proclaiming how their operating system has device support for this, that, and the other thing and Linux doesn’t? Well, now you have a perfect come-back. The newest, fast interface, USB 3.0 is out and only Linux has native support for it.

Linux started supporting USB 3.0 in the September 2009 release of the 2.6.31 Linux kernel. Neither Windows 7 nor Snow Leopard currently supports USB 3. Windows support? That will have to wait for Windows 7 SP1 —whenever that shows up.

Long before then, many USB 3.0 devices will have arrived. Some will doubtlessly have Windows drivers, but only Linux is USB 3.0 ready. USB 3.0, aka SuperSpeed USB, reaches new highs in PC peripheral speeds. USB 2.0 has a maximum throughput of 480Mbps (Megabits per second), which is fast — but these days, when you might want to move gigabytes of movies from one your PC to an external hard drive, it’s not fast enough. USB 3.0, by comparison, has a maximum throughput of 5 Gbps (Gigabits per second). Of course, that’s a peak speed. In real life, USB 2.0 has an effective throughput of about 32MBps (Megabytes per second) while USB 3 easily laps it at an effective throughput rate of 350MBps (Megabytes per second).

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January 18, 2010
by sjvn01
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Should Ubuntu include proprietary software?

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, arguably the most popular of all Linux distributions, is asking its users what new, proprietary programs they’d like to see as optional software in Ubuntu.

Note, I said “new.” Ubuntu has actually included proprietary software in the form of hardware drivers since April 2007. Then, Ubuntu developers decided to place binary ATI and NVIDA graphic card drivers in the distribution because, “A large proportion of people using Ubuntu – including 70%-80% of people with new computers – need a non-Free driver for reasonable performance from their graphics card, wireless card, or modem, because there is no Free driver available, they had little choice in the matter.”

Never-the-less, when it came to end-user software, Ubuntu has, generally speaking, held the line against including proprietary software in their distribution. You won’t find, for example, Adobe Flash 10.x in Ubuntu, even though it’s commonly included in other popular Linux distributions such as openSUSE.

Indeed, there are several other distributions, such as Mint, which are perhaps best known for including proprietary programs that Ubuntu has refused to incorporate into the distribution. Until now.

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