Practical Technology

for practical people.

April 23, 2008
by sjvn01
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Can CAPTCHA be saved?

You may not know the term, “CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart),” but you’ve used it.

You may not, however, be using it for much longer. Every time you’ve had to puzzle out the letters and numbers from a distorted, scrambled jumble before you can sign up for a new Web services account, such as Live Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail or post a story on an online discussion systems like Digg, you’ve used CAPTHCHA.

It’s meant to make sure that you’re a real person and not a bot seeking to spread malware and spam. For a while CAPTHCHA worked. If you’re like me, you found it annoying, because there were times when you couldn’t tell the difference between ‘s’ and ‘S’ either. Still, even though it was, and is, a pain, I was willing to put up with it since it actually did help block spammers.

The key word above is ‘did.’ In late 2007, hackers started getting some success against CAPTHCA schemes. By January 2008, Yahoo Mail was cracked; Hotmail was crunched in early April; and Gmail was cut open in April.

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April 22, 2008
by sjvn01
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KDE and GNOME Buddy Up

Who would have believed it in 2004? KDE and GNOME, the two major Linux desktop interfaces, buddying up and having their annual meetings together? It would have been easier to believe in cats and dogs signing a permanent peace treaty. Believe it.

The two once bitter rivals for the Linux desktop have agreed to co-host Akademy and GUADEC, KDE and GNOME’s main conferences in the summer of 2009.

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April 22, 2008
by sjvn01
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Can we please stop Cross-Site Scripting Attacks?

You’d think the Web designers and masters of a major presidential campaign site would get it right wouldn’t you? I mean, they’re running these sites to convince voters to get their person into the White House right? Isn’t that worth a little time and trouble to make sure that the site isn’t easily crackable?

Well, as anyone who tried to visit Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign site’s community area over the weekend only to find themselves visiting Sen. Clinton’s site knows the answer is “no.”

It’s not just Obama’s techies though. It seems that’s Hillary’s site is also ripe for the picking, but so far, to the best of my knowledge, no one’s done it. Yet.

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April 22, 2008
by sjvn01
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Can you safely avoid Microsoft patents in open-source development?

Thanks to the European Union’s courts, Microsoft was forced to open up its APIs and protocols for its MCPP (Microsoft Communications Protocol Program) and WSPP (Workgroup Server Protocol Program). According to Keith Hageman, an MSDN moderator, “The MCPP package content details Windows Clients to Windows Server protocols for all features. The WSPP package content details Windows Client to Windows Server and Windows Server to Windows Server protocols for ‘File and Print.’ ‘User and Group Administration,’ and ‘Networking Transport’ features only.” In English, these are the keys to getting non-Microsoft programs, such as the open-source file/print server Samba, to work with Microsoft clients and servers.

Sounds great doesn’t it? The poison pill in all this is that while Microsoft has to let you develop programs that use these protocols and APIs, it can, according to Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, charge you a patent license per copy if you create commercial software with this information. It would be helpful, of course, if you could tell when you might be in danger of violating a Microsoft patent. Aye, there’s the rub.

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April 22, 2008
by sjvn01
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Deciding When to Upgrade to 802.11n

You can never have enough money or a fast-enough wireless connection. We can’t help with the money part, but for Wi-Fi users, IEEE 802.11n—with its up to 300Mbps (megabits per second) burst speeds—is the answer.

Well, it should be the answer. Deploying 802.11 is really not as simple as picking a networking vendor and pushing through a purchase order.

That’s because 802.11n has been stuck in standards mud-wrestling for years. As is so often the case in standards, two major vendor sides squared off over which group’s approach would become the one true—and thus money making—standard.

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April 21, 2008
by sjvn01
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XP SP3 Finally Released

Well, it took Microsoft long enough, but Windows XP SP3 has finally been RTMed (released to manufacturing).

Users, however, can’t update yet. According to a Microsoft TechNet forum posting by Chris Keroack, the release manager, for Windows XP Service Pack 3, XP SP3 for XP Pro users will be made available “on April 29th, via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center.” XP Home users will need to wait even longer. “Windows XP SP3 Automatic Update distribution for users at home will begin in early summer,” wrote Keroack.

In a note to his original message, Keroack also wrote that XP SP3 isn’t available yet to MSDN or TechNet members. While many had hoped that it would be available today, they’ll need to wait, it seems, until it becomes publicly available. Keroack wrote, “This will be available within the next month.”