CompuSaff Today! http://today.compusaff.com/ Quick takes on software, tips, and 'net oddities en-us Nucleus CMS v3.64 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://today.compusaff.com//nucleus/nucleus2.gif CompuSaff Today! http://today.compusaff.com/ 2010.06.15 - Change is Coming! xml-rss2.php?itemid=1146    Stay tuned! 14970]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1146 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:03:59 -0500 2010.05.14 - Pidgin Rollup xml-rss2.php?itemid=1145 2.7.0 Version. There are a whole raft of fixes shown in the ChangeLog, including what looks to be a fix for the mangled / dropped / partial messages when using Yahoo accounts. Don't forget to re-apply your Pidgin-Encryption plug-in after you install the upgrade, otherwise your encryption will not work!
   Update - Pidgin Encryption 3.0 will not work with Pidgin 2.7.0, but the new 3.1 version reportedly will. Watch this space for when the PE3.1 for Windows arrives. 14954]]> Software xml-rss2.php?itemid=1145 Sat, 15 May 2010 00:02:26 -0500 2010.04.12 - Impossible? Unbelievable?? Magic!!! xml-rss2.php?itemid=1144 watch it twice (like I did!), and then tell me how Liu Qian does it! 14917]]> TMT xml-rss2.php?itemid=1144 Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:05:16 -0500 2010.04.02 - Foxit Reader Fixed xml-rss2.php?itemid=1143 from BetaNews and stay safe from rogue PDF docs! 14913]]> Software xml-rss2.php?itemid=1143 Fri, 2 Apr 2010 22:56:16 -0500 2010.04.01 PDF Vulnerability xml-rss2.php?itemid=1142

PDF


   Most folks use Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view PDF documents. Several of us have ditched Acrobat Reader in favor of faster, more usable utilities such as Foxit's Reader 3.0 for Windows. Beware that a new loophole has been exposed that allows the bad guys to subvert your system just from you opening a specially crafted PDF doc.
   This Security Central article over at InfoWorld[Malicious PDF file doesn't need a software vulnerability] documents the dirty details and the vendor reponses. Bottom line? Be on the lookout for updates to your PDF reader software in the next week or two and then download and install it! 14913]]> Software xml-rss2.php?itemid=1142 Thu, 1 Apr 2010 22:59:27 -0500 2010.02.11 - Blue Screened? xml-rss2.php?itemid=1141 Windows patch cripples XP with blue screen. 14885]]> Hints and Tips xml-rss2.php?itemid=1141 Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:45:14 -0600 2010.01.27 - Are We Safe When Browsing? xml-rss2.php?itemid=1140 tracking cookies from web advertisers, and you've switched to Firefox Browser with Adblock Plus to cut down on the ads, with Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO) addon, too. Pretty safe, right?
   But now you've got Flash LSO's leaving trackable scraps on your system. For that you can use the BetterPrivacy addon to get those removed every time you close your browser.
   Whew!! Lots to protect from. But you're safe now, right? Not so fast, grasshopper! What if you could be more or less identified just by the uniqueness of your system? Like your combination of fonts, User Agent from your browser, and the browser plugins you are using. Stuff like your screen size, and color depth. Interesting theory, isn't it?

When you visit a website, you are allowing that site to access a lot of information about your computer. Combined, this information can create a kind of fingerprint — a signature that could be used to identify you and your computer. But how effective would this kind of online tracking be?
The EFF is running an experiment on just that possibility right now. From my machine, Panopticlick reports:

Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 60,715 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 15.89 bits of identifying information.
And it doesn't seem to make much difference if I'm using Firefox's Private Browsing mode or not. Hmmm..... You can read about the study at their Panopticlick web page. And, if you so choose, you can check to see how unique your web fingerprint is - or isn't!
   What kind of results did you get? Let us know in the comments! 14873]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1140 Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:11:48 -0600 2010.01.25 - Load All Your Apps At Once! xml-rss2.php?itemid=1139    Start with having a look at Ninite Easy PC Setup. Ninite lets you pick from current versions of popular apps across several categories to let you automatically download and install the apps you select. So pick your favorite Browsers, Instant Messengers, media players, office productivity suites, browser plugins, system utilities, and more. You can pick any or all the apps you want and then click on the Get Installer button to get your install package.
   Another similar service is available from Allmyapps. Allmyapps bills itself as the "Application Store for Windows XP, Vista and Seven to find and install the best applications". This site features an even larger set of apps to choose from.
   Give these a shot and let us know the pros and cons of how they worked for you in the comments. 14871]]> Software xml-rss2.php?itemid=1139 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:10:07 -0600 2009.12.18 - Back! xml-rss2.php?itemid=1138 ISP, 1and1 informed us that


Our technical administrators have identified a service issue and are
working to resolve it as quickly as possible. Since your system may be
among those affected, you may experience some disruption in service
for the next 24 hours while we resolve this issue.

The next update (Dec. 12th) was more serious, but sounded like a plan was in place:


On December 10th at 2:00am EST, our technicians discovered a malfunction
in the server that hosts your site. Currently, your website is still offline.

However, we have isolated the malfunction and are working to restore your
service as quickly as possible. The restoration of your website will be
complete tonight around 10:00pm EST. You will not experience any loss of data.

We know that you trust us with one of your most important resources, your
website, and we are truly sorry for the negative impact that this outage has
had on your business or personal web presence.

Please be assured that we have done everything within our capacity in handling
this matter. Our technicians understand the priority of this, and have followed
all procedures in place to ensure limited downtime for your site, which is our
primary concern.

We are investigating any improvements we can make to our processes for the
future to ensure that an incident like this does not develop to a major outage.

***************************************
Technical Information:
***************************************
The web server that your site is hosted on has been offline due to a hardware
failure in the RAID setup.

RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Independent Disks" and is a technology
that employs the simultaneous use of two or more hard disk drives to achieve
greater levels of reliability and performance.

Your website is stored across the RAID system twice over different hard drives,
if one of the hard drives fails your web site will continue to run. The failed
hard drive is replaced and the data that was on the drive copied again from the
other drives within the RAID, this is known as rebuilding the RAID, and normally
happens seamlessly without any effect to the web hosting server or your website.

This is a daily task performed in our data centers and is standard for large
data storage systems such as used in the web hosting environment.

In this instance, we replaced the failed drive with a new drive and the RAID
started to rebuild. While this was happening the rebuild process failed,
corrupting all the data within the RAID set. This should not happen and we
have open tickets with the RAID manufacturer to understand what went wrong
in this case and to ensure that they can prevent this for the future.

Our system administrators do not rely on the RAID system as our only source
of backup. We run a rolling backup of the live system to external backup servers
to ensure that in a case like this we have a restore solution.

After the RAID corruption occurred, our engineers analyzed the situation and
found that the only solution left to us was to recover the data from our backup
systems. At this point the RAID was reinitialized ready to receive data, this
process itself takes several hours to perform.
   Okay, so there would be additional delay, but all should be well at last. Not so fast, grasshopper. Yeah, the restore finished, but no files were brought back. Only the folder (directory) names were restored. So we notify the support desk, which in turn notifies the admins, which in turn notify the support desk, who reply with the following email on Dec. 17th:


This is an update with the back up you have requested.
Unfortunately, our administrators was not able to restored
files in your web space.
We sincerely apologized for the inconvenienced this has caused you.

   Typos and all, bottom line it means their hardware failed, their backup failed, and you're out of luck, cupcake. Fortunately I had taken a files backup and a database backup or we would have been totally 'toast'. So I did a restore to the server overnight, and unpacked it today. And now we're back up and running.

   Moral of the story?
  1. Perform backups regularly. (read it again!) Perform backups regularly!
  2. Don't trust 1and1 with your website. Pick somebody else. 14847
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1138 Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:11:39 -0600 2009.12.05 - KeePass Update xml-rss2.php?itemid=1137 KeePass Password Safe. 14839]]> Software xml-rss2.php?itemid=1137 Sat, 5 Dec 2009 22:25:05 -0600