Symantec Uses Rootkits in Antivirus Software!

If you have Norton SystemWorks or Norton AntiVirus Professional 2005 or 2006, your “advanced” recycle bin protection uses RootKits to help Symantec manage your files!
OK, no biggy.. Symantec is using it to help you right?
But hackers and viruses and trojans can use it too!

Don’t they ever learn?! One would expect that Symantec would patch its own rootkit secretly before, with all the hype about Sony/BMG.. After all, that’s what they are doing now!

You can read Symantec’s “response” and “vulnerability report”? here.

While technically it is not a root kit in that it does not use a series of strings, etc. to hide a directory or files, it hacks the Windows subsystem to hide one particular directory (theirs).

Again, Symantec tried to beat the bad guys by using their technology, but they ‘got played.’

Go with NOD32 instead… Believe me, you’ll finally get a good nights sleep.

Educated Musings on Beta 2 Release Date

If you are interested in Windows Vista Beta 2 and its rumored release dates, here are some general educated surmises taking into account previous betas for different products, information from Microsoft on the Vista builds, and some general ‘extrapolation’ (i.e. guess-work :P) First some background: People are looking forward to Beta 2 because it is rumored to be a public beta, meaning that it will be available via CPP to almost anyone interested in checking it out. Beta software means that it is not for use in a production environment, it is not guaranteed to be stable, or even to run at all, but that is an extreme. At Microsoft beta builds are fairly stable, especially compared to IDW/IDX CTP builds (commonly referred to as I-Don’t-Work/Exercises builds) and normally shows quite a bit of indication as to the direction the final program is going along, since all that hard work is rarely for nothing.. The December CTP (build 5270) was an almost code-complete build. It was released on Dec. 16th, 2005. The next build to be released is the February CTP, and is the final build before Beta 2. It will be the first look at a code-complete Vista for us Tech Beta testers. Continue reading

Who wants WLM (Windows Live Messenger)?

I’m making it clear from right now: anyone who spams this thread will have his IP banned from this and any future contests. Spamming includes many people coming here posting the same message over and over, a single IP address applying more than once, or asking for the status of your invite. It will not be tolerated.

Now to the good part: to claim your free WLM 8 invite, please enter your Passport.NET enabled email address in the email field. Do not post your email address for the world to see.

You must post a reason why you should be invited. If you don’t your comment will never even make it through. Don’t lie, we have our ways of finding out if you really are stranded in Antarctica and desperately need a better IM client.

So, comment away, and spammers beware!

You Won’t Believe…

How much faster and more responsive Vista is with a better graphics card!

Even though my ‘brand new’ card is the lowest WDDM supporting chipset (Radeon 9550 256MB), it has four times more memory, and more processing power than I can count; compared to my loyal GeForece 4 MX440 64MB AGP 8x… Which has gone through the mill several times with me..

The GeForce broke quite a few overclocking records.. can’t find any official database, but google makes mine look quite good ;)

Let’s hope this ATi is up to overclocking scratch too..

(Many!) WLM 8 Invites!

If you head over to Night Hawk’s digitalfive right now you will find many WLM invites raring to go out.. over 70 invites, and no where near as many qualifying requests! Kristan (Night Hawk) and I, along with many other generous members of the blogosphere, have pooled our invites together and are engaged in a mega-give away! Kristan: put five more on my tab please!

IntelliPoint & Intellitype on Vista

There’s a new version of IntelliPoint & IntelliType out that addresses this issue!

To get IntelliPoint running on Vista:

  1. Grab the latest version of the Microsoft IntelliPoint software.
  2. Run setup, it will extract the files and folders to C:\Program Files\Microsoft IntelliPoint 5.x\
  3. After it extracts, exit setup.
  4. Open Windows Explorer, go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft IntelliPoint 5.x\IPoint\SETUP, and find “oemsetup.exe”
  5. Download intellipoint.ini from our servers.
  6. Drag and drop intellipoint.ini over oemsetup.exe; wait ten minutes, then go to CP -> Mouse and have a little look see.. It should be installed :)
  7. Enjoy!
  8. If after these steps some functionality is missing, see this forum topic on hard-coding the device ID.

To get IntelliType running on Vista:

  1. Grab the latest version of the Microsoft IntelliType software.
  2. Run setup, it will extract the files and folders to C:\Program Files\Microsoft IntelliType 5.x\
  3. After it extracts, exit setup.
  4. Open Windows Explorer, go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft IntelliType 5.x\IType\SETUP, and find “oemsetup.exe”
  5. Download intellitype.ini from our servers.
  6. Drag and drop IntelliType.ini over oemsetup.exe; wait ten minutes, then go to CP -> Mouse and have a little look see.. It should be installed :)
  7. Enjoy!

Weird Downtime..

In what appears to be a WordPress 2.0 bug my last post (JavaScript Alternatives) decided to “unpublish” itself sometime yesterday…

Continue reading

Google vs. MSN: What to Expect..

Everyone has heard about the raging war between MSN and Google, and everyone is fighting to get their opinion about which is better in.. What most do not realize is that MSN and Google both (yes, Google too!) have their shortcomings..

At the moment neither is the “ultimate search engine” that their makers would like for them to be, though that does not stop them from advertising them as being so… What follows is a brief and accurate guide/overview of how to use them both to your benefit, where each excels, and where they fall short.. There is no rambling introduction, no circumventing points, and no conclusion. Just plain hard facts.

MSN Search’s No. 1 listing is usually the one you want; so if you are looking for a website or a company or a product, use MSN. But if you are shopping for info, browsing the web, etc. you need Google…. Because Google’s results are sorted by “Backlinks” its relevance level for each site comes up based on the number of links that other people linked to this site with this keyword..

For example, there are 98 sites linking to your site in an < a > tag with text “Joe’s Blog,” but your site is called “Smith’s Blog” and has nothing to do with Joe… Google does not care, you will be number 1 on their search rankings (obviously provided that no one has more backlinks than yourself). Google does NOT read meta data (except for frequency, language, content, and robots definitions), it ignores keywords and description tags.

By contrast, MSN Search reads Keywords and Description tags and sorts sites by relevancy based on cached content only. MSN Search is excellent (read: unbeatable) for new sites, ergo good for the fast paced online world of day-and-night technologies; while Google boasts its (excellent and very large) database of more-or-less popular and dependable links…

In the end Google has less spam, MSN has more. Google has more content, MSN has less. MSN updates its cache faster, MSN gives newbies and their sites a bigger, more fair chance, while Google is a researchers best friend. ;)

Windows Live Messenger

Well, once upon a time ago I promised you regular update on WLM 8.0 Beta…

At the moment, my biggest issue with it is latency.. I send a message, and sometimes a person gets it immediately, sometimes half an hour later, and sometimes it comes back as undeliverable, although I had sent a line of text two seconds earlier that I had received on my other PC immediately..

I have yet to figure out sharing folders work, though as I am on 5270 part of the workaround is to disable sharing folders; but I could never get MSN WLM to inform the other party that I am attempting to share something, and when I tell them myself, they cannot open the shared folder on my computer… So much for that..

Nudges don’t make sound on Vista either.. But I realize that WLM is not made to be run on Vista… Not yet, at any rate… So I’ll try to focus on XP.

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It’s a Microsoft Consipiracy!!

I may be very, very wrong here, but it sure does look like what follows is true. At any rate, its not illogical, so in all likelihood I’m not (no matter how much it looks like it :P) going off the deep end here..

Microsoft is going to dump the My Documents Folder!!

That said, I had better explain myself, real quick too….

For the last so-many builds, CTPs, and Betas, the My Documents folder (or simply ‘Documents’ as Microsoft claimed it will rename it) has not appeared on the desktop.. Checking and double checking settings, the registry, etc. all point to it being there… except its not… The bug reports filed come back as “Known Issue..” OK, fine it was a known issue in 5112 (Beta 1)… And 5219 you say?? Weird :S

Continue reading