New, tips, and more
A nice review from MSNBC:
Technology proved a mixed blessing in 2004, taking three steps forward and two steps back –maybe even two and a half steps back. Biometrics were supposed to make our borders safer; but chip-enabled visas and the US-VISIT fingerprinting program raised just as many questions as they answered. Online banking soared and so did online fraud.
From NewsFactor:
The U.S. has maintained its dubious distinction of being the world’s top producer of spam, leading the ‘Dirty Dozen’ list compiled by security Latest News about Security authority Sophos by a wide margin.
After scanning all spam messages received at a global network of traps throughout the past year, Sophos researchers determined that the U.S. is responsible for exporting 42 percent of all mass e-mail attacks. South Korea is second, at 13 percent, followed by China (8 percent), Canada (6 percent) and Brazil (3 percent).
From NewsFactor:
As December comes to a close, the group that launched the upstart Web browser application Firefox can look back on 2004 with satisfaction. Mozilla has seen the Firefox browser downloaded over 13 million times since its release in November.
A companion e-mail program — Thunderbird — was released in December. And the nonprofit organization has announced the ambitious goal of achieving a 10 percent share of the Web browser market during 2005.
From the NYT:
Ten years ago, Kodak manufactured the first digital camera aimed for sale to retail consumers, the $749 QuickTake 100, sold by Apple Computer. But by 2000, Sony had muscled in as the leading digital camera maker and Kodak was hovering near 5 percent of the market, a dire position, while the film business -which it had dominated for a decade – was starting to collapse.
Kodak called in anthropologists and other social scientists, who observed camera users in an effort to learn how taking and printing pictures fit into their daily lives. They also followed prospective camera buyers into stores to understand how they chose certain models from the crowded shelves.
Chris and I hope you have a very Merry Christmas. Be sure to let us know of any cool new “toys” you got!
This is the 50th year that NORAD (NORth American Aerospace Defense Command) has tracked Santa on Christmas Eve. Their tracking site has information in 6 languages, pictures of Santa through the years, along with other interesting Christmas information (did you know Santa has eaten 825246243 cookies?).
Check it out at http://www.noradsanta.org/
Yesterday I posted a link to Google’s year-end review of search terms. Well, of course the other search engines have done this as well. Visiting http://tools.search.yahoo.com/top2004/ will display Yahoo!’s:
I don’t do a lot of crossword puzzles, but when I do, I can’t stand leaving a few clues unanswered. I tried just using a search engine to search for answers, but that didn’t work at all. Then when I searched for crossword help, I found the OneAcross web site. You can enter the clue, and then an answer pattern. For instance, a clue I couldn’t get today was 6 across Patronage. I entered patronage as the clue, and then .E..S (the periods are place holders, and I knew the E and S) and the site came back with the word AEGIS. The word is clickable and it gives you a possible definition. As it turns out, it was right and it then helped me get another 6 clues.
From the Ed Bott – Ed Bott – Windows (and Office) Expertise: Security alert for Windows XP blog:
Here’s a disturbing report of a Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability in Internet Explorer, from Secunia. Note that installing SP2 alone will not protect you from this problem, although it does offer a useful tool to fix it temporarily.
Clicking the test link on their page opens an IE window that contains their own content, with “https://www.paypal.com/” displayed in the Address bar and an authentic-looking SSL padlock icon in the status bar. (Clicking the test link in Firefox does nothing.)
This test page, of course, does nothing. But if it were an actual phishing attack, it would be possible for a bad guy to convince you to give up personal information like a password or a credit card number in the mistaken belief you were actually at a Web site belonging to your bank, PayPal, Ebay, or another trusted site.
To protect yourself until a patch is released, do the following.
- From Internet Explorer, choose Tools, Manage Add-ons. (If you don’t see this menu choice, you don’t have SP2 installed, and you have bigger problems!)
- Scroll down the list and select DHTML Edit Control Safe for Scripting for IE5.
- Click Disable.
- Click OK to close the dialog box, and then restart IE.
Even if you normally use Firefox, I recommend that you take this precaution until a patch is available.
If you have an application that needs to use the DHTML Edit control, there’s a fix that allows this ActiveX control to be used safely, but it’s too complicated to list the instructions here. Leave a comment if you are in this situation.
If you use an earlier version of Windows, you should disable ActiveX.
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