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Mac versus Windows vulnerability stats for 2007

2007-12-19T08:11:00.001-08:00

This is total blog spam, but I basically just wanted to keep record of this on my blog. Here's a summary from the original blog by Larry Dignan"The year 2007 has been an interesting year that brought us improved security with Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5). But to get some perspective of how many publicly known holes found in these two operating systems, I’ve compiled all the security flaws in Mac OS X and Windows"

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6 Steps to Deflate Self-Defeating Fears

2007-12-14T08:03:00.001-08:00

Have you ever justified your lack of success towards a goal with the excuse that you lacked the experience? Or that you lacked the resources: money and time? Did you give up before you even tried?

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What every programmer should know about memory

2007-09-24T08:42:00.001-07:00

Unlike storage subsystems, removing the main memory as a bottleneck has proven much more difficult and almost all solutions require changes to the hardware.

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Microsoft launches Mediaroom IPTV and Multimedia Platform

2007-06-18T12:09:00.001-07:00

"Microsoft today announced the availability of Mediaroom, the latest update to its award-winning IPTV software platform, featuring several new multimedia capabilities, including in-home personal music and photo sharing, dynamic MultiView (multiple picture-in-picture) capabilities, Multimedia Application Environment for development of interactive .."

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I'm not sure if all readers of this will realize the bigger picture here. Microsoft chose to call this "Mediaroom" because that's truly what they want to provide, all types of digital media to any room in the house. To me, this is one of the last pieces to a puzzle that I've been seeing form for quite some time. Some people who dislike and/or fear Microsoft for it's approach will certainly view this as an "another attempt to own your living room", and their kind of right. This software by itself will not require you to give any money to Microsoft. What it does is make it very simple for a person, who wants to, to create a simplified solution for their home entertainment system, but it's all Microsoft.

I for one am already considering this solution because it will allow me to do something I've dreamed of since I baught my XBox 360....THROW AWAY MY CABLE BOX...plain and simple, I hate it. Poor interface coupled with poor hardware. Plus, it's just one more device, one more remote and one more layer of complication. This product, once I choose an IPTV provider, will allow me to use my Xbox and any other networked PC as the sole hardware for a unified, simplified solution that does everything I want to do with my TV.

Microsoft wants me to do this because they think I'll be more likely to purchase XBox Live video content; movies & TV shows. But I don't want to. Not unless they want to offer much more selection and a much more reasonable pricing, something at least as cheap as and with the selection of the movie store. I can make a trip to a RedBox quicker than I can download a full length movie, so why bother?

So, in a sense, they are making pretty good leaps and bounds to "owning" a lot of living rooms, but not in the sense of taking anythign away from the owner. Instead, more that people who share my idea of how integrated a home network and a entertainment system should be, will be far less likely to be buying an AppleTV, or any other so called solution any time soon.

Huge Tidal Turbine Will Power 1000 Homes (PHOTOS)

2007-06-14T11:20:00.001-07:00

It's the largest tidal turbine in the world -- it will generate 1.2 megawatts. I can't tell you how many times I've sat and thaught why in the world haven't we come up with a way to harness the power of the ocean in an ecologically sound way. I've had a few rough designs in my head, most of which used the forces of boyancy on the ever changing tide. I'm no mechanical engineer, so I'll assume this is a much better design. Finally!!

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(VIDEO) Bill Gates Shows Off Microsoft's Touch Table

2007-05-30T23:23:00.001-07:00

Billy Gates was on the Today Show this morning showing off his fancy new table. Want to see it in action rather than just in photos? Check the video for all sorts of goodness of it being used for all sorts of applications, such as playing with photos, wirelessly pulling photos off a camera, and ordering and paying for food using credit cards.

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Why software commoditisation is a myth (The Reason Microsoft Attacks Linux)

2007-05-14T09:12:00.001-07:00

“Software prices will eventually fall to zero. The open-source software movement has already started that commoditisation.” -- Good article, but I disagree

Open Source software will always be used as a "par" for commercialized software. If companies can't release software that is easier and at least as feature rich as an open source alternative, they can't expect to get payed for it. Some companies get away with this for a little while but eventually they are forced to either beef up their products or get out of the industry. Generally speaking, software can pretty much always improve. Software prices may fall as the margin of quality between open source and commercialized software narrows, but there will always be some margin.

Open Source serving as a par is an AWESOME thing though, I must give the open source developers their kudos for implementing the high end features that they do. I wish I had the time and lack of greed to do it. Raising the bar for companies like Microsoft and Apple is a necessity. If the public is gonna shell out these prices for software we better be making these guys work for our money.

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UFC 73 building up to be an extravaganza

2007-05-08T07:18:00.001-07:00

UFC 73, set for Arco Arena in Sacramento, will feature one of the deepest cards in the promotion's 14-year history, with two championship fights and two other fights that could be headliners on virtually any other card.

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Apple Patch Fixes 25 Security Vulnerabilities

2007-04-20T14:35:00.001-07:00

Twelve of the vulnerabilities being patched would enable remote code execution, which is generally considered to be a "critical" bug in security circles. Several other bugs enable users to advance their system privileges without authorization.

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Nice ammo for use against Microsoft bashers who like to harp on Windows security flaws while pretending these things don't happen in almost all large development efforts. I've always wondered "Hmmm...what would happen if Macs were as widely used as PCs". I think we have our answer. I also like how, from the sounds of this article, OS X doesn't even automatically update with this patch, nice.

Now, I'm not saying "This officially makes Macs worse than PC's". I'm sure the overall count for security flaws found in Windows XP still outnumbers those in OS X. My simple point is that now as Macs become more popular and put under the same microscope that PC's have been all these years, we find the same kind of problems. OS X, Windows, and Linux systems all have their place in this world, they're all pretty damn good at what they were truly designed for, but none of them are perfect. There is no perfect OS...and there never will be... in our life times.

So for those of you who see the PC vs Mac commercials and think "Wow, I wonder what it would be like to have a computer that just doesn't have problems like my PC", don't count on it. Just because it's funny (which they really are...I love them), does not make it true.

Vista Manager v1.1 - by Yamicsoft Software

2007-04-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Vista Manager is a new shareware(free to try) tool designed to put a pretty massive number of Windows Vista "tweaks" in one place. It's available for download from PC World along with several other new Vista tools I will likely be evaluating in the near future. I am most excited about Start++, and will also be posting a review of it. Vista Manager is what it says it is; a BUNCH of tweaks. You could literally spend a week trying out every little option but most of them are pretty self explanatory, so you generally know what you're gonna get.

One statement I must make here is that these are all "tweaks"... they are NOT "hacks". The difference is that hacks are usually changes to an application or operating system's functionality and/or appearance that the creators either didn't design and/or want it to do. Therefore hacks generally require modifications to delicate system files. Tweaks would be better defined as less-than-obvious options that are available (but not always recommended) to the a knowledgeable user without altering the creator's design. That being said, there is very little this application does that cannot be done without it, but the average user would have little knowledge of how.

Vista Manager also gives you a handful of nice tools for system maintenance and customization. Some are useful (registry tools) and some are very arbitrary (Wallpaper Changer), but regardless it's a decent package. All this functionality is already available (likely for free) elsewhere from various software makers, but again VM has succeeded in putting it all in one nicely grouped package.

So Vista Manager is putting all these advanced options in one easy to use place, great. Problem is, some of these features scare me when I imagine it in the hands of certain people I know...not most, but some. Additionally some recommendations that it makes had me thinking "Thank God I know better". For instance the the registry scanner suggested that .torrent, .xhtml, .shtml and .wll are all invalid file extensions and should be removed from the registry...NOT MY REGISTRY!!! I use those file types all the time! In the Start menu customization section, there is a list of items it will allow you to remove from the start menu; when you first open it up it has 'Printers', 'Administrative Tools', 'Recent Items' and several others automatically selected for removal. This kind of thing is easy to undo for most users, but why make suggestions that will likely only inconvenience the average user?

There was one feature of VM I was very exited when I saw... I've been wishing I could change the behavior of the "power" button since I started running Vista, especially knowing it takes up a little more hard drive space than the amount of RAM you have.

But when I selected this option, saved, and clicked the Vista power button, guess what happened? It hibernated. I tried it over and over with reboots in between but no matter what it kept hibernating. Maybe it would work if the spelled disable correctly?

My final verdict is this: Vista Manager is still a decent one stop tool for customization and maintenance of Windows Vista but it is not very innovative. I recommend Vista users who have ever thought "I wish I could change that" at least try it out. Some true power users will find they can easily live without this, while other users (I hope you know who you are) may want to do so under strict supervision of a qualified geek.

On a side note to Yamicsoft, a lot of these settings are the type that are enforceable through domain group policy. This would be a great tool to market to small businesses that don't have Active Directory specialists available to tweak their domain. Why not take this one step further and make an administrative version of this? I don't care to restrict access to my hard drive, maybe if I had a mischievous 8 year old I would, but mostly I would want to do this type of thing in a small business environment.

UFC 69 - Did I See History?

2007-04-12T16:04:00.000-07:00

On Saturday the 7th I was one of the the lucky 15,269 MMA fans that was was able to attend UFC 69. Unfortunately I am not loaded, so I was in the 50 buck seats where the fighters look like GI Joes but honestly I can't complain...The Toyota Center has a pretty good view from almost anywhere. Plus we were just behind and to the right of one of the giant 75' projection screens so we got to see the action pretty close(but backwards) when we could no longer depend on our bare eyes. Plus, it was well worth the money just to do get this sweet picture you see here. Yeah, that's me & Forrest Griffin, winner of season one of the "The Ultimate Fighter" and winner of one of the best slug-fests in UFC history. Nice guy.

Speaking of history...this brings me to the real subject of this entry: Matt Serra vs. George St. Pierre. After the fight it was almost immediately mentioned that this could go down as one of the biggest upsets in UFC history. Personally, I feel it's no contest. It is not only the most unexpected, but also the most exciting upsets in the UFC, possibly in all of MMA. Not only did Matt Serra definatively beat the most dominant striker in the weight class, but he pretty much knocked him out (ref stoppage due to strikes). Even the people who thaught Serra stood a small chance said he would have to do it via submission. I don't know ANYONE, online or in real life who truly thaught Serra would win. It's the most exciting because GSP had just beaten Matt Hughes off of his 6 fight thrown, and also because Matt Serra has basically just become a real life Rocky Balboa.

Commentary after the fight compared this upset to that of Randy Couture over Tim Sylvia....WHY? Cause Tim's 6'8" and Randy's 43? If that's the closest upset they can come up with it's done. That wasn't even an upset. They call that an upset because they like to build hype about certain fighers. The fact is Tim "Split Decision" Sylvia (Nicknamed after the IHOP breakfast plate he most resembles) was an underserving champion and everyone knew it. Randy Couture is a true champion and one of the most determined athletes in all of MMA. He's probably about to be knocked off of his thrown too by either Mirko "Cro-Cop" or Nogueira, but the point is that's why Randy chose the heavyweight belt to come out of retirement for... he knew it was weak. That's the whole reason the UFC is bringing in these ringers from Pride.

Anyway... I'm no expert, I've only been following MMA for about 2 years now, but the next closest upsets I can think of aren't even in the UFC. Wanderlei Silva losing to Dan Henderson at pride 33 was quite a shock to me, but I'm a pretty big "Wandy" fan and truthfully he hadn't been doing his best lately.

So, other than that I'd love to hear of any fights that readers might consider a great(er) upset.

Bars should have bettter photos

2006-05-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

So, I like to dabble a little bit in photography. It's pretty fun. I have a roommate Mike, who is a good photographer and a professional graphic designer so I get photo & Photoshop pointers from him. Since I'm totally an amateur and don't have aspirations of doing much professionally, I stick to a pretty simple, but nice digital camera...Canon SD500. It's a slim little 7mp with cool in camera features that allow you to do some sweet stuff with color and motion but nothing crazy. Point is, it's small enough to take with you anywhere you would want, but you can also turn lots of situations into creative p
hotos.

For instance, when I first got it I took it almost everywhere, so when a couple co-workers wanted to go to a bar after work, I brought it in with me. Made a sweet photo too...CHECK IT:

Obviously this photo is about vivid colors that the great lens allowed me to capture with no flash, in a low light situation, but also the motion captured is really killer. Using a low ISO setting and taking series of pictures in burst mode, I captured the two frames that I wanted; the tap up, and the tap down with the barkeep moving a lot too. So when I got home I PS'd it up! I layered the two shots and applied transparency and a mask on the top one. Using a big feathered brush I took out the parts of the top layer I didn't want. Really, the only parts that didn't get masked were the barkeep and the tap.

I told myself, and Mike who helped me, that I was going to attempt to sell this bad-boy to the bar so they could put it up. I think it's the kind of photo that a semi-classy bar like Molly's in The Woodlands would want framed up right by where it was taken. I mean, if I sat down at the bar, looked to my right and saw this photo of exactly what I had just been staring at while attempting to get my 6th round....I would be like "DAMN THAT IS SWEEEET!! What an exquisite bar this is. I shall journey here for my next plethora of libations"

Problem is... I never got around to going back to that bar to sell it.....right down the street from my work, in fact it's on my why home from work, but I just haven't stopped by in the 4 months that I've had the picture printed out. I even had my co-worker Dave, who does wedding photos on the side, print it out in a 8x10 and he did an excellent job. He used some crazy Epson printer that he had to go to classes to learn how to calibrate.