Hacked US Treasury websites serve visitors malware

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/03/treasury_websites_attack/

iTunes 9.1 remaining issue

I got iTunes 9.1 to work, and connected my iPhone to sync it.

Guess what appeared:

Of course, I usually synchronize "Notes" with my computer, but it's the first time I did so in German... ;)

iTunes 9.1 on Windows 7 (64-bit) is BROKEN

Just updated my iTunes to 9.1, and now it won't start.

Apparently I'm not alone:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=150&start=45#threads

No error messages, no apparent problems during installation. :(


UPDATE: TURNS OUT IT'S A PROBLEM WITH BONJOUR - WHICH IS USED FOR APPLE TV. I REMOVED IT AND ALL IS WELL WITH THE WORLD.

Fun with X-Rays, Part 2

I had to do some more troubleshooting at the veterinary clinic today, and that meant I needed another x-ray image…

Yep, that’s my iPhone. ;)

Facebook Is a Cybercrime Danger Zone

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20100203/bs_nf/71424

Nasty new IE bug exposes your files (please panic now!) - Computerworld Blogs

Nasty new IE bug exposes your files (please panic now!) - Computerworld Blogs

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Fun with X-Rays

I was at on a client appointment this morning at a veterinary clinic.  Their radiology system puts x-ray images on a server, and the workstations are supposed to be able to access the images.  For whatever reason, they were not.  So, I wanted to test the system and see if the workstations could see a "new" image.  Obviously, putting one of the animals under the radiation unnecessarily was out of the question, and no one (including me) wanted to expose themselves unnecessarily.  So, I came up with an idea - take an x-ray of my notebook !

And here it is - pretty cool. :)

ASUS CG5290-BP009

Around a month ago, my primary business computer died.  It was a top-tier consumer HP Pavilion Elite.  It was the second to “die” within 1 year of purchase.  The prior HP desktop was also an “Elite” HP.  Both started having weird problems that weren’t windows-related, but brought the machines to a halt within moments, with virtually no advance warning.  I think it’s because HP is putting Samsung hard disks in their desktops.

As a result, I knew I needed to get a new one quickly but didn’t want to give HP more money.  I could’ve ordered from Dell, but needed a working machine within 24 hours, so ordering it wouldn’t do.  I was able to use one of the notebooks to do invoices and such, but needed to get my Outlook and iTunes (more for iPhone than music) back up on a “permanent” machine.  I can’t load up all that stuff on a notebook.

So, I went and spent about $1,400 on an ASUS desktop:

I got it up and running within about a day, and transferred all my files to it within about 3 days.  Over the last month, I’ve gotten almost everything I need on it and configured the way I like it.

This thing is a beast.  I couldn’t be happier with it.  Now let’s see how I feel about it a year from now…

I bought a new convertible notebook

I've been testing Windows 7 for a few months, but I installed it on an old machine, and that version is set to expire soon. I know I've got to get a lot more comfortable with Windows 7, and I don't want to mess with my primary work machine, which is Vista x64. I've also been eager to buy a convertible notebook. It's not that I really need another one - I already have several, but I guess call it a case of "gadget lust." So, to kill two birds with one stone, I went out and bought a new HP TouchSmart tx2-1375dx. It's got Windows 7 Professional x64, 4GB RAM, a 320GB Hard Disk, and a 2.2GHZ AMD Turion X2 with virtualization support. So far, I love it. Gadget porn to follow:

 

By the way, I posted this using Windows Live Writer.  Kinda cool.  It seems great for posting with greater control over the layout and content.

Toshiba Notebooks

When clients ask me what brands they should consider, I often specifically say that I've had problems with the quality of Toshiba notebooks in recent years.

I'm currently restoring a client's Toshiba notebook, and got a great working example of such a problem. I put the factory-supplied Recovery Disc into the machine, and began the process, only to be greeted with a message that this was the "Wrong Machine!" O RLY?

It turns out that many Toshiba notebooks suffer from this specific issue, so much that Toshiba's support site has a "fix" for the issue, but it apparently took them several years to put it up. And to make matters worse:
- There's different fixes depending on the model
- It involves making either a bootable floppy (?) or CD - not very user-friendly.
- It involves booting the machine from that bootable floppy/cd

I'm just wondering how they screwed this up across so many different models.

To wit: http://www.google.com/search?q=toshiba+%22wrong+machine%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

WinAntivirus - Mac users falling for it?

I received two calls today from clients who "fell for" a "winantivirus" popup, AKA smitfraud. For those who don't know, that's a scam popup that often results in a "drive-by download" - a virus that installs itself on your machine without you clicking anything.

It varies all the time but may look something like this:



It alerts you to several viruses that it says are currently on your machine, then directs you to download their antivirus software that will fix everything. Of course, it doesn't fix anything, and in many cases it is the thing that is infecting your computer. It is sometimes very hard to remove.

I get calls about such scams almost every day, but what makes today interesting is that these aren't Windows users. It's two clients who switched to Mac over two years ago.

Thankfully, these types of scam software doesn't even work on Macs. But the website that the popup directs you to asks for credit card and other personal information as they process your "order" for this crap. That, of course means they're stealing your money and likely worse.

Windows 7

I just put Windows 7 Ultimate RTM on a pretty modest test machine (P4HT, 512MB RAM, Intel Graphics).

Despite the fact that it's a low-end machine, I'm very impressed.

Many of the things that were quirky about the UI (user interface) on Vista are much better. Overall, the interface seems smarter, and more user-friendly. A frequent complaint about Vista is the UAC (User Account Control) pop-ups. With Vista, even when a user is simply changing their desktop background, they're asked to authenticate/approve the change. Many UAC pop-ups require two separate approval clicks. Windows 7 gets a big plus in the user-friendliness department - UAC pop-ups are very infrequent. In fact, I haven't seen any since installing it.

One thing I hate about Vista is the Sidebar. Without exception, I turn it off immediately when setting up a client machine. When clients have it already enabled, I often simply ask them if they care about the "clock, calendar, and sample photos" that the default "sidebar" includes. 98 times out of 100 they don't, and I kill the whole thing. One less thing running can't hurt performance. I like the idea of Gadgets, but hate the fact that Vista sticks them in a window that interferes with other things. In Windows 7, the gadgets are independent - little "windows" on their own, without actual windows of course.

There are some things I'm "on the fence" about, however. A feature of Vista that I think is great is the Windows Photo Gallery. I think it gave Windows users a near equivalent to the Mac iPhoto application. Unfortunately, it's gone by default in Windows 7, but Microsoft offers "Windows Live Photo Gallery" as a replacement. It requires you to have a Windows Live (or MSN/Hotmail) account, and also requires that you login to the service to use it. I don't see the customer benefit of this change, since the program seems to work very similarly to the Vista program. If Microsoft wants to integrate Windows Live features into it, I wish they had made it an optional setting so that the user could simply use it on their local machine.

Despite my minor misgivings, seeing how well it's running on this old-ish POS, I'm likely going to put the retail Windows 7 upgrade package on at least one of my own machines.