Day: July 10, 2009

M$ (Microsoft, for you that don’t regularly follow my Blog) just released the new version of their Flash alternative, Silverlight… now at version 3.0.

Silverlight 3.0 provides for offline Sliverlight apps

“After going live just a little bit early, Silverlight 3 is now an official release. The third iteration of Microsoft’s rich internet application platform largely viewed as the chief competitor to Adobe Flash (but really an AIR rival) was officially launched this morning at a Microsoft event in San Francisco alongside Expression 3, the latest version of the company’s design and development studio. In the short time that it has been around, Microsoft said today that nearly one-third of all Internet-enabled devices have Silverlight 2 installed, and today’s launch ushered in several new big-name customers. NBC Sports, for example, which used Silverlight to stream the Beijing Summer Olympics, will not only use Silverlight for the 2010 Winter Olympics as was previously expected, but for all of its online video moving forward. NBC Universal and the rest of the companies using Silverlight will be able to capitalize on the latest developments to the platform, which Microsoft premiered incrementally this year after Silverlight 3 was released in beta at MIX 09 in March.”

99% of the world uses Flash… Silverlight is light, fast, and may even be cool… but, it doesn’t have the marketshare, one of the few M$ products that doesn’t… what does that say?

OK, so local (Triad) Time Warner has me ticked off! I watch the SciFi (excuse me, now, “SyFy”… yuk!) Channel for “Eureka” and “Warehouse 13” as well as the few other ACTUAL SciFi programs on SyFy… sigh, indeed! Anyway, what ticks me off is that they turn UP the audio level on LOCAL cable commercials… while preempting the “network” commercials (always a few milliseconds too late!)

Anyway, I am sure that they are telling the local commercial buying companies that this “increasing the volume” bit is a GREAT idea to catch people’s attention… well, guess what, local vendors that are paying good money for your commercials to run… I sit with my finger on the MUTE button, and as soon as they blare out at me, I happily, gleefully, with MALICE… hit the MUTE BUTTON to silence the commercial… so, I NEVER HEAR YOUR MESSAGE!!!! So there! Time Warner… are you listening??? You are “out-smarting” yourself, OK?!?!? We aren’t listening to your LOUD COMMERCIALS! Anybody else out there doing what I am doing?!? If so, write them… send me comments to this post… let me know I am not the only one ticked off!!!

Microsoft has patches for you… hot off the press!

Six Security Patches on Patch Tuesday

“Critical Patches
Critical patch No. 1 will be designed to stave off RCE exploits for all supported Windows OS versions.

The second critical item will be aimed at patching the DirectX multimedia control solution, a favorite complaint of security gadflies. This patch will affect DirectX versions 7.0, 8.1 and 9.0 running on systems using Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

Microsoft has issued other security advisories about ActiveX in recent times. In May, Microsoft began an investigation of a DirectX bug in its DirectShow framework for multimedia files. In June, the company announced it was investigating a potential DirectX bug in Internet Explorer.

The final critical patch will be a Windows OS fix addressing RCE exploits. It’s considered “critical” for Windows XP but “moderate” for Windows Server 2003.

Important Patches
First on the ‘important’ list will be a virtualization fix — something to be seen more often, perhaps. It will be a patch to stop potential elevation-of-privilege attacks in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 and Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 editions, as well as Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 x64.

The next important patch will address Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006. ISA Server provides application-layer firewalling and protects Web servers. The server is being rolled up into Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway, which Redmond calls a ‘comprehensive secure Web gateway solution’ protecting client-side users from Web-based threats.

The third important item deals with 2007 Microsoft Office System Service Pack 1 in general, and Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 Service Pack 1 in particular. It is the rollout’s fourth RCE exploit fix.

Depending on which components are included in Tuesday’s announcement, July looks to be a reasonably busy month for IT pros. The entire slate of patches may require restarts.

As usual, those interested in nonsecurity updates may want to check out the monthly knowledgebase article. Microsoft has accompanied every security patch release with nonsecurity updates for more than a year now. Those items include a new Malicious Software Removal Tool and spam filter updates. Changes for Vista and Windows Server 2008 are also on tap via Windows Update, Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services.”