Author: Dr. Bill

The IEEE is, of course, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Meeting in Hawaii (well, SOMEBODY’S gotta do it) they passed the first draft of the new 802.11n standard for wireless, which will eventually provide up to 600 MBps in throughput over wireless networking! Dewd!

IEEE Committee Passes 1st Draft of 802.11n

“Broadcom and Marvell have already announced chips based on the draft, with Broadcom saying its products would be upgradeable in case of any changes in the final revision. The first 802.11n chips could be released by the end of this quarter, Marvell said.

Passage of a proposal requires a 75 percent vote in the affirmative, which it easily surpassed on a vote of 184 to 0 with four abstentions. However, final ratification is not expected until 2007.

802.11n uses a technology called MIMO, which stands for multiple-in, multiple out. In layman’s terms, it means a device could have multiple antennas that handle more than one data stream at a time, thus speeding the transfer of data tremendously.

According to test, data rates of up to 600 MBps could be expected. 802.11n devices would also be backwards compatible with the earlier 802.11a, b and g specifications.”

It is hard to stay on top of it all myself… but now, when you come to our site, you can always check out the Tech News feed from BetaNews as well! Of course, I will still be commenting on the news that attracts my attention as well… gotta be a curmudgeon after all!

Check out the “Tech News Feed” on the right sidebar of the page under the “Pages” heading. Enjoy!

Have you ever had your web browser hijacked? You open your browser and ZAP! Suddenly you are at some loser site that you did NOT have set as your Home Page! Then, you set your Home Page back to your normal one, only to find the next time that you open your browser again… ZAP! You have been hijacked, all right!

Well, there are steps that you can take to solve this problem, and this article lays them out pretty well:

Prevent Browser Hijacking

I especially like his first step… don’t use Internet Explorer. There ya go!

“404 pages” are the pages that you get if you go to the wrong page on a website. Most are BORING! But this site has a cool 404 page:

Click here for a cool 404

My 404 page is not super boring… but it isn’t that cool… but, in the interest of full disclosure, here’s the Dr. Bill Bailey.NET 404 page:

Click here for MY 404

Steve Gibson, of GRC Software, author of Spinrite and security maven, claimed on his “Security Now!” Podcast to have found that the WMF exploit was no accident, but rather was a true “back door” into Windows, put there by the Evil Empire themselves! Whoa! Talk about inviting the death squads to show up! Microsoft is already denying the report (of course,) though it does sound like something they might do…. in my humble opinion. Check out M$’s denial here:

Microsoft Disputes WMF Backdoor Claim

Watch your back, Steve! Meanwhile, we will see what his further research reveals… more as it happens!

It seems that the new version of Skype (2.0) is winning over some of it’s critics. I, myself, had been an early user of Skype, and had moved over to the Gizmo Project… maybe I will have to try Skype again. It is free, after all!

Skype V2.0 Wins Over Critics

“Skype 2.0 became available for the general public earlier this week. Improvements from earlier Skype releases include free video calling and the ability to sort contacts into groups like colleagues, friends and family. There’s also mood messages that let fellow Skypers ‘know where you are and how you’re feeling,’ the company said.

Apparently, Skype’s listened to the feedback, some of it pretty nasty. The test version gave rise to a number of complaints ranging from a misfiring voice mail feature to the rather curious choice for the alerts to incoming calls, known as ring tones.

‘I tried an early 2.0 beta last month and didn’t like it at all. But I’ve been running the latest build for the past few days and it is just great, no negative issues with it,’ writes blogger and Skype watcher Neville Hobson.”

Microsoft has won another one. They patented the FAT file system (File Allocation Table), which is actually old anyway, but now a challenge to the patent, that looked promising, has been rejected.

USPTO Upholds Patent for FAT

“On Tuesday, the USPTO announced its decision to uphold the patents, and now coders and users in the free and open source software community, as well as the makers of a wide array of flash storage-based electronic devices, are wondering just how big of a bind they’re in.”

So, will Uncle Bill demand some money from you for using your thumbdrive? We’ll have to see!

First Sony, now Symantec! Yeeesh, guys! What’s with setting up security holes in our Windows systems? They are unsecure enough as it is!

Symantec Found Using Rootkit Feature

I, personally, have never liked Symantec. For instance, Norton Antivirus is about as hard to remove from your system as a virus, itself! But this is a new low!

“The Norton Protected Recycle Bin feature adds a directory called NProtect, which stores temporary copies of files that users delete. The idea was to supplement the standard Windows Recycle Bin and enable users to recover files they removed accidentally.

However, hiding a directory from Windows can open the door to vulnerabilities, as the Sony DRM rootkit debacle exposed. Malware authors were able to write viruses and worms that hid in the cloaked directory, effectively preventing scanning software from discovering their existence on a PC.

Symantec notes that on-demand scanners, including Norton AntiVirus, would discover the malware when it is loaded it memory. Still, the company isn’t taking any chances after Sony’s PR disaster and has issued an update to make the NProtect directory visible in the Recycle Bin.”

I simply can not improve on this article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols as a follow-up to Microsoft trying to claim to be better at running on legacy hardware than Linux!

Linux-Watch Article on Legacy Issue

“Here’s the bottom line: no matter what Microsoft may claim, if you want to get the most from an older system, there’s a Linux distribution out there for you. Suggesting that Windows XP or Server 2003 is a reasonable alternative is simply a bad joke.”