Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Weird question, you ask? Ah, but no! Here’s the deal. Spammers want to know, above all else, that the e-mail address that they have for you is a “good” one. So, if you go on vacation AND you set your e-mail to “auto-reply” to messages with your “happy little message” of “I’m out of the office…” Well, your auto-reply message goes back to the spammers as well, when their nasty viagra messages come in to your inbox. So, you have provided them with VERY valuable information!

So, what to do? Try this, BEFORE you go on vacation, send a message to the people that commonly (yet legitimately) send you e-mails a message saying that you will be out for a week. NOT your WHOLE e-mail list, just the main folks (you know who they are!)

Just a thought! Don’t give spammers any more info than you have to! Let’s be careful out there!

You have heard about it, but what is it? This is a great, concise description of the issues involved in “Net Neutrality!”

Net Neutrality Primer

Strange that ultra-liberal “MoveOn.org” AND the National Religious Broadcasters are BOTH on the same side in this, huh? I like what this article says, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

It sure has been a slow week for tech news so far… but this item is one that I have mixed feelings about. I really like Winternals… they have awesome free utilities and tools that I use all the time! I sure hope that Microsoft gobbling them up means that we will lose out on these cool tools!

Microsoft buys Winternals

I will try and stay positive! Maybe Winternals programmers will help out M$!

“As part of the deal, the software maker is naming Winternals co-founder Mark Russinovich as a technical fellow. ‘I’ve had my eye on Mark for some time,’ Jim Allchin, Microsoft divisional co-president, said in a statement. ‘The work he and Bryce (Cogswell, Winternal’s other co-founder) have completed in system recovery and data protection illustrates the depth of thinking and skill they will bring to future versions of Windows. The addition of their deep kernel-level expertise to our existing strong talent will help provide us with the edge we need to continue to raise the quality and functionality bar for Windows on both the client and the server.’ In buying Winternals, Microsoft is getting the company’s free tools, its Sysinternals community Web site as well as several paid-for software products for businesses. However, it appears Microsoft made the deal, in large part, to hire the company’s two co-founders. ‘It’s definitely about talent,’ Platform and Services division architect Jason Garms said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. ‘Mark is one of the top five or 10 people in the world when it comes to Windows internals.'”

Microsoft Word had a zero-day bug, then Excel, now its PowerPoint. Really gives you confidence in Microsoft’s “Security Initiative,” huh?

Microsoft Confirms PowerPoint Zero-Day Attack

“The latest attack exploits a previously undocumented flaw in Microsoft PowerPoint, the ubiquitous presentation program used by millions of users around the world. The attack comes just days after Microsoft’s July Patch Tuesday and closely mirrors the situation in June when a zero-day Excel attack was discovered 24 hours after Patch Day. Virus hunters at Symantec linked the zero-day attack to a Trojan horse program called Trojan.PPDropper.B that arrives via e-mail from a Gmail address. The subject line of the mail and the .ppt file-name are in Chinese characters, suggesting that the attacks are emanating from—and attacking targets—in the Far East. If the PowerPoint attachment is opened, the Trojan drops and executes a variant of Backdoor.Bifrose.E, a keystroke logger that is used to steal sensitive information and send it back to a remote server controlled by malicious hackers.”

Survey results of Internet users demonstrate that Mac-users and Trekkers (Star Trek fans), are the primary listeners to podcasts! So, which are you? I will cop to being a huge Trekker, and I like Macs, but I don’t own one… so pretty close! I am probably unusual in that I listen to about 25 podcasts a week. Hummmm… maybe I am in my own category?

Podcasts popular in the holodeck

“Among those surveyed, 51.6 percent said they paid bills online, and 24.6 percent participated in online job hunting. E-mailing is still the most popular online activity at 92.7 percent, with news reading (71.5) and weather checking (63.9) in second and third place, respectively. Compared to those statistics, downloading podcasts is still a relatively unpopular activity. Overall, 6.6 percent of adults said they had downloaded audio podcasts within the last 30 days, and 4 percent had downloaded video podcasts. Since the question has only been recently added to the survey, according to the Nielsen/NetRatings spokeswoman, there is no data available for 2004 to allow for a growth comparison. (Blogging came in even lower at 4.8 percent.)”

M$ has been bad, and the EU is clamping down! They have been fined big time for refusing to give up details of their server code that would allow other companies to better design media software for Windows Server. M$ has acquiesced somewhat on its Media Player client, but they have been dragging their heals on the server side.

EU fines Microsoft 281 mln euros for defiance

“European Union regulators fined Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) 280.5 million euros ($357.3 million) on Wednesday for defying a 2004 antitrust ruling, and warned the company to comply or face bigger fines from next month. The tough new penalty is the first of its kind and comes on top of a record 497 million euro fine the Commission imposed in its landmark antitrust decision against Microsoft in March 2004.”

Get ready to get your security updates! M$ has found five BIG security flaws in Windows and Office that will allow someone to take over your computer!

Microsoft Warns of 5 “Critical” Security Flaws

“Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday warned of five ‘critical’ security flaws in its Windows operating system and Office software that could allow attackers to take control of a computer. Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs on 90 percent of the world’s computers, issued patches to fix the problems as part of its monthly security bulletin. The world’s biggest software maker defines a flaw as ‘critical’ when the vulnerability could allow a damaging Internet worm to replicate without the user doing anything to the machine.”

Alright! The word is getting out! People are realizing that Internet Explorer is not safe! Firefox usage continues to grow! Life is good!

Firefox Use in the U.S. Passes 15%!

“Worldwide, Firefox now holds 12.93 percent of the market, up from 11.79 percent in May. The open source browser commands a 15.82 percent usage share in the United States, and a whopping 39.02 percent in Germany. Australians are also big Firefox users, with the browser holding 24.23 percent of the market down under. Internet Explorer use worldwide has fallen below 80 percent in the United States to 79.78 percent, according to OneStat, although IE still accounts for 83.05 percent of the browser market globally. British Web surfers are the biggest IE users, giving Microsoft’s browser 86.23 percent of the market.”

Every so often I have to explain e-mail relaying to a client so that they can figure out how to set up their e-mail if they are hosting a domain with me. I thought the general information might be interesting enough that others might benefit as well, so here’s the explanation I sent out:

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OK, here’s how it all works.

A user has an Internet Service Provider that provides the “wire” to their house. For clarity, we will call this company “ISP.com.” They are the ones that you pay for your DSL, or broadband, connection. In my case, for instance, I have a broadband connection provided by the Piedmont Triad Road Runner division of Time-Warner. So, ISP.com provides service to you. You are in their “cloud” of domain security, and they, by default, “trust” you as “one of their own.â€? It is a cozy, happy relationship. As far as ISP.com is concerned, your house, and your PC, are “on their network” and they allow you to “send and receive” pretty much whatever you want, to and from, them.

Now, outside of ISP.com, there are other ISP’s, other companies, and other network services. These folks are “outside” the friendly confines of ISP.com. ISP.com does NOT trust these other companies. And, sadly, they shouldn’t! There are too many bad guys out there to lower your guard! I have often said that the Internet is like the old “Wild West” days. You have to carry a six-shooter with you to protect yourself from the guys in black hats!

Now, you (a member of the ISP.com community) contracts with an outside vendor to provide business e-mail (like me,) we with call this company “MAIL.com.” MAIL.com has it’s own DNS, infrastructure, e-mail servers, firewalls, and, it, too, has a responsibility NOT to trust anyone outside of it’s “cloud” of influence. MAIL.com trusts YOU as a customer, but MAIL.com DOESN’T trust ISP.com, and ISP.com doesn’t trust MAIL.com. Rather than being a bad thing, in computer and networking circles, this is “business as usual” since both companies know that the rules are; “If I can’t control it in my own datacenter, then it is NOT to be trusted.â€?

Mail servers have an ability called “relaying” that allows one trusted source to “relay” mail to another trusted source. “Relaying” is ONLY turned on WITHIN a network “owned” by the vendor that controls it. For instance, MAIL.com may have four servers sending mail BEHIND their firewall, and WITHIN their own datacenter. Among this “big, happy family,” these servers may be set to relay mail to each other all day long. But, MAIL.com would NEVER open a relay to ISP.com, and ISP.com would NEVER open a relay to MAIL.com. On the Internet, these mail servers are called “Open Relays” and as soon as they are found, they are “blacklisted” as spamming servers, or, they are isolated in other ways to be sure that they do not become “carriers” of all the ills of the Internet like Viruses, Spam, Malware, etc. No one wants to be found out to be an “Open Relay” server. Aside from the fact that it is bad computer management, and opens up abuse problems, it is also just plain “dumb,” and other computer geeks think that the company that does this is clueless and should be sent back to Networking 101! (They also poke fun at them in dark, shady, corner Geek Bars and have a laugh at their expense!)

So, what is a customer to do? He (you, in this case) is “stuck” between two “Wild West gunslingersâ€? that don’t trust each other! However, MAIL.com trusts YOU as its customer, and ISP.com trusts YOU as its customer! So, you can RECIEVE mail from MAIL.com, and you can SEND mail from ISP.com! Therefore, you have to set up your mail client so that:

INCOMING mail is set to the e-mail server at MAIL.com
OUTGOING mail is set to the e-mail server at ISP.com

In this way, you can both send mail OUT, because ISP.com trusts you. You are in their network, after all. And you can receive mail sent IN to “insert-your-personal-domain-here”.com because MAIL.com trusts you as a customer and will gladly send your client e-mail destined to you.

So, now, let’s drop back to the “real world” at my house, as a real “for instance.” My ISP is Road Runner, so I would have my home e-mail set to SEND OUT via Road Runner. But I would have my RECIEVE server set to DrBillBailey.NET (since that is my personal domain.) So, my e-mail client would be set:

SMTP OUTGOING server: smtp-server.triad.rr.com
SMTP (or POP3) INCOMING server: mail.drbillbailey.net

Now, since I am “within” the Road Runner “world” I don’t even need a password to “relay” off the “local-to-me” Road Runner e-mail server. However, I DO need a username and password to connect to my personal account at DrBillBailey.NET.

So, what you will need to do, is be sure that your e-mail client is pointing toward YOUR ISP’s SMTP server for OUTGOING SMTP traffic, and to the e-mail server at “insert-your-personal-domain-here”.com’s server (with your username and password) for the INCOMING mail. This SHOULD clear up any problems. Sorry for the long story, but I have found it helps to “get” the underlying concepts when setting these things up!

Well, it is official… “google,” with a small “g,” is now a verb! The 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary lists “google” as a new word!

“Google” Goes From Web to Webster’s

“The definition: ‘to use the Google search engine to obtain information … on the World Wide Web.’ As in, ‘Let me google that.’ Linguists said google entered the lexicon especially quickly. It reached the pages of the dictionary just five years after its first known public reference as a verb in a New York Post article. Usually, it takes 10 to 20 years for words to enter everyday use, if they make it at all. Google’s speed ‘is typical for words used on or about the Web,’ said John Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc. ‘Those are words that establish themselves in the language the quickest because of the power of the Web to propagate words.'”