Month: March 2007

I don’t know why… but it CAN be done! Thanks to Kelly, a faithful listener, who shared this with me! Windows Media Player in Windows… which we will call WiMP from now on (I love that one, Kelly!) will play Ogg IF you install a codec for it, available here:

Directshow Filters for Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Theora and FLAC

So there you go… you can use WiMP and cruise on with patent-free media! Hoo-rah!

By the by… I just tried it, and it works! Kinda cool, actually! Don’t get me wrong, of course, I STILL prefer VLC Player… it is free, it is Open Source, and it is NOT Microsoft!

This year Daylight Saving Time is not at it’s normal time. The government changed the dates. Hooray for them! Anyway, your computer doesn’t know what the government has done (aren’t you glad?) So… for your computer to correctly automatically change the date as it has always done for DST, you need to apply some updates.

First of all, if you have Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, or Windows 2000… tough! They are no longer supported and you are hosed. (Actually, just turn off the “automatic update feature” on Daylight Savings Time on your machine and set the time manually!) If you have Windows XP, Service Pack 1, then upgrade to Service Pack 2! If you are at Windows XP, Service Pack 2, then do the following:

Go to:

https://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Choose “Custom” and select “Windows Update (KB931836).” Apply it and reboot! NOTE: If you have already been doing regular updates… you MAY have already applied this one! If it doesn’t “show up” in the list as available, you probably already have applied it!

If you are using Microsoft Outlook, you will need to update it as well… Outlook has a separate update called “Time Zone Data Update Tools for Outlook Calendars.”

More info on that is here:

https://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/931667

And, of course, if you have Microsoft Windows Vista… it is already “up-to-date” with the change, and you are “good to go!”

If you are running a flavor of Linux or FreeBSD, then check out this article:

Update Linux and FreeBSD systems for new Daylight Saving Time settings

Bottom line, you need to be sure that your machine is up-to-date with it’s latest patches before Sunday!

This is one reason it is not smart to do an immediate upgrade as soon as one is released! I like to “hold” back on upgrades to things like my WordPress Blog. It turns out that if we had upgraded to WordPress 2.1.1 as soon as it came out, we would have been in danger of having malicious code in the site! So, hooray for folks tracking these things down!

WordPress Code Subverted on Its Own Server

“Users who have downloaded the 2.1.1 version of the open-source blogging platform WordPress should upgrade all files to 2.1.2 immediately, since they could include a security bug injected by a cracker who gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, according to a release posted on WordPress’ site on Friday. WordPress received a note on the project’s security mailing address Friday morning regarding ‘highly exploitable code,’ the release said. After investigating the issue, the WordPress developers found that the 2.1.1 download had been modified from its original site. The Web site was taken down immediately for further forensic analysis. ‘It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file,’ the release continued. ‘We have locked down that server for further forensics.'”