Month: July 2012

Victims of the DNSChanger trojan will be cut off from the Internet on Monday. Check your system now!

DNSChanger victims to lose internet on Monday

“This coming Monday, 9 July, the FBI will be turning off the DNS server which currently intercepts queries from DNSChanger victims. This will mean that users who are infected with the malware will be almost completely unable to access the internet normally. Users are therefore advised to check whether their computers or routers use one of the FBI-listed IP addresses for DNS queries, well before the server shutdown, by visiting dnschanger.eu or dns-ok.us.

Users who want to check their configuration manually need to look out for the following IP address ranges:

85.255.112.0 to 85.255.127.255
67.210.0.0 to 67.210.15.255
93.188.160.0 to 93.188.167.255
77.67.83.0 to 77.67.83.255
213.109.64.0 to 213.109.79.255
64.28.176.0 to 64.28.191.255

If an address from one of the above ranges is already set as the DNS server on the computer or router, it is infected with DNSChanger. Users can find out where to locate this DNS server information for their particular case using a wizard set up by the eco association. Future DNS queries can be made using servers such as Google’s at 8.8.8.8.

Until November 2011, criminals were intercepting DNS queries from infected computers and redirecting them to fake web sites. This allowed them to steal credit card details, sell fake anti-virus software and undertake click fraud.

The FBI then destroyed the DNSChanger network in Operation Ghostclick and, as a temporary solution, set up a replacement server which redirected DNS queries from affected computers to their correct destinations. On 9 July, this server is set to be switched off. Although this date and the DNS problem have been public knowledge for several months, there are still thousands of infected computers in use in the UK. Two months ago, the FBI was still registering queries from around 20,000 UK IP addresses.”

So, $39.99 for Windows 8 if you have a LEGITIMATE earlier version of Windows. Pretty nice!

Upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $39.99

“We set out to make it as easy as possible for everyone to upgrade to Windows 8. Starting at general availability, if your PC is running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 you will qualify to download an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for just $39.99 in 131 markets. And if you want, you can add Windows Media Center for free through the “add features” option within Windows 8 Pro after your upgrade.

When you use Windows.com to purchase an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro, the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant makes upgrading simple by walking you through the upgrade process step-by-step from purchase to download and then of course installation.

The Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant will check to make sure your PC is ready for Windows 8. It will provide a detailed compatibility report that lets you know of anything you may have to address before or after the upgrade and outlines actions to take.

It will also inform you of any application or device compatibility issues. It will ask you what you want to keep from your current Windows installation. You will be able to upgrade from any consumer edition of Windows 7 to Windows 8 Pro and bring everything along which includes your Windows settings, personal files, and apps. If you are upgrading from Windows Vista, you will be able to bring along your Windows settings and personal files, and if you are upgrading from Windows XP you will only be able to bring along your personal files. Of course, if you want to start fresh, you can choose to bring nothing along. Or if you prefer to format your hard drive as part of your upgrade experience, you can do so as long as you boot from media and then format your hard drive from within the setup experience for installing Windows 8, not prior to it.”

I LOVE Audcacity… it is my only audio editor, and it rocks! And, it is Open Source, and FREE! Check out the bug fixes and features below:

Audacity Audio Editor

Bug fixes

Interface

Selection Toolbar: a value for the previous whole second displayed if the value was close to a whole second.
Finding zero crossings could cause the selection to expand into white space at either side of the clip.
Clips did not drag to another track if mouse was over a selection.
Mixer Board: Rendering four tracks resulted in a redundant Track Strip followed by a crash.
Imports, Exports and Files
Exporting to WAV or AIFF led to a “Libsndfile says” error or corrupted output due to order of metadata in imported files.
(Mac) Fixed crashes importing MP3 files on PPC machines.
(Linux Ubuntu) .Aup files could not be associated with Audacity (they opened in the web browser instead).

Effects and Analysis

Normalize: Fixed issues where normalization could be to wrong value if applied with DC offset correction, or if applied to “read-directly” WAV and AIFF files before On-Demand completed.
Sliding Time Scale: fixed an audible discontinuity at the beginning of the processed selection; fixed a serious quality problem on Linux 64-bit.

Other miscellaneous bug fixes

including fix to prevent zooming with mouse wheel or ball scrolling the content off-screen.

Changes and Improvements

Shortcuts can now be added in Keyboard Preferences to items in the Generate, Effect or Analyze menus, including user-added plug-ins.
Nyquist Effect plug-ins can now be added to Chains.
New “Paulstretch” effect for extreme slowdown without pitch change.
New “Sample Data Export” Analyze effect for exporting a file containing amplitude values for each sample in the selection.
New Preference (off by default) to import files On-Demand (without seek ability) when using the optional FFmpeg library.
New Preference (off by default) to retain labels when deleting a selection that snaps to the label without extending past it.
(Windows installer) New option to reset Preferences on next launch.
(Mac) Audacity now has excellent compatibility with the VoiceOver screen reader. For details, please see https://manual.audacityteam.org/help/manual/man/accessibility.html#mac.
CleanSpeech Mode (no longer supported) will not now be enabled even if it was enabled by an earlier version of Audacity.
Added Serbian (Latin and Cyrillic) translations.