Author: Dr. Bill

You search for something via a search engine, you click on the link, and you get infected by a virus! Ouch! It turns out that among web search engines, Yahoo is the riskiest to use!

McAfee: Yahoo search most ‘risky’

Out of the top five search engines, Yahoo returns the riskiest sites for users, according to security vendor McAfee.

“In research published on Monday by McAfee SiteAdvisor, 5.4 percent of Yahoo searches returned links to ‘risky’ internet sites. AOL was found to be the safest of the top five, with 2.9 percent of sites. According to McAfee SiteAdvisor, Yahoo returned the most results rated ‘red’ or ‘yellow’. ‘Red’ rated sites failed McAfee SiteAdvisor’s safety tests. ‘Examples are sites that distribute adware, send a high volume of spam, or make unauthorised changes to a user’s computer,’ said the report. Examples of ‘Yellow’ rated sites are those which send a high volume of ‘non-spammy’ email, display many pop-up ads, or prompt a user to change browser settings. According to McAfee, overall, on Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com, Google, and AOL, sponsored searches returned more risky results than ‘organic’ searches. Of sponsored searches, 6.9 percent returned risky content, compared with 2.9 percent of organic searches.”

So, you are a Linux user. You have declared yourself totally free of Microsoft! No longer will you be making Bill Gates the richest man in the world! You are smug, you are happy… and then, the Microsoft “enforcer” comes by and says, “Hey, bub, if ya don’t wanna get hurt, ya gotta pay us protection money, kapish?” Yep. That’s what M$ has decided to do… the first step was to announce that Open Source was in violation of M$’s intellectual property, then they bullied Linux vendors (starting with Xandros) into coming into an “agreement” with them to issue so called “patent covenants” to Xandros users “protecting” them from possible lawsuits by M$. We knew M$ was evil. Now, we see that they are in the protection racket!

Microsoft’s Protection Racket?

“Microsoft should have admitted that Linux matters sooner. For years, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant seemed to be in denial as the open-source operating software made gains against its Windows franchise. But now a series of deals is finally allowing Microsoft to argue that it’s ahead of the curve–with the entertaining upside of making some of the open-source community’s truest believers even angrier. Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT – news – people ) announced a pact with Linux software distributor Xandros Monday that will the offer tiny company’s customers so-called ‘patent covenants,’ protecting them from the threat of litigation from Microsoft.”

What should our response be to this craziness? Don’t buy Xandros. Simple. Don’t support those companies that knuckle under to Microsoft’s evil practices. Money talks.

We all know spam is evil… and we all hate it! How often have I said, only half-jokingly, that all spammers will be “first up against the wall when the revolution comes!” Well, Robert Soloway is now “up against the wall” so to speak! He is in jail! And spam might just take a dive now that he is!

‘Spam King’ Behind Bars, Authorities Say

“The arrest of a 27-year-old Seattle man is being hailed as a major victory in the fight against spam — and some are saying it could lead to a noticeable decrease in the amount of spam worldwide. ‘Spam is a scourge of the Internet, and Robert Soloway is one of its most prolific practitioners,’ US Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan said. ‘Our investigators dubbed him the ‘Spam King’ because he is responsible for millions of spam emails. Soloway is accused of sending tens of millions of such mails between November 2003 and May 2007, promoting his company Newport Internet Marketing that offered ‘broadcast e-mail’ software and services. Federal officials arrested Soloway after a federal grand jury indicted him on 35 counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, fraud in connection with electronic mail, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering. The federal government is also seeking $772,998 in damages.”

Very nice! I hope he gets a life sentence for every piece of spam he sent!

You know… when Data would just tap on the flat console in front of him to control the Enterprise? Well, guess what? Microsoft has released a “surface computer” like that!

Microsoft unveils table computer

Microsoft has unveiled a new touch-sensitive coffee table-shaped computer called ‘Surface.’ Designed to do away with the need for a traditional mouse and keyboard, users can instead use their fingers to operate the computer. Also designed to interact with mobile phones placed on the surface, Microsoft says it will initially sell the unit to corporate customers. These will include hotels, casinos, phone stores and restaurants. So-called ‘multi-touch’ interfaces – which allow the user to move several fingers on a screen to manipulate data, rather than relying on a mouse and menus – have been making waves in tech circles for some time.”

Very cool! I want one! Then I can pretend to be on the Enterprise! Rock on! Though if it is made by Microsoft, it may be like Data in the image above!

I accidentally blew away my database for the web site and had to restore from backups… ack! So, I lost a few postings. Sorry about that! At least I had backups! (Always backup your data!) Otherwise, I would be one VERY unhappy curmudgeon!

Check this article out, the top ten new features in Windows Server 2008, formerly called “Longhorn.”

Top 10 New Features in Windows Server 2008

“#10: The self-healing NTFS file system. Ever since the days of DOS, an error in the file system meant that a volume had to be taken offline for it to be remedied. In WS2K8, a new system service works in the background that can detect a file system error, and perform a healing process without anyone taking the server down…

#9: Parallel session creation. ‘Prior to Server 2008, session creation was a serial operation,’ Russinovich reminded us. ‘If you’ve got a Terminal Server system, or you’ve got a home system where you’re logging into more than one user at the same time, those are sessions. And the serialization of the session initialization caused a bottleneck on large Terminal Services systems. So Monday morning, everybody gets to work, they all log onto their Terminal Services system like a few hundred people supported by the system, and they’ve all got to wait in line to have their session initialized, because of the way session initialization was architected.’…

#8: Clean service shutdown. One of Windows’ historical problems concerns its system shutdown procedure. In XP, once shutdown begins, the system starts a 20-second timer. After that time is up, it signals the user whether she wants to terminate the application herself, perhaps prematurely. For Windows Server, that same 20-second timer may be the lifeclock for an application, even one that’s busy spooling ever-larger blocks of data to the disk…

#7: Kernel Transaction Manager. This is a feature which developers can take advantage of, which could greatly reduce, if not eliminate, one of the most frequent causes of System Registry and file system corruption: multiple threads seeking access to the same resource…

#6: SMB2 network file system. Long, long ago, SMB was adopted as the network file system for Windows. While it was an adequate choice at the time, Russinovich believes, ‘SMB has kind of outlived its life as a scalable, high-performance network file system.’…

#5: Address Space Load Randomization (ASLR) Perhaps one of the most controversial added features already, especially since its debut in Vista, ASLR makes certain that no two subsequent instances of an operating system load the same system drivers in the same place in memory each time…

#4: Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA). That’s right, Microsoft has actually standardized the error – more accurately, the protocol by which applications report to the system what errors they have uncovered. You’d think this would already have been done…

#3: Windows Server Virtualization. Even pared down a bit, the Viridian project will still provide enterprises with the single most effective tool to date for reducing total cost of ownership…to emerge from Microsoft. Many will argue virtualization is still an open market, thanks to VMware; and for perhaps the next few years, VMware may continue to be the feature leader in this market…

#2: PowerShell. At last. For two years, we’ve been told it’ll be part of Longhorn, then not really part of Longhorn, then a separate free download that’ll support Longhorn, then the underpinning for Exchange Server 2007. Now we know it’s a part of the shipping operating system: the radically new command line tool that can either supplement or completely replace GUI-based administration…

#1: Server Core. Here is where the world could really change for Microsoft going forward: Imagine a cluster of low-overhead, virtualized, GUI-free server OSes running core roles like DHCP and DNS in protected environments, all to themselves, managed by way of a single terminal…”

Remember the old saying, “The shoemaker’s son never has new shoes?” Well, in that spirit, as a web host, I seldom change my “home” web site… but that time has come!

Check it out! It is the “main site” for my web empire! (Yeah, right!) Anyway, I like it! Click the link below:

New Dr. Bill Bailey.NET Web Site