Welcome |eMusings | Offtakes on Web-related software, services 'n tips

Mon, 3 Oct 2011
by emusings
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Get Mozilla Firefox 7 NOW

If you are a Mozilla Firefox 6.0.2 user you may have seen an Upgrade to Version 7 prompt. Unless you are among the few (many?) who have disabled update notification because it breaks your plugins. My advice: Get Firefox 7 as soon as you can. Like NOW!

There’s lots of new stuff that makes the upgrade worthwhile. Better system resource (aka RAM) management for one. But this user found that now add-ons can be removed or added without needing to restart the browser. An ability to install extensions without a restart was the Google Chrome browser’s sole redeeming feature. But Mozilla Firefox has cought up now. And Firefox, unlike default Chrome, doesn’t ‘phone home’ with all kinds of data about your browsing habits.

Read the Firefox 7 Release Notes for the complete details including bugs fixed.

And if you are worried about sharing information online, consider installing the free Ghostery extension that blocks both web bugs and third-party cookies. It displays domain-specific services blocked in a overlay box. And is available for Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome browsers.

Another great extension to add to your Firefox is the multi-thread Down Them All download accelerator. It’s flexible enough to be used just for file downloads. But can also download images or the contents of all links on a web page. Plus controlling the download speed, the number of segments and the simultaneous download count too.

Wed, 21 Sep 2011
by emusings
2 Comments

Dammed Downtime

This blog along with 30 other websites hosted on a common server were taken down on 9/11 (11 Sept 2011 and yes I see the significance) by a hacker pretending to be Brazilian. Except that’s misdirection because in Brazil they use Portuguese! The hacker replaced every file containing the string “index with its own twisted message in Spanish and a graphic of a semi-nude woman.

And before you rant about insecure passwords we’d used 12-16 character really secure passwords that met Linux’s rather exacting standards. And tested them on GRC’s Password Haystack site to see how quickly they’d give in to brute force attacks. Nothing that took less that a few hundred centuries met our standards.

I believe, although the company my former company Indax leased the server from denies it, the attacker entered an insecure backdoor on the domain controller. From personal experience I know of a large US-based hosting company who uses a modified WordPress (yes, what powers this blog too) based hosting partner management system. When I used it the user passwords were limit to no more than 6 characters and could only contain capitals, lower-case or numbers!!!

It took me with the help of one other person to get the hosting box back on track. My blog took 2nd place on the update. And when I tred to restore it earlier today found I had a broken theme to deal with. Jeez! The aggro (aka aggravation).

Sun, 21 Aug 2011
by emusings
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Why this blog may look messed up

I’m experimenting with a new HTML5 theme that may look messed up in browsers like Internet Explorer 8 and older. If you really want to see what this site now looks like, upgrade your browser. Internet Explorer 9 is one option (altho I haven’t installed it yet; I’m no IE fan

But it’s better if you look at Google Chrome 14.x and later (There’s a public Chrome 15.x Beta available). Or Firefox 6 or the 7 or 8 Betas. Unlike MS products, these are really stable,

And Firefox 9 looks even more awesome! See the user interface (aka UX) here.

Fri, 19 Aug 2011
by emusings
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Everyday Problems: Windows Explorer

I know I haven’t been posting new stuff to the blog. My problem is of prioritization. There’s so much to write about. Except I don’t know where to begin.

A friend called and asked if I knew why their Windows XP Explorer kept crashing. This is Windows Explorer we’re talking about; not Internet Explorer. In this instance every time my friend tried to search for video files via Start > Search, the Explorer window search sub-pane would accept the keywords, run for all of 10 seconds then crash. When my friend browsed to a folder with video content, Explorer would crash!

So I ran a quick search and got the usual million (I’m exaggerating) responses; most of which dealt with corrupted Internet Explorer. Unfortunately Windows Explorer (explorer.exe) is so much a part of Windows (any version). That you can’t re-install it without re-installing Windows. Which we all know is a pain in the wrong place.

The Windows Explorer crash was linked to videos. So a bit more searching revealed that on Windows XP, the video thumbnail generator suddenly, and somewhat inexplicably, gets corrupted.The fix is to open a command session (Start > Run) and type “regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll” to uninstall the video thumbnail function. Once done you don’t even need to restart Windows.

Now my friend is happy. Windows Search can find all videos match a specific keyword. And can also view a folder with videos without Explorer crashing.

Fri, 1 Jul 2011
by emusings
0 comments

Google Docs used for Phishing

Scammers are inventive. If promises to win millions of Pounds, Dollars, what have you by replying to a (grammatically badly constructed request) didn’t suck you in. Let’s see if documents from a trustworthy source will reveal your private information.

The latest scammer trick to surface leverages the general trustworthiness of Google products. How many times have to opened someone else’s Google Doc file without wondering if it was safe to do so?

So watch out for that form. Phishers are now using simple Google Doc forms (spreadsheets actually). Banking that for most web users Google is trustworthy. Right?

W-R-O-N-G!

For more on what can possibly go wrong read about Google docs phishing sites, phake sites including the lo-down from F-Secure.

Stay Safe you all!