Friday, July 28th, 2006
Mozilla recently patched 13 Firefox flaws, which 8 of them are tagged "critical".
TechWeb.com reported:
Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia tagged the overall update as "highly critical," the second-from-the-top threat ranking. "[These] multiple vulnerabilities can be exploited to conduct cross-site scripting attacks or compromise a user's system," Secunia's online research note read.
A majority of the bugs will allow an attacker to introduce his own code to a vulnerable system; several of them can be exploited by posting malicious code or content on Web sites and enticing users to visit those sites.
If you are running on 1.5.x version of Firefox, check for new version and download Firefox 1.5.0.5 by clicking on Help > Check for Updates... in the file menu.
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
As a response to Intel's move to cut processor prices, AMD slashes their processor prices to continue competing and gaining processor market share from Intel.
As expected, AMD rings in the next round of the processor price battle with Intel. In an effort to remain competitive, the company today slashed the prices of all desktop processors. In the strategically important field of socket AM2 CPUs, the drop averaged 47% - which may not be enough to retain overall price/performance leadership, according to TG Daily findings.
It would be interesting to keep this price war going. And we, the comsumer will be the main beneficiary. However, I do hope that the quality don't go down like the price.
For a full story with price list, go here: AMD drops desktop processor prices by 47%
In another story, AMD has finally announced that they are buying ATI, after such a long rumour. Read AMD's press release for details: AMD and ATI to Create Processing Powerhouse
Thursday, July 20th, 2006
eWEEK.com recently reviewed the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. As they compared the linux desktop operating system with other linux distros, they commented in their article "Ubuntu 6.06 Is Current Desktop Linux Champ" that:
Canonical's Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is an excellent Linux-based operating system—so excellent, in fact, that it not only earned eWEEK Labs' Analyst's Choice designation but has also become our clear favorite among Linux desktop distributions.
They also discussed in another article on whether Ubuntu would pose any threat to Window Vista. Though I believe it won't, but I strongly recommend you to give it a try. Here's some screenshots.
Speaking of Ubuntu, I just got my CDs yesterday, after requesting for them on June 8th, 2006. If you don't want to wait that long (well, it's more than 1 month for me) and you live somewhere near Malaysia, I have a few extras. Just leave a message in this post and I'll try to mail it to you as soon as possible.
Thursday, July 20th, 2006
If your Windows XP takes a very long time to shut down, you can try User Profile Hive Cleanup Service provided by Microsoft (yes, Microsoft). The users at digg claimed that it really helps to shorten shut down time. I remember it took a very long time to shut down before I formatted and reinstall my PC not too long ago.
What will it do to your windows?
The User Profile Hive Cleanup service helps to ensure user sessions are completely terminated when a user logs off. System processes and applications occasionally maintain connections to registry keys in the user profile after a user logs off. In those cases the user session is prevented from completely ending. This can result in problems when using Roaming User Profiles in a server environment or when using locked profiles as implemented through the Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP.
On Windows 2000 you can benefit from this service if the application event log shows event id 1000 where the message text indicates that the profile is not unloading and that the error is "Access is denied". On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 either event ids 1517 and 1524 indicate the same profile unload problem.
To accomplish this the service monitors for logged off users that still have registry hives loaded. When that happens the service determines which application have handles opened to the hives and releases them. It logs the application name and what registry keys were left open. After this the system finishes unloading the profile.
Note that you are required to have a genuine windows to download it. Besides Windows XP, you can use it on Windows 2000, Windows NT and Windows Server 2003 as well.
Wednesday, July 19th, 2006
Robert Brewin, co-CTO of Sun Microsystems revealed that open-sourcing of Java programming language will be done incrementally. However, they are still having problem on how to keep Java compatible, and how to ensure that no particular company uses market forces as muscle for its own implementation, a move that would threaten Java's 'write once, run anywhere' mantra.
In the news:
I'm wondering if that will affect Java programmers? I suppose it won't. What do you think?
Update: Read more comments on this topic at digg.
