Three new flaws have been found in Internet Explorer 6, two of them are classed as critical flaws, and both of those will affect even uses of IE6 SP2.
Here for more details.

Franki

After calling Linux a cancer, and making many other such disparaging remarks to anyone that would listen. Microsoft have just put 10 million dollars into a company called Vintela that is known for its Unix/Linux management software.

Could this be a sign of change from Microsoft? I doubt it personally, I suspect that they are either just covering their bases, or they are planning to use parts of their software to allow the management of Unix/Linux boxes from Windows servers, or vice versa. That’s not really as unusual as it sounds, one of Microsoft’s past tactics has been to make it really easy to migrate from a competitors products to their own, and nearly impossible to migrate away from. Nothing unusual there. You can read more about the deal here.
INSERT: It appears that Vintela is a Canopy group company, Canopy is behind SCO, so this may well be a sly way to give SCO more money to continue it’s battle against Linux. Read this groklaw article for more.

In other Microsoft news, a company in Australia called EEYE Security services has complained to the media that a critical security flaw in Win2k that they found and showed Microsoft in August has not been acted upon or patched. “The flaw allows anonymous attackers to compromise default installations of the affected software, without requiring user interaction, and gain absolute access to the host machine.”

More on that story here.

Franki

This article at Wired.com is of vital importance to anyone that considers their rights at least as important as Hollywood’s or the recording industry’s. Basically they are trying to sneak new laws quietly though the Senate that in many ways totally changes your rights with regards to music and video.

For example, how do you like the idea of not being able to fast forward though ads and other promotional material without it being a crime? Or perhaps having the DOJ come after you for using iTunes or a file trading program.

If you have any regard for your personal freedom, and you live in the US, it’s in your own best interest to write to your relevant politician to register your objection for this sort of underhanded action. They have lost a couple of ground breaking cases, so now they are trying to change the law to suit them. Consider that when we used VCR’s, we were able to fast forward the copyright notices (which we have all seen a hundred times or more and don’t need to see again.) as well as the previews and such. We already can’t fast forward our DVD’s past the copyright notices, and now they want to make it illegal to fast forward previews and other ads as well? They are slowly eroding all of the rights we took for granted. Don’t let them.

Franki

AVG maker Grisoft has long had a popular free (non-commercial) anti-virus program for Windows. Up until now however it was based on old code, and was relatively slow to receive pattern file updates.

That has just changed with the release of the new version 7 release of AVG free anti-Virus. If you are using the old version, you will need to update before the end of the year as updates will stop for previous versions at that time.

I run two anti-Virus apps on my Windows machines, because one often picks up things that the other would miss, and my choice of an alternate program is the Open Source ClamWin anti-Virus. ClamWin is small and fast so there is no noticeable slowdown when running both programs in the background.

Franki

For just $30 a year for a consumer, or $600 a year for commercial users, you can use Keyhole, an interactive mapping solution that gives you zoomable high definition images of the earth. I can see where a realtor for example, may benefit from being able to show a site to a prospective buyer. I can see an attorney using it to research the scene of an incident, etc. I think it may be a bit pricey for most, but it does have a free seven day trial. Many cities are in very high resolution, such as Boston in this example.

This is funny, have a read. I question the fact that he was so attached to his browser that he had to write it a letter 🙂 but I agree with his conclusions.

On the same note, the Washington post has also favourably reviewed Firefox. Their article is entitled: “Firefox Leaves No Reason to Endure Internet Explorer” however you will need to register or go to bugmenot, or use the Firefox extension of the same name, to login and read anonymously. For those of you that just want the info, here is a telling paragraph from the article:

I think anybody using Internet Explorer should switch to Firefox today. Seriously. Even if you’ve loaded every IE security update, Firefox will give you a faster, more useful view of the Web. If you haven’t — or if you use a pre-XP version of Windows ineligible for Service Pack 2’s security fixes — it would be lunacy to stick with IE.

Franki

The recording industry, encouraged by favorable treatment from the most liberal federal bench in the US Appeals system, has filed a petition with the US Supreme Court, seeking to hold file sharing software companies responsible for the sharing done by clients of the company.

Among Monday’s petitioners siding with the entertainment companies were the Association of American Publishers, Screen Actors Guild, Recording Artists Coalition, National Basketball Association and the commissioner of Major League Baseball, Marks said. Now those are some strange bedfellows. One wonders how else they may be entertwined.