For those who need tutorials I have noticed that the Jasc website now have these. Go to http://www.jasc.com/support and then the learning center link on the left or use the others, whatever you need.

We used to have to go to the Paint Shop Pro users group for tutorials before, I don’t know exactly how long Jasc have been doing them themselves but I have just discovered them.

There are a couple of upgrades, Don posted news of these. They are still at the Beta stage at the moment, but I think I am going to be very interested in version 9 as I really like 8.

The Telegraph in the UK has released a story about the downsides to using Internet Explorer, and the benefits of upgrading to an alternative. (In this case the alternatives discussed are Mozilla and Firefox).

So there you have it folks, the US government suggested you get rid of Internet Explorer, dozens of security experts around the world have suggested the same, Microsoft’s security chief has admitted to using Firefox, Internet Explorer 6 has had over 160 flaws found since it was released, and now even Journalists are getting sick of an Internet infested by virus’s, spyware, spam, Trojans, worms all manner of other net nasties, all of which have at some time in the past gotten into peoples PC’s because of Internet Explorer or a program that uses parts of it. (like Outlook Express).

I’ll say it again folks, try Firefox. If you don’t like it, they will give you a refund. (that was a joke, Firefox is free, so it wouldn’t be much of a refund.)

Regards

Franki

I just came accross the Gmail Giving Tree – Welcome site. I have been wanting to give Gmail a whirl for a bit now. A couple of groups I belong to have people who have received invites. I have not. I am curious if anyone has had experience with the giving tree concept. What bothered me is that there is no privacy policy on this site.

The Register Has just done a review of Windows XP service pack 2, and found it somewhat lacking.

In short, The Reg found that SP2 doesn’t turn off enough services, the firewall doesn’t block outgoing connections, and Internet Explorer and Outlook Express still have security issues. Worst of all, they still have not made admin rights limited to only an administrator account (as opposed to all users having admin rights), that one thing alone would have made a huge difference in security.

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Browser History timeline: Overview provides a listing of the release date of each browsers final version. Some have not had a significant update for over three years of their latest version!

In a recent interview on Wired, Microsoft security chief Stephen Toulouse was trying to make a point that all web browsers suffer from vulnerabilities, not just Internet Explorer, unfortunately his explanation reveals that he uses Mozilla Firefox himself. Here is the quote in question:

Security is really an industry-wide problem. Just this morning I had to install an update to Firefox to block a flaw that would’ve allowed an attacker to run a program on my system. We’re working around the clock to make Internet Explorer safer, and we’re making changes with our Windows XP Service Pack 2 to make browsing a lot more secure.

So, the boss of Microsoft Security uses Firefox, that is almost as telling a statement as the United States government recommending people change away from Internet Explorer.

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SPAM is without a doubt a cancer of the Internet, with 60+ percent of mail now classified as SPAM, if something is not done soon, e-mail will go the way of the Dodo. On an average day I waste about 30 minutes a day scanning my junk directory looking for possible real e-mail that was classified as SPAM by accident, that’s about 2 weeks a year that I won’t get back.

Some really smart sorts at a Queensland University (Australia) have come up with a new method of letting in the good and blocking the bad. The system is a firewall that uses statistical analyses to determine what’s good, and what’s not. Statistical Analyses is nothing new in SPAM detection, pretty much everyone is using it nowadays. However these guys look at an e-mail as a whole rather then the sum of its parts. The ability to do that is the difference between blocking an ad e-mail, (SPAM) from an e-mail detailing the same subject matter, but not in a commercial sense. (In other words, it will catch SPAM about Viagra, but would learn not to block an e-mail about the benefits of Viagra that wasn’t trying to sell it.) Apparently the testing is to the point where out of 25,000 e-mails, there was only one misclassification. That’s allot better then most of the SPAM solutions I’ve seen.

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