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Bug

XP Systems Getting Emergency IE Zero Day Patch 179

Posted by timothy from the patches-galore dept.
msm1267 (2804139) writes "Microsoft announced it will release an out-of-band security update today to patch a zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer, and that the patch will also be made available for Windows XP machines through Automatic Update. At the same time, researchers said they are now seeing attacks specifically targeting XP users.

Microsoft no longer supports XP as of April 8, and that includes the development and availability of security updates. But the about-face today speaks to the seriousness of the vulnerability, which is being exploited in limited targeted attacks, Microsoft said. Researchers at FireEye, meanwhile, said multiple attackers are now using the exploit against XP machines, prompting the inclusion of XP systems in the patch."

Submission + - laser lit lunar eclipse (nasa.gov)

Submitted by Mister Liberty
Mister Liberty writes: Tom Murphy, astrophysicist at UCSD (https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/) writes:
While not related to Do the Math, I encourage you to check out this (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140418.html) stunning photo taken by Dan Long capturing our recent laser ranging efforts during the April 15 lunar eclipse. This is a real photo, taken through a C-11 telescope with a focal reducer (700 mm, f/2)—the outgoing laser beam has not been artificially superimposed. Normally it is really difficult to get a picture of our faint beam heading toward the Moon, because the Moon is so glaringly bright. The eclipse provided a great photo-op, and also a means to test the hypothesis of dusty reflectors. To me, this shot is just gorgeous. But I have more invested in it than the average Joe: this picture serves as a visual representation of a key focus in my life over the last 14 years—so of course I’m enamored."

Comment Re:It has a combined address/search bar (Score 2) 688

by Mathieu Lu (#46871353) Attached to: Firefox 29: Redesign

You can also use custom keywords with Bookmarks:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Usin...

I alias google to "g", so when I want to search, i just type in the location bar: "g these are my search terms".

It's also practical to do Google searches in specific languages. For example, I use "ge" for google-english, "gf" for google-french, etc.

Comment History repeats itself (Score 5, Insightful) 86

by ptaff (#46816157) Attached to: David Auerbach Explains the Inside Baseball of MSN Messenger vs. AIM

Yeah, those long forgotten chat-silo days when you needed an ICQ account, an AIM account, a MSN account, a Yahoo account to reach all your friends... fortunately XMPP/Jabber would solve all of this, and even Google would embrace the open standard with their new GTalk.

Oh! wait... it was a bait and switch.

Don't be evil does not mean be good.

Submission + - There's got to be more than the Standard Model

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: The Standard Model of particle physics is perhaps the most successful physical theory of our Universe, and with the discovery and measurement of the Higgs boson, may be all there is as far as fundamental particles accessible through terrestrial accelerator physics. But there are at least five verified observations we've made, many in a variety of ways, that demonstrably show that the Standard Model cannot be all there is to the Universe. Here are the top 5 signs of new physics.

Comment Automate everything using chef/puppet (Score 1) 136

by ptaff (#46727457) Attached to: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Unix Admins

Using anything like puppet or chef under version control to do all server ops will not only leave you with a full timestamped documentation, but will allow you to easily horizontally scale servers, rebuild them should disaster strike and protect you from stupid upstream package updates that b0rk your config files.

Have a staging and production environment? pushing your chef/puppet scripts to production after they're proven to work insures you have the same changes applied on both sides, and avoid manual operations on production.

Submission + - Heartbleed OpenSSL Vulnerability: A Technical Remediation

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since the announcement, there has been buzz around the underground and malicious actors have been actively leaking software library data and using one of the several provided PoC code to attack the massive amount of services available on the internet. One of the more complicated issues is that the OpenSSL patches were not in-line with the upstream of large Linux flavors. We have had a opportunity to review the behavior of the exploit and have come up with the following IDS signatures to be deployed for detection.
Privacy

Dropbox's New Policy of Scanning Files For DMCA Issues 243

Posted by samzenpus from the lets-see-what-you-have-there dept.
Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes "This weekend a small corner of the Internet exploded with concern that Dropbox was going too far, actually scanning users' private and directly peer-shared files for potential copyright issues. What's actually going on is a little more complicated than that, but shows that sharing a file on Dropbox isn't always the same as sharing that file directly from your hard drive over something like e-mail or instant messenger. The whole kerfuffle started yesterday evening, when one Darrell Whitelaw tweeted a picture of an error he received when trying to share a link to a Dropbox file with a friend via IM. The Dropbox web page warned him and his friend that 'certain files in this folder can't be shared due to a takedown request in accordance with the DMCA.'"

Comment Flying with stopped engines ? (Score 1) 382

Just a random though: has anyone checked how long, and over what distance, the plane could fly from its cruise altitude once its engines stop ? If, in such a situation, the pilots tried something similar to what has been done with flight 1549 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549), it might be an interesting approach to try to approximate a circular search zone (rather than an area).

Submission + - Microsoft reportedly plans to offer a free version of Windows 8.1 (ndtv.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to reports, to Microsoft plans to announce a free version of Windows 8.1 in a bid to persuade customers to upgrade to the latest version.

Reports claim the new version, called 'Windows 8.1 with Bing', could be given away at a developers' conference in April, a version that would have key Microsoft apps and services.

According to media reports, "Microsoft is currently experimenting with a free version of Windows 8.1 that could boost the number of people using the operating system."
OS X

Apple Drops Snow Leopard Security Updates, Doesn't Tell Anyone 241

Posted by timothy from the they'll-figure-it-out-soon-enough dept.
Freshly Exhumed writes "As Apple issued an update for Mavericks, Mountain Lion, and Lion yesterday, Snow Leopard users have not seen a security update since September, 2013. This would not be noteworthy if Apple, like a host of other major software vendors, would clearly spell out its OS support policies and warn users of such changes, but they have not. Thus, the approximately 20% of Mac users still running Snow Leopard now find themselves in a very vulnerable state without the latest security updates."

Submission + - Interview: Ask Richard Stallman What You Will

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: Richard Stallman (RMS) founded the GNU Project in 1984, the Free
        Software Foundation in 1985, and remains one of the most important
        and outspoken advocates for software freedom. RMS now spends much
        of his time fighting excessive extension of copyright laws,
        digital rights management, and software patents. He's agreed to
        answer your questions about GNU/Linux, how GNU relates to Linux
        the kernel, free software, why he disagrees with the idea of open source, and other issues of public concern. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

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