Ballmer Announces Public Beta of Win 7
Ballmer sees the future as being the total integration of the computer, television, and telephone through the Windows operating system on the PC. Interacting with the cloud he envisions a fully user-friendly integrated computing environment in the near future. He indicates that Windows 7 is a step towards that future, Watch Ballmer’s entire keynote speech: (Opens Windows Media Player.) There’s some rather hot stuff coming up in the Windows scene, as you may well have seen: As well as some pretty innovative hardware, there’ll be partnerships between Microsoft and Facebook, now giving the ability to connect Facebook with Windows Live. A partnership with Dell, who will pre-install Windows Live essentials on all of their PCs worldwide. Plus a partnership with the Verizon network in the United States to bring Windows Live Search to cellphones running Windows Mobile. I for one am looking forwards to Friday 9th with eager anticipation.
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The Graphics Card
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Before we go into the fairly easy process of fitting a graphics card; Let’s look at why you’d want to do so in the first place: Most if not all motherboards are equipped with onboard graphics: The Northbridge of the chipset gives them a limited graphics capability. "Limited" is the operative word here; especially on lower-end motherboards: The low-end AMD motherboards that I tend to use more-than-not, (Customers who request a cheap computer for no more than office-type work get what they ask for. In fact; despite the motherboards in question being allegedly "low-end", they’re fairly versatile.) usually have a paltry 64MB of graphics capability; in addition to which they ’steal’ the 64MB of memory for their operation from system RAM. - Yes they eat into the memory-sticks that you fit into the RAM - slots and gain priority to their full potential, whether or not they’re using it. Most other motherboards operate on a similar principle, to a varying extent. The top-end motherboards tend to be suitable for use with less attachments; However these motherboards are commonly used by gamer/overclocker-types; who add the latest of everything at the cutting-edge of technology anyway. - Just so that they can be proud geeks, until the following week when technological advancement moves on another notch. How much difference, exactly, does this RAM-robbing by the onboard-graphics actually make? : In reality not one heck of a lot; especially if you fit a minimum of 2GB RAM to every computer like I do. RAM’s now fairly inexpensive; particularly if you’re using DDR2, which is dirt-cheap these days. Why the big fuss then? Well it’s not just the fact that the onboard graphics make 2GB - Nice round figure. - RAM, look like 1.94GB; it’s also that the graphics are really lousy with that tiny amount of memory. As we’ll go on to discuss; 64MB graphics blows at the best of times: Any figure below 128MB of graphics RAM, (That is RAM or memory allocated exclusively for use with the graphics module.) will cause your graphics to suck big-time on a decent modern desktop or laptop. Oh you’ll without doubt get a great picture; a great still-picture that is. Anything moving at speed = fail. Try scrolling up or down fast: It’ll take the raster a fraction of a second to catch up with itself. (It reminds me of those Looney Tunes cartoons; where characters run off at speed and their front-half almost disappears before their back-half starts moving. Imagine the inverse of that happening on your screen when you stop scrolling and you’ll have some idea of what I’m on about.) …And if you mean to play any games…Well the Microsoft free games which have shipped with every M$ operating system since or before NT will probably run OK; but 2fps, if you’re lucky, won’t get you very far with Crysis or Doom. (Maybe a blue-screen?)
- So unless you’re intent on using Office and IM only; it’s always a good idea to upgrade the graphics capability with a graphics-card. Most decent usable graphics-cards can cost anything from around £17 / $24 upwards. Unless you’re gaming with the latest games; a little above this price-range should suffice for low to middle-end systems. The exact card you choose will depend upon the operating system you’re running. - For instance, XP can’t run anything in Direct X 10; so it’s pointless having a Direct X 10-capable graphics card on an XP system: Unless you intend to upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 that is. (Check for hardware compatibility first.) Most graphics-cards these days are PCIe cards. (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express.); which is an active connection method that channels multiple serial-data-streams from the motherboard to the graphics-card; as opposed to its earlier counterparts, PCI, PCI-X, and AGP, which stream data in a parallel format as a single-channel. There are all different types and sizes: Big ones, small ones, some as big as your…I’m not going into the particular types and sizes here as that is, really, beyond the scope of this article: For the purpose of which we’ll just keep it nice and simple; without referring to SLI…Oops! I’m not going to write about VGA, DVI, RGB, etc, plugs/sockets either. Google is your friend; as are the links. Screw that. That’s the complicated part out of the way; in as simple terms as I am able to muster. Now the easy bit; fitting it: - Everything you need to know is covered in the following article at this link. Yes I am cheating. Yes it’s out of character for me. Yes I am behind schedule and almost out of time. It’s a good site anyway: It saves me taking pics or finding and snagging pics. It saves me writing loads more… OK I admit it’s probably better than I’m able to produce in the remaining time that I have scheduled. So go there to find out how to fit one. It’s certainly not rocket-science: You’ll need a screwdriver, a screw that can be screwed in by the screwdriver and that fits the corresponding hole, (There’s my female technical terminology making its appearance again.) a PCIe graphics card, a computer with a PCIe x 16 socket to fit the card in, and about 5 minutes. Go read it; and comment on this one before you do so. (Comment box is below.) (Why don’t they put a down-arrow key on keyboards? - Perhaps they could also put a f… - File it! key on them also.) Can you tell things aren’t quite going to plan?
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Tracing the Route
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Have you ever wondered what route your internet activities are taking? You’ve just visited kkomp.com from wherever you’re logging onto your computer or handheld device; but your download of the page you requested didn’t come straight from the server to you: Instead it went through a number of other servers, acting as relays, to get to you. You may be surprised how many of these it passed through en-route. You can find out the identities of these servers with the Windows command "tracert". ("traceroute" on a Mac.) - For instance; if I wanted to see which servers my communication passes through to kkomp.com’s server; I first open a command prompt in XP. (Start>Run, and type "cmd" in the dialogue-box. ¬) I get a DOS window with the following in it: - Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron>_ The _ is the command-prompt. At the command-prompt I type "tracert kkomp.com"; thus: - C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron>tracert kkomp.com The computer responds by pinging all the servers en-route and asking them to identify themselves: - Tracing route to kkomp.com [213.171.218.145] The first stop is my BT Home Hub router: - 1 19 ms 100 ms 99 ms BThomehub.home [192.168.1.254] Then the separate BT internet network switches. (Because I use BT internet in the UK, and BT have their own mini-web which connects to the real internet at various nodes. You’ll probably get something different, unless you’re a BT customer in the UK.):- 2 25 ms 25 ms 24 ms 217.47.206.250 It’s made it to the big switch at Reading… 11 161 ms 102 ms 27 ms core2-pos0-0-0-13.ilford.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.201.201] Which passed it on to another big BT switch at Ilford… 12 127 ms 123 ms 179 ms core2-pos9-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.74.65.118] Which sent it to the real internet… 13 125 ms 245 ms 40 ms linx.bb-c.the.lon.gb.oneandone.net [195.66.224.98] It’s just about to hit Fasthosts’ main server… 15 222 ms 82 ms 64 ms pc2.prt0.fhdis.fasthosts.net.uk [88.208.255.1] Followed by one of their internal web-servers… 16 53 ms 32 ms 32 ms 213.171.217.3 …And to the individual hosting server. 17 176 ms 158 ms 61 ms server213-171-218-145.livedns.org.uk [213.171.218.145] Trace complete. C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron> Target neutralised. Here’s the actual window’s content without my comments: - Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron>tracert kkomp.com Tracing route to kkomp.com [213.171.218.145] 1 19 ms 100 ms 99 ms BThomehub.home [192.168.1.254] Trace complete. C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron>
Try it for yourself: You can use any domain or IP address in place of kkomp.com . Here you learn something new every day; even New Year’s Day. Happy New Year. May 2009 bring you much enlightenment. |
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BitTorrent Bootleg Windows 7 Beta has Issues
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A beta version of Windows 7 is out on BitTorrent. You can get a copy and run it before you’re supposed to - but it’s illegal; and if you live in the UK, or possibly some other countries in Europe, you’ll be aware that certain ISPs are watching you. It might be a mistake to download it, because it’s not possible to apply security updates to the bootleg version. That includes the recent "out of band" update for a seriously critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer. The build which was leaked was a daily build for the beta, probably only for the development purposes of Microsoft staff. It wasn’t supposed to be leaked; and those who do have legal access to it have access to a proper beta version which may include the fix. Microsoft has no reason to release a patch for this version; after all it’s not supposed to be in the wild. If you download this version you are risking your online safety.
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Zune-Tastic Failure
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Microsoft’s 30GB Zunes are failing on a colossal scale. Around 2AM, (In an American time-zone presumably. My source is indefinite as to which one.) 30GB Zunes that were switched on reset themselves. When they were switched on again they froze in the loading process, becoming totally unresponsive and practically useless. Zune users have dubbed this crisis Z2K9; a parody of the Y2K bug. (Although the New Year hasn’t even started at time of writing. Reports of this problem are continually appearing across the internet. It would seem that the bug lies within the latest firmware at this point; as many who failed to update their firmware seem to be unaffected. The source material I used was unable to give a proper explanation as to why this was happening; and as yet I am none the wiser myself. I’m sure that an explanation will soon be forthcoming though. It’s certainly one method of advertising; but probably not a good one. Have you had similar problems? If so please do tell in the comments.
Addendum: Here’s the official fix: - “Microsoft’s responded to the Zune 30GB failure, blaming a leap-year handling bug. And they’ve provided a fix. Which is to wait til New Years, when the bug will go away by itself…” |
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Windows 7 beta 1
Hmm. - Excuse my dubiousness and cynicism; but I get the uneasy feeling that Microsoft are going to ruin what is otherwise a good operating system by creating a tiered pricing-structure similar to the one they did with Vista. - Starting from reasonable for the feature-scarce Home Basic version, and scaling up to astronomical for the full-featured Ultimate version. Will they never learn?! Whether or not the above actually does happen is yet to be seen: But I’d put money on it all the same. What’s your opinion?
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Bulletin: IE Vulnerability Patched
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Microsoft have issued a patch to cure the recent vulnerability issue in all versions of Internet Explorer. They have been rolling it out via Windows Update and Microsoft Update; however some computers may still not have received it yet. (I state this since at time of writing one of my computers received the patch around midnight GMT, while I have just browsed to Microsoft Update to install it on the other one at 03:30 GMT.) The patch is MS08-078: Security update for Internet Explorer, and is referenced in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as KB960714. There are several versions available, detailed here. Automatic Updates should deliver the patch to your computer. If you have Automatic Updates switched off, or you don’t receive the update as expected, you should go to http://update.microsoft.com or http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com using Internet Explorer to do so. (Other browsers will not work at these links.) It will be necessary to restart your computer after applying the patch. If you are unsure whether or not your computer has been updated you should check your update history at one of the links above. Internet Explorer will be safe again once the patch is applied; but if you’ve downloaded Firefox or another alternative browser and like it, then my advice would be to stick with it. It is nevertheless safe to start using Internet Explorer again following the installation of this patch.
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Invulnerability Updates
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It would appear that the image of invulnerability that Apple attempt to portray in their advertising is becoming threatened. This is now concurrent with a Firefox trojan which tarnishes the open-source community’s similar portrayal, as well as another security vulnerability discovered in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The malware writers must be ready for a field-day! On December 15th 2008, Apple released security updates for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, client and server, bringing the products up to versions 10.4.11 and 10.5.5. The updates address 21 individual vulnerabilities. 7 of the vulnerabilities are in the Adobe Flash plug-in. If Apple dared to use severity ratings then a number of these updates would have been termed "critical": However the pretence continues, and no doubt Steve Jobs will manage to sweep this unfortunate necessity under the carpet in the usual style. With all these circumstances which could lead to arbitrary code execution, Apple had no choice but to patch. I wonder how their advertising campaigns will be affected in the light of reality? :- "I’m a Mac" "…And I’m a PC." "What’s up PC? Have you picked up another infection?" "No Mac; my user stopped using Internet Explorer until Microsoft release a patch for a recently discovered vulnerability. - Just like Apple recently did for you. How many updates was that now..?" "Oh a few…" "- Twenty-something springs to mind: That’s rather a lot for an invulnerable system, wouldn’t you agree Mac?" "OK, OK, But I’m patched now; so I’m still invulnerable. Your patch hasn’t been released yet." "Now Mac; aren’t we getting a bit above ourselves? Invulnerable systems don’t need patches. - What’s that? We’re out of time? OK I’ll conclude this ad for you:- Apple - Patching up the Future Invulnerability." "Hey! Wait a darn minute PC…" (Sound fades out.) Apple users should update their systems ASAP.
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A Good Reason to Dump Internet Explorer
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If you guessed from the title of this post that yet another security flaw has been discovered in Internet Explorer; then you’d be right:-
The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference in the data binding function of Internet Explorer. When data binding is enabled (which is the default state), it is possible under certain conditions for an object to be released without updating the array length, leaving the potential to access the deleted object’s memory space. This can cause Internet Explorer to exit unexpectedly, in a state that is exploitable.
All you would need to do to allow your machine to become compromised via Internet Explorer is visit a site which has a special malefic type of scripting. Microsoft have not yet released a patch for the vulnerability, although they are working on it. In the meantime I would suggest that all users of Internet Explorer download Firefox, import their settings to Firefox from IE when Firefox installs, and use Firefox rather than Internet Explorer whenever possible. If you find that you don’t like Firefox and prefer IE then by all means change back as soon as Microsoft have patched the vulnerability. I advise everyone to avoid using all versions of Internet Explorer whenever possible for the time being.
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