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OpenSuse Factory

On June 18th 2009 The OpenSuse Project announced that its development factory has been made more accessible to package contributors.  Joe Brockmeier’s post at opensuseNews states…

 ”we’re making it easier for contributors to take responsibility for packages and to contribute directly to openSUSE. This means contributors will be able to be directly responsible for packages, without having to go through a Novell employee to make changes.

Read more on OpenSuse News site.

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Microsoft Security patches June 09

Microsoft has released its latest security bulletins covering 31 security vulnerabilities. In a total of 10 bulletins 5 turned out as critical, the highest security rating by Microsoft.  See details below:

(extracted from http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms09-jun.mspx)

MS08-018 (Critical): Fixes two privately reported vulnerabilities in implementations of Active Directory on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003, and Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) when installed on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003. The more severe vulnerability could allow remote code execution.  It is rated Critical for all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, and rated Important for supported versions of Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003.

MS09-019 (Critical): Patches seven privately reported vulnerabilities and one publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer. The more severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. Affects IE 5.01, IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8 running on all supported editions of Windows.

MS09-020 (Important): Fixes one publicly disclosed vulnerability and one privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). The vulnerabilities could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker sent a specially crafted HTTP request to a Web site that requires authentication. These vulnerabilities allow an attacker to bypass the IIS configuration that specifies which type of authentication is allowed, but not the file system-based access control list (ACL) check that verifies whether a file is accessible by a given user.  Affects all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

MS09-021(Critical): Patches seven privately reported vulnerabilities that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Microsoft Excel file that includes a malformed record object. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system.  It affects Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, Excel 2007, Office 2004 for Mac, and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac; Open XML File Format Converter for Mac; and all supported versions of Microsoft Office Excel Viewer and Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack.

MS09-022 (Critical): Covers three privately reported vulnerabilities in Windows Print Spooler. The most severe vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an affected server received a specially crafted RPC request.  It applies to Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

MS09-023 (Moderate): Patches a privately reported vulnerability in Windows Search. The vulnerability could allow information disclosure if a user performs a search that returns a specially crafted file as the first result or if the user previews a specially crafted file from the search results.

This security update is rated Moderate for Windows Search installed on all supported editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

MS09-024 (Critical): Fixes a privately reported vulnerability in the Microsoft Works converters. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Works file. Affects Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003 with the Microsoft Works 6–9 File Converter,  Word 2007 Service Pack 1, Microsoft Works 8.5 and Microsoft Works 9.

MS09-025 (Important): Covers two publicly disclosed and two privately reported vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel that could allow elevation of privilege. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could execute arbitrary code and take complete control of an affected system. The vulnerabilities could not be exploited remotely or by anonymous users. Affects Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008.

MS09-026 (Important): Patches a publicly disclosed vulnerability in the Windows remote procedure call (RPC) facility where the RPC Marshalling Engine does not update its internal state appropriately. The vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code and take complete control of an affected system.  Rated Important for all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008.

MS09-027 (Critical): Covers two privately reported vulnerabilities that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Microsoft Word file. Rated Critical for all supported editions of Microsoft Office Word 2000. For all supported editions of Microsoft Office Word 2002, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, and all supported versions of Open XML File Format Converter for Mac, Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, and Microsoft Office Word Viewers, this security update is rated Important.

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Keyword search and website ranking tools

Any webmaster and marketer will know how important it is to keep track of their website ranking, keyword positioning, visits, ROI and so on…  There are a lot of interesting tools out there to help us. 

  • Google Analytics - Visitor tracking, keyword positioning, goal setting, demographics and more…
  • http://www.alexa.com - web traffic metrics, top sites lists, site demographics, hot urls, and more… 
  • Google Webmaster Tools - detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google
  • Yahoo Site Explorer - detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Yahoo
  • Bling Webmaster Center - detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Bling (former LiveSearch)
  • Keyword Spy - Research and track keywords in 3 search engines and 30+ countries.
  • KPMRS - website rank monitoring services on various search engines
    for multiple keywords.
  • XML-Sitemaps - Generate sitemaps online. Up to 500 urls Free.
  • WP Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog.

These are just a few tools I use the most, please share yours.

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SwitchVox IP PBX

Switchvox is Digium’s family of Voice Over IP Phone systems for small and medium businesses. Switchvox systems are designed to be easy to use, full of helpful features and cost less than a traditional PBX. It’s based on the world’s leading open source PBX, telephony engine, and telephony applications toolkit Asterisk.

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Mozilla FENNEC - the Firefox gone mobile

Bringing Firefox’s features, security, performance and ease-of-use to mobile phones.  Fennec is yet in it’s Beta 1 version, it has been built on the same technology as the world famous Mozilla Firefox and has many of the same features.

  • Tabbed browsing
  • One-click bookmarking
  • Super easy navigation
  • Add-on ons (Firefox style)
  • touch-enabled interfaced optimized for the small screen

The interface is very intuitive, download the emulated version to run on your PC and check out this great browser.

Watch the video overview:

Fennec Beta 1 walkthrough from Madhava Enros on Vimeo.

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GIMP Tutorial and book

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package and it works on Linux, Windows, Mac, OpenSolaris and FreeBSD. It is also available in many languages. The official GIMP Project website has a very good set of tutorials divided into the following levels:  Beginner, Intermediate, Expert, Photo Editing, Web and Script Authoring.

If you prefer to take your reading away from the screen here are some book that can teach you a lot about this great image manipulation program.

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Spotify - listen to more than three million tracks legally and for free

Spotify is a streaming service, which lets fans listen to more than three
million tracks legally and for “free”, it has more than a million
users in the UK already. The system has 3 packages on offer, starting with “Free” (showing ads between songs), a Day Pass £0.99 (ad free) for 24hrs and a Premium Subscription for £9.99. All 3 packages give you the ability to:

  • Search - Find and browse by artist, title, album, genre, year
  • Specify your own radio channel based on genre, year and artist
  • Share -  Create, share and collaborate on play lists and share links to music

The Premium package also comes with  exclusive access to pre-releases and concert ticket lotteries.

The company plans to expand it’s service to the mobile market and beyond the UK. They also expect to announce a deal with fellow streaming
site Last.fm to provide song recommendations, making it easier for fans
to find acts they like.

Spotify can be downloaded from http://www.spotify.com and currently works on Mac and Windows, and  there’s a tutorial on their site on how to run it on Linux using Wine. Again a company wanting to go global has started by cutting corners with the Linux community, an easy but unforgivable mistake to make.

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LinkedIn Timeout at Login

I was having problem Login in to Linkedin.com from work (also was one of the company directors), I went through my whole network and firewall setup looking for any setting that could be blocking their site.  I was getting a “Connection Timed Out” error.

The solution was also simple but still poses a question to me.  I deleted the LinkedIn cookie from my Firefox and it started working straight away, the interesting bit was that as soon as my computer gained access also did the other computers on my network.  So if you are having problem loging in to LinkedIn on your network and clearing your cookies does not sort it out, try asking you coleagues (who use LinkedIn) to clear their browser’s cookies. I will report this to LinkedIn to see if this has any foundation.

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Intel Fined 1.6bn Euros

Intel has been fined 1.6bn Euros by the European Commission for anti-competitive practices. This is the biggest fine for a major corporation since the 2004 Microsoft 497m Euro fine.  The Commission found that between 2002 and 2007, Intel had paid
manufacturers and a retailer to favour its chips over AMD chips.

Intel claims that such payments did not exist, instead they do “provide incentives to customers to buy our products”, according to Bruce Sewel, Intel’s vice president, on an interview to BBC Five Live.

This decision was welcomed by AMD which had filed complaints since 2000 against Intel. “The EU decision will shift the power from an abusive monopolist to computer makers, retailers and above all PC consumers,” said Giuliano Meroni, AMD’s European president. (extracted)

Read more on the BBC Busines website

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Automatically display form data with PHP

This is a simple PHP  script to automatically display (dump output)  data submited from a html form.

The form setup

  • all inputs (form fields) need to have the same name with [] at the end to turn it into an array,  e.g <input type=text name=formdata[]>

formq.html content

<form method=post action=showme.php>
Name: <input type=text name=formdata[]><br>
Email: <input type=text name=formdata[]><br>

<input type=submit value=ok>
</form>

The Script setup

showme.php content

<?php
$data = $_POST['formdata']; # get value from the form fields

foreach ( $data as $key => $value ) { # loop through array collecting the results

echo  “$value<br>”;  # output the data  - print to page
}
?>

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