CHRISdotTODD

As reported by eWeek and ZDNet , there is a new problem with Word that could allow attackers to take control of your PC. Since there is no fix available yet, you should avoid opening any unknown Word files. I would expect that Microsoft would release a fix as soon as possible, but if they stick to their patch-Tuesday schedule, this may come to late to make the December release, forcing users to wait until January.

I have been working with an Excel file for about 18 months -- each month I link to a monthly Excel data file. This gives me data in one file that I can use to trend many different segments. I am not sure when, but this file had ballooned to over 3 MBs. Finally this month when I tried to upload it to our intranet, I received a file size limit exceeded message. I searched and searched, and could not find any thing that would compress or clean up the file. Finally I went to Google and found a solution. The credit goes to OzGrid Business Applications . Here is a link to the entire article , and below is what I had done to reduce the file size. The first thing of course is to make a backup... just in case I then performed the following on each worksheet (only 2 in my case): Select a cell and press F5 Click the Special... button Click the Blanks radio button Click OK Select Edit | Clear | All Manually go to the last row in the worksheet (do not use Edit menu shortcut) Select the entire r

There is an excellent article posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that describes how poorly implemented security is not better security. Trusted Computing: Promise and Risk by Seth Schoen reminds me a lot of DRM. The direction of two organizations, Microsoft Next-Generation Secure Computing Base or NGSCB and Trusted Computing Platform Alliance or TCPA, want to put restrictions in place that could force you to use certain software by certain manufacturers. Of the fours security areas: (1) memory curtaining; (2) secure input and output; (3) sealed storage; and (4) remote attestation, remote attestation could be a problem. Developers could force you to use certain software in order to use their system. The author recommends adding an owner override to prevent problems. Read the article yourself to learn more.

Yahoo! reported on the 24th that Sony has another recall -- this time it is their Cyber-shot camera . "The liquid crystal display screens of eight camera models might not display images correctly, images could be distorted or cameras might not take photos at all." This affects cameras sold over 16 months from September 2003 to January 2005. Apparently this is not the first camera recall for Sony. Compared to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq over the last three months , things do not look good for Sony. I do not expect the PS3 to help them much either.

I found two sites that look at the inside of a Wii game machine from Nintendo. Popular Science has 16 photos while informit.com has a complete tear down with instructions. Both are very good, but informit.com gives you much more information including a nine minute video . In addition, CNN posted an AP article on how the motion controls for the Wii and PS3 work. I also found a link to some handiwork where someone figured out how to get to the Wii Shop store.

I had tried the free Google Desktop at work, twice, and each time uninstalled it. First because I could not search my network drives. (I like to use network drives to share files with my colleagues, and to make sure they are backed up.) Later I had decided to try again, and then discovered the possible security issues. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Google now has addressed the security concerns and they have released an update that will index networked drives. I have been running this now for about two weeks, and it generally has performed well. The Google Desktop Search is based on keywords, so it does not always give you the most relevant results. I also had some troubles with PowerPoint running very slow while editing. (I turn the search off when I am working in PowerPoint.) With those caveats, it seems to be a good solution. A nice, new feature is that if you hit your CTRL button twice, a search dialog appears in the center of your screen. Of course Google Desktop will

Barracuda Networks reported November 15th that they have seen an increase in spam of 67% since August of this year. I learned this fact while reading about spam linked to Russian gang from eWeek , "...authorities have traced the operation to a well-organized hacking gang controlling a 70,000-strong peer-to-peer botnet..." This hacking gang is using the trojan tool that removes other viruses before setting-up shop on breached computers, which I reported in October . The most common compromised machine is XP with service pack 2 at 47% . Another 37% is XP with no service pack or service pack 1. This I do not understand at all -- if you are going to use your computer on the Internet, you absolutely must keep it up-to-date with patches and fixes. Over 12,500 of the compromised machines are in the US . Finally, this group push two messages, "pump-and-dump" and penis enlargements. The "pump-and-dump" is penny stocks. It is believe the reason must be that these tw