CHRISdotTODD

I get an RSS feed from FranticIndustries (Stan Schroeder) blog. Stan's most recent post was seven things he missed from Firefox when forced to use IE6. I thought the list was great. Not only did it point out some less common features, but it also explained how to set them up. I'll give you the list, but you will need to visit FranticIndustries to learn how to use them: Multipage home page Selection source Undo closed tabs The test profile Search tricks Quick tabbing and session saving Spell checking

I am generally skeptical about new versions of software. If I have been productive in the version I have, why would I need a newer version? Usually it seems that it is just a money grab by software vendors. In the case of Office 2007, I was additionally skeptical about the replacement of the menus with ribbons. This was partially based on the new Internet Explorer 7 design, which I do not like. Just by chance, today I picked up a copy of PC Magazine's January edition (so I could read it on the plane), and it provided a First Look review of Office 2007. Ironically, I also happen to be listening to an older (Nov 7, 2006) podcast from PC Magazine (called PCMag Radio), which happen to also review Office 2007. In listening and reading, my opinion began to change. If that wasn't enough, today Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal also released a favorable review of Office 2007. All the reviews promise that the changes will be difficult to make for current Office experts, as the

Brian Krebs, blogger of Security Fix , posted some recently completed research that clear shows why none of us should be using Internet Explorer. According to Mr. Krebs' research, Internet Explorer was unsafe for 284 days of 2006 -- 284 ! In case you doubt this number, here's what Brian Krebs had to say about his research methodology. ...individually contacting nearly all of the security researchers who submitted reports of critical flaws in Microsoft products to learn from them not only the dates that they had submitted their findings to the company, but also any other security trends or anomalies they observed in working with the world's largest software maker. Additionally, he also shared the data with Microsoft before posting it on his blog. This chart shows all the vulnerabilities that Mr. Krebs included in his findings. So if you were an Internet Explorer user in 2006, chances are you opened yourself up to compromising your PC. Mr. Krebs reports that the second most

informit.com posted a great article on how to retrieve deleted data from memory cards. They did an experiment where they purchased 14 memory cards from eBay, and in most cases, were able to retrieve deleted data. Statistically, this indicates that 78% of the cards we obtained on eBay contained recoverable data. In total, we found 240 pictures, 17 movies, and a wide range of files from the card with computer files. This was a follow up from an exercise in 2004 where they bought 10 used, formatted hard drives. In both cases, unless you know how to completely erase your data, they are suggesting physical destruction. Fortunately, deleting the data is not too difficult or expensive. If you are a Windows XP Professional owner, then you already have the tools needed to ensure your drive is clean. All you need to do is click Start — Run and type in cmd. Then at the command prompt, type in the following: cipher /w:[drive letter]: Where [drive letter] should be replaced by the media card driv

LMH (an unidentified hacker) and Kevin Finisterre have started publishing a new Apple bug each day this month (January 2007) in order to bring attention to that fact that Apple software has security bugs too. This is similar to a browser bug a day that H D did in July of 2006. H D did give the vendors advanced warning before releasing each vulnerability, though LMH and Kevin Finisterrre will not. I believe if Apple really wants us to switch to their platform, some proof that they know how to deal with security issues is important. It will be interesting to see how Apple responds. LMH and Kevin Finisterrre claim their goal is to make OS X a better platform -- I hope they are successful.

Recently on two separate TV shows I saw an image file used to hide other data (one was text and one was another image). Wouldn't you know, I then ran across ZomgStuff and a post from UgLy NeRd , which has an article on how to hide a text file in a .jpg. It is actually quite easy: use RAR to merge the two files, giving it a .jpg extension ( copy /b secret.jpg + meeting.txt.rar lizard.jpg ). When you want to retrieve the text, open the .jpg with WinRAR. Check the posting on ZombStuff to see a few screen shots.

For nearly a year, the FCC has not approved the AT&T / BellSouth merger -- more specifically commissioners Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein . In order to break the deadlock, AT&T has put forth provisions to make the merger look more favorable to consumers. This is the second set of conditions that AT&T has put forth in order to get the merger through -- the first being in October . The most exciting part of the provisions this time around is AT&T's partial support of Net Neutrality. According to Nate Anderson of ArsTechnica , this provision means that all content of a particular type will receive equal bandwidth. What it does not provide is equal bandwidth across different content types. For example, AT&T could throttle back all VoIP, and give more bandwidth to video. The good news is that companies cannot pay AT&T money to deliver their content faster than another content provider. Other provisions include returning 3,000 BellSouth outsourced job