.i.T.LIFe BLOG

Windows 7 & Windows Server 2k8 R2 SP1 Beta Download

Are you a TechNet member? No? Why not? If you use a Microsoft product in some form, you should be a TechNet member. Information Technology, TechNet members have the option to download Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (Release 2) Service Pack 1 Beta through the Eval Center.

So what’s the most important about this run; “This early release of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta is not available for home users. The SP1 Beta does not provide new end-user features, and installation is not supported by Microsoft.” and keep in mind”In order to download and install the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta you must currently have a Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 already installed.”

Hey, if you are an I.T. pro and a TechNet member, give it a run.

Microsoft, & Irsfeld, M. 2010. Microsoft TechNet Flash Newsletter,

Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta,

Download, Evaluate and Get Resources. Volume 12, Issue 15, July

28th, 2010. Microsoft Corporation. Information retrieved from:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ff183870.aspx

What the hell am I talking about? Well, Google is a very BIG company. Financially, they have tons of moneys to spend the time to ensure the right development goes into their new OS. I think it’s a great idea! Another new OS on the market and it’s free! Chrome OS already promises to be backward compatible with most applications. That means, you will not have to re develop an application just to get it running on Chrome OS. It will be supported by it’s maker and many users who choose to do so. But it will not be supported by the industry unless money gets involved. I’m not a Microsoft Fan Boy. FVK paying for office and most of their software. But I love the DirectX technology. I’m a gamer, game developer and it’s the industry leader! I will buy Windows 7 and continue to support Microsoft on their DirectX Technology; alone with any hardware company sporting it.

My Laptop has a Linux OS. But I’m a techie and every normal friend I have has no idea how to operate my Linux OS. Mac can blow themselves for keeping their company’s heads within their own asses for so many years. It’ll take some more time Before Apple gets my money instead of getting eaten.

Why do I say it will not be supported? Google will have to work hard to gain industry recognition with their OS and many communities (such as the multi billion gaming industry). I can see their OS being used in multiple enterprises at the time of launch. But not being utilized in the gaming community. If they can fully push DirectX and OpenGL technology as good as Windows and better than Linux; I will personally invest in Google. What’s that symbol again? GOOG! Gotta love Nasdaq!

The official news is here! FireFox 3.5 has been released!

CHECK OUT THE NEWS POST AT:

FireFox 3.5 Oficially released!

• Get Firefox 3.5

  3.5, English (US), Windows (7.7MB)

  
  Download Now - Free
  

• Get Firefox 3.5

  3.5, English (US), Linux (9.4MB)

  
  Download Now - Free
  

• Get Firefox 3.5

  3.5, English (US), Mac OS X (17.6MB)

  
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The F-Secure Security Labs has released information of a new Malware running around the net. The legitimate name is Trojan.Win32.Buzus.bjyo. This Trojan is currently known aas a high risk Trojan because it was recently detected (June 18^th to 30^th, 2009)! That means, for everyone who likes to update their malware/spyware/virus scaners once a month will not have the remedy handy for this guy. A lesson is, you should update your software before you run it every time.

The goal of this Trojan is to get you infected and here’s how it tries to do it: “There has been a couple of malware attacks that have tried to use the news coverage of the death of Michael Jackson as the lure to get people infected.

Last night we saw this one: a file called Michael-www.google.com.exe. This file was distributed through a site called photos-google.com and possibly also through photo-msn.org, facebook-photo.net and orkut-images.com. Do not visit these sites.

When executed, Michael-www.google.com.exe drops files called reptile.exe and winudp.exe. These are IRC bots with backdoor capability. The file also shows this fake error message:

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001709.html

Here’s a deal for Microsoft users. The micro center is offering customers the options to purchase an upgrade license (right now) for a low price. Through the Microcenter you can get a Windows 7, Home Premium Upgrade for $39.99 and a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade for $89.99.

Head on over to the Microcenter and grab the deal while you can. I myself will wait a while…

Hello fols, a pause from my current projects as stated before this post, I want to help make the world aware of a compnay and software I SUPPORT!

WHY?

If you are like me and utilize Open Office; you’ll discover that you cannot open and convert office 2k8 files. A great solution is using the

odf-converter-integrator

With this software, which… by the way is freeware and open source, you can open and convert all those .X files with Open Office!

I just ran into an issue where Open Office could not open a .pptx file. Using ODF, I was able to convert the file! GREAT!

Check it out!

Here’s a copy of what I posted on a news site:

I’M QUOTING MYSELF FOLKS!

I’ll admit there’s some useful items in there if you have the time to read through the pages of apps…

Check it out:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2338803,00.asp

Ok this ip address hits lots of blogs with hundreds of spam! You never saw it on my site because I have my settings to await moderation!.

I BLACKLISTED through my routers and website servers:
ip address: 83.233.30.32
ip address range: 83.233.30.0 - 83.233.30.255

My investigation and research tells me these addresses belong to:
SERVERCONNECT.SE

somehow affiliated with:
Labs2 Routingregistry, Sodra tullgatan 4, S-211 40 Malmoe, Sweden
phone: +46 771 518500
bredband2.se, skycom.se, labs2.com, abs2.se

WHAT THEY DID:
Enrolled to my site under the user name, 83.233.30.32 and attempt to SPAM my servers with HUNDREDS of messages about Viagra, male enhancement and other sexual content.

Hello world! What’s a great gift to give for the holidays? How about something that doesn’t cost anything (financially), other than spending some time on your pc to actually do it?

E-CARDS! Lot’s of web sites have many different e-cards available for you to send to everyone you know. The majority of the time, they’re free. Unless if you don’t own a pc, buy one and sign up for internet access (then your paying for it) just the sending cards.

So head over ti google, and search for e-cards. happy holidays!

My run in with the Best Buy Master card website and company. I was unable to sign into my account and the website gave me a number I can call for support.

Here’s the pic:

I called the provided number, pushed a few buttons on my phone and was placed on hold for 7 minutes. A customer service representative got on the line and told me I would have to call another number directly about my issue. They could not transfer my call and after I asked,

why the website advises its customers to call them, just to be placed on hold and have a service rep. tell them to call somewhere else” they were unable to answer my question, apolligise and once again tell me to call the other number!

HA, That’s BULL$HIT!

A co-worker of mine has asked me to take a look at his laptop. He claims, it runs slow, doesn’t boot properly and he can’t do anything with it.

Being the nice guy I am, I took it home today. The machine being serviced in a Dell c400, P3 laptop. Not a bad machine at all.

Upon powering up the system, the first error message occurs during boot.

It’s a floppy drive read error. The resolution to this is to not have the floppy enabled, or make it the last boot device within the boot order of the BIOS settings. This particular laptop is so small, the Floppy and dvd drive are external. So if the floppy is NOT connected during boot , it gives an error. So I rebooted the machine and pressed F2 to enter the BIOS setup. I set the proper date, time and moved the floppy to the last boot device. I saved my settings and rebooted.

Wonderful news, no more errors and the machine booted to the Windows XP Login screen after a 2 second post.

At this time I ran into another problem. There’s a password set on the User and Administrator account. What can I do? I told him I would give the laptop back in good order the next day. I can’t call him or guess his password because it’s after midnight and I don’t know what he would use.

So my only option is to HACK IT!

How do you hack and recover a password? Check out the next post!

Regarding “Microsoft Windows 7: What the Future Holds” (Mendelson, E.).

So what does the future hold for Microsoft? It’s a company that will probably never die and they have years of buggy software on the way in. Let’s face it, most of the times it’s all about the money. But with this case, it’s all about who can do what and how fast they can do it; which leads to all about the money. One of the best and most stable Operating Systems to come out of Microsoft was Windows XP. Vista is so buggy and requires updating. Most normal people would think, hey maybe after Vista service pack 2 (which would make Vista…maybe as stable as XP), then we can move on to the next, best thing.

It’s a dam shame that they don’t care about the users. They say they do, but do they? Microsoft claimed, they will support Nvidia hardware. Microsoft even releases there own Revamped drivers for Nvidia hardware. Then why the hell does my Vista, 64 bit PC with 3 8800 OC, GTX cards still crash every now and then? My research into the issue says it’s an incompatibility issue between the hardware and the software. Search the net for a resolution? OK, the answer I find everywhere is: they are still not 100% playable with each other, keep checking for driver updates and maybe the problem will be resolved.

What the fudge? Mr. Operating System Giant? You still want to invent the future even though it will crash, gives us headaches and cost half a grand? A GREAT IDEA!

References:

Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com

Mendelson, E. June 2^nd 2008. Microsoft Windows 7: What the Future Holds. PCMAG.com, Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. Information retrieved on June 3^rd, 2008 from: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2314409,00.asp

Here’s some definitions of Spam control that we all should be aware of:

Spoofable-An electronic spammer can change the words so filters don’t recognize the spam; but humans can detect it.

False Positive- This can be a legitimate email that contains spam words or phrases.

Spoofable- Hashbusters can fool bulk detection systems by making the spam appear dissimilar. This can be defeated be inserting non spam words or wording into the machines to see.

Reactive- writing signatures that require collecting spam.

High Overhead- Adaptive learning systems (bayesian) that are hard to train, teach or maintain.

Emerging- This requires extensive vendor investment in tracking email and web reputation.

With Spam Filtering technology, it’s good to know Who, Where, What and How?

Who is and what do we know about the sender. Where does the message, and if it does contain links, what do we know about where they lead to. What does the message contain and what’s it about. How was the message constructed and why was it constructed in such a manor.

I was just browsing the web and I can’t help but think of the 2 programs I have used a lot today. One is Open Office and the other is Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare.

Open office is awesome. Thanks to Sun Microsystems for providing a kick ass, free ware office product. I use it everyday before I say or ah, type anything and publish it to the web. The best part is, I didn’t have to pay jack toward Microsoft.

The next is something that takes me anyway from the jack asses of reality. Within the Call Of Duty 4, I can murder people and it’s OK. I love it. I have access to a wide variety of military weapons that I want to own in real life (but, legally own, that’s going to take a long time to acquire). The game is realistic and graphically beautiful. It has role playing built in because it’s a cross genre title. It’s one game that I spent $50 USD on in years. But It’s worth the money. I’m going to start review games because of this, my college and PC!

Any who I need to kill something, in the mean time, check out.

Http://www.openoffice.org

Http://www.callofduty.com

MIT should embrace the open source community on its approach to mobile development. Take a look at this write up from EWEEK:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/MIT-Takes-TwoPronged
-Approach-to-Mobile-App-Dev/?sp=0&kc=EWKNLWMU050809STR2

After reviewing the document, the only logical solution is the open source environment. Unless the college intends on buying android from goggle; or the company donates the platform. I’ve had the opportunity to code for android and didn’t purse to it because of other personal goals. I know what it’s capable of and I actually favor the system. If the MIT techs are as smart as they should be, it would not be a problem to code up their own system that could trump the others.

Also, the article claims, MIT is still indecisive of what they are going to utilize. I firmly believe and support: they should develop their own open source system that’s compatible with a majority of devices. Think about it, all mobile devices from various companies coming together. What a beautiful thing.

Special thanks to Stan Gibson and EWEEK for distributing the article. Also to MIT for the actual project in conversation.

I’M BACK!

Why did I leave for over a month?

I ran into a word press coding error, that screwed up my websites templates. What do I mean? My site didn’t look right for a long time. Literally half of the screen was blue and the navigation bar was aligned at the bottom. I learned how to completely write blog templates from scratch; in order to resolve the issue. Nothing worked at all.

I updated word press on my server,
I installed the updated versions of my template,
Utilized template copies that worked else where and got nothing,
Re-wrote the template code from scratch and still nothing.

What caused this mis hap? I was uploading a post from my Linux machine; during the transfer, my Internet connection was murdered. A few hours later, when I went home and online, I noticed the problem. I spent about a month trying to resolve the issue. Now wait a second, I didn’t spend a month trying to resolve the issue, over the course of a month, I was able to resolve the issue. Why did it take so long? Let’s see, I built a new hard core gaming PC, moved half way across the world, sold my entire house, bought an entire house, settled in somewhere and now I’m looking for a job in my new home. While attending an online college that demands a lot of time. Thank you University of Advancing Technology; I love you! Also, while being a father and family member. It’s a lot on my plate.

I loved that post so much I tried everything in the book to keep it. I had no choice but to permanently delete the post and like magic, everything was back to normal.

How did I know it was that post, specifically? Within that post, half of the commenting was blue, which then carried itself through to my other posts. The other half was the default formatting.

So folks, it feels good to be back in a place I love to live in. I just need to find a job and after a few years, I’ll move to California; I really want to be an AI, Game programmer.

I had to set aside my tech life for a minor issue and discomfort. Within my web host I use web mail for my email access. Why? It’s an easy way for me to manage my email because I’m always on the go. Everyday I use a lot of different machines to play with my email. Web mail was the best solution for my needs. I said, “was,” my web host is called www.Hostmonster.com and I’ve been happy with their services. If you Google the company, you will discover a lot of unhappy comments.

I’m a little happy and unhappy about what recently occurred. It turns out the Hostmonster team has discovered a back-door/hole/leak/whatever you want to call it with the interface Horde uses, that would allow an intruder root access to the server! YEA, that is unsafe and I’m happy the Hostmonster team caught the issue and dis activated the program. The downside was, they kept me out of the room and wouldn’t let me in! I researched th

I had to set aside my tech life for a minor issue and discomfort. Within my web host I use web mail for my email access. Why? It’s an easy way for me to manage my email because I’m always on the go. Everyday I use a lot of different machines to play with my email. Web mail was the best solution for my needs. I said, “was,” my web host is called www.Hostmonster.com and I’ve been happy with their services. If you Google the company, you will discover a lot of unhappy comments.

I’m a little happy and unhappy about what recently occurred. It turns out the Hostmonster team has discovered a back-door/hole/leak/whatever you want to call it with the interface Horde uses, that would allow an intruder root access to the server! YEA, that is unsafe and I’m happy the Hostmonster team caught the issue and dis activated the program. The downside was, they kept me out of the room and wouldn’t let me in! I researched the issue of not being able to login and discovered I needed server side access. I can have this access if I request it through Hostmonster, but this will take a few days! I called their 24 hour tech support and was told about the issue I described above.

It turns out Hostmonster will probably not notify it’s users about when the patch has been installed or if they chose to implement a new e-mail application. I’m stuck with Squirrel mail or a 3rd party email application. I liked Horde damit! At least to keep my sanity with being able to use web mail, I can IMAP my accounts on my personal pc’s and use Squirrel until the Horde situation is resolved. I could install another 3rd party email client, but I have no much other junk going on I have no time for this. Any-who, I’m off to hunt for an email application while my web host keeps me in the dark!

A colleague of mine asked me sometime today to briefly state a few great free-ware, spyware removal tools for personal use. My instant reaction was, Aw-Aware, Spy Bot Search and destroy and Windows defender! There are quite a few more programs that we can add to this list. Let’s face it though, the 3 I have mentioned are pretty good tools to utilize, they are free and get the job done. So thank you to Lavasoft and safer-networking for the products they have! Notice I didn’t thank Microsoft; that’s becasue one can argue that Windows defender is not free. You have to pay for a copy of Windows and that means you paid for the use of Windows Defender! There will be more on this subject in the future. For now I’m heading back to my pc build! I can’t wait to start modding!

Lavasoft  = Ad-Aware
Safe-Networking = Spy Bot Search and Destroy
Microsoft =  Windows Defender

New Budget/Hardcore rig