Archive for May, 2006

AS/400 Restore Commands

Trying to restore some files on our integrated Xseries, so I am posting the commands I use here, just in case I do actually get them to work.

RST DEV(‘/QSYS.LIB/TAP01.DEVD’) OBJ((‘mydir/*.psd’ *INCLUDE ‘restoredir’)) SUBTREE(*OBJ)

This command restores files from mydir to the specified restoredir. The example uses *.psd but could be used for programs, documents, etc.

SiteAdvisor Blog

Here are the latest posts from the SiteAdvisor Blog. Definitely some good info, pay no attention to those dates.

Windows Vista Build 5381 Screenshot Gallery 1

Paul Thurrott has posted some screenshots of the latest Vista build 5381, here.

Well, this was a nice surprise. I knew that the Beta 2 version of Windows Vista would be based on build 5381, but we had been told that Microsoft wouldn’t be shipping any more interim Vista builds after build 5365 (see my review). Then, late on Friday, May 5, 2006, Microsoft quietly shipped an early, pre-Beta 2 version of Windows Vista build 5381 to testers and others close to the software giant. That means we’ve able to preview what Beta 2 will look like before it officially ships on or before May 22.

His next review will not be until Beta 2.

Computers and Accessories on Ebay

Here is a great bunch of the newest computers and accessories listed on Ebay.com.

Mcafee Launches Apple VirusScan

Windows is still the whipping dog, with the largest market share, but more and more attention is being paid to Apple and their security problems, no matter how small. These will be taken more advantage of as their userbase increases. Not because people want to do Apple like they do Microsoft, it will be purely monetary concerns I am sure. As more people use Apple, the bigger the money made from maleware, spyware, etc.

McAfee has launched a Mac security product, saying that Apple Computer’s OS X is “just as vulnerable” as other operating systems are to targeted attacks.

The antivirus vendor introduced McAfee VirusScan for Mactel on Friday. To back up its statement, McAfee cited the release in March of a patch that fixed 20 vulnerabilities in OS X. A proof-of-concept worm that targeted the OS X platform was also discovered earlier this year.

“Historically, Microsoft has been targeted because it has had dominant market share. As there are more Apple users (in the future), more threats will appear,” Sal Viveros, a security expert at McAfee, told ZDNet UK. Source: News.com

Barry Bonds and Steroids

Saw this photo in Yahoo news, and thought it was pretty funny.

Wether he did it or not, Barry Bonds is going out with a stigma. Should there be an asterix if he breaks Babe Ruth’s record?

AOL Adds Voice Over IP Product

Looks like AOL is jumping into the Voice over IP market, with the release of AIM Phoneline, that will allow instant messaging users to make calls to and receive from regular phones. This will particularly useful to people who want to be able to talk to their online buddies, but don’t want to give out their home phone number. I also smell another way for pedophiles to contact your children without you knowing, but that’s another blog post altogether.

AOL is pushing farther into the Internet Protocol telephony market with its latest product that allows instant-messaging users to make calls to and receive calls from regular phones.

AOL has already had a “talk” button integrated into its instant-messaging client, but previously it only allowed users to talk to other AIM users online from computer to computer. Beginning May 16, AOL users will be able to use AIM Phoneline, which allows them, from their IM client, to talk to people who are using regular phones.

The basic version of AIM Phoneline is free and allows AOL’s instant-messaging users to get a local telephone number where they can receive phone calls. If the AIM user isn’t online, the call goes directly to voice mail, which can be retrieved from an e-mail account. Users can also make free unlimited local and long-distance calls in the U.S. Canada, and 30 other countries.

AOL users can also subscribe to an unlimited service for a monthly fee of $14.95 (a limited number of subscribers will get a special rate of $9.95 per month). The unlimited service allows users to call landline or cell phones from their IM client using the AIM phone number. Source: News.com

Nowadays Financial Reasons are Tops for Malware

It used to be malware, such as viruses, trojans, spyware, etc, were mainly used to garner attention or to expose exploits missed by software creators. Not today, today, 70% of malware is used for financial gain

Seventy percent of malicious software being circulated is linked to various types of cybercrime, a study by security firms Panda Software showed.

The report, based on a survey in the first quarter of 2006, suggested that “financial profit has become a priority” for creators of “malware,” which includes viruses, worms, trojans and spyware, the company said.

“Activities which were previously motivated by the egocentric or narcissistic natures of certain individuals seeking notoriety or looking for a platform to demonstrate their technical know-how, now have a single objective: fraudulently profiting by exploiting the latest technology.”

The report also suggests that hackers are moving away from e-mail worms to forms of malicious code more difficult to detect.

About 40 percent of the problems detected by Panda was spyware, a type of malicious code designed for financial gain, primarily through collecting data on users’ Internet activities.

Another 17 percent was trojans, including “banker trojans” that steal confidential data related to bank services, others that download malicious applications onto systems.

Eight percent of the problems detected were “dialers,” malicious code that dials up premium-rate numbers without users’ knowledge; “bots,” a scheme involving the sale or rental of networks of infected computers, accounted for four percent of the total. Source: Yahoo

It’s only going to get worse and worse, as more and more money is funneled into online advertising, more advertisers and consumers will get taken advantage of by malware. As soon as merchants realize they need to police who is advertising their products and how they are doing it, maybe it will start declining.

Security at Home from Microsoft

Here are the latest security at home articles from Microsoft.

Now your Xbox 360 can blog

Simply enter you Live gamertag and 360voice.com will automatically, based upon what you did that day, create a blog entry for your 360. The blog is updated once a day and even offers RSS feeds to your own, and others 360′s blogs.

read more | digg story

this was originally posted on Major Nelson’s site, the Xbox Live’s Director of Programming’s personal blog about Xbox and more, and this is pretty cool and scary at the same time. Check out Major Nelson’s Xbox blog here. It tells you what you do everyday, wether the Xbox just sat there lonely, wether you played MP3′s or DVD’s through it, or how many points you scored on Xbox Live. Pretty cool.