I just did hear about a rather nasty bug that some websites are using to download malware and adware. It exploits something that IE uses to display certain vector graphics. That functionality isn't taken advantage of by very many legit sites yet, but as always the cracker community is eager to do whatever necessary to make some cash. It's particularly bad because it doesn't actually require you to download anything and it all happens pretty invisibly.

Thankfully there's a patch out now:

You should run Windows Update to obtain the patch, reboot your machine as Windows Update will require, then re-register the VGX.DLL file if you had previously unregistered it, since Windows Update does not automatically re-register the previously vulnerable DLL file. (See instructions for re-registering the previously vulnerable DLL here.)

You can then verify that your system is no longer vulnerable by displaying this benign VML vulnerability test page, which will use VML to display two red star filled rectangles:

http://www.isotf.org/zert/testvml.htm

If the DLL is NOT re-registered, you will see a blank space instead of the red-filled rectangles. If the DLL is still vulnerable (the patch didn't "take"), your browser will crash harmlessly.

Courtesy of the Security Now podcast #58

Go do it and don't wait.

No not my writing project, I've been setting up a sub blog where my NaNoWriMo novel will go. Rather this:

HP has created a printer that is essentially an email appliance for people who don't have a computer. It costs $150 and for ten bucks a month or a hundred a year it will print out any email sent to a special Presto address. It will only print mail from specified users and it will also print calendars and news feeds that you select. It dials in periodically and downloads whatever content that awaits it.

On the surface this seems pretty cool for folks who don't have or don't want a computer, but want to be able to receive email. Of course they can't send email. I'm not even sure as to how they can select calendars and newsfeeds to print without internet access. Sure the initial setup takes place over the phone, but after that wouldn't you need some way to personalize your settings? Or do you just call your nephew and have him do it?

I could maybe see tech savvy people using this sort of device to save them some time printing email and daily news, but most of them don't object to reading off the screen and understand saving trees. They would also know how to block most spam and use an RSS feed. And without a high speed LAN jack I just don't see them wanting to tie up a phone line (assuming they even have a land line) with the added possibility of long distance charges and everything that we thought we were getting away from.

I love me some guns and two new sorts have been brought to my attention, one funny and one not.

I have the above affixed to a lined black corduroy shirt that I wear as a jacket. My mom got it from ThinkGeek for Christmas. Last night I was picking up some late night groceries and was sporting aforementioned shirt as it was cool and misty out. The cashier asked me if I was one of those GeekSquad folks. I replied that I wasn't, but did indeed geek for a living. I thought briefly that I should tell her that I was a geek of the circus variety but I have a feeling that would have been lost on her. She then asked if I minded if she asked me a question. Rather than replying that she just had, I replied in the negative. She asked me if she had to have digital cable in order to get Road Runner's high speed internet. I told her that I didn't think so and satisfied that I had done my duty I walked out into the night, not entirely certain that I was correct.

Since things are a little slow today I decided to "hit the books". My contracting agency has an online training suite. I've been working on the CompTIA Security+ cert and today I started the Network+ track in addition. It just went over the OSI model. In an effort to see how well I understand what I just heard I am going to reproduce it (more or less and in my own words) below. Feel free to critique (those two of you that understand this sort of thing).

Are any of you crazy enough to be running Vista right now? I've been getting a lot of questions about it and I'm listening to TWIT 77 (I Have a backlog of 'casts) right now and they're saying that you really should by a whole new machine that is Vista Premium Ready.

Sounds like Vista is doing cool things with hybrid drives (hard drives w/ built in flash drives) and you can get a performance boost with an external USB flash drive. It also sounds really pretty, but all the stuff I'm hearing is that there is no compelling reason to get Vista.

Geek's geek Wil Wheaton has written up a post both on his blog,WWdN: In Exile: Geek in Review: Pac-Man Fever, and Suicide Girls (not gonna link that generally NSFW site) that has to do with the passing of an American icon, the video game arcade.

This darlin' little thing is a mouse that any road warrior should be proud to own. It uses Bluetooth to connect wirelessly to your XP/Vista notebook. When you aren't using it it slides into your PC card slot to charge. It has a little kickstand that when flipped down, powers it up. The only odd thing about it in my mind is that the kickstand raises the back end of it up which seemed backwards. It does fit the hand well though, even my big mitt. A simple, but elegant design, lack of AAA batteries, and smart idea for storage makes it seem like something out of Cuppertino. Go get yourself one.

According to RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter the Copyright Royalty Board has set the royalty rates for webcasting music. It will be $0.0008 per performance (defined as the streaming of one song to one listener) retroactive to the beginning of '06 and will be raised to $.0019 per performance by 2010.

This will probably kill sites like Pandora. To make those numbers real for you,

According to the comScore Arbitron ratings report for November 2006, the AOL Radio Network had a average audience ("AQH") between 6AM and Midnight of 210,694 listeners. Multiplied by about 16 songs per hour, 18 hours per day, and 31 days per month, plus adding an additional 10% to account for overnight (Mid-6AM) listening, suggests that AOL played about 2.1 billion songs that month. At the CRB's royalty rate ($0.0008 per play), I'm guessing that would create a royalty obligation to SoundExchange for the month of November of about $1.65 million. Annualized, that's about $20 million for 2006.

And it will be over double that in three years. Greedy sons of satan. So Gizmodo recommends boycotting the RIAA this month. That means doing some research and if you want to know where you can go to get RIAA free music then check this out. Will it work? Probably not., but it might feel good.

Sitting here in my easy chair watching Crossing Jordan and downloading Podcasts over the wireless connection. Technology is groovy! What piece of tech makes your life more fun?

The Falcon 1 rocket launched successfully from the Marshall Islands. SpaceX, funded by Elon Musk, has the goal to improve the cost and reliability of access to space "ultimately by a factor of ten". Their mission, to get the Falcon 1 into orbit yesterday, wasn't a complete success. The second stage went into a roll during its first orbit and reentered the atmosphere. Given that this is only their second test flight, they feel that it's anything but a failure. They have a contract to deliver a Naval Research Laboratory payload into space and plan to do that later this year.

I have to say that this pumps me up more than a little bit. I've often said that the real exploration of space will kick into high gear when private industry gets ahold of it. As we've seen with FedEx and UPS vs. the USPS, privatization can lead to better delivery of services heretofore under the auspices of the government. I have no doubt that this will prove to be the case when it comes to rockets. SpaceX has plans for a manned space program using a blunt-cone ballistic capsule that it calls Dragon. It will have the ability to dock with the International Space Station and they want to take over supplying the ISS by 2010.

This thing is freakin' awesome! Hit the link in the title for the site with plans.

HT to Geekdad.

Non-Lethal.com has some interesting products that I would most assuredly not want to be on the recieving end of. Like this bad boy:

The TAC 700 launcher allows authorized users to quickly launch rounds and create substantial pepper clouds to gain compliance in crowd control, barricade busting, and many other non-lethal use of force situations. Set trigger options to conform to your policy while giving authorized users the right capabilities to achieve their missions. Averages 700 rounds per minute in full automatic. Up to 60 ft. target accuracy, 200 ft. for pepper saturation. Tactical and compact.

How cool is a paintball gun that can shoot a mix of balls that can break glass, mark people with glowing goo, and lay down a cloud of pepper spray? I've gotten into some discussion regarding the use of force to protect your home. According to some, if you aren't ready to use lethal force then you're not doing your job as a hubby. Obviously I disagree. I would rather have something like this in my house as opposed to an actual gun. These aren't currently available to the public though. Ironic somehow that I can by a shotgun or semi-automatic pistol no problem, but really effective non-lethal stuff isn't ready for me.

How do you protect your home/family? How do you feel about guns in the home with kids?

New pictures under the gallery!

Also I'm playing with a tumblr blog aka tumblelog. It's a place to dump my links and play with mobile blogging/cell phone snaps.

You'll find links to both up top, in addition to a link to my Blogtalk Radio host page.

These two articles Dell Officially Announces Ubuntu Line-up and 22 Things to Know About the $99 Zonbu Linux PC seem to indicate that *nux systems are finally getting into the mainstream.

The one that's most interesting to me is that $99 box. Granted you only get that price if you get the Amazon online storage service (it's $250 otherwise), but it runs on a CF card which is awesome. I see no reason why you couldn't easily build this cute thing into a TV. They'll have a model of this for use in a living room soon, which I assume means that there will be connectivity to your Hi Def flat screen.

Go open source, go!

Technical Stew the first steps in a group blog/podcast on tech.

Review of Iris to Iris by Building 429

According to Dosboy's Bits and Bytes a Soundwave MP3 Player is now available for pre-order at Kooltoyz.com. I predict that if this isn't crap it may indeed surpass the iPhone in popularity. If I'm wrong then you can feel free to laugh at me. In fact, I suggest you start laughing now. Perhaps the coolest part is that the cassettte door (where you would have once loaded a magnetic tape media, crazy I know) opens to let you plug in an SD card.

ht to Gizmodo who "predicted" this.

Have a looksee at Technical Stew. We've got a couple of new posts and a new poll up.

Why don't you give Episode 2 of the Technical Stew 'cast a listen? (Okay so depending on how you count it it's one, two or three since we did a test cast on BTR and one on TS, but this is an hour long and has Pat so added bonus.) It's worth your time!

Rt. click/Save as.

If you want to listen live/participate, keep checking back here or here for info. Looks like Friday nights at 10:00 EST will be our regular time, until it isn't.

For those of you who aren't checking Technical Stew on a regular basis or any kind of basis, you should. It's Pat's and my take on all things tech. We're also doing a weekly Talkshoe podcast on that topic and you can download it from Technical Stew. And feel free to call in. It'll be happening at Talkshoe.com every Friday at 10:00 pm EST God willing.

BTW, you should really check out Technical Stew. I hear they're giving out free cookies, made from fresh girl scouts.

I get a fair number of hits here (something like 1500/month here lately) and I'm going to try pushing some of that traffic over to my group techie blog Technical Stew. Go give that a look and show us some commenting love!!! Also check out our podcast @ 2200 EST tonight. You can listen online live and even call in.

Call in info:
Dial: (724) 444-7444
Enter: 40610 # (Talkcast ID)
Enter: 1 # or your PIN

Just for kicks I thought I'd give this a try. The One Laptop Per Child Project is doing a give one/get one deal. For $399 you get one XO laptop for a child in a foreign country and one for your own child. So if any of you regular readers are feeling generous enough to kick in a few bucks and want to participate then click on the Paypal button. We have until the 25th of this month (the 26th really). Yes I will use any funds recieved to buy this. Yes my child will get one. And if I don't get enough money from y'all I will see if I can generate the difference myself. If that's not possible then I'll donate the money to a charity of my own choosing (though I'm open to suggestions). I put in 2.50 as a minimum, but feel free to go as high as you like. Stickying this to the top until the 26th.

I love me some xkcd.

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

Santa visited us a few days early and look what (s)he brung.

That would be a new 20" iMac. And yes I do believe that I heard angelic voices when I cracked open the box.

Give it a listen. It's fairly short.

I am soooo going to start posting back over at Technical Stew again!! I abandoned ship when things got bizzay. Apologies to Pat and Dan.

Anyway posted a brief thing on VoodooPad.

I've started posting again more over Technical Stew so pretty much all of my tech posts will be over there. If you're interested in helping out this is sort of a group project. Drop me a line.

Peter Hirschberg has recreated a vintage early 80's arcade. He did all of the renovating on the cabinets himself, spending about $500 a game and untold time. Apparently it is open by invitation. According to Gizmodo he supplies the quarters to his guests wanting them only to revel in his obsession as he does. I could lose hours in there, days if there were Nachos and Pepsi enough.

I miss the arcades of my youth. Yes there are "better" video games out now, but playing in the mall arcade with real flesh and blood friends and trying to beat one another's scores was where it was at. I agree with Peter that the arcades of the late 80's early 90's were but pale shadows with their fighting games and 50-75 cent machines. There was an arcade in the town I grew up in that would let you in for a paltry sum and you could play all of their machines as much as you wanted. Bliss!!

What was your favorite game?

I made this in about two minutes from a stock photo of Earth with Pages and Preview on my Mac. Man I love this thing.

I love, love, love the Geekdad Blog. They consistantly have stuff that makes me wish I were geekier than I am. Here some software I wish I had written:

Here's the website where you can download it.

Cory Doctorow, geek god, defender of all things open source, and generally great podcaster/writer is releasing a new book this year, Little Brother

Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Boy THAT'S gonna push a button or two. Knowing Cory, which I don't, not personally anyway, this will probably be available for free in some form or another. I can't wait to read it. Evidently every chapter will contain some interesting how to's like defeating CCTV's and your school's proxy server. Heh.

So if you aren't using picnik in conjunction with your blog/flickr then you might be a loser or just cheap. Well now most of its functions are free and you can do all kinds of cool things (that honestly you'd be able to do ten times better with GIMP/Photoshop, but hey this is free AND web-based). I created this mock up of a polaroid. I tried starting with a picture of me, but apparently when a picture of me is taken a sort of vampire effect happens. Oh something shows up alright, but it's not pretty.

Before:

After:

The BRP Can-Am Spyder Roadster is a thing of beauty.

For those of you that don't get it (which may be more of you than I think), I present Podcasting in Plain English by Common Craft.

Enjoy.

Okay so it's not exactly powered armor, but it is an exoskeleton married to a motorcycle and appears to be chock full of awesome.

Yamaha Branded Deus Ex Machina Motorcycle Exoskeleton: A Segway On Steroids

Art Center Pasadena student Jake Loniak has taken everything that is cool about exoskeletons and motorcycles and crammed it into this Yamaha-branded Deus Ex Machina concept motorcycle. The vehicle is powered by ultra-capacitors and doped nano-phoshpate batteries (similar to the ones currently used in hybrid cars) and it is controlled using 36 pneumatic muscles with 2 linear actuators set along a spine consisting of seven artificial vertebrae. Even the helmet is pneumatically attached.

Okay last video for a while. Watch this and be amazed.

Accoridng to Danger Room there's a new blimp in town.

Boeing says its JHL-40 could take some 80,000 pounds of cargo over 200 miles. "Boeing said the blimp would be environmentally friendly because it would eliminate the need to build roads or rail lines to remote locations, where transportation can be costly, inadequate and unreliable," Reuters reports. "The JHL-40, or Jess Heavy Lifter, is named after Pete Jess, president and chief operating officer of SkyHook International, the Calgary, Alberta-based company that secured the patent for the blimp, which combines elements of a helicopter and a traditional airship."

I've been watching Ice Road Truckers for the last few months and as cool as that show is, this thing sounds a lot less dangerous and would let companies get heavy goods even during the warmer months. I've seen a number of blimp like vehicles on the web over the last few years. There was talk of a passenger cruise-ship type deal a while back. I think that given the current level of tech that would be awesome. Now all I need is a pair of brass...goggles.