Monthly Archives: December 2011
Microsoft Releases Emergency Patch
According to PCWorld, “Microsoft Ruins Perfect Record with Out-Of-Band Patch” by releasing the first emergency patch of the year. Yes, less than 48 hours away from the next year, Microsoft had to release this patch. This is especially interesting, as MS apparently isn’t currently aware of any specific attack. However, it seems that it is worse than a normal Denial of Service (DoS) attack in that each ping can tie up a CPU core for 90 seconds, which means it doesn’t require a coordinated attack or botnet.
eWeek’s Fahmida Y Rashid was quoted in RedOrbit article “Microsoft Releases Emergency Patch To Address Zero-Day Vulnerability”:
Two Home Menu Items After Setting Static Front Page in WordPress
Yesterday, I wrote about “Using WordPress as a Regular Website with a Static Front Page”, in which I wrote:
As long as your WordPress theme already supports it, that’s really all there is to it! You will now have a static landing page called “Home” and a blog attached to it (if you chose to set it).
Well, as it so happens, I was working on a site when I wrote this article. Up until that point, I have created WordPress sites with a static front page without any incident, but I forgot to put up an article about it. Well, I’ve been trying out a brand new cool WordPress theme, TechGo. I did what I normally do, and there they are: two Home menu items. This is the first theme that I’ve had this issue with.
Using WordPress as a Regular Website with a Static Front Page
WordPress is a great platform. Bloggers all over know and love the platform, and there aren’t many limits if you pay for hosting. There are many plugins you can add to it that can make it do just about anything short of backflips. For example, you can create a WordPress site that looks like a storefront selling products like store.johndscomputers.com does.
However, WordPress is really just a blogging platform, right? Turning it into a storefront is all well and good, but surely you couldn’t use it for a “regular” website, right? Right?
So, what is a “regular” website? Isn’t it just a website with a landing page, some other pages and perhaps some subpages to go to? So, how is this really different than a blog with static pages other than the fact that the landing page varies? Think about it. In WordPress, you create a page, and the page shows up on the top as a link that you click on to navigate to the page.
GoDaddy and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
Censorship keeps increasing in the Not-So-“Land of the Free”, and HR 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (or, should that be Seditious Overt Power Act?) is just the latest example of how Big Brother knows what is right for you. Oddly enough, GoDaddy originally came out in support of this unconstitutional act! According to a Gizmodo article (which has a title I’d rather not repeat here):
So far, none of our voluntary action has stifled legitimate capitalism online. And neither will robust intellectual property enforcement.
This has nothing to do with “intellectual property enforcement” and everything to do with the greed of media companies.
Geek Friday: User-Friendly Application for Ubuntu Grub Settings
I previously covered a little bit about editing the grub boot program for Ubuntu systems in “Windows XP Recovery Partition 4: Install Clonezilla”. That’s all fine and well if you can remember where the files are and aren’t in the habit of forgetting to run update-grub2. You would think there would be a program for this, right?
Well, it turns out there is! The How-To Geek site did an article on “How To Easily Change Your Dual-Booting PC’s Default OS” in which they use StartUp-Manager to manipulate the grub menu to select time-out, default OS and other options. The article covers the basics quite well, but the program documentation also covers removing options for recovery mode and memtest86+. Sounds like the tool for me! I’ll have to try this out next time I find a need to play with grub, which admittedly isn’t every day.
This Just In: Bon Jovi is NOT a Zombie (or, You Can’t Believe Everything on the Internet)
According to Elmore Magazine, “Jon Bon Jovi Is Not A Zombie”. A rumor was started on Twitter that Bon Jovi had died of a heart attack. It would seem that like Mark Twain, the reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated.
The nice thing about the Internet is that everyone has the freedom to post whatever they want for the most part. They may be restricted as to where they can post it, but if there’s a will, there’s a way. The downside of the Internet is also that everyone has the freedom to post whatever they want, and it doesn’t even have to be true.
Capturing the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)
The default on many PCs, particularly those that come from the big manufacturers, is to reboot after a blue screen of death (BSOD), the wonderful blue screen with white letters that greets you with STOP error codes and a lot of geek-talk. I’ve seen some computers that crash and restart so fast that sometimes the user isn’t even aware of the blue screen in between! This can end up in an endless cycle of reboot, crash and reboot. Frustrating!
There are various ways to break this cycle. Many BSODs occur pretty shortly after startup or after login fairly consistently. Pressing [F8] and choosing “Disable automatic restart…” is perhaps the easiest way for consistent BSODs.
However, it can be hit or miss as to when some events cause the blue screen, so you might get it up and running without a blue screen and still not know what is going on. There are utilities that read the dump files, but frankly they are usually cumbersome to use.
Well, NirSoft has an easy to use utility BlueScreenView, which will read the minidump files created during BSODs, and you can view the details of the crash. Hopefully, if it is a faulty driver, it will be listed as the possible cause, thus helping you to narrow down on the issue.
NirSoft makes some other handy utilities, some of which are used by BleepingComputer.com volunteers to assist people who post in their forums for assistance. If you use one and find it useful, I encourage you to donate so that they will keep them updated.
Geek Friday: Understanding Home Networking
From time to time, I get questions about what is needed for home networking. Sometimes, people try to explain a problem over the phone, and it is difficult to know if they really understand the difference between the modem and the router. Throw in wireless networking, and it can overwhelm people who really just want to make things work.
Think of it like your car. You aren’t expected to be an expert to drive a car. However, it comes in very handy to know what brakes do, that the oil and oil filter needs to be changed regularly, what tire rotation entails from a high level, etc. Otherwise, it can be very difficult to make decisions about servicing the vehicle.
Home networking is sort of the same. You aren’t expected to be a networking expert, but it helps to know what piece of hardware controls your wi-fi when it isn’t working. It also helps to know what type of equipment you are working with so you know whether or not you really need that disk the ISP sent you, as I’ve seen people mess up their connections by running disks for DSL modems when they are connected to a router.
Well, the How-To Geek has several good geeky articles, but they have a full well-written article on “HTG Explains: Understanding Routers, Switches, and Network Hardware”, which includes diagrams to help see how things are supposed to be physically connected.
One thing they do not get into, and it is somewhat outside the scope of their article, is that some ISPs offer wi-fi router and modem combinations. Instead of having two physical boxes, you only have one. While this reduces flexibility, it does help when you have to reset it, as you only need to be concerned with troubleshooting and resetting a single box.
Resetting TCP/IP in Windows XP Sometimes Doesn’t Work After Rootkit Malware
Microsoft has KB article 299357 that supposedly assists in resetting your Windows XP TCP/IP network settings back “to its original state”. I assume under normal circumstances that it works correctly, but after a malware attack, it may or may not work, it seems.
As a background, there are rootkits out there that will infect the TCP/IP stack. However, TDSSKiller from Kaspersky, which is good at detecting a lot of rootkits, does not find all of them. In addition, Surfright’s Hitman Pro, which usually catches what others might miss, does not detect it either. Combofix was able to detect the infection, but DHCP would still not work on the client. Instead, it sat there saying “Acquiring network address”.
Workaround for iTunes Home Sharing Nonsense
Some time ago, I complained in “Review: iTunes Home Sharing Disappoints” where I listed some downers about the whole iTunes sharing of playlists. For example, I thought it was annoying that iTunes literally had to be running on both PCs for it to work. However, that was minor in comparison to not marking items as being played as it went along. So, I wound up listening to some podcasts three times before I figured out nothing was being marked as played. This isn’t such a big deal for playlists that don’t change often, but when I am on the road, I like to catch up on news sometimes.
Well, I got clued in on an iTunes feature that I’ve never seen documented anywhere (not a big surprise, as so few features seem to be). If I double-click on iTunes while holding down the [Shift] key, it will prompt for which library you want to open. So, that got me to thinking about accessing the iTunes library remotely. Would it get around these issues?
