Brian Krebs from The Washington Post has been advising the average Windows user on various things. A while ago, people started asking him if they could trust a Service Pack for the .Net framework. While you probably are well aware about .Net, what it is and what it does, many people are not. So Brian took it upon himself to test the SP and after some time gave it a go.

However, it seems now that when installing this update, Microsoft is so friendly to add their own add-on for FireFox. While it is nice to see that MS is acknowledging FF as a major player in the browser world, it is not the normal way to install add-ons. One of the great features of FF has always been it extendability, but moreover the choice what & when to extend it.

No big deal right? Let’s just go and remove this unwanted extension. Right, this would work with any other developer, but we are dealing with Microsoft, which means the ‘Uninstall’ button is disabled, and removing the add-on is only possible through some obscure registry hacks, with which you don’t only risk in breaking the good operation of your favorite browser, but also your whole OS when you don’t really know what you’re doing.

Nobody really knows how this add-on behaves, but personally I don’t like this situation at all. Like Brian says in his article, it makes you wonder what else Microsoft’s installs behind your back… Maybe calling this malware is a bit over the top, but nevertheless I’m going to tag this post with it, since such behaviour is typical for malware, and it’s not because it’s coming from MS that we should keep one eye closed.

It’s already bad enough the Redmond company does not seem to be able to create a decent browser of their own, but now they seem to have to mess up the work of others as well. I for one am not very happy with this. In fact this makes me going to avoid Microsoft software even more than before, and I hope the same for you as well… Remember, it’s for your own good .

1st place:

2nd place (my favorite):

3rd place (also better than the winner imho :p):

Congratulations to these authors!

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Extra (this movie was included in the 5 finalists, but unfortunately didn’t make it):

to download the ogg-versions of these movies, click here!

But what is happening in the corporate environment? Well, this aren’t looking so gloomy there… InformationWeek is reporting that a staggering 83% of businesses will not upgrade to Windows 7 next year. So what is happening there?

Well of course our Redmond friends are still suffering from a big PR problem surrounding Vista. With this OS being plagued with so many problems and incompatibility, it’s only natural the corporate world is not very enthusiastic about it. While Windows 7 looks promising from an end-user point of view, IT professionals say that most of the important functionality needed for a successful deploy-scenario are still missing. One of the key ingredients here is the fact that you can’t really upgrade from XP to 7. A clean install seems necessary. Also since 7 shares the code-base of Vista, many of the compatibility problems will remain, and companies just can’t afford any major downtime in the current economical climate, at least not because of a Windows upgrade…

While XP still holds a lot of popularity, it’s death is getting very near as well. Mainstream support is ending today (Tuesday), and many businesses that won’t make the leap to 7 immediately risk of getting trapped in a no-service period spanning the duration of their waiting. Additionally, the 9 year old OS is getting out-dated, with little to no support for current hardware advances that are being sold for a couple of years now (hello!? multi-threading support?!)

Microsoft definitely needs to step it up a notch, fixing both their shattered reputation and the remaining technical issues responsible for the upgrade hold-offs.

Just a quick post to let you know that this site is now also available on IPv6! Check it out on http://www.v6.gunthy.net.  Of course you need to have an IPv6-enabled internet connection.

For those who don’t have the option yet to get native IPv6 (which will be most of the people, including me ), you can get a free tunnel from the friendly people over at SixXS, who are also providing my tunnels. The site is filled with quality information on how to get it working. Once you’re up and running, don’t forget to check out the Cool IPv6 Stuff page, which immediately gives you some v6-fun!

Don’t know what this strange thing I’m writing about is? Read up on the wiki page and learn all about it. Better sooner than later in my opinion, as you will find yourself on this new technology at some point in time anyway!

For now, enjoy the v6-version here, and keep an eye out for things, I might be including some nice v6-only goodies once in a while .

From now on, this blog is reachable & readable (;-)) from my new domain … www.gunthy.net !!

Enjoy!

On the security side it’s probably a bit early to tell. It’s clear that Microsoft has plenty of experience creating relative insecure browsers and hopefully they have learned from earlier mistakes. Of course you have to look at this in perspective. IE still is the one with the biggest market share, so it only makes sense that more security issues and bugs are found faster. This in turn is also the main reason the browser is targeted the most by malware authors. On the other hand, being the leading software in your field, my opinion is that security should be top priority. I’m not saying it isn’t over at Redmond, but we can all agree it doesn’t always look that way. Surely problems will arise sooner or later, whether IE8 will live up to it’s expectation here, I guess only time will tell.

So what about the standards side? I for one can only be happy with the fact that finally Microsoft has decided to be more standards-compliant. This is definitely a step in the right direction. But let’s take a closer look… Over at the IE blog, there’s an interesting post about backwards-compatibility. To ensure that old(er) sites work seamlessly with this new version, IE8 is getting shipped with what is called Compatibility View. This mode is there to make sure IE7 code still runs on IE8, even if it’s not really adhering to the standards. And I think here is where the problems start. If you browse down on the blog-post to the comments, you can see a lot of people are concerned about this. In essence IE8 is providing 2 new ways of rendering pages. One of course using the native IE8 mode, using the provided standards, the other one implementing sometimes strange behaviour in handling code. This is surely going to cause quite some headaches with developers.

Last but not least, I’d like to share some Microsoft marketing trick I found lining out the different loading times of IE8, Firefox and Chrome. Personally I found the video quite funny, but what scares me is that a lot of end-users will walk right into this. I’m not saying the claims made are wrong or twisted, but I do wonder if people really think speed is THAT important. Let’s be honest here, who really cares if a site takes one of half a second longer to load in your browser of choice. Differences like this are really marginal. What should matter most is the overall performance of the application, on all domains. Such a campaign proves one thing for me: Microsoft is really feeling the heat from Firefox and Chrome breathing down it’s neck. They are afraid, and they should be!

The CodeWeavers people have already put in great support for DirectX 9 in their latest version for gaming, and it seems they are planning to also include version 10. Other things include support for .Net & GDIPlus. All this should be included in their latest release, version 7.2. For the expected 8.0, they plan on revamping the Linux UI, but also the Mac version is going to get some new goodies. Further on, better support for IE7, Office and much more applications is to be expected.

While I haven’t used any of their products myself lately, I must say I’m quite impressed by their efforts. Since I use Wine myself on an almost daily basis, I can vouch for the fact that the program has definitely reached a mature state. However when using the ‘vanilla Wine’, be prepared for a lot of tweaking. This is where CodeWeavers jumps in. They have been able to provide all this tweaking for you, giving you a working product out-of-the-box.

I’m usually not so enthousiastic about commercial spin-offs of Open Source products, but this one really is worth it’s money. If you’re not willing to spend time on tweaking & troubleshooting Wine issues, or would like professional support when stumbling upon a problem, then consider this product, I’m sure you’ll love it!

After some time not blogging at all, and even taking the site down for a very brief amount of time, I’ve decided I’m back . I’ll try to write again on a regular basis, provided of course there is something to write about…

I’ve also added a new toy. From now on, you can talk to me on IRC. Use the link to your left or the one in the menu to the right to open a java-based IRC client. The channel is hosted on KreyNet, which is mainly a dutch speaking network. For that reason, my channel is only available through this webchat. If you feel you should have access through your own IRC client, you’re always free to drop me a line & I’ll see if your claim is valid .

Don’t worry if I don’t reply right away, I’m not 24/7 on there, but if you give me your contact details in a private message, I’ll be sure to let you know something in due time.

Downadup is one of the nastiest worms I’ve seen in my professional history. Having quite the amount of hands-on experience with it myself, I can say that I haven’t seen such a persistent one before. And I’m not alone… F-Secure reported Friday in a blog-post that they estimate the number of affected machines to be over 8 million. EIGHT MILLION!!! My god…

So what happened? Well the worm seems to be detected first late September, using a flaw in one of Windows’ services which allowed it to brute-force account passwords it spread rapidly. Once successful, it starts spreading itself through network shares, USB-sticks and other computers affected by the same security hole. Late October, Microsoft released an emergency patch to fix the hole, but a lot of machines still remain unpatched, thus very vulnerable.

A lot of corporate networks got infected as the worm spread havoc using the exploit. It locked users out of their accounts by keeping on guessing the password. Once on the machine, it starts securing the places it uses by removing all access rights to parts of the file system and registry, making it very hard to remove. Once your network is infected, it feels like your efforts to wipe out the worm are like carrying water to the sea. Counter-measures like installing the MS-patch and updating your anti-virus solution do help, but seem to only slow down the spreading. Use of USB sticks should definitely be heavily restricted, or if possible be banned completely.

To make things worse, the worm in some cases renders the infected computer useless, using methods like stopping services or using excessive bandwidth. It’s ability to install third-party malware such as trojans and other viruses, which gives full control over the machine to the worm author(s), doesn’t help either.

I think we haven’t seen the last of this one yet. The biggest question I think is, if you ever get your network clean again, how can you be sure no remnants are left behind. After all, as with any virus or malware, can you ever be sure you are completely safe? I guess only time will tell…

According to its developers, Samba 4 is about to change all this. While it is true that there is still a long way to go, some nice things are to be expected. As previous versions required tedious configuration skills and reading through tons of manuals, version 4 should “just work”.  The DNS scheme is now being generated automatically, and the OpenLDAP back-end, if required, is being configured by Samba itself. Scripting has vastly improved, as now Python is being used as the default scripting language, however there are still bindings for other tools as well.

All good news, but there are of course a couple of disadvantages. For example, there is no real administration interface. In the past, Samba used to have a web-interface, but due to lack of support this has been removed. The door has of course been left open for the community to develop this, so I think we will see quite a few of these interfaces pop up soon enough. Another downside is that authentication for Unix clients and the print server, compared to Samba 3,  are not yet implemented. In it’s current state this would mean you’d have to run the two versions side by side.  Luckily, there seem to be plans to re-instate these features as soon as possible.

Of course there is still a lot of work to do. One of the things mentioned are domain trusts not yet implemented. This is still a bit of a set-back. However the fact that the Samba-team is working closely together with Microsoft is proving to be successful. Unfortunately, Samba 4 is not yet released to the public, but an alpha release is due soon. So for all you early-adopters out there, just a little more patience .