August 2004 - Posts
Yesterday I had 6 Gmail accounts to distribute and lots of interested guys that have contacted me via my Blog has received the invitation. I hope the "lucky" people that have received the accounts will be happy now and will thanks me with a little feedback 
Now I've again other 4 Gmail accounts to distribute, but this time I'd like to give them not simple only to the first 4 people, but to people that could do a little present to me... 
What type of present?
I'd like to have a little logo for my Blog... Are you able to do a nice logo with a written that says something like "Stefano Demiliani WeBlog"? If you'll send a nice logo to me (the address is demiliani(at)gmail.com), I'll give you a Gmail account... 
2 important Service Packs for .NET Framework 1.1 and 1.0 are released: .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 1.0 Service Pack 3.
Focused on improve the security, they include roll-ups of all reported customer issues found after the release of the relative Microsoft .NET Framework, provide better support for consuming WSDL documents, Data Execution prevention and protection from security issues such as buffer overruns, provide support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 to provide a safer, more reliable experience for customers using Windows XP.
The time for a massive testing for the Gmail service is coming...
in these days the old beta tester are receiving lots of free invites for account creations (today I've received 6 accounts to distribute), so this is the signal that Google is starting the Gmail response under lots of service requests.
I'd like to distribute some of these accounts and I'd like to give some of them with precedence to some friends of UGIdotNet. Someone interested?
I can understand the Gmail mania of these months, the growing number of applications and tools to provide better services with a Gmail account, but something like this is really impressive... GmailFS, a Gmail Filesystem.
What is it? It's an application for Linux that provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium. It's written with Python and uses the FUSE userland filesystem infrastructure to help provide the filesystem, and libgmail to communicate with Gmail.
This is cool because GmailFS supports most common file operations (read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename), so you can use all your favourite Unix command line tools to operate on files stored on your Gmail account. You can normally mount your Gmail filesystem and start working with it.
So cool!
I want to thanks here the Novell services, expecially the courtesy of Mr. Scott Carlson.
He has to sent me the Novell Linux Technical Resource DVD kit and I was informed on every movement of my DVD around the world. Finally, I've received the DVDs on a wonderful packet.
Thanks a lot, a great service!
The news of the day is the official Microsoft announce for the target date of Longhorn availability... 2006.
Personally I was expecting a release date to 2006, for me it's not a big news. The real big news are this:
- Longhorn will be out without the WinFS feature... the revolutionary filesystem will be aded on a later time.
- WinFX technologies, including the new presentation subsystem code-named "Avalon" and the new communication subsystem code-named "Indigo", will be also available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 in 2006. Great!
Reactions to this? A lot, obviously. Why this choice? Longhorn out without WinFS could be a loss of power?
Maybe yes, but I think that this is a good marketing strategy... Longhorn promise to be a revolutionary OS, so a step by step introduction on the market could be what the major part of customers want.
If I see the facts from a normal user point of view, I could say that what I like to have on Longhorn on 2006 is a great and powerful user interface, with transparency effects, vectorial images, 3D effects and so on. I need a Windows that could compete with advanced OS interfaces such as Aqua for the Mac world or the new KDE for example. I would have also other improved features but, if I'm only a normal user, I could survive also without WinFS.
If I see the facts from a developer point of view, WinFS is the feature I really need on a revolutionary OS (and also great security features). It's normal that I could be a little disappointed.
However, if I think with my mind, what I can say is that I really need that WinFS feature will well tested, with great performances and if the WinFS layer will be also on other platforms different from Longhorn, it will be a wonderful thing. I can wait a bit after Longhorn diffusion to start using the new feature... the delay could result on a better layer.
So, also if lots of people are disappointed after this decision, personally I don't think it's so wrong.
Windows XP SP2 has just been released to the public via the Automatic Update feature and we're rapidly seeing the discover of security flaws... this is not a good way to start. 
Today the last news: eWeek and PC Magazine are reporting that the new Windows Security Center of Windows XP SP2 has dangerous flaws. According to what they write on the articles, seems that a malicious program (including ActiveX controls) could access the Windows Management Instrumentation database, edit its contents and alter the security status on it. Your system could appear really secure at your eyes, but this could not be wrong.
Terrible... it's really so easy to alter the security status of an XP SP2 machine?
Microsoft has an official response that you can read here. What I'm surprise to see on an official MS response is something like this:
- "Most malicious attackers would go for the most direct route, such as directly shutting down the firewall or antivirus, rather than lying in wait, watching for the user to do it". Ok, this could be true, but a real security upgrade I think must be cover all security aspects of a system.
- This is the point that really hurts me... "The user must be in Administrator mode, and the program running on the local machine to get to the WMI. For the enterprise, users may run at more protected levels". I've told about this aspect some times ago on this blog... one of the first Windows XP improvements I think that must be the feature to create a normal user (with less privileges) during the setup and set it as a default account to work. Now Windows XP is installed in Administrator mode and I think that a great amount of users are normally using an Administrator account to work every day. This is terrible unsecure. This is a things that Windows must learn from Unix systems... use a normal account and switch to Administrator account only for special operations (I love the Linux SU - switch).
I'm terrible disappointed to listen something like this... but where is all the security promised?
Ok, the last: I've not yet installed XP SP2 on my machine, but at work I've a machine where XP SP2 is installed, with Internet Explorer 6.0.2800.
Do you have the same? Try this:
1) Go to http://www.mikx.de/scrollbar/
2) Drag the scrollbar down a bit and let go
3) Check your Start -> Programs -> Startup folder...
A wonderful .EXE file is downloaded on your system. This is an IE Drag and Drop vulnerability (Secunia has a report about it) and works well also with XP SP2 installed. 
And now? Waiting before installing the new XP SP2? No, I think I'll install it as soon as possible, but with an aspect in mind: my system in always not so secure, so keep the eyes open!
This could be useful, expecially for the SP2 Auto Update coming (obviously, useful but not necessary...):
Microsoft has released an update for Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) 2.0 and WinHTTP 5.1, a software that updates the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) to v2.0 and updates WinHTTP.
These updates help ensure an optimal download experience with future versions of Automatic Updates, Windows Update, and other programs that rely on BITS to transfer files using idle network bandwidth.
A better update life? We hope so...
Today I've received a big Blog Spamming by a nice people to promote some sites located on Belgium and Germany...
I don't think it's an intelligent way to promote a site... my little advice to the spammer: you could use the time spent to spam on this blog for other more useful things.
Tomorrow (25th of August) according to Microsoft announcements, will be the day for the Automatic Update release of Windows XP Service Pack 2.
I hope so, but I think that the Automatic Update requests will be a great amount, so there could be problems with the Windows Update service.
However, after the XP SP2 installation, I think we've to bookmark the link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 875355: How to use the Automatic Recovery feature to recover your computer if the Windows XP Service Pack 2 Setup program is not completed successfully.
This article discusses how to use the Automatic Recovery feature to recover your computer to its previous configuration if the installation of Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) is not completed successfully. Use the procedure that is discussed in this article to recover your computer to a bootable state and to remove Windows XP SP2 if Windows does not start correctly after you try to upgrade your computer from Windows XP to Windows XP SP2. This article also discusses how to collect information about the Windows XP SP2 installation and about your computer to help troubleshoot and diagnose the issue.
Bookmark it... could be useful!
I don't know if the rumours are true, but is coming on the air the voice that Google could appear on the Instant Messaging world with a new proper Instant Messaging service based on the open Jabber protocol.
I'm a real fan of the Jabber protocol (I'm a Jabber user and it's not only a simple IM Protocol...) and if a giant like Google is planning to adopt it for a new IM service, this could be the start point for a real protocol diffusion.
Obviously, there are lots of good IM Client out (like MSN, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ etc.) so it will not be simple to attract people on a new IM product, but the open nature of Jabber could be the key for a success (you could easily build new services or a personal IM Client, you could easy interact with the IM service and integrate it with your applications for example).
We've only to wait the Google movements... personally I hope that these projects could be realized soon, I'm really curious to see the new GIM or Joogle (maybe??? ) in action...
I'm a real fan on Fedora now... I know that some Linux users could disapprove this but I've totally forgot my previous Debian release. Fedora is more user friendly, easy to configure and update and it's a good release for my needs.
Today I've discovered (thanks to Edgar Sanchez) a wonderful guide about "Instructions for installing Mono on Fedora Core 1 and Fedora Core 2". I've checked the Mono Community site on the past months but I've totally loose this great guide (seems really well explained).
Only a my little addition: the yum repository can be found also at this address: http://www.go-mono.com/archive/yum-repository/fedora-2-i386 (if you're using the Core 1 version, just replace the 2 with 1).
In this period of Gmail diffusion, lots of people have tryed to create a tool to be notified when an email is received on their Gmail accont.
Now, Google has provided us with the first official Gmail Notifier (now it's on beta stage).
The Gmail Notifier is a downloadable Windows application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser. You can play a sound when an email is received and also it has the ability to connect a mailto: address on a web page to your Gmail account.
The tool that I've been waiting for...
P.S. It checks for email availability every 2 minutes... I hope that on next releases this time could be set as you want.
The first Windows XP Service Pack 2 Hotfix is officially out (even before the begin of the official distribution of SP2).
This is not an extremely important Hotfix (it's focused on patch an IP Address Connection problem for some users of virtual private networks) but it's the sign that some patches will be soon available (expecially with the large diffusion and adoption of the new SP2).
The time is coming... Heise Security has discovered the first flaw on Windows XP SP2.
"With Service Pack 2, Microsoft introduces a new security feature which warns users before executing files that originate from an untrusted location (zone) such as the Internet.
There are two flaws in the implementation of this feature: a cmd issue and the caching of ZoneIDs in Windows Explorer. The Windows command shell cmd ignores zone information and starts executables without warnings. Virus authors could use this to spread viruses despite the new security features of SP2.
Windows Explorer does not update zone information properly when files are overwritten. So it can be tricked to execute files from the internet without warning."
You can read more about these flaws HERE.
This is not a good news... I hope that the announced delay on the official releasing of SP2 could help to fix these problems.
The new 7.2 version of the old Netscape is out...
A revolutionary browser? Absolutely no. Revolutionary features? Absolutely no (it's totally based on Mozilla 1.7). So... do you see some reasons to switch to Netscape? Personally, no!
I think that it will not be a success (but I hope for AOL that this will be false). At this moment the browser world has a great product out (Mozilla and Firefox) and what we eventually need is a real revolutionary browser, not a clone of a good product with some little personalization.
A link absolutely to bookmark: .NET Framework 2.0 Reference Guide.
(special thanks to Brad Abrams for the signalling).
The first news I've see today after my week of holiday is the big list of programs with possible issues in Service Pack 2 published by Microsoft here.
I've not installed XP SP2 at the moment but I'm really worried about the amount of software that can have problems (also Visual Studio .NET is included ). I hope that the main amount of problems will be caused by the new firewall settings (ON by default), so they can be switched easily, otherwise I think it could be a serious problem. Only trying the new SP2 will say us if there will be real problems or not.
However, I'm not totally satisfied about the new Windows Firewall... ok, it's a good firewall if you consider the previous version of Windows Firewall on XP, but I think it's not complete like other products. Personaly, I' m using the free version of ZoneAlarm Firewall on my work pc, and it's more complete than the new XP Firewall.
For example, with ZoneAlarm you have an easy total control of the Firewall settings, you can easily turn on and off some Firewall's options, and expecially it includes the feature that only allows authorized programs to access the Internet. Why the new Windows Firewall don't have this feature?? It only filters incoming traffic... and the outbound traffic???
Mmm... not so good as I was expecting!
Just come back from holiday, a wonderful week at the sea... it's now time to reconnect myself to the Internet world (maybe tomorrow!!) ;)
The time is arrived...
The new XP Service Pack 2 Final Release is ready on the Windows Beta site. If you want to test, the package has the name WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe (266.01 Mb).
Good luck!
I want to report here some recommendatiosn that comes from the Windows Beta Team:
Final testing is complete and at 10:08am this morning we signed off on build 2180 as Windows XP Service Pack 2, releasing it to manufacturing. The final build will be available to beta sites immediately at http://windowsbeta.microsoft.com/download/dl3.asp. You will find both English and German versions there, Japanese will follow early next week.
Next week the service pack will be available on the Microsoft Download Center for general download. In the interim we're making the update available to you via the beta web site.
If you are running RC2, or any other build released to beta sites, we invite you to turn on Automatic Updates, and starting on August 10th your system will automatically download the express version of Windows XP SP2. For typical home users this is about a 75 MB download; for those on RC2 it should be less than 30 MB. As soon as the background download is complete, you will be prompted to install SP2 and to accept the EULA (SP2 does not install automatically even if Automatic Updates is set to automatically install security updates). If you have a modem connection, don't "Cancel" the update once it's in progress; just disconnect and when you reconnect later, it will automatcially pick up where it left off until it completes.