The truth is that Microsoft offers no fix for the security issue with the viewer. The patch that is applied, only makes a warning pop up when you try to use it. The warning tells you that you are taking a risk by using the viewer. Somehow I am not surprised to see MS turn its back on the customers like that. Obviously, MS wants all versions of Windows that were released prior to the new broken product, called Vista, to vanish. (they already got your money and there’s no money in those previous versions anymore) MS seems to take that approach too easily, but what can you do?

Does a good alternative Windows software for viewing image files, if using Windows 98 – Windows 2000, or Windows XP that was installed as an upgrade from Windows 2000, even exist? I happen to like my Windows 2000 Pro to run Windows applications (especially games) because of its stability, and I don’t like having my wallet being constantly grabbed at by the big MS fingers trying to lift it. Besides, Win2K plays a great game of DOOM III. I began my search for an alternative for my broken image viewer, and then… low and behold, GNU comes to the rescue again, and since Microsoft is too big to care anymore.

All of this is another reason why I have been weaning myself away from MS products using an operating system (Linux) that is better supported and more stable. But if you are not ready to accept that path yet, the Open Source Initiative has a great image viewer available for all. It is called CORNICE. It looks good and can execute across different platforms. Cornice was written by Alberto Griggio in Python + wxPython + PIL. It even works like a champ under MS Windows. There is a lot of geeky stuff there, but you can see some very accurate screen shots of Cornice at the Cornice Website.

If you want to use this free software (not shareware), you can download an already compiled installer from the Cornice website or from Softpedia. The download costs nothing. As with all software suggestions from me, it is totally free and comes without any spy-ware, ad-ware, pop-ups, viruses or other such irritants. Best of all.. it works great.

Mmmmmm Brew… Bottoms up!

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math on this one: $400 – $500 for MS Office (standard One PC license issue) vs $0.00 for OpenOffice.org with licensing for unlimited installations… Whoa! This isn’t the first time that Sun Microsystems has developed an office suite that doesn’t cost anything. The original offering was StarOffice. It is still around and works greater than ever. It is very reasonable in price, but can no longer be offered free of charge as it was during development.

Many of the features in StarOffice, however are also available in OpenOffice. A major difference between the two has always been that StarOffice is a total work environment, where OpenOffice is your basic office applications. (Word Processing, Database, Presentation Writer, Spreadsheet, and an additional application for editing scientific formulas) Furthermore, OpenOffice is Open Source and follows the Open Source Initiative guidelines. This means that you not only receive the already compiled applications from Sun, but you have the source code used to compile the applications as well. The initiative also states that you are licensed to install the software on as many PCs as you wish, freely redistribute the software by giving it away, or even sell it if you want to. Now, that is just too cool isn’t it?

Compatibility… You are not locked down to one operating system. With this free office suite, you may if you want to, but are not restricted to, use Microsoft Windows on the PC running it. OpenOffice.org is multi platform and will execute fine on Microsoft Windows (98 – Vista), Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac X, and Free BSD. You also receive document compatibility between all of your PC’s. (even those PCs you have that run MS Office or WordPerfect). You may even export your document to PDF format for even greater compatibility between platforms and use Adobe reader to access it. I use version 2.3 on both Windows 2000 Pro and on Slackware Linux. Both editions installed without so much as a hiccup and work identically and flawlessly.

Why any office, (no matter the size), or individual that requires basic office publishing tools, would choose to use MS Office instead of this full featured set of applications… I have no clue.

OpenOffice is not a backroom effort from some hacker. There is so much more to know about OpenOffice than I intend to go into here. Complete descriptions of this fine software is online, but as I said in the beginning of this writing, I am only touching on the surface to bring awareness of its existence to those not already familiar with it.

OpenOffice.org is free of charge and has great support from Sun. Full documentation is online at the openoffice.org website. As with any not for profit project, they do kindly ask for donations to keep the project alive and moving forward, but it is not required. It costs nothing to try it, and if you are familiar with any word processing applications, you will feel right at home with it from the start.

It’s the end of the day, and time to get out the old beer bong and look for oblivion. Crank up the tunes please….. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

Indeed, you may be misinformed, but you did bring my attention to one part of that post. My saying, have your firewall block port 80 in a broad sense was not totally accurate on my part, and I do apologize for my not catching it first. So, thank you for pointing that out. Since the post was referring to incoming requests, I should not have assumed that everyone was on the same page with me, and I should have explained more clearly for you that the ports listed would need blocking on the “Internet” connection and for inbound request to those ports only. To me, it is common sense not to block the outbound requests. DUH!

Misinformed then commented: “Most Desktop Search programs don’t include the search for system files like .drv, bat and so forth. Have you bothered to test this? What application?”

I did in fact test this. I found that IBM’s OmniFind returned no .drv files in its search, but using Google Desktop I received a partial results page with 57 results pointing to files with the extension “.drv”. This was a partial result because Google Desktop was only 37% completed with it’s indexing of the PC. I didn’t need to see more at that point. Google desktop is no longer on my computer.

Finally, misinformed commented: “Google Desktop uses LOCALHOST to serve results. An outside party can’t access the Google Desktop webserver on your computer.”

It is true that Google Desktop only uses localhost to serve requests. The network settings for Google Desktop are defined in GoogleDesktopNetwork3.dll which points the application to localhost, 127.0.0.1, and port 4664. Even with that bit of information, you have a well suited name for yourself misinformed, and a false sense of security as well. I must refer you to the October 29, 2007 post from CERT which clearly states that an untrusted Java applet can connect to localhost. Sun Microsystems has fixed that minor issue with their latest update, however not everyone does updates when they should. (especially those using dialup service to the Internet) Also, lord help you if you use Microsoft’s Active X controls on internet connections. I’ll consider another post at a later date for my beloved Active X. So, the final answer to the question on top is YES! The potential security risks remain.

The focus point of the original November 3rd post is to bring attention to not allowing personal information to be visible through the locally installed search engine, because it is possible that your personal information may be exposed to others.

Thanks for visiting my pages. It’s beer o’clock!

Both offer versions for Linux, Windows, and Mac. These two local search engines have a good side, and that is you can quickly search your documents in a fraction of a second with your browser. The results are displayed with a Web-like page, where you just click your way to that document. What a great idea! Unfortunately it is possible to have someone over the Internet help themselves to that information as well. There are some handy rules to consider when you install either one.

Remember that these search tools are actually using a Web server behind them. With that in mind, you can make it possible to search your PC hard disk from anywhere on the Internet. If you are not using a solid firewall, and if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) does not block IP port 80, 8080, or 4664 you need to adjust a few things that will lock down your search engine from the outside world.

Most Web servers use port 80 for http access Make sure that your firewall software will block any calls to that port on your computer or local network. My local installation of OmniFind defaulted to use that port. Fortunately I have the double security of a firewall, plus my ISP blocks the use of that port to keep individuals from easily placing a server on the network (they want you to be a business and paying for a business account)

Port 8080 gets used a lot of times by proxy servers or Websites. I think mainly because it is an easy number to remember. The last port number applies to Google Desktop on port 4664. Most ISP’s don’t bother to block numbers like that because it is not a common port used on the Internet.

I have used both of these search engines. Both of them give you the option to disallow searching of certain folders on your PC. Although it may take a few of your precious moments of time to do so, it is well worth doing it. Don’t be crazy and have either one of these powerful tools search and index your entire C: disk. First of all, it will slow it down by making a huge index file unnecessarily. Then you must consider, how many times do you need to search for mouse.drv? That’s the kind of stuff it will neatly index and keep track of if you allow it to have free access.

The main purpose for these programs is to help you find your documents or even email messages, that for whatever reason, you might need for future reference. Personally I prefer IBM’s OmniFind. It is designed more for document searching on the local PC and across your local network for all to share and find. It’s not for finding those illegal mp3′s you keep or files like mouse.drv. In other words, it is much better choice for small businesses that want to increase their productivity. IBM narrowed the types of files allowed to keep the product more in line with being a business tool. Having the office searching mp3′s doesn’t seem very productive to me.

On the other hand, Google Desktop is the general purpose desktop search, and seems more geared toward the home user, but even with that it is very wise to disallow the program to index your files that contain sensitive information. Publishing your banking information or other other files that pertain to your personal finances is not a good idea.

So, explorer.. Happy searching! While you’re discovering all that stuff on your PC.. I think it is time to celebrate! I’ll make a toast for the uncovering of long lost address book entries and four year old Emails for ya.

Also… Let’s make sure that the tax won’t cut into the politicians’ pockets. Imposing more tax on booze, wine or tea will never do, because they like those things. (The British tried the tea thing and failed) How about CIGARETTES! Let’s just single out that group and have them pay more. We know what’s best, and besides, all these insurance companies are driving us crazy with their lobbying. This will make them smile. We don’t like smoking anyway and everybody should be like us. We can’t just outlaw smoking. Prohibition failed with alcohol. Instead, people that use tobacco can be taxed out of buying it

Excuse me, but there’s something wrong with this picture. The tax will most likely be passed, especially since smokers don’t complain. It also seems to be in vogue to speak badly about those nasty old cigarettes, unless tobacco users scream loudly and voice opposition to their congressman. They wouldn’t dare, and they never have before

Care about this matter, and visit this site now: http://www.nocigtax.com/

Recently it has been announced that the old TV (that was new a week ago) is obsolete. FCC Announcement That’s an expensive piece of junk. The part that really gets me in the gut is that the manufacturers knew about the change to eliminate standard TV broadcasting for a long time. So, why do they still market the units that don’t have digital tuners in them in this country? That’s easy! It is to insure that you will buy another one in the near future. The average person has no idea what they’re getting when buying an item like that. The only thing that they know is what the salesman tells them. That person wants only to make the commission on the sale, and will tell the buyer anything to close that deal. Truth is, the salesman doesn’t know anything about the item but they sure know how to talk you into buying it. That is why they are considered professionals in their field. It’s no longer the used car salesman that you have to be cautious of.

Here’s the touch of reality that will hit people in the head in our not too distant future… automobiles. We all know that gasoline is not going to be around for long. The technology is there for transportation that doesn’t need it, or at least doesn’t need so much of it. Yet, the car lots are full of new vehicles that require lots of gasoline. It is all going away when fossel fuels dry up, (not as far away as you might want to believe) so why are gas hog vehicles being sold new today

We are told that the world is using too much gasoline. Why hasn’t anything been done to fix the problem? Cost? You bettcha. I remember a long time ago a story about the carburator that would get 100 miles per gallon of gasoline. Mysteriously, it went away. It was understood at the time that GM purchased it from the inventor. It never was released for production. (do they own that much of the oil industry to block anything like that from becomming a reality for all? That story was marked as a myth later, but it is actually a reality. Only last year, July 2006, Popular Mechanics published this article about the 100 or even 200 mpg technology that exists. Popular Mechanics Article It’s just something else to make you go “Hmmmmmm”, and what is it all about? Greed.

Maybe all this will go away. Just forget about it and go for a few ice cold beers and a swim at the beach.

What all of these articles are not promoting is that the polar region was warmer before. Is it possible that the climate on Earth is only getting back to normal after millions of years since the last known ice age? I found an article from NASA that pretty much says not to worry so much, and if you read it, you’ll see the truth of it.

Haven’t you noticed that our media thrives on drama? So much so that they dramatize their stories to the point of where panic sets in on people. Maybe that’s the thrill. I know that the more extreme the story is, the more money they can make by selling all those ads to throw in your face.

I love science, and I love fiction. Lately I see most of my science fiction by just watching the news. Instead of being so focused about the nice warm weather today, something more believable such as the likeliness of a huge object striking the Earth from space is more of a concern to me.

Ehhhh… Let’s all just forget about this crap, head for the beach, and pop open a few beers!