Ehab Tarabay

FireFox 3.6.6 released.

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:15:00 +0000

Today FireFox 3.6.6 was released, with one slight change that is considered a temporary solution for the FireFox “Hung Plugin” timeout, the timeout was increased from 10 seconds to 45 seconds, for too many purposes 45 seconds is a big number and it was chosen to stay on the safe side, although this is a temporary fix to be issued by 3.6.x hopefully later on.

People who used to notice FireFox not able to play Farmville or any resource hog Flash Game online, might notice an improvements after upgrading their FireFox to 3.6.6.

My disappointments with QuickBooks POS

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:07:00 +0000

15 months ago I regretfully bought a genuine copy of Intuits leading POS system AKA QuickBooks POS Pro 8.0 with the hardware bundle.
And I knew i would need intuits skilled support team, so i spent my $600 on a support plan.

After 15 months of usage i have the right to list my disappointments in the list below:

No alteration to a receipt once its saved. and that is a very useful feature available in all competitive products. for example if you somebody buy a watch and you give him a receipt stating the payment method as cash, and then after he leaves you notice that it was mis-entered as it should be Debit card instead. the only way to fix it , is reverse the receipt and do another receipt, and the problem we face in this situation was that the new receipt that the customer DON’T have has a different number, different time, and maybe different date. thus the receipt with the customer is not valid anymore. and note it is very time consuming process, unlike the competitive products where you can right click on a receipt , edit it, and simply click change payment method.
Reporting, i wanted to view the payment summary report on time frames of 15 days for managerial purposes. and i couldn’t put the subtotal every 15 days, even with my SQL skills, adjusting customizing the reports have very constraints
The support, even with my $600 support plan, I NEVER EVER CALLED AND HAD A SATISFYING SOLUTION. there support specialist is very hard to communicate with, never understands the questions if explained less than 10 times, and never give you an answer without making you wait till he try it for 10 minutes on his machine. i had to hang up and call too many times every time i call for help.
Gift Certificate have any number, accept any number, and redeem any number. i can issue a gift certificate with the number 0011 and then another gift certificate with the number 0012 and third one with the number 0012 again , and again and again.
Gift Certificate issue again, if someone with the girl certificate of value $200 came to the store, used his certificate for 150 , and then he used it for 100, and then for 45 … etc, its all ok for QuickBooks.
If the gift certificate with number 0011 was never issued, and it was used as an input method, QuickBooks would be fine with that as well.
Pictures of items are very small, and can’t be enlarged. no need to save it in the database , but a hard copy with a 500x500 image can be saved on the hard drive on the same path as the database, in case bigger image was needed on a quote.
When you are viewing a list of receipts , the only way to view a receipt is double clicking on it, which will open a new window, there is no preview pane like in Microsoft Dynamics POS, which is kind of annoying and time consuming.

That's the most major complains i have, but not all of them.

cheers for now

IXP in the British Virgin Islands

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:37:00 +0000

According to the TRC (Telecommunication Regulatory Commission) The British Virgin Islands should be hosting its first IXP (Internet Exchange Point) within a month of the deadline of the public consultation which will be June 22 2010.

According to PCH (Packet clearing house) currently (the minute this post was posted) there is 88 countries with IXP, and 159 countries without IXP.

You can check the up to date list at any time here.

An IXP stands as an Internet Exchange Point, and it is a physical point where ISP's such as (Cable and Wireless, DigiCel, and CCT) exchange their local traffic instead of using means of sending the traffic off island to an IXP outside the territory, and then routing it back to island.

I will give a simple example on how an IXP can help in lower the cost on ISP's (Thus on the end user).

1-

Lets say i have 10 camera's installed at my office, i am viewing these camera's locally using a different ISP (in the office i have WiMax, and at home i have LIME DSL).

Instead of having the traffic routed from my cameras to CCT , and then remotely lets say Miami or NY IXP then back to Cable and Wireless). With an IXP it will be routed like so

Cameras , CCT , IXP (Locally) , Cable and Wireless, My home laptop.

thus we saved connecting via the internet to the USA and saved some bandwidth by using our local cheap in cost infrastructure relatively compared to other connecting media to the USA.

The Second Benefit would be the privacy, lets think about it as our governmental documents and Emails, and remote connections .. etc.

We don't want such traffic to travel so long to foreign countries.

Smaller distance of traveling and less number of hoops for a packet to travel would provide faster connection, especially when we are not using the backbone bandwidth provided by our ISP's as local traffic is not intended to be routed through the backbone.

Having our own IXP, means contributing more in decentralizing the internet and providing a less dependent internet experience, with more routes to be taken.

That is all the benefits i could think off right now on such a hot Sunday.

I will post another post later demonstrating if the BVI market is suitable for an IXP or not.

Note: In case something was mis-typed or mis-explained, or missed. please feel free to comment.

PS: This is a link to the TRC (Telecommunication Regulatory Commission) in the BVI

iPAD Security breach

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 04:29:00 +0000

Apple has suffered another embarrassment. A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs, military officials, and top politicians. They—and every other buyer of the cellular-enabled tablet—could be vulnerable to spam marketing and malicious hacking.

The breach, which comes just weeks after an Apple employee lost an iPhone prototype in a bar, exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It even appears that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's information was compromised.

read more here

Exclusive Steve Ballmer iPad Review

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:53:00 +0000

LOL Big time , that think made me laugh and sure it will make you have a laugh too … check it out

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft gives his thoughts on the ipad. He doesn't like the lack of flash, the fact that you can't multitask and that it is expensive. In this iPad review you can pretty much tell he thinks it sucks.

"The following entry in the [strings] section is too long and has been truncated" error message when you try to modify or to view GPOs in Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Professional, or Windows 2000

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Sat, 15 May 2010 22:53:00 +0000

Typically, the problem occurs when you try to view or modify a GPO that has been viewed by a different workstation, and that workstation contains .adm files that use the "IF VERSION >=5" construct. When an administrative workstation views a GPO, the workstation automatically updates that GPO with the latest version of the .adm files. If the workstation's .adm files are newer than the files that are contained in the \Adm folder of the domain GPO, the template files are updated. If the template files contain the "IF VERSION >=5" construct, when an administrative workstation tries to modify or to view the GPO, and the workstation does not have this hotfix installed, the errors occur.

Download the following to fix the problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842933

Difference between viruses, worms, Trojan horses, Spyware, and Malware.

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 15:46:00 +0000

Alot of my students, and customers have no clue between the differences of the mentioned above. and a lot of computers specialists know them and yet they have wrong definitions in their mind.
Thus i wrote this article, and in order not to make you bored i will be straight to the point and precise as possible.

Virus Vs. Worm Vs. Trojan Horse Vs. Malware .

Virus: A virus is a computer program that is written by a human to do undesirable actions to the infected system and its user. A virus starts infecting files, documents, and applications on the infected machine. As long as these files are not cleaned the virus will remain to exist in that specific system.
The virus doesn’t propagate intentionally from one computer to another, but it might propagate by a sharing files between two computers via any media (Emails, CD’s , Flash Drives .. etc).

Worm: Worms are just like viruses in the regard of being computer software programmed by another human, designed to infect a computer and do undesirable actions to that infected machine. But UNLIKE viruses these programs depend less or not at all on human behavior in order to spread themselves from one computer to another. Worms would try to spread itself from one computer to another over the network (E.g Emails , instant messaging .. etc). Hence computer worms spread much faster than computer viruses.

Trojan Horse: A Trojan horse,Name taken from the Greek mythology, is a non-self-replicating program, it deceive the user by pretending to do a desirable action for that user, but instead it opens backdoors facilitating unauthorized access to the infected computer.

Spyware: A spyware is a software that is hidden from the computer user, it collects information of the computer usage for legal or illegal purposes (E.g key loggers) these spyware programs can also be used for adware (Advertising-supported software)

Malware: Malware is derivated from malicious software, which includes all the undesirable software such as viruses, worms, and Trojan horses.
So unlike most people who could define the above, Malware AND NOT virus is the biggest subset that includes all the undesirable software.

Now that we know the differences. i would like to note that although AVG Free is one of the best anti-viruses i ever used (and i recommend upgrading to to the full version) you can download AVG anti-virus here.
And for extra security against spyware, trojan horse, and worms, please download malware bytes here.

These two software are free, light weight, free to update. Please make sure they are installed and updated frequently (manually update unless you purchased the full version).

IE Shares dropped 1%

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 05:31:00 +0000

Microsoft's Internet Explorer market share dropped another percentage point in March, the first month after an antitrust settlement brought a browser ballot screen to Europe.

As part of an agreement with the European Union to end an antitrust investigation into Windows-IE bundling, Microsoft deployed a ballot screen starting March 1 that asked European Windows users to choose their preferred Web browser from a list. However, it's difficult to ascertain how much the ballot contributed to IE's slide in market share, since that's been a trend for months.

I said it before in a previous post.
How come corn oil Tanks can have a free soap attached to them, but windows is not allowed to have a free browser attached to it ?
Why would they advertise on their own product, the competitive products?

Is it just because they own most of the market, that exposes them to anti-trust ?

Messenger for Mac 8

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 05:42:00 +0000

The first Microsoft Messenger for Mac that carries full audio and video support.
This version of Mac will be available by the end of March with Office 2011 for Mac.
No huge surprise, though. It's not like Microsoft reserves a lot of capital for its Mac-software business. And the last update to Messenger for Mac came two years ago.
Mac users , go ahead and try the beta version by clicking here

Network admins ready to upgrade to Windows7

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 05:30:00 +0000

Computerworld surveyed 285 IT professionals to gauge their attitudes and intentions with regard to Windows 7. Overall, 72 per cent said they plan to migrate to Windows 7, with 70 per cent saying they will implement it within a year or that they already are installing the new OS.

The number one reason cited for upgrading: To get off the aging Windows XP platform. That said, however, almost 40 per cent of survey respondents will take XP support to the end - April 2014 - before they install Windows 7 on all their Windows machines.
Which version of Windows is currently running in your IT operation?
[Check all that apply]
Windows XP - 93 per cent
Windows Vista - 35 per cent
Windows 2000 - 15 per cent
Windows 98 - 3 per cent
Windows 95 - 2 per cent
Source: Computerworld online survey; 205 respondents

source

Facebook funding privacy projects with $9.5 million.

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:34:00 +0000

A federal judge has approved a proposed settlement byFacebook in a class-action lawsuit involving its now defunct Beacon behavioral tracking service.

Under the settlement, Facebook will pay $9.5 million to set up a privacy foundation to fund projects promoting the cause of online privacy in return for the lawsuit against it to be dropped.

In approving the settlement, Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California overturned several objections that had been raised by some members of the class-action in response to the Facebook offer.

Source

USB 3.0 offers faster data transfer, and MORE power

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:11:00 +0000

IN THEORY USB 3.0 could be about 10 times faster than USB 2.0.
Developed by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), USB 3.0 specifications promises a theoretical top speed of 5 Gbit/sec compared to USB 2.0 that used used to hit a top of 280 Mbit/sec. Noting that USB 3.0 will be compatible with USB 2.0 devices.

The first round of USB 3.0 cards and devices works with Windows Vista and Windows 7; Apple hasn't decided whether to support the new standard. The basic software for USB 3.0 has been in the Linux kernel since last fall, and the needed drivers are slowly coming out.

Physical changes were made to this new technology unlike the transfer from USB 1.0 to USB 2.0. More wires has been added to the inside of the connector, and the blue color indicating that this is a USB 3.0 connector. Check the picture below, the connector to the computer still the same (FOR COMATABILITY WITH USB 2.0) and the Female Connector had major changes. As a result, you won't be able to fit a USB 3.0 cable into a USB 2.0 device. However, you will be able to plug USB 3.0 devices -- and cables -- into your current computer; you just won't get the speed advantage. (Note: To get the most out of USB 3.0, the cable needs to be less than about 9 feet long, down from the USB 2.0 16-foot limit.)

USB 3.0 offers more power:

On top of faster data speeds, USB 3.0 provides up to 150 milliamps (mA) of electricity -- 50% more than USB 2.0 -- to an unconfigured device while the computer it's connected to is finding and loading its needed software. Once the device has been configured and accepted by the computer's operating system, USB 3.0 can deliver 900mA to the device, compared with USB 2.0's 500mA. This should be more than enough to power a hard drive or a camcorder -- or even a USB device (such as a monitor or a projector) that needs more power than is available via a USB 2.0 port.

USB 3.0 offers power conservation as well. While USB 2.0 is either on or off and wastes power when it isn't being used, the new spec comes with three levels of power use that draw progressively less power.

Tax to fight malware ?!

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:49:00 +0000

Microsoft’s Security chief suggested the idea of “Internet Usage Tax” to get some revenue used to aid in the fight against Malware.
The suggestion indicates that ISP’s have to raise their bills slightly for this purpose.

Microsoft Warns, not to press f1 to access ie help

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:50:00 +0000

With any luck, millions of Microsoft Windows computers should get a patch this Patch Tuesday for a VBScript vulnerability that could allow a remote attacker to take over the computer. So far, it seems that there are no exploits in the wild, as noted in Microsoft’s security advisory.

Microsoft says that the nature of the vulnerability is tied to “the way VBScript interacts with Windows Help Files when using Internet Explorer.” Unless and until that vulnerability gets patched, the workaround to protect yourself is simply to avoid using the F1 key:

Microsoft identifies the following as affected software:

Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4
Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3, and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Service Pack 2
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 with SP2 for Itanium-based Systems, and Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition Service Pack 2

How the mind can move objects

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:52:00 +0000

I really thought that should be shared.
can the brain move objects ??

Rebootless updates for ubuntu

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 03:38:00 +0000

Ubuntu now is the first OS that doesn't need rebooting for applying security updates.
Ksplice has started offering "Ksplice Uptrack" for Ubuntu Jaunty, a free service that delivers rebootless version for all the latest ubuntu kernel security updates. It is currently available for both 32 bit and 64bit.
Source: www.Ksplice.com

google as an internet ISP

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:14:00 +0000

Google announced that it's getting in the game for real with the launch of a fiber-based ISP service that'll offer 1Gbps speeds at "competitive prices" to select markets. The idea is to provide next-gen access to between 50,000 and 500,000 people and basically see what happens -- and, as you'd expect, the new network will be a poster child for Google's pro-net-neutrality efforts. Sounds good to us, but we've all got a ways to go before Eric Schmidt comes over with the lightpipe -- Google's just now asking for "interested communities" to apply, and launch markets will be announced later this year. Video after the break.

Gmail Introduces Google Buzz

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:03:00 +0000

Just when i thought Gmail was perfect,Google introduced Google Buzz.

it makes sharing of photos , thoughts,and videos much faster, easier , and easier to follow up.

Especially for people who stick on their Gmail day and night.

Windows 7 RC expires june 1 2010

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:36:00 +0000

If you are still using windows 7 RC, Starting from March 1 2010 your PC will start to shutdown every 2 hours. As a reminder for the windows 7 expiration on June 1 2010.

To avoid interruption, you will need to reinstall an earlier version of Windows, or the final, released-to-manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7.

Happy New Y2K in 2010

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:18:00 +0000

More than 30 Million credit card holders in Germany couldn’t use their credit cards since the last New Years celebration.

All around the world, just like Germany, Point of Sales, credit card merchants, and a bunch of other software suffered the same date problem just like in the year 2000.

Meanwhile Symantec's network-access control (NAC) software that is supposed to check whether spam and virus definitions have been updated recently enough fails because of this 2010 problem, according to one of the company's security forums.

Source 1
Source 2

Network Inspection System (NIS) in Threat Management Gateway

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:25:00 +0000

Network Inspection System (NIS) is the vulnerability signature component of TMG’s Intrusion Prevention System (IPS). NIS is a brand new feature in TMG, and helps prevent zero-day attacks.

This post explains how NIS works. Let’s take a scenario.

A vulnerability is detected in a product and disclosed on the internet
Software vendors start developing patches for customers affected
- At the same time, attackers are taking advantage these disclosed vulnerabilities – even before the patch is released for the vulnerability.

Software vendors can take weeks or even a month to develop and release a patch for a disclosed vulnerability. Till then, the vulnerability is out in the open. This means an attacker can compromise the system using the disclosed vulnerability even before the software vendor can develop a patch. This is called a zero-day situation.

How does NIS help in the zero-day situation?

NIS is a signature-based IPS. NIS will receive the signatures from the software vendor as soon as a vulnerability is disclosed.
While the patches are still being developed, NIS blocks all traffic matching this vulnerability signature, preventing attackers from compromising even unpatched systems.

So, what are the benefits?

Closes the ‘vulnerability window’ between vulnerability disclosures and patch deployment from weeks to just a few hours.
For Microsoft products that are retired (not supported by Microsoft), new security patches are not developed. As an example, Windows Server 2003 SP1 was retired in April 2009 and when Conflicker emerged, it attacked all unpatched machines – wreaking havoc.
NIS signatures for Microsoft products are updated free of charge for all TMG customers.
NIS is based on GAPA (General Application-level Protocol Analyzer) by Microsoft Research, and can also be extended to third party products, although at the moment it is protecting only Microsoft products.

This post was copied as is from one of the best tech blogs i follow daily
http://www.microsoftnow.com

Please click here to read the full post

Windows not fit for online banking, says Washington Post blog

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:35:00 +0000

It would be easy for Linux and Mac users to point to this blog post by Brian Krebs at the Washington Post's Security Fix and feel smug. The post flat out states that the simplest, most cost-effective way to avoid online fraud is: "Don't use Microsoft Windows when accessing your bank account online."

If you're a Windows user, ouch.

But hold on a second. The thing is, Krebs isn't endorsing the Mac or Linux platform in his condemnation of Windows. Rather, he's pointing out that Windows is the most-targeted platform, but that certainly doesn't mean that Macs or Linux machines are invulnerable.

Krebs points out that the safest way to avoid malware and make sure your banking session is secure is to boot your machine from a Live CD that is a pristine, uninfected environment. Live CDs are typically Linux variants, but the OS doesn't really matter -- what matters here is that you are booting an operating system that malware can't infect because its state is not persistent.

This is solid advice, and it leads me to wonder how long it will be before the major OS makers offer a locked-down virtual machine, or better yet a locked-down banking partition that is a fast booting light OS containing only a secure browser with which to do your most sensitive online tasks.

(From downloadsquad.com)

From Outlook to Entourage to …. Outlook for MAC

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:26:00 +0000

I notice lots of folks keep on asking about a method to import their Data from Outlook to Entourage.

Knowing that entourage could only import .mbox files, and Outlook could only export .pst files.

The way i usually do it is:

I go to the windows machine, install Mozilla Thunderbird , and import everything from my outlook to Thunderbird.

That WILL NOT convert the .PST files, it will simply make MAPI calls to outlook to retrive the mailboxes.

And Thunderbird will store them in a .mbox format.

After that , i close thunderbird, and go to
%AppData%\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\,

copy the mail folder which contact all the mbox files (although they will be shown as unknown files, because the .mbox extension won’t be there).
copy the MAIL folder,

go to Mac Mail , and import from Thunderbird, when the wizard ask for the path, locate the copied MAIL folder.

And taraaa

I would also like to note, that Microsoft will release Outlook for Mac in 2010 and that will replace entourage.

Key features about Outlook 2010 (information taken from http://www.downloadsquad.com):

Built on Cocoa. The application is being constructed from the ground up on Cocoa to make integrating with Mac OS a lot easier.
New Database. A high speed file-based database with support for backing up files with Time Machine and Spotlight searching.
Information Rights Management. Helps prevent sensitive information from being distributed to or read by people who do not have permission.

Bill Gates Facebook page :-)

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:15:00 +0000

This is the funniest thing i saw in the past 3 months :D
thought to share it with you guys.

please click on the image below to view the enlarged thumbnail from the source. and keep your comments :-)

Wikia Death Proves Google Is Search-Startup Killer

noreply@blogger.com (EhabT) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 04:01:00 +0000

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' open source, human-powered Google killer died a quiet death Tuesday, making Wikia.com the latest object lesson in the futility of trying to unseat Google as the king of search engines.

Even though the site lasted barely a year, Wales should not feel badly about pulling the plug on his ambitious attempt to harness the power of the crowds to take down Google and force search algorithms to become more transparent.

In fact, Wikia even managed to force Google to adopt a Wikia-like feature in November that solicits user opinions on whether search results are relevant.

But, the reality is that no one can kill Google, and its search box is going to rule for many more years. It employs 20,000 of the world's most intelligent people and rakes in billions yearly. It has a squadron of other products from YouTube to Gmail that insinuate the company's technology deep into its users' lives. It runs the net's best data centers, something that any true competitor would need hundreds of millions to come close to matching.

While it may be little comfort, Wikia has well-esteemed neighbors in the search engine graveyard.

Amazon's attempt to build a successful search engine called A9 failed, and its former head Udi Manber is now a vice president at Google. Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com all continue to struggle to maintain what's left of the search pie after Google grabs its 60-something percent. Technorati, the blog search engine, has been all but abandoned by web users….