Hamarana

I trawl through my spam trap from time to time to see if anything worthy has been wrongly tagged, and found some spam-tagged comments which included links to what would appear to be innocent on the surface (or not quite so innocent.. ), and underneath the html is an executable which would download to a windows computer and execute code without so much as a by-your-leave.

I hope all you Windows users are well protected.

I don’t know how many of my readers are avid Windows users, but they may want to have a play with the newest version of Windows. Its out now, its only a beta so downloader beware… You can NOT use it to upgrade XP. You *can* use it to upgrade Vista but only if you have SP1 installed. Microsoft recommend a clean install so if you have a spare machine, I would be looking to that as the testbed. Its a 2.6G download so if your data allowance is skating the edge, wait til your next month rollover.

I have heard many positive remarks about W7 (as opposed to what I heard about Vista) and am looking forward to giving it a try on my Mac Bootcamp Partition. Once I am into my next month’s data allowance. It will probably be out of beta by then Beta is the only free version and it is time limited, so get it while its hot, and before it expires.

Windows 7 website: includes beta download links

Let me say this: I am not aiming to be a professional photographer… but I just love to have applications which let me pretend.

I’ve just discovered Adobe Lightroom. On the Mac, I could also choose to use iPhoto + Aperture. However, Lightroom has me completely transfixed. I think this is the first time I am seriously considering paying a vast sum to own a piece of software like this. I’m downloading the trial version of Aperture as I type, but right now, I am not sure why I am bothering… perhaps because its Apple software and I feel I ought to give it a tryout.

From the Lightroom website:

Enjoy robust support for more than 150 camera raw formats, and experiment with confidence. Adjustments you make to images in Lightroom won’t alter the original data, whether you’re working on a JPEG, TIFF, DNG, or camera raw file.
…
Fine-tune your photographs with precise, easy-to-use tools for globally correcting white balance, exposure, tone curves, lens distortion, and color casts.

Seriously, its like having a darkroom right there on your computer. And the changes are non-destructive… unlike in iPhoto where if you make a change it gets saved whether you want to keep it or not. There are ways round that but its a pain… I like the way Lightroom works… because it works like I do.

If you are even halfway serious about digital photography, you owe it to yourself to take a look, try it out. I haven’t been this impressed with a piece of software for a long time.

Just a quick screenie of VMWare running Windows vista, inside a virtual machine. I installed Vista in a separate partition with the help of an OSX app called Bootcamp. VMWare can pick up that install and run it inside OSX. I don’t think Parallels can do the same.

More later on how it all runs but so far so good. I had trouble getting VMWare using my net connection but that’s all resolved now. Parallels worked with it right out of the box. I’m leaning toward the VMWare install for only one reason… it doesnt capture the mouse completely. ie; I dont need to make additional keypresses to get the mouse pointer back to OSX, which I do for Parallels.

Its all good.

Nice one, Apple.

There are some of us who use Firefox for its extensions and yet we still revert to Safari more frequently than one might imagine…

Safari is fast, efficient, and just … um… nice looking. What can I say… I like it.

Well, now Windows users can use Safari too. As of the current public beta, Safari is not just for OSX.

Get it here

On Stage together for the first time since 1983 or so…

Its a long video session so be prepared to give up a bit of time. Its very interesting and enlightening.

View the first video here and then just let the videos load themselves. There are about 8, and these range in length from 4 minutes to 19 minutes.

When I was a Windows user I often thought I should buy BOClean because it was one of the better antitrojan tools out there. Instead I ended up going with the now defunct TDS3.

Apparently the Comodo company has bought out Privacy Software Corporation, and in keeping with their current policy, BOClean is now completely free.

http://www.comodo.com/news/press_releases/24_04_07.html
Comodo releases BOClean 4.23, formerly by Privacy Software Corporation (PSC)
Jersey City, NJ (April 24 , 2007) – Comodo, a global Certification Authority and leading provider of Identity and Trust Assurance (ITA) Management solutions, announced today the launch of Comodo BOClean 4.23. Building on Comodo’s recent acquisition of the assets of Privacy Software Corporation (PSC), the release coincides with the re-launch of the PSC website under the Comodo brand. Like all of Comodo’s desktop security software, BOClean 4.23 is free of charge to end-users.

I’ve been installing the free Comodo Firewall in friends’ computers of late, it seems to be an extremely effective program, and unlike Zonealarm which gives a free (but crippled) version, this is the real deal.

Check all the available free products at Comodo’s Free Product Area. Please note that BOClean is now known as Comodo Antimalware.

This would be my first stop if I bought a Windows computer again