Hey KaZaA Users, don't download 8ball
If you didn't see this yet on Tech TV or on any site, pay attention. If you download skins for KaZaA be careful. There is a skin called 'Eightball' that is a virus. You want a skin, Instead, you'll install a virus that wipes out your music files. It's officially called the Magic Eightball skin. It comes as a Zip file named eightball2.zip. Once opened, the program executes on some systems, erasing music files and causing system crashes. Don't search for or download any KaZaA skins named Eightball. Better yet, use another file sharing pro gram.
A Real exploit
RealNetworks has announced that a vulnerability in the popular RealOne Player and the RealPlayer could let an attacker take over a victim's computer. According to an email published on Bugtraq, both the RealPlayer and the RealOne Player suffer from exploits. NGSSoftware first discovered the bug and reported it to RealNetworks on November 1. NGS says a buffer overflow error occurs when a large amount of data is flooded into a couple of different files, one called the synchronized multimedia integration language (SMIL) file. Two other overflow errors occur when a victim tries to access a particular file either locally or remotely. The resulting data flood causes the RealPlayer's and the RealOne Player's security controls to be compromised.
Even after the patch today, the NGS analyst who discovered the bug said the patch doesn't work. In an interview with The Register, Mark Litchfield said, "The problem is still out there." This was confirmed by Progressive Networks also. They have said that there is confusion about this bug. More
here
You asked for it... you sort of got it
Sun Microsystems has released a test version of its Solaris operating system for computers using Intel processors... but it's not done. The unsupported test version is available as a download for a $20 fee. The final product will be finished by late December, said Bill Moffitt, product line manager for Solaris. Faced with customer outcry, Sun said in August that the Intel version would be resurrected, but only for its own LX50 Intel servers. But customers weren't mollified, so in October Sun said it would expand to support other computers as well. Not a lot of a word on AMD support or what software is in the works for this platform. Save the $20 and buy a Moloch shirt. Want to read
more?
Final Preps being made for tommEE pickles Birthday
If you haven't already heard yet about tommEE pickles birthday this year, you might be missing out on the best party yet. We are heading out to Sin City Las Vegas for a weekend of gambling, drinking and lCES disaster planning. The weekend will commence with a drive out to Vegas from SoCal, then drinks at the Hard Rock Casino and the next day, trade show stuff at CES. If you need more info, surf on over to
tommEE.net/His_Party and if you are looking to buy something for the party check out
this
Secrets Strange & True
Well Tech TV did put on the 2 year old documentary that Moloch was in but they did cut some things out. I don't know why they did alter the documentary at all. The whole film is only 40 minutes long. Quite enough time for for commercials I thought. Well if you didn't see the presention of the show you can catch it again on Sept 30th at 5pm/EST.
Product Review: Pinnacle Studio Deluxe
It's been a while since I have done a product review and I have meaning to more. Well I recently made a trip to Best Buy and they had a deal on Pinnacle Studio Deluxe ($299 in store, $100 rebate). I have been looking forward to this package for a while. Fry's normally carried this product but the packages were always opened because they were returns. The one I got from Best Buy was sealed, I guess because they are a little more professional than Fry's.
The product comes with a PCI Firewire card, a break-out box with analog ports, some cables and Pinnacle Studio Version 8. I installed the card in one of my systems that I do a lot of video editing and installed the software. The Pinnacle Studio software is really simple. Sometimes too simple. Capturing video is a snap and so is video editing. Rendering video seems kind of buggy but I will find out more about that when I can contact customer support. The coolest thing I found about this package was the rendering to VHS. If the break-out box has no video going through it, it will display color bars, like a test patern. When in renders the video it does it a DV quality at a full screen image. Really nice. When you are capturing it will also let you preview the capture through the video out. On the downside, this is not an ordinary capture card. It won't work with Real Producer or most capture programs but it does most other programs abilities by itself. At $299, this product is worth looking at. With the $100 rebate it is really good, figuring that most good capture cards will run $100 alone.
