By Perry, 3 years and 9 months ago

A fresh, new look

No, you haven't come to the wrong place. This is still «It's News to Me.» I've just decided it was time for a new, cleaner look, and when I saw Steve Sloan's blog this morning, I really liked the look of it. I was able to locate his template in the list of possibilities at Blogger so I decided to take the plunge and make the switch. The only down side is that it may have killed previous comments to posts, but there weren't many of those anyway, so I'm willing to live with that side effect.

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By Perry, 3 years and 9 months ago

Linux and Mac OS X targeted by malware writers

This article at ars technica, Linux and Mac OS X get some love (?) from malware writers, reports: «Over the past few days, a couple of exploits for Linux and Mac OS X began circulating. Some of you may have seen e-mails purporting to be from the Red Hat Security Team. The e-mail contains a link to fedora-redhat.com and prompts users to download and install a patch for fileutils-1.0.6, stating that a vulnerability could 'allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code with root privileges.' The 'patch' actually contains malicious code that will compromise the system it is run on. «

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By Perry, 3 years and 9 months ago

A voice from the past

What a wonderful surprise! I've just gotten off the phone with Brenda Jernigan, with whom I worked at Behaviorial Systems, Inc., from about 1972 until 1978, who was calling to invite me to participate in a surprise event for a friend with whom we both worked. I won't mention his (or her) name so as not to spoil the surprise in honor of his (or her) retirement. She commented that I was really easy to find by just looking in the phone book -- sheesh! such old technology! -- and I asked whether she thought that I should have obscured my address more effectively.

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By Perry, 3 years and 9 months ago

Some real news for a change

Now this is really news! Shannon has updated his blog with some interesting things he is up to.

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By Perry, 3 years and 9 months ago

Catching up -- Again!

Yet again, I find my self having to «catch up» my posting here.

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By Perry, 3 years and 10 months ago

I learned something today

I participate in a mailing list, called TBUDL, which stands for The Bat! User Discussion List, so that I can keep up with developments taking place with my favorite email program, The Bat!. And I'm not just there to learn about what is new; I also find that reading this list is the best way I have found to learn how to use the many powerful features of the program. Occasionally I learn about other things that I didn't know by reading the messages that are posted there. Today proved to be one of those occasions.

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By Perry, 3 years and 10 months ago

Google's Desktop Search Tool

Google has released a beta version of their desktop search tool here. The idea is to use the power of Google searches for finding information on your hard disk. As usual when a tool like this comes out, those concerned about the potential abuses of it are many. This thread on the Metafilter web site, presents a number of the arguments, both pro and con, about this tool. It's probably a good idea to read these comments so that you can make an informed judgment about whether you want to experiment with it or not.

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By Perry, 3 years and 10 months ago

Handling tech escalations

As I approach the end of the first week of handling escalated calls where the first tech agent couldn't resolve the customer's issue, causing the customer to ask to speak with a supervisor, I've a couple of observations.

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By Perry, 3 years and 10 months ago

More about Podcasting

Yesterday I mentioned how hot Podcasting is on the Net. This morning I decided to set a «watch» in FeedDemon, which is a feature whereby you can have the program scan all the feeds you subscribe to for key words. I chose to put two key words, Podcast and Podcasting, into the watch, and then I ran it. It pulled 85 entries that mentioned the subjects. I was surprised by the number of references, even though I suspected there would be a lot of them. This watch feature will now alert me to any new mentions of these subjects each day when I open FeedDemon, and I can check out what is being said.

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By Perry, 3 years and 10 months ago

Odds and Ends

Like having a book that's overdue at the library and dreading facing the music and the fine that inhibits taking it back, it's now been long enough since I last posted anything that I need to catch you up on what's up but because so much has happened it's a bit of a drag to have to cover so much in one post. (Note to self: short, frequent posts are easier than catch up posts.)

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