Thushan Fernando

Final day of being a teenager:O / GMail Security Flaw (reminisence of Hotmail bug circa 98/99)

Hard to believe it but from tomorrow on I'm no longer considered a teen:-( Well i aint going to waste my last day as a teen on the PC, its off to bludging around with me mates and (probably) getting busted by the cops for doing something illegal (indecent exposure?)... The last time we had a “Last Teen Day“ party amongst ourselves we ended up getting busted for driving dangerously(Zig zagging along a lonley highway on the way back from a clubs - Metro, QBH) whilst under the influence of alcohol (apart from me cause I'm a sad ass that doesnt drink)... it was pretty serious at the time but looking back, we we're nuts.

GMail Security Flaw

I know alot of you are using GMail, so this may be of some caution to those who do. According to The Register an israelli hacker has found a major vulnerability in GMail that will allow a malicious user to access your email account with simply your username. Its done by cookie spoofing, or stealing another users cookie and spoofing the real user and gaining access to the account. This reminded me of the major Hotmail security flaw around 98/99 (that we at school exploited readily amongst friends) which send the password for the user soon after the user logged in if a certain type of email was sent to his account mimicking the hotmail home page (to do with cookie handling). While those flaws in hotmail are since fixed it makes you wonder how many others may be still affected by similar issues?

Xbox: High Quality Halo 2 Screenshots & Lets sue Microsoft if your Xbox dies(some nut)!

Well the most anticipated Xbox game of this year is nearly apon us - less than 10 days away. GameConnect have got their hands on some (110 some) screenshots of Halo 2 in both single player and multiplayer modes.

Check it out here.

Man Sues Microsoft for XBox Dying after 1 year of use.

This is pathetic.

A VIDEO GAME fan upset over an apparently "tiggered" disk drive in his Xbox video game console has sued the vendor of the game gear, Microsoft, on behalf of users everywhere.

Sean Burke's console stopped reading all disks after less than a year of use and alleges that the thing was only useful as a door stop.

The man filed a case in Los Angeles' "Superior Court" on behalf of anyone in the United States of America who bought an Xbox in the United State since the console's November 2001 launch.

According to the lawsuit, the allegedly defective Xboxes stop working after minimal usage, or in legal speak, after "unreasonably, unconscionably, unusually and unexpectedly short amounts of time". The suit seeks damages, restitution and various other costs and fees. People from Microsoft had no comment to make on the lawsuit and reporters trying to get a comment were greeted by growls from the dark depths.

But let us never forget that in Anglo-Saxon law, people and companies, also viewed as individuals and therefore collecting the singular case, are innocent until proved guilty.

Pfft not on my behalf your not.

Looks like it was his DVD-ROM that died or failed, if this does actually get any positive outcomes - Eg. like the judge/jury awarding him the case - it will be the start of a new wave of sue'ing. “My TV tube died after 10 years of use, all its used for is a fish tank“. People need to do a reality check before they take others to court, but it a country like the US of A where kids take their parents to court and vice versa its not totally shocking. I wonder if anyone can sue Sega for the lack of popularity for the Dreamcast console? (Does anyone still make games for DC?)

MS: Photo Story III 4 FREE:D

On Wednesday, Microsoft will ship Photo Story 3 for Windows, the latest version of its amazing digital photo slideshow utility. However, this version of Photo Story differs from previous versions in many ways, adding a wide range of new functionality. Best of all, it will be made available free to all users of Windows XP.

Originally scheduled to be integrated with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, Photo Story 3 builds on the successes of Plus! Photo Story and Plus! Photo Story 2, which were included in successive versions of Plus! Digital Media Edition, a digital media-oriented add-on pack for Windows XP that sold millions of copies over two years. Like previous versions, Photo Story 3 uses a simple wizard-like interface to help consumers turn still photos into immersive animated videos called photo stories, which feature professional panning and zooming animations similar to those popularized by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. You can also optionally add narration, background music, and titles to your photo stories.

Photo Story 3 builds on this functionality in a number of ways. From within the Photo Story interface, you can now edit and rotate photos, add several effects, remove black borders from vertically-oriented photos, and add captions to individual photos if you'd like. And in addition to adding music to your photo stories, you can also automatically generate a soundtrack based on a selection of genre types, styles, bands, moods, tempo, and intensity. Photo Story 3 then customizes that music to match the length of the photo story to which it is applied. Finally, Photo Story 3 also makes it easier to share your creations with friends and family, offering a variety of templates that are compatible with PCs, Portable Media Centers, Pocket PCs, and smartphones, or that can be transmitted easily via email or the Web.

Download a free copy:-)

PRB: MySQL Configuration fails to complete if MySQL Service Fails to start & how to fix

Followup to my earlier blog. Just got MySQL v4.1 installed and had some initial difficulty in getting it properly installed. If you have an existing copy of MySQL installed (this would be in c:\mysql\) its advisable you backup your databases(with MySQL Admin or Navicat etc)and uninstall the old and clunky InstallShield 3.xx based installation and reboot (make sure you do reboot).

After rebooting download the complete MySQL Install of v4.1 (weighs around 35.xxMB) which when uncompresed is an MSI file. Run the MSI file and install it and let it start the configuration wizard (very funky, almost like configuring Yukon!) then follow the prompts as desired. When you get to the “Use MySQL as a WIndows Service“ part make sure you enter an alternative name to “MySQL“ as the service name. This is because for some reason the Installer *may not* uninstall/remove the MySQL Service from the previous version.

If you attempt to install with “MySQL“ as your service name then you'll find that the service fails to load when you hit execute at the end. So rename(or go back and change it ) to MySQL 41 or something else and it should work fine.

All in all the new builds of MySQL are very stable and depending on how you configured it (Developer->Minimum Resource Usage) it will actually stick to playing that role.

MySQL v4.1 Released!

MySQL AB, developer of the world's most popular open source database, today announced the general availability of MySQL® 4.1. Certified by the company as production-ready for large-scale enterprise deployment, this significant upgrade to the MySQL database server features advanced querying capabilities through subqueries, faster and more secure client-server communication, new installation and configuration tools, and support for international character sets and geographic data. MySQL 4.1 can be downloaded now at http://dev.mysql.com/..

“Our user community has been testing MySQL 4.1 for many months, and hundreds of businesses have already deployed production applications based upon it,” said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. “It is through their feedback that we are able to provide such a highly-reliable, affordable database. While building upon MySQL’s acknowledged speed and ease-of-use, this new version also lays a foundation for us to deliver even more enterprise-level capabilities in MySQL 5.0.”

"MySQL provides our small, medium, and large enterprise customers with affordable, open access to their Web data warehouses," said Frank Faubert, CTO of Sane Solutions, LLC, developer of the market-leading NetTracker Web analytics software. "With its support for advanced relational capabilities like subqueries and prepared statements, MySQL 4.1 allows us to offer NetTracker customers a low-cost, low-maintenance database solution for their Web analytics applications -- without sacrificing power, performance or scalability."

Features & Benefits of MySQL 4.1
MySQL version 4.1 offers dozens of important product enhancements and new features, including support for:

• Subqueries and derived tables -- allowing users to search complex data sets with greater ease and efficiency;
• A significantly faster and more flexible client-server protocol with support for prepared statements, providing optimized query execution and improved warning information;
• New GUI installer and configuration wizards for Linux and Windows, making it easier for developers to set up and optimize their MySQL databases;
• Encrypted client-server communication using OpenSSL (GPL), greatly increasing security against malicious intrusion and unauthorized access.
• A more highly-optimized MySQL server library with a smaller memory footprint that performs significantly faster when embedded in third-party software.
• Extensive Unicode support through the utf8 and ucs2 international character sets for applications that require the use of local languages;
• Industry-standard GIS spatial types for storing and managing geographic data;
• Improved full text search and Help features.

Download:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.1.html

Software: TweakXP v4.0.2, Firefox v1.0 RC1, Opera v7.60 PR2

TweakXP v4.0.2

The *must* have tweak utility for Windows XP. I dont think i've seen thus far any better tweak tool than TweakXP. Download and follow the program through... (is it written in VB6?) it seems to be compressed with some sort of PE tool otherwise the size would be much larger.

Firefox v1.0 RC1

Everyones new favourite browser has gone RC1! Download it today!

Download Mozilla Firefox for Windows 1.0 RC1
Download Mozilla Firefox for Linux 1.0 RC1
Download Mozilla Firefox for Mac OS X 1.0 RC1

Opera v7.60 Preview Release 2

I have to admit the early versions of Opera were indeed quite fast (v5.0) but now adays its chocking up memory (primarily the UI) but its speed is still there. Some of the changes in this release include many interface changes, including the startup menu, toolbars and menubars, something which has been commented on a lot both by Opera and users of other browsers among other things.

Download Directly