Mark’s blog at sysinternals talks about Sony’s latest DRM software that acts like a rootkit – resisting efforts to appear in active processes on the system and other really nasty software. Although Sony’s aim is to stop you copying their music, when they start doing tricks like this (which is possibly illegal as it modifies your computer without you agreeing to let it do so but ianal) it is more likely to encourage piracy as people rely on getting mp3’s off the internet as they are less likely to get copy protected additions at the same time.
The direct link to the article is this link which appears to be broken
11 outlook web access tips for 2003 which are also useful in outlook itself. I did wonder what the difference between premium and basic version was and now I know. My bonus tip is that unless you have owner access to a users mailbox you only get read access to someone elses calendar in outlook web access, even if you have edit or author access within outlook. I spent ages trying to work this out for a remote customer (who I couldn’t talk through things over the phone as they only had 1 phone line which she used for dialup! I finally managed to get hold of someone in the office, make sure that a pc in the office wasn’t in use and then take control of the pc to test the outlook vs outlook web access functionality.
…when you double click on them but will from the File/Open menu was a weird one that I hadn’t come across before. However, following the instructions in a Google Groups posting where the tools | options | general | ignore other applications was unchecked and it worked. Very strange. Not sure why this has started to happen but it works – *shrug*
Essential Pim are going to be giving away the pro version of their software for everyone who visits their site on Halloween. Looks like Opera started a great trend 🙂
The cool thing is that the portable version will be available too which means you can use it on your usb key. The data is encrypted and it doesn’t need installing on the pc.
Although I’ve not tried this software it sounds really good. Now that we don’t have outlook in the office (or even on the computer) and the Notes Pim functions just suck big time (at least on a naff 1024*768 screen) this will hopefully be really useful.
I’ve taken the step of forwarding all incoming mail for my userid at my main domain to my google account for 3 reasons. 1 is to reduce the amount of spam that I get in my inbox and the second is to give me a decent web interface for my mail as the web interface with 1and1 is awful to use and really slow and thirdly to have a searchable archive of mail available from any computer.
The main computer at home will download the email via pop3 as usual but I’ll also have email on the move. I’ve not forwarded all email via google as it blocks certain attachments (.exe files for example) which I occasionally need but I might do this at a later date with an exception email that goes direct to pop3 instead of via gmail.
Scott Adams has a blog and starts off with “If you’re reading this on company time, congratulations on beating the system. If you’re reading it on your own time, you really need to find a job where they pay you to do this sort of thing.”
I’m sure i’ve read the follow up story in one of the dilbert books (or management principle books) but its still pretty funny and shows how pointless committees are.
Thanks to Adam
Ben talks about the confusion that is going on about exchange2003sp2 and the best ways to install the upgrade and have imf working at the same time. subsequently.
kb article 909444 has how to fix the issues that may arise when you install Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-051: Vulnerabilities in MSDTC and COM+ Could Allow Remote Code Execution (902400). Although I’ve not had any of these issues – yet – this will be good reference for me.
Although i’m not using it (at the moment) there is a new version of Synergy out
Skype are doing a decent bonus in that if you sign up for $10 or 10euros worth of skype out minutes (or voicemail) then you get 3 months of voicemail free and 2 hours of skypeout credit if you pay by credit card. I now only have .06euro’s left in my account after our first $10 purchase so I am about to renew. The annoying thing is that most of the people in the uk don’t have skype although I had a great 100 minute conversation about the church website this morning over skype for free 🙂