the finger-keyboard synapse - May 2006 Archives

May 2006

BitWise recommended on Security Now Podcast (16:47) - A quick thanks to Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte for briefly discussing BitWise in their Security Now Podcast from May 18th. Did I mention that Steve recommended BitWise for secure IM? Steve's discussion actually reveals a bit of "behind the scenes," in that it was Steve Gibson who prodded us to add the NAT traversal technologies last year. So, thanks to Steve both for the prod and the nod! Here's an excerpt: I know the author, I’ve interacted with him,... | 2 Comments

Bad BitWise, don't be a pig! (23:15) - Several different people have mentioned the same or a very similar bug to me in the past few weeks. The issue seems to be that when BitWise loads when Windows boots, it sometimes eats up hundreds of megabytes of memory, and after a bit, the usage will then fall back down to something normal. The conflicting part is that one person only experienced it when "Connect Automatically" was also enabled, but another gets it even though he doesn't use that...

BitWise IM for Commore 64/128 Announced (19:54) - We are pleased today to announce that BitWise IM will be available by the end of the month for the popular Commodore 64 and 128 personal computers. We can no longer afford to ignore the tremendous demand from users of the best-selling computer of all time. Users will be able to download BitWise IM from the popular QuantumLink online service or can order a 5-1/4" floppy for a small shipping and handling charge. It has taken an incredible feat to... | 2 Comments

Permission bits shouldn't be optional (14:57) - I've had reason lately to investigate Adobe Acrobat security for an unrelated side project that I'm involved with. More specifically, we were interested in being able to control access to documents based on a set of permissions that would be centrally stored. A password-protected file wouldn't suffice because a password can be shared, and sharing documents should not be permitted (unless the recipient had been granted the same permission). By the end, I had learned that not only does Adobe... | 2 Comments

Don't bash it before you try it (22:47) - I realized that despite all my poo-pooing IE 7, I hadn't actually used it. So last week I loaded up the IE 7 Beta 2 on my laptop, and I have to say that I do like it quite a bit. I don't think it's a Firefox killer, but it does bring IE 7 back on to the playing field after years of being pretty outdated. Once it ships with the OS, it could very well be enough to keep... | 4 Comments

ExtremeTech: IE7 Isn't Good Enough (12:17) - In my last post, I talked about Dvorak blasting IE as Microsoft's biggest mistake. A few days later, I came across a "review" of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, and their opinion was basically too little, too late. In many ways, Microsoft is stuck in the age of big, spread-out releases. It's used to the prospect of building up a huge set of new features into a big product, selling it, and then moving on to the next two-year development... | 1 Comments