Blackmoor Vituperative

Yes, the prices for Windows Vista are ridiculous.

No, I won’t be buying Vista.

If I could run Photoshop CS2 on Linux, I would have switched my desktop OS to Linux already.

After months of issuing warnings, the music industry finally made good on its threat to file suit against peer-to-peer software company LimeWire.

A group of music companies, including Sony BMG, Virgin Records and Warner Bros. Records, have accused LimeWire and the company’s officers of copyright infringement, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in New York. LimeWire produces software that’s often used to create copies of music recordings and then distribute them over the Web.

The recording industry is asking for compensatory and punitive damages, such as $150,000 for every song distributed without permission.

(from ZDNet, Music industry sues P2P firm LimeWire)

Personally, I use Shareaza.

“Firefox 1.5.0.5 is a security update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers,” Mozilla said on its Web site. “We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version.”

Microsoft Office is a hacker’s playground: First Word, then Excel, now PowerPoint. For the third time in two months, a zero-day vulnerability in a widely used Microsoft Office software application is being used in targeted hacker attacks. Avoid the Microsoft Office security hole by switching to OpenOffice.

Microsoft Confirms PowerPoint Zero-Day Attack

OpenOffice.org 2.0.3: Open For Business

OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 is recommended for all. Enhancements include:

• performance improvements: for example, a 23 percent improvement in certain Calc benchmarks
• further improvements to file format compatibility with Microsoft Office files
• new email integration features for users wanting to send emails in Microsoft file formats
• more control over how exported PDF documents will display when opened in a PDF reader
• support for more languages and improvements in hyphenation and thesaurus
• support for Intel architecture for Mac OS X plus improved Mac OS X System integration
• built-in check for updated versions

We also recommend OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 because it includes important security fixes. These have not been exploited but all users of any prior version of OpenOffice.org are urged to download 2.0.3. A standalone patch will be available soon.

File under “yet another reason to switch to OpenOffice”.

New PowerPoint hole used in cyberattacks | Tech News on ZDNet

File under “as if you needed yet another reason to swich to OpenOffice”:

A weakness in how Office applications handle Macromedia Flash files exposes Microsoft customers to cyberattacks, experts have warned.

Flash files embedded in Office documents could run and execute code without any warning, Symantec said in an alert sent to customers on Thursday. The security issue is the third problem reported within a week that affects Microsoft Office users.

“A successful attack may allow attackers to access sensitive information and potentially execute malicious commands on a vulnerable computer,” Symantec said in the alert, which was sent to users of its DeepSight security intelligence. The vulnerability was reported by researcher Debasis Mohanty.

The issue relates to the ability to load ActiveX controls in an Office document and is not a vulnerability but an Office feature, a Microsoft representative said. “This behavior is by design and by itself does not represent a security risk to customers,” he said. An ActiveX control is a small application typically used to make Web sites more interactive.

(from ZDNet, Microsoft Office hit by another security problem)

Microsoft Office, Flash, and ActiveX? Wow, that’s a trifecta. If it was put to music, it’d be a country music song. All it’s missing is a Sony rootkit, and you’d have the four horsemen of the software apocalypse.

More evidence of the absurdity of intellectual property law in the USA (specifically software patents, this time):

Microsoft loses appeal in Office patent spat

I’m all for the “little guy” standing up to Goliath. Nonetheless, software patents are an inherently bad idea. The sooner we rid ourselves of them, the better off all of us — including Microsoft — will be.

Google unveiled on Monday a new version of its Google Earth application, which features greater coverage and higher resolution, even showing people walking in some locations–detail you get with aerial photography and not usually satellites.

The downloadable Google Earth 4.0 runs on PCs, Macs and Linux-based machines and is available in localized versions in French, Italian, German and Spanish, according to Michael Jones, chief technology officer of Google Earth. Jones, speaking here at Google Geo Developer Day, said the improvements will eventually show up in the Web-based Google Maps site.

(from ZDNet, Google Earth zooms in)

While you are over there, check out Google Sketchup.

OpenOffice.org has released a statement concerning the so-called “macro virus” affecting OpenOffice. They say the same thing I said on Wednesday: it’s not a virus. It’s much ado about nothing.