CSS Problem-Solving

Grok Headline matches for CSS Problem-Solving

Solving the in-home TV distribution
problem

Solving the in-home TV distribution
problem 03/29/2005 06:51 AM
The “Triple Play” chorus has become deafening. Everyone and their brother has a triple play strategy – big telcos, little telcos, PTTs, IOCs, just about any size, shape or form of telco wants to head off the cable guys at the pass with a TV strategy.

Solving the "what you're looking at"
problem with Video Conferencing

Solving the "what you're looking at"
problem with Video Conferencing 06/30/2004 11:07 AM

Great article in the Beeb News about a research project which is actually reaping great benefits.

For years - I believe one of the things holding up video conferencing was that the viewer sees the other person either looking up or to the see - there's no eye contact, as the camera on the others side is NOT the screen. This creates a very disturbing anomaly that (IMHO) has prevented everyone but very geeky people to utilize this breakthrough technology.

So now.......

i2i, in development at Microsoft's research lab in Cambridge, UK, is a two-camera system which very carefully follows an individual's movement.

It uses a specially developed algorithm to fuse what each camera sees to create an accurate stereo "cyclopean" image.

This means it looks as if users are looking each other in the eye. It can also display floating 3D emoticons.

"We were able to come up with an algorithm that was able to take two images and capture a corresponding map in 3D," said Antonio Criminisi, lead researcher of Microsoft's Machine Learning and Perception Group.

"Using this powerful technology, we can now synthetically create an image as if the person is looking at you."

I don't necessarily buy the synthetic character angle, but just getting cameras to show you eye contact is huge....

So whwther or not thsi works - will depend on the issue of "are peopel willing to trade off and NOT see teh actual human (but a synthetic one) - all for the purpos eof seeing that person - in the eye.

But WAIT@! It's a synthetic person, so why....

[via techdirt]

Statistical Education Through Problem
Solving

Statistical Education Through Problem
Solving 03/27/2005 08:10 AM
Statistical Education Through Problem Solving
http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/st eps/

Statistical Education Through Problem Solving (STEPS) was a collaborative project between seven universities throughout the United Kingdom "to develop problem-based teaching and learning materials for statistics." The materials draw on specific problems arising in Biology, Business, Geography and Psychology to help students learn that statistical issues are "important natural parts of the process of reaching conclusions." The software developed as a result of this project, which utilizes the computer and graphical illustration to support learning, is available to educational institutions free of charge and can be downloaded from this website. (Note that other organizations are expected to purchase the software.) A glossary of statistical terms is provided in the software program as well as on this website. Although the funding for the project ended in 1995 and the website was last updated in January 2004, the material is still current and useful for teaching statistics. The authors note that the STEPS modules are intended to be used to support existing coursework, and "not intended to replace lecturing staff or to provide a self-study course in statistics. This has been added to Statistics Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. [From The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2005. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Internet Problem Solving Contest 2004

Internet Problem Solving Contest 2004 05/20/2004 02:43 AM

E-gov experts emphasize problem-solving
skills over IT

E-gov experts emphasize problem-solving
skills over IT 09/14/2004 08:26 PM
ITBusiness.ca Sep 14 2004 10:46PM GMT

Creativity techniques and creative tools
for problem solving

Creativity techniques and creative tools
for problem solving 09/07/2004 07:43 PM
Creativity techniques and creative tools for problem solving (lots)

mycoted.com/creativity/techniques
track this site | 3 links

Microsoft counsel sees shift in problem
solving

Microsoft counsel sees shift in problem
solving 05/02/2004 05:50 AM
SiliconValley.com May 2 2004 10:41AM GMT

Demo 2004 offers new ideas for IT
problem-solving

Demo 2004 offers new ideas for IT
problem-solving 02/17/2004 05:18 PM
A hand-picked group of 67 innovative IT vendors began showing wares yesterday, hoping to pique the interest for their nascent products with those in the audience of around 550 enterprise IT leaders.

Electronic Replicas of Newspapers:
Solving a Non-Existent Problem

Electronic Replicas of Newspapers:
Solving a Non-Existent Problem 05/07/2004 12:06 PM

jack Shafer (Slate): Honey, They Shrunk the Newspaper: Reading the electronic versions of the New York Times and Washington Post.. That these editions induce claustrophobia, even when displayed on a large flat-panel monitor, cannot be denied. For a sense of how poorly the facsimile of a broadsheet newspaper translates onto a computer screen, imagine reading a newspaper through a six-pane colonial window in which five of the panes have been blacked out. I haven't had this sort of tunnel vision while reading since the last time I endured newspaper microfilm at the city library.

Web Crossing Brainstorm plug-in aids
team problem-solving

Web Crossing Brainstorm plug-in aids
team problem-solving 04/26/2004 11:42 AM
Web Crossing Inc. on Monday released its new Brainstorm Plug-in, an add-on for the company's eponymous online collaboration software. The new plug-in uses a three-stage brainstorming process to help online teams work through problems. It's free for a limited time and available for download now.

Baxa Corporation Completes Six Sigma
Training for Problem-Solving and Process
Improvement

Baxa Corporation Completes Six Sigma
Training for Problem-Solving and Process
Improvement 06/11/2004 02:01 AM
Baxa Corporation announces the completion of a pilot training program in the Six Sigma methodology. Funded by a government grant, Baxa trained a select cross-functional team in the process and practices of Six Sigma to kick off a broader-based program. The ten-week course recently "graduated" its attendees to move on to create measurable results through hands-on implementation of the program's tools and methods throughout the company. [PRWEB Jun 11, 2004]

CPS: DAVE
POLLARD'S CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING
PROCESS

CPS: DAVE
POLLARD'S CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING
PROCESS 12/28/2004 02:53 PM

In previous articles I've described the Innovation Process of gurus like Clay Christensen and Peter Drucker (and my own), and a process for tapping the Wisdom of Crowds. Since then, I've talked to several business leaders about these processes, and they suggested I integrate them together to create a Creative Problem-Solving Process. The diagram above is the first draft of this CPS process. It appears there may be as many as 12 steps in the process involved in solving problems or making critical decisions, whether in a business context or a broader social context. In most cases, many of these steps are side-stepped or short-circuited, often because the problem-solvers or decision-makers think they already have the information or perspective that doing them would provide. Perhaps this is why so many unimaginative solutions are developed and so many bad decisions are made? The process of solving problems, when it's undertaken thoroughly, can involve three different forms of interactivity (conversation, collaboration and canvassing), in engaging the energies of three different aggregations of people (individuals, teams, and 'crowds'). The following table summarizes the 12 steps, and the interactivity, methods, deliverables and some facilitation tools for each: Action Interactivity Methods Deliverables Some Tools A Teach Conversation Training Competencies Creativity Techniques, Collaboration Skills B. Listen Canvassing Continuous Scan, Intelligence-Gathering Identified Needs, Insights Environmental Scanning, Minto Fact-Based Research C. Understand Conversation Analysis Root Causes Root Cause Analysis, Fishbone Diagrams D. Organize Collaboration Coordination Solution Team, Improvisational Plan 'Getting Things Done', PKM, Improv E. Think Ahead Conversation Iteration Future State Visions Thinking-Ahead Process, Future-State Visioning F. Reach Out Canvassing Engagement Commitment, Attention, Status Quo Dissatisfaction 'ChangeThis' Manifestos G. Brainstorm Conversation, Collaboration Creation, Ideation Solution Alternatives, Innovation Culture Accelerated Solutions Environment H. Survey Canvassing Qualifying Collective Wisdom, Consensus Wisdom of Crowds process I. Design Collaboration Crafting Prototypes Rapid Prototyping, Natural Design J. Experiment Collaboration Parallel Processing Proof of Concept True Collaboration Training K. Challenge Collaboration Questioning, Critical Thinking Solution Qualification, Issues & Landmines Seven Thinking Hats L. Deploy Canvassing Offering Solutions Project Management, One-Step-at-a-Time Applying the process to a business problem: Nash Instruments makes digital thermometers and other medical instruments for hospitals. They manufacture in Mississippi, taking advantage of low labour costs, but foreign competitors manufacturing in China have undercut them. The company is on the verge of bankruptcy, and 300 employees are depending on Nash's ingenuity to reinvent their company to save their jobs. So we start by teaching the core Solution Team of Nash the process, and creativity techniques so they can imagine a successful future for their company, not limited to incremental improvements. Then, with the Solution Team, we canvass customers and end-users of the company's products and other similar instruments, and find out what untapped needs they have. We also study trends in the market, and scan across other industries, science, technologies, and nature, to surface new developments that might be adapted or applied to Nash's products, processes, platforms, technologies, supply chain or distribution channels, core competencies, customer experience, brand, service or community wrap-arounds, or business model. Perhaps we discover that what customers are most unhappy with is the poor quality, ambiguity and reliability of these instruments -- and that what customers want aren't cheaper instruments, but simpler, more durable, more accurate ones. That they are buying the cheap ones made in China only because none of them differentiate themselves in other ways. The third step is to analyze the root causes of the company's current predicament. We know from the previous step that price really isn't the differentiating factor that's hurting the company's sales, but why isn't the company, with its skilled, domestic workforce, able to produce a better product? And are there other aspects to the undifferentiated 'customer experience', such as service quality? Or a distribution or marketing problem? Or lack of product diversity or innovation? Suppose we discover that the root problems are that the company has compromised on materials quality to try to reduce cost, that it's slow to exploit new technologies, and that it has developed a reputation for unresponsive service. Once we know this, we refine the Solution Team, and develop the plan and timeline for solving the root problems.and meeting the untapped customer needs. Then we conduct Thinking-the-Customer-Ahead sessions, using an iterative 'what-if' process to enable some of Nash's most forward-thinking customers and potential customers to understand where their businesses, and instrumentation needs, are headed, which in turn allows Nash to craft a Future State Vision that satisfies those needs. Maybe we discover that the future of medical instrumentation is wireless, that displays are going to have to be flatter and sharper, that measurements in several medical technologies will need to be two orders of magnitude more precise, and that in some cases the tools will become so sophisticated that the instrument manufacturer will have to become part of the virtual medical team, on call 24/7 to assist in interpretation of the results. And then we reach out to the larger constituency, all current and potential customers and end-users, articulating the promise that Nash could deliver and fomenting dissatisfaction with the status quo, creating a sense of urgency in the minds of customers and end-users, articulating the unmet need, and also creating that sense of urgency in Nash's own people. Next we do the creative work of inventing or reinventing products, processes, platforms, technologies, channels, brands, and even business models, and growing the core competencies needed to deliver on them. But we don't put all our eggs in one basket: We develop a suite of alternative solutions. And then we use the Wisdom of Crowds process to present them to the 'crowd', as large a group of existing and potential customers and users and employees as possible, and use the crowd's collective intelligence to help us select the best of these alternatives before taking them to market. Nash's reputation is a problem -- trying to go upscale with a new generation of sophisticated, precise instruments will be a marketing nightmare. maybe a whole new division with a new name is needed? And should the company try to overcome its employees' near-total ignorance of how hospitals use its instruments, so they can offer virtual interpretation, or leave this niche to others? And should it overhaul its supply chain in favour of better-quality material suppliers, or even bring production of these materials in-house and cut out the middleman? Now, with the confidence that we have the optimal solutions, we can design working prototypes of these solutions, and we can collaboratively run parallel experiments with different implementations of these solutions, failing fast and inexpensively to winnow out the implementations that don't work in practice. How would wireless instruments avoid interference with, and from, other medical technologies in the operating room and on the patient's night-table. What different techniques can be used to increase read-out precision without a commensurate increase in equipment cost? And when medical instruments need to be made in two 'flavours', one for sophisticated hospital use and the other for patients to self-diagnose and self-monitor, how do the price points differ and how should functionality and ease-of-use be traded off? Should Nash even be in both markets? And then the implementations that succeed must pass the final hurdle, another collaborative process that encourages skeptical, critical thinking people in the organization to challenge whether this solution really is optimal, and unearth landmines and other problems the developers may not have thought about. Maybe the designers didn't consider that baby-boomer patients' eyes are weakening and the display in a new consumer product just isn't large enough? Or that one of the new suppliers of a critical material is in financial difficulty? Once the solutions have passed this final test, they're ready for launch. The launch of dramatically new products, processes and technologies is a difficult process, and if not done properly and quickly can make an enormously promising innovation into a production or market failure. The launch needs careful project management, using a rigorous, tightly-controlled, one-step-at-a-time process. It's all common sense. The reason it is so rarely used is that few organizations have the competencies to do more than two or three of the 12 steps effectively. I've worked on all 12 steps at one point or another in my career, and they are not easy to master, but when they're done well, they yield astonishing results. The answer, I think, isn't just to bring in consultants to facilitate the process and then breeze out again. Advisers need to teach businesspeople how to do this for themselves, and then steward them through the process a couple of times to ensure they follow it properly. In a world where innovation will soon again be recognized as the only sustainable competitive business advantage, learning this process may the most important education for tomorrow's business leaders. And there's no reason to believe this same process couldn't be used to effectively address broader social, economic and environmental problems as well. I'll explore that in a future article.

Solving Puzzles with LM-Solve

Solving Puzzles with LM-Solve 11/17/2003 07:51 PM
A great many puzzles and games, such as Solitaire or Sokoban, are of the form of a "logic maze" -- you move a board or tableau from state to state until you reach the appropriate goal state. Shlomi Fish presents his Games::LMSolve module, which provides a general representation of such games and an algorithm to solve them.

Solving comment spam

Solving comment spam 01/27/2004 10:57 PM

There are two main schools of thought concerning comment spam: the optimists and the defeatists. Optimists believe that comment spam can be beaten with technology; defeatists (maybe I should call them pessimists) believe that comments are as doomed as email and we're all going to hell in a hand basket.

The story so far

I fall squarely in to the techno-optimist category. Back in September I started blacklisting domains linked to from spam comments, defending against return visits from spammers and allowing others to syndicate my block list to run on their own site. Then in October I tweaked my comment system to eliminate PageRank from links in comments, making spamming for search engine optimisation a futile exercise. Of course, this measure only works if spammers realise it's there (I know at least one has) which is why I'm personally very happy to see that the latest release of Moveable Type has adopted the technique - to mixed reviews from the MT community.

There have been a whole bunch of other technological innovations over the past few months. Sam Ruby has implemented throttling to ban people who post three consecutive comments, and has some great ideas about guarding against strangers. Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist makes the blacklisting concept available to a wide audience. Meanwhile, James Seng's MT-Bayesian introduces trainable spam filters adapted from the fight against email spam.

The challenges ahead

So those are the solutions so far; the critical question is whether they work. The amount of spam I've been getting has definitely decreased, but as I run a completely custom blogging system I'm safe from the automated scripts that target more widespread systems - other sites make easier targets. Now that the less ethical search engine optimisers have started to catch on to the potential of comment spam to improve their PageRank the amount of spam can only increase. Some bloggers have already started to disable comments entirely (thankfully Dan turned them back on again shortly afterwards), setting a worrying precedent for the elimination two way interactions comments allow between bloggers and non-bloggers.

I'll put it in writing now: I will never disable comments on this blog. In the past few months the comments here have proved far more interesting and valuable than my actual posts, and I really appreciate the quality of the discussions that have arisen here. I will take whatever steps are necessary to keep this a useful environment for discussion.

Many people have hailed user registration as the ultimate solution to spam. It isn't, because the value of PageRank is just too high - and writing a script to automatically create accounts (even with email confirmation required) is child's play to anyone who is competent in an internet-aware scripting language. Even accessibility-impeding captchas are no defence against spammers who can afford to employ cheap labour to defeat them - and with search engine rankings as critical as they are there's no shortage of spam dollars.

With those ruled out, let's look at the remaining solutions:

The killer

Without links, comment spam has no purpose. To eliminate spam, eliminate links. Redirecting them through a PageRank killer already achieves this, but proves too subtle for spammers intent on spreading their links as widely as they can. Too truly eliminate spam, strip out links and anything that even looks like a URL and force the spammer to preview their carefully crafted advertisement before hitting submit. Seeing as hyperlinks are the single most important feature of the web this may seem draconian - and indeed it is. But on a site that serves more as a discussion forum than a farm and where the alternative to killing links is killing comments entirely this could be the saving factor.

For most blogs however links are an essential part of the discourse - I certainly wouldn't want to disable them here. Now only do they add huge value to the discussions, but more importantly they act as a "signature" for many commenters - knowing a comment is by "Dan" is far less useful than knowing that it's by Dan from www.simplebits.com.

Finding a compromise

Draconian measures such as the above wouldn't be necessary if spammers would wise up to the fact that their carefully crafted missives were having no effect on their precious PageRank. The real challenge then is to make anti-PageRank measures obvious to even the most brain-addled viagra peddlers. I've taken the first step towards this by turning on compulsory previewing for comments, which should have the added benefit of reminding legitimate commenters to use paragraph tags. I'll be working on ways of making the anti PageRank measures more obvious over the next few days, as and when work permits.

I've seen people argue that depriving legitimate commenters of PageRank is a poor compromise. I disagree: if the only cost of eliminating the incentive to spam is the loss of some Google ego then I see it as a price well worth paying. Of course, I say that as someone who's already built up their Google ego but at the end of the day it's my blog, my rules. One solution I've considered is creating a whitelist of sites that frequent commenters use in their signatures, causing them to be displayed without a redirect.

Comment spam is a solvable problem. Furthermore, blogging about comment spamming is almost as dull as blogging about blogging. Let's hurry up and solve it so we can go back to blogging about cats.

On Solving Solved Problems

On Solving Solved Problems 04/06/2005 12:02 AM
I found this rather amusing. In an email thread at work about a new "feature" someone wanted to introduce, I said: ... In other words, it sounds like we're trying to solve a solved problem. A coworker responded privately with: But solving solved problems is *so* much easier than solving unsolved problems! :-) Well said. Even more amusing is that I could see his facial expression as I pictured him saying that in my head. The current solution, in case...

Solving the gay marriage mess

Solving the gay marriage mess 03/06/2004 01:59 AM
Massachusetts' old-style (= corrupt) House Speaker, Thomas Finneran, no longer backs a compromise amendment to the state constitution that would permit civil unions but ban same-sex marriages. Instead, he wants two amendments. The first would say: "It being the public policy of this Commonwealth to protect the unique relationship of marriage, only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Massachusetts." According to the report in the Boston Globe, the second amendment "would include language saying that the Legislature 'shall establish civil unions,' but would call for the Legislature to define...

Solving NI's policing dilemma

Solving NI's policing dilemma 04/15/2005 10:06 AM
BBC News website reports from Belfast on the thorny issue of policing.

Solving and creating captchas with free
porn

Solving and creating captchas with free
porn 01/27/2004 08:37 PM
Someone told me about an ingenious way that spammers were cracking "captchas" -- the distorted graphic words that a human being has to key into a box before Yahoo and Hotmail and similar services will give them a free email account. The idea is to require a human being and so prevent spammers from automatically generating millions of free email accounts.

The ingenious crack is to offer a free porn site which requires that you key in the solution to a captcha -- which has been inlined from Yahoo or Hotmail -- before you can gain access. Free porn sites attract lots of users around the clock, and the spammers were able to generate captcha solutions fast enough to create as many throw-away email accounts as they wanted.

Now, chances are that they didn't need to do this, since optical character recognition has been shown to be readily tweakable to decode captchas without human intervention -- that which a computer can generate, a computer can often solve.

My cow-orker Seth Schoen points out that human-generated captchas are much harder to solve: say, picking out a photo of an animal, at a funny angle, in a cage, and challenging attackers to correctly identify it. People can do so readily, machines probably can't.

Except, of course, that getting people to pick out pix of animals at funny angles doesn't scale. Unless, of course, you offered them free porn to do so ("Want free porn? Identify the animal in this cage!").

Which suggests a curious future, where commodity pornography, in great quantities, is used to incent human actors to generate and solve Turing tests like captchas in similarily great quantities.

Solving the mysteries of Mercury with a
probe called Messenger

Solving the mysteries of Mercury with a
probe called Messenger 07/31/2004 07:07 PM
US News Jul 31 2004 10:18PM GMT

Contests as the path to solving complex
technological problems

Contests as the path to solving complex
technological problems 02/13/2004 03:48 PM
Perhaps one of the best ways to get the US economy going again is for the Government to dive into the business of contests.  Simply, cash awards to organizations that engineer and demonstrate breakthrough technology that solves specific problems.  We have seen a few minor efforts in this direction recently.  NASA has launched their "Centennial Challenges" program with $20 m for key technological breakthroughs.  DARPA is even getting into the act with a $1 m "Grand Challenge" for an autonomous ground vehicle that can navigate between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.  These contests compliment the now famous privately funded X-Prize that will award $10 m to the first organization that can get 3 people to 100 km above the earth and back twice within two weeks.  What do you think about contests (or a sequence of increasingly difficult contests that build on each other) for the development of unmanned Mars missions (at much less expense than the $820 m spent on Spirit and Opportunity), extremely low cost hydrogen fuel cells, 20 hour laptop batteries that cost less than $100, and more?  In my view, a billion $$ spent this way over the next couple of years would prove true McLuhan's dictum that for every great problem there is someone that doesn't see it as a problem.

BTW: there needs to be a lot of academic work done on how to make these contests effective.

California Police Get New High-Tech
Crime-Solving Tool

California Police Get New High-Tech
Crime-Solving Tool 09/16/2004 05:14 PM
Officer.com Sep 16 2004 9:53PM GMT

Partner: Ten Steps to Solving Cooling
Problems Caused by High-Density Server
Deployment

Partner: Ten Steps to Solving Cooling
Problems Caused by High-Density Server
Deployment 04/13/2005 05:53 PM
Download this white paper

�Solving Difficult Design Engineering
Challenges with High-End CAD� �
Presentation by Design Visionaries at
the Bay Area CDI - CAD Event

�Solving Difficult Design Engineering
Challenges with High-End CAD� �
Presentation by Design Visionaries at
the Bay Area CDI - CAD Event 03/17/2005 03:36 AM
Design Visionaries, Inc., provider of top quality mechanical engineering and CAD services, invites you to the presentation entitled �Solving Difficult Design Engineering Challenges with High-End CAD�. The presentation will be held at 6:00pm on March 23rd, 2005 at the Bay Area CDI-CAD Event, hosted by DeAnza College, Cupertino. DeAnza College 21250 Stevens Creek Blvd.Cupertino, CA 95014 [PRWEB Mar 17, 2005]

Solving The Online Music Format Mess...
With Another Format?

Solving The Online Music Format Mess...
With Another Format? 12/11/2003 02:43 AM
Now that every other company is starting a music download store (even if no one is making any money off of it), people are beginning to realize that maybe it makes sense to come up with a single format that works for anyone. Of course, some might say that we've already got formats that work, but the folks over in the recording industry seem to have a mental block when it comes to the formats that everyone likes to use. So, now, Microsoft, Universal Music and others, under the title of the Content Reference Forum, are teaming up to create a new music format - but one that makes it easier for them to make you buy the music. There aren't all that many details, but it appears to be going back to some of the very original concepts behind a hypertext system: that content only needs to be available once, and any time you want to access it, you just link to it. In other words, instead of offering downloadable music, the plan is to offer links to music that is served up remotely. Of course, one of the "features" of such a system is that the content providers can know (and, potentially, charge you) every time you want to hear that certain song. It's an interesting idea, but it seems to make the music less valuable. Suddenly, it can only be listened to from an internet connected machine, you don't actually own anything, and the big content providers get to keep a big database of exactly what songs you listen to when. Doesn't sound all that appealing to me. The one thing that it does have going for it, is that it allows people to "share" - if, by share, you mean point someone to a link and let them pay for it themselves.

What's the Problem?

What's the Problem? 02/01/2005 09:28 PM
and Tim Meehan Freud asked, "What does a user really want?" Ten-plus years into web development, we still don't know. One of the biggest problems in creating and delivering a site is how to decide, specify, and communicate exactly what we're building and why. Use cases can help answer these questions by providing a simple, fast means to decide and describe the purpose of your project. In this quick-reading article, Messieurs Carr and Meehan introduce use cases and their, uh, uses.

a problem we could fix

a problem we could fix 05/25/2004 12:50 AM
"It's extremely difficult to govern when you control all three branches of government." John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Washington Post, 5/23/04. And when did political parties begin to claim "control" of the Judicial Branch? Someone should inform the Justices. I don't think they've been told yet.

A look at the problem

A look at the problem 12/30/2004 06:51 AM
USA Today Dec 30 2004 10:57AM GMT

Another Day, Another IE Problem

Another Day, Another IE Problem 07/02/2004 08:22 AM

Security risks swell for Microsoft's Explorer: From the Gee, That's Obvious Department.

Using Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser to surf the Internet has become a marked risk — even with the latest security patches installed.

That's the upshot of the discovery of yet another Internet Explorer security hole being exploited by intruders bent on swiping personal information from unwitting Internet users.

[...] "Internet Explorer's track record is such that the software just cannot be trusted right now," says Jeremiah Grossman, CEO of WhiteHat Security.

Again, I ask: if you're still using IE...why?

Click here to comment on this entry

Top Tip: Do I have a RAM problem?

Top Tip: Do I have a RAM problem? 02/12/2004 12:51 PM
After POST but before win xp starts up I hear two beeps and the computer never gets past detecting the drives (the hard drives and dvd-rom). Most of the time it boots fine. Then when I shut the system down sometimes I get the two beeps agian and it never shuts off...

What's Your Problem?

What's Your Problem? 11/27/2002 07:36 AM

Win XP Sp2 Problem

Win XP Sp2 Problem 08/27/2004 01:56 PM
Introduced in Service Pack 2, along side many other security features, Windows XP gained the "security center" (screenshot). A nice addition, and a central place for people to check their system's security status. So we thought.

eWeek and PC Magazine have published reports suggesting that the system can be spoofed very easily, allowing potentially nasty programs to perform un-wanted tasks. "Based on an anonymous tip, we looked into the WMI and the Windows Security Center's use of it, and found that it may not only be a security hole, but a crater in the wrong hands. Due to the nature of WMI, the WSC could potentially allow attackers to spoof the state of security on a user's system while accessing data, infecting the system, or turning the PC into a zombie for spam or other purposes."

The PC Magazine article explores the problem and how it can be exploited in good depth. It makes very depressing reading for users who had hoped that Microsoft had over-come this kind of problem with Service Pack 2. Microsoft responded to the article suggesting that they didn't think it was a problem at all; they added that you needed to be running as an administrator for it to be an issue; true, PC Mag agreed, but they also noted that XP Home runs (by default) as Admin, and most users of XP Pro make themselves administators to save hassle when installing and running programs.

Service Pack 2 is a necessary upgrade for all users, and everyone should install it. However, as the article and Neowin recommend, don't rely to heavily on these new security features. Ensure you update Firewall / AV / Windows often, and check the status of your protection often. Microsoft will never be able to be 100% safe / problem free, but they are trying, and should be commended for their effort.

View: Read more at PC Magazine | eWeek Article
Download: Service Pack 2

Read full story...

The Version Problem

The Version Problem 01/23/2004 02:23 PM
The cobbler's children go barefoot -- or, why the Safari guy's Safari blog doesn't work right in Safari 1.0 -- or linking the browser to the operating system. Wasn't that supposed to be a bad thing?

An $8 Billion Problem

An $8 Billion Problem 08/05/2004 04:12 PM
Plus, Microsoft wants your thoughts, Gap takes a spill, and Sara Lee has indigestion?

The Problem With Presntations

The Problem With Presntations 12/18/2003 05:45 AM
Doc Searls' advice on PowerPoint .. The Problem With Presentations .. It’s the story, stupid .. piece

searls.com/present.html
track this site | 7 links

What Happens When You Don't Understand
The Problem

What Happens When You Don't Understand
The Problem 12/16/2003 06:28 PM
The real source of the vulnerability is not Apple's code, or really even their implementation. But the DHCP standard itself. (John C. Welch via MyAppleMenu)

AMD compatibility no problem

AMD compatibility no problem 02/16/2004 06:49 PM
CNET Asia Feb 16 2004 9:55PM GMT

P2P Porn Is Not The Problem

P2P Porn Is Not The Problem 12/12/2003 12:51 PM
A few months back, when Senator Orrin Hatch was convinced by some wealthy backers that the real problem with P2P file sharing systems was that porn was available, we wondered how that was any different from the internet. There's lots of porn on the internet, but politicians aren't running around saying that we need to shut it down. But, because of some misleading statements by the entertainment industry, politicians are freaking out about the file sharing networks. If they do try to do something to shut them down, of course, the porn will just move elsewhere where it will be harder to shut it down. In fact, the porn already is elsewhere - as it has been all along. The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) is telling Senator Hatch that P2P porn is no worse than what's already available on the web. Hatch's original statement was based on a GAO report, but they're now saying that wasn't based on a comprehensive study, but tips that were sent in to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Only about 1.4% of those tips concerned P2P networks.

The Problem with .NET Generics

The Problem with .NET Generics 08/05/2004 03:28 AM
One of the most awaited features of Microsoft .NET 2.0 is generics. Generics promise to increase type safety, improve performance, reduce code duplication and eliminate unnessecary casts. The most obvious application of generics in the framework class library are the generic collections in the new System.Collections.Generic namespace. Much has been written about those, but they are not the topic of this article.

No regs, no problem

No regs, no problem 01/24/2004 03:30 AM
USA Today Jan 24 2004 7:11AM GMT
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