Thanks to Microsoft wanting to add more security and features to Windows Vista with SP1 some gamers have to suffer with the random issues that come along with it. I recently built a brand new computer (2days ago) and had an issue running one of my Favorite online games City of Heros/City of Villains with Ventrilo.

Issue: For some reason Ventrilo was not picking up my PTT key while in game but if I minimized the game it would work just fine..

Fix: Right click the Ventrilo shortcut and select run as Administrator and then click allow. This should solve the issue for many games with this issue.

Why: City of Heros runs as Administrator due to the continuous access to the Program Files folder. A work around for this is to install City of Heros to C:\ rather then C:\Program Files\ or to a non OS harddrive but that work-around didnt work for me some reason. So because Vista has such an annoying security feature called UAC. When City of Heros or other random games (that run as Administrator) are the active window aka your playing the game, UAC blocks other programs from hooking your mouse and keyboard events. So running Ventrilo as Administrator allows it to hook events when your in game because its running as the same user. Oddly enough it still works as normal when your not in game as well (example: Surfing the internet)

The executives in charge of online payment system E-gold have pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges, the US Department of Justice said on Tuesday.

Principal E-gold director Douglas Jackson, who is also chief executive of E-gold affiliate Gold & Silver Reserve, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Jackson now faces up to 25 years in jail and a fine of $750,000 (£376,000).

E-gold senior directors Barry Downey and Reid Jackson each pleaded guilty to charges related to operating a money-transmitting business without a licence. They could each be fined $25,000 and receive a jail sentence of up to five years.

At sentencing in November, E-gold and Gold & Silver Reserve, as organisations, face a maximum fine of $3.7m. Additionally, as part of their plea bargain, E-gold and Gold & Silver Reserve will forfeit $1.75m in the form of a money judgement.

"By failing to comply with money-laundering laws and regulations, the E-gold operation created an environment ripe for exploitation by criminals seeking anonymity in conducting online transactions," said acting assistant attorney general Matthew Friedrich. "This case demonstrates that online payment systems must operate according to the applicable rules and regulations created to ensure lawful monetary transactions."

Security experts and law-enforcement officers have known for years that criminals were using E-gold accounts. ZDNet.co.uk reported in 2006 that a piece of ransomware had instructed users to pay money into an E-gold account to recover hijacked data.

E-gold provides digital currency services over the internet through the sites e-gold.com and omnipay.com. According to the Department of Justice, the E-gold operation was attractive to criminals because it did not require users to provide their true identity, or any specific identity at all.

E-gold continued to allow accounts to be opened without verification of user identity, despite knowing that the operation was being used for criminal activity, including child exploitation, investment scams, credit-card fraud and identity theft, the Department of Justice said.

In addition, E-gold designed a system that expressly encouraged users whose criminal activity had been discovered to transfer crime proceeds to other E-gold accounts. E-gold had assigned employees with no relevant experience to monitor hundreds of thousands of accounts used for criminal activity.

Jackson said the case provided an opportunity for "a new beginning" at E-gold.

"The resolution of the criminal case… provides for a second chance — an opportunity to address the flaws embedded in the E-gold system and to transform the E-gold operation into the institution that I, the other directors, and our long-suffering employees and contractors have always envisioned — one that serves to advance the material welfare of mankind," wrote Jackson in a blog post.

E-gold and Gold & Silver Reserve will continue as organisations, but will now have to comply with US federal and state laws related to operating as a licensed money-transmitting business, and address the issue of money laundering. E-gold will also have to prove its claim that all transactions are backed by physical gold.

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Mr Cerf was interviewed at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Half Moon Bay. He often speaks about net neutrality. In this interview he says that companies such as Verizon misquoted him in full page adverts in major newspapers.
He says the Telcos are acting like little kids in a tantrum. "I’m not going to build this system unless you give me three scoops of ice cream and a pony. My reaction to this is quite negative. It’s harmful to the national interest to behave in this way."
Mr Cerf wants a split in the way broadband providers operate so that they are not allowed to interfere with any applications on the Internet and that the carriers charge themselvesl, from an acconting point of view, how much bandwidth they use.
He says that carriers should be provided with incentives to make them behave differently or there should be an incentive for competitors to come into the market that can effectively compete with them and to take away their monopoly position.
Here is the 3.45 minute interview, my apologies for the lighting but the audio is very interesting.

(Original Post )

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Your precious firewall can’t save you now!

Weak or nonexistent implementations in computer security software can leave otherwise-secure computers wide open for attack – so open, in fact, that in some cases it’s as if there’s no firewall running at all.

Speaking at the annual HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference in New York, security researcher Joe Klein of Command Information said that the internet is full of computers surreptitiously running IPv6, unbeknownst to their owners. Compounding the problem is the number of operating systems shipped with IPv6 enabled by default, which includes Windows Vista, Linux’s 2.6 kernel, Sun’s Solaris, Mac OS X, and a variety of cell phones operating systems, including Windows Mobile 5 and 6.

Computers with a lackluster IPv6 setup – even if they have a strong IPv4 firewall or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) in place – are just as naked in IPv6 space as they would be in IPv4-space without a firewall, with any program that listens for connections allowed to accept them. Most operating systems, by default, use a handful of “listeners” used for networking and internal processes – and it is these listeners that are frequently the first to be targeted in an attack.

A number of computer worms, including Blaster and its follow-up Welchia, worked by exploiting a buffer overflow with Windows’ internal RPC infrastructure, which listens on port 135 and is ordinarily covered up by a firewall.

Network administrators who don’t keep tabs of their systems face a huge risk, said Klein. Operational dangers aside, administrators who work for organizations that have to comply with regulations like HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley risk non-compliance if they don’t secure their IPv6 implementations – whether they realize they have one or not.

“Essentially, we have systems that are wide open to a network,” said Klein. “It’s like having wireless on your network without knowing it.”

Security researchers have for some time found hackers exploiting IPv6. A 2002 post from Lance Spitzer of the Honeynet project observed a hacker that broke in to a Solaris-based honeypot through normal means, enabled IPv6 connectivity in the OS, and then set up a tunnel out of the network that went into another country. The break-in was only discovered due to network packet-sniffing, and even then Spitzer says he was unable to decode the data being sent out.

One of the biggest threats is the variety of backwards-compatibility schemes designed to tunnel IPv6 traffic through an IPv4 system, like Teredo or the 6to4 system: the very act of tunneling often circumvents firewalls by nature.

“Teredo/ISATAP is currently and will continue to be a major red flag for networks that have both IP versions enabled, because tunneling confuses the heck out of a lot of firewalls and IDS deployments,” said an unnamed DoD security specialist, in an interview with Wired’s Threat Level.

With internet progressives trying to switch the internet to IPv6 as fast as it can – a widget on Command Interface’s web site estimates that the internet will run out of IPv4 addresses in about two and a half years – some fear that technological progress may be outpacing the security that keeps it safe.

(Original Post )

Just wanted to let all of you in on a bit of good news from the Mouse and Keyboard on the Xbox360 world.

For those of you who may already be familiar with the XIM (Xbox Input Machine), you know that it was capable of taking the XFPS’s capabilities and enhancing them 10-fold to make a usable mouse and keyboard experience with most games on the console. Since you’re familiar, read below for the good news.

For those of who who don’t know the XIM, read on. XIM started as an enhancement for the XFPS. Anyone who has used the XFPS regardless of which edition knows that no matter what you do it just doesn’t offer the same experience. The guy behind the project, OBsIV found that it was possible with the combination of additional hardware and a special piece of software that you could create a much more accurate experience with the mouse and keyboard in games like COD4 and Halo 3. But, this experience wasn’t quite as good as it could be due to the limitations in the hardware that the XIM used. So he went back to the drawing board and created a piece of hardware and new software that could deliver the experience that you’ve always hoped to get with a mouse and keyboard on a console, appropriately named XIM2.

So, what’s the good news in all of this blabbering? The XIM2 is now being pre-ordered and will ship in 2 weeks.

Official Site: http://xim360.com
Pre-ordered Thread: xim360.com

(Original Post )

Pandora’s internet radio has always been one of those sites that was really cool in concept, but too inconvenient to ever go mainstream. The service was long tied to computers only, and while it eventually expanded to special internet radios and some mobile phones, it still has yet to become a household name. But with the launch of Pandora’s new iPhone app last Friday, it looks like the service is about to hit critical mass. It’s a free, mobile, digital radio station that only plays music you like and lets you skip the stuff you don’t. And it rocks.

The personalized music service employs a small army of 50 musicians to create a “Music Genome” that describes each song according to 600 attributes. Listeners input a few of their favorite artists, and the site analyzes the Genome to serve up an endless stream of recommended music.

We introduced the app last Friday, when we called it our “flat out favorite application so far”, and since then it hasn’t failed to impress. Streamed music plays flawlessly over Edge and 3G networks - during a 40 mile drive I didn’t once run into any kind of skipping or static. Even better, the app currently has no advertisements playing, though we can probably expect that to change.

Unsurprisingly, Pandora’s usage stats are overwhelmingly positive. Pandora is currently the fourth most popular free app on iTunes (behind Apple’s Remote, AIM, and WeatherBug), and has reportedly been seeing a new listener every 2 seconds. Usage over the weekend hit an all-time high for the service, with 3.3 million tracks streamed to iPhone listeners alone. Perhaps more impressive is the retention rate of listeners, who are averaging over an hour of listening per day.

If there’s one thing that could kill the service, it’s ads. Pandora is going to need to monetize the app somehow - let’s hope it allows us to pay an upfront fee (say, $10) to avoid the annoying interruptions that have made listening to traditional radio a painful experience.

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WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin Friday said he would not seek to fine cable giant Comcast Corp. (CMCSA, CMCSK) for slowing some Internet traffic.

Instead, Martin said he wants the Comcast to stop its practice of prioritizing certain applications that tend to use a lot of bandwidth. "It is not a reasonable network management practice," he said at a press conference to discuss his recommendation.

"We would tell Comcast that they have to stop engaging in that practice. They have to disclose to the commission where they are engaging in that practice."

Martin has proposed that Comcast change the practice within a "reasonable time frame," which could be the end of the year.

"We would say that as they are moving to a new network practice that they need to disclose to us and to consumers," Martin said.

The other four commissioners must weigh in on Martin’s proposal before it can take effect.

Comcast has said it would challenge the order if the other commissioners agree to it.

Comcast argues that Martin is unfairly imposing a new rule and punishing the company at the same time.

"You can’t enforce this because there aren’t any rules," said Comcast Spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice. "It violates all sorts of due processes in the way you are supposed to create rules."

Martin said he is aware of Comcast’s concern. "I think that’s one of the reasons why I have not proposed that we put a fine," he said.

Comcast A shares recently were off 2.5% at $18.19.

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Cisco take note: Juniper’s new EX 4200 switch not only fills a hole in a leading competitor’s product line, but also represents a credible alternative for enterprise access switching.

In Network World’s exclusive Clear Choice test, we subjected the EX 4200-48T switch to the same rigorous battery of benchmarks we used to assess seven other vendors’ 10G Ethernet access switches earlier this year. (See comparative 10G Ethernet switch test .)

The verdict: This is one fast box. The EX 4200 delivered line-rate throughput in every case, the only switch we’ve tested this year to do so. What’s more, 10G Ethernet latency is the lowest we’ve ever measured. We also were impressed by the EX 4200’s feature set and powerful JUNOS command-line interface (CLI).

That’s not to suggest Cisco and others should fold up their tents, though. This is Juniper’s first effort in enterprise switching, and that inexperience shows in a few places. Multicast support is still a bit rough, and our tests also uncovered a couple of security concerns. Still, this is an impressive device, especially for a first try. (Compare products .)

We tested the $16,800 EX 4200-48T, which offers 48 10/100/1000Mbps gigabit ports, two 10G Ethernet ports, PoE capability on 8 ports, and stacking capability for up to 10 switches. Juniper also offers the EX 4200-48P with 48 ports of PoE capacity from a single power supply for $18,400. Both devices offer optional redundant power supplies and support virtually all switching and routing protocols (see Features spreadsheet ).
Faster still
In access switch tests earlier this year we found throughput no longer is the differentiator as it once was, with most boxes pushing packets either nearly at, or within one percent of, line rate.

With Juniper’s EX 4200, there’s no need to say "nearly". Even under the heaviest loads our Spirent TestCenter traffic generator threw at it, the switch delivered line-rate throughput in every single unicast and multicast test, both in layer-2 and layer-3 configurations. No other switch did that.

Latency – often a more important metric than throughput, especially for time-sensitive voice and video traffic – was low and consistent across all tests. Measured at line rate, the Juniper switch delayed 64-byte frames across 10G Ethernet links for an average of 1.96 microsec and a maximum of 2.01 microsec.

(Original Post - Read More! )

Recently I was doing a support call at work and a user had an issue with Word 2003.. Every time they started it up it was starting in safe mode so they really couldn’t do much of anything.
Anyhow thought I would share the fix with everyone.

Close Word
Open up Windows Explorer navigate to: C:\Documents and Settings\(Username)
- For username this should be the folder that has your current login name… if you don’t know it.. It is probably "User" or "Owner" or your name.
Go to the follow subfolders inside your folder Application Data\Microsoft\Word\
- You will probably have to maks sure you can see hidden folders to access this folder.
Rename "Normal.dot" to  "Normal.dot.old"
You should now beable to load up Word
*Note: You must have all Microsoft Office Applications Closed to do this.