Windows needs your permistion to continue - if this annoy you in your Vista

I don’t know if you like this or not and I will not explain if it is good or bad, however Vista is shoing us from time to time this dialog box:


It is very healthy to disable it, especially for the guys that have a patience to open the some files or applications.

Talking about Control Panel, to disable that message you always receive you will need to go to Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > User accounts (if you will copy "Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\User Accounts" in your address bar of your windows explorer window you will get there and if you'll use the quick find from the start menu by typing "user" you will get there).
And here we have a magic link Turn User Account Control on or off (it is one of the options with the little shield at the left). If you will press it you will be asked again by windows for your permission to do this task (and hopefully it will be the last time)

A reboot will be needed after for the magic to happen or at least a log off from Windows.

Show desktop in your quick launch bar of your Windows

How can we delete the show desktop icon from the quick launch? It is easy, just right click on it and press Delete or just drag it into Recycle Bin. The question is why would you delete it? A reason could be that you use more the keyboard and to reach the desktop you just press Win+M (this one is like pressing the minimize button for every opened window) or Win+D (in this case is just like pressing the Show Desktop icon - it will show the desktop and on the next Win+D you will get back to your window). Another reason is the space that you think should be filled with more useful application and not with this useless icon.
Now you get tired of the keyboard, or just tired, or just lazy, or you just bought a wireless mouse that you can use as a remote from the bed from which you have a decent distance to the table, and you want to see the desktop, but you will get annoyed to minimize all 10 windows that you have opened with the pictures and your email, and your task list, and a movie, and you need now desperately the show desktop icon, and you want it back. The steps are described in this Microsoft knowledge base article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190355):
1. Click Start , click Run, type notepad, and then click OK.
2. In Notepad, type the following text on individual lines:
[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop
3. On the File menu, click Save As, and then save the file to your desktop as Show Desktop.scf. To keep the right file extension you should use the All files on the Save as type field. If the file was well named you will see the right icon on the desktop (I mean the icon of Show desktop).
4. Now just drag it on the quick launch

Firefox and IE - browsers vulnerabilities

In the 4th of jun Michal Zalewski made public at http://lists.grok.org.uk/pipermail/full-disclosure/2007-June/063712.html a list of 4 vulnerabilities of Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
There is one critical problem at the IE with the access to the cookies of some pages by third part pages. A major problem in Firefox with the iframes that could include javascript injection. Ant other two midium problems, one for the browser provided by Mozilla and the other for the Microsoft's browser.
You will find interesting the last one, here is a demo of how you can be triked that you are visiting the real cnn page.

Widows user can copy files faster with TeraCopy

I don't now the etymology of the name of this application, but it is easy to guess. Tera, i think, comes from the the amount of data that could be managed with the help of this utility, and copy comes from the feature it provides.
So.. the application can help you to copy much faster the files from one hard drive to another, to make this process in several times by put it on hold and continue it when you want, integrate with the shell. Very useful when Windows wants more space on a drive (you know that Low disk space message), and the time is always important, so the delay in the work process because of copying files.
You can find this product on codesector page ,I think I'll try it too.

Windows Media Player Plug-in for Firefox

Have been released another official Microsoft plug-in.
This plug-in allows you to use Windows Media Player inside of Firefox.

It is designed to support the following Windows platforms:

• Windows XP SP2 (x86)
• Windows XP SP2 (x64)
• Windows Vista (x86)
• Windows Vista (x64)/li>

Port25 is hosting it, and you can download it from here: Download - indows Media Player Firefox Plugin

It is backwards compatible with the old 6.4 Windows Media Player. And among other things has the following new features.

Read more.

Your Windows show a "Low disk space" warning again!?

Sometimes you get tired of these warnings, and this is one that most of the people will gladly disable. But for that you need to go editing registry of your operating system. On the Downloadsquad website you'll find the line below like an alternative to registrar editing. Just copy the line and paste it in a command prompt. (To open a command prompt you need to type cmd in Run dialog box, to show this dialog box type Window key + R).

 

regini HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" = REG_DWORD 1

But this warning i find sometimes useful. I start to download a little bigger file, and may be I do not have enough space on the disk, and this warning will make me find some space before the downloading process is finished or download the file on a different drive. So it is your choice to disable the warning. I didn't do it on my computer, because it shows not so often, and it still appears useful to me.

Choose your vista

What sould can do the new OS on your computer? If you want this new OS be Windows Vista, you'll find some information about the product and its versions in the new ExtremeTech article. Depending on where do you use it you can choose a home edition or a Home Edition(Basic or Premium), or a Enterprize/Business edition. All the features are included only in the Ultmate Edition, but from my own experience, I know most of the times users are disabling some of the features, so maybe you don't want them all and you better choose an other version, I don't know yet about the behavior of this OS on 32 or 64 bits, but soon we'll found out.

.The article Which Vista Edition is Right for You? on ExtremeTech.

Holiday theme for XP users

Here is a nice Windows XP theme, the Brief Description from Microsoft site say "A Christmas desktop theme with new wallpaper, animated cursors, new icons, new sounds, and a 3D screensaver."

You should try it, and enjoy, feel the Christmas atmosphere. Download it here, install then apply the theme(right click on desktop, go to Properties, the first tab Themes - you are in it i think, choose the Chistmas Theme and hit the Apply button).
Windows XP Cristmas Theme

Drawing a car using Paint

Not everybody could do that, but I it is interesting to see how it is possible to draw such a nice car using such a simple tool. Watch it here.

Critical Firefox hole allows password theft (IE - FF | 1 : 0)

Vulnerability lies in browser's Password Manager software

A flaw in Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox browser makes it easy for cybercriminals to steal user information on Web sites where users create their own pages, such as MySpace.com.

The flaw lies in Firefox's Password Manager software, which can be tricked into sending password information to an attacker's Web site, said Robert Chapin, president of Chapin Information Services Inc. For this attack to work, attackers need to be able to create HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) forms on the Web site, something that is allowed on blogging and social networking sites.

The attack was used in a MySpace phishing attack reported in late October. In that attack, users registered a MySpace account named login_home_index_html and used it to host a fake log-in page that exploited the flaw.

This page sent MySpace username and password information to another Web site, and MySpace users who visited the page using Firefox could have easily had their information compromised, said Chapin.

Firefox developers rate this bug critical, according to an entry in the project's Bugzilla database.

The flaw arises because Firefox's Password Manager does not perform a thorough enough check when it is deciding whether to send password information, and then does not ensure that password information is being sent to the server that requested it, Chapin said. In the MySpace attack, for example, Firefox would check to see if the form was coming from the MySpace.com domain, but did not make sure that the password information was being sent back to a MySpace server.

"From a programming point of view, this is almost like a typo," he said. "Ironically I think that's why it hasn't been discovered until now. It was just way too obvious."

Chapin has posted an analysis of this type of attack, which he has dubbed a Reverse Cross-Site Request, as well as a demonstration of how it works.

Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE) is also susceptible to these type of attacks because, like Firefox, it does not ensure that password information is being sent to the same server that requests it, Chapin said.

But IE is less likely to be tricked because it does a more thorough job in checking to see where the log-in form is coming from before it automatically submits password and user information, he added.

[good news]No Office 2007 shutdown switch - says Microsoft

Microsoft has no immediate plans to add a controversial Windows Vista anti-piracy feature direct to its Office 2007 suite (so.. hurry), but will consider offering it as an add-on, the company said.
Microsoft revealed that although it has not built its Software Protection Platform (SPP) into Office 2007, it is considering adding it to its Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program, a validation system that checks if a user has a legitimate copy of the software. Office 2007 was released to manufacturing earlier this month, and will ship on December 1.
Windows Vista's SPP feature requires users to activate the software with a valid activation key within 30 days of purchasing the OS (but it will be some good guy that will find a way to avoid that). If that does not happen, the OS goes into reduced functionality mode, which lets users browse the web for an hour before the system logs them out. To browse more, users must log in again, but they will only have another hour before the process repeats itself.
Office 2007 does have a product-activation feature similar to SPP. Product activation requires the system to be activated with a product key after being started 25 times. If it is not, the application will go into reduced functionality mode.