Posts Tagged ‘tips’

Dr. Who by Proxy Server

Posted: December 23, 2008 by datechguy in doctor who, tech
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The Doctor Who Christmas Special is only 2 days away. The Christmas countdown calendar is running out of features. If you are all excited by this there is some bad news , some good news, and some more bad news and some more good news.

The bad news is The Next Doctor will only be televised in England, the Good news is that the BBC usually puts up the video at the Doctor who web site to watch, the other bad news is that video is only viewable if your PC is in the UK. The good news is you can always use a proxy server.

A proxy server is basically a computer that stands between a machine and where it is going, for example if you are in a large business you likely have all your net traffic going through a proxy to try to block both virus and sites that your work doesn’t want you go to.

In this case you want to use one of the free proxy sites out there to find a server in the UK. When you set proxy values basically your machine will go out to the computer in question, and that computer will make the request. The BBC then see it as a UK machine and you can watch it.

There are several companies that offer proxy use to shield your IP from the net, that way the fact that you are surfing from your machine is hidden from the world. That is the advantage of an anonymous proxy server. The disadvantage is that speed will of course be decreased as every request has to pass through a particular machine at an unknown location. The pay sites will be faster than the free ones.

Just remember the machine you are passing through will now have a record of where you are going, so think and act accordingly.

A quick how to on how to setup a proxy in IE Connection tab under Lan Settings is here. You can set it in Firefox under Tools, Options, advanced, settings. The placing of the values are basically the same, but details are here.

If you want a quick preview of it now well your wish is my command, at least in this case;

And don’t forget to send the charity a fiver.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that for some of the calendar things also need the proxy server to play.

Update #2 My review of the Next Doctor is here.

The Much desired IE patch

Posted: December 17, 2008 by datechguy in amazon reviews, tech
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Microsoft has issued its IE patch. KB960714 contains the link to the patch necessary to block the IE exploit.

The Manual downloads are here, classified by the various types, or you can do an auto update here (IE required).

DO NOT WAIT TO DO THIS.

You have some patching to do

Posted: December 17, 2008 by datechguy in tech, Uncategorized
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This is job one Wednesday morning for you all:

Microsoft Corp. is taking the unusual step of issuing an emergency fix for a security hole in its Internet Explorer software that has exposed millions of users to having their computers taken over by hackers.

The “zero-day” vulnerability, which came to light last week, allows criminals to take over victims’ machines simply by steering them to infected Web sites; users don’t have to download anything for their computers to get infected, which makes the flaw in Internet Explorer’s programming code so dangerous. Internet Explorer is the world’s most widely used Web browser.

Well you shouldn’t worry, its not like Internet explorer has 89% of the browser market. Oh wait:

Microsoft said it plans to ship a security update, rated “critical,” for the browser on Wednesday. People with the Windows Update feature activated on their computers will get the patch automatically.

Well if you have your updates set to 3 a.m. and you leave the pc off then the auto update will not to squat for you. Personally I’d run a manual update and make sure that it is taken care of.

The download is not available yet, I’ll link to it as soon as possible but the recommended actions are listed here.

Of course you an always use firefox instead.

The patch is now available.

A flaw in IE. Who woulda thunk it?

Posted: December 16, 2008 by datechguy in tech
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You know the only thing that really surprises me after all these years is that every now and again I’m surprised by Microsoft security holes:

Users of all current versions of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer browser might be vulnerable to having their computers hijacked because of a serious security hole in the software that had yet to be fixed Monday.

The flaw lets criminals commandeer victims’ machines merely by tricking them into visiting Web sites tainted with malicious programming code. As many as 10,000 sites have been compromised since last week to exploit the browser flaw, according to antivirus software maker Trend Micro Inc.

I thought the yahoo page on my sister-in-law’s infected PC had a Chinese flavor to it. Guess I was right. This is what firefox is for.

And if you don’t have a secondary browser on your system. Get one, I don’t care which.

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