Blumer.com.ar

Demonoid torrent was shutdown last fall. For those who don't already know, Demonoid is back up. Looks like they found a new host for the Web site and the tracker is functioning properly as well. For those with old accounts, all the old data has been saved. It's almost as if they never left.

Demonoid is an invitation only community. You can only register by invitation. So, we are giving free invites to all our readers. Just add your comment and I will contact you. Hurry, there's no many invites left ;-)

Productivity

AbiWord (download)
Tired of expensive, slow, bloated word processors? Download this surprisingly powerful freebie, which includes sophisticated features such as mail merge and advanced layouts. The program handles a wide variety of document formats, including those of Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, OpenOffice.org, and other programs.More...

You just picked up the latest issue of PC World that has a DVD full of trial software, games and shareware stuff. Then you learn about a software that can "predict future" and install it the same day.
Well, there's no harm in installing or trying out new software, the problem is that they occupy tons of space on your computer's hard drive and there are fair chances that you won't ever run these "shareware software".
And not just software, you computer drive is clogged with temp files, duplicate mp3 and images, software installation logs, movie files that are saved at multiple places, etc, etc.
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Microsoft today announced the availability of Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update. The company has also posted the upgrade to its download site here.

 

"Today, you can now download Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update," Microsoft Product Manager Nick White wrote on the company's Vista blog Tuesday morning. "For those of you eager to receive the benefits of Windows Vista SP1 -- you can now do so!"

The release was not unexpected; text on Amazon.com discovered this weekend implied the download would be available March 18, with the retail product being released March 19, although the mention of the download has since been removed from the shopping site.

Microsoft has released Vista SP1 for five languages: English, Spanish, German, French and Japanese. Updates for other languages are expected to start rolling out in April.

SP1 releases are typical milestones for Microsoft products as many IT shops wait until the first update before deploying. Vista's update comes a little more than a year after its initial release.

According to Microsoft, the SP1 update is designed to improve Vista's reliability and application compatibility, among other changes.

In his post, White also commented on the driver issue that initially delayed the early release of SP1 to IT professionals. "We've completed our analysis and are happy to report that many of these issues were fixed between the release candidate (RC) and the final version," he wrote. "We identified a small number of device drivers that may be problematic after an update from Windows Vista to Windows Vista SP1."

A list of drivers that may still cause problems with the upgrade is available here (scroll down). White also recommends reading Knowledge Base article 948187 before installing the upgrade.

For now, Vista SP1 is an optional download; it will become a forced upgrade starting in "mid-April" on any computers that have Windows Update set to automatic download.

Microsoft's Singularity operating system is now open to the public for download, under a Microsoft academic, non-commercial license. Inside is a fully compilable and bootable version of what could be the basis for the future of Windows, or maybe simply an experiment to demonstrate .NET's capabilities. Singularity, if you'll recall, has gained wide interest from researchers and users alike, by claiming to be a fully managed code kernel (with managed code drivers and applications as well), something that would finally revolutionize the operating system research arena. The
project is available on CodePlex.

http://www.codeplex.com/singularity

The Cult of the Dead Cow hacking group has released a free tool that turns Google into a point-and-click vulnerability scanner.

Cult of the Dead Cow, or cDc, an old-school hacking crew famous for its anti-censorship stance, has shipped a new tool that turns the Google search engine into an easy-to-use vulnerability scanner.
Taking its cue from Johnny Long's Google Dorks—search queries that reveal sensitive information—cDc's new Goolag Scan pushes the envelope even more, offering a stand-alone Windows GUI-based application to power the searchers.
The open-source program comes with about 1,500 custom Google search queries embedded by default to run searches for vulnerable Web applications, misconfigured Web servers with open backdoors, sensitive user names and passwords, and other documents accidentally exposed on the Internet.
"It's no big secret that the Web is the platform," said Oxblood Ruffin, a spokesperson for the hacker think tank. "This platform pretty much sucks from a security perspective. Goolag Scanner provides one more tool for Web site owners to patch up their online properties.
"We've seen some pretty scary holes through random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe and the Middle East. If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large Web site, I'd be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday. The vulnerabilities are that serious," Ruffin said.
The utility ships as a .Net program that can be manually configured to power Google queries for specific servers or for an entire set of domains.
For example, a business can ask Goolag Scan to search for vulnerable servers or "files containing juicy information" on all its Web sites, turning the scanner into a useful auditing tool.

Windows Vista SP1, which began rolling out via Automatic Update, has left some users' machines unbootable. The update loops forever on "Configuring updates: Stage 3 of 3 0%
complete. Do not turn off your computer." "Shutting down"... restart and loop. Echostorm notes having found traces of what sounds like the same bug in early beta releases of SP1. It's unclear how many users are affected. So far there is no word on a fix from Microsoft.

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/showpost.aspx?postid=2848906&siteid=17

Project Dakota is a easy way to update Windows XP.
It is a CD that contains all the updates found on the Windows Update Website, including Service Pack 2, with a small standalone programs that run the updates in the order specified by Microsoft according to the order set by Microsoft.
It also includes common programs found on most computers such as Adobe reader, Spybot S&D and Quicktime.

http://www.theatticnetwork.net/dakota.php

There's a growing revolt among Microsoft TechNet & MSDN subscribers who are frustrated that they can't yet get Vista SP1 and test their software on it. This can't be good news for anyone hoping that SP1 will have better compatibility. While SP1 has been released to manufacturing, and pirate copies are easy to find, Microsoft is withholding it from subscribers until early March. According to the article, some frustrated users are upset enough that they plan to abandon TechNet entirely and turn to piracy.According to the Technet blog, they have pushed up the date to before the end of February, though no exact date is mentioned.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9061838
http://www.google.com/search?q=vista+sp1+tpb
http://blogs.technet.com/technetplussubscriptions/archive/2008/02/11/technet-plus-sp1-availability-update.aspx

You may have seen reports of Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 floating on the net by now. I stumbled a couple of links and torrents on several discussion boards but most of them are either RC1 (Refresh 1), Fakes or just plain old Trojans. Surely, a lot of people doesn’t want to wait several days to get a hold of their own copy and install it on there system.
For couple of days, the only people who can get a valid Vista Service Pack 1 are some beta testers and people who have an MSDN accounts. Luckily, several people made this available to the general public, so you don’t need to wait until March to get a hold of Vista Service Pack 1. You have two ways on getting the Service Pack.

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Officially, only a few thousand lucky Microsoft Windows beta testers have their hands on Windows Vista SP1 today. However, somebody leaked the script used by the beta testers to enable their systems to install Vista SP1, so now you can download it (or create it) and use it to get your own copy of Vista SP1 beta via Windows Update.

Overview of the Process

The process includes the following steps:

1. 1. Download or create a script that adds two registry keys to your Windows Vista system. If you don't want to download the script, the folks at Softpedia provide the script code in plain text so you can see what it does. Copy the text and save it to a command file (.cmd) with Notepad or another text editor.
2. 2. Open a command prompt with administrative privileges on a system you use for Windows Vista testing (remember, you're going to install a beta of a service pack, so be smart and don't risk breaking your everyday system). To do this, right-click the command prompt shortcut (by default, it's in Accessories), select Run as Administrator, and provide the needed credentials.
3. 3. Run the script you downloaded or created in Step 1.
4. 4. Run Windows Update and install the KB935509 update.
5. 5. Reboot.
6. 6. Run Windows Update again and install the KB937287 update.
7. 7. Reboot.
8. 8. Run Windows Update again and install the KB938371 update.
9. 9. Reboot.
10. 10. Run Windows Update again and install the Vista SP1 beta. Keep in mind that according to some users at My Digital Life, you might need to wait an hour or so before the Vista SP1 beta shows up in your list of available updates.

You Can Get Vista SP1 Beta Now, But Should You?

After working with (and being worked over by) Windows Vista betas during the writing of Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed and other Vista books I have contributed to, I'm not personally keen on spending time with another Windows Vista beta. Users around the web report wildly different impressions - some report better performance, but others report a mixed bag of results. As with any beta, your mileage may vary. And keep in mind that just in case you're tempted to forget you're running a beta, installing the SP1 beta puts a removable evaluation version number stamp on your desktop.

A wave of bugs in the plug-in technology used by Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser has some security experts, including those at US-CERT, recommending that users disable all ActiveX controls.
The U. S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, put it bluntly in advisories posted in the last two days: "US-CERT encourages users to disable ActiveX controls as described in the Securing Your Web Browser document," the organization recommended.
US-CERT's advice was prompted by multiple vulnerabilities in high-profile ActiveX components used by members of Facebook and MySpace and by users of Yahoo Inc.'s music services.
Three new vulnerabilities in the photo uploader software used by both Facebook and MySpace were disclosed yesterday by researcher Elezar Broad, who on Monday also posted sample attack code for a pair of critical bugs in Yahoo's Music Jukebox. Last week, Broad had pinned the Facebook and MySpace ActiveX controls with two other flaws. All five of the Facebook/MySpace vulnerabilities originated with an ActiveX control developed by Aurigma Inc.
As the number of vulnerabilities mounted, security professionals began ringing the alarm. On Monday, for instance, Symantec analysts urged users to "use caution when browsing the Web" and told IT administrators to disable the relevant ActiveX controls by setting several "kill bits" in the Windows registry.

US-CERT, however, offered up more aggressive advice as it recommended users move IE's security level to the "High" setting, which completely disables all ActiveX controls. Setting IE's security level to 'High' disables all ActiveX controls. To get here, select Internet Options from the Tools menu, then click on the Security tab. Click Internet at the top for the zone, then move the slider up to the maximum.
"That's the easiest way to protect yourself," agreed Oliver Friedrichs, director of Symantec Corp.'s security response group. "But it can also have an adverse impact on your browsing experience." A compromise, said Friedrichs, would be to disable "only those plug-ins that pose a current and imminent threat," such as the flawed ActiveX controls used by Facebook, MySpace and Yahoo.
Disabling individual ActiveX controls, however, requires editing the Windows registry. That's too scary for most home users to contemplate, but business users are another matter. "That approach is hard to argue against in the enterprise," said Friedrichs, who noted that there are tools available that let corporate IT administrators push registry changes -- including new keys that disable specific ActiveX controls -- to all users.

The SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center acknowledged that setting kill bits is beyond the ken of most users; one of its researchers came up with a graphical interface-based tool that sets and clears the kill bits of six ActiveX controls that have been tagged with bugs in the past week. The free tool can be downloaded at the ISC's Web site. The SANS Institute's free 'kill bit' tool provides checkbox-simple settings to disable half a dozen ActiveX controls. It's much easier than monkeying with the Windows registry.

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Submited in a comment today. The project looks great. So, we are giving it its own place:
Welcome to the .NET Mass Downloader project. While it’s great that Microsoft has released the .NET Reference Source Code, you can only get it one file at a time while you’re debugging. If you’d like to batch download it for reading or to populate the cache, you’d have to write a program that instantiated and called each method in the Framework Class Library. Fortunately, .NET Mass Downloader comes to the rescue!

http://www.codeplex.com/NetMassDownloader

A team of Russian hackers has found a way to decipher a Yahoo CAPTCHA, thought to be one of the most difficult, with 35% accuracy. The Russian group's notice, posted by one "John Wane," is dated January 16. This site hosts a rapidshare link to what looks to be demonstration software for Windows, and quotes the Russian researchers: "It's not necessary to achieve high degree of accuracy when designing automated recognition software. The accuracy of 15% is enough when attacker is able to run 100,000 tries per day, taking into the consideration the price of not automated recognition " one cent per one CAPTCHA.

http://internetcommunications.tmcnet.com/topics/broadband-mobile/articles/18772-yahoos-captcha-brokenis-spam-tsunami-the-offing.htm
http://network-security-research.blogspot.com/
http://www.0x000000.com/?i=502
http://rapidshare.com/files/84243632/YahooCAPTCHARecognition.rar.html

A free software tool that promises to strip down the Windows Vista operating system -- which even some Microsoft officials have called "bloated" -- to a minimalist state is attracting big interest on the Internet.
vLite, created by developer Dino Nuhagic, automatically removes a number of non-essential Windows Vista components in order to pare the OS's heavy footprint by half or more.
vLite allows users to preselect numerous Vista features for automatic removal prior to installing the OS on their personal computers. Among them: Windows Media Player, Windows Photo Viewer, MSN Installer, Wallpapers, SlideShow, Windows Mail and other utilities.
"It's not just about hard disk space. There is also an increase in OS responsiveness and you don't have to tolerate all kinds of things you don't use," said Nuhagic, in an e-mail to InformationWeek explaining why he launched the project.
vLite, however, isn't for the technically timid. The software warns that the changes it imposes on Vista are "permanent, so be sure in your choice."
Nuhagic said he doesn't know exactly how many downloads vLite has seen -- but a forum that asks users to submit suggestions for the next version has drawn almost 50,000 views.
The emergence of tools like vLite reflect the frustrations voiced by many computer users over Vista's bulk and resource requirements.
Loaded with an abundance of features and tools designed to ease navigation and bolster security, the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Vista both require a whopping 15 GBs of available disk space for installation. By contrast, Windows XP -- Vista's predecessor -- requires 1.5 GB of available space for installation of the Professional version.
With Vista bearing a footprint 10 times larger than XP's, even Microsoft officials are expressing concerns about Windows' growing waistline. Speaking last year at the University of Illinois, Microsoft distinguished engineer Eric Traut said the operating system had become bloated.
"A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system. That may be a fair characterization," said Traut.
In response to such concerns, Traut said Microsoft has adopted a new, modular approach to OS development that will yield more streamlined products beginning with Windows 7 -- a successor to Windows Vista that's expected to be available some time in 2010.
The approach calls for Windows developers to use a bare bones version of the OS -- dubbed MinWin -- as the building block for their next programming effort. MinWin is built on about 25 MBs of data -- making it smaller than Windows Vista by an order of magnitude.
Until it's ready, there's always programs like vLite.

Microsoft Corp has released a new build of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to its invitation-only group of approximately 15,000 testers, giving weight to recent speculation that the final code is close.
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Windows Vista 32-bit version of the 16 multi-lingual user interface kits (MUI) official download links.

Chinese (PRC) language kits :
Download

Chinese (Hong Kong SAR) language kits :
Download

English language kits :
Download

Italian language kits :
Download

Spanish language kits :
Download

Swedish language kits :
Download

Japanese language kits :
Download

Portuguese (Brazil) language kits :
Download

Norwegian language kits :
Download

Dutch language kits :
Download

Finnish language kits :
Download

French-language kits :
Download

Russian language kits :
Download

German language kits :
Download

Danish language kits :
Download

Korean language kits :
Download

The open-source KDE desktop environment is making the jump across platforms with broad support for Windows and Mac OS X. The core KDE desktop programs, the KOffice suite, and the Amarok music player are actively being ported.
These efforts are largely made possible by the inherent portability of Trolltech's Qt development toolkit, the underlying framework used by KDE software. Qt is designed for cross-platform portability and even uses native widgets on both Windows and Mac OS X. Trolltech uses a multi-licensing model that makes Qt available under the GPL for open-source software development and requires programmers to buy a commercial license for proprietary development. Previously, only Mac OS X and Linux/X11 versions were available under the GPL, but Trolltech decided to make the Windows version available under the GPL too with the introduction of Qt 4. This finally opened the door for porting open-source KDE applications to the Windows operating system.
There are also several key technologies in the KDE 4 stack that make the desktop environment more conducive to porting. The most notable of these technologies are the Phonon multimedia abstraction layer and the Solid hardware wrapper library, which are both described in my recent review of KDE 4.0.
The KDE development community's adoption of CMake is another major factor that has contributed to the increased portability of the desktop environment. KDE's build system was previously based on Autotools, an intractably arcane and grotesquely anachronistic cesspool of ineffable complexity that makes even seasoned programmers nauseous. The migration to CMake instantly simplified portability issues because CMake has very robust built-in support for generating makefiles for widely-used compilers on all three major operating systems. CMake can even automatically generate project files for commonly-used IDEs like KDevelop, Visual Studio, and XCode.

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SOMEONE upset with the growing size of the popular "Nero" cd and dvd-burning application decided to take matters into his or her own hands, and released unofficial "Nero Lite" and "Nero Micro" versions.

I remember the time when Nero -which seemed to come bundled with almost every decent CD-writer at some point- was a small and efficient application. It basically "got the job done", with a solid engine and decent interface. In the last few years, however, the size of the beast grew considerably, with the latest build 7.7.5.1 -released last month- being a 190MB download that does not include help files and which in addition lists "1 GB hard disk space" for a full install among its requirements. What used to be a small CD and DVD burning application now is a huge suite composed of the original "Burning Rom" plus: "Nero Express", "Nero CoverDesigner", "Nero WaveEditor", "Nero Toolkit", "Nero Vision", "Nero Recode", "Nero PhotoSnap", "Nero BackItUp", "Nero ImageDrive" and a few others I'm probably leaving out.

The "Nero Micro" installer

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MySQL has been bought by Sun. Right now there is only a brief announcement but it discusses what the acquisition will mean for the core developers, community etc.

Scott Gu just announced it: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code

Overview of Windows Vista Service Pack 1

This white paper presents an overview of Windows Vista SP1 and the improvements it contains.

Notable Changes in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate

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(PCWORLD.com) Web apps that transcend the Web. PCs that redefine what a PC can do. And oh yeah, a certain cell phone you may have heard of. We pick 25 breakthroughs that you can get your hands on right now.
Make no mistake, the Web is taking over. Applications are moving to browsers en masse, and technology to take Web apps offline promises to smooth the road ahead. And let's not forget breakthrough devices advancing the Web-anywhere world: Apple has redefined the phone, and One Laptop per Child's sub-$200 laptop is delivering Internet-style collaboration to kids in developing nations. But innovation isn't all on the Web; the PC is evolving as well. Apple has reenvisioned backup, HP has created the first useful touch-screen PC, hybrid hard drives boost speed and battery life, and ultraportables have become even more useful. Chosen from the hundreds of products we reviewed in 2007, here are 25 that will change the way you work, communicate, and play this year--and beyond.

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Every once in a while, a piece of software so clearly outclasses its peers that it deserves special commendation. For this article, I've assembled my 15 favorite downloads of 2007, selected from a wide range of categories--everything from antivirus and security tools to system tweakers, from media managers to system speedups.

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Predicting trends is fraught with difficulty. Throwing caution to the wind, five leaders in software development offered what they expect will be major trends in 2008.

Two themes cut across fields. Outsourcing will continue to affect more people, and testers, business analysts and project managers will need to learn how to face the challenges of distribution. Also, agile development will increase in popularity, and testing and requirements engineering will need to find their places in this environment.

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