Many know for a fact that the transition from Windows XP to Vista was a major step for most. The heightened system requirements to run all that eye candy were immense-even if Vista only just slightly out performs XP.
People therefore turned to Microsoft’s next planned operating system, Windows Seven as the answer to speedy computing with system requirements equal to Vista’s and (hopefully) not a whole lot higher.

Today the Now retired Bill Gates had this to say about Microsoft Windows Seven:

We’re hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I’m very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone, so those scenarios connect up well to make it a great platform for the best gaming that can be done, to connect up to the thing being done out on the Internet, so that, for example, if you have two personal computers, that your files automatically are synchronized between them, and so you don’t have a lot of work to move that data back and forth.

Huzzah…The people rejoice?
…Not just yet-Its early days,

As most of you know Microsoft launched their Popfly Game creator today. Its an online tool for creating web based games similar to the casual games you’ve probably wasted hours playing when you should have been studying/working/eating/sleeping- Now you can waste hours making the games as well

I wont go on about it because its all over the web but for more info on the api etc check out this blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ben_anderson

However the real reason I am writing this post is to show you some funny videos made by Microsoft Channel 10 for the popfly launch. The videos are small rip off’s of some popular games including:

• Halo
• Punchout
• Mario
• Tetris
• GTA
• Frogger
• Pong

Here’s The Halo one but check out the rest of them here: http://www.on10.net/blogs/tina/Popfly-Game-Creator/

watch?v=DVanGGz3R30

Earlier this week I published a post regarding a vulnerability in several versions of Microsoft Windows…
…Well the vulnerability is now being executed-there is another round of Mass SQL injections going on which has infected hundreds of thousands of websites running on the IIS platform.

Preforming a simple Google search for traces of the malicious script results in over 510,000 modified pages.

With more and more websites using a SQL back-end to make them faster and more dynamic, it also means that it’s crucial to verify what information get stored in or requested from those databases - especially if you allow users to upload content themselves which happens all the time in discussion forums, blogs, feedback forms etc. Unless that data is sanitized before it gets saved you can’t control what the website will show to the users. This is what SQL injection is all about, exploiting weaknesses in these controls.

Currently the malicious file that is being injected is 1.js however it must be noted that this could change at any stage. Visitors to this website are “treated” to 8 different exploits for many windows based applications including AIM, RealPlayer, and iTunes. DO NOTvisit sites that link to this

After months of being left in the dark after the first release of Microsoft Ultimate Extra’s for Windows Vista’s Ultimate edition Microsoft surprised us yesterday with some new content.

I admit – surprised is sort of the wrong word used to describe my feelings for the latest batch of Ultimate Extra’s…
But nonethe less - Get ready to justify Ultimate’s large price tag because today we were gifted a few cheesy Windows sound effects, some language packs and a couple more mediocre Windows Dream-scene wallpapers.

…Sure in the past we were rewarded with Texas Hold’em Poker as well as Windows Dream scene, with promises of more to come but the latest instalment has left me with a bitter taste in my mouth-I think it’s time Microsoft woke up and actually fulfilled their promise and take care of the little guy!

…But who knows, perhaps its just a Taste of whats to come?

The WoW Starts now?

Added Feature?: Windows Live Photo Show NOW appears in the list of apps to which sound events may be added. New sound effects to come?

After investigating public reports, Microsoft has published Microsoft Security Advisory 951306, which describes a vulnerability that affects multiple versions of Windows (including Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2, all supported versions and editions of Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and Windows Server 2008.)

The newly found security flaw could potentially allow a malicious local user (who has authentication) to execute specially crafted code to raise his privilege level to LocalSystem. IIS and SQL Server are the main attack vectors. But other vectors are possible, such as Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) on Windows Server 2003.

The vulnerability looks like it basically allows for any process that has the SeImpersonatePrivilege to execute some code and be able to impersonate LocalSystem (which has the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SID and a wealth of privileges in its token). For Windows 2003 and beyond the users awarded that privilege are in the Network Services, Local Services, Local System, and Administrators groups. On Vista/Server 2008 you additionally won’t have the privilege unless you’ve elevated. That fortunately reduces the scope of this otherwise highly serious vulnerability, though it still isn’t pretty.

It must be noted however  Microsoft stated in its advisory that- “Hosting providers may be at increased

Ever since i made the change to Vista I have noticed that the browsing of network folders  on my network was slow-with OR without connecting through a domain (esp When browsing Windows Server 2003 shared folders).

When opening the network folder your computer displays straight away but there is  5-6+ second wait before other network computers & shares are displayed…

So what to do? The fix involves changing two settings from the command prompt. You need to run the command prompt as an administrator. You can do this by right-clicking and selecting run as administrator. Type in the following commands:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
netsh int tcp set global rss=disabled

You will need to restart your machine afterwards. The difference is night and day. I wonder what the reasoning was for not having Vista set like this out of the box?If you are unhappy with the changes you can restore the default settings with

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
netsh int tcp set global rss=enabled

 I saw this fix over at Excalibur Partners