September 2002
Monthly Archive
Fri 20 Sep 2002
Ever wonder exactly what was inside of your computer? Well now you can .. Belarc Inc. provides a free utility that will analyze your system and dynamically create a webpage that outlines what you have in your system. While the program is not exactly new, I just learned about it recently and it is the most straightforward computer analyzer that I have found to date.
Things it reports: operating system, system model, processor, main circuit board, bios type, bios burn date, hard drives, avaliable space, cd-rom drives, dvd-rom drives, floppy drives, locate of RAM in system, number of available memory slots, amount of installed memory (in MB), drive partition information, logins in the system, network drives attached to system, printers, graphics card, sound card, network adapters, MAC address, IP address, USB devices, software licenses, and software versions.
Fri 20 Sep 2002
For anyone out there looking to spend about $1000 to build a PC, here are my component choices for the month ….
Shuttle SS40 - $310 - The Shuttle SS40 is an Athlon based Flex ATX motherboard housed inside a 200mm x 181mm x 280mm aluminum chasis.
AMD Athlon XP 2200+ - $143 - The Athlon is the price/performance leader.. period.
Crucial 512MB DDR PC2700 RAM - $179.99 - Great RAM, Great Price ..
Nvidia GeForce4 MX 420 64MB - $140 - An all around good card .. not a top performer, but very capable.
Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM HD - $112 - Lots of space & fast…
Toshiba CD-RW/DVD Combo - 16x CD-R, 10x CD-RW, 12X DVD and 40X CD Read - $85 - Plays any type of disc you throw at it .. can’t complain about that…
Total: $970 — this gives you $30 for other items (additional fans, floppy drive, etc..) as needed…
The final specs of the machine:
AMD Athlon XP 2200+, 512MB RAM, 80GB 7200 RPM HD, Shuttle SS40 mini-case design, 10/100 Ethernet, UDMA/100, 12X DVD, 16×10x40 CD-RW, CMI 5.1 Channel Audio, GeForce 4 MX Video, TV-Out, S-Video Out, FireWire, USB.
Lots of power, small form factor, $1000 … what more could you ask for? 
Fri 20 Sep 2002
Apparently all it takes to bring down a Microsoft Windows 2000 based server is a bad font file. According to MSNBC’s Bug of the Day website, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Advanced Server (all releases up to the current Service Pack 2 release) may create a blue screen of death if there is a damaged font file on the system.
Hmmm.. I wonder if this happens on a *nix based server .. uhh .. nope.
Wed 11 Sep 2002
On MSNBC’s Bug of the Day site, the following apps have been found to have bugs for the month of August..
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows 98
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft Windows ME
Microsoft Outlook 2002
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
Microsoft Excel 2000
Microsoft Excel 2002
Microsoft Word 2002
Microsoft Access 2000
Microsoft Commerce Server 2000
Microsoft Commerce Server 2002
Microsoft FrontPage 2002
Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions
Tue 10 Sep 2002
In this Infoworld article, Brian Valentine, Vice President of Windows Development stated that Microsoft products are not engineered for security. While this is simply obvious, it is rather interesting that the head of the windows development team would state this in public.
According to the article, there were no less than 8 security bulletins released by Microsoft with security issues in Windows. This month, there have already been two (so they are atleast trying to keep pace..)
Whats interesting is the article discusses “Trustworthy computing” an initative started by Bill Gates at the beginning of the year that included one month (Feburary) for fixing security holes. Since that time, service packs have been released and there appears to be just as many security issues then ever.
On the plus side, Windows isn’t the only vulnerable software that Microsoft produces. Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Exchange Server, Outlook, Outlook Express, Microsoft Office, Small Business Server, and Visual Basic (just to name a few) have had several huge exploits reported this year.. Check the site.. most of them are fairly recent (last few months)
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