A new windows exploit has been discovered in the wild and the good folks over at Security Focus have a decent amount of information about it. In a nut shell this new exploit takes advantage of the WMF format (Windows Media File) to run malicious code on your computer with the intent to drop spyware or worse on your computer. Simply viewing the file is enough to trigger the exploit.

At this point Microsoft has released a security advisory about the issue, but at this point does not have a solution or patch for the problem. There is a temporary fix for the problem listed at Microsoft.

You need to unregister the affected files. Here are the steps taken from the microsoft website.

To un-register Shimgvw.dll, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type “regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll” (without the quotation marks), and then click OK.

2. A dialog box appears to confirm that the un-registration process has succeeded. Click OK to close the dialog box.

Impact of Workaround: The Windows Picture and Fax Viewer will no longer be started when users click on a link to an image type that is associated with the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

To undo this change, re-register Shimgvw.dll by following the above steps. Replace the text in Step 1 with “regsvr32 %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll” (without the quotation marks).

Fey

Update: Microsoft has finally released a patch for this vulnerability.. If you have automatic updates turned on (you really should) then you are probably already patched.. If not, head over to the knowledge base and get the update and install it manually..

Fey

Does anyone other than me remember the Drew Carey episode where Drew and his friends argue with Mr. Wick and his friends over who’s cult movie, Rocky Horror Picture Show vs Priscillia, Queen of the Desert is better?? Both great movies BTW..

Well I get the same feeling when I see some of these SEO “discussions”.. There is always room for some debate when it comes to SEO because there are certain facts that we will just never truly know.. But lately it seems that some of these discussions have taken on a sureal aspect.. There have always been these types of arguments on the ‘net, but to see them in supposedly professional forums instead of the latest zero day board is always interesting to me. .

Take the recent discussion about the Google Sandbox over at WebProWorld or the current discussion about Hidden Divs, also at WebProWorld.. Reading these threads with no other knowledge of who the people in the discussion are, would you trust any of them with your site’s SEO chores?? They may be incredibly talented people, but the lack of professionalism and purely argumentative aspect that these threads take on, you have to wonder..

In a field with a lot of guesswork, and few hard facts, I can’t help but see in my head two groups of kids standing in the playground, going “nu uhh” back and forth at each other.. I suppose the only thing missing from these threads is having the posters dress up in drag and start doing the Time Warp..

Fey

Let’s fill this pig up!! Actually, I am in the bad habit of tossing pictures online in non searchable directories and then can never find what I’m looking for without logging in through ftp and scanning for that picture I need.. Yes, I am that sad.. So I tossed in a picture/video/audio gallery that may or may not see much use.. Yeah, Coppermine, yet another open source project..

Yes, I used a stock template.. Yes, some day I plan to integrate it visually with the rest of the site, but for now the stock hardwired works fine for me.. For now there are just a few pictures in there.. Mostly jewelry that I have made and designed.. I do a lot of design work for Images Jewelers but not a lot that is all me.. We do a lot of work by colaberation so it’s all part me, part Bob, part Joe etc.. The pieces here are all me.. I don’t get to work on the bench very often anymore so my bench skills are going to hell, but what’s a guy to do??

If you want to take a look - great! Leave a comment and let me know what you think.. I really do like to hear what people think about my jewelry work..

Fey

I put up another old web site this week.. This one features the wonder and joy that is Robotech.. If you don’t know what it is, there’s probably nothing here for you to see, for those of you that know it, you might like a few things I gathered up over there..

I found proof that the hero actually started his career as a pilot by killing an innocent civilian, and my first fanfic, the MinMei one, that actually got me some serious hate mail which I found absolutely hysterical.. But then at the RoboCon (yes I went like any good fanboy) there were some people there that had lost all touch with reality..

The site itself has a few old school tech ideas in it, some of them actualyl still work.. The Java Applet video player may squeel it’s ass off whel it loads so be prepared to grab your volume control, and there are some pretty bad midis playing through the whole site (hey that site hasn’t seen any love for more than 5 years).. But the ‘cool’ thing is the multiple onMouseOver call.. It’s not a big deal now, but this was one of the first sites that I’m aware of to use a single mouse over to control 5 different elements on the screen.. Hey, it was cool back then.. We could tell by how many people stole the code and left the written by tags in there..

Like the VrE Online site, I think it’s sort of cool to look back at a snapshot of what we were doing on the web years ago.. I’m going to use that as the reason to not ‘fix’ anything instead just being too lazy..

Fey

An interesting thread took an unusual twist at WebProWorld.Com this week.. Specifically this thread (now locked) discussing the possible existence of the sandbox effect at Google.. During the course of the debate I took it upon myself to prove the competitiveness of several search phrases, dual zone completions, xn nipple and rotating choking sleeve were just a few of the phrases.. To no real surprise we were able to force ourselves to the #1 spots with very little effort at all.. As far as I was concerned we had proven our point and were prepared to remove the page and use the domain for something else..

Then the surprise happened.. The SEO that we were able to outrank decided to threaten me specifically..

CrankyDave and Feydakin… I invite you to leave your spoof SERP page up without anyone linking to it or any other SEM whatsoever!

If there is any detectable SEM at all I will turn it over to the GOOG explaining the game and referencing this thread to get it removed.
…page 20…

At first I had intended to ignore the issue, but the problem carried on further..

I conceded that it was a great test even against my own SERP and offered to leave it alone as long as it was left alone. …page 21…

And further here

Most anyone could assault anyone’s clients for their SERP by going to various portfolio pages and playing with their top keywords and phrases if they really wanted to, at the risk of lawsuits. …page 23…

What started out as a debate about the existence of the google sandbox evolved into a series of veiled threats and claims of ownership of SERPs for certain key phrases.. Now, I may be a bit sensitive since I’m on the receiving side of this, but I was under the impression that the one group that controlled the SERPs were the Google algorithms..

This brings up an interesting debate in my mind.. Can a company or person actually claim ownership, or intellectual property rights, on key phrases?? Is this the new direction for SEO?? Beat me out of my rankings for any reason, spoof, testing, or genuine competition and I’ll take it to Google that you are beating me..

I would think that the obvious answer is that this is certinaly not possible.. But look at other things that we thought weren’t possible, an Aussie lawyer getting a patent on the wheel, Amazon getting a patent on one click purchasing, the list goes on and on.. Could this possibly be a vision of a not too distant future where search engine placements become a legal battle ground where you must show a valid legal reason (in someone’s mind) for targettting those words to be able to use them?? Would building a parody site that outranks the primary site see itself targetted for restraint of trade simply because it’s more popular??

Or will we see a new ICANN where SERPs can be challenged and a national committee will determine the suitable use for those phrases??

It scares me, how about you??

Fey

Many years ago I was part of a group that was really bleeding edge for a lot of things.. In ‘94 we spun off a game magazine called VrE Online.. For about 2 and a half years we published reviews on games and hardware on BBS’, electronically on floppy, and eventually on the internet.. It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot about a lot of things, especially game companies pulling advertising when you pan their games..

Since I’m starting this site all over from scratch I’ve decided to pull the archive of VrE Online out of the crate and put it back up, warts and all.. I haven’t bothered to fix anything except for a few show stopping URL issues.. I also put together a quick and ugly page with a complete list of all of the downloadable version I could find.. If you are interested in seeing where we started in the very early days of the web, the last update was in 1996, check it out over here at vreonline.feydakin.com..

I also need to thank a few of the people that really were a huge part in making the magazine happen.. Louis Stice, Andy Hardison, Jeff Godemann and Craig Crowder were there through some pretty hard times and made all of it bearable.. Thanks guys..

Yes, I have finally succumbed to the mania known as blogging.. Part of the reason was that I wanted to see just what everyone was finding so thrilling about blogging, part of the reason was to experiment with SEO tactics, and the rest was that I’m simply an Attention Whore that figures everyone wants to know all about me and I’ve had this domain for years and thought that maybe it was time I did something useful with it..

I don’t intend for this blog to be a marketing gimmick for all the projects I’m involved in, but you can expect to hear about them from time to time..

So now I’m off to tweak and massage to look and feel of the wordpress basic install, or maybe I’ll take the easy way out and just download someone else’s template and take a nap..