Larry Seltzer

There were anonymous, nonspecific reports this week that a corporate license code for Microsofts Windows Server 2003 had been released on the Internet. This product has been released to manufacturing and is planned to release to the public later this month, but beta versions have been in wide use for some time. Observers fear the […]

I was helping a very non-technical friend of mine with his computers recently, and I asked him if he was interested in setting up a home network. He was putting computers in his daughters rooms, and I figured theyd want Internet access. I offered free setup and even some free equipment. He declined because hes […]

The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache HTTP Server Project announced version 2.0.45yesterday. Several low-profile features are introduced in the new version, along with several bug fixes, the two most important of which tackle security problems. The details on a denial-of-service vulnerability will not be revealed until April 7, apparently to give administrators time to […]

Microsoft loves to make things programmable. Its one of the companys great strengths and, since everyone got connected to the Internet, one of the things that gets it into trouble. The first serious discussion of the over-programmability of Microsofts products (to my memory) came in the wake of the Melissa virus in 1999. Why does […]

Click! Click! Click! Thats the sound of my 2.4GHz Siemens Gigaset phone system when my 802.11b wireless network is nearby, especially in some parts of the house. I actually dont notice it so much, but people I talk to complain. My range on the phone and wireless network is also greatly diminished when both are […]

Viruses may be more powerful than ever, but so is antivirus software. Read PC Magazines Review of Personal Antivirus Tools to see which is best.

That free software youre downloading comes at a price: It may surreptitiously install extra software that tracks your browsing habits. Read PC Magazines review of spyware removal tools and do something about it.

The Sendmail Consortium has released version 8.12.9 of the Sendmail Mail Transfer Agent (SMTP server) after a serious vulnerability having to do with the parsing of addresses was prematurely revealed by a third party. As explained on the Sendmail site, the address parsing problem was a buffer overflow with potentially serious consequences. The advisory does […]

Theres something new in Microsofts latest security bulletin. The vulnerability disclosed in the bulletin applies to Windows NT4, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The company announced, however, that options for fixing the former are limited: “Microsoft tested Windows NT 4.0 and Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition. These platforms are vulnerable to the denial-of-service attack; […]

I had trouble recently sending e-mail to a relative of mine. At first I just assumed he was blowing me off, but eventually I found out he was using a whitelist: He defined a list of e-mail addresses from which he is willing to receive e-mail, and e-mail from all other senders is dropped. People […]