Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

I have been having some trouble with comment spam lately. We use Mollom, a great ser vice that works well with Drupal and stops most spam. However some spammers are getting more clever – and at the same time very stupid. They are putting more realistic comments in and getting past the text analysis – but as there are  no links allowed they are kind of stupid. The comment doesn't gain them anything – just fills my comments with rubbish.

So now all anonymous comments require approval – and I can bulk delete the time wasters spam. If you have a legitimate comment to make – and you are encouraged to do so – either log in to make it, or realise that it will go into my approval queue for checking.

So to all my legitimate readers and commenters – thanks for participating. And to all the spammers  go away – there's nothing for you here!

Thanks for reading.

Got lots of things to share today.

Starting off with Windows 7:

• Engineering Windows 7 have listed a bunch of changes made to Windows 7 since the Beta was released.
• They have also written a very interesting article about how they built the Windows 7 Boot Animation.
• The Windows Team Blog has a list of the new Windows Media Centres features in Windows 7.

Crossing to Windows Home Server we have these posts:

• Susan the SBS Diva blogs about Backing up the desktops in a small network.
• Windows Home Server Team link to an article about synching two Windows Home Servers using SyncToy. I use Synch Toy a lot to keep numerous folder pairs synchronised. Combined with Livemesh this makes keeping the data between my server and my clients servers synched a cinch!

Now over to Microsoft Office:

Security vulnerabilities were announced today in Microsoft Excel and also in Drupal.

See the Official MS security advisory (968272), and the explanation by ars technica.

Our advice for now would be to be EXTREMELY careful when opening any Excel spreadsheet, Word document or PowerPoint file that is emailed to you. Rule of thumb – if you don’t know the person who set you a file (any file) NEVER open it. If you weren’t expecting the file from someone you do know then email or call them and ask them if they sent you it and if so what it is BEFORE opening it. I trust that MS will release the appropriate patch shortly.

The Drupal security vulnerabilities have been announced on the Drupal website and upgrades and patches released for both version 5 and 6.

For our Jethro Consultants Web hosting customers this means an immediate patch for those who are on maintenance contracts with us, and for those who are not they pay us by the hour to apply. We get to those as soon as we can. We are also busy upgrading our own websites.

More interesting things I have found since yesterday.

Australian residents can go in the draw for a Windows 7 T-shirt courtesy of Long Zheng.

And if you are running Windows 7 some important news about the UAC. – especially take note of the the last paragraph which says:

Update: I’d also like to reiterate, until the RC build of Windows 7 is available, everyone using the Windows 7 Beta should change their UAC setting to “max” to ensure they are safe from either UAC vulnerabilities.

Following is the letter I wrote to Mr Stephen Conroy today. He is a Federal Senator. Senator Conroy was appointed Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy on 3 December 2007.

He is proposing a “clean feed”. The current webpage for this policy at the ALP is “offline”. Here is the plan for cyber safety that has on page 2 the intention to provide a mandatory clean feed.

And here is the EFA Australia’s analysis of the plan and why it wont work.

In light of the furore that has erupted around the nets with this proposal I have written a letter to Mr Conroy.