Ramblings of an old Doc
DrJBHL's Articles » Page 52
June 10, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Just what it says. The critical patch is for IE to prevent a remote code execution vulnerability in IE 6-10. Make sure to get this one. The vulnerability is related to phishing bringing the victim to a website where the vulnerability would be exploited. The others are patches for Office 2003 and Office for Mac to patch vulnerabilities in them. Here’s what to expect:   Source: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-jun
June 9, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Many in our community as well as outside it have visual impairments from one cause or another. Among adults, diabetes is the most frequent cause, but there are others. This invention works for all causes and is completely noninvasive. Although it was designed for people with vision loss, it might help those with dyslexia and those with memory loss. OrCam will understand what information is wanted by the user just pointing his/her finger: A label, a street sign, newspaper articl...
June 8, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Gifs were all the rage, once. Sometimes a child’s or a pet’s antics are caught on video, and you’d love to condense it down and maybe add a cute comment. You could certainly do it in the animation section of Photoshop (and add fades/pans/titles/text/music) but not everyone has CS5 or 6. Also, maybe you’d just like a cute little gif, and nota Pixar masterpiece. So, QGifer will import a vid and gives you very significant editing capabilities quite similar to Ph...
June 6, 2013 by DrJBHL
  I wonder what on earth the NSA is doing. All phone records (not the content of the calls themselves, nor the caller’s identity) including numbers dialed, duration of calls, location data, unique identifiers all are being handed over on an ongoing basis to the NSA. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Miami ordered this in April 25th, for a three month period ending July 19th. This means that whether you are suspected of wrongdoing or not, your records are being analy...
June 5, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Very recently, the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property released an interesting (if 84 page long) report on preventing theft of IP. You can read it here: http://ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_052213.pdf It’s interesting because it proposes the use of malware to prevent theft. In other words, they suggested that malware (spyware, rootkits, ransomware and Trojans) can be deployed to test your computer for pirated software and lock it until you ...
June 4, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Great. Yahoo has joined the Empire. Your “New” Yahoo Mail will now scan the contents to bring you “relevant” ads. Who knows what else it will do (check this out)?  “When you upgrade, you will be accepting our Communications Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. This includes the acceptance of automated content scanning and analyzing of your communications content, which Yahoo! uses to deliver product features, relevant advertising, and abuse prot...
June 2, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Popular? Well, according to Neowin the free app has seized second place among the free apps the W8 Apps Store. Interesting as it only launched a few weeks ago. Anything with the name Photoshop is going to garner some interest, but this is a phenomenon. It might have something to do with the Photoshop meme, or getting something for “free”. So, I figured I’d give it a spin to see what the deal was. You can find it here: http://www.photoshop.com/tools/expresseditor ...
June 1, 2013 by DrJBHL
  The Justice Dep’t. filed a secret lawsuit against Google to try to force it to give up user data without a search warrant: This after a different court ruled the process unconstitutional. There’s nothing short of the First and Fourth Amendments at stake here. This is yet more fallout from the Patriot Act. The Federal prosecutors are truly determined to keep the “right” to warrantless searches of your data. Google is just as determined to prevent it, terming t...
May 31, 2013 by DrJBHL
  This is especially for beginners. Unless you’re a Ps/Ai/Id/Ae/Dw etc. guru, you can profit from this free 5 days of totally awesome. Lesa Snider – Photoshop, Jack Davis – Graphic Design, Khara Plicanic – InDesign, and on and on. These are awesome teachers, and I learned my Ps from Lesa Snider on a program similar to this, only it was three days of intensive CS6 that left me eternally grateful to her and the wonderful folks at creativeLive who make these event...
May 28, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Just saw this on The Chive, and found it fascinating. This artist merges science and art. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is her name, and she deserves a “Bravo!”. She picks up chewing gum, cigarette butts, hair, etc. (some of that etc. could be on the yucky side), and takes samples from them to a DIY biology lab. There she extracts the DNA, and prints out the result. About 30 parameters are then fed into a 3D printer from a program she customized, and a face is printed out. ...
May 26, 2013 by DrJBHL
  This one comes via my son. PhoneClean is a cool, free utility which should be used occasionally to clean up your iOS device and return it to its former peppiness. If you have an iOS device (as in the title), go to http://www.imobie.com/ and learn about this freebie here: http://www.imobie.com/phoneclean/ There’s a user guide here: http://www.imobie.com/phoneclean/guide.htm There are many other guides accessible from the homepage or, you can take a look at t...
May 26, 2013 by DrJBHL
  This is a handy little program for those who wish to modify the W8 boot. As far as I can tell, it should live peacefully with Stardock’s W8 programs, but if not, it can be saved on a stick for times you’ll be asked to fix someone’s W8 computer. It’ll give you rapid access to legacy settings which you’ll need. I published another article today before I discovered this gem through gHacks (thanks, gHacks!). Hope the Wiz and others find this useful....
May 26, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Well, I didn’t buy W8, and am not using it, but there are folks here who do so, “This Bud’s for you!”. One of W8’s features is an amazingly rapid boot. Actually, it’s a “hybrid boot”: a cross between hibernation and booting. But, let’s say you’re having a problem which you need “Safe Mode” to solve. How can you do it in such a rapidly booting environment? F2 and F8 time periods are reduced to really tiny periods. According to the MSDN blog, “ the interval wherein Windows wa...
May 25, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Chasys Draw IES (CDIES) is as the title says, a new and free image editing suite for Windows. According to its dev it’s built on three pillars: “Character (no Photoshop imitations here), Performance (fast, efficient and stable) and Innovation (new techniques and out-of-the-box thinking).” – J.P. Chacha It’s made of four modules: “Chasys Draw IES is a suite of applications including a layer-based image editor with animation, icon editing support and sup...
May 23, 2013 by DrJBHL
  Computer scientists at the Technion (Haifa, Israel) have developed and actually constructed a molecular transducer: “Scientists developed and constructed a molecular transducer, which is an advanced computing machine. This molecular computer was built entirely of biomolecules, such as DNA and enzymes that can manipulate genetic codes. This unprecedented device can compute iteratively, namely, it uses the output as a new input for subsequent computations. Furthermore, it produ...