Interesting, albeit a bit weird – Google will change its name to … ALPHABET. Ok, then.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technologyinvesting/why-google-is-renaming-itself-alphabet-and-how-it-affects-you/ar-BBlCTqN?ocid=spartandhp#page=2
Critical Windows Security Flaw and Fix Released
Microsoft has released a major Critical Windows Security Flaw and fix. By critical, I mean they went outside of their normally rigid ‘patch Tuesday’ [twice a month] schedule and released this fix on-the-fly, so to speak.
From Mashable:
“The flaw is in the way the Windows Adobe Type Manager Library handles OpenType fonts. In practical terms, if someone running Windows visits a website that contains embedded OpenType fonts or a specially crafted document, an attacker could execute code on his or her computer.
“An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of the affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights,” Microsoft wrote in a security bulletin.”
The Windows update tool in modern Windows OS can handle this.
D-Link Wireless Camera FTP Storage
We had a few break ins in the neighborhood recently so I decided to set up an outdoor surveillance camera. But I needed to upload motion detected videos to an FTP type of site. So I had to provide for video file storage for an outdoor WiFi based security IP camera. I will use a D-Link video camera and a cloud based location to store the videos. As this is for home use, there is no server. I used to have servers at home, but nowadays, I work off Azure or other Cloud based companies and it is no longer needed or feasible: the server is cloud-based. Besides, home servers are too loud, although I when I had them at home, they were pretty nifty ;>
Anyway – here are the home Surveillance Video Project specifics!
Add Disk Space in Windows Hyper-V Server
Need to extend or add disk space to a Virtual Machine? The wonderful thing about virtual server technology is that disk space can be added super easily. The days of purchasing extra hard drives of any sort online and then installing them in a server are slowly coming to an end. Now disk space can be added, or extended in this example, through virtualization technology.
The following applies to extending a current virtual disk drive to Server 2008 R2 or 2012.
SQL Server 2008 Database Mirror Setup Fails
Sometimes setting up Database Mirroring or Replication from one database to another for disaster recovery or fault tolerance etc. can be tricky. I ran into an issue where the mirror kept failing, even after the full backup [from the Principal] and restore [to the Mirror] of the database and most recent transaction logs completed successfully. I encountered ‘handshake failed’ and encryption algorithm errors.
It was indicated in Event ID’s 1474 and 1433.
Fascinating! I elaborate on a resolution here.
Windows 10 is Free and Available
I got this interesting Windows 10 alert or notification on my Windows 8 laptop / tablet. I have to admit, it is intriguing, but for the time being I will hold off. The update alert is seen here:
Theme directory “twentyfifteen” does not exist
WOW, that was scary! I just went into my WP-ADMIN to update some Plugins and the theme [I heard there was an update @ 4.2.2], and I ended up losing my site: we are talking full on, white page, so a screen shot would not really do justice to how scary that is. There was no error code or message in site. Is this a “White Screen of Death”? I had the 2014 WordPress theme installed, nothing more except a few plugins. I did notice before trying to update WP 2014 that 2015 was sitting there unused, and I checked the box. Big mistake [?]. I guess I really should have simply removed 2015 altogether until I was ready to move to it or not checked the box. But shouldn’t we be able to update both the 2014 AND 2015 theme, without taking the site down? Lesson learned!
I also ended up with this rather ugly message in the Themes WP-Admin area upon finishing the themes updates:
“theme directory “twentyfifteen” does not exist”
Yikes! Site down, and limited options! Did I mention I am NOT USING 2015. I guess by checking both boxes, the assumption by the application is I wanted to upgrade to 2015.
I panicked and started searching frantically over at my friend, the Google search engine. Unfortunately, none of the fixes applied to my situation and some did not work for me. The fix was surprisingly easy, but I admit I ‘rolled the dice’ on it, as I was not sure if I would lose my site for good, or at least until a full reinstall. [I DID have some backups of the content].
I was still able to get into my http:// sitename/wp-admin so at least I had that going for me. Gratitude! I went into the Appearance and themes area, which is where the ugly message was showing and I added the 2014 theme back. I reinstalled it. This all happened so fast, I had to do it twice – sorry but I am not sure why this was necessary, but the WP 2014 site indeed came back!
Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Packs a Serious Punch
Yahoo is reporting the Microsoft plan to truly boost Surface Pro 4 power specs. It looks like it may be delayed a bit, but will be a force to reckon with, if specs are of importance.
“The device is supposed to pack some serious high-end specs, according to Venture Capital Post, including two size options (12-inch and 14-inch) with 2K resolution displays, Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processor options, 16GB of RAM and a stylus. However, these specs are yet to be confirmed.
Actual pricing details for Microsoft’s rumored laptops isn’t available at this time, but the Surface Pro 4 should be more expensive than the recently unveiled Surface 3.
A few days ago, Microsoft quietly announced the Surface 3, a 10.1-inch Windows tablet that costs just $499 and will be upgradeable to Windows 10 later this year.
A fall release for the Surface Pro 4 would likely mean a launch in line with Apple’s new iPads. In fact, Apple is rumored to launch a larger iPad of its own, the 12-inch iPad Pro, which might compete directly against Microsoft’s Surface Pro line.”
Internet Explorer 11 Crashes on Windows 8.1
It’s so shocking when you have a brand new ASUS Windows 8.1 hybrid touch, keyboard laptop, but standard web surfing CRASHES continuously. Who expects this? Probably not Apple users.
Anyway, I have Internet Explorer 11 on this Windows 8.1 ASUS. I love it, I really do.
But one thing I noticed is that if I open up a Word Document off OneDrive, for example, and keep that Word document sitting around for a while, then my Internet Explorer will crash!
If I do NOT have Word Documents opened, no crashes. Weird!
So, a workaround is to close Word documents in order to surf the web without crashed. But is that the best solution? No. Word should be able coexist with … Internet Explorer. For the record I am using Word as part of Office 2010. I may try to edit documents online (using Office 365) as the default – this may resolve the issue long-term. At this point, I still prefer using the locally installed Word but I cannot handle IE crashes and restarts. So, another real fix is this: go into Internet Explorer’s Internet options, into Programs – you can see there is an HTML editing option. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY edits web pages in Word [the default]! Microsoft Word is the king of standard and advanced document editing, but it is not used for editing HTML pages. I do not care what anyone says otherwise ;>
So, do yourself a favor and change this to Notepad. This will not eliminate certain other types of crashes, for example, PISS POOR design on websites – something all too common these days. But it will go a long way to stop many crashes.
Adding a Server in Netikus Event Sentry
I am a big fan of Netikus Event Sentry for monitoring of servers and their services, as well as whether they boot up … or go down. Recently on a few new servers, I noticed I kept getting an error upon trying to deploy the Event Sentry agent: “The network path was not found”
It looks like a little work needs to be in the local advanced firewall on the target server, as it is blocking the agent. Once I opened the advanced firewall, I enabled all the Inbound “File and Printer Sharing” related rules, except the
