Multipleplatforms

GNOME Desktop Repaire
Gentoo and SuSE Linux have patches available for the flaw that exist in the GNOME desktop identified early this week by Secunia according to a report in CNET. These are the same vulnerabilities we notified you of yesterday; the open source community knows how to respond to security issues, quickly.

Free Stuff: Card Reader
This freebie comes from PC Connection via Free After Rebate.com, a 3 port USB 2.0 hub and a 9 in 1 card reader for the cost of shipping only. This is a nice addition to your peripherals if you are looking for a card reader as the three USB 2.0 ports are an addition anyone can use.

Apple Tip of the Day: Use Expose Within an Application
Today the tip is located at the Apple Pro Tip of the Week site and involves using Expose within an application, the trick is to use F10 to utilize the power of this application.

PC Tip of the Day: Customize Your Mouse and Pointer
Following up on this weeks theme of customizing your PC for you, visit Microsoft’s Support site to learn the tricks you can use to make your mouse and pointer more user friendly.

What is an I/O Port?
According to Wikipedia, “Nearly all processor families use the same assembly instructions for both memory access and hardware I/O (see memory-mapped I/O for details). However, Intel microprocessors have assembly instructions (IN and OUT) that are used specifically for hardware I/O. These instructions figure out which hardware device to communicate with using the concept of an I/O port or machine port. These ports are numbered based on which hardware device they refer to.

Intel microprocessors generally allow one octet (byte) to be sent or received during each instruction. The hardware device decides how to interpret data sent to it and what data to send to the processor. For example, a common use is to ask a hardware device which byte (in a data transfer) it will be sending next.”

Feeding Frenzy
In an ironic twist and somewhat like sharks in a feeding frenzy, adware (AKA spyware) competitors are working to knock each other out in the ever-increasing process of tracking computer surfer’s habits. According to CNET, the rivals are even including code to eliminate the other company’s ads as the battle escalates.

Spyware Killer
If you have tried everything and the kitchen sink to rid your PC of spyware, PC World has an article with advice and links for a free removal tool, HijackThis. Make sure you read this article before attempting to use this tool to avoid making a bad situation worse.

More Reasons to try Thunderbird
Mozilla.org has released their email client, Thunderbird 1.0 and MacWorld lists several good reasons to switch to the latest open source offering including the better security and HTML is rendered by Mozilla rather the Internet Explorer, making your mail viewing safer.

Open Source Tip: Slackware
Slackware is another open source choice available at LinuxISO.org and they have this to say about the distro: “Description: Since its first release in April of 1993, the Slackware Linux Project has aimed at producing the most "UNIX-like" Linux distribution out there.”

PC Tip of the Day: Background Change
You can change the desktop background on your Windows PC via the control panel. To learn the secrets of changing the background, visit Microsoft’s Support site.

Apple Tip of the Day: Dock Your Favorite Web Site
You favorite web site can be a click away if you place it in your dock. Open your web browser and surf to the site you would like to save, like Multiple Platforms.com, then triple-click on the URL and drag it to your Dock on the Trash side of the dividing line. When you want to visit the site next time, you can just click on that icon in the Dock and surf away.

What is a Network Port?
Yesterday we featured a hardware port and today the spotlight is on the definition of a network port, and Wikipedia has this on that, “A network port is an interface for communicating with a computer program over a network. Network ports are usually numbered and a network implementation like TCP or UDP will attach a port number to data it sends; the receiving implementation will use the attached port number to figure out which computer program to send the data to. In TCP and UDP the combination of a port and a network address (IP-number) is called a socket: e.g. the list of well-known ports (computing)