Last week their anti-virus product came last in a comparison of anti-virus products and failed to achieve accreditation, before that it wasn’t protecting Windows Vista users properly, this week it’s deleting entire mailboxes!
Microsoft has admitted that its Live OneCare security suite has been accidentally deleting some users’ Outlook and Outlook Express e-mails.
According to postings on Microsoft’s OneCare forum, erasures have been caused when the antivirus program finds a virus in an e-mail attachment. Instead of then quarantining that single e-mail, users have reported that entire .pst or .dbx files — the personal folder where non-Exchange Server users’ messages and other details are kept — have been quarantined or, in some cases, even deleted.
One user commented on the forum: “Is there a chance to recover it? If not, OneCare will have done more damage than any virus in my 30 years of active computing.” Forum postings indicate, however, that recovery is possible in some cases, where the .pst or .dbx file is still available in OneCare’s quarantine facility.
Stephen Boots, a forum administrator, commented that he was “very unhappy about this problem as it was reported over a year ago and fixed in the 1.0 release”, adding: “It never appeared throughout the beta, but suddenly appeared when 1.5 was released”.
In a statement reported on Computerworld, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company was “working to address an issue where the antimalware engine for OneCare is erroneously quarantining Outlook .pst files or Outlook Express .dbx files, when the .pst file or .dbx file contains an infected attachment”. The spokesperson added that a fix would be included in the next OneCare update, which is due on 13 March.
The update might be due out tomorrow, and maybe that will fix the problem, but how exactly did they manage to reintroduce that bug, months after getting rid of it?
More importantly, Microsoft have admitted that OneCare deletes Outlook and Outlook Express mailboxes, but what about other mail clients (Mozilla Thunderbird (my recommended email client) and Eudora for example) that also have to store emails somewhere…if OneCare is deleting the mailboxes of Outlook, surely it can delete the mailboxes of competitors’ email clients, but will Microsoft’s patch prevent that?
A few weeks ago I reported that Dale Sinden and Simon Foster, the two movie buffs of John Kerr’s New Day Australia now have their own show on Sundays between 6pm and 8pm, I also commented that the catalyst for the new show was the departure of former 2UE presenter Mike Williams who was apparently unsatisfied with his remuneration…whilst that may be the case, 2UE want to paint a different picture, as this extract from The Sydney Morning Herald explains:
Film recruits
When 2UE programmer Greg Byrnes was driving around after midnight a few weeks ago trying to settle his crying baby twins, he happened to hear overnight presenter John Kerr’s regular segment with movie buffs Dale Sinden and Simon Foster. Byrne was so impressed that he has now given the pair their own two-hour show on Sundays to discuss film. Sunday Night at the Movies is heard from 6 to 8pm and features new releases, DVD reviews, film trivia, a cult corner and soundtracks. The pair replace Mike Williams in the slot. Now Byrne just has to solve the problem of getting his children to sleep through the night.
May I suggest that instead of sleeping during the night, they gather logical thoughts from Clive Robertson? Oh…err actually no, that’s my bad habit…in fact when I rang Clive early this morning, his producer Abe suggested that I should really have been asleep.
Anyway, whatever the story is, a big congratulations to Dale and Simon, they are doing a great job, their show is quite possibly one of the busiest shows on 2UE and is an awful lot of fun. Needless to say, it is an awful lot better than the four hours of Sharina’s Psychic Boredom which follows them.
According to the logs, somebody landed on this website last week by searching for “promo presentation Powerpoint vacuum cleaner”.
This is the 56th result (6th result on 6th page) on Google for that search query.
Whilst I’m confused as to what this person was looking for, I’m even more confused as to why they followed the link to this site…the result seems to have very little to do with their search query, although as I said, I have absolutely no idea what they were searching for.
On Friday I promised details of the “full moon affected people” I encountered during my lunch break. Both of these people were encountered in the Weston Creek area.
I encountered the first one after I had ordered a creamy potato bake and a coffee to take away from a cafe in Cooleman Court (a small shopping centre for those of you not familiar with the area), I was waiting for my order and another man went up to the counter to place his order, one of the waitresses started to serve him, but he, instead of ordering, started telling her about how her photo was in the window, she looked, as did I, and there was nothing in the window, but he insisted…there was an awkward silence, my order arrived and I left. I have no idea what happened with him and his imaginary photo, but I doubt that he was served by the girl supposedly in the imaginary photo.
A few moments later, as I was crossing the road, a man who was crossing the road in the opposite direction decided to yell out, whilst right beside me, “large square people”, something which stopped me dead in my tracks, as I was completely dumbfounded, as were a few other people if their facial expressions were anything to go by. I did somehow manage to complete my crossing of the road and find somewhere quiet and sane to eat my lunch.
It’s been a while since I’ve had the perverse pleasure of writing about the strange people I seem to encounter, and despite the fact I’ve enjoyed it, I don’t want to have to do it again for a while.
Saturday was an interesting day on 2CC, the morning programming was an outside broadcast from Bunnings Belconnen, Steve Liebmann filled in for Glenn Wheeler in the afternoon. 2UE covered the New South Wales Waratahs’ rugby union match until 10pm, so 2CC ran local programming, with Kris McKenzie running what sounded like an incredibly well organised show, which isn’t something I’ve ever associated with 2CC’s rare local night time programming. 2CC should be proud of their Saturday night effort, and consider doing things like that more often.
The remainder of this week should also be interesting. During the breakfast show today somebody will win a holiday as part of 2CC’s “Cash and Holiday Mania” competition…I’m not in the draw as I opted to take the $100…that was before they told me I would have to wait until after the competition for the cheque to be mailed to me.
On the drive show, the proposed Tralee housing precinct will be the focus of a debate between someone from Canberra Airport (opposed to houses at Tralee), and somebody from the Villiage Building Company (wanting to build at Tralee). It will be an ad-free half hour and it should be an interesting debate…pity I can’t remember the names or the exact time. I can remember one of the names, but it would be very unfair of me to name one person and not the other.
Looking ahead to Friday night, and 2CC will broadcast their first Friday night NRL match, it will be live (sourced from 2GB) and will, as usual, be much better than the Channel Nine coverage. If you plan on watching the NRL on Friday night, mute the TV and turn on 2CC.
That reminds me, my (not to be trusted) footy tips start again this week…I’ll either put them online on Thursday or Friday morning.
Also, I’ve received a few emails about the radio reviews…I have a whole heap of recorded review periods to review, with the final one in the first round due to be recorded today. I will suspend further recordings until next week when the ratings period is over, and I will endeavour to get as many reviews done as possible in the interim.
Reverend Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Party has gone off his rocker again…this time calling for an immediate moratorium on Muslim immigration for ten years, so that we can bring more “oppressed Christians” in to the nation. I have no problem with either group, but I think any move to allow or disallow immigration solely on the basis of a person’s religion is not only offensive, but an incredibly big step backwards. Thankfully Reverend Nile is in the New South Wales parliament and has no chance of changing federal immigration policies.
New South Wales police minister John Watkins has made a big error, promising that Sunday’s closure of the Sydney Harbour Bridge so that people can walk on it for its 75th birthday won’t cause traffic gridlock, as experienced when the Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liners visited the harbour a few weeks ago. Mr. Watkins claims to have a plan to avoid traffic gridlock during the 4.30am to 11pm closure…but as fas as I can tell, that plan involves people leaving their car at home.
Two weeks out from the election and he make a stupid promise about Sydney’s volatile traffic…silly silly man.
In other Sydney traffic news, the Lane Cove Tunnel’s operators claim that the air quality in it has been verified to be good, but there won’t be any cars in their until after the election. A vehicle-free tunnel probably would have clean air in it.
There’s a storm cloud gathering over the validity of a claim from federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd that his family was evicted from their house when he was a child…what that has to do with how Mr. Rudd plans to run the nation is beyond me…back to the issues please. Even another ramble about how bad Labor thinks WorkChoices is would be more interesting than this nonsense.
The idiots at the top end of Telstra’s corporate ladder are threatening the federal government with the “mother of all class actions” if their competitors are allowed to build their own $3.6 billion national high speed broadband network…perhaps Telstra’s daft CEO Sol Trujillo has forgotten that he had a temper tantrum and decided to blame the government for his decision to not build his own broadband network. If, as one of Telstra’s annoying internal mottos claims, “anything.possible”, is it not therefore possible that Mr. Trujillo isn’t the right person to provide essential telecommunication services to the country, and should quit and take his bunch of executive crazies with him “done.now”? (to quote another internal motto).
That pretty much sums up what’s on my mind right now.
This week’s award goes to Reba McEntire, and the feature song is The Fear Of Being Alone.
We ordered up one more bottle of wine
You told me your story and I thought about mine
You said when you lost her you lost everything
It all started having a familiar ring
So I asked you to take me some place quiet
We wound up at the river for the rest of the night
Somewhere around the break of day
I could hear it coming from a mile away
So don’t say that word
Not the one we both heard too much
You may think you do but you don’t
It’s just the fear of being alone
Reckless hearts can clear a path
Wider than a hurricane’s aftermath
We’ve both traveled down that road
Where in the name of love anything goes
So don’t say that word
Not the one we both heard too much
You may think you do but you don’t
It’s just the fear of being alone
Like a child in the night
With no one to hold you
And tell you everything’s gonna be all right
I must admit it’s been fun
But that’s no reason to jump the gun
If this is real time will tell
So let me bite my tongue and remind myself
Don’t say that word
Not the one we both heard too much
You may think you do but you don’t
It’s just the fear of being alone
