Microsoft has officially unleashed the Xbox Experience, or NXE, upon Xbox 360 owners everywhere, and it's... well... interesting.

Yesterday, millions of Xbox 360 consoles were given the opportunity to "transform", as Microsoft calls it in their press release.  Personally, I'm thinking that the average user will just think of it as a new GUI.  Microsoft added a tonne of new functionality in what looks to be an effort to attract more users to the product, instead of pleasing the masses of existing users.  The new Xbox Experience contains a completely redesigned GUI that adds a more cartoony feel to the console.  I wasn't personally impressed by it.

The worst part is that the Xbox Media Center Extender still doesn't support the DivX codecs that are already on the console from the last update.

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In a move that is sure to rattle the cages of their competitors, Microsoft has decided to drop the price of their consumer security suite by 100%.  Yep, it's going to be free.  Now you can be protected and you can keep your $49.95 for other things, like groceries.

The Windows Live OneCare service is actually a bundle of protection products that includes antivirus, antispyware, firewall, wireless networking security, and online identity theft protection.  This free deal kicks the pants off of the ZoneAlarm deal I posted this morning. 

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Well, it's Tuesday and that means for today only, you can download ZoneAlarm Pro for FREE!

Yes, you read that correctly!  To celebrate the 15th aniversary of Check Point (the company behind ZoneAlarm), they are giving away a one year subscription to their flagship security software free of charge.  The package normally sells for $39.95 for a one year subscription.

The download location for the free ZoneAlarm Pro package will go live at 6 AM PDT.

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On Tuesday AVG Technologies released an update for their AVG 8 antivirus product that falsely detects a Windows XP system file as a virus.  Specifically, it sees the file as a Trojan horse and users who delete this file are in for a shock.  Their system may enter into an infinite reboot loop, or worse, not even boot at all.  AVG immediately released a follow-up update that contained a fix for the false positive detection.  Users who are experiencing problems should acquire the fix tool from AVG.

The good news is that the update only affects AVG 8 products running on Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and French versions of Windows XP. 

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Here we go!  The first non-beta release of FreeNAS has hit the web.  The much anticipated 0.69 RC1 version is finally here and I'm revved about it.  Some of the updates that I find the most exciting are the UPS email notifications, traffic graph improvements, and the quixplorer file system browsing.

The upgrade steps are the same as usual, if you are using the livecd version like I am.  Simply power-down your FreeNAS server, remove the old cd, then put in the new cd and power back up.  The livecd will detect that an older version was in use and update your configuration files.  That was easy.

If you are looking for more info or help on FreeNAS, check out my previous post Review: Learning FreeNAS by Gary Sims.

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As submitted to http://acanac.org/blogs/geek/

GPS is quickly becoming a staple of the modern automobile.  I'm not sure what the stats are, but it seems that just about everyone has a GPS these days.  And why wouldn't they?  GPS is a great tool that helps us know where we are and figure out where we are going.  With play by play instructions, paper maps have become obsolete.  Again, where is the downside?

The downside is in the companies that produce them.  My GPS came with my car.  It's not built in, in fact, it's a Magellan Maestro 3210.  It was a freebie from General Motors for my purchase of a Chevy Colorado this summer.  As an aside, I love my truck.  That being said, the maps in the GPS are limited to Canada only for some strange reason.  To make matters worse, they are from the first quarter of 2007.  That means that they were a year and a half outdated when I received it. 

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Two Microsoft Security Bulletins have been released for November's Patch Tuesday.  Don't let the small number fool you, one is ranked critical and the other is ranked important - the two most serious rankings a security bulletin can be tagged with.

The critical patch affects XML Core Services in Windows and Office, while the important patch only affects Windows.  As usual, if exploited, the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution.

Patch up people!  The patches will be made available through Windows Update on November 11.

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend Microsoft Tech Days 2008 in Toronto and let me tell you, it was a blast.  The basic summary of the event goes something like... Microsoft tried to bridge the gap between developers and IT pros and for a last minute event, they did manage to pull it off.

The events were supposed to be more like training sessions and each lasted between and hour and an hour and a half.  Having taken sessions from both the MSDN and the TechNet streams, I can tell you that the MSDN side did a much better job at pulling it off.  Let me explain.

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Core Security Technologies says it has discovered a new critical security hole in Adobe Reader that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer running the software.  This newly found vulnerability affects Adobe Reader version 8.12.

Essentially, an attacker could embed malicious JavaScript code inside of a PDF.  According to CNET News, "Once the file is opened, the code could manipulate the program's memory allocation pattern and trigger the vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of that user."

Sadly, a CoreLabs researcher discovered the vulnerability back in May, however Adobe has yet to patch this hole.  Similar vulnerabilities have been found in Adobe software in the past.

Well, I finally made the time to finish reading Learning FreeNAS by Gary Sims, and I must say that I was very impressed with this book.  The simplicity of the name truly lends itself to the content of the book - simple, yet precise.  This title is packed solid from cover to cover with useful information for everyone from the beginner to the professional.

The content of the book is laid out in a very logical and intelligent manner, paving the way for easy navigation.  Many sections within this book appeal to the very novice user, such as a basic explanation of Network Attached Storage (NAS) and how it can benefit your organization.  The good news though, is that the author prefixes such content with a notification advising you that more advanced users can skip ahead to the next section.

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