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I was looking for a tool that would allow me to diff two directories last week, so I could try to see what a patch was changing. The top result and a quality product was WinMerge, an open-source application that can find differences between directories and then merge them together if you want.

WinMerge is hosted by SourceForge and has its own webpage at WinMerge.org where you can learn more about the program. To find the differences, you just launch the program and start a new comparison. Select one directory for the “left” and a different directory for the “right”. You can also choose compressed files to compare against and filter things by file name or file extension. When you’re all set hit Ok.

The results may take a minute to calculate depending on the size of the directories and when it completes, it will look like the screenshot below. You can sort by any of the attributes and see which files are different in the comparison result column.

After the comparison, you could elect to merge the two directories and deal with the conflicts where the files are different.

WinMerge helped me see that a patch wasn’t being properly applied, so I had to reinstall the update. Check out WinMerge.

The Browser Wars are in full swing with the new standards of HTML5 and CSS3 making their way into use. Some of the fiercest competitors are lingering old versions of the browsers. If you’re wanting to use a cool new feature, this site can help you understand which browsers will support it. The site currently lists compatibility for Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4 on Mac and these versions for Windows:

• Firefox 2, 3, 3.5, 3.6
• Safari 4
• Chrome 2
• Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8
• Opera 10

After continuing to receive additional spam daily through the same campaign that I posted here a week ago, I decided it was time to escalate things. It became apparent that the Unsubscribe link on these e-mail messages wasn’t doing anything. If the FTC enforced the CAN-SPAM Act this would be the proper venue and for now it’s about the only action that we can take.

You can find out more information about spam at the FTC’s website for it: www.ftc.gov/spam/

On the left-hand side, you can click ‘File a Complaint’ to move to the next step.

Checking Twitter tonight for more MediaTemple news, I saw the latest Tweets of those people I follow. Among that list was also a posting by a person I didn’t know, I didn’t follow, and didn’t follow me. This random person and random post just seemed to appear in my list without reason. Anybody know why or see this before?

I confirmed I wasn’t following them and have no acquaintance with them. Any thoughts?

It appears there is a malvertisement (malware being delivered through website ads) attack campaign in full force and after today I’d guess it’s on the up-swing. After having a number of people in separate physical locations report the exact same malware installed on their machine, things start looking bad. I’m never one for jumping to trends and hopping to conclusions, but I know what makes for a bad day. XP Internet Security 2010 is a Fake AntiVirus that will get installed on your machine and start reporting infections and trying to get you to buy it. (It’s a scam! Don’t give them any money!) The worst thing, however, is that the malware tools currently aren’t detecting it or able to remove the infection.

Last year, I ran in the 5K that accompanied the Illinois Marathon and half-marathon. I registered for the event ahead of time and used the online registration through Active.com. The event was fun and well coordinated. Unfortunately, months after the event, it wasn’t quite so coordinated.

On February 16th, the United States government participated in a war game that was different from any others in recent years. Moving from the conventional attacks, threats, and worries of the past this most recent war game started with our digital infrastructure. An app was downloaded by over 20 million smart phones called March Madness. This app activated a malicious bit of code right before this simulation began and proved itself to be a worm that spread to other phones through your contact list. Meanwhile, the president’s “cabinet members” (played by former senior administration and national security officials) have convened to advise the president and plan a reaction as more intelligence and news is presented in real time.

Wednesday, I was able to check off another one of those things on the ‘To Do at least Once in your IT Career’ list by degaussing hard drives. Degaussing a hard drive means using a device that generates a strong electromagnetic field to wipe the data on the drive. This is an important step that I’ve mentioned before in the ‘Before you Recycle/Garbage that Old Computer‘ article to ensure your security and privacy; it is also required for compliance with state law for my office. Normally, we would use DBaN but that could take 20 to 60+ minutes per drive depending on the capacity and condition of the drive. The degaussing process takes about 20 seconds per drive (5-10 seconds per side). Since another IT office had just got the degausser, I decided to take it for a spin and wipe 250 drives in the time we would normally be able to do 8 (good) drives with DBaN.