Thankfully, my days of using chemistry in school are well behind me but I easily recall the frustrations of trying to type up a chemical formula or draw a compound. Once again proving that later generations have it easier than I did, Microsoft Research in partnership with Cambridge University have released an add-in for Microsoft Word that specializes in displaying … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2010
Exploit PDF Files, Without Vulnerability
A fully patched Adobe Reader and FoxIt Reader are currently capable of launching an executable embedded within a PDF while not making use of any vulnerability. Didier Stevens, a security researcher from Belgium, explained the exploit without publishing how to do it on his blog Monday. The trick doesn't rely on Javascript, which has been the culprit in many of the recent Adobe … [Read more...]
Microsoft’s Courier – The Next Gadget I Want
The Amazon Kindle is an interesting e-Reader, but it's too locked into Amazon's system and file formats. I prefer Sony's Reader as far as e-Readers go because they embraced open formats in response to Kindle's competition, but still it's a fairly limited function device. Apple's iPad does not interest me at all. HP's Slate is closer to what I would want, but it seems built for … [Read more...]
Ask 404TS: What’s up with “Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?” dialogs?
An interesting question has been posed on the 404 Tech Support forums asking about those pop-up dialogs you might receive every once in a while that start with "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?". The question also asks, "Are there any dangers related to this? Will it install malware? Is there a way to block it automatically?" These are very good questions … [Read more...]
Adobe Acrobat and PDFs with Foreign Languages
A user recently informed me that they were receiving an error message when they tried to view a PDF that apparently had Chinese characters in its text. The message they received was: The Simplified Chinese Language Support Package is required to display this page properly. Under the current configuration, this resource is not available. I was aware of the foreign language … [Read more...]