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Nitesh Dhanjani, doesn’t post as often as most others do on the O’Reilly blogs, but when he does, its always good. Take today’s for instance. Want to see the power of the newest un-patched (as of this writing) expolit of Windows’ “Picture and Fax Viewer Metafile Overflow Vulnerability”? Nitesh shows you the way…Exploiting the Windows XP/2003 Picture and Fax Viewer Metafile Overflow Vulnerability

I’m not going to bother quoting it. You can click the link if you want. But its truly interesting, powerful and scary for those of you that have Windows boxes at home. (I don’t by the way [insert Nelson from the Simpsons laugh]).

Now don’t go and do anything bad with that ok?

Editor’s Note: We are trying out a couple of new things with this post. The first thing is “tips” for different random computer things for our less techno-savvy readers (and maybe some of the savvy ones too.) The second thing we are trying out is a new writer, who’s name is sadly Mike, so that we’ll have to do something about that.

Since Dan and I can’t seem to shut up about Macs all the time, we thought it would be nice to have the first tip be about Windows. Enjoy.

Change the registered organization and/or owner of XP

Okay so you bought a used PC from someone and it still has their name under the General Tab on the System Properties. It can be annoying to see someone elseís name on there when it should be yours. After all, you own the PC. Maybe the PC belonged to you and a significant other that you are no longer with. Now you can get rid of that name and add yours with this tip.

Please use this Registry edit at your own risk. You should make a backup copy of your Registry everytime you change registry files.

• Open the Start menu, click on Run, then type regedit and click OK.
• Find the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion.
• Find the string value RegisteredOwner, then right-click Modify and edit the value. This is the value where your name goes.
• Click OK.
• Find the string value RegisteredOrganization, then right-click Modify and edit the value.
• Change this value to the Organization that you belong to if this applies to you.
• Click OK, exit the Registry editor and reboot your system.

Now your name will be displayed in the System Properties as it should be. I know this tip really isnít useful as it quite pointless, but at least now you can change the name of the Owner and/or Organization of your PC. You can see from mine that I changed it to Tardmonkey. This is an easy edit for this type of thing.

Now that the holidays are so close you can smell them, I think most of us could use a little refresher on how to take better photos. So here is a nice little article from PushStop.com on how to do just that.

If we could just all follow these tips, flickr could be a much better place.

Link: Better Holiday Photos

Remember the band Presidents of the United States of America (P.O.T.U.S.A)? You know “Lump”, “Peaches”…just try to pretend you don’t have that CD stashed away somewhere. I have it, I love it, and I still listen to it all the time. Well they are back! Back with new video shot entirely with camera phones.

One of the blogs over at O’Reilly has a great interview with the band and some technical stuff on how and why they shot a video with camera phones. Its a cool idea with a cool implementation. P.O.T.U.S.A is back and they are as tech savy as ever, hopefully their new music will be just as cool.

..then maybe you won’t be so ashamed to rock out to “Peaches” later tonight.

Well its happened. It was just a matter of time. It actually took longer than I thought. FrontRow, the application from the new iMacs, has been hacked to work on all Macs. It also didn’t take long for all kinds of media popping up proving the fact.

- Here’s a video of FrontRow running on a Mac Mini.
- Here’s a flickr set about FrontRow running on a Mini.
- Here’s a how to on getting FrontRow on the mac of your choice.

Can we all now assume Dan will be up tonight getting it to run on his Mini?

Via TUAW

Why is it that really smart guys that find out a cool new way to do something have zero skills or desire to make a decent website? Maybe a crappy site makes it seem like you are just too smart and you just don’t have time to waste on making a site for your creation, you must move on to that little cold fusion thing you have going in the basement. Either way, Doug Burbidge figured out how to take a VGA signal and send it over cat5 cable and he made a crappy site explaining how to do it.

According to his site he has achieved 800×600 resolution over 50 feet with his VGA to cat5 setup. That is pretty damn cool. Other than a neato video wall of monitors, I really can’t think of a use right now, but I’m sure there is something.

Via Hack a day

How’s about three “How To” posts in a row? Ok, great idea! Here’s another one:

Derek at Uneasy Silence has written a little PHP script that translates the iTunes links to regular links so that one could download videos from their servers.

Let me explain. The iTunes Music Store has music videos that you can play, for free, through the iTunes program (Which is really just a specialized web browser.) Well, Derek found the way to translate the links that are used in the store to links that you can access with any broswer (like Firefox)

So if you want to download any of the music videos on iTunes, just right click on the “Small” or “Large” links and copy them. Then head on over to his translator and paste in the link. It will then hand you back a regular link to download that Kelly Clarkson video you’ve had your eye on! Right? …Just me? Ok then, download whatever you want, but your missing out!

Link: How-To: Download music videos from iTunes

I realize that no one really comments much on here. I always thought that it was because I say everything so wonderfully and completely that there is nothing for anyone else to add…or this site sucks. Turns out I was wrong on both counts! Maybe no one comments on any posts (other than the infamous Armstrong article of course) because no one knows how to do it correctly.

Lifehacker to the rescue with their post: Lifehacker’s guide to weblog comments
Here’s a quick tidbit from the article that I hope everyone out there starts following. It doesn’t happen on this site, but it happens a lot of other places and it is annoying as hell.

Don’t comment for the sake of commenting.

Commenters who only say “First!” or “Nice site” on an open thread have no business hitting that “Post” button at all. Further, only spammers comment for the sake of adding their name and URL to a web page. Useless comments will gain you the reputation for being a useless commenter.

Go read the article, empower yourself with the knowledge of how to comment correctly, then forget it and run out there and get as many “First Post!” comments you can get!

kuro5hin.org has an article up on “How To Shuffle and Cut a Deck of Cards One-Handed”. Its a well-written piece that shows how to both, shuffling and cut the cards, with one hand. Its a nice little trick. Too bad none of the other people you are playing poker with will be able to see it, with you playing Party Poker in your parents’ basement and all.