Chad's News

Adobe PDF documents have security settings which can, among other things, prevent anyone from modifying the document. This is helpful, for example, when sending electronic copies of contracts for review. But it can also be a pain when the document needs to be changed but the password has been forgotten or the person who knows the password is no longer working for the company. The linked article has a solution that works in Windows systems: print the PDF to an XPS file (the XPS “printer” is automatically supplied by Microsoft), then open the XPS file and print it to a PDF file. This will give you an identical copy of the original document, but without any security restrictions.

Link: http://www.techrepublic.com/…

Back in April, Google updated its Cloud Print service, which allows you to print documents over the Internet from mobile devices. Now you can choose to print a document to FedEx Office locations—after choosing FedEx Office as the print destination, you simply go to any FedEx Office store, enter a code, and the document is printed right then and there. The second new feature is that you can print to compatible Android devices running the Chrome browser (the “printout” will be a PDF document that you view with Chrome).

Link: http://chrome.blogspot.com/…
(via Ars Technica)

The Denver metro area may be getting a diverging diamond interchange, where traffic temporarily switches to the left side of the road to cross a bridge. It will be where McCaslin Blvd crosses Highway 36, between the towns of Superior and Louisville. My first reaction is, “How can this possibly work without causing accidents?” But apparently it not only works but works better than more common interchange types.

Thanks to Josh for this link.

Link: http://www.dailycamera.com/…

In a post-9/11 world, attempting to hijack a plane, for any reason, is not the most intelligent thing to do. Yet six men did just that on a flight in China. They were overcome by the passengers and crew, with two of the hijackers later dying from their injuries. (Note that there is some disagreement about whether or not this was an actual hijack attempt.)

Link: http://www.foxnews.com/…
(via The Daily Caller)

The DNSChanger trojan infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide and changed their DNS server settings to point to rogue servers. (Your DNS setting tells your computer where to go to look up a URL such as www.chadsnews.com. Without one, you’re effectively shut off from the Internet.) The FBI shut down the source of the malware but realized that turning off those rogue servers would have severe effects for those who were infected—they would lose Internet access. So as a stopgap measure, the FBI set up real DNS servers to replace the malicious ones. This Monday (July 9th), however, the FBI is going to permanently turn off those servers.

The FBI has a webpage with instructions on how to determine if your computer is infected. I suggest taking a few minutes now to verify that your DNS is okay. If you’re infected, and even if you’re not, this might be a good time to consider using OpenDNS as your DNS provider.

Link #1 (PDF): http://www.fbi.gov/…

Link #2: http://www.kvue.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

I remember having to deal with leap seconds from my time in the military when I worked with satellites, but I never thought they’d affect down-to-earth things like websites. Yet that’s exactly what happened when an extra second was inserted at midnight on the evening of June 30th. Linux and Java didn’t handle the transition very well, causing affected systems to hang and thrash. As a result, several major websites went down briefly. Google, being on top of things like this, had its own plan for dealing with the leap second: the leap smear.

Link #1: http://www.wired.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Link #2: http://arstechnica.com/…

Here at Chad’s News, we have an entire category devoted to stupid criminals, but here’s an example of people just begging to be stolen from, primarily because of their inexperience with debit/credit card security. These people (mostly teenagers) have been posting pictures of their debit cards to social media sites, giving criminals everything they need to use the cards fraudulently. An unknown person, in an apparent effort to draw attention to the problem, has created a Twitter feed, @NeedADebitCard, that re-tweets such pictures.

Link: http://www.securityweek.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

If you’ve ever tried to change an icon under Windows (for a folder or shortcut, for example), the icon selection dialog defaults to the shell32.dll file. Admittedly, shell32.dll contains a lot of good icons, but sometimes you just need a better selection. Here’s a list of 17 Windows 7 files that contain an additional 1200+ icons (note: I imagine many of these are valid for other versions of Windows):

• C:\Windows\explorer.exe
• C:\Windows\System32\accessibilitycpl.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\ddores.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\gameux.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\imageres.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\moricons.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\mmcndmgr.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\mmres.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\netcenter.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\netshell.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\networkexplorer.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\pifmgr.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\pnidui.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\sensorscpl.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\setupapi.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\wmploc.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\wpdshext.dll

Link: http://www.techrepublic.com/…