News from the Top

Adobe has released security updates for Flash Player and Shockwave Player . The update deals with this security bulletin , a bug that an attacker may use to exploit older versions of the Flash Player, Shockwave Player, and/or Adobe Acrobat to take control of your computer system. An update for Acrobat Reader is expected before the month ends (Friday).

Karen, a friend of mine and also a mentor, will be riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge to raise funds for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, to support cancer research and therapy. She will be riding a 92-mile path from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts to Mass. Maritime Academy in Cape Cod. This will be her second year. Here’s what she says about it:

On August 1, 2009, I am again participating in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge. The PMC is a 92-mile bicycle ride to raise money for cancer research and treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, through its Jimmy Fund. Additionally, the PMC is the best fundraising effort of its kind donating 100 percent of every rider-raised dollar directly to the cause.

As you probably know, I made my novice run last year and was able to finish in 7 hours and 15 minutes (better than I thought) and raised $3,200.00 for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. At the time I was thrilled to have accomplished the goal in my sister’s name and in the names of all of your loved ones for whom you asked me to ride. (I rode with each name on my helmet as a tribute to their courage strength and memory.) – It was a wonderful experience!

As many of you know, my family has been deeply affected by cancer as my mother and sister both lost their lives to breast cancer. While their absence from our family continues to be enormously painful—everyday—and it was the feeling of helplessness and the need to do something which brought me to last year’s ride.

However, this year I will ride with a whole new awareness since little did I know that three months after last year’s ride, I would personally become all too familiar with the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the battle of fighting cancer.

With a December, 2008 diagnosis of Breast Cancer, my life has been altered in such a profound way that I can only describe it as my greatest fear coming true, my greatest challenge, and in the end my greatest opportunity…to truly live.

Last year, I was asked many times “why would you want to ride 92 miles in one day?” And my best answer seemed to be “why not?” It sure seemed like the right thing to do. While the ride was a wonderful experience for me, it cannot compare with the meaning with which I will embark upon this year’s ride.

Therefore, my ride, while raising money for research and treatment, will be above all be my way of saying “thank-you” for the care, support, encouragement and love that I received as well as a tribute to every individual affected by cancer…those who are survivors, those who currently struggle, those who are caregivers, and those who have lost their courageous battle but remain forever in our hearts and minds.

Nothing can compare with the grace, grit, strength, and courage with which so many have faced their battle with cancer and if you have ever said…“if only there were something I could do.” Well, the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge is what I can do and with your help, it can be so much more.

If you are interested in helping me meet my fundraising goal and provide support for cancer research and treatment, I would be most appreciative. To make a donation, there are two options available as follows:

Option 1: e-gifts

e-gifts can be made on-line using a major credit card by going on-line to http://www.pmc.org/egifts/ . To link your donation to me you should choose the first option: “sponsor one rider with one gift” and use my e-gift ID which is KW0102. (you can also search for me by name.)

Once you have entered my e-gift ID KW0102 (or name) click “search” the page will present Karen Ward – Marshfield, MA US and then you can enter the amount of your donation and credit card information.

Option 2: Checks

If you would prefer to send your donation in check form you can most certainly do that! Here is how.

Make your check payable to Pan-Massachusetts Challenge. Please do not make checks payable to me!

Send your check to me at my work address:

Karen Ward
SkillsUSA Massachusetts
250 Foundry Street
South Easton, MA 02375

I will collect all donations made by check and deposit them with the PMC. The PMC provides all riders with deposit tickets and mailing labels to insure proper deposit and connection to a specific rider. Again, please do not make checks payable to me!

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this email and thanks for your consideration of a donation to benefit cancer research and treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through its Jimmy Fund.

Oh yeah, I would also appreciate your kind thoughts on Saturday, August 1, 2009! I am sure it will be a long day but in the end well worth the effort.

You can also read more about her 2008 ride at this link.

We’re doing everything we can to block ads about that game, for a variety of reasons (stolen copyrighted content used in their game, NSFW ads, iEvony client practically steals your passwords, etc.)

They keep registering new domains as we add them to the filter. Google’s Ad team is aware of their practices but haven’t done anything public about it yet.

There’s a new security hole in Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Acrobat, where the attacker can exploit a problem with the Flash plug-in inside a PDF file to install malware onto your computer. Such malware could introduce viruses that could damage files on your computer, as well as install software that could capture your various logins and passwords, banking information, key codes for games, and credit card numbers

The problem currently affects Windows PCs only, and an update will be released by Adobe by July 31st, 2009. In the meantime, it’s recommended that you delete a file on your system to remove Flash capability from Acrobat Reader/Acrobat:

Deleting, renaming, or removing access to the authplay.dll file that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat v9.x mitigates the threat for those products, but users will experience a non-exploitable crash or error message when opening a PDF that contains SWF content. Depending on the product, the authplay.dll that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows is typically located at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\authplay.dll or C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0]\Acrobat\authplay.dll. Windows Vista users should consider enabling UAC (User Access Control) to mitigate the impact of a potential exploit. Flash Player users should exercise caution in browsing untrusted websites. Adobe is in contact with Antivirus and Security vendors regarding the issue and recommend users keep their anti-virus definitions up to date.

The forums software was updated to 2.3.1 to fix minor bugs.

Details:

• Links to YouTube and Vimeo inside the URL BBCode tag are no longer converted into embedded videos (Fixes [#6])
• The text-wrapper function no longer truncates URLs inside BBCode tags (Fixes [#7])
• “me” is now an allowed username for email addresses (Fixes [#4])
• Embeddable content only shows up on the news when the news database was rebuilt. It should show up when posting news. (Fixes [#9])
• Fixed unquoted HTML attribute on the post reply page. (Fixes [#3])
• Fixed “Unterminated string constant” error on the login page. (Fixes [#11])