Microsoft's new small print – how your personal data is (ab)used

Users who chose to enable Microsoft’s personal assistant software
“Cortana” have to live with the following invasion to their privacy: “To
enable Cortana to provide personalized experiences and relevant
suggestions, Microsoft collects and uses various types of data, such as
your device location, data from your calendar, the apps you use, data
from your emails and text messages, who you call, your contacts and how
often you interact with them on your device. Cortana also learns about
you by collecting data about how you use your device and other Microsoft
services, such as your music, alarm settings, whether the lock screen
is on, what you view and purchase, your browse and Bing search history,
and more.” But this is not all, as this piece of software also analyses
undefined “speech data”: “we collect your voice input, as well your name
and nickname, your recent calendar events and the names of the people
in your appointments, and information about your contacts including
names and nicknames.”



Microsoft's new small print – how your personal data is (ab)used

Free Oracle Book: "Developing Applications with NetBeans IDE 8.0" | NetBeans Zone

As you'll see, it very thoroughly covers everything that NetBeans can do for you!



Free Oracle Book: "Developing Applications with NetBeans IDE 8.0" | NetBeans Zone

Personas Make Users Memorable for Product Team Members

Persona-Focused Design

The main benefit of using personas is that they create a common, more
precise vocabulary for describing a certain type of user and thus focus
design efforts on a common goal. In meetings, the persona’s name acts as shorthand for the full set of attributes, desires, and behaviors
that need to be considered when making design decisions. If instead you
tried to reference what “the users” would want, each individual in your
meeting would interpret who those users are and their needs
differently. Further, this “user” definition would shift based on each
person’s mental model
of what is being discussed. Framing a statement around a specific
persona breaks the listeners out of self-referential thinking and
removes the speaker’s reliance on opinions, shifting the discussion away
from personal judgments toward that particular persona’s needs. Once
the team can easily picture the same set of users, it can create better
designs for them.


When making design-strategy decisions, those functionalities that
would most benefit a persona should inform which features to implement
and prioritize. Usually, one or two personas should be identified as the
main targets for a product, or for a feature set within a larger
product. Avoid wasting time designing and building extraneous features
that aren’t useful to the target persona(s). This practice of focusing
on only pleasing a particular user—or even two users—helps designers
avoid having to create an interface that handles every edge case
imaginable. You can’t design something to please everyone! But, it is
possible to design an experience that is enjoyable and usable to a
defined set of target users.



Personas Make Users Memorable for Product Team Members

Formateando language icons en horizontal

El bloque language icons en Drupal viene por defecto con un formato de lista vertical con se puede ver aquí:

 

Si queremos modificar este formato podemos jugar con las CSS del módulo locale. En concreto iriamos al fichero:

modules/locale/locale.css

En este fichero podemos encontrar diferentes clases CSS que podemos modificar para cambiar el aspecto del listado de idiomas. En nuestro caso lo que queremos es que aparezcan en horizontal, para ello insertamos este código en el fichero:

#block-locale-language ul li
{
display: inline;
list-style: none;
}

Lo que convierte el listado de idiomas en algo tal que así:



Como se puede ver hemos quitado las viñetas y formateado la lista horizontalmente.

Solucionando problema de seguridad de inyección de SQL en drupal 7

En primer lugar hay que decir que este fallo de seguridad afecta únicamente a las instalaciones de Drupal 7, por lo que no debemos perder tiempo actualizando versiones menores que la 7. 
Es necesario actualizar lo antes posible debido a que numerosos bot podrán acceder a tu servidor de forma automática y explotar el bug. Aunque hayas conocido un poco tarde la existencia del bug has de actualizar cuanto antes pues, como dice el dicho, más vale tarde que nunca.
Básicamente la solución al bug es actualizar el Drupal Core a su versión 7.32 y en algunos casos hacer una pequeña modificación en el archivo .htdocs de /sites/default/files.
En este diagrama podemos ver las decisiones a tomar en cada caso.

Descripción del fallo de seguridad altamente crítico

• SA-CORE-2014-005 - Drupal core - SQL injection

Descarga de Drupal Core 7.32

• Página de descarga de Drupal
• Instrucciones de actualización del core de Drupal

Modificación de .htdocs del directorio files

• No se debe cambiar el .htdocs de la raíz de drupal solo el de /sites/default/files
• La pagina de "Informe de Estado" de Drupal nos avisará de la necesidad de hacer este cambio.
• El código a incluir es:

# Turn off all options we don't need.
Options None
Options +FollowSymLinks

# Set the catch-all handler to prevent scripts from being executed.
SetHandler Drupal_Security_Do_Not_Remove_See_SA_2006_006

  # Override the handler again if we're run later in the evaluation list.
  SetHandler Drupal_Security_Do_Not_Remove_See_SA_2013_003

# If we know how to do it safely, disable the PHP engine entirely.
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
  php_flag engine off
</IfModule>

• Más información sobre este cambio.  

Acciones tras aplicar la solución

Tras aplicar estos cambios podemos estar seguros de que a partir de ese momento no somos vulnerables a los robots que intenten explotar la vulnerabilidad de inyección de SQL en nuestro servidor. De lo que no podemos estar seguros es de que anteriormente el servidor no haya sido comprometido.
En la siguiente página tenemos un listado de diferentes problemas que se han encontrado en servidores que ya han sido atacados, lo que nos puede ayudar a detectar problemas similares en nuestro servidor.

• Learning from hackers a week after the Drupal SQL Injection announcement
• Drupal Core - Highly Critical - Public Service announcement - PSA-2014-003
   

Espero que esta recopilación de información para solucionar el problema os sea de ayuda.