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June 30, 2008
Dr. Who and the Stolen Earth Proxy Server
Every Saturday there is a ritual in our house.
At 2 p.m or so EST the latest episode of the very long running British Science Fiction series Doctor Who is shown in England. Three weeks later they show up on the Sci-Fi network slightly cut.
My oldest being the Doctor Who fanatic that he is doesn't want to wait or miss a scene. Until this week his only choice has been to find (Through the fan site Planet Gallifrey) Youtube sites that post the episodes. Although the BBC allows you to watch episodes online for a week you must be in the UK to do so.
This is where the proxy server comes in. If you look under internet explorer in the connections section or firefox under network connection you will see proxy server settings. These settings allow you to designate an address were all internet traffic passes through before going to or from your pc.
Many parental programs use this type of thing to screen sites, an anonymous proxy server can be used to hide your pc as you surf. You simply put in the ip of the proxy server you are using and presto your computers stuff is located elsewhere.
Thus my son was able to make our system appear to be in England and watch a high quality version of the doctor who cliffhanger without waiting for someone else to upload it.
Remember you are in effect passing all your data through some strange server so use proxies at your own risk.
This means that if you try to call us at the house next Saturday from 3:30 till about 5 we'll be busy.
Posted by Peter at 01:08 PM
June 29, 2008
Caveat Emptor , particularly on the net
Slashdot reports that those words are well founded particularly when referencing Godady:
Adam Dicker isn't just any GoDaddy employee; he's head of the GoDaddy subsidiary that controls the auctions. Dicker won some of the domains he bid for, and pushed up the bid price on auctions he didn't win. The conflict of interest is unethical, but could this practice also be illegal?
That goes for political stuff too.
read the whole thing and remember that when there are so many different businesses that can make a play for your business its a bad move to be low.
Posted by Peter at 11:20 PM
June 28, 2008
That's one
Looks like the MPPA has one one:
EliteTorrents was one of the largest and most popular BitTorrent trackers during 2003-2005. Administrators of the site were responsible for uploading the prerelease of Star Wars, Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, 12 hours prior to its theatrical release. The repercussions of their actions were swift, as on May 25, 2005, the collective efforts of the MPAA, FBI, local police and US Customs forced the site off line and the administrators in custody during operation D-Elite.
Via slashdot that whose users don't think it is very cool but there doesn't seem to be any question concerning the facts of the case. I've said it before and I'll say it again no movie is worth large fines or jail time and anyone who simply can't live without seeing something early needs to get real priorities.
Posted by Peter at 09:47 PM
June 26, 2008
Webathon for the Troops
Every now and then here we pitch for a good cause.
Over at Michelle Malkin's place they are having a Web-a-Thon to raise money for care packages for the troops overseas. As of this posting they have raised: 448.553!
If you want to listen or donate or enter the chat room go here.
It is a most worthy cause.
Posted by Peter at 08:40 PM
June 25, 2008
Take it from the boss
If you want to lowdown on Teleworkers don't take my word for it. Network World interviews the boss Michael Wexler on the subject. You can listen to the podcast here.
Posted by Peter at 09:23 PM
June 23, 2008
The Robots your kids love
Ever wonder what technology is actually inside that cuddly toy bear? Wonder no more.
Via Andrew Sullivan who was made "oddly sad" by the revelations.
Posted by Peter at 09:01 AM
June 22, 2008
Mail Fraud
Well users of Yahoo mail have a problem:
Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), the world's largest provider of e-mail services, said on Monday that a software virus aimed at Yahoo Mail users had infected "a very small fraction" of its base of more than 200 million accounts.The e-mail virus, or worm, has been dubbed Yamanner and landed in Yahoo mailboxes bearing the headline "New Graphic Site."
Once opened, the message infects the computer and spreads to other users listed in Yahoo users' e-mail address books, security experts said.
This small problem has gotten bigger and bigger as the week has gone by. It would be a very good idea to do a manual update of your Anti-virus to make sure you are updated before going in there again.
Posted by Peter at 09:17 PM
June 21, 2008
Garbage in Garbage out
Given the choice between hard work or a quick click guess what happens every time:
The Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC) said pupils are turning to websites and internet resources that contain inaccurate or deliberately misleading information before passing it off as their own work.The group singled out online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows entries to be logged or updated by anyone and is not verified by researchers, as the main source of information.
Read the whole thing, like everything else on the net use with caution and don't leave your doubts at the door.
Posted by Peter at 10:42 PM
June 20, 2008
We still see them infected either way
There are many things that people don't like about Vista UAC is one of them. I just didn't realize that people took it so seriously:
Until recently, all I had was a hunch that most Vista users either wanted UAC, or at least passively left it turned on. In an MSDN blog entry by Chris Jackson, I found some hard data. In that post, Jackson mentions that the Vista installed base that has UAC disabled is "currently hovering around 12 percent, but on the scale of Windows that's pretty huge."
He asks the relevant question concerning this data:
If you're using Vista, have you disabled UAC on your own computer? If not, why? Now, if you have deployed Vista as part of your job in computer support for your company, have you disabled UAC on those computers? If so, are you crazy?
Well have you? I wouldn't.
Posted by Peter at 10:47 PM
June 19, 2008
Just remember they aren't all this nice
When you think of leaving your wi-fi open or grabbing others keep this in mind:
For the next three years, I didn't pay for Internet access. Instead, I got online via the unsecured wireless networks of my neighbors. This didn't seem illegal at the time--I mean, those signals were streaming through my apartment--but it is an actual, bona fide crime. Last year a man in Cedar Springs, Mich., was fined $400 for mooching off somebody else's wi-fi--a police officer spotted him laptop-surfing in a parked car. Apparently that violates Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47 of the United States Code, which covers anybody who "intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access."
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Peter at 01:42 PM
June 18, 2008
Enjoy it for now we will never see it again
Well if you are a sports fan in Boston in general these are the golden years and no year is no golden that this one:
Red Sox World series this yearCeltics World Championship this year
Boston College NCAA National Hockey Champions
New England Patriots Undefeated regular season, played in Super Bowl
New England Revolution (soccer) played in Championship game.
Boston Bruins 1st round playoffs lost in Seven games.
We will never see a season like this again in Boston so we better enjoy it while we can.
Posted by Peter at 12:34 PM
June 17, 2008
Are they just TRYING to be delinked?
I figured after the week of fiasco for the AP the couldn't do anything stupider.
I was wrong:
The AP’s disharmony with bloggers may have only just begun, as the alternative it’s now offering to being served with takedown notices involves paying an up-front sum for excerpting online articles — as few as five words…The pricing scale for excerpting AP content begins at $12.50 for 5-25 words and goes as high as $100 for 251 words and up. Nonprofit organizations and educational institutions enjoy a discounted rate.
Captain Ed (now blogging at Hotair) asks the question:
What’s their game here, seriously? They’re turning themselves into laughingstocks and blogosphere pariahs while drumming up business for Reuters and AFP.
Ignorance is bliss and the AP is being run by happy people.
Posted by Peter at 10:48 PM
June 16, 2008
Live by the link die by the link
Looks like the AP is finding out live by fair use and die by fair use. It all started here:
I'm currently engaged in a legal disagreement with the Associated Press, which claims that Drudge Retort users linking to its stories are violating its copyright and committing "'hot news' misappropriation under New York state law." An AP attorney filed six Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment.
The site is a fairly small site unlikely to be able to afford the heavy legal expense of fighting. Blog reaction was rather swift:
What a brilliant move — try to drive away the very people who are luring others to your content. What is AP trying to do — blow up the blogging world?
Jeff Jarvis, media reporter, founding editor of Entertainment Weekly and a reporter who lives in both the print and blog worlds answered in a post who's title I won't repeat:
This complaint comes from an organization that leaches off original reporting and kills links and credit to the source of that journalism. Yes, it has a right to reproduce reporting from member news organizations. But as I point out here, the AP is hurting original reporting by not crediting and linking to the journalism at its source. We should be operating under an ethic of the link to original reporting; this is an ethic that the AP systematically violates.
His solution was simple:
Who needs the AP tapioca when we can get reporting like this from the source wtih no more than a link? Isn’t it a better service to reader and journalist to link directly to the original reporting?So, bloggers, unless the AP recants and apologizes to Cadenhead, I urge you to avoid linking to the AP and to link to reporting at its source.
The blogger response has had some effect as of today:
The about-face resulted from a large number of bloggers deciding not to send their readers to the AP’s sites, which would impact the advertising revenues gained from the extra traffic. The AP’s clients most likely explained that in an era of declining ad revenues for the news industry, they needed all the help they could get. The AP’s policy would have cut sharply into their sales — and would have eventually pushed those sites to use Reuters, AFP, BBC, and UPI feeds instead.
You don't throw an anchor to a drowning man.
Posted by Peter at 02:18 PM
June 14, 2008
Yahoo & Google vs Microsoft?
Now that Google and Yahoo are doing some work together rather than hanging with Microsoft but there might be pitfalls when you cross the big guy in the pond:
"Without Microsoft, this probably would stand up to regulatory scrutiny," Enderle said. "But Microsoft has increased its presence on Capitol Hill significantly ... and there are restraint of trade issues, so by the nature of Google's size and because Microsoft is going to be pounding on a lot of doors, I think this is going to be a problem."Because of Microsoft's considerable influence, Enderle gave the deal a 35% chance of passing regulatory muster. But if regulators approve it, they will be keeping a much closer eye on Google in the future, he said.
If I can't have yahoo nobody can!
Posted by Peter at 06:05 PM
June 12, 2008
This is getting old
You know I actually skipped the last story on this topic because I've seen too much of it but might as well get it over with:
National security agencies are warning businesses and federal officials that laptops and e-mail devices taken to the Beijing Olympics are likely to be penetrated by Chinese agents aiming to steal secrets or plant bugs to infiltrate U.S. computer networks.Chinese government and industry use electronic espionage to "easily access official and personal computers," says one recent report by the Overseas Security Advisory Council, a federally chartered panel comprising security experts from corporations and the State, Commerce and Treasury departments.
same ole same ole.
Posted by Peter at 10:43 PM
June 11, 2008
Well Duh! update
A while back Mickey Kaus at slate had this to say about Microsoft XP and Vista:
Suicide Marketing! Has Microsoft hit on a brilliant new sales strategy? Here's how it's done: First, you screw up your major product, replacing it with a fancier version that is widely derided and universally regarded as inferior to its main competitor. But--key point--you keep selling the old, popular product. Then you announce that you'll stop selling the popular product on June 30. This causes a predictable--and highly profitable--surge in sales. ("Last chance to buy Windows XP!") You pocket the millions from those sales, but then at the last minute announce a reprieve. Bowing to customer demand you'll keep selling XP--until you need another little boost in the bottom line, when you will announce once again that you're killing it after a date certain. Last last chance! Really. We mean it this time! Then another reprieve, and another deadline, and another surge of panic buying, etc.--on and on, seemingly ad infinitum (at least if you are a monopoly player like Microsoft). ...
Interesting thought, he updates today with this:
"Want Windows XP pre-installed? Time's running out."--Promotional email from Dell Small Business SystemsAfter that, you'll have to buy the product Microsoft actually wants to sell you! ... A strong vote of confidence in Windows Vista from Dell. ..
Oh well.
Posted by Peter at 11:52 AM
10 most common passwords
Is one of the 10 most common passwords out there?
Personally I like passwords that combine letters and numbers, that play on personal items or that transpose numbers and letters so people won't guess them easily. The best passwords combine odd combinations of numbers and letters with something easy to remember by the holder of it.
Of course we can't all be as sophisticated as these fellows:
Posted by Peter at 11:09 AM
June 10, 2008
Well DUH!
Here is a news flash from the department of the bleeding obvious:
DiBona finds that “a year of overwhelmingly bad publicity, coupled with opportunities for continued XP ‘downgrades’ or potentially skipping over Vista for Windows 7, looks to have meaningfully eroded support for Vista and are likely to impair the product’s overall adoption.”
Bad publicity is causing people to not adopt Vista, who woulda thunk it?
Posted by Peter at 10:45 PM
June 09, 2008
Ho Hum more china stuff
Where have we heard this story before?
Although Canadian authorities refused to identify the perpetrators of this attack, they leave doubts on Chinese hackers. From June to September 2007, roughly during the same period, five countries - the USA, Germany, Britain, France and New Zealand - have announced that they had suffered similar attacks on from cyber hackers
I didn't think that Canada would have so many secrets that might be worth hitting. via Slashdot.
Posted by Peter at 11:43 PM
June 08, 2008
Vista Review #4 Parental Controls
One of the Gems of the vista operating system is the built in parental controls
Parental controls:
What is it: A series of controls to limit kids on the systemWhat does it do: It blogs usage and/or particular items from use
Why might you use it: You would use it to both limit access to questionable content and also to limit general computer use if the kid is constantly in front of the machine or neglecting homework or chores.
How do i use it: In control panel select parental controls. Once opened select the account you desire to limit, you can set time limits, limits based on ratings of games, restrict specific programs or even filter specific web sites or adjust filters.
Watch our for the following: If you do not have passwords on accounts that have admin rights then any parental control can be bypassed in minutes. Make your the admin accounts are passworded.
Finally remember no parental control is a substitute for an attentive parent.
Posted by Peter at 11:05 PM
June 07, 2008
Telecommuting Tip #1
As I begin a very rare (one of the advantages of seniority) Saturday shift there have been quite a few stories on the increase in telecommuting driven by very high gas prices (running about 3.92-8 in my neck of the woods and higher in Boston proper). This would be a good time to touch of the subject again beyond our old podcast.
As employers try to keep their people who have long drives by 4 day shifts and telecommuting it is important for those actually given the chance to do so to be ready. We will put these in between the occasional vista tips
Check your equipment:
The #1 item that has to be considered before anything else when telecommuting is the equipment. If you have bad equipment then nothing else matters. Your employer needs to establish standards and you need to be able to meet them:If all you are doing is logging into a particular server and accessing documents then a lower speed connection and a slower processor is fine.
If you are doing anything requiring remote connection or "real time" phone connection then a higher speed connection and a fast processor will be wanted.
Depending on what you do bandwidth may be an issue. If you are working from home you don't want your kids to be downloading a 2 hour movie from some torrent client while you are trying to connect.
It is important to have a plan B if a computer goes down or a network goes down. Be prepared to head in or connect at another location if something goes wrong.
Finally if you are on a specific shift make sure you test your systems 15 min before your shift starts. That will give you time to reboot routers and systems as needed. It is an embarrassment to be late for work when you are working from home, what are you going to say? Gridlock on the stairs?
Once the equipment issue is resolved then you can worry about the next issue. Location, but that will be for our next post on the subject.
Posted by Peter at 09:00 AM
June 06, 2008
Still worth saying
Today is June 6th, its not a national holiday but it should be a day to remember (Memorial day not withstanding). 64 years ago today a lot of fellows most of them not much older then my teenage sons stormed a beach in northern France leading to the defeat and downfall of the Nazi empire.
Nearly 3,000 American's British and Canadians died that day and many more in the days following. It is very much worth saying what we said two years ago....
When you see an elderly man say in his 80's or 90 keep in mind that more likely than not when he was a young man he put himself on the line for us. Even if he didn't serve consider; we have 40 different types of flavored coffee to choose from, his coffee was rationed, as was meat and a lot of other things we take for granted.These aren't just old people; they are the reason why we have what we have today. Occasionally I'm asked if it's hard to take care of elderly customers. They might not hear or see so well when you talk to them etc. I say no, that isn't hard, what they did 60 years ago is hard and we owe them, big.
As long as I'm doing this blog, you are going to see those above two paragraphs every June 6th.
Posted by Peter at 02:10 PM
June 05, 2008
Linux over vista?
How do you know that an operating system isn't doing the trick? When another one is offered by the manufacturer:
Acer has already started selling Linux in its Media PC business but this should now spread, according to Gianpiero Morbello, vice president of marketing and brand at Acer. "We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft," he said. "Microsoft has a lot of power and it is going to be difficult, but we will be working hard to develop the Linux market."
Microsoft needs to remember that it is not only the end user but the manufacturer that is their customer and act accordingly.
Posted by Peter at 09:04 PM
June 04, 2008
Here comes the Snow Leopard
Engadget tells us the next apple OS is on the way:
Steve will also use his keynote to introduce the next major version of OS X, codenamed "Snow Leopard." As the derivative release name indicates, there aren't many changes in store from 10.5 Leopard -- Apple's said to instead be focusing on tightening up speed and stability as it starts producing more mobile devices. What's more, this could be the end of PowerPC and Universal support in OS X
More reasons to ignore vista.
Posted by Peter at 07:52 PM
June 03, 2008
If everything is a computer then everything needs to be secure
When it comes to security it is more than laptops that people need to worry about:
Some 94% of senior IT staff fear PDAs present a security risk, just above the 88% who highlighted mobile storage devices as a worry.Nearly eight in 10 said laptops were an issue. Only four in 10 had encrypted data on their laptops, and the remainder said the information was "not worth" protecting.
Whats worse is the caviler attitude of the users.
A key danger with PDAs was that over half of IT executives surveyed were "not bothering" to enter a password when they used their phone.Nine in 10 of the smart phones were being given access to company networks without extra security, even though the phones were individually owned by users. There were no access restrictions being applied to 81% of the phones.
Data is only as secure as the people who hold it.
Posted by Peter at 11:44 AM
June 02, 2008
Seeing is believing?
When I got my first Windows 95 system it came with Compton's Encyclopedia. I remembered thinking how cool it was to have some of the great speeches of history in audio at my fingertips, but it occurred to me at the time that some people might not understand that there was no such thing as recording devices at the time of Washington's farewell speech.
Today's photo software makes it even worse as you can play with an image any way you want these days? So how do you tell what is real and what is not? Scientific American has some answers:
Barely a month goes by without some newly uncovered fraudulent image making it into the news. In February, for instance, an award-winning photograph depicting a herd of endangered Tibetan antelope apparently undisturbed by a new high-speed train racing nearby was uncovered to be a fake. The photograph had appeared in hundreds of newspapers in China after the controversial train line was opened with much patriotic fanfare in mid-2006. A few people had noticed oddities immediately, such as how some of the antelope were pregnant, but there were no young, as should have been the case at the time of year the train began running. Doubts finally became public when the picture was featured in the Beijing subway this year and other flaws came to light, such as a join line where two images had been stitched together. The photographer, Liu Weiqing, and his newspaper editor resigned; Chinese government news agencies apologized for distributing the image and promised to delete all of Liu’s photographs from their databases.In that case, as with many of the most publicized instances of fraudulent images, the fakery was detected by alert people studying a copy of the image and seeing flaws of one kind or another. But there are many other cases when examining an image with the naked eye is not enough to demonstrate the presence of tampering, so more technical, computer-based methods—digital image forensics—must be brought to bear.
Read the whole thing it is a real page turner. I wonder however if you can program a machine to generate an image specifically designed to beat such software as mentioned.
Posted by Peter at 05:56 PM
June 01, 2008
Vista Review #3 User Accounts
The 3rd of our series of Vista basic functions posts:
User Accounts:
What is it: It's the area where you set up and control user accounts
What does it do: It allows the setup of new user accounts and the modification of the permissions and settings of old user accounts, it also allows access to the UAC User account control.
Why might you use it: You would use it to configure individual accounts particular children's accounts to make sure they don't have admin level rights, you would use it to password accounts and to toggle the UAC which requires verification for some system activities.
How do i use it: Choose User Accounts via the control panel or from the Search line. Once in simply select the account and the action you wish to take, be aware that these changes may require a reboot and remember if you forget the password on the administrator account you are in bad shape.
Watch our for the following: If you are considering shutting off UAC consider that although there are many nasties that is will not block it will block enough of them to make it worth our while.
BTW to some who are wondering why we are going over basic items a lot of our customer have never used vista so the basic stuff is very useful.
Posted by Peter at 06:04 PM