I was in the midst of typing something on my PC when an Instant Messenger window opened. It was from XFaDEtOBlACk8705. I have no idea who that is.
The message was carefully crafted to look like one of a zillion IM’s, though probably one sent by users younger than me (which, of course, is nearly everyone nowadays).
Brilliant. This is social engineering at its finest. This message is screaming, “click on me.”
Here at my desk at work I’m on a Linux computer. It won’t run Windows programs, so I safely clicked. A warning box came up telling me this was an executable program! I’m not sure what payload this file delivers, but it can’t be good.
A few minutes later, I noticed XFaDEtOBlACk8705, so I sent him a message. Did he know what was going on? He did not, but had opened an IM earlier and then watched as IM messages spawned across his screen!
He did something foolish in clicking on the link, but it was specifically written to trick him. I guess that’s a little bit mitigating.
I sent off a note to AOL security, though I’m pretty distressed after having read the message at the bottom of the form. Don’t expect to hear back from us, they said.
Unfortunately we cannot reply to each report individually. If you require technical support in addressing the issue you encountered you can look in the Frequently Asked Questions section. There you can find general troubleshooting information that may help you. Thank you for your continued support of the AOL
The Challenge of Computing
For the past few months I’ve been blogging, emailing, and computing in general on my backup machine. Somehow, my main computer had become unstable, rebooting at any or no occasion.
I’m not sure what made it go nuts. I only know it did. I suspect it wasn’t a virus or spyware. I’m very careful about that, but something was bugging it and it was relentless.
At one point I wondered if the problem wasn’t caused by the power supply? Considering all the crap I’ve got shoved in my computer case, it might have been overtaxed. A few weeks ago I ordered a new, quieter, more powerful power supply and a few extra sticks of memory.
This weekend I pulled the old supply and hooked up the new one. Though it looks complex with lots of wires and plugs connected to it, it’s really pretty straightforward.
I fired up the computer and – well, it was the same garbage. Right in the middle of nothing the computer would reboot. Maybe the original power supply was bad and a spike of electricity from its strained regulators had put bad data on my hard drives?
I decided to start from the very beginning.
My C:\ drive didn’t contain much other than installed programs. All my important data was squirreled elsewhere. I re-formatted the drive.
Next came my copy of Windows XP. In the drive it went and the install process was underway… until it stopped. Randomly, files weren’t being copied properly and Windows wasn’t shy about telling me.
The message was something like, “Press Enter to try again, skip this file at your peril.” I pressed Enter… and Enter… and Enter. Sometimes on the second or third try a recalcitrant file would load, only to hit the another pothole a few seconds later.
Finally there was a file that wouldn’t copy, no matter what I did! Was it the CD drive, my hard drive, the Windows CD itself or something I hadn’t thought of yet? I kept trying, but never got any further.
Finally, tonight at work while reading through an old Usenet message, I found something that might be the culprit… though it sounded off the wall. Sometimes when mixing and matching memory chips, Windows balks. It just refuses to install.
That, in a nutshell, was what had happened to me.
I’m guessing – actually, it’s more like hoping, I’ll be able to stick the memory into the PC once Windows is loaded and running. It will run much faster with 1 Gb of RAM than it does with 512 Mb.
As I type this Windows is updating, installing all the security patches that have come out since XP hit the scene. I still have a few more drivers and utilities to throw on before it’s time to reinstall my programs.
What a royal pain!
In the long run, all of this anguish and angst will go away. The computer will run like a top. I will be happy.
It’s a machine I designed and built myself. Unless something goes wrong from time-to-time I feel I just haven’t pushed the envelope.
Socially Engineered Virus Delivery
This just came in my e-mail. It was written in such a way that it would pass by my spam protection. It’s also written with an innocence that will get people to open it. That’s social engineering at its finest, I suppose.
First, Very Sorry for my bad English.
Someone is sending your private e-mails on my address.
It’s probably an e-mail provider error!
At time, I’ve got over 10 mails on my account, but the recipient are you.
I have copied all the mail text in the windows text-editor for you & zipped then.
Make sure, that this mails don’t come in my mail-box again.
bye
Of course if you open the attached zip file – ZAP – there’s a payload which is probably a virus or spyware or something bad for you.
I took a look here on my Linux machine (which won’t run Windows programs, so is safe against these virii delivery systems) and found the program inside the your_text.zip file is actually called: Mail-document.Datex-packed.exe. The “.exe” part is the tipoff. It’s an executable program.
As long as people fall for this stuff… and they surely will… they will keep being delivered.
My New, Old Computer
My butt is sore. Much of yesterday was spent on the hardwood floor in my office moving pieces in and out of my main computer.
Over the past few months, this computer has become more and more unstable. As tech support for my family and many of my friends, this is a situation I have seen and advised on many times in the past. Usually I consider a total rebuild to be the last resort. This was different.
I am, alas, fast and loose when it comes to software. I move things in and out of my machine on a fairly steady and totally disorganized way. Who really knows what was inside of it to make it croak?
On many machines the instability is caused by outside forces containing viruses and spyware. I don’t think that was the case (though it’s possible). Somehow, through all my playing, some driver been ‘pranged.’ It’s possible it was just one byte, or maybe more. It was impossible to predict where or when the crash would occur – only that it would.
Of course that’s the problem. Computers should be dependable. How anxious would anyone be to do any work on a computer with the understanding that you were no more than minutes or seconds to losing everything you had worked on?
I decided the best course of action would be to add a new hard drive, allowing me to keep my old data and reorganize. Most modern computers have one hard drive and a CDROM or DVD player/recorder. This machine now has five¹ hard drives, a CDRW and DVDRW.
Staples was having a sale and I picked up a 160 GB drive for $70. That’s an astounding number, though it probably will be middle of the road in a few months and expensive by the summer. That’s how high tech pricing goes.
My friend Peter is disappointed I didn’t buy the biggest and (more importantly) fastest drive I could get my hands on. I am a firm believer that most high tech horsepower is wasted. Getting a deal was more important than getting a speed demon.
I plopped the drive in the case… not as easy as it sounds. Because of all the pre-existing wiring, I had to disconnect and reconnect devices to swing the drive bay out and then back in.
Who exactly designed the plugs used in IDE disk drives? This is ridiculous, with an almost impossible to find key arrangement that allows you to decide whether the plug is going in upside up or upside down. It is possible to put it in backwards and bend some pins. Ask the man who has!
This 160 GB hard drive has more capacity than my machine can address! I put in a CDROM from the drive’s manufacturer, Maxtor and split it into 3 parts: 10, 75 and 79 GB. It was time to turn my computer back into a computer.
As I was loading Windows, a sobering thought entered my mind. What if it was crashing because of some hardware failure? I would be out the $70 for a drive that would be useless. I didn’t want that.
Windows loaded fine. Then, I pulled out a CDROM I had burned (and have used at least a half dozen times since) with Windows XP Service Pack 2. This is so much easier than downloading it every time it’s needed.
I have discussed this with other techno weenie friends. No matter how many times you install Windows, each installation comes out slightly differently. I have no idea why.
After Windows was totally up-to-date, I began to load all the hardware specific drivers I needed. I was surprised that the drivers for my video card were totally different -totally redesigned in look and feel – from what I had been using.
Are they faster and better or just different? With computers, version 2 is not necessarily better than version 1.
Next I started to move back some of the software. Because of Windows structure, if you put in a new drive and reload Windows, all your old installed programs (even if they’re still accessible) have to be reinstalled from scratch! The data remains, but the program is unusable.
As of this moment, I, once again, have a working computer. Of course I always did have a working computer… there are three in this room at the moment. But, right now, my main machine is pure and sweet and speedy again. Its data is still somewhat disassociated from its programs. That will need to be fixed. I’ll also keep checking to see what I’ve forgotten or misplaced.
The final step to make this box totally operational will be to follow some on-line instructions and shut down a bunch of services Windows runs in the background which I don’t need, and which slow down any computer.
All of this is a royal pain, yet it’s my fun.
¹ – Only four are supported at any one time and the smallest is currently offline. It contains most of my photos, which will be moved to another drive. Then it will be removed from the case and used in another project.
Computing Denial
Who knows why these things happen – but they do. My main home computer has become unstable… unable to work for more than a few minutes without crashing to the dreaded ‘Blue Screen of Death.’ I have the luxury of backup machines, but this main box is the one I depend on and store my most important files on.
That a symptom of computer sickness has developed its own well know nickname (and the acronym BSOD is well know too) is a left handed tribute to Windows computing.
It’s possible there’s something I introduced to the computer that’s got it feeling sickly, though most likely it’s just a driver (or two) or a program (or two) that don’t play well together. I’m not wise enough to know if this is because of the way Windows is designed, but there is a constant litany of Mac and Linux users saying this doesn’t happen to them.
The answer to this BSOD problem is simply to reformat and start again. There’s no doubt I’ll be doing that sometime in the next few days. I just need some time to decide how to do this without losing too much, or any, of my data.
I know I’ll want my mail and address books. There are documents that I’ll need to save too. The scare is that I’ll forget something and end up losing forever something I’ll want or need. That’s why I’ve been reticent to do it.
The funny thing is, reformatting and rebuilding a computer is something I’ve done dozens of times for friends and family members. In fact I had to reformat and redo my dad’s machine while I was in Florida.
It’s a never ending cycle.
My Day in a Spacesuit
It’s been a while since I hosted Inside Space on SciFi. It was a really good show. Maybe I realize that more today than I did then.
Isn’t that always the way? You have a backstage view of the job you’re performing. You know when you’ve executed perfectly and when you didn’t get close. No one else knows, but you do.
A friend sent me an email yesterday and that sent me looking into the archives to find a show he wanted to see. I found one where I’m trying on a spacesuit at Hamilton Standard (now Hamilton Sundstrand) here in Connecticut. They’re made for space, not Earth. You realize that as you put it on… all 150 pounds!
After I had gone in and out of the suit, one of the techs helping out told me a story. Some people panic when they realize getting out of it means going through a rigid, difficult to move, ‘tunnel. It can take hours until they’re comfortable enough to make a move. I’m glad he waited until after I was out to tell me.
One thing Inside Space had going for it was the producer, Dave Brody. Dave is more detail oriented than anyone I’ve ever worked for before or since. He and I would get into fights about syntax and script, but when the shows were finished they were things of beauty. Sometimes, to make a point, the video would be layer upon layer upon layer. Dave’s philosophy of video is similar to Phil Spector’s ‘wall of sound.’ The screen was constantly used to make a point.
As long as I was dubbing it, I put a streaming copy here on the website. Just click to see it on any Windows computer with a broadband connection.
Steffie’s Eye-Pod Problem
Steffie got an Ipod Mini, the beautifully designed Apple portable music player. In order to get it to work (and we still haven’t really figured out what to do on her Windows 98SE computer) I had to register the software.
The instruction said, enter your serial number, it’s on the back of the Ipod. You look¹! Are they nuts. Even my 17 year old daughter had trouble reading this. I finally put on magnifying goggles. Even then it was a strain.
Would readable type have ruined the effect?
¹ – I have placed the dime in the shot for size comparison.
Fixing My Computer Until It Doesn’t Work
Last night, while sitting at the computer, I opened up TweakUI, a program that allows mere mortals to fool with the Windows user interface. Somehow, over time, my computer had started demanding I sign on every time I powered it up. I wanted that to stop.
I had forgotten about TweakUI until my friend Peter Mokover reminded me. There’s no reason for that last sentence other than the gratuitous mention of his name. At one time Peter was ‘the man.’
TweakUI allowed me to turn off the sign on procedure and even eliminate the names that appeared for signing on… well, not quite.
This morning, when I turned on the computer, up came the log on screen (that I thought I had turned off). It came without any names to sign on! That part, unfortunately worked.
The cure, thankfully, wasn’t too difficult. Windows does have a facility to roll back the clock and reset the computer as it was before I made these changes (going in through Safe Mode).
I still have to log in.
Damn you Bill Gates!
A TV First – At Least For Me
Last night during our 11:00 PM news, as the commercials that precede the weather played, the computer containing all my weather graphics crashed! This wasn’t a little crash, the screen was totally black with a cryptic directory path showing in a blocky white type. There was nothing to do but reboot.
What do you do? We scrambled. Commercials that would have aired later were moved up and I sat and stared at the screen.
If you think Windows takes a long time to boot for you, imagine watching the booting process while the entire TV station is put on hold… waiting. It was painful.
I’m not sure what happened, but I’m hoping we found the problem tonight. I can’t be sure. It seems to have something to do with networking and a hub that was slower than anticipated.
It’s just the kind of hell I’d rather not relive.
Unfortunately, the more devices that are running off computers, the more likely we are to see this kind of event become commonplace. It’s awful at a TV station – but imagine if your car or an airplane you were flying on needed to be rebooted at a critical moment. Oy!
Windows XP Service Pack 2
Over the last year or two, the Windows operating system has started to resemble the South Bronx in the early 80s. Yes, it’s intrinsicly valuable, but it’s also become dangerous. The young and innocent must be protected from predators.
Over the weekend, Microsoft slowly rolled out a massive service pack for Windows XP – the latest version of its operating system. Since I have a bunch of machines to update at home, I downloaded the 225mb version and then passed it across my network to all the machines.
The size of the download will certainly keep people with dial-up accounts from getting the pack. It will probably intimidate many broadband users as well. That’s a massive file to download.
I’m taking few chances, so it was installed on my spare machine first. I figure there’s nothing mission critical on this machine so I can survive should the machine be unhappy with what I did.
Microsoft actually expects to see some troubles, though I have seen few specifics. Since it closes holes in certain ports with its new firewall, it’s sure to break programs that communicate in a non-standard way – even if they’re doing so for a perfectly legitimate purpose.
After the download, installation took about 25 minutes. It didn’t ask for my help, other than clicking off on the EULA.
As far as I can tell the installation was a success. I immediately noticed my wireless network, which needed me to manually start it on every reboot, was now finding its own way to operation. I’m not using Internet Explorer or Outlook Express on that machines, and I know that’s where a lot of the security enhancements were aimed.
There are two things which trouble me. First, this service pack doesn’t address problems for people running Windows 98, a perfectly fine and usable operating system. We have two machines at home (Steffie’s desktop and my laptop) which are running Windows 98. Neither machine has the firepower to switch to XP. They will continue to be susceptible to all the same attacks that brought this service pack on in the first place.
My second problem concerns whether Microsoft will allow this patch to be used on systems with bootleg copies of XP. It would seem obvious that they shouldn’t support those who steal from them, except for the fact that many of the ills this service pack stops are passed along to legitimate users. So, no inoculation for them means they may make my computers sick in the long run.
It is certainly a quandary for Microsoft. I don’t know what I’d do if it were me. However, if viruses and spam from zombie machines continues because of Microsoft’s policies, I’ll be ticked.
Visual Basic – Thanks Bill
Recently, I read online where Microsoft was giving away free copies of Visual Basic.Net. VB is a programming language for Windows computers. I think, though I don’t know, Microsoft is giving this away because its use on the Internet requires using a Microsoft powered web server The web server business is one place where Microsoft has been hurt by Linux – hurt badly.
Visual Basic .Net came on a set of CDROMs. This afternoon, before leaving for work, I decided to install them. Oh my God! My installation took close to 2 hours. I sat and watched as registry change after registry change and file after file was loaded onto my machine.
Finally, it was time to go to work – but the process wasn’t complete. Helaine finished it up (calling me as she read off the screen).
I think, based on what I read on the screen, I have just given up 3 gb of hard drive space for this.
But, if it works out, and if I can learn what I’ve been told is a pretty straightforward language, I’d like to write some Windows applications which manipulate weather data from the net.
I hope I haven’t bit off more than I can chew.
Tough Choice for Microsoft
I’m sitting at one of my Microsoft powered computers at the moment. Since I built this puppy from individual components, I actually have a full CD version of Windows XP Home – something that seldom comes with computers anymore.
It used to be, prior to Windows XP, that Microsoft’s operating systems were easy to steal. There must be millions of Windows 98 machines running on an operating system that was borrowed from a friend.
Starting with XP, Microsoft made this much more difficult. Now computers need to be activated before the operating system will become permanently enabled. Windows XP versions that come with specific hardware often will not run on other hardware. And, Microsoft has found many of the bogus serial numbers used to activate XP and now deactivates those systems if they try and use Windows Update. Still, if what I’ve read is correct, much of Asia and the Third World’s computers are run on bootlegged copies of Windows XP.
There lies the problem.
I never would have thought of this myself and have to thank Slashdot for pointing it out.
With all the security flaws and weaknesses of Windows XP, should Microsoft continue to deny software upgrades to illegally obtained and installed versions of their software? Surely, if Microsoft allows anyone to keep XP up-to-date, there will be less incentive to buy the disk. On the other hand, by denying these patches, is Microsoft creating an environment where more and more bad code will infect the Internet… which affects legal owners like me!
I’m not sure what advice I’d give to Microsoft. Are they liable for the unpatched versions of their original code? Do they have any obligation to me, a paying customer, when it comes to bootleg copies of their software?
This won’t be the last we’ll hear of this. It’s a very provocative question to ask in an industry that’s anything but simple.
Mac Users… I’m So Embarrassed
I compose this blog on a variety of computers. Most of the time, the typing is done at home on one of a few Windows XP machines, using Internet Explorer. From time-to-time I will also compose on my Linux machine at home (or if it’s a really slow night, my Linux machine at work) using Mozilla as the browser. Most of the time, the blog looks exactly as I want it to look.
Without going into all the details (since I’m not sure I totally understand it), a blog like this is only possible because of CSS or cascading style sheets. I can define the look of the blog’s component parts and keep things uniform through a master style sheet. That’s why the column on the left looks as it does, the main blog body and headers look as they do, and how
I don’t own a Mac and never use Macs. I had no idea what this blog looked like on a Mac. Now I do, and I’m not happy. You can take a look yourself if you really want! That capture was sent to me by Michael Dreimiller.
I had somehow left out one tiny little command. It was a command that deactivated big type. Without it, every once in a while, big type would appear where I didn’t want it.
My Windows browser could care less. Unfortunately Internet Explorer really doesn’t follow the exact CSS protocol (even though it accounts for the vast majority of web browsers). So I was short changing Mac owners.
The fix took about 10 seconds. I’m still not sure if everything else is Kosher. For that, I will run the rest of the site through a ‘validator’ later tonight and see what changes are necessary. Though I started with a perfectly valid style sheet, I have modified it mercilessly over the months. Who knows what evil I have done.
Anyway, if you’re a Mac user, my profuse apologies. Feel free to reread whatever looked awful earlier. Everything should be fine now – I hope.
More And More Linux Frustration
This is a rant born of frustration. I guess I’m looking for some sort of community consensus – not how I should solve my problem, but how the Open Source community should attack a real problem of usability.
In my heart of hearts, I so want to love Linux. But now, after months of trying, I’m wondering if I’m not ready for Linux, and more importantly, if Linux isn’t ready for me.
Some quick background. I took my last computer course in 1968 (that’s no typo). To my friends, I am tech support. My wife has watched me guide others through menu after menu, all while in bed, with my eyes closed. The computer I’m typing on was assembled by me from parts I specified. The one next to it has just received a motherboard/cpu transplant on my kitchen table.
I am not a technophobe. Still, Linux frustrates me in nearly every possible way.
Over the last week, since rebuilding my auxiliary computer, I have loaded and reloaded and reloaded again. My estimate is a dozen loads of 5 or 6 different flavors of Linux. Each of them similar. Each of them different.
I’m starting to get worried Comcast will flag me for overly taxing their system with all the iso’s I’ve scarfed up.
On some distributions my audio card is recognized. On others it’s not, or is only after some minor tweaking. On one (and I wish I could remember which one) my TV card plays. On others, it’s cryptic error messages – messages which make Microsoft’s error messages seem kind and gentle. On one distribution, the box for the TV is blank, but the rest of the screen is full of noise, which seems to be the disjointed TV video.
The only way to get the printer to work (it’s attached to an onboard print server on my router) is by first making believe it’s attached directly to this computer and then editing the file. Clever.
None of the Linux variants I’ve used knew what to do with the video system on my motherboard – though it’s far from esoteric. I am stuck with a generic VESA driver, which means my system is running slower than it should.
I have tried to fix all of these problems, but let me use the video problem as my example. Doing a Google search for the video chip (KM400 from Via) and Linux leads to some interesting suggestions. There are some that seem to be translated to English from Chinese, but not well enough that anyone speaking English could follow. Others originate in German, then English, and again something is lost in translation. Steps are missing or just hinted at. No two suggested remedies are exactly the same.
As I look through the Usenet responses, it’s tough not to pick up smart ass disdain from many of the cognoscenti! And, I expect to get some of that here.
One of the things that’s touted as a strength of Linux, and weakness of Windows, seems to be the opposite. Windows lives in a standard world. My Linux box does not. Will the Debian driver work in my Mandrake distribtution? Maybe, though probably not.
Does my 2.6 Kernel need different care and feeding than a 2.4? Seems like it. But, I don’t really know what a kernel is, much less why 2.4 and 2.6 eat different food.
My motherboard came with all the Windows drivers I’d need – none for Linux.
Will I have to compile a package? Can I? How do I do it?
I want this to work, yet I feel Linux is fighting me. The Linux community seems anxious for this to work… and at the same time it’s scared that their baby will go mainstream… afraid that someone will do to Linux what they perceive AOL did to the Internet!
I’m not going to give up. But, I am getting very frustrated – very. I can’t believe I am alone.
The Penguin And Me
I am in love with the concept of Linux. It’s possible, at the very same time, I’m not in love with Linux itself. I have spent the last 2 days loading at least 10 different configurations of Linux onto the new ‘old computer.’
First, an explanation. Every time I mention Linux I see eyes glaze over. What is it? Why is it there?
Linux is an operating system. It is based on Unix, a wonderful operating system which (I think) was devised at Bell Labs a long, long time ago.
An operating system is what stands between you and your computer. It knows how to wake the computer when you apply power and it provides a handy set of commands and protocols to speak to the computer.
Like French, Spanish and English – each operating system can tell your computer meaningful things, but using different words. And, each operating system understands different words.
Programs meant to run on Windows do not run on Linux (this is a simplification, but the exceptions are really out of the norm right now). Obviously, the opposite is true as well.
So, why run Linux, when everyone else is running Windows?
Not only is Linux free, that is immediately evident. But Linux represents a different way of doing business. In its simplest form, anyone who uses the basic building blocks and adds to them for their own purposes, contributes those additions to all other users. Even without charging for the software, there’s a reasonable business in charging for technical expertise.
Most web servers are run on Linux. Many scientific applications run on Linux too. Google is either running on Linux or something closely related (I can’t remember at the moment).
My hope is to run Linux alongside my Windows machine and use it for utility purposes, including developing new pages for my website, and weather analysis using GrADS.
The problem is, in a somewhat anarchistic community, the various Linux flavors aren’t always compatible with one and another. Not only that, Linux is nowhere near as good as Windows in recognizing the hardware within your computer. So, it is hit and miss as to whether any particular Linux distribution will be able to do anything that another distribution can.
I started with Fedora Core 2. It is the latest rendition of what is the desktop successor to Red Hat Linux. Then Mandrake 10 Community. Later Fedora Core 1. Each time I configured my machine a slightly different way, loading some programs and excluding others.
None of the Linux variants could see and understand the video controller for my computer. I am running video, but not at the speeds I should be getting. Some of them saw my audio card – well, all of them saw it. They just didn’t see it in a way that would make it work. In some flavors of Linux I was easily able to switch to a working audio solution; though I know about the solution only through a lucky find while looking for something else.
All of things things would be fairly painless in Windows.
As I type this, I am loading Red Hat 9. It is an older distribution, one that Red Hat itself doesn’t support any more. There seems to be a lot of software that I want to run which is already packaged for this particular variant. I’m in the final stages, which means over 300 MB of fixes and updates, all of which were downloaded through my cable modem.
Sometime later tonight I will be finished. Hopefully, RH9 will be the answer to my prayers. Otherwise, it’s back to the drawing board and more installs.
One more thing. Here in the Fox household, Linux is referred to as “The Penguin.” That nickname is based on Tux, the Linux mascot, who is a penguin, of course.