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BRIAN'S BLOG

Brian Grainger

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brian@grainger1.freeserve.co.uk


 

11th October 2005

At the end of August the Daily Telegraph finally stopped publishing its weekly computing section. I started reading it when it was a supplement called 'Connected' in the days of Windows 9x. This was at the start of computers going mainstream. One part of this section was the Bootcamp series of articles, written by Rick Maybury. This covered all sorts of useful items from how to build your own PC to how to set up wireless networking. Associated with the Bootcamp were helpful tips, readers questions and recommended freeware and shareware.

I am very pleased to see that, although the articles have stopped, the whole archive of previous material is being made available on the web by Rick. He has created a very easy on the eye simple web site at:

http://www.rickmaybury.com


26th August 2005

I get Microsoft Tech Net e-mail so I can keep tabs on all the problems with Windows. The latest one had a piece about Microsoft Vista, (Longhorn that was). It mentioned that Vista had 'Full Volume Encryption' to help prevent disk access to files by other operating systems.

Now, as Linux rescue disks are quite handy for rescuing Windows systems that just don't work any more I was intrigued. I wondered whether this new tool just encrypted files or stopped them being read or copied as well. There was an e-mail address for queries in the Tech Net e-mail so I sent off. I very quickly got an answer - Microsoft are keen to deal with the public again!

I was directed to the following address:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/evaluate/feat/secfeat.mspx

The section on data protection is the one of interest - although all are pretty interesting. It would seem Microsoft are taking steps to make files only available to the original operating system and original machine. This is to guard against government officials leaving their laptops in the taxi and the files somehow getting to the newspapers! Very laudable. However, it does indeed look as if it will be more difficult to rescue Windows systems that have gone on the blink.

Sadly, I can see that this facility is something that government will jump at. Very useful for locking them into Windows - and us, if we need to communicate with them.


23rd November 2004

While our Government tries to convince us that we are under threat from 9-11 style terrorism it would seem the threats on the Internet stepped up a night last weekend.

Visitors to 'The Register', a respected source of IT news, last Saturday were potentially hit by a worm attack without knowing it. They were open to attack through the ads that the site was carrying! See here for details:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/21/register_adserver_attack/

The attack used an as yet unpatched vulnerability of Internet Explorer, although Windows XP users with Service Pack 2 installed will be OK.

Obviously this sort of attack is open to all sorts of possibilities and the following article highlights the current thinking on the possibilities:

http://www.theregister.com/2004/11/22/apache_hijack_serves_iframe_exploit/

It is time to think seriously about ditching Internet Explorer and using another browser. The open source alternative, Firefox, recently released at version 1.0, is receiving much attention. Go to http://www.mozilla.org and follow the links to Firefox. At the same time you might like to think about getting Thunderbird, the open source alternative to Outlook Express, from the same site. This has not yet been released at full version 1.0, but it has been through a number of 0.x releases and is pretty stable.


14th November 2004

Just before this weekend Microsoft announced the availability of their new search engine MSN Search. No doubt they aim to do to Google in the search wars what they did to Netscape in the browser wars.

I gave it the acid test. I did an ego search, that is I searched for my name, "brian grainger", with no other conditions.

MSN Search came in with 1161 results. The first page that was related to me, rather than some other Brian Grainger, was at position 73.

Google came in with 1580 results. The first page relating to me came in at number 4.

Google wins hands down, at the moment, as far as I am concerned!


10th October 2004

Ken Ross writes to pass on some information from Gavin Haynes.

He tells me of a couple of audio mp3 files which are a recording of an interview with Steve Wozniac about the Apple II, the Mac, education and more. The relevant URLs are:

Part 1
http://www.digitalvillage.org/audio/dv04010301.mp3

Part II
http://www.digitalvillage.org/audio/dv04010302.mp3

These files are from the sound archive of FPFK, a Los Angeles radio station. If you go to the front page of the Digital Village web site you will find there are lots of different and interesting speakers and subjects. Some are under real audio format (ram), but they are trying to convert all their archive material into mp3. I'm just waiting for the Richard Stallman interview to appear in mp3. He usually manages to say something controversial.


25th August 2004

Time for a bit of fun and a break from computing.

We are nearing the end of the Olympics and we have been celebrating those that run fastest, jump highest or are the strongest, but what of those who don't quite make the top.

It's time to visit the web site that praises those that come last!

http://www.mcwetboy.net/dfl/

This site records those in last place for each of the events and has a cumulative medals table. It is interesting to note that, as of today, not only is China high in the list of winners, but they are also number one in the list of those in last place! Good old GB is in a fairly nondescript 12th place, so nothing changed there.

Remember the maxim:

It's not the winning that counts, but the taking part.

These days that ideal has been lost, but this site at least tries to kindle that spirit.


24th August 2004

Early this year, just after the rovers on Mars had started their exploration, one of them started to turn itself off regularly. The Spirit rover, the first to land, was the one at fault and there was an anxious few days while controllers worked out what to do. They eventually decided they had to clear its memory of the data it had collected during the early parts of the mission. Since that time it worked flawlessly during its predefined operational lifetime of 90 days. Decisions were taken to extend the lifetime of roving and it is currently exploring the Columbia hills! However, things are starting to wear out. One of its wheels is beginning to falter and with the onset of Martian winter there will be less time to rove anyway as energy has to be conserved.

What has this to do with computing, you may ask? Well, it has been revealed that the problem was more to do with a functionality of DOS. More details can be found here:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1638764,00.asp

I guess we can all be grateful it was not running Windows. They would never have been able to insert the Emergency Startup Disk from Earth!


4th August 2004

I'm a bit slow in finding out about this, as it has been around since 2002. I am indebted to Simon Goodley, (City Diary in the Daily Telegraph), for bringing it to my attention.

Of course, he didn't really know what he was talking about. He used it to as an example of techies focussing their attention on the wrong things. In this case blaming Google techies for having fun rather than stopping the virus that hit its web site just as its flotation price was announced. No matter that the site I am going to mention was not created by Google and that the reason the Google site went down last week was a brand new exploit by a virus that did legitimate searches to find new e-mail address to further its own ends. That was probably quite difficult to guard against. How does one determine a legitimate search from a virus doing one?

Anyway, enough of this banter. Go along to Google, search for elgoog and click 'I feel lucky'. If the resulting page has a strangely familiar look, but sends your eyes crazy, then you have found the first true 'mirror' site for Google. It works too. Do a search for GUPCI, (ICPUG reversed), and you will see that your favourite web pages are listed in the stluser!

At first sight this looks a bit of a jape, but pretty useless. That is what Simon thought anyway. However, New Scientist reported in September 2002 that China had blocked Google to its citizens as it might subvert their minds with nasty Western ideas. They did not block this 'mirror' site though. All the Chinese had to do was use the 'mirror', type carefully and view the results in a mirror. Now this is the sort of 'off the wall' thinking that brings companies such as Google oodles of money before they succumb to the City types. When that happens they usually have to conform to a different set of rules and it is downhill all the way then.

In case Big Brother Blair gets ideas similar to the Chinese and bans the use of Google, make a note of the 'mirror' site.
http://www.alltooflat.com/geeky/elgoog/


7th July 2004

For those of us with an Astronomical interest, especially when coupled with space research, there are many sites of interest on the web.

One of the instruments up in space is the Soho spacecraft that monitors the sun through various different instruments. It is the primary source of our information about the sun's 'weather', which can be quite important to us here on Earth.

In the news last November (2003), the sun was hyperactive. Over a period of a fortnight it threw out the largest 'corona mass ejections' that had ever been recorded, which was a little strange since it is supposed to be in a quiet period for sunspot activity. On earth it created power cuts in Scandinavia and in space it did affect the odd spacecraft, although the probes on their way to Mars at the time took precautions and were unaffected.

At the time I was monitoring the pictures from the Soho instruments on the web and they were quite spectacular. Now, Nasa has put together a movie which combines the output from 3 of the instruments over the period of the storms. In addition, some animations of the track of the storm have been created to show how they passed Earth and beyond. Most recently, they arrived at the Voyager spacecraft, which is now at the edge of the solar system.

The files are quite large, so you will either need patience or broadband to download them.

Have a look at:
http://www.rednova.com/news/stories/1/2004/07/09/story001.html

The Multi-Instrument movie is the most spectacular.


29th June 2004

A friend of mine informed me last night that they had a virus. Over the phone I guide them through running AVG Antivirus to remove the virus. It found no less than 22 infected files. It managed to remove all but one - iehost.exe

This introduced me to the world of Hijacker programs. Iehost.exe starts running as soon as you boot Windows, which makes it quite difficult to remove. Using Task Manager to shut down the process resulted in being unable to close the Task Manager. Trying to reboot into Safe mode failed - whether by user inexperience, or not - I am not sure. Iehost.exe started running again and installed its nasty parasitic programs. How is a novice supposed to remove such things?

If this was not enough, I then read the following today
http://www.theregister.com/2004/06/29/cws_shredder/

It seems one Trojan is getting so complicated that the one 'white hat' who has succeeded in removing it has thrown in the towel trying to keep up with the constant, ever more sophisticated, techniques of the 'black hats'.

Spam is an annoyance, but this type of activity is a more fundamental problem. Just how can a novice safely surf the web?


14th June 2004

Today I was reading a couple of space travel related articles. Coupled with the outcome into the Shuttle tragedy last year I got to thinking that there is a serious dichotomy between what government wants in terms of safety and how they think they can get it.

The final report into the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy called for space flight to be made safer. To do this they have grounded the space shuttle fleet until certain actions are carried out. This must increase the risk to the international space station. For example, they cannot do certain repairs because the equipment cannot be carried by the Soyuz.

Bush’s commission on his Mission to Moon-Mars and Beyond strategy will report this week that it wants to streamline NASA, cut bureaucracy and allow a greater input by private enterprise.

So how does private enterprise respond?

On June 21st, Spaceship One will attempt to launch into space on a sub-orbital flight. This will be the first purely private venture funded mission into space. In fact a big contributor is Paul Allen, Bill Gates's partner in founding Microsoft all those years ago.

Bert Rutan, the builder of Spaceship One, is quoted as saying:

"We fly to space directly over the crowd instead of going way down range, and it lands back in the same place, like a small, light plane at a private airport."

The whole point of going down range is that if there is an anomaly, (space talk for blows up!), the debris does not fall on crowded areas! It may be cheaper and it may cut bureaucracy, but it ain’t inherently safer this way.

As the Americans might say - Go figure!


18th April 2004

Are you worried about the Earth being hit by an Asteroid?

Last year I thought all my worrying about getting a pension could be forgotten, as it was reported an asteroid would cause severe destruction before I reached that age! Unfortunately, a day later, the calculations were revised and the scientists decided we were not going to be hit after all.

Now a site has appeared which will allow you to calculate the amount of damage caused by an asteroid impact on the Earth, taking into account such parameters as its size and density, etc.

Doomsayers are directed to:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/


8th March 2004

You have to laugh!

Last year, Microsoft got stung in the US courts for $521 million for breaching a patent granted to a company called Eolas. In 1998 they patented the idea of execution of remote code embedded in hypertext pages. Although everyone, including Tim Berners-Lee, condemned the decision to uphold the patent, Microsoft lost the appeal as well and were ordered to start paying the original $521 million plus the interest accrued.

Now the US Patent Office has decided to annul the patent! Subject to appeal by Eolas, common sense comes good in the end.

I wonder if Microsoft will get their money back!

Details can be found at http://www.theregister.com/content/6/36065.html


7th March 2004

Did you know that the Apple iPod that is sold in the EU has been crippled? Neither did I.

Apparently there is an EU law which limits the output from personal stereos. This law has caught the iPod so that the firmware within the iPod has been changed for Europe.

While there are some software tweaks around to combat the problem in part the only real solution is to buy your iPod in the USA.

http://www.ipodlounge.com forums have discussed the law and have some of these software tweaks.


18th January 2004

It's amazing where you get to when you follow up a simple story from the Register.

You may think the number of speed cameras in the UK is bad enough now and that they are used more as a money maker than a safety exercise. What do you think of the idea of every lamp post in the country being used to monitor your speed and being connected into a network so that details can be transferred? Is it Orwellian or not? Fiction it definitely isn't.

Have a look at http://www.theregister.com/content/69/34894.html for the original story.

When I saw this link it referred back to the source of the original article which in turn led to Guy Kewney's Mobile Campaign web site, http://www.newswireless.net/ .

Guy Kewney has been a technology writer since the early days of personal computing and one I have found very interesting.

I found other articles on Guy's web site. One in particular caught my eye, Net Wars, for two reasons. First the subject matter, the take over of the web by the forces of evil, and secondly the author, Wendy Grossman. I first read Wendy's stuff in the Daily Telegraph. In the late nineties and early noughties she wrote many an interesting technology related article.

The Net Wars article, at http://www.newswireless.net/articles/040109-netwars.html, led back to Wendy's web site at http://www.pelicancrossing.net. From here it was easy to find links to many of Wendy's articles, both in print and on the web.

If you are interested in technology and the web, these links are worth a visit.


13th November 2003

The Americans have set up a Robot Hall of Fame, which allows entries from real and fictional robots.

The first inductee from reality is the Sojourner Mars rover vehicle and the two fictional inductees were R2-D2 and HAL9000 - clearly the term Robot encompasses computers!

See story at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1111_031111_robothalloffame.html

How about setting up a UK Robot Hall of Fame?

We may be short on real inductees at the moment, although Beagle 2 could well qualify come Christmas.

However, on the fictional front I have no doubt who should be the first inductee - with a brain the size of a planet, but relegated to car park attendant at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, it has to be Marvin, the Paranoid Android.

Any takers for K-9 as the second fictional inductee?


10th October 2003

After all the trouble with worms and viruses in August and September the quote of the quarter must be:

To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it.

To mess up your Windows box , you just need to work on it.

For the full story go to:
http://www.theregister.com/content/56/33226.html


19th August 2003

You cannot keep a good Amigan down. News of the Amiga turns up in the most unlikely places.

Surfing around to look at the latest Knoppix news I find the text of a recent interview with Klaus Knopper, its creator. Two of the gems from this very interesting chat are that:

  • Klaus has never used a Windows based PC
  • His computer at home in earlier times was the Amiga.

The full interview can be found at:
http://www.pctechtalk.com/view.php?opt=printable&id=1239


5th August 2003

I seem to be spending most of my time responding to the many people saying thanks for the instructions on how to turn off the Messenger Service and stop the Spam coming via that route, (features/030429fe.htm). However, I am occasionally surfing the web and coming up with some new things to look out for. It does seem as if a lot is connected with scams of one form or another.

One of my correspondents tells me about a product caused Hotbar that is being marketed by Messenger Spam. I did a search of the web and found that Hotbar was a toolbar add-on to Internet Explorer that allows you to use different skins. What you may not know is it also sends back information on the web sites you visit and then sends you targeted ads based on where you have gone. Because it is integrated into the browser these ads do not seem to be affected by the usual ad stopper programs. The program is also difficult to uninstall as it keeps reinstalling itself. I suggest you give Hotbar a wide berth. More info at:
http://www.safersite.com/PestInfo/h/Hotbar.asp

The next scam comes from Microsoft itself. The Messenger Spam results from the default setting of the Messenger Service being ON, yet hardly any home user is likely to need it. It is a tool primarily for network administrators. Now comes news of a Windows vulnerability where a hacker can execute any command on your PC by getting into it in a similar way as the Messenger Spam. Microsoft sent out an alert a little while ago about this critical flaw but the US government has seen fit to renew the warning twice now. This is probably the most critical Windows flaw found to date. It affects anybody with any version of Windows EXCEPT Window 98 or Windows Millennium. Whereas for most other vulnerabilities of this type a user has to open an e-mail or visit a web site to be hacked this one only needs the user to be connected to the Internet! That means all of us. You can find more about the vulnerability as well as a patch by following this link:
http://microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-026.asp

Those of you in the UK may have heard of our governments own little scam - the Smart ID card. They keep dreaming up new ways to encourage us all to carry a little card that will hold all sorts of personal information on us. Perhaps you agree with it, perhaps you don't. At the moment the government is consulting opinion. Have your say by going to:
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/policydocs/consult_subject_document.asp?docnum=802
Just one thing. They will not let you see the policy or give you the form for your opinion unless you give them your web address. It seems that only web aware people who are prepared to give away personal information will be allowed an opinion. One way of skewing the results to get the right answer I suppose!


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