Category Archives: Information Technology

Technology Woes

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My Inspiron 9400 / 1705 died.  More accurately, the GPU (video card) fried.  Now, a computer with no ability to display anything is not going to be very useful.  This left me with two options:

  • Find the parts and do the repairs.
  • Get a new computer.

In looking at what was involved with fixing the box, both DH and I started leaning towards a new box.  When we saw that Dell was replacing these boxes over the given issue, it pushed us over the edge.

Cancer is not cheap to combat.  Infertility had already depleted a lot of financial savings, so we had a few criteria that needed to be met under $1,000.00 USD.  (We did go over a bit, I admit, but it was unavoidable.)  The main thing was that I needed something that had a dedicated video memory card.  Shared video cards are bad whenever you run programs such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.  That doesn’t even touch gaming issues.

Adobe has a long history of eating every possible resource on any given machine.  Microsoft only tries to do that from time to time.  Adobe is a master of creeping bloatware.  Unfortunately, Adobe is the only possible alternative for some things.

We went to our local computer megastore because DH wants NOTHING to do with my machine.  I even had trouble getting him to go with me to the store to buy it.  (He wanted to do this in a truly Byzantine manner that even his closest friends thought showed a form of insanity.  The details would reveal too much about his neuroses, so I will not state them here.)  There we were when I found a decent refurbished machine:

HP Pavilion 17.3” screen laptop

I’m pretty happy thus far – even though figuring out Windows 7 is weird.  It is going to take some time to transfer everything over.  I have to access the functional disk that resides in the Inspiron 9400 to release some of my programs so I can install them on the new box.  These aren’t programs I can do without, either.

Oh, did I mention that my Zune went at the same time.  In the next few days I am going to have to call Microsoft and try and get it fixed.  It should still be under warranty.

(I haven’t even touched the stuff that is going on at work . . .)

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Godwin’s Corrollary : Breastfeeding Discussions in Online Communities

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Any female dominated online community will dive into discord upon the mention of breastfeeding vs. the bottle.

So, I haven’t been doing too much online of late.  I was reading, making cards, cleaning, and starting a new job.  I meandered over to my blog reader to find that the infertility blogosphere’s main blogger, Mel at Stirrup Queen’s had decided to post about breastfeeding.

No good can come from any post about breastfeeding in a woman dominated area.  The discussion will, no matter how carefully laid out, degrade into each side using diatribes against the other.  Comments were made, blog posts inundated this corner of the blogosphere – all because someone decided to blog about the world of breastfeeding.

Now, I’m not wanting to create yet another space about breastfeeding v. bottle feeding.  No, when the very even-keeled ladies on Ravelry’s BID (Big Issues Debate) board can’t manage to discuss this without eventually having a flame war, I don’t hold hope for any part of the blogosphere.  This is a group that has successfully debated many another hot topic.

My history online starts with GOPHER and Usenet.  This phenomenon just repeats and repeats – just like the first person to invoke the Nazis (with obvious exceptions when you are actually discussing WWII and the Nazis) loses in any internet argument.

Breastfeeding v. the Bottle is the corollary.

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Patch Tuesday, The Productivity Killer

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I understand that patches are necessary.  Security is important.  But why does everyone decide to push all patches out on the same day?

I realize that they (ubiquitous they) believe this is a good idea.  It gives them a set deadline to meet.  Of course, by everyone doing it on the same day, there is no testing for conflicts between various programmatic updates that are not provided by the same companies or cooperatives.

Copy and Paste were broken on my machine today.  This is really bad when you are trying to navigate between various operating systems, as I was.  So, I have spent a good portion of my day trying to fix some conflict that I have been endowed with.

Aren’t computers fun?

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Stupidity, Thy Name Is Blizzard

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Some of you may be aware of the fact that Blizzard.net has decided the way to get rid of internet trolls is to use RealID to rip away the veil of anonymity.

This doesn’t work.  People who are idiots online are also idiots offline.  (I know I can be an idiot at times.  I try to temper it as much as possible, but, sometimes, even I, a grown woman, lose my courtesy controls.)

Today’s CTRL+ALT+DEL is a good summary of how well that works.

Now, not only is this not going to do what they claim they want it to do, it is going to cause actual harm to some people.

How many people want everyone they know to know all of their hobbies?  There are people who would not understand about reading comic books, romance or science fiction novels, playing video games, knitting, or cooking.  People have some of the most amazing prejudices that others would never even blink an eye at.

What about those unfortunate few who are being stalked?  Yes, they want to escape to a game world to get away from their worries, but, well, Blizzard says, “Nope, you can’t stay safe and play our game.”

There are a lot of under-18s who play these games as well.  It seems to me that there may actually be some privacy issues I am unaware of that affect the younger set.  Yes, parental controls can turn off RealID, but most teens know how to get into their parents’ accounts and do things that the parents would rather they didn’t.  (This is a truism of technology.)

I have heard some internet savvy folks claim that since IP addresses can be linked to individuals this makes no difference.  I beg to disagree as there are ways to fake IP addresses, etc.  Also, most stalkers don’t have the internet savvy to do this type of tracking.

My guess, as someone with many, many years in the software development profession, is that marketing came to the development team saying “we have to be a social media company!”  The developers groaned in private and did the bare minimum to make the deadline as they had more important updates to get fixed with limited resources.  I wouldn’t even be surprised that they are hoping the community outcry caused by this idiocy – and that is what it is – will make the powers-that-be at Blizzard roll back this change – or severely alter it.

Of course, I could be wrong and this could all be part of the plan to take over the Internet as the more paranoid websites have been claiming.  But, well, after years in IT, I can’t really see it as that nefarious. 

 

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Old Codgers in Congress Fear Connectivity

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http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0618/senators-introduce-bill-disconnect-internet/

The old folks home of dementia patients known as Congress has shown a stellar example of their inability to understand even everyday technology. Lieberman, et al., wish to create a giant off-switch to stop the US Internet in case of cyberattack. This won’t work real well since the darknet* (don’t google or go there!) is already cut off from the rest of the net but still manages to worm its way in to steal credit card and bank numbers from time to time.

But wait, there’s more! What is the most common type of cyberattack there is? DDOS – Distributed Denial of Service. In Congressional English (a.k.a. Senatorial, or moron), this means someone fills the tubes until nothing more can get through. For smarter people, it means if you type in an address, or click that link, the page you want won’t load up for you to see it.

How does an off-switch help this? (Yeah, that’s rhetorical.)

*Darknet is another internet network where only bad guys hang out. You seriously do not want to ever find yourself connected to it.WordPress tags: , , , ,

U.S. (Halliburton?) Identifies (Admits?) Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan

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I realize that this sounds a bit on the conspiracy side of things.  I know that this may cause me to lose any credibility with many folks out there.  And perhaps I have just been enjoying too many Conspiracy and Paranormal Podcasts.  But, in the end, it seems way too convenient that the Soviets knew of these resources and Halliburton is a major contractor for the US military and mining and oil interests for there not to have been some level of purpose there.

For those who are unaware, the US military has long been used by business interests to forward their goals to make more profit.  It is something that some history teachers touch upon, but many don’t.  Smedley Butler – the man who saved the Union before World War II – even wrote a book called War is a Racket after serving as a general.

Why did Smedley Butler think this?  Well, the very lucrative banana and other plantations of South America were major financial interests of the robber barons of the era.  We stayed in the Philippines for the same reason.  It was always about money and trade.  Also, the opening of Japan was because the US Navy threatened to open fire if the Japanese didn’t open their ports to trade.

So, Afghanistan has the largest known deposits of lithium (batteries, computers, etc.), cobalt (more high tech), and other minerals crucial in the creation of computers, batteries, and other technologies which run our world today.

Why wouldn’t I think that Halliburton – or Brown and Root, or some other incarnation – influenced things so that we would have a strong military presence in Afghanistan?  I find the protestations of this being a surprise rather hard to swallow when the Soviets knew before they left Afghanistan.

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Techie Hat On : Network Neutrality – The Myths

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Having worked in telecommunications, I am quite entertained by the network neutrality debate. Both sides continue to push myths as facts. Two things:

  • There has never been true network neutrality.
  • Costs for real control would be, expensive.

I’ll talk about the lack of current network neutrality today. . .

Providers of bandwidth – telecommunications and cable companies (primarily) – try to give priority to their own traffic and to preferred partners already. This is a long-standing practice from the days of P.O.T.S (Plain Old Telephone Services). They do this partially by charging for accessing the part of the network that they own.

This is where it gets tricky. Who actually owns certain parts of the network? We have the major players – AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and some names you will never hear of – and we have local companies who are providing that last little bit of network connectivity to your home or business. There are portions of that network that more than one company claims as their own.

This lack of clear distinction has created an entire field within telecommunications known as Cost of Access (COA). This is not normal accounting. No, this is a type of accounting that you need to be a specialist to deal with. Telephony is all about billing and this is where you will either make or break your bank. Often, disputes arise over whether that is actually something that you (the provider) can actually charge for.

What happens with those disputes? Well, those customers who are being difficult, can, in some instances be shunted to the back of the call queue. This starts getting into things like origination points – which aren’t always clear – and can end up causing poor service to innocent parties. Of course, we are talking about milliseconds here, but when you are charging by the minute and rounding up, that can end up costing a great deal.

There are also a variety of types of equipment used in the world of telephony and internet networks to allow priority to go to certain types of traffic. It can even block traffic completely. There is even throttling of some traffic types.

At a very, very basic level, priority would be something like telling the system that any network traffic originating from the providers office gets moved to the front of the queue and can take up all available bandwidth. (This is very simplified.) It can even be told to push out other types of traffic. This is harder, and has some limitations, but can be done.

Blocking traffic can be easy or hard. It depends on how you want to do it. There is an entire part of the internet called the “Darknet.” No, you don’t want to go there. Really. This is the place where credit card and banking numbers are bought and sold in batches by Eastern European and Asian hackers. There are entire blocks of IP Addresses (that thing that identifies a given computer on the internet) that are completely blocked from the “legitimate” internet.

Now, please feel free to ask any questions you want. I will be glad to bug my husband (a real network and security expert) for answers and then try to create a simplified explanation.

Please remember this is a very oversimplified description meant for a general audience. I know that the techies out there can shoot holes through a lot of this with exceptions, but you all realize that this is basically true!

Am I Under a Technology Curse?

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So, this weekend I got hit by something called the av.exe virus on my Netbook. (My main computer is dragging along due to not having a sufficient hard drive due to complications in imaging the existing drive. Thank-you very much Dell Computers – NOT!) This is an old-school virus. It is nasty. It goes back to the days when viruses were just destructive instead of trying to self-propagate.

The worst part of this? I keep my stuff up-to-date and pay Trend Micro for virus protection. Trend Micro is not the only company that is not protecting against this gem. Kaspersky isn’t. Norton isn’t. None of the major anti-virus companies are. You get infected despite doing everything right. If I can get infected, anyone can. And my husband, the networking / security expert, agrees with that assessment. (Let’s not mention that I can attract weirdness in all my life.)

So, what did it take to rid myself of this monstrosity? I started at Virus Removal Guru and followed their instructions. This is NOT a short – or even complete – process. It took all day Sunday – after I discovered I was infected. The muttering from my expert husband was interesting. Oh, by the way, if you get this, you need access to an uninfected machine to fix it and continue searching. DH used this for the manual part. This is mutating fast, so any instructions written up are going to be subject to constant change.

From DH, the expert, it seems to be traveling via Adobe products – .pdf, flash, etc. So, be very, very careful opening anything of that sort.

How did I know I was infected? Suddenly a very Windows looking window opened up claiming it was scanning for viruses. Since I run PC-Cillin I knew this was just not right. Firewalls don’t stop this nasty thing either. The common consensus? If you get this, you are screwed.

eBooks – One of a Series of Problems (with a small tirade about my hard drive)

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I’m a little bit of a luddite when it comes to ebooks. This is partially due to why I’ve been on a blogging break – and why I’m still fighting with technology right now. I do, however, believe they have a place in an avid readers life.

First, why am I a luddite? Well, the failure of my backup drive in the midst of a major data transfer which led to the loss of much data. I was trying to make room on my too small main hard drive. The back-up drive died between the time of it doing its back-up and the creation of my secondary back-up. I lost a lot of data. (I am also attempting to replace this drive. This means computers aren’t always available for use. More on this later.)

Now, some sellers do allow you to grab your ebooks more than once from their servers – and don’t limit your device usage too much. One of the reasons I am very comfortable with Audible.com is because they store my audiobooks so I can get them again. This is not true for all of them – and some are stupid about DRM.

Audible.com handles DRM issues well. When my Creative Zen died (wail), and I had to migrate to Zune, I didn’t have any trouble deactivating my Creative Zen and activating my new Zune. Not that it matters at the moment since I can’t download my podcasts until this hard drive is replaced. I have heard people have had issues with digital editions when they wanted to switch devices – not exactly pirating a book.

This insistence on control of device and format could easily lead to the same disasters that hurt the music industry bigwigs. Now, there are some major genre players who have seemingly “got it.” Harlequin and Baen are both early adopters who have actually done some interesting and innovative things.

Baen lets readers read a selection of free books – or chapters – online in order to entice readers to go out and buy the whole book or the rest of the series. Of course, most readers will want that first book too.

Harlequin has also embraced ebooks. They have been slowly creating a new way to buy their limited number publications as ebooks. They have also created an online exclusive line with Nocturne Bites. I know I have picked up a Harlequin series and found that the other books are not available unless I want to spend a lot more money than I budget for my pleasure reading.

Do you know of any publishing houses that are taking advantage of the ebook – or that are just trying to tie their books up even tighter in DRM?

Amazon.com, however, has limited ebooks to only the Kindle. I read on my Palm. I like my Palm as a reader because it has a few other applications I use regularly. I wasn’t planning on switching until the new Palm Pre phones come down in price. Mobipocket is owned by Amazon, by the way, and is the underlying technology for Kindle books. They put proprietary code on top to prevent other devices from using the books sold specifically for the Kindle. I was surprised by this. I like Amazon. I love Amazon. But I was disappointed with their decision. (I completely get it on a business level. I just wish they had allowed me to continue using my Palm and just added functionality for Kindle users.)

Now, I’ve been reading telereader.com – a blog devoted to ebooks, and have more to say about ebooks in the near future. But I want to take an opportunity to complain about technology.

I have a Dell Inspiron that I am trying to upgrade the hard drive on. It has something called Media Direct that is making the traditional imaging software throw up on itself. I have had supergeeks look at it and they are getting into the area of technological esoterica to fix it. This includes weird hardware they must dig out of their collections. Why do we make it so hard for people to make what should be easy changes?

New Zune for an Audiobook Addict

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The day before Thanksgiving my beloved Creative Zen 40 GB died for the final time. I listen to audiobooks while I am cooking, cleaning, and crafting. It makes the time pass in a way where I don’t feel like I’m missing too much reading time. It also helps when the eyes get tired to have a book to listen to instead of reading.

417ZyubggULNow, I spent half the night trying to fix it. DH came in and asked the normal, “Did you try X?” series of questions. The last option left was to find a new hard drive to install into the controllers. Well, for the same price I could get a new MP3 player that included video.

Now, video was not a primary concern, what was a concern was an ability to hold lots of music, podcasts, and lots of audiobooks. The audiobook capability should include using the library’s system.

I looked at the iPods and was rather dismayed to see how small their storage capacity was. Most of the people I know who travel or tend to listen most of the day want large capacity hard drives on their media device so they don’t have to do too much space management.

I spent a good portion of the rest of the night looking up which devices got the best reviews. Microsoft’s Zune 120 GB Video MP3 Player (Red)won on size plus price. The comparative iPod is just overpriced.

So, the first thing I did was email Audible to have my Creative Zen deactivated. It is impossible to deactivate a dead device without contacting customer support. It was very important to me to be able to put my audiobooks on the new Zune.

On Black Friday, DH found the Zune 120 GB Video MP3 Player (Red) for a great deal – including the car package – and bought it for me. The site claimed “Next Day Delivery.” Now, they have a strange interpretation of “Next Day Delivery.” It took about 2 weeks to get it. I don’t think that normally qualifies as “Next Day Delivery,” but I could be wrong. (This was Dell, for those interested in such matters.)

Finally, my Zune 120 GB Video MP3 Player (Red) arrived. I immediately connected it to my laptop and started finding all the bugs. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the device, but, like all electronics, it has its flaws. The first one was an error that fixed itself. It couldn’t find music I had burned to my computer while saying it was there. This mysteriously fixed itself after a therapeutic reboot. I had even found references to the issue in the support forums.

The next issue is that I can’t connect to my home network for some reason. I know the password is correct – but long – and it just won’t connect. The error? Wrong password. Nope, it’s the right password.

I have been putting all my music on the Zune 120 GB Video MP3 Player (Red) . I have even bought a couple of things off of the Zune Marketplace. If I were employed (I’m looking!), I would get a Zune Pass. The Zune Pass is $14.99 USD a month for unlimited listening and the ability to buy 10 songs each month automatically. That is a very good deal and I am going to try and convince DH that it would be a good idea for us since the local station that used to be where you heard new music has stopped playing music. Well, except for Ed Love’s Destination Jazz. I’m pretty sure they would have been inundated with calls and threats of loss of support (NPR) if they pulled his show. (The man knows every Jazz legend ever, or so it seems.)

I love the interface. I love my Zune 120 GB Video MP3 Player (Red). And, after a heck of a year, it was a great present for Christmas.

Oh, I have also discovered that you can play the video on a television if you want.

Do you have an MP3 player and how did you come to have the one you have?

Note: If you got multiples of this – including a weird looking one – I apologize. I was trying out a bit of new blogging software and it over rode my template. That is just a great big NO for any further use. I’m sticking with BlogDesk.