Hawk’s Babble-Log

Autorun is a feature bug in Windows which automatically runs arbitrary programs whenever a CD is inserted in the drive, or when any new USB jumpdrive is inserted into the system.

For example, if I insert my friend’s infected jumpdrive into my Windows machine, and it contains the file AUTORUN.INF in the root of that drive, Windows will run whatever virus is specified in that file, thus infecting my machine. Except that I have autorun turned OFF, so my machine doesn’t get infected, and I am able to delete the AUTORUN.INF file, as well as the virus files on his flash drive.

As far as security is concerned, this is the worst possible bug Microsoft could have ever created (except possibly the semi-automatic virus installer known as Internet Explorer).

How to turn off autorun in Windows XP:

Go here and download Tweak UI (on the right, about half-way down):
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx

This will give you a file called, ‘TweakUiPowertoySetup.exe‘. It’s an installer; run it to install Microsoft Power Toys / TweakUI. No reboot necessary.

Once that’s done, Start Menu -> Programs -> Powertoys for Windows XP -> TweakUI. It looks like this:

In the left pane, click the + next to My Computer, click the + next to AutoPlay, then click on Drives. On the right will be a list of all drive letters possible. Uncheck every single one (with prejudice). It should now look something like this:

Click OK and you’re done!

I see two major things which are wrong here:

1. Microsoft, in an effort to be user-friendly, made this feature bug ON by default. This means that an infected jumpdrive can spread a virus/trojan/malware throughout an office like wildfire. Microsoft wants it like this. Well, they never have been too keen on system security, so that kinda makes sense.

2. Microsoft made it very, very difficult to turn autorun OFF in Windows XP. It didn’t used to be this difficult. In older versions of Windows, you could turn it off from the system control panel. Search the net for instructions, it did not require downloading a utility to do it.

Drawbacks to turning Autorun off

The only drawback to turning autorun off in Windows XP is that CDs won’t start to play automatically when you pop ‘em in. Also, if you’re using a Cruzer Micro USB drive, it’s annoying software won’t launch automatically when you pop the thing in your machine. Actually, that’s a good thing. But if you like it’s annoying software to launch every time you pop it in, then you’ll want to leave autorun turned on for that drive letter. But know this: if your USB stick (or anyone else’s) is infected and autorun is on, it will infect your computer before you can say, “Dang it, Microsoft!” (as soon as you stick it in).

Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, Common, Jane Alexander and Helena Bonham Carter. A stellar cast, I like just about everyone on here. I didn’t like John Connor played by Christian Bale, he was just not a likeable character.

Good movie, but I don’t want to see it again.

Why? Because my favorite character died in the end. But if you like action sequences, it’s full of ‘em. And the action sequences are good.

Speaking of action sequences, the T-800 is one tough cookie… but stupid. The only thing keeping the T-800 from killing you is distance. Once it gets a hold of you, you are done. But not in this movie; if you throw everything you’ve got at it and it just keeps on coming, what does it do to you once it gets a hold of you? It throws you across the room, of course. This puts more distance between you and it, thus giving you more time to figure a way to defeat it. If the T-800 really wanted to kill John Connor, it would have simply walked up to him and killed him. Instead, it walked up to him, grabbed him, and then tossed him away. See? Stupid.

There were the standard lines, such as, “I’ll be back.” and “Come with me if you want to live.” Hey Hollywood, how about some creativity?

They show where/how John Connor got his facial scars. They show how Kyle Reese learned the rope-through-shotgun-stock trick.

Watching the previews, I remember hearing John Connor saying something like, “One way or another, this war ends tonight.” At the end, you heard him say something like, “Skynet’s global network is still operational…” I was thinking, “Well, there were a lot of good action scenes, but what was accomplished?” Because of that last line, the war is not over, the preview lied to me, and now there is yet another opportunity to make another movie with little creativity.

I will not be buying this one, unless I can find it used for $3.

I wanted to make a point about these connections. Here, you can see the power connections to the motherboard. Personally, I don’t need the labels, but I love ‘em anyway; it’s a good idea (helps keep the smoke in) even though they are idiot-proof these days.

And here I’m holding the CPU power connectors so that you can see the label. Nice, eh? I love this power supply.

And these little guys… I think this is a huge leap forward. I LOVE these little connectors!

You take the individual case connectors, in this case, the USB connectors, and plug ‘em in to this little blue thing. This little blue thing is labeled on all sides, it’s just brilliant. Once they’re all in there, just slide the whole thing down on to the motherboard! Saves my back!

I love modern technology!

Dear Jeff,

I have a lot of respect for you. I think you’ve done amazing things with Amazon.com. Indeed, truly remarkable things. When idiot investors were walking away from your presentations, you were creating the amazing future which eventually became Amazon.com.

Example: You started Amazon.com as a book store, then just took it to the moon. Outstanding!

Example: Amazon created wish-lists. I don’t know if y’all were the first, but amazon.com was the first site I found that did wish-lists. This made it easy for me to keep track of the items I was saving up for.

Example: Amazon One-Click. It’s very convenient, fast, and easy to set up. Makes shopping on amazon.com a cakewalk! No one else did that, and not many other sites do that now either.

Example: Amazon Associates. Made it possible for me to have an online bookstore without the actual bookstore (or moviestore, etc.).

Example: Amazon Marketplace. I’m not saying eBay hadn’t hit the mark first, but you guys there did a bank up job on the Marketplace and I still find amazing deals there, when I don’t want to pay full price, or when it’s out of print.

Example: Amazon MP3. I like being able to buy the songs that I like on an album, instead of being forced to buy the whole thing. In the past, I have purchased CDs for just one song on the disc. The downloaded MP3 is high bit-rate, and not DRM’ed. This is a big point, as I can put it on any of my audio player devices (like my phone).

Example: Amazon Unbox. I just may use Unbox for all my video purchases. I’m kinda undecided on it, but it’s still intriguing. I can buy a movie and start watching it within about 10 minutes (sometimes less) right on my big-screen computer. Nobody beats 10-minute shipping. Plus, it’s there for me forever (can’t lose it); that’s a big plus.

And finally… The Amazon Kindle. Wow! I love it! I just LOVE IT! This is the device that I want all my stuff on. This is the one. It’s just the right size, in my humble opinion, because I can slip it into my side pants pocket (even with the cover on). I love all it’s features, except the DRM’ed books. I can only read ‘em on the device, not anywhere else; that’s a minus.

From my perspective, it looks like you are giving us people/consumers what we want. I think this is exactly the right thing to do. How do you know what we want? Do a survey. Doing surveys with enough people will give you a very accurate picture of what we want.

In a Charlie Rose interview with Marc Andreessen (creator of Netscape), Marc spoke about the Kindle. He said something like, “Oh, Kindle, I mean, it’s just–it’s gigantic.” He then went on about form factors… “The iPhone with a sort of three or four inch screen… a laptop or netbook with a 12 or 14 inch screen… and now you’ve got the Kindle with a sort of seven inch screen.” He and Charlie Rose go on to talk about others making a bunch of little “pads”, or “net pads”… Marc continues: “Somebody will figure it out. That thing, I mean, the Kindle does books and magazines and newspapers, but that form factor and that shape of a device and that weight in a couple of years is going to be doing video, it’s going to be doing music, it’s going to be doing video conferencing. It’s going to be doing telephony. It’s going to be doing Web browsing. It’s going to be doing everything, right? And so that’s the next — one of the fascinating things is that’s the next screen size and the next killer device, I think, is what’s going to happen.

In a recent interview, you were asked about putting other media (such as video) on the Kindle, and you said something like, “Would you use a Swiss-army knife at the dinner table?”

Actually, I would. But that’s because I’m a geek. And I have used a Swiss-army-knife-style spoon-and-fork thingy for eating a whole meal. It worked quite well, no problemo.

Anyway, here’s my point: I (the consumer) want a device just like the Kindle, which can do e-books (just like it does now), play my MP3s (with all the features of an iPod), full color e-paper, play movies (e-paper is almost there, you can watch demos on YouTube of video-capable e-paper now), with a big SSD (Solid State Disk) to hold my entire library (of everything, audio/video/ebooks/PDFs/etc), two additional SD card slots for my own SD cards, wireless access to the internet (just like it does now), GPS services (just like it does now), longer battery life, and a good internet browser for web surfing & email (such as Mozilla Firefox). You could even hook it in to Amazon Unbox and sell me movies directly to my Kindle. Cha-ching!

I would pay a lot for a device that did all that. I’d bet others would, too.

Cell phones come close, but they’re too small to read whole books on (plus they don’t use e-paper), and they’re also too small for movies/videos. The best a cell phone has going for it is that it’s already networked. I can do a lot with my little flip-phone: web, Gmail, Google Maps, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, texting, IMs, take pictures (and post them to Flickr), listen to my MP3s with sterio Bluetooth headphones, and so on, but it’s not a good e-book reader, and it doesn’t have a fast-enough processor for video.

Now, let me go back a step, back to before there was a Kindle. Sony had a pretty good e-book reader, but it wasn’t networked, you needed to have a computer to put the books into it, there were not a lot of e-books available for it, and it cost a friggin’ arm and a leg.

I would bet I could not have convinced anyone to put any money in to a project to create a cute little e-book reader which used e-paper, ran for days/weeks on a single charge, was networked (for free), had a deal with a big book-seller such as Amazon.com for all of it’s content, ran on a free, open-source operating system (Linux), and did all the other things (such as note-taking) that the Kindle does… and make it affordable. No way, bub. I would have been laughed at, all the way out the door.

Then Jeff Bezos creates and releases the Amazon Kindle. Bam!, now it’s possible. Before that, it was not within the realm of possibility. Now that it’s been released, the Kindle has shown that such a device is actually possible… and is really what people want.

NOW I could convince someone to make such a device. Indeed, I could convince someone (with money) to invest in a project to create the all-my-media-needs device described above, the one which is fully networked over the existing Sprint wireless network, portable (with long battery life), color e-paper, full-motion video, MP3/music player, with lots of storage, web browsing, email, VoIP, everything.

Google may already be working on such a device. Google has money to throw around, and they’ve got talent as well. Just look at what they did for cell phone operating systems with Android. They’ve also got a huge e-book project already in production, and one for the iPhone & G1.

The guy who owns that big news network, Rupert Murdoch, he’s got money to throw around. And he loves the Kindle. I’d bet he’s working on a device to do what you, Jeff Bezos, won’t let the Kindle become.

Let the Kindle fulfill it’s destiny. Create an API for it and let people play around inside it and create with it (just like Google’s Android OS for cell phones).

If you don’t, you will lose the market to devices which do what we want them to do, not necessarily what you want them to do. And if you lose the market, your dream of “everything ever printed available in the Kindle” will not happen.

Thanks for your time.

-Hawk
Humble Kindle owner

Time to put all this new stuff in the case! Here’s all the stuff I had at the time. Power supply, motherboard, 4G RAM kit (2 x 2G), AMD CPU, cables, connectors, manuals, stuff… see pic.

The Motherboard is an ASUS M3A79-T DELUXE, AMD 790FX chipset, ATX form factor, 4xPCI-E(x16) / 2XPCI / 4XDDR2, SATA2 RAID, 1GB lan, 1394 (firewire), lots of USB 2.0, and amazing audio capabilities. CPU type: AMD Socket AM2.

Power supply and motherboard installed in the case. I popped out the connector plate which came with the case, installed the one that came with the motherboard, and it all fits perfectly!

The RAM installed in the motherboard, and the CPU is ready, along with the CPU heatsink & fan.

The RAM is a CRUCIAL 4GB KIT (BL2KIT25664AL80A), high-speed gaming RAM set.

I like this motherboard because I can simply add two more 2G RAM sticks and double it. I’m not saying Windows XP will be able to use it (as of now, not all of my 4G is used), but I can expand it easily. This ease of expansion is important to me.

CPU installed. It went in easy as pie.

The CPU is an AMD ATHLON X2 7750 2.7G – Black. It was just under my pricepoint for this system. I can always upgrade.

And finally, the CPU heatsink & fan. Now I almost have a working computer.

I’ll probably replace this heatsink & fan with the kind I’ve got in my linux server; it looks like a tower of heatfins with a fan on the side.

Most of this stuff has been discontinued, but you can find suitable replacement components at mwave.com

So far, so good! More to come.

When writing negative reviews, I don’t hold back. And this is no exception: 1 & 1 web hosting sucks ass, big time. I would not pay that company one thin dime for anything.

I asked them to add a domain name to my friend’s virtual hosting account, and they were like, “Eh?” I very carefully explained to them (all of them were in Portugal) how to add a domain name to a website. It’s trivial, I do it all the time. No, I’m not transferring a domain, no, I’m not registering a new domain; the domain is already registered and pointing to the correct IP address. All they need to do is add the name to the account and the website will show up.

Nope, they don’t do that. I would need to upgrade to a goddamn dedicated server account in order to do that.

Just now, I logged in to my GoDaddy account and added about 40 domains to my virtually hosted account. As expected, it was trivial! Why can 1 & 1 not do this? Because they’ve got their heads up their asses! That’s why.

Stick with GoDaddy, they allow you do to trivial things with your virtually hosted websites without upgrading to a full-on dedicated server.

And, on the topic of dedicated servers, I recommend serverbeach.com.

Some boneheaded friends of mine got themselves infected with the Email-Worm.win32.NetSky.q worm.

Upon installing antivirus software to handle it, I got an error about how the Microsoft Installer Service was not running. When trying to start it manually (net start msiserver), I got an error about how it was missing or not found or something.

Again, I humbly request a stand-alone scanner/cleaner from anti-malware makers, something than I can run straight off my write-protected flash drive / jumpdrive.

Thank you for your time.

-Hawk
Humble SysAdmin (who now has to wipe the drive and re-install Windows)

http://freeofvirus.blogspot.com/

Remove Fake Antivirus 1.0 is used to remove:

1. Personal Antivirus,
2. Anti-Virus-1,
3. Spyware Guard 2008,
4. System Guard 2009,
5. Antivirus 2009,
6. System Security,
7. Antivirus 2010,
8. Antivirus Pro 2009,
9. Antivirus 360 and
10. MS Antispyware 2009

(all of them are fake antivirus which are viruses or trojans) from your computer.

Remove Fake Antivirus is used to remove fake antivirus which are viruses or trojans.

http://freeofvirus.blogspot.com/

Please make a version of your software which need not be installed into a system, but may be run straight from my write-protected flashdrive / jumpdrive so that I can easily repair / clean infected systems.

Net installers are not helpful.

As it is right now, I can’t even install your software on the infected machine as the infection actively prevents me from installing anything, especially anti-malware-type programs.

Thanks in advance.

A Humble SysAdmin,
Hawk

I’m building a new game machine! Yaayyyy! It’s way overdue.

Here’s the new power supply. It’s a 700W, which should hold me for at least a week, maybe even two. The maker is called “be quiet!”, believe it or not. And with a huge 120mm fan, it’s pretty darn quiet. The type is called “STRAIGHTPOWER”, and it’s got enough cables and connections to power anything I may put in this machine (for a very long time). Most of the connections are labeled with colorful pictures of where they go (which is just nice of them).

This is the case. Yes, it’s the exact same case as my linux server.

I like this case. It’s clear acrylic by Logisys. It’s big enough for whatever I may need to put in it. It’s easy to work on. It’s clear. Did I mention that it’s totally clear acrylic? Way-cool.

This case comes with three small blue fans: one in front, one in the side, and one in back. They are lit by four blue LEDs, one in each corner. No, there is no option for green, nor for red. I’ll eventually have to replace them all with red fans, but they are still cool as-is.

I don’t know if they still have these items, but you can find most of this stuff at mwave.com and frozencpu.com. Mwave beats just about anyone else on price, and FrozenCPU specializes in all kinds of stuff for tricking out your computer big-time. That’s where I got the cool red cold cathodes from (in subsequent posts).

More to come.