Recent Posts

1651

Living Room / Re: What's the name of your car?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 12, 2014, 07:07 AM »

I always have, and always will maintain that motorcycles have souls. You must treat them how they want to be treated...or they will kill you.

After much thought my recently acquired 2010 Harley Davidson FLTRX has been named Trixie. While the name is a bit uncreatively a play on the model designation, she's also a bit flashy (more chrome than I'm generally comfortable with), and she loves to play (as long as I don't push too hard).

1652

Non-Windows Software / Re: LINUX: Free book for the Tiny Core Linux distro

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 12, 2014, 06:58 AM »

Hm... If I could get Samba running on the base core edition/version(?) in a VM. That would be a perfect place to study/play with Linux.

(Don't mind me...I have these moments periodically)

1653

Living Room / Re: What happened?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 11, 2014, 03:55 PM »

That a right interesting (or frightening) imagination you have there Iain.

1654

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 11, 2014, 03:49 PM »

Considering I'd missed it, sure...I'll give'em a point for that.

1655

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 11, 2014, 03:07 PM »

^Ya know there was one year back when that I did goof up on my taxes, and the IRS actually correct the error and sent an additional $50 in my return check. Granted I'm sure the poor bastard got fired for it ... But it did happen at least once that I know of.

1656

Living Room / Re: Problem with Office 365 and Windows 8

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 11, 2014, 03:03 PM »

This company uses Outlook like a Giant Filing Cabinet and learning NEW ways here is not a good thing.

-questorfla (March 11, 2014, 01:32 PM)

Note: Although this doesn't address your question, I can't help but point out that using Outlook as a "giant filing cabinet" is an extremely bad idea for more reasons than I have time to go into. Even Microsoft frowns on using it for that.

-40hz (March 11, 2014, 01:56 PM)

Did you wince when you read that too?

But seriously man, something here don't sound right. Open/Save defaults to OneDrive?!? That just doesn't strike me as normal at all. I just setup a Office365/Exchange client (in a workgroup (eek)) a few weeks ago and they aren't defaulting to Live/Sky/OneDrive. I'm thinking that maybe they (got screwed) are logging into Windows 8 with a Microsoft account instead of a Local Machine account...and that is forcing everything skyward.

Or have you seen this behavior in a "normal" deployment before?

1657

Living Room / Re: Staunch US Intelligence Community defender Dian Feinstein comes to her senses.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 11, 2014, 02:40 PM »

I'll take this as a sign she's learned something as soon as she applies the same standard to my privacy as her own. After all, some animals are more equal than others.

-Vurbal (March 11, 2014, 02:08 PM)

Ouch!! (Now that's a really sharp stick)  But you are indeed right.

I just hope congress can put down their golf and yachting magazines long enough to get the ball rolling and push her report through declassification. We need a head - actually a bunch of them - on a stick to put this to bed with.

1658

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 11, 2014, 06:49 AM »

^Right On Man!!!

1659

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is my desktop email client breaking mail message headers?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 10, 2014, 11:58 AM »

just for your information:

The message headers are not used for the classification via SpamNet.

-Antispam Sniper

http://antispamsnipe...elp/oewm/spamnet.htm

-Curt (March 10, 2014, 09:33 AM)

Hmmm...I'll have to look into that when I get home.  I want to say that's an option, and I think my SpamNet option is disabled.  NOt sure though.

-superboyac (March 10, 2014, 10:12 AM)

I'm not familiar with the products specified, but judging by the description given it's a weighted keyword (Bayesian) style of filter so it can't alter the message in any fashion without skewing the results. Also any attempt at including the header would just introduce noise in the results due to the normally random information there causing a single (naughty content) message body result to blossom into thousands of sender recipient variations.

So unless the filter is cutting off the header for message analysis, and then stuffing that headerless-ly analyzed copy in the inbox...it would have no reason to be modifying anything.

1660

Living Room / Re: My pop/imap Android experience

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 05, 2014, 01:00 PM »

So instead of just having three simple buttons which would be "intimidating", we have one button...but with a long press option.  Really?  Is that really that much easier.  end rant.

-superboyac (March 05, 2014, 12:44 PM)

Only if the button is green and has the words "Don't Panic" next to it.

1661

Living Room / Re: What the Internet looks like - Undersea cables wiring the ends of the Earth

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 05, 2014, 11:20 AM »

^More likely easement issues and physical security I'm guessing.

-40hz (March 05, 2014, 07:43 AM)

That's what I meant by land use/access issues. How do we get to the land we're allowed to use, who else is going to be there, and who all is going to be shooting at us when we get there?

1662

Living Room / Re: What the Internet looks like - Undersea cables wiring the ends of the Earth

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 05, 2014, 06:35 AM »

Interesting that some countries were apparently easier to cable around than through. Is the terrain really that bad, or was it just land use/access issues?

1663

Living Room / Re: Netflix Mocks Amazon's Drone Delivery with Video!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 04, 2014, 06:56 AM »

Actually I was just drawing attention to the similarities between Ren and the cartoon author's style in the opening line. Not too many people will go there straight out of the gate. But then again I appreciate the somewhat ironically conflicting imagery...as some things really cannot be done "gently".

1664

General Software Discussion / Re: Repairing Windows 7 from the recovery console

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 03, 2014, 05:28 PM »

The cleanest most true to vanilla OEM disks I've ever found were Dell's. I've used them on all brands and never had a problem with anything as long as the COA was still readable.

@40 - I forget which one of the two caught the kernel patch, but neither one takes a long time to run. and both can be run in safe mode with command prompt only.

1665

General Software Discussion / Re: Repairing Windows 7 from the recovery console

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 03, 2014, 01:36 PM »

...Then it's starting to sound more and more like a rootkit. Repairing the install won't necessarily remove the bugg ... So it's best to go with the kill it with fire approach. Run the Kaspersky offline scan of at least the boot sector and recovery partition, then format and reinstall, or do the factory recovery.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Damn he's quick today...(round 2)

I already typed this so I'll post it anyway.

-Stoic Joker (March 03, 2014, 11:31 AM)

In my case, I was able to identify the actual boot target and navigate to the correct boot repair tools. Even with that none of the repair attempts successfully concluded. It would go away for an hour or so, then come back with the helpful news that the repair could not be successfully completed and ask if I wanted to reboot...

In my case, I think killing the rootkit took some important stuff along with it. Repairing partition tables and MBR didn't help. System said successful and all ok. But same deal on reboot. Nada.
 (see attachment in previous post)No joy I'm afraid.

Interestingly, the hidden factory recovery partition was completely trashed. I could see it. But the OEM recovery manager (Sony VAIO) reported it was invalid and couldn't be used. Don't know if the malware did something to it, or possibly Kapersky nuked something on it. But if so, it didn't indicate doing anything to it in the log therefor scratch Kapersky as a possible culprit.

So in this case it was less "scorched earth" and more like "last resort." Especially since the client hadn't made a recovery disk set and I had to order media from Sony. (Which is always great fun. Not.) Normally I won't bill a good client for a basic OS reinstall/recovery as long as they have a working disk set. In this case, I charged them one hour at my full hourly rate.

Show me some consideration - or show me a check.
 

-40hz (March 03, 2014, 01:16 PM)

I hear ya. Did something much like that to a machine just last week that got hit by CyberLocker. Domain user account/UAC enabled ... Still killed it deader than hell.

Kaspersky said the machine was fine...but it wasn't.

I managed to finally kill the thing with these:
http://www.adlice.co...ller/RogueKiller.exe
http://www.adlice.co...r/RogueKillerX64.exe - For reference only, machines are 32-bit

From: http://www.techsuppo...val-help-305963.html
GMER Rootkit Scanner: http://www2.gmer.net/gmer.zip


Seriously freaky in memory kernel patch GMER finally spotlighted so that the SFC could notice that the kernel was not himself... but it took both the above to get the coffin nailed shut. They had good backups - Yay me - so I got the user files and main db of the Sunday night backups (accounting works weekends).

How the hell the little MF got past Kaspersky ofline I don't know ... but it did it 3 times.

1666

Living Room / Re: Survivorship Bias...an Insidious Enemy

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 03, 2014, 12:04 PM »

When hurricane Frances/Fay (I forget) hit here we were out of power for 7 days. Many people were complaining about the power being out that long. I however having wandered around a bit to get an idea of the true scope of the damage...was actually impressed that they got the power on as fast as they did. But then again I helped out the situation in my own (it's probably a misdemeanor) way...and consider myself to be lucky

1667

Living Room / Re: Netflix Mocks Amazon's Drone Delivery with Video!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 03, 2014, 11:47 AM »

For some reason I started reading that in Walter Cronkite's voice and didn't make it past the first frame before erupting into maniacal laughter - When did Renegade start doing cartoons?

1668

General Software Discussion / Re: Repairing Windows 7 from the recovery console

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 03, 2014, 11:31 AM »

While 40's scorched earth method - which I also use - works too, I already typed this so I'll post it anyway.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When you get to the mouse only GUI, can you get task manager to run by pushing Ctrl + Shift + Esc? If you can du run new task and try loading either Explorer or cmd to get a shell to work with. I found it rather amazing the number of things that will cause Windows to forget that last - rather critical - give the user an interface to work with step.

If no TM can be had, boot to a Win7 disk of the correct bitness (edition/license is irrelevant for this) look for the easy to miss (I think it says) repair windows link on the bottom left of the install windows window. and get to a command prompt.

(either way you get there) Then use bcdedit /enum to see what the currently configured boot targets are. That way at least you'll know if you're fighting with the correct native OS, or a .vhd virtual OS that is part of a borked dual boot configuration attempt.

Once you're sure you have the correct target the boot repair tools (part of the CD's recovery stuff) should be able to stop whatever update is preventing the shell from loading.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: Method above assumes of course that the machine in question has not been taken over by pure evil and turned into one of Satan's puppy eating zombie whores.

1669

General Software Discussion / Re: XP to Windows 7 advice

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 03, 2014, 07:15 AM »

Oh, and an extra warning related to installing Win7 on a laptop (mine is a Dell Studio). If you have trouble getting it to boot up, unplug all USB devices until after you have installed all updates, even if you have boot from usb disabled, like I did. I started having troubles after installing SP1 and had to unplug my mouse to get it to finish booting, and one of the later updates that was not included in SP1 resolved it. No more issues.

-app103 (March 03, 2014, 02:57 AM)

I ran into something like that on a (2008 R2) server awhile back. The RDX removable cartridge backup drive was identified as an internally connected USB device, and it would stall/fail the boot if the server was restarted when a cartridge was inserted - eject the cartridge and it booted just fine. This issue had plagued the (then new) client for years. Disable boot from USB was disabled as you mentioned but it would still fail. What I found was that the seemingly completely unrelated Legacy USB Support was the actual culprit, as disabling it resolved the issue.

1670

Living Room / Re: YouTube finally forces creation of google+ A/C to comment

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 28, 2014, 03:28 PM »

There have been several times that I've been about to click to reply to something... then it asked me to link a FB account.

-wraith808 (February 28, 2014, 02:45 PM)

  - I react to that like a vampire to a garlic flavored wooden cross with a UV light and a pointy end.

1671

Screenshot Captor / Re: Black Screen

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 28, 2014, 02:16 PM »

A quick search on Trusteer Rapport leads me to believe it's probably the culprit.

-Vurbal (February 28, 2014, 10:38 AM)

+1 - After letting the name sink in for a bit I remembered why it sounded so familiar. After freshly deploying a network with brand new equipment. The doctor's machine started crashing randomly in the middle of just about everything. As the doctor - with reasonable credibility - was swearing to having done nothing other than go to their bank's website ... I spent the next week (or so...) with Dell's support troubleshooting a "hardware" problem.

Then there was made the most casual of offhanded comments regarding the bank's "recommended security software" that "had to be installed" (according to the popup window...) ... Before the accounts could be accessed.



So after said Trusteer Rapport was unceremoniously beaten to death with a hammer, the machine not only suddenly had a miraculous recovery...but has been running flawlessly ever since for some 3 whole years now.

And just for the purpose of belaboring the point. Here is an excerpt from a security article regarding TR from 2010 (I'm sure it's gotten worse):

In these cases, a critical legal question that often arises is whether the thieves compromised the customer’s system or that of the bank’s. I mention this because Trusteer recently built a new component into Rapport called Flashlight, which tries to give partner banks the ability to remotely check to see if their customers’ systems are infected with malicious software. Whether the banks will proactively use that feature to stop online banking fraud is unclear, but such a feature would make it tougher for small and mid-sized businesses that lose money to online bank fraud to claim that their computers weren’t the sole cause of the loss.

Right! So it's quite literally up your ass with a flashlight for the purpose of protecting...who?

1672

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 27, 2014, 06:46 AM »

although I would have been happier if the images were bigger

-tomos (February 27, 2014, 05:11 AM)

Bottom right button of player makes it full screen - I couldn't see them before that either.

1673

Living Room / Re: Netflix Mocks Amazon's Drone Delivery with Video!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 26, 2014, 03:01 PM »

In keeping with 40Hz's request to avoid knee-jerk cynicism, I momentarily put aside my wanton desire to attack all things corporate and found this explanation of why it isn't necessarily complete evil and doom for the consumer:

Inside The Netflix/Comcast Deal and What The Media Is Getting Very Wrong

1674

Living Room / Re: My pop/imap Android experience

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 25, 2014, 02:55 PM »

I didn't run into that on my iPhone. I told it to provision a new email account, selected GMail from the list presented, entered my existing address and password, and it defaulted to an IMAP set-up without being told. Apparently if you've set your GMail account up to use IMAP, the iPhone mail client is smart enough to figure it out.

-40hz (February 25, 2014, 02:27 PM)

And, unless things have changed when I wasn't paying attention, it's equally simple to setup ActiveSync for a Microsoft server.

-Vurbal (February 25, 2014, 02:44 PM)

That would be my experience as well.

Not by coincidence Apple doesn't give a rat's ass whose servers are on the other end. They mostly just want to make the technology as invisible as possible.

-Vurbal (February 25, 2014, 02:44 PM)

  Nailed it! They have no backend systems of their own to fight for...they'll happily just stick it anywhere.

1675

Living Room / Re: My pop/imap Android experience

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 25, 2014, 02:49 PM »

The bottom line is if the average person wants to have a smooth and user friendly experience with either a Microsoft or Google mail client connecting to a server from the other company they should expect to pay extra for it. That's not because there's something irregular about Google's IMAP implementation or Microsoft's Active Sync servers. It's simply a thinly veiled passive aggressive anti-competition strategy on both sides. Neither is representative of the email client experience beyond their specific ecosystems.

-Vurbal (February 25, 2014, 02:16 PM)

Agreed. That's why I stick with MonkeyShaft and stay the hell out of G-World. Otherwise it's to much like trying to figure out the right way to mix gun powder by candle light.