Recent Posts

1701

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 17, 2014, 07:56 AM »

I've always rather liked Paul Thurrott, I'm not an avid reader...but I do like his style of presenting the new features list. As far as his "inaccuracies" *Shrug* I tend to assume that anyone in the press is completely full of shit and form my opinion on an average of everybody's input...and then weigh it against my own experience.

From a consumer perception stand point, Windows 8 is truly an epic class train wreck. I've seen people's reactions first hand. The expression of horror on their faces - as if I was using a shrunken dead baby head for a key fob - when I pull out a Windows phone. Or while spec'ing a new machine inquire as to what OS (8?)they would like to use.

I actually did worry a bit, but didn't hesitate to flatten Win7 and install Win8 on the new workstation I just got here at the office. I'm also not having any trouble using it. There are a few things that aren't where I expect/remember them to be, but search works just fine.

1702

Living Room / Re: What Google Plus is all about

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 17, 2014, 07:15 AM »

Fanciful friending tactics aside, I think the point of the article lies here:

“If you want Google search, they’re going to shove Google Plus at you pretty hard, so the consumer’s forced to take the product they don’t want to get the product they want,” said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies antitrust law and the Internet.

“That raises big questions under antitrust law,” he said. “It reminds me a little bit of Microsoft when Microsoft was fearing Netscape and decided to bend over backward and do anything possible to tie Explorer to their operating system.”

Google declined to comment on this issue.

[Insert Favorite Do Not Want Meme Here]

And despite what some vocal users have said, few have fled — a sign, perhaps, of Google’s sheer strength on the web.

“If people want to use your platform enough,” Mr. Elliott said, “you can get away with quite a lot.”

I think they meant to say if sheeple want to use... But never the less the point stands. Folks are getting turned into a pair of eyeballs with a - soon to be empty - wallet.

1703

Living Room / Re: WARNING! Linksys routers infected with self-replicating worm/malware.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 15, 2014, 08:29 AM »

So, why, one wonders, did UpNp get excommunicated and HNAP get invited in...?

-IainB (February 14, 2014, 06:13 PM)

UPnP is to allow misc. services to get out. HNAP is to let misc. "Admins" get in. But skipping past the whole opposite directional intent bit. UPnP got much more (sales pitching to customers) exposure. Where HNAP was never really used much, because:
 1. admitting the thing could break isn't a sales highpoint.
 2. Getting the customer to enable UPnP (assuming it wasn't already by default) was the easiest route out for support people.
 3. The only time support would really need to get into a (residential...) customer's router...was when they were stuck offline...making the point of the protocol rather moot.

1704

Living Room / Re: WARNING! Linksys routers infected with self-replicating worm/malware.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 14, 2014, 07:08 AM »

Okay... I've only gotten as far as reading the above, but with an exploit that uses an HTTP request to port 8080 as an entry point I can only assume they're targeting the external access remote administration "feature" of the router. A feature that should be either turned off, or highly restricted to start with me thinks.

So is this exploit somehow bypassing configuration imposed restrictions, or is it just targeting the defaults crowd? I'm inclined to think simply turning off remote administration - like it's really used that often by home users - would sufficiently mitigate this but don't want to assume that just yet.



Edit: Looks like SANS confirmed the Remote Administration off = safe hypothesis.

1705

General Software Discussion / Re: Photos that spontaneously change

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 14, 2014, 06:49 AM »

In the forum here, the face looks well balanced on my monitor (with brightness relatively low on monitor settings).

-tomos (February 14, 2014, 06:26 AM)

Looks perfectly fine here to me as well.

1706

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 13, 2014, 10:52 AM »

Zoiks! With the exception of the top few, those are some frighteningly high percentages.

1707

General Software Discussion / Re: Hidden Files

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 13, 2014, 10:45 AM »

Have you tried an offline scan of the machine?

1708

Living Room / Re: Very interesting images by Erik Johansson

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 13, 2014, 10:42 AM »

Those are cool.

1709

General Software Discussion / Re: Tips for Windows 8 (got any?)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 13, 2014, 07:31 AM »

Don't know if this has been posted yet but: Windows 8: How To Recover Previous Versions Of Files

1710

General Software Discussion / Re: It's not a valid windows 32bit application

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 13, 2014, 06:55 AM »

What can I do to recover those affected executables.

-Contro (February 12, 2014, 07:45 PM)

OS isn't mentioned, but if it is Win7 Previous Versions may be an option if it's enabled.

1711

Living Room / Re: Stop NSA Spying!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 12, 2014, 11:58 AM »

Creating more laws won't stop anything. It just makes the rat maze all that more convoluted. (Hint: rat is a 3 letter word...) The problem lies in the existing laws that these rats are wiggling through. Repeal these laws and the rats no longer have places to hide. Patriot Act, bad law, get rid of it...and all of its little Constitution pissing friends should go with it.

The 3 letter alphabet soup rats need to be constrained by extremely bright sunshine to keep them from deviating from there actually appropriate tasks. Strip them of their volumes of legal mumbo-jumbo wiggle room, so they spend plenty of good quality time fearing being thrown in one of their own prisons if they get caught going peeping-Tom on one the fine citizens what's covered by the constitution.

They should all should be given, and be required to carry at all times a book with only one page. On that page should be written:
What Part of NO Did You Miss?

1712

Living Room / Re: A Point About Grammar

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 11, 2014, 03:33 PM »

I was actually just going with liquid and solid (ice at bottom of photo) for a total of 2.

I did not however see any lakes in the photo.

1713

General Software Discussion / Re: Hidden Files

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 11, 2014, 02:51 PM »

FWIW - anytime I'm doing a virus scan, I'll run CCleaner and nuke all the temporary files and cookies just to save scan time.

-40hz (February 11, 2014, 02:22 PM)

I use ATF-Cleaner for much the same reason. It easily knocks close to an hour off the scan time. I haven't tried it on Win8/81 yet, but its never done me wrong on Win7 and below.

1714

Living Room / Re: Project Christine - Modular PC from Razer

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 11, 2014, 02:41 PM »

Hm... So it's only as future proof as the PCI-Express technology it's based on.

Then there was this bit:

Each sealed module is entirely self-contained and features active liquid cooling and noise cancelation. With this design, Project Christine’s components can be safely overclocked without voiding warranties

The "sealed modular design" sounded fairly easily hackable, until I got to the liquid cooling bit. That could present some of the wrong kinds of exciting complications.

1715

Living Room / Re: A Point About Grammar

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 11, 2014, 07:10 AM »

Don't know where you are.  I'm in 'the South of Florida'.  Not The South or The Deep South.  That begins to end up around the border.
Back when the History and Discovery channels had less *reality* crap they had shows referring to The South.  Never mentioned Florida.
It was always Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Carolinas ..

-crabby3 (February 10, 2014, 04:55 PM)

I'm in the middle of central Florida. And while "The South" might officially end at the border...straying more than a mile or so off the interstate around here will bring one up to speed real fast about how far south The South really goes. We're talking Rebel flags, Confederate money, a 5th grade education, and 3 teeth per family - that's extended on both sides (assuming there are actually 2 sides...) mind you.

There are places in the national forest here that the cops won't go into with less than 3 vehicles in a caravan.

-Stoic Joker (February 10, 2014, 05:19 PM)

This is above Orlando? 

-crabby3 (February 10, 2014, 05:37 PM)

Yes, ~80 miles north.

We have Rebels, counterfeit money, many GED's and no teeth per.

We have the Everglades but the cops don't bother chasing.  There's only a few places with semi-potable water any time of year.
If the perps are driving... there's only one western exit... with cops waiting.  Most turn around and face the music.

-crabby3 (February 10, 2014, 05:37 PM)

(hehe) now you're getting it. Florida being a transient state (e.g. most residents are from somewhere else) likes to pretend they're above all that Mason Dixon line shit ... But they're not. We're just as much The South (as the true locals quickly show) as the rest of the (classically held as) Southern states.

Mind you I'm not sayin' that it's good or bad ... I'm simply pointing out that it is.


@IainB - I was actually trying really hard not to use the word 'dialect' ...(as it tends to upset the locals)... But yes it does rather fit.

How many different waters do you see in this photo?
 (see attachment in previous post)

-app103 (March 04, 2011, 07:33 PM)

Two?   

-crabby3 (February 11, 2014, 05:38 AM)

Agreed. Two waters strikes me as correct also.

1716

Living Room / Re: A Point About Grammar

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 10, 2014, 05:19 PM »

Don't know where you are.  I'm in 'the South of Florida'.  Not The South or The Deep South.  That begins to end up around the border.
Back when the History and Discovery channels had less *reality* crap they had shows referring to The South.  Never mentioned Florida.
It was always Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Carolinas ..

-crabby3 (February 10, 2014, 04:55 PM)

I'm in the middle of central Florida. And while "The South" might officially end at the border...straying more than a mile or so off the interstate around here will bring one up to speed real fast about how far south The South really goes. We're talking Rebel flags, Confederate money, a 5th grade education, and 3 teeth per family - that's extended on both sides (assuming there are actually 2 sides...) mind you.

There are places in the national forest here that the cops won't go into with less than 3 vehicles in a caravan.

1717

Living Room / Re: A Point About Grammar

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 10, 2014, 05:11 PM »

...Hell man we're in "The South" grammar is so far gone here "the yokels" get close captioned on the history/discovery channel...

-Stoic Joker (February 10, 2014, 11:49 AM)

If that were true, then I would suggest that the captions might be for the hard of hearing.
If it were not true, then it's a very droll remark.

-IainB (February 10, 2014, 01:28 PM)

The accents really are that bad. They can be heard just fine...but they must be translated for those unfamiliar with the tendency to jumble an entire sentence into a single (somewhat long) "word".

1718

General Software Discussion / Re: Tips for Windows 8 (got any?)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 10, 2014, 12:49 PM »

Well, much to my surprise...the brand new HP z420 workstation I got last week with a fresh install of Windows 8.1 just decided to up and forget how to drag and drop anything this morning. It was to the point that I couldn't even resize the columns in a ListView control. But a quick Bing brought up this article which resolved the issue. The only interesting thing was that it took about 5min after making the changes for it to start working again - Damn strange me thinks - but it is working again.


Come to think of it, if the article goes away - don't you just hate when that happens - at some time in the future I'll summarize it here:
Open dcomcnfg from an administrative command prompt.

Component Services-->Computers-->My Computer [Right click] and select properties.

On the COM Security tab click Edit Defaults in the Access Permissions section (it's on top).

Note: If you are on a domain select local computer as location.

Grant Local Access permission to the SYSTEM and INTERACTIVE accounts.

Wait a minute or two and it should come back to life. Why the dramatic SciFi resurrection is necessary is beyond me but that's how it went down ... Or came back up rather.

1719

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 10, 2014, 11:55 AM »

Fascination of old motorcycles:
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Giampy (February 10, 2014, 08:21 AM)

Damn fine fascination you got there! What's the bike on the wallpaper...it looks (to me) to be Italian but I could be (and probably am) wrong.

1720

Living Room / Re: A Point About Grammar

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 10, 2014, 11:49 AM »

Am I the only one that's annoyed by the seemingly decreasing quality of language in "professional" news, articles and general writing?

I really don't care about people making mistakes in forums or informal writing. A lot of people don't speak English as their first language, and that's not a problem. What I find annoying is "professional" media that simply don't know how to use English properly.

e.g.
* Statistical "outlyers". It's "outliers". Sigh...
* "mass nouns" -- They're called "countable" and "uncountable", not "mass".
* Verb agreement

The list goes on and on.

It's just jarring to get "hit" by grammar, spelling, and word choice mistakes that there really is no excuse for.

It's one thing for it to be "the odd time", but it's not. It's all the time.

Am I just super-anal? Is poor grammar really acceptable in professional media?

-Renegade (March 01, 2011, 08:43 PM)

can't here/scan no pro info, yokel stuffs way 2 boaring to. 

-crabby3 (February 10, 2014, 08:26 AM)

Yokels?! Hell man we're in "The South" grammar is so far gone here "the yokels" get close captioned on the history/discovery channel. God knows why the hell these people are considered fun to watch (much like a train wreck I guess). Jesus Christ man, when people have to be close captioned (e.g. translated for) on the local news because their enunciation is really that bad...there is a serious problem ... And I don't think it in the water either. 

1721

Living Room / Re: Has anyone here used Novicorp WinToFlash?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 10, 2014, 11:27 AM »

Any reason you're considering that when there are a few freeware tools that do the same?  I've used both of these successfully:

Rufus
Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

-skwire (February 10, 2014, 08:58 AM)

Second link didn't seem to work (for me).

Abso-freakin-loutely LOVE Rufus' auto update! It gives a straightforward simple yes/no option, and if you dare hit why it has a plain English - 25 words of less... - explanation of what personal info will be getting shared, and for how long. Now, why the hell can't more companies do that!

Hell...I already love the program and I don't even know if it works! It's plum amazing how easy it is to please people if you just quit trying to screw them all the time ... Ain't it?

1722

General Software Discussion / Re: Continuing with XP

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 06, 2014, 11:58 AM »

It occurs to me that "ending support" simply means that you can no longer call MS with technical questions about XP after the April 8th drop dead date. It does not mean that at the stroke of midnight the OS will pack-it-in shutdown and delete itself. So... Why change anything?

If the wife likes using her XP machine, just let her continue. Get the last updates that come out for it (if any), make an image backup of the machine to use in case of emergency ... And carry on as you have been. Sure at some point she will have to go with a new computer. And it will come with a new OS of some kind. But there is no compelling/rational reason to go diving for the fire alarm in an attempt to virtually wedge XP into some other OS. Because the risks of using XP - which will slowly increase with time but are hardly going to hit 9x level anytime soon - will be there regardless of it being guest or host. So just run it on the native hardware it's happy with and keep going as is.

1723

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

« Last post by Stoic Joker on February 03, 2014, 03:10 PM »

Thats just wrong!

But so is this...
 (see attachment in previous post)

-wraith808 (February 03, 2014, 11:13 AM)

Holy crap man, now that's just wrong by even my standards ... ... And I don't have any! 

1724

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

« Last post by Stoic Joker on January 31, 2014, 11:19 AM »

So they cook a potato in a manner that makes it taste like a raw fish...?!

Why didn't they just put raw potato slices in the bag?

<someone tries it> Hay this stuff tastes like shit!
<So does Sushi> Nailed It!

1725

T-Clock / Re: T-Clock 2010 (download)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on January 31, 2014, 06:58 AM »

I was curious about that one too ... You don't know either? Shit.

-Stoic Joker (January 30, 2014, 12:39 PM)

Page 16 of this thread... here... c'mon, SJ, it was just a few years ago you posted that...

-x16wda (January 30, 2014, 06:54 PM)

Oh...That posix (update) dll ... Christ I was thinking there was some new Posix.dll file running around. I gotta stay out of here ... I'm just starting to add to the confusion.