I'm Back

Variety of issues confounded my postings here recently.

First and foremost, the Macbook I used had issues and had to go get repaired.  Since it was still under warranty this was a good thing, but it had to be sent to the depot which was not so good. This made work a lot more cumbersome and I needed to use a desktop at home and iPad at the office which was not nearly as functional so everything took longer than it should have and it wasted a lot of time.  I also found out that lots of passwords to needed systems didn't in fact copy over to other Apple devices.

Worse the laptop had two distinct issues - the screen had a small crater in the lower right, right at the hinge of the case, and the keyboard was not working well and had visible wear.  

So it was written up as two work orders. Sadly, that let them screw up and do one repair, the screen, and return the laptop to the store yet completely miss the other rather obvious one so it had to be sent back yet again.  

This meant a whole week without the laptop which was highly frustrating.

On top of that I got hit with either Norovirus or a gastric attack last Tuesday night that lasted through Thursday.  Not a recommended way to drop 6 pounds and when you can't even keep water down, it's not a good thing.

Also did some oral check-ride preparation with instructors this week that went well so it's moving along.

So today, the Laptop is now finally back so posting will get back to normal.

Good Morning Guv'nor, Department Of Pre-Crime Calling

The city of London's pre-crime unit must be having to work overtime with the latest news on the results of the facial detection system installed for London's surveillance cameras:

The Independent: Facial recognition wrongly identifies public as potential criminals 96% of time, figures reveal

Facial recognition technology has misidentified members of the public as potential criminals in 96 per cent of scans so far in London, new figures reveal.

The Metropolitan Police said the controversial software could help it hunt down wanted offenders and reduce violence, but critics have accused it of wasting public money and violating human rights.

Is the 96% false positive rate a bug or a feature? After all, in the United Kingdom's new and improved Orwellian surveillance state, it's not that the system is misidentifying the public as criminals, it's just they haven't been caught in the act on camera yet.

Feeling Old By Comparison

The right speaker on my Macbook Pro has started to crackle and be all static-ky. This is likely due to the speaker being deformed by heat over time, and is a pretty well known Macbook problem.

Otherwise, it's trucking right along nicely, and the recent update to Mojave improved the speed on quite a few things and fixed the startup from sleeping reliability issue I was having under Sierra.

Since its been a trusty and good machine and has been holding up well and humming right along, so a repair rather than replacement makes sense, right?

So I contacted Apple support to see what a replacement would cost.

Well, it turns out my 2013 Macbook Pro is now considered to be vintage by Apple.

Vintage.

Yep, 2013 is considered Vintage, I'm a flippin' antique by comparison then, eh?

Vintage means Apple no longer supports it but they referred me to some third-party repair companies to figure out what the replacement will cost.

The Latest Hack Attempt Of The Democrats Was By . . . . The Democrats Themselves

The latest hack attempt of the Democrat National Committee data was this week. It led to an outburst of claims of Russian collusion, etc, but now turns out not to have been by the Russians at all, nor of any outside party for that matter.

Instead, it was the work of the Democrats themselves.

The attempt was actually penetration testing by the Michigan Democratic Party to test security of the DNC's files. Apparently they forgot to tell the DNC they were doing it, which led to a wee bit of embarrassment as the DNC quickly cried "Russkie Wolf!".

The Detroit Free Press: Democratic data hack: Here's who was apparently behind it

Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Brandon Dillon acknowledged in a statement that the state organization's efforts to improve cybersecurity led to mistakes though he didn't elaborate.

. . .

CNN first reported the attempted back on Tuesday after the DNC told the FBI someone was trying to hack its voter database two years after successful Russian efforts to infiltrate its computer systems and release thousands of emails online, embarrassing the party during the 2016 presidential campaign.

A Good Check To Run On Your Home Router

Wordfence offers a free scan utility for you to check if your home router has a vulnerable port open that could expose your network and allow the router to be hacked and used for attacks on other sites.

It's worth running the scan to be on the safe side, and its rather nice of Wordfence to provide it for free and get some awareness of the issue out there.

NSA And The Future Of The American Republic

Both Borepatch and Say Uncle link to the presentation below by Jacob Applebaum discussing the NSA's means and methods of hacking the heck out of the internet, and computers, and phones.

It's worth the hour to sit down and view it in its entirety. Yes, it's real, and it's darn scary.

On the one hand, I want the NSA to be able to listen in and gather signals intelligence on America's enemies.

On the other hand, I'm rather concerned that the NSA seems to have decided that Americas' enemies includes the American people.

Here's a happy thought as we enter 2014, with a congressional election looming and three more years of Obama as president:

Take the presentation's revealed breathtaking capabilities of the NSA.

Now couple that with, for example, the Obama administration's and the Democrat's desire to continue fundamentally transforming America and stay in power. For those on the left reading this blog, switch that to the next Republican president who comes into office.

Next, take the premise that the NSA's data is not just being used for anti-terrorism purposes, and if it actually is for now, good luck on it remaining so locked-down -- such wide-ranging and tasty information obtained tends to be used far beyond its promised original "national security only" limitations -- but is instead being used for political purposes of the party in power such as listening in and discerning opposing candidates' strategy to stymie, delay or defeat them. Much as we've already seen the IRS' power being so used against the Tea Party in the last election. And to that the sweeping ability of the NSA to intercept all internet and phone communication and to deny computer and internet transmissions at opportune times.

Then folks, if that's the case, the only thing left to say is:

Ave Atque Vale Res Publica Americana

Much ToDo About Nothing

BGR.com: iOS developer is threatening to sue Android devs for using the word ‘ToDo’

A developer that creates apps for Apple’s (AAPL) iOS platform has threatened to sue an Android app maker for using the word “ToDo.” Appigo has sent a letter to an Android developer regarding his Star Trek ToDo Agenda app. In the letter, Appigo notes that it owns the trademark for the word “ToDo” and the developer’s use of the word is “likely to cause customer confusion to our existing and potential customers.” The problem with all this, as David Ruddock of Android Police points out, is that Appigo’s trademark happens to be for the Spanish word “Todo,” and not a fanciful respelling of the phrase “to-do.” Ruddock explains that “had Appigo claimed ToDo [was] a fanciful respelling of To-Do, it would almost certainly not have received principle registration for its trademark until it had established sufficient secondary meaning.”

Yep, looking at Appigo's trademark registration, they did indeed trademark the word TODO (in all caps) with a statement that "The English translation of "TODO" in the mark is "ALL" or "EVERYTHING"."

Ooops, you really gotta hate cease-and-desist letters based on flimsy or in this case untenable legal support.

DRM Frustration and Fail

DRM being Digital Rights Management. The various methods for content providers pissing their end-users off to all heck and gone.

So my local library, in addition to books, DVDs, CD, MP3 on CD and such is also offering e-books and e-audio books.

Makes sense right? Good for the library as no worries about shelf space, damaged discs or vandalized books. In the case of audio CDs, considering as how they get scratched as fast as being looked at, it makes sens to keep it electronic.

In addition, this kind of content is cheap as hell for a content provider - no repeat production, printing or stamping costs as each item is a digital file and if it gets corrupt you can upload another one. Nice, convenient and accessible with no worries about someone else checking it out - what's not to like?

Should be easy right, for them maybe, for a user not so much.

To listen to an audio book, as I planned to do on my iPhone and plug it into my car and listen to it to and from work would have been great.

Not so fast.

First I had to download Overdrive Media Console, which then wanted Windows Media player to be upgraded with some sort of DRM update.

The problem being, it would not update.

After multiple tries with the online help, it wouldn't work. After 2 hours of messing around with it, I finally figured out that it will not update if you try it through Firefox - you must do it through Internet Explorer - note that the help files do not mention this in any way, shape or form.

So I finally get the fisking thing downloaded and it issues the audio book files in protected WMA format - I try to load it up in iTunes to transfer to the iPhone and nope, it doesn't work with an error message that its protected. Of course.

Nor can I get the Overdrive to transfer it to the iPhone as per the Overdrive site: "OverDrive Download Station is not able to transfer to iPhones." Wonderful. So it looks like I've got the capability of sitting in front of my computer and listening to an eAudioBook - wow, that's really handy and useful.

However all is not lost: The program allows you to burn then to a CD and transfer the files in CD Audio format.

Good grief.

After all the fisking time wasted to comply with their stupid DRM model, the end result is a file that has no DRM protection whatsoever and once on the CD could be transferred, ripped back into mp3 and loaded on an iPhone, or given away to the entire universe I suppose.

You are supposed to destroy your CDs when the loan period is up. How many people do that, I have no idea.

I'm personally toying with the idea of mailing them, postage collect, to the publisher with a cover letter detailing how messed up their whole DRM concept is.

Epic Failure from a security standpoint and from a usability standpoint.

All that nonsense to protect content that ends up unprotected once you waste hours making the software behave and then about a half hour burning a few discs.

MSU Email, We Hardly Knew Ya

My MSU email account, after being happily active all these years, over 15 years post attendance is now going away.

It seems they've finally decided to kick the alumni off the email system.

Originally the University on May 30th in a sent a terse email to the affected alums:

You are receiving this message because you have been identified as someone who has not taken a course at Michigan State University in two or more years. MSU IT Services will be deactivating msu.edu e-mail accounts and AFS (Andrew File System) storage space for those who have not been students in two or more years to maintain university storage efficiencies. Starting on June 26, 2012, your e-mail and AFS accounts are among those scheduled to be deactivated. Between now and June 26, we encourage you to go through your accounts and save or migrate any files you wish to keep.

Less than 30 days to migrate your email account that you've had for years and notify all services and persons that use it to communicate with you, nice.

They then, five hours later on the same day backpedaled on the cutoff date and provided some further information/justification:

Dear Spartan, We have heard from some of you today that we could have done a better job giving you notice about deactivating your MSU e-mail and AFS space. You are right. We apologize for providing less than a month's notice. That's not enough time. We understand that this came suddenly and unexpectedly to some, in part because of confusion over the "Technology Guarantee" provided by Peter McPherson. For that reason, we will provide additional time before deactivating your account. This action will not be taken until Friday, August 31, 2012. To clear up the confusion about the "Technology Guarantee," it's useful to go back to the source, a speech given by Peter McPherson in 1996 in which he stated: "MSU alumni will have affordable lifelong technological access and two post-graduate years of free e-mail access." Technology access included student NetIDs and login to StuInfo or Web Enroll. McPherson's speech is located at http://www.msu.edu/~presofc/guarantee.html. The university needs to take this action for several reasons. Primary among them are freeing up university data storage resources and maximizing services for current students. Few of our peer institutions offer extended access to e-mail and storage accounts for the same reasons. When MSU first made the decision to provide e-mail and storage after graduation, access to these services was limited. Today, low cost or free e-mail and data storage options are abundant. Again, we apologize for the short notice on our part, but we hope you can appreciate that we are taking steps to serve MSU students and to be fiscally responsible. Sincerely, Dave Gift Vice Provost and CIO MSU Libraries and IT Services

But regardless of the tone and apologies for lousy messaging, they are moving ahead and shutting down the accounts. Instead of 2 years post-attendance, I, for one, got 15 years out of it. I wonder if I have a claim to keep it due to adverse possession at this point? Sadly not. But, I think by this point most alumni figured it would stick around and not be deleted as there hadn't been a word about such before.

When you have to reach back to a quote from a 1996 speech you're kinda reaching for a justification I daresay.

Having a permanent email address was quite useful. My MSU account was my one "main" account with most online personal and business transactions run through there (except for the blogging and related stuff) and was quite convenient.

I'm now busy updating all my online accounts such as with Midway, CDNN, Ebay, Paypal, Netflix, NRA, Divers Alert Network, investment accounts and the like to my new email address on a different service.

It's a major pain, especially for those services that only give occasional email updates, and I'm busy trying to remember where other accounts with that email address may lurk.

On the upside, its an opportunity to rotate and upgrade all of the passwords with some upper cases and numerics if they didn't have them before.

It's unfortunate that MSU didn't think outside the box for a bit:

Had they charged each alum $20 or $25 a year that would likely more than cover any real storage costs and the minimal admin overhead maintaining the existing accounts might cost. After all, storage is dirt cheap these days. They likely would have not only opened a new revenue stream but gained a lot of goodwill with their Alumni.

As it now stands, this much in the way of headaches certainly wipes out the potential for such goodwill.

Pity.

When Security Hampers Usability

While trying to stop viruses and other nasties from harming my PC, I've been noticing some serious issues with my web browsers recently. From ridiculous slowness. to complete freezing, to text coming out jumbled when being typed in, it was becoming a major problem.

After running lots of anti-virus scans, checking various network settings and everything else I could think of, I've finally tracked it down and figured out that the problems are caused by the Constant Guard Toolbar provided by Comcast as part of their computer security stuff they give you for free as a subscriber.

It is helpful that they give you the security package and it obviously benefits them as it prevents or at least reduces the risk of their network from becoming a bunch of virus-infected and hacked computers.

But, the Comcast Constant Guard Toolbar really does not get along well with Firefox and Google Chrome, and least not in their latest updated iterations.

How badly does it not get along?

Try as badly as absolutely constantly freezing the browser, waiting forever for pages to load and then suddenly getting a "program not responding" message as the browser goes translucent, and anytime you try to enter text in a text entry on a website it just doesn't work.

So I disabled the Constant Guard Toolbar and voila - functionality is back to 100% with the browsers and speed and text entry is back to normal.

So, if you're experiencing Chrome or Firefox browser freezing and browser slowness, you may want to try disabling the Constant Guard Toolbar and see if that resolves your problem.

Good security tools shouldn't destroy your usability in the name of enhanced security.

Of course, if you couldn't use the web browser due to the security tool making it unusable, I suppose your web browsing would then be 100% secure.

Constant Guard Toolbar - The operation is a success but the patient died. No thanks, I'll take an operational browser with a slightly higher risk over an unusable source of frustration any day.

Nice Wireless Repeating

The home network I have operating didn't exactly have much range - no signal downstairs and one side of the house away from the office was a total dead zone.

At least, it was sucky until today.

Via Amazon, the Amped Wireless High Power Wireless-N Smart Repeater and Range Extender (SR300) arrived today.

Setup was a snap. I plugged it into the laptop and it immediately found the wireless network. I configured it and added further password protection and in less than 10 minutes from the time I started opening the box it came in, it was up and running.

I now have a full signal in the basement and throughout the house.

Tash will be most pleased as she was annoyed that she couldn't sit with the laptop and do work in a variety of locations.

Darn nice product, with a very elegant and easy to use interface. The SR300 is a nice small and unobtrusive rectangle with two antennae poking out from behind a picture frame in a central spot of the house so it can repeat and amplify the signal coming from the office. A great and pretty inexpensive way to end dead spots around the house.

Talk About Software Bloat.......

The laptop computer was beginning to have performance issues (lots of slowness and weird screen resolution issues) so I decided it was time for a rebuild from scratch to clean up the accumulated mess.

The laptop is about three years old and had one hard drive failure/replacement under warranty in the past.

It is running MS Vista Home Premium and there the story, trial and tribulations, not to mention lots of waiting time while stuff installs begins.

So far after 3 days of rebuilding, in which it has been constantly downloading, and installing, Vista updates, the amount of hard drive space being taken up by Vista, its updates, and a limited installation of MS Office 2007 (Word, PowerPoint and Excel, with no Access, Outlook or OneNote) is 51 GB!

Oh, and we're not done yet as it just began installing Vista Service Pack 2.

The Hard Drive is 102 GB.

So 50% of the total space on the hard drive is taken up by just the operating system it came with and was designed for, and the basic word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications that were contemporary with its release.

On the upside, in between multiple restarts for Vista updates, I've re-added the Dell printer driver and it actually connected on the first try, which was impressive, not to mention a full anti-virus suite. I also removed both MS Works and the trial MS Office install that was on it which was interfering with the purchased copy of MS Office - the software license key for the full Office 2007 Ultimate edition that was purchased wouldn't work with the trial (and unlockable for full functionality with a license key) Office 2007 Home and Student version that was installed and the install kept failing so long as the locked trial version was on the system. Lots of fun.

With luck the reinstall will be finished tonight and we'll have our laptop back in use again.