If you're one of the richest -- if not
the richest -- men in the universe,
then a little thing like a near-stock market collapse isn't such a big deal.
Bill could lose $50 billion and still have enough to control Third World economies,
give Paris Hilton a clothing allowance and buy everyone in America a six-pack
of Pabst.
Even though Gates lives in a very different world, I trust his economic judgment.
(I try not to be political here, but does either major presidential candidate
understand anything about the economy or how to reduce our federal deficit?
You tell me at [email protected].)
Gates, despite losing billions this week, believes
in the fundamental strength of our capitalist system and doesn't even think
a recession is coming. Say it's so, Bill!
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/08/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Scareware victims have been
venting
to us
all
week. Here are some more of your thoughts, including some praise for Vista's
scareware-fighting tactics:
My own laptop became infected and I could not even turn my Office on!
I turned the machine off and prayed I would not have to format it. A colleague
sent me this
link and it worked well. I have not had a problem since running the malware
removal software.
-Susan
Regarding your scareware item, I am a system admin responsible for over
40 Vista machines. I've had Vista deployed since March 2007 with User Access
Control enabled. The users don't have administrator rights to their box. I
haven't had a single virus or malware incident reported by my users or by
Symantec AntiVirus.
You tend to bad-mouth Vista in many of your articles, but you can put
me down as one admin that loves it because the users can't mess it up.
-Ken
Oddly enough, I can give some support to Vista on this one. After having
set up a computer that I was not concerned about, I decided to put Vista to
the test. I went to any number of search engines and started searching for
any site that I thought might give me a nasty bug. I finally found one. I
allowed the system to accept whatever was being offered despite Windows Defender
screaming at me not to do it. Yup, I was then infected. Symantec AV was helpless
against this new computer corrupter that I picked up and Vista sure hated
it, as well. Ended up just rebuilding the system.
This along with another experience I had taught me one lesson: My system
is more secure with Windows Defender on and without Symantec AV than the other
way around (as you're not supposed to run AV with Defender on). To date, I
haven't seen anything to prove me wrong. Now, I'm sure there are others who
have had the opposite experience, and I'd like to hear from them. That way,
I'll know where not to go as well. The additional experience was that I ran
a test computer for around three months with Defender and no AV. I then installed
AV and ran a scan. No virus. Two weeks later I had a virus; my Defender was
turned off. But hey, maybe that's because I'm not using Forefront/Antigen,
right?
-Jacob
I wrote an article re-infecting a VM with a sample malware I obtained
from a client's machine, and documented all the corners of the VM that were
infected. See it here.
-David
A recent story about Mac Pros emitting
a bad smell that may or may not be benzene prompted Doug to ask readers
whether they fear their gadgets. One reader is keeping a wary eye on his phone:
My phone might not be popping popcorn but it sure is sending strong signals
into my head. I am sure the Bluetooth isn't much better. Sometimes I feel
like one of the fish in the water by the nuclear tower in the "Simpsons"
after the nuclear waste has oozed in.
-Anonymous
And while hotel Internet connections are getting
a bad rap for being unsecure, John thinks they're not that dangerous. In
fact, they could be worse:
Want to talk about really unsafe connections? Some workers hit the strip
clubs. Maybe these clubs should offer hot spots...umm, never mind. Seriously,
though -- as long as you have proper security on your laptop and only enter
information on secure Web sites with certificates, it is no more vulnerable
than your home network.
-John
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/08/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Public relations folks come in all shapes, sizes and levels of professionalism.
Sometimes, I get calls from a newbie clearly reading tech-speak from a script.
Other times, a trusted longtime pro calls me with information that's of 100
percent interest to my readers. Often, the level of creativity is less than
that of a Backstreet Boys song.
Then there are the moments of true cleverness. I would've never written about
the company Secure
Computing this week were it not for PR spin-meister Richard Mulligan, who
told me that when it comes to spam, "Obama" beats "McCain"
by a factor of 6-to-1 (there's six times as much Obama-related spam as there
is about McCain), and that "Sarah Palin" slightly edged out "Joe
Biden" in the same category -- don't ya know!
I have no idea what this all really means or how it helps Secure Computing
sell security products, but it was kind of fun.
What should each candidate do to help our tech and IT sector? Well-thought-out
thoughts welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/08/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Steve Ballmer defended himself, it seems, even more than his own company in
a class-action lawsuit over "Vista Capable" logos. Many consumers
are angry after buying a Vista Capable Computer (I call them VCCs) only to find
out it only ran lower-end versions of the OS. And sometimes, even that was a
stretch.
Ballmer claims
he was out of the loop and not part of the logo decision. I believe him.
Heck, this guy is busier than Paris Hilton at an all-male revue! But Ballmer's
reasonable excuse doesn't excuse the misleading logo program itself. Consumers
and the fee-hungry lawyers (who'll get most of the award, anyway) are right
on this one.
I have a feeling Microsoft has learned a lesson on Vista and that, in fact,
Windows 7 will be far better. And if it is, the glorious economics that are
the PC market will continue to shine. Here's an example of those economics:
I'm willing to help buy Mac laptops for my kids Lauren, David and Nick, but
can't bring myself to shell out $1,100 for a low-end Mac lapper of my own. That's
Apple's problem, and the PC's Main Street, blue-collar, Joe Six-Pack advantage.
Are you impressed or blasé about the price to power ratio of today's
PCs. Vote yea or nay at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/08/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Last week, Doug wrote about a survey that showed .NET's popularity is
on
the rise, after lagging behind Java's for some time. David explains what
may be behind the change:
I am not a developer, but from a system admin point of view, I do not
care for Java. With .NET, you have 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and soon 4.0. With Java,
you have 10 or 12 JRE releases per 1.6.xx release. This becomes very cumbersome
because most apps are tested against a certain Java release so each time that
changes you have to deploy the new JRE (I called it the 'JRE chase'). I had
this issue with a company that developed health care software. As a company,
they did not seem to care much.
With .NET, you only have a handful of releases and they can be easily
deployed with WSUS.
-David
Readers chime in with more of their thoughts on scareware,
and their suggestions for fighting it:
I hate scareware! Had a machine last year with this problem. A user was
clicking on the supposed 'problem' messages.
I think Centurion or another type of freezing software that puts the
computer back to a clean state upon restart is one of the best ways to deal
with it in a large deployment. Of course, keeping users from having install
rights and user education are effective tools, as well.
-Jason
Have PCs that you maintain for friends or family? You would do them a
huge favor if you set up multiple accounts in Windows, with the accounts that
access the Internet having limited privileges. For adults, provide them with
clear instructions on the only times they can log in to an administrative
account to install well-known software.
My two children would be tempted to do the same thing many other computer
novices do when these types of pop-ups occur, or they just want to add that
required software to run games on their browser. Secure it and then lock down
all the possibilities to find other ways to install executables. We haven't
had a single virus for years on a family computer that's actively used by
four different accounts.
-Joe
These stories are all reasons why people should NOT be surfing the Web
using an account with administrator privileges! This means setting up the
PC from the very beginning with an administrator's account and a limited-user
account, and doing all of your normal work with that limited-user account.
Of course, how many people not in the IT field would know about this?
Should companies that sell computers do a better job of educating the general
public about this?
-Steve
And Doug's daughter chimes in with her advice:
How do I prevent the scareware pop-ups (and all pop-ups)? I got a Mac,
and have maybe had one single pop-up since.
-Lauren
What do you think? Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/07/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Everyone, it seems, has a different way of passing their time in a hotel. Some
hit the town, many hit the restaurants, a lot hit the bars and more than a few
hit the pay-per-view. And some of us try to get some work done, and use the
wireless or Ethernet connections at $12.95 a day to connect to the home office.
But like the food in the restaurants or some of the creeps in the bars, these
connections aren't
always safe. It seems hotels are far more interested in collecting their
fees than in protecting your machine. Many of these Ethernet networks are hubs
that are completely unsecured. And the wireless ain't much better -- most are
also simple hubs.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/07/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
There's a pretty big battle in the world of high-performance computing (HPC)
and hopefully this will soon affect those of you in IT.
HPC has long been the purview of designers, engineers, 3-D renderers and data
miners. These high-performance boxes cluster massive arrays of processors, often
x86 (and GPUs for the graphics-inclined), and aim it all at a small set of specialized
applications. It's very cool, but unfortunately a bit of a niche.
And many of these systems -- in essence, commodity supercomputers -- have been
running Linux. It's free and nice and scalable across clusters, multicores and
multiprocessors. Windows Server is also showing some spunk in this market, and
the availability of either Linux or Windows means you may be able to apply this
muscle soon to more common data-processing tasks.
Red Hat doesn't want to miss this opportunity and has a new
bundle -- a software stack, if you will -- that includes Linux itself along
with clustering tools and a job scheduler. With so much great commodity hardware,
this should form the basis of expensive and utterly ripping HPC systems.
Can you see a use for this style of HPC/supercomputer? Super-smart answers
accepted at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/07/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Yesterday wasn't a great day for stockholders, workers, politicians or taxpayers.
In fact, the only folks who made money on Monday are the ones who sell red ink.
So far, Microsoft hasn't been clobbered by the Wall Street fiasco, meltdown,
mess, debacle, scandal or disgrace. In fact, Microsoft went on the record denying
that it was freezing its hiring. As many companies are laying off thousands,
not freezing hiring sounds pretty dang good.
Is this economy affecting your shop, and if so, how? Stories of gloom and perseverance
welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/07/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Amazon wasn't satisfied with just selling books online, so it started hocking
everything from music to clothes to bike parts. Then it looked around and realized
it had a rather massive datacenter(s)...so why not sell computing power, as
well?
Many of Amazon's cloud services have apparently been Linux-based. But Linux
isn't enough for many customers who want to run Windows Server and SQL Server
remotely. Amazon is more than happy to oblige, and is now beta
testing these two platforms.
Microsoft itself is widely expected to announce a cloud of its own later this
month. Will clouds change the role of IT? And what services would you most want
up there? Wise answers welcome, as always, at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/06/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Have you been hit by scareware? These readers share your pain. As pomised, here
are their stories about how they got hit, and how they dealt with the problem:
We're a non-profit providing low-cost computers to low-income disabled
and low-income seniors. The majority of our clientele are new to computers,
and when presented with a big warning in large letters, they will click "Fix
it!" This is a real problem, since our people have no clue as to how
to remove the infection (and I've done it and it isn't easy or quick). What
a pain!
-Paul
I just finished a full factory restore on a friend's laptop because he
clicked on a pop-up for Antivirus 2008. This "free" virus checker
completely trashed his machine. Luckily, I was able to save most of his documents
prior to the machine becoming completely unusable.
-Ron
I am an IT pro, have been for 30 years. There is a lot to be said for
the old dumb terminals that did not have Internet! Since Aug. 1, we have had
15-plus machines get the Antivirus 2008 or some variant thereof at work, and
at least that many employees' personal home machines, which has earned me
some additional pocket money.
But my own personal machines at home (two) also got it -- the first thanks
to one of my daughters, and the second I have to take the blame for. And before
I found a great tool for removal, I spent days trying to clean them up. In
fact, for the one my daughter did, I accidentally deleted some files in the
Windows folder that from that point prevented me from logging back into the
machine, period. I had to change hard drives and make the original C drive
D to be able to back up the 75GB of stuff she had on it. Another week of restoring
and re-installing, and she was back up. Lawsuit is not punishment enough --
theses companies should be tarred and feathered!
-Harry
One of our office machines was playing music from the Internet through
Media Player and a window popped up declaring, "You have been infected
with horrible Trojans, you need to download this now." Thankfully, I
was there and they asked me what was going on. I found out that this was that
bogus Antivirus 2009 that has been showing up in various places. What really
surprised me was that this site not only showed up as an advertisement on
the site Media Player was pointed to, but was a sponsored site on Google and
Yahoo and probably other search engines. I am truly amazed that these search
sites don't screen their advertisers better than this. Apparently, these scammers
are willing to pay to appear on search engines because we are gullible and
will fall into their trap.
The other thing that surprised me was that even while I was telling the user
that this was bogus, they kept saying, "It looks so official, so genuine."
I pointed out that they would hardly make it look fake if they really want
to fool people, and they still kept saying, "It looks so real."
Yes, it does.
-Anonymous
I'm there right now with a PC hit by scareware. Our HR manager brought
in his home laptop and he swears he only visited the GA Bulldog Web site.
The laptop has been taken over by one of those "Your PC is infected"
scams. It's infected, all right! I'm at the point now where the only recourse
is to erase the hard drive. I hope there will be teeth in whatever is done
to go after these companies!
-Buz
XP anti-spam, or something similar, got onto my daughter's computer. I
used Symantec's eradication instructions, but it took days of effort, and
I learned more about registry than I wanted to know.
-Bill
I had a situation recently where my son got attacted by one of these programs.
I did eventually fix it, but it took three days, a lot of investigation and
a copy of bootable Linux to get to the root of the problem. It was almost
as bad as a rootkit to get rid of. Normally, I would probably have just reformatted
the hard drive and reinstalled, but I was bound and determined that some punk
was not going to get the best of me. Since then, I have heard of a number
of other people infected with this crap, and I just wish I would have documented
what I had to do to fix it and post the fix on the Web. Maybe next time.
-Rusty
One of our employees approached me and said his home computer had gotten
some type of virus and had become unusable. Being the compassionate IT manager
that I am, I told him to bring it in. When I turned it on and booted it up,
I could not do anything but stare in disbelief, and then laugh. Basically,
his background wallpaper was red with a virus symbol and the words "You
have a virus" or something to that effect. A pop-up box with a bogus
scan started running and messages started popping up everywhere saying all
types of virus and spyware were detected. I watched amused as Norton AntiVirus
helplessly tried to get things under controll, but it was way out of its league
and was probably making things worse. I could not click or open anything except
a dialog box that popped up saying that I needed to buy the full version of
Vista Antivirus 2008 to fix the problem.
Apparently, while he was surfing the Web he came upon a site that popped
up a dialog box that would "scan his computer for free" for viruses
and spyware. My solution for him? Boot from the XP CD, stay away from questionable
Web sites and do not click on links that promise to clean your PC. Well, you
can guess...the rest is history.
-Asif
I am a division chief with a south Chicago suburb fire department and
also the IT manager for the same municipality. I have had about 30 PCs that
have been infected by these seemingly legitimate pop-ups. I advise my users
to just pull the power plug when one appears, no matter what they're doing.
For the unfortunate ones that didn't, or just clicked the "X" in
the top-right corner, they paid the ultimate data processing price. Their
hard drives went to alphabet heaven. A few were recovered by purchasing other
anti-virus software and these actually did clean up the mess. Most weren't
so lucky. The impact of this is that a lot of these firefighters have had
to use their personal PCs for training. Hours and hours of PowerPoint presentations,
movies and lessons that firefighters and paramedics use went up in smoke.
The problem with this latest round of "You're infected" pop-ups
is that they have the look and feel of a real Microsoft window. When a virus
takes on the look and feel of an operating system, the average user is not
going to have the tools to decide between "Oh, this one is real"
and "Uh-oh...yank the plug." Microsoft and the DAs of the states
-- if not at the federal and international level -- should hunt these authors
down and prosecute them fully with felony charges.
-Tom
Got a comment of your own you'd like to share? Let us know! Leave a comment
below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/06/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
HP is a major player in virtualization. It has a couple of lines of servers
it virtualizes, a thin client strategy, plenty of management tools and a whole
bunch of storage. It has so much in the virtualization space, it took me about
a month to figure it all out and write
this
feature.
HP is strengthening its virtual storage hand by shelling out $360 million to
buy
LeftHand Networks, an up-and-coming maker of iSCSI storage.
I think storage is the next frontier in virtualization, but the industry has
to work on overall definitions, standards and tools that are easier to install
and manage. What is the reality of virtual storage? Shoot your thoughts and
experiences off to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/06/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Users of recent model Mac Pro desktops have apparently had to live with a
strange
smell (the computer smells, not the user). A French scientist believes the
odor is actually benzene and could give you cancer. Apple says not to worry,
but is looking into it anyway.
What ever happened to our CRTs giving us all cancer with their radioactive
effulgence? Do you fear your computer, your cell phone or the high tension lines
that power them? Fears and comforting thoughts both welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/06/2008 at 1:16 PM0 comments