Fixing a Windows virus makes me appreciate my Mac
July 31, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
A good friend of mine called me on my cell this morning.
"Yo! Hey brother, I have a problem with my laptop. Can you help me out?"
Walt's a really bright guy but isn't into computers at all. Computers are just another tool for Walter, giving him access to e-mail and the web while he is out on job sites. He works from his truck so it has become his mobile office, with a little Sprint broadband device allowing him to get electronic access from nearly everywhere.
The company he works for is small and since he works hundreds of miles from the headquarters it's up to him to maintain his own computer. He was not a happy camper because Windows was telling him that he had some virus infections and that he needed to clear them out. At this point his machine had become unusable and he wasn't sure what to do next.
Since he was in the area I asked him to swing by so I could take a look at it. The machine itself was a newer Dell laptop running Windows XP. Sure enough, there were a bunch of dialogs popped up complaining of virus infections. But something seemed really wrong.
Though the dialogs looked like they came out of the Microsoft Security Center they looked... I don't know... odd. I had never seen those particular dialogs before and had never had Windows prompt me to click a button to scan for viruses.
Apparently the latest trend in Windows viruses and spyware is to create windows that tell you that you are infected and to follow their steps to remove the crap from the machine. They masquerade as very official looking Windows dialogs. The giveaway for me was that I haven't seen Microsoft use an Always on Top window for a warning before. They may make it system modal but never something that simply covers other windows.
When I asked Walt what he used the machine for he said e-mail through Outlook and looking up manufacturers web sites for information. That was it. Nothing else I asked? "Not even porn" was the smiling response. Obviously in one of his web searches he clicked on a link that he thought contained a legitimate site for his job but was wrong. Who knows, maybe he just clicked the wrong link in a search result.
I went to the PC Tools web site, downloaded and installed PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Anti-Virus. Sure enough his machine was infected with something that was generating all of these little error dialogs. After a couple of successive scans and repair cycles we were able to get the machine clean and I made sure the system was set up to keep the machine relatively safe, at least for the year that the subscription lasts.
While this was going on I mentioned that I had switched to Mac and that problems like this were not something I even worried about anymore. Walt looked at me with the "that's nice" stare. This was a company supplied machine and he sure as hell wasn't going to be getting them to buy him a Mac. He just needed this machine to be able to work so he could get his day back on track.
Walt of course really appreciated the help. It only took me about 45 minutes to get everything resolved for him before he was able to pull out of the driveway and head off to the next job site. While his truck drove down the street and I walked back inside I thought to myself, I'm so glad I'm not dealing with THAT any longer.
What, me worry?
Sure, there are viruses trojans that have been created for Macs though they are few and far between. Macs can be hacked and compromised and pretending they cannot be is just plain unhealthy. The reason Macs have been left relatively unscathed while Windows machines are easy pickings is because there are literally tens of millions of unpatched and unmanaged Windows machines just sitting on a live internet connection.
It is really hard to run a Windows XP based system without commercial virus protection. I don't run any on my Macs because I'm very cautious about what I download and install. I do believe that the Mac will continue to grow in popularity and with that growth a bigger target will be placed on them. Until that happens though I'm going to continue to enjoy not going through what my buddy Walt just went through.
Desktop Theatre Sc 33: What have the robots unleashed?
July 30, 2008 by Bradley W. Lewis
Filed under Desktop Theatre
Screen sharing with Leopard
July 30, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
It was a beautiful day outside so I decided to grab the MacBook Pro and enjoy the delightful weather out on our screened in porch. I had some online reading to do as I am trying to get a handle on Git, the version control system I am going to be using.
While sitting here enjoying the breeze and working through the Git documentation I remembered that I had left Adium running on the Mac Pro downstairs. Many of my friends contact me through AIM and I usually put up an away message if I'm gone for a while. But I just sat down and got comfortable - getting up seemed like a lot of work to me. I decided that now was the perfect time to try out Leopard's Screen Sharing capability.
For some reason Apple decided to bury Screen Sharing down in the following location:
/System/Library/Core Services
I navigated to that in Finder and then dragged it into my Dock to get easier access to it. Once I had that fired up I simply entered the name of my Mac Pro into the Host window and pressed Connect. I was immediately rewarded with my entire Mac Pro's screen, miniaturized and scaled to fit on my MacBook Pro:
Even my dual monitors were represented. I tried playing around a bit and found it to be quite responsive. I had the option of either viewing the screen in scaled mode or by scrolling it. I found the scaling worked better for what I needed to do. Granted, the menu bar was extremely tiny but I could make out the little Adium icon and quickly set my status to away.
One machine to rule them all
Having accomplished this little mission I thought to myself: I wonder if I can gain access to my Ubuntu machine from the comfort of my screened in porch too? It physically sits right next to the Mac Pro and resides on the same network. I use SSH all the time to remotely connect and run tasks but I had never tried accessing my Ubuntu machine using a remote screen sharing application.
Apple's Screen Sharing program is based on VNC, which I knew was available for Ubuntu. With this little hacking challenge on the table I decided to dig in. First I ran SSH and connected to my Ubuntu machine. Next I followed LifeHacker's nice little four step instructions for getting VNC up and running on Ubuntu—something that could be handled through my SSH connection.
Within a couple of minutes I had my Ubuntu machine ready to be accessed. I fired up Screen Sharing again and entered in the name of my Ubuntu workstation. I got a couple of warning dialogs but within a few seconds I was rewarded with my Ubuntu screen up and running on my MacBook Pro:
The performance of the connection was terrible compared to the performance I got from the Mac Pro, though it was functional. I didn't tweak it at all; I just did it because I could, so I'm sure there is room for optimization.
I don't know why but there is something tremendously satisfying about remotely controlling a machine, especially one you didn't have the ability to control when you sat down. With my little remote adventure out of the way and this blog entry written up I better get back to that Git documentation.
It's not reading itself.
iPhone 3G Second Look
July 30, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
There are a couple of things I've noticed about the iPhone 3G that I didn't mention in my original post that I would like to cover. First off, the iPhone comes with what look at first glance like standard earbuds. I simply ignored them since they looked like the little white earbuds that I received with every other iPod I own.These earbuds are different though. They include a little microphone 5 inches below the right earbud, harking back to the wired headsets that were popular before Bluetooth headsets became all the rage. You can use the them to listen to your music and it produces very serviceable sound. The best part though is when you use it for a phone call; the sound is loud, crystal clear and comes into both ears, something I rarely experience with a phone since I tend to use single ear headsets or just press the handset up to my ear.
The other cool feature is that the little microphone is also a switch that can be used while playing music. A single click pauses the current song and a double click advances to the next song on the playlist. If a call comes in while you are listening to music you can also click the microphone to answer the call.
About the only downside to the headphones are how to carry them. You can wrap them around the body of the iPhone but that renders the display unreadable. There are cases out there—like the Jam Jacket from DLO that I bought for my iPod Touch—that provide a nice little clip to wrap the headphone cord around. The downside to that is the iPhone can't be slipped easily into a pocket with it attached; far too bulky. "Is that an iPhone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
The alternative is to just pick up a Bluetooth headset of course, though I have yet to have found one that offers decent sound beyond the ability to listen to phone calls. If you have a good solution to this problem please let me know. As Ross Perot would said, I'm all ears. Assuming I'm not listening to my music that is.
Portable Pictures
One of the nicer features of the iPhone is the ability to sync it up to my iPhoto collection. From within iTunes I simply point it at iPhoto and tell it to grab my 20 most recent events (there are several options for controlling what comes over). iTunes optimizes the photos before shipping them off to the iPhone so they don't take up the same amount of space they do on your hard drive. Once there you can scroll through them or generate a slide show.
The camera that comes in the iPhone is 2MP and takes very, very basic photos. This is not a replacement for even a basic digital camera since there are no controls to handle things like white balance and there is no flash. If your subject is properly lit you can take a decent photo; outdoors in daylight the quality is fine but if there is any backlighting at all everything washes out. That means forget trying to take a picture of someone with a window at their back. A flash would help but again, this isn't a "leave the digital camera at home" kind of device.
It's more like a "I don't have my camera with me but this will do in a pinch" kind of device.
A Black Rubber Cover
I really don't like the idea of having a device as expensive as the iPhone subject to the abuse I would likely visit on it without at least a little protection. I picked up an Incipio dermaSHOT silicon case, which provides some insulation against scratches and inadvertant drops but adds little to the bulk of the iPhone. The case also comes with a clear surface protector that helps keep the main glass free of scratches. The dermaSHOT does attract a little bit of lint when placed inside of a pocket, making the iPhone look a little on the furry side, though it is easily brushed off.
I have one of those scratch protective coatings on my iPod Touch (Came with the DLO Jam Jacket) and it helps considerably. Not only does it protect against scratches it cuts down on the finger print factor too. I haven't seen any change in the sensitivity of the touch screen since applying it either.
If you are going to install one of those protective covers to the face of your iPhone make sure you wipe it down really, really well first and apply it in as dust-free environment as you can. Otherwise you'll get small bubbles under it.
The now daily Time Machine Error
July 29, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
Rarely a day goes by now that Time Machine doesn't produce the dreaded Time Machine Error warning: "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume." Ironically I get this more on my Mac Pro with dual internal hard drives that check out fine rather than my little MacBook with the slow USB based drive for backup.
Since Time Machine runs hourly I'll get 23 to 47 backups that work fine, then the error. It's always a single file that seems to blow out the backup and generate the message:
I haven't encountered this on my MacBook Pro yet, only on my Mac Pro. The time machine icon in the menu bar shows this:
I first encountered this problem at the beginning of June and it is definitely a byproduct of the 10.5.3 update. Jeff McCord has documented similar problems on his blog. There seems to be two solutions that work for me:
1) Try again. About half the time just telling Time Machine to try again seems to work.
2) Look at the backup volume. If there is a file on your backup volume that ends in "inProgress" then drag it to the trash can. You'll be prompted to enter your password. Once done try Time Machine again.
I'm getting a lot of hits on this blog from people searching for Time Machine Error so hopefully this abbreviated solution set will help them clear the error until Apple fixes it.
I have read reports of people saying this may be related to using Growl—which I use with several of my applications—though I only seem to be seeing this error consistently on my Mac Pro. Though a relatively minor error that is easily recovered from, often by doing nothing but letting Time Machine try again, I would really like to see it eliminated.
Desktop Theatre Sc 32: Muhahahahahaha!!!
July 29, 2008 by Bradley W. Lewis
Filed under Desktop Theatre
Goodbye Sprint, hello iPhone
July 29, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
Last week the proverbial last straw was placed on my back by Sprint. Though they have tried like crazy to retain my business over the years and I still had 4 phones under contract I had had enough. At our home on the Eastern Shore of Delaware our signal had been deteriorating for many months, to the point where you could only maintain a phone call for 15-20 seconds. People would call, you'd look at the phone and see two bars, start to talk and POOF! The call would fail mid-sentence. Fan-flippin-tastic. Five different phones, all got the same result.I called Sprint to complain. The first person I spoke to told me that he would be happy to give me additional minutes on my account to compensate for the problem. Though a nice gesture, I declined because the phones were basically useless unless you liked to carry on Twitter like conversations with everyone. He suggested I speak to someone in the technical support group and transferred me over there.
After a lengthy hold a nice guy from the Texas support office got on the line and looked up my physical location. He said my area was in a "good" zone and that I should not have any problems. Well, clearly I was having problems. He explained at length how the cell towers were directional and that I may be in a dead zone. He suggested that I call the Sales department and talk to them about purchasing a signal booster for my home. He of course couldn't transfer me but assured me that I would have no problem speaking to someone that could help.
It was pretty clear at this point that no one really wanted to do anything about my problem. Trying to be optimistic I decided to call back and speak to someone in the Sales department. When I finally got through to a human being I explained that I needed a signal booster based on what their support person told me. The person I spoke to had no idea what I was talking about.
Wonderful. I told the Sprint rep that I had had enough and was going to switch providers if they didn't do something about it. She immediately went into crisis management mode and put me on hold. Apparently it's standard operating procedure at Sprint to put people on hold when they sense there is a serious problem, hoping you hangup in frustration, forget why you called or simply expire from old age. When the Sprint rep discovered that I had indeed decided to stay on hold she told me that she was going to open a ticket to get technicians to our address to see if they could resolve the problem.
Impressed that Sprint would actually send someone out I asked when this would happen so that I could talk to them directly. She started to become very evasive at this point and told me her supervisor would call me back shortly to explain what was going to happen. She assured me that I would receive a call later that day. Comically she asked if I was interested in upgrading my plan at the end of the call to include some feature I didn't have. Uh, no, thank you.
I was near my phone the remainder of the day and no one called. A couple of days later we wrote a nice little good bye letter to Sprint and talked through where to go next.
I've been wanting an iPhone for months now and with the 3G release my desire for one increased dramatically. With Sprint failing to deliver I had removed my last obstacle and went into full sales mode with my wife, telling her about all the great things she could do with an iPhone. I figured if I could convince her that she wanted an iPhone then I would get one by default. A friend of ours had just visited us and brought her iPhone and my wife was pretty impressed. We knew the iPhone got a great signal in our house so that wouldn't be an issue. Though it took a couple of conversations I finally got her excited about getting one for herself.
Hurry up and wait
Since I was shuttling family members around I was back in Virginia and stopped by the Tyson's Corner Apple Store at 11am on Monday, July 28. There was a line with about 30 people in front of me but the Apple folks assured me that I could get an iPhone if I waited, as long as I wanted a 16GB white iPhone. The black 8GB and 16GB versions were sold out.
After a two and a half hour wait it was finally my turn. It went very smoothly; the Apple clerk needed my Sprint account number so that I could have my phone number ported over. It took about 20 minutes from start to finish to port over our phone numbers from Sprint to the two iPhones.
Immediately after I left Apple I ran over to my local AT&T store to get the remaining phones on our account ported over. Fortunately that was a relatively painless exercise and we were able to set up the full family plan with shared minutes, unlimited text messaging ($30 / month for the 5 phones) and get my kids the phones they wanted. We even found that we were qualified for a discounted rate (15% off) on our primary lines. All in we will be paying about $40 more per month than we were with Sprint, though obviously with significantly more features.
iPhone First Impressions
Though I was thinking I wanted the black 16GB iPhone I didn't really care that much which one I got. While I think the black one looks a touch cooler I was going to slap a rubber sleeve on it anyway to give it a little shock absorbing capability, negating the color. The white iPhone actually looks pretty cool though in person. The white surface doesn't show any smudges and to a degree reminds me of a white MacBook.
The iPhone hooks up to iTunes much like any other iPod and I quickly went about identifying new content since I had significantly more capacity than with my 8GB iPod Touch. I love the Discovery Channel and especially Dirty Jobs; it turns out they are free as video podcasts on iTunes. It's hard to beat watching Mike Rowe show you how sausages are made while you belly up to the breakfast platter at the local diner.
iTunes reports that my iPhone has 14.64GB of capacity. I can only assume that this is a combination of the formatting of the memory "drive" and base 2.0 software.
I really like the fact that the iPhone has an internal speaker (I know, Duh, it's a phone too). There are times with my Touch that I simply need to hear a brief sound clip and don't want to unwind the headphones and plug them into my ears - now I don't have to do that.
I've had an iPod Touch for a little while now and was quite used to the interface. The screen itself is brilliant and displays high resolution images with ease. Browsing the web on the iPhone's built in Safari browser is a complete pleasure. Having suffered through years of crappy little web interfaces on mobile devices the ability to get really useful web pages in that form factor is truly revolutionary.
About the only challenge I've had with the iPhone so far is the placement of the speaker for the handset. At first I thought that the volume was very poor on the iPhone but it was really a matter of where I was positioning my ear against the surface. Other than that I've thoroughly enjoyed my first day with the iPhone.
Best of all, every place I've been my little 3G indicator is displayed and I get a very strong signal. So far, so good.
Oh yes, my nephew Dan—the one that tried to get his iPhone the day after they were released—gets his today. He ended up having to go through the AT&T store in California where his parents set up the original account, they had to order the phone for him and set it up, then ship it out to him.
My free iPod Touch
July 28, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
Each member of my family—my wife, three children and I—are heavy iPod Nano users. We never got into the iPods with hard drives because they were just too large. When the first Nano model came out I immediately went out and got one for each of us. We do a lot of travel as a family and figured the iPod would be a great way to help reduce the quantity and volume of "Are we there yet?".
At that point we were all still Windows users, each of us running some flavor of Windows XP and using iTunes on it. The Nanos were perfect for us and regardless of where we fell on the technical proficiency scale they were mastered very quickly. We imported our CD collections and began buying our music through iTunes.
Over the years we cycled through at least one iPod each. For my wife, son and I it was because we upgraded to a newer model with more memory, video capabilities, etc.
My daughters were a different story. Either both of them are fond of carrying bricks in their oversized purses or they have a secret pet rock fetish but both have managed to crush the display on their Nanos. My oldest daughter is very pragmatic about it and was quite happy to just take the ones that my wife or son had upgraded from. My youngest however is a gadget fiend and simply has to have the latest and greatest device.
"Daddy, I would love to get an iPod Touch. Have you seen the screens on them? They are SOOOO cool! Can I please have one?"
Ugh. I don't know where she gets this obsession with technology.
Needless to say she did get an iPod Touch for Christmas last year and happily showed it off to everyone. While I was quite happy with my last generation iPod Nano (no video) because of the tiny size and 8GB capacity, there was a part of me that coveted that iPod Touch.
A free iPod Touch?
When we bought the MacBook Pro a little over a week ago we were able to take advantage of the promotional program Apple is running for people that qualify for an educational discount. There are benefits that my wife gets from teaching at a public high school and this is one that I enjoy the most. Not only were we able to get a discount on the MacBook Pro itself and Applecare, we were also able to get a free iPod with up to a $299 rebate. Since the 8GB iPod Touch was $299 I figured this would be a great time to get one.
The Touch is an interesting device and a marvel of engineering. The large display on it is simply stunning. After the display the biggest difference between it and the standard iPod line is that there are only two external buttons: The Sleep/Wake—On/Off button at the top edge and the Home button on the face. This is a bit of a challenge because I normally operate my Nano by feel. My thumb feels the click wheel on the Nano and I can pause, change the volume or skip to the next or previous song without ever looking, even when I'm out jogging.
The Touch requires my full attention when operating it however. The position of the controls is handled directly on the touch display, a display that can reorient itself based on the attitude of the device. Hold it straight up (Portrait) and you get slightly different control surfaces than if the Touch is on it's side (Landscape).
For this reason alone the Nano will continue to be my primary music device, at least for exercising. The Touch has many capabilities though, some changing the way I access my primary computers.
E-Mail and Web Browsing
Perhaps the coolest feature of the iPod Touch is the ability to surf the web using Wifi and the internal Safari browser. If you have not seen an iPhone or iPod Touch browsing the web you will be stunned that something so small could actually be so functional. Though it does require a Wifi host to tap into I can generally find them in most of the places I frequent.
I'm a big Gmail fan and the mail program in the Touch can hook right up to it and provide a highly readable interface to my e-mail. Though I wouldn't want to compose anything of length on the Touch's display based keyboard, it is pretty easy to type on. If you have large fingers it would likely be a bit of a challenge though.
I've found that now when I am upstairs watching TV with my wife I'll keep the Touch handy because it's so quick and easy to check e-mail or pull up a web site that is referenced on the program we're watching. It isn't something I would spend an extended amount of time on but is perfect for that quick reference.
It may be pretty but it gets dirty fast
About the only thing negative I could think of with the iPod Touch is that its polished surface—both the display glass and the chrome back—show every finger print and smudge. Within a day of getting the Touch I went over to my local Best Buy and purchased a DLO Jam Jacket for $21. It provides a rubberized case that ads a little to the bulk of the Touch but in return makes it feel highly ruggedized.
The small clip on the back of the Jam Jacket doubles as a headphone holder so you don't have to wrap the headphones around the business end of the display. This makes it even easier to just grab it quickly and check e-mail or the web.
Apple comes through again
When we bought the MacBook Pro and the iPod Touch we had to pay for the Touch up front. The $299 was supposed to come as a rebate. I've always hated rebates. The companies that provide them often squirrel out of them by telling you that you didn't include the correct UPC code or you wait for 6-8 weeks and just forget about the darn thing.
Apple is different. When we bought it they gave me a little card and the Apple Store employee told me to go online when I got home and fill out the form. He even offered the use of the Macs on display if I wanted to do it immediately. I ended up going home and filling out the form, a very brief one that basically had me plugging in my receipt ID and confirming my mailing address. It was really simple.
Four days later I got an e-mail from Apple indicating that my rebate was on the way. Today I received the rebate check from Apple. Elapsed time to receive the rebate check: 9 calendar days or 5 business days.
Apple continues to impress me. Not only are they producing cutting edge products that I thoroughly enjoy using, they are running their business exceptionally well.
Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Digital Photographers
July 28, 2008 by Dr. Michael N. Roach
Filed under Books, Digital Lifestyles, On The Frontpage: Books
In my professional life I have attended many seminars and workshops. Some of those seminars or workshops have been funded by my employer, and others I have paid for myself. Looking back over some forty plus years of classes—let’s go ahead and call these seminars and workshops that—I think that the average price of any of these half day classes has to have averaged at least a hundred dollars per session; perhaps it has been even more. Read more
Desktop Theatre Sc 31: Farm Explore III
July 28, 2008 by Bradley W. Lewis
Filed under Desktop Theatre
