A real time waster

Check out http://cubo.cc/ As of the end of March 2008, that will lead you to an odd intereactive app. It's the head of a girl whose head and eyes will follow your mouse pointer.

I'm not sure what the point of it is but it is a little odd to say the least

server 2003 hang up at mup.sys on a safe boot

We got a call about a server that was getting a black screen of death on boot. It's been around for a few years. I went into safe mode and it was hanging up at mup.sys.

This doesn't necesarrily mean that mup.sys was bad. Rather than go and replace it, I opted for removing all of the USB devices along with a parallel printer connection. The onboard USB is 1.x and there was a 2 port usb 2.x add on card (I said it was an old machine).

The machine then booted normally. I added back one device at a time until I found that it would hang when the external hard drive was connected back to the USB 1.x onboard port. It was either the USB port or the hard drive. I put a USB 2.0 hub on one of the USB 2.0 ports on the add on card. When I plugged everything into that things worked fine. For some reason, the USB 1.0 port decided to fail. Time to spec out a new server for them . (Actually the time to do that is in the past. However, with a bit of recession looming, clients arent' too quick to do upgrades. )

Click on a link, any link - Get busted and go to Jail

Declan McCullough has been writing on tech stuff for quite a while. He recently posted an article about FBI Entrapment about a situation where the FBI posted some links on a message board that appeared to be links to obviously illegal pictures and video that were to an FBI run site. Some guy clicked on the links and a couple of days later got a visit from the feds, was thrown on the ground, handcuffed, tried by a jury of morons... er his peers and convicted. His attorney is trying to get things reversed. (by the way, "Hundreds" of people were nailed with this particular sting)

OK, Great, they busted some scumball. Child porn is illegal and repugnant. It's much much worse than a sitting prez nailing an intern a year older than his daughter. So, no problem if you are a good upstanding citizen, right???


WRONGO BONZO- Go straight to jail, do not pass "GO". Do no collect $200.

The fundamental flaw in this that was outlined in the article was that it appeared that the Feds were simply looking at the IP of the person who clicked, not the referrer. IOW, They saw that someone clicked on the link and followed it. They don't know what link they really clicked.

For example, they might have clicked the links on the FBI post that read something like http://www.reallydisgustingillegalimmorralandandfatteningstufff.com/ OK, so that person should know they are venturing into possibly illegal territory. Note the stress on possibly.

Now, here is the problem where the FBI is using the "Kill them all, let God sort them out approach". It has to do with the way anchor text works.

There are two parts to an HTML link, (1) the actual address that the link points to and (2) the text that is displayed for the user. Therein lies the problem and a huge potential that would allow people to ruin the lives of others. This has been widely known for some time. The whole Google bombing that led to Google showing a page on President Bush for the search term "miserable failure" is a result of just this type of manipulation.

How does it work?? The format for a link in HTML is something like

{a href=www.site.com } text the user sees. {/a}

I can't duplicate the html for the link easily here because I can't include the brackets so I've used curly braces instead.

In the case above, the user would see text the user sees as the link but if they click on it, they would go to http://www.site. com/. Oops, one click like that and your life can be ruined.

The ability to do this is something that almost anyone can do. It's not some arcane piece of programming. It is the most simple, rudimentary html. If someone wants to get nastier, they can do a little javascript or other programming to actually force their victim's browser to "Click" on the link. Don't like a particular individual? send them an anonymous email with one of these disguised links and watch the fun begin. Want to ruin lives at random? Set up a self help website for some serious medical condition and throw in a couple of disguised links.

So, what can you do to avoid the possibility of becoming like the main actor in a Greek Tragedy?

1. Learn how to farm and speak Pennsylvania Dutch, Become a strict member of the Amish Community and avoid all electricity and electronic communications with the outside world.
2. Make sure that your wifi connections are LOCKED DOWN. That's Locked down in Caps, italics, bold etc. If you have an open wifi and someone wants to cause you pain or is just randomly causing pain, all they have to do is connect to your wifi and type in one of the links. You're now toast. BTW - forget about fairness and due process etc. Prosecutors use these types of crime where everyone hates the perp, even if they aren't guilty, to built their reputation.
3. Make sure that you have NO virii or trojans on your computer. That is almost impossible because it is philosophically impossible to prove a negative (Ie you cannot prove that there are no trojans on a machine). However, a seriously infected machine might have apps that cause automatic clicking.
4. Strictly control who has access to your machine. Gee, your kid has a couple of friends over and one of them clicks on an entrapment link. A week or so later, you are sniffing the pebbles on your driveway with a jackboot firmly planted on your neck.
5. Consider learning about jury nullification. One of the reasons that this stuff can happen is because the judges and persecutors can do this is because they count on the ignorance of a jury. If you are on a case like this and you see obvious BS, then don't rubberstamp the guilty verdict. Of course, if you choose this course, you might want to engage in item #1 above, Get rid of all your computers and join the Amish.
6. Use cache cleaning software and other privacy apps. The guy in the story was largely convicted because of two, count em two, thumbnails. Anyone who has ever examined the contents of a browser cache knows that the user has almost no control over thumbnails that are downloaded. (see #5 above). However, if the jury of your peers happens to be a bunch of boobus ignroramus americanus whose knowledge base consists of the scores of every Phillies player and all the episodes of Seinfeld, you are cooked. Stick a fork in yourself, you are done. An even better idea might be to have a linux box that runs off a CD with absolutely no hard drive memory for any recreational surfing or for any surfing where you don't need to download/save anything.
7. Let your elected federal reps know that you think the feds might be overboard and hurting people. Of course, if you do this, refer to option #1 again.
8. Never, ever, ever click on any links again, ever or look at the HTML source and do a whois before clicking on any links... Yeah right...
   

By the way, if you want to see how an ignorant police force and overzealous prosecutor can screw a person's life up, check out the story of the substitute teacher in Connecticut. Julie Amero. The fact that she has suffered this long is a travesty.

Bernardo Gui is alive and well in 2008. Long live the Inquisition!!

Vista SP1 - DANGER Will Robinson - Danger

Well, Vista has finally accumulated enough patches to warrant Service Pack 1. (SP1).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/bb738089.aspx

According to Microsoft SP1 will do all sorts of great and wonderful things such as "supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. " I hope the new standards aren't DRM related....


However, as you read the Microsoft release, one of the first things you see is a Service Pack Blocker tool. Why would we even consider blocking a service pack that is supposed to do all sorts of wonderful things??

Well, there have been a number of reports of problems with SP1 and it appears that some drivers may conflict with the Service Pack resulting in MS not allowing you to install SP1. To add insult to injury, if you are blocked from getting SP1, you now have to figure out exactly which driver or drivers is causing the problem. Microsoft is leaving that for you to figure out for now.

I suspect that there will be some people and small companies that will not realize that they have been blocked from SP1. In those cases, they will probably fail to get future security related updates which will have the hackers salivating. If you are running Vista, you should be aware of whether or not SP1 installed. To see if you have SP1 for Vista installed, Click on START, right click on COMPUTER, and left click on PROPERTIES. That should tell you if SP1 installed. If it hasn't installed then you want to consider:

1. Perhaps you don't have auto updates enabled. If this is the case, try to enable the auto update function for windows or go to INTERNET EXPLORER, TOOLS, WINDOWS UPDATE.
2. If you find that SP1 is being withheld you can ignore the situation in which case you will eventually be hacked because of a lack of security updates or you can try to identify which drivers or other factors are blocking you from getting SP1. You can check out the list here or call in a consultant. (We are available for remote support or direct support if you are in the Philadelphia, Pa area.)
3. There is a way to override the blocking of SP1 but we won't go into that here. Those people who can do this safely will know how to to it. This is another "penny in the fusebox" type of thing.

As for issues with SP1, here is a small sampling

• Information Week - An article about Penn and it's experience with SP1.
• ZDNet - Problems with Symantecs corporate antivirus
• CRN "running Vista SP1 with the Aero interface causes pointers for certain types of wireless and optical mice to malfunction, despite these devices having been certified by Microsoft as 'Vista Compatible'. " Great - we don't need no steenking mice anyway

There is a free support site for update issues. However, be sure you navigate through properly so you remain in a free support area. You can find the support site here.


Also, please remember that when you hire a consultant to fix this mess, consultants were not put on earth to subsidize Microsoft and other Software manufacturer's mistakes.

New Jersey Kommisar of Nannyism Subpoenas Records of Social Site

Some people's feeewings might have been hurt so the Attorney General of New Jersey has to come to the rescue.

A social networking site, juicycampus.com was set up in Nevada. Ok, so the site is a place where people say not nice things about other people. Guess what folks, the real world is like that. People will get nasty. Just look at politics, Dina McGreevey starts saying nasty things about Eliott Spizter and then it comes out that Ms. McGreevey, the ex NJ Love Gov and their driver were having steamy three ways which might involve NJ taxpayer's funds. Oh, and no sooner does the new New York Gov get in to replace the disgraced 4k.hr Spitzer that we find out he was cheating on his loving wife and seeing ho's in a hotel (Guess that's why it's called that) again, possibly using taxmoney from his state's citizens.

So, Fast Forward to the current situation. Somebody in Nevada comes up with a website where people can say mean, nasty and vile things about other people (Sort of like what the New York Slimes does to President Bush and the Republicans on a daily basis). Now, someone gets their pwecious feewings hurt. What do they do? Harden up? Ignore it? Fight Back? No, they run to the skirts of the nanny state. "Oh Please Great Kommissar Attorney General, protect me from the evil bad capitalist website".

The NJAG now subpoenaes the website operator and the ad provider, adbrite. They are also thinking about been subpoenaing google which had previously provided advertising. This is chilling. Website operators will now be at the mercy of whichever Attorney General is having a slow news day or wants to enforce their own social dream on society by harassing selected websites.

A secondary effect is a chilling one. By harassing the ad providers, AG offices can now start exerting undue control over speech, possibly in violation of the First Amendment. If enough of the People's Republiks start been subpoenaing (read harassing) the advertising companies, then the advertising companies will have to start becoming thought police. Google already does this to a large extent with their ad programs. Mention too much about guns or shooting in a positive sense on your site and it will stop showing Google ads.

Let me take a minute and say that I personally think that what the website is doing is totally despicable. However, I don't believe that this is something that the government should step in and do the nanny state thing on. Things like this can be controlled to some extent by the free market.


As far as the AG offices, they are there for only two reasons (1) to further the aims of the party of the AG and (2) to further the career of the AG. Let's look at some examples of this (3) protect the status quo and donors (players) to the parties.

• The Spitzer case - Do you think that Spitzer never spent a dime of taxpayer's money while he was having his 5k flings? Do you think you will see the AG look at the spending there? Try shorting your tax payment by 10 bucks and see what happens.
• The Patterson Case - See the Spitzer case above.
• There is a case in Boulder Co. where an ex judge and his lawyer wife took a MILLION dollars worth of properly from their neighbor by claiming that they were entitled to it because they trespassed on the land. So far, the Colorodo AG is sitting on his butt doing nothing (see www.landgrabber.org for details on that outrage)
• I ran afoul of a business organization that was really a front for an insurance broker and ended up in a messy lawsuit because of it. Complaints to the Pennsylvania AG fell on deaf ears. Don't worry about the complete misrepresentation of their marketing.

The AG's press release can be found at http://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases08/pr20080318b.html

A website that publishes anonymous gossip about college students, some identified by first and last name and dormitory, has been subpoenaed by the Office of the Attorney General and the Division of Consumer Affairs as part of a state investigation into the operation of the college gossip website

Hey, New Joisey - How about investigating how your ex gov put a foreign national in charge of the state's homeland security... How about investigating if the Jim, Dina, Teddy freeway threeway used any taxpayer dollars to support it? How about investigating how Governor Corzine was speeding recklessly down the highway and tried to blame everything on some poor schmuck in a pickup truck?

Postings on JuicyCampus.com include uncomplimentary references to the physical characteristics, race, ethnicity and implied sexual experiences of students

Gee, too bad Obama's Pastor isn't in your state. Hey, now that I think about it, I'm offended by a lot of the stuff he has said. Here's the website for you to investigate http://www.tucc.org/home.htm. Oops, I'm sorry, investigating that won't fit in with your agenda now will it. ?

The state issued a second subpoena to Adbrite, Inc., a San Francisco-based online advertising company that advertises on the JuicyCampus.com web site. The state is requesting information about the business relationship between Adbrite and JuicyCampus.com in order to determine how JuicyCampus.com represented its operation to Adbrite, including the types of ads and advertising keywords requested by JuicyCampus.com

Yep, that's the ticket, Intimidate those who don't follow your dreams of a socialist utopia. Let's use the subpoena power of the state to indirectly control how advertising companies run their businesses.

Additionally, the State sent a letter to Google, Inc., to inquire about the company’s prior business relationship with JuicyCampus.com

Oh Boy, you guys are really trying to have http://www.state.nj.us/ come up number one for the keyword "Mafia infested", "Miserable Failure" and "Corruption Capital of the US" aren't you. Here's a hint guys. Don't go yanking Google's chain. Yeah, they are pretty liberal at the 'plex but their net worth is probably greater than that of New Jersey.

Kodak "easyshare" won't run right on limited accounts

Let me preface this by saying that the best protection we've found for XP based systems is that users do all recreational surfing and email reading from a limited user account, not an account with administrator rights. We try to set up our home based clients especially so that the kids are running as limited users. That has been over 99% effective in stopping virus and trojan attacks.

The other day we were working with a client who had purchased a new Kodak camera for her son. The computer running XP would not see the camera. We were getting a 'device not recognized" error. I tried doing a repair install of Easyshare and then a complete reinstall. It still wouldnt' recognize the camera.

I got a suspicion that maybe it just wouldn't run on a non admin account. After a few minutes of searching I found a bunch of threads confirming that. Kodak's advice to people is to "Just run as an administrator".. Great, just because your software can't run under a limited user account, just remove the best safety device ever. Here's some similar thinking

• Put a real copper penny in under the fuse in your fusebox and you'll never have blown fuses again (of course, your wiring in your walls will glow and burn your house down)
• If the relief valve on your water heater keeps popping, just pull it out and replace it with a solid plug (Just don't be in the house when it swells up like that eddie murphy character and goes booooooooomm)
• If the smoke alarm keeps beeping, just remove the batteries (So that when there is a real fire you can roast to death)

I did come across a list of applications that require you to be an adminstrator to run but unfortunately I can't find it again.

I absolutely refuse to compromise the security of client's systems to run what is essentially a non essential piece of software. If Kodak thinks having a sytem with 11, 9 and 7 year old boys running as administrators is OK, then let them do that with their machines.

The work around was pretty simple. I had an 11 in 1 card reader in my laptop bag. I gave that to the client and showed the 11 yo who owned the camera how to download the pictures. He learned the whole process in about two minutes.

What concerns me is how many people out there are blindly following Kodak's advice to "Just run as an administrator?"

It will be interesting to see if the situation improves under Vista or not.

HP Pavillion's webcam software - What happened to the common GUI?

Geeez, I've been messing around with the webcam software that comes with the HP Pavillion dx6000 laptop. I suspect that HP is outsourcing the coding........ to the local zoo.

The whole idea of a common Graphical User Interface was that you would flatten the learning curve so that when you picked up a new app, all of the main menu items would be relatively in the same place.

The interface for the camera is confusing at best. In order to record, you have to find the icon on the left that looks like a bunch of stuff jumbled together (the black and white scheme doesnt' help with id). Oh, by the way, there is no mousover tag, you need to right click if you aren't sure. Now, you've found the icon with the camera, film reel and microphone. Click that.

Hold on, we're not there yet. You need to go and find HP webcam under 'source'.

Almost there now. Double tap the HP webcam line and wait for the blue light on the webcam.
There is a disappearing menu at the bottom. Move the mouse around till you see that. Now look for the big red bullseye next to the camera icon. Click that and you will see available disk space and recording time so far under the video.

Ok, how do you stop it? Clicking the record button just tells you "Recording in progress". Hey, I want out... Look for the Square block.. Yep, the square block on the disappearing bottom menu. That will stop it.

So now. where the heck is your video.?? With any luck you will see files on the right side of the screen with names such as webcam_2008_03_03_1300 or something like that. Click on it. Go ahead, I dare you. What I was getting was a video but the sound track was some dopey elevator music. My 12 year old son suggested going to my computer, then to the public folder and playing it from there using windows media player. That worked and my voice was the soundtrack not the elevator music.

Hey HP , If you are going to outsource code writing to the zoo, at least try to have simians do it, not turtles. Well, actually, I suspect turtles could have designed a better interface.

Oh, in addition, if you are in full screen mode, you can't alt-tab to get to your other windows.

One final word - The Common Graphical User Interface was designed for a reason.

Kentucky rep sponsors bill banning anonymous internet posts

Maybe we should limit legislative sessions to 2 days per year to try to minimize the damage these well meaning meddlers can do.

A representative in the Kentucky House, wants to pass a law banning all anonymous internet posting.

The proposed bill http://www.lrc.ky.gov/record/08RS/HB775.htm The synopsis is

AN ACT relating to information technology. Create new sections of KRS Chapter 369 to establish definitions relating to Internet Web sites, blogs, or message boards; require registration prior to posting information to these interactive services; identify persons, businesses, or entities that post information to these interactive services; establish penalty provisions.


This type of bill is wrong for a lot of reasons such as:

1. This will be a headache for webmasters as far as compliance as well as the fact that it will create additional expenses. The web is still in it's startup phase and this will create an undue burden for web operators.
2. The web is global. If laws like this go through, there will be a nightmare patchwork of laws that sites will be bound by.
3. Privacy is necessary. Tim Couch is active in the NRA. He should realize that many employers have an anti gun bias. If this bill passes, then people will not be able to express their opinions anonymously. They will have to either shut up or risk their jobs. Also, some gun owners might not want to post something because they don't want to advertise the fact that they own firearms to everyone.
4. Many people use online forums for support for physical and mental health issues. Employers have been known to fire people becauese they, or their family, have health issues simply because they feel that the employee can't work effectively or that their health insurance rates will rise. So, if this bill passes, a woman looking for support for breast cancer will have to do so knowing that her identity is available.
5. This unfairly affects US Subjects... er I mean Citizens. Citizens pay taxes, register to vote, and their kids register for the draft. Federal and state legislators have been derilict in their duties by allowing 12 to 20+ million illegal aliens into this country. Under a bill like Couch's, decent law abiding folks are the ones who can be tracked, not the illegal aliens using fake ID.
6. There are already mechanisms that can be used in the cases of terrorism or severe harrassment. A court order can be obtained and IP records examined. Even if someone goes through several layers of anonymous proxies they can eventually be trackesd.

Overall this is an ill conceived idea that, if enacted, will be a textbook case of "the law of unintended consequences"..

This is a case where the words of Thomas Paine are more than appropriate
"That government is best which governs least."

• News Article on the proposed bill
• Couch's House Kentucky Page including an email contact form.

USB Lamp and Notebook Paranoia (Or caution)

I like to work with my laptop in one of the quiet corners of the house. Unfortunately, the lighting isn't so great there.

I bought one of those USB Gooseneck LED lamp. It works great and once you get it positioned properly.

HOWEVER.... I started thinking about the stresses on the USB port. You have some definite weight at the end of about 8 or 10 inches. Every time you move or jiggle the notebook, you essentially have a lever effect exerting stress on the usb port. Physics isn't my strong point and I'm not about to work out the stress factors. I just get a queasy Nostradomas like feeling of impending doom.

The solution turned out to be pretty simple. I have a usb extension cord with a base for my sierra wireless aircard. The USB cord plugs into the laptop, and since it is totally flexible, it produces zero stress on the port. I'm going to upgrade my Targus Chill mat to a Chill Hub. Once I get around to doing that, then I can plug the light into my Chill Hub. If the light stresses the USB connnection and breaks it, I'm only out 40 bucks, not 900.

More on Poor Man's Exchange

We posted in http://www.chrismendlascorner.com/2008/03/poor-mans-email-option-for-verizon.html about how to access your email on your web enabled phone.

If you set your email account up the way we mentioned in that post you can gain some flexibility for your email (again, use caution when messing with email settings)

We are running a new laptop with Vista. I haven't gotten around to parting with the money for a copy of Outlook for that machine. I'm using the Windows Mail app that comes with Vista. It's the successor to Outlook Express. You could use any email client.

What happens is that our main account is set to leave messages on the server for one day as indicated in the post mentioned above. When we are on the road, we can fire up the email app on the laptop and get any recent messages.

Here are a couple of things to consider.

• When you configure the email client, make sure that it is NOT set to delete messages from the server.
• When you have an internet connection, simply connect and download your emails. IMPORTANT - email passwords are notoriously easy to sniff. If you are on any kind of a public network, you should change your email password as often as you change your underwear (And we don't mean once a monthh). We don't use public wifi since we have a cellular aircard. However, we do check our email at times when connnected to a client's network.
• You would need to import your address book into your laptop email client. This was a pain for us since we have all of our Outlook contacts in folders and subfolders.
• When you reply to an email, the sent copy is in the email client on your laptop. Keep this in mind when you really want a record that you sent the email. We often BCC ourselves if we want a record of sending an email that will end up on our main machine.
• You can delete the older emails periodically if you are not deleting the messages from the server.

Overall, this works fairly well. If you are somewhere without a laptop, you can go to a web based email reader such as www.mail2web.com HOWEVER, be sure to use the secure connection and be aware that sniffing email passwords is easier than pouring yourself a cup of coffee. Change your passwords regularly. Also, keep in mind that any messages you delete while using a web based email client WILL NOT be available for download to your main machine unless they were already downloaded.

You should be aware of the amount of traffic you get in terms of the total messages. Since your are leaving messages on the server, it is possible that you can fill up your inbox. We get around this by

1. Asking for a mailbox size upgrade if possible
2. If you get an important email while on the road that has a large attachment, you can forward that to something like a Gmail or Hotmail account. Then you can delete it from your server. The easiest way to delete something from your server is to use a web based email client such as mail2web.

Overall, coupled with the ability to check emails on our Envy, we now have a whole lot more flexibility.

One other thing. If we are going to be away from the office for a couple of days, we usually shut down outlook. At that point, you might want to change the settings on your laptop to "Delete messages when deleted from the deleted items folder". That way you can delete the spam and unneeded messages and empty the deleted items folder. That will reduce the number of messages waiting for you when you get back. Be careful what you delete and be sure to change the setting back when you return.

Poor man's email option for a Verizon Phone

With email becoming ever more important, you don't want to be away from it for long.

I have an LG Envy and use Outlook for my main email account. I looked at hosted exchange options. Overall, they are a pretty good option but they can cost around 50 bucks a month. Verizon has an email option for about $20 per month that looks fairly good. It will work if you have a web capable phone and the web package (about 15/month for our plan)

I found a low cost/no cost option that seems to be working pretty well for now. (be careful when messing about with your email settings).

We had one machine that was our main machine which runs Outlook. Outlook was set to delete messages from the server as they were downloaded. That works great when you are only trying to read emails from one location.

What we are doing now is that we changed the advanced settings in Outlook to leave the messages on the server for 1 day and to delete the messages from the server when deleted from the deleted items folder.

Now, when a message comes in, it remains on the server for one day or until I have deleted it and emptied the deleted items folder. The next trick is to set up your phone so you can access a web based email access system that is WAP compatable. One that works for us is www.mailtoweb.com/wap . Since the messages remain on the server for a day, we can leave outlook running while out visiting clients and be able to see messages as they come in and read them as long as they are not made up soley of an attachment.


Here is the basic process (Be careful when changing email settings)

• Set the advanced settings in your Outlook on your main machine to Leave messages on the server, delete after 1 day, delete when deleted from the deleted items folder. The last option lets you clear out the spam before you leave the office in the morning
• Make sure you know the password for your email. (Surprisingly many people don't)
• Bookmark your online wap email reader such as www.mail2web.com/wap on your phone.
• When you want to check your email, go to the wap mail reader. Mailtoweb's interface is a little basic on the envy but it does work. You need a little patience. We found it best to work from the "list all messages)
• We have found that sending or replying to a message is a bit quirky from our phone. Sometimes we get a timeout message and send it again only to find out that it really went the first time.

So far, this has been working great. It's not on the level of a blackberry and hosted exchange solution. However it is a lot better than what we had just a month ago.

There are other online wap readers. We are considering finding an open source reader that we can put on our private password protected website (Intranet). That way, we will have a reader that is not dependant on a third party although Mail2web has been stellar so far

An added bonus is that you can also access your mail from your laptop while on the road. We'll post seperately on that

Ambiguity - Microsoft's guided help for corrupted XP registries

Dang, I really hate tech writers who write ambiguous articles.

I have a client's laptop where the registry was hosed. The machine won't boot and gives a classic corrupted registry/hive error.

I found the appropriate article in Microsoft's knowledge base to address the issue entitled How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B307545

There's something new in there that I haven't noticed before, the 'guided help' option. Overall, it looks pretty cool. HOWEVER, the writer left one piece of info out. The guided help says you need to install and run it as an admin. The article addresses a machine that is dead, caput, lifeless, inert, non functional.. OK, is it possible to run the guided help on a machine that won't boot windows?? If so, how do you do that.

Also, the guided help info says to install on a removeable medium such as USB. Does that also mean that the guided help will write to a CD?

For now, I'm going to do it the hard (manual) way.. I'm also going to schedule some clarvoyance classes with Madam Esmerelda to see if I can read the minds out at Redmond.

SBS, Symantec Endpoint Protection and Network Threat Protection

Aaarrrgghh

A server had an expired copy of Norton Corporate 10.x. Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.x seemed to be the best alternative at the time. We purchased enough licenses and installed SEP on the clients (about 6 machines). So far so good.

When we tried to install on the server, it was requiring that IIS be installed on the server. That turned out to be a nightmare because (1) the company could not locate the distribution media for Server 2003 (It is a legal copy) and (2) the c drive is short of space (For some reason the previous VAR decided that 8 gig on the c drive would be enough hard drive space.

So, it seemed like we could run as unmanaged clients... NOT...

What happens is that as soon as you enaable "Network Threat Protection" on the server, all of the clients are blocked from accessing shares on the server. So, on to the trusty Google searches. We found documentation about checking the "share files and folders" boxes. Been there, done that. We also found

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-security.nsf/docid/2007100512163348

OK, that involves setting some firewall rules to open up the necessary ports. Been there, done that too. Went back and double checked... Yep, all those settings are correct. However, a minute or so after turning on "Network Threat Protection" none of the clients can access any shares.

So, right now, it doesn't look like we can set things up as managed clients until (1) we get more hard drive space (2) we get the distribution media to install IIS.
-or-
Either a fix comes out or we find more ports that have to be opened up.

So, back to either the windoze firewall or trying to find a 3rd party firewall that will play nicely with SEP

Google's new Privacy Policy Requirement for Adsense

There is a discussion going on at webmaster world about google's new requirement that all sites using adsense need a privacy policy. Apparently the overpaid lawyers at the Googleplex decided that things weren't complicated enough already. They came up with a requirement that everyone post a privacy policy. If you wanted to access your adsense account, you had to agree to Google's new terms. A quick explaination can be found at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2008/02/updated-terms-and-conditions.html

But that is it- Only a quick explaination. The members at webmasterworld have been trying to figure out exactly what we are required to do. The famous ASA (Adsense advisor) has been conspicously absent from the forum so far

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/3584379-1-10.htm

A lot of discussion for that thread centers around the cookies and web beacons that google uses. Those things will have some impact on the privacy of your visitors. The other issue is that Google is notorious for penalizing duplicate content and repetitive navigation links. This policy you will need to place on your sites is a typical multi page lawyer brain fart. No one is sure if that will cause duplicate content issues. Also, it appears that sites have been hit with the infamous 950 penalty because of internal navigation links in headers, footers and sidebars. Everyone is trying to sort out how to put a link to your policy in a way that will not send your rankings into the abyss.

Icedowl posted on the forum that the Direct Marketing Association has a privacy policy generator online. It's probably a good idea to have a policy. It will probably take you about 15 minutes or so to fill it out for each site. You can then view the resulting policy online or have it mailed to you in html or plain text. You can find the generator at http://www.the-dma.org/privacy/creating.shtml

Too many lawyers, not enough chum. I can just picture one of the Googleplex lawyers at lunch with their lawyer buddies "Hey Bob, you oughta see what we did. Now everyone is going to have to hire a lawyer to put a privacy policy on their sites" "cool dude" "Yeah, and once you guys milk that, you can start some lawsuits and really get things confused. We'll get it so that every small mom and pop site has to spend at least a couple of grand for legal fees every year"

Blogger and duplicate descriptions in G's Webmaster tools

Google's Webmaster tools has some neat new sections. One of them is a diagnostic called Content Analysis . It will show problems that can kill your rankings such as duplication in titles or descriptions.

We have a couple of blogs. Some of them are hosted at blogger and some we host. The first blog we checked that was hosted at blogger (though with a custom domain) was fine. No content issues were found. Great.

We then checked a blog that is hosted by us. That showed that every page had the same meta descsription. That's bad for two reasons (1) The snippets showing up in the search aren't adequately reflecting the content and (2) there is a lot of evidence that duplicate titles and descriptions can hurt your Search Engine Ranking, especially with Google.

We did find a blog at http://www.danielmillions.com/2007/03/blogger-meta-tags.html That seems to have the answer. There's no time left tonight to try out his suggestion for a dynamic meta tag but we'll try it out this week and post the results.