Norton 360 Backup lockup

We tried our first Norton 360 backup the other day. The backup size was about 33 gb and we had a 25 gb limit.

The real problem came when we tried to delete the backup. Unfortunately the documentation could be a lot more clear. It looked like we should be able to open up My Computer, navigate to the Norton Drive and delete it from there. However, when we right clicked and clicked Delete, Windows Explorer seemed to hang and not actually delete the backup or files inside of it.

I will try to establish a chat with Norton when I get some free time. I'd also like to know exactly how the 'automatic' backup works. Will it just copy files during idle time or does it have to do the entire backup in one shot.

The concept has a lot of promise but we seem to be getting off to a rocky start.

Norton 360 One click error messages

We are trying out Norton 360 premium for it's backup capabilities. So far, we've found the interface to be a little unweildy.

We created a backup set for 20 MB and ran it manually. At the end of the run, we got an error message that 21,000 files were backed up but that there was an error. We submbitted through the email version of the one click reporting.

The dissapointing thing was that we wanted to provide details about the error and our questions regarding it. It took several tries because the error reporting kept telling us to make our comments shorter. We finally were able to submit but only with about 3 short sentences.

Come on you Norton folks... what are you thinking?? Why clamp the text portion to an absurdly short legnth? I suppose that I will probably have to go for the phone or chat version of the error reporting in order to really describe the problem.

Support Ending for Vista (No Service Pack) and XP SP2 or lower on April 13 2010

If you are running Microsoft XP with SP2 or lower or Vista without at least SP1, you will no longer be able to receive security updates after April 13 2010.

Microsoft End of Support Information

If you are running XP or Vista versions that are affected then you should consider updating to at least XP SP3 or Vista SP1.

The inability to receive security updates will open your systems to attack.

Amtrak Philadelphia to DC coach coonectivity

We took the northeast regional from Philadelphia ti Washinton DC.

Coach class had 2 110v receptacles for each pair of seats.

Can your car dealer remotely kill your car??

Apparently some car dealers install packages that allow them to remotely disable your car, honk the horn or do other mischief. A disgruntled employee hacked into the web based system that allows them to remotely disable a car's ignition or cause the horn to continue honking.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/hacker-bricks-cars/

This is a bit disturbing at best. I'm in no way a fan of trial lawyers but this seems like a big fat lawsuit just waiting to happen, especially if the customers were not aware that this type of package was installed in the vehicle.

Suppose a person had a pregnant wife just ready to deliver. They go to get into the car and it won't start because they were a couple of weeks late on their payment or a disgruntled employee decided to shut them down?

When I buy my next vehicle, I plan on asking the dealer and having them sign a document stating that there is no remote disabling technology installed. If they won't sign that, then I'll simply go to the next dealership.

With the preponderance of 'smart' appliances, I could see how this could also be used for things like televisions and perhaps even home heating systems.

Caveat Emptor.

Password and password reset idiocy

I would love to get the idiots that design the password and password reset system in a room for just five minutes..

I hadn't used my USPS.com account for a while. When I was using it, the password was remembered so I wasn't typing it in. I usually use an algorithm for my passwords.

Well, I wanted to DO ONE SIMPLE THING.. Just one stinking thing... order some Stinking supplies from the stinking post office... Yep, should have taken all of five minutes...

Well, I went to login and it didn't accept my password. OK, I checked the algo and tried again. I tried a couple of variations..

Well, fine.. I'll just go for the password reset. A screen came up asking "In which city were you born in".. Well, let's put aside that the fine governmment flunkies can't get the grammar correct.
I put in the city where I was born. First of all, this type of question is a PAIN IN MY ROYAL BUTT. You might ask why?

• First of all, with things like google, information such as 'in which city were you born in' or 'what is your mother's maiden name" ARE ALL TOO EASY TO FIND OUT. Just ask Governor Sarah Palin about how the son of a democratic honcho hacked here email account with some basic research and lucky guesses.
• So, given the above, I sometimes obfuscate things. I might put philly instead of philly.
• On top of that the idiots at the postal service demand that the secret answer match in case with what you originally entered. Oh, just great, I'm now left guessing Philadelphia, PHILADELPHIA, Philly, philly, PHILLY, None of your freaking business, outer mondovia etc.

Oh, let's add some extra frustration. I tried the "Live chat".. "We're from the government and we're here to help you".. Unless you are talking about a time other than 8 to 4 weekdays. Wonderful. I can't wait till the government runs our health care.. "Sorry Chris, We understand your appendix is about to rupture but we are closed for the weekend and the employees have a mandatory SEIU meeting all day monday.

OK, I was finally forced to sign up for another account. Luckily it appears to have let me do so with the same email address I used previously.

When I signed up for the new account, I noticed that the password rules require at least one cap, one letter and at least one ancient Greek or Sanskrit character. Seriously, the cap thing is a pain for me because I don't have my algo wired for each individual set of password naziism that you can run into. If people are stupid enough to use their name in the password with a 1 after it, then let them get hacked. However, a lot of the password restrictions I've run into are pretty arbitrary.

The sum total of wasted time was a little over an hour. Great work folks. I can't wait till I have a medical emergency and have to deal with government bozos.

Rotating USB drives for backups

If you use USB hard drives in rotation for backups you can run into a problem in that hard drive. letter assignments are not sticky.

In one case I ran into an additional problem in that the existing configuration mapped a network drive as D. When you added a USBdrive, it took the first available drive letter which happened to be D. This caused conflicts.

A solution was to use USBDLM (USBDrive letter management). This runs as a service and precludes newly connected USBdrives from taking the mapped network drives.

Norton Internet Security now dies when your subscription ends

My Norton Internet Security has been bugging me to renew. I wasn't worried because my past experience was that it would continue to run after the end of the subscription which gave me a couple of days leeway.

However, when I booted one of my machines today I noticed that Norton simply stops working when the subscription expires. In other words, you apparently lose all of your protection.

The machine is a bit older so the renewal and upgrade to Norton 360 took nearly an hour. That would have been really irritating had I been under a deadline for a project.

So, take a close look at your subscription and consider that your protection will most likely cease when the subscription expires.

Goodbye privacy - Phone app recognizes your face

A new app for phones should make you a bit paranoid about your security and safety. Essentially, it will recognize faces from pics of total strangers. The app then searches social networking sites such as Facebook and looks for matches.

For details see the Sun Article . The site for the developers of Recognizr is at here

Currently the software is a prototype and people need to opt in for it to be able to recognize them. However the implications are creepy at best. It would be possible to run the same kind of search on people who have not opted in to the service. Perhaps Recognizr would always be opt in but that doesn't stop other developers from designing a more intrusive system.

This tool can easily be used for nefarious purposes. Some examples would be

• We currently have someone in our neighborhood who has been trying to lure children into his vehicle. An app like this would allow him to snap a photo and find detailed information that could be used to more effectively lure a child.
• Someone could simply go around a resort snapping pictures and thereby determining whose homes are probably vacant at the time.
• If you go to a protest such as a Tea Party, government officials could compile a list of attendees with only a moderate amount of effort. Say hello to a tax audit.

There are some measures that might offer protection. One barrier would be the extent to which social networking sites allow non individual users (databases) to mine their photos and information. An individual measure would be to not place photos of your face in social networking sites. Consider trying to tell your kids not to post on facebook and not allow any of their friends to post their pictures on their facebook or myspace pages and you realize how futile this would be.



I suppose though that the final barrier against stalkers would be a 1911 with hollow points.