Author: TruXter

How Safe Is Mobile Internet?

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From Whistle Blowers:

“A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier’s systems, exposing customers’ voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.”

Verizon has a finger pointed at it.

This information I got from Slashdot Review.

Of course, I followed up with a search in Google.

Doesn’t sound good and doesn’t sound like a right to privacy.

The part that gets me the most is the government’s ability to track you. Then again, it has been able to track your cell phone for years. Maybe, this will just get swept under the carpet, forgotten, and/or never mentioned again. I’m assuming we will hear nothing of this again.

TruXter

Owner and writer of :

iworkwithtech.com and iworkwithpeople.com

Re-Evaluation of Dr.Web

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After years of not touching Dr.Web, I could not remember, in full, why I did not like it. I could not remember why I did not trust it. It has been at least five years since I tried it and someone I see is trusted by quite a few people recommends it. I gave it a go. Well the first download is 14 MB. Quite tiny and happens in a blink — although the file downloaded was actually just a tool to download the actual program. After the download was complete and the install was nearly finished, it asked for a verification key (I did not have one). So the program allowed me to press a button and have a key automatically inserted. Why? Dunno. The scan seemed pretty smooth; I didn’t see the scanner get hung up on anything. The list of files being scanned was pretty steady. Boots and reboots of the system were smooth and there was no delay or hang time from Dr.Web.

I consider any program that you have to find a program from a second party to remove to be malware. If the program does not allow me to see the size of the actual install until after it is finished installing (I had to navigate to the folder it was contained in), I consider it to be deceptive.

Granted, this is a workplace computer. I am not the first employee to use this computer and formatting it is not an option. I did find traces of Limewire once installed on this machine, so you should have a pretty good idea how beat down this machine is because of misuse. Since this program found nothing and ran smoothly, I decided to break out some of the tried and true programs: Ad-Aware, Spybot, and A-Squared. All three found something, and no, it was not all cookies. Ad-Aware found what it labeled as a w32.novarg.a@mm (aka MY DOOM) file. A-Squared found a few hijackers, and Spybot found, like, 60 things.

Now here comes the issue. I decided I do not need this program to start when I start my computer. Since it never found anything, I was not impressed enough that I could leave it on the workplace computer throughout the trial period. I went to un-install Dr.Web, but it wasn’t happening. The un-install actually tries to install the program again. I went through the whole step of seeing if it would say “before we can install you must un-install; would you like to un-install?” Never happened. Full install right over the current.

So I did a Google search on it. The best information I found was sad and scary, all in one. Delete all registry entries and then go back to the directory of install and delete all signs of Dr.Web. I really do not suggest you do that. I mean, it did not damage this machine. I booted fine afterwards with no errors, but if you are new to ‘regedit,’ stay out. It is much safer that way.

After 14 years of doing this online and nine years on local networks (before the Internet), you would think I learned my lesson. Well, I have learned that sometimes you just have to try stuff and be prepared to put things back together. Good thing I do and can.

Here’s an alternative.

TruXter

Owner and writer of :

iworkwithtech.com  and iworkwithpeople.com 

The Odds of GTA IV On PC

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We all want to know ” Will Grand Theft Auto IV come to the computer?”

Let’s look at the odds by looking at the past games that have come out.

Grand Theft Auto and GTA2 came out on PC before they came out on console. GTAIII changed the pattern with it’s release for the Sony Playstation. Grand Theft Auto 3 and the Rockstar and take two families allowed the console gamers to get first crack at the world of Liberty City. The game makers just dropped them into a world of free roam with nothing but their thumbs mashing the controls, doing things that people used to do with all ten fingers. Right away, issues became noticed. The problems where stuff like the A.I. would lose control or just get stuck on simple obstacles they could have just walked around. Users also noticed what is called “pop-ins.” A ‘pop-in’ is when you are moving through this world, then suddenly a bush or a bridge just appears from nowhere, “bam, now it’s just right there” and it was not there a second ago. So Rockstar games amazed everyone with the announcement of GTAIII for the PC. The PC version had a better draw distance and I.A. was tweaked. The question is, did they make a PC version just to shut people up and make more sells?

Grand Theft Auto Vice city came out for the PS2 before it came out for the computer game players. There wasn’t any announcement of a PC version until two months before it’s release. Again, the game was tweaked and looked better on the PC. In my opinion, Vice City was a duller game than GTAIII since Rockstar stripped so much out of the GTAIII engine that it removed most of the ambiance. The items removed where all atmosphere and did bog down consoles and video cards. Nowadays, computers and consoles are finally strong enough to handle that much stress. Again, I ask “Did they make the PC version just to sell more of the same game, even to repeated customers?”

San Andreas, they never even told us it would come out for the computer. While working on San Andreas to be released for the computer (nearly a year after the console version), Rockstar games was also working on Liberty City Stories.

Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories where first announced to be created exclusively for a portable gaming console called “playstation portable,” aka PSP. Six months after both were released, news was announced both would be released for the Playstation2. Neither one have yet to be released for the PC.

So far, there is no announcement of a Grand Theft Auto IV coming out for the personal computer. This next game is now set back to be released on April 29th of this year. If things would have been on schedule (agreements with console makers, etc.), the once again revisit to Liberty City would have been on time, and we would have already heard the news about a computer version. Since the console version was delayed, could it be that the PC version’s news was also delayed, or pushed to be released one year from the original release date of the console version?

Since we have not received a PC version of Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, nor any news of GTAIV on anything but Xbox360 and Playstation3, I can only expect that Rockstar games would much rather put the “Stories” games and San Andreas out for the Wii console. Long before we will ever see a PC version of any, especially the newest.

TruXter

Owner and writer of :

iworkwithtech.com and iworkwithpeople.com

E.A. puts in bid to buy out Take Two Interactive

Posted onAuthorTruXter

The owners of the Rockstar franchise and game, Grand Theft Auto have been offered a multi-billion dollar offer from E.A. to buy them.

So again, we see a similar but smaller, attempted, hostile take over. The same as we saw in the attempt of Yahoo purchase from Microsoft.

Take Two said “No, We are worth more.”

Notes

TruXter

Owner and writer of :

iworkwithtech.com  and iworkwithpeople.com 

What to do when infected with spyware/adware

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[tags]adaware, adware, asquared, computer, hijacker, hijackthis, hosts, infected, infection, log, maliciouse program, malware, popup, redirect, scanner, spybot search and destroy, spyware, trojan, virus[/tags]

We all have had infestations, pop ups that never go away, something that changes your home page, or something that redirects the site you type to a totally different site. Even worse than all that, when there is a combination of those problems.

Well, I have some good news and some help for you.

Next time, you might want to consider this stuff first before you even go anywhere on the internet.

For starters, I would begin stopping most malware from even connecting to the net from your computer, this step stops your computer from ever going to the sites where malware is created, uploaded, and/or updated. Fix your “hosts” file by going to MVP’s site and reading up on the subject. I actually just scroll down like 20 lines and he has a zipped file with 5 or so items in it. Extract the contents to the desktop, double click the batch file, and in a blink, I am Protected from tons of malware servers. http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

Please read mvps site to get a full understanding and to be on the same page as me. Yes the hosts project started out as a way to block banner ads, but it was later found that you can do much more. PLEASE READ THE MVPS SITE.

Before installation of new “hosts” file, I head to my existing “hosts” file and open it with Notepad to see if there are any changes made to it that are located here “C:WINDOWSsystem32driversetc”

There is a line that should say “127.0.0.1 localhost” which means local host is YOU. If it says anything other than 127.0.0.1, then your machine has been routed to someone else’s server and everything you do and type is being passed through them first. They filter through it and crack what they want. If you have anything different there, please post it here as a comment so I, and others, can help take care of someone like this.

Next, let’s go scan your machine. If you can, install this, “http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/download/” and install a-squared Free 3.1

Run that program and remove anything and everything it finds. Let the scan finish before you start the next step. If both scanners try to remove the same files, it could cause problems.

Next, go get Spybot-Search and Destroy, you will find it here “http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html” spybot – Search & Destroy 1.5.2

Now, go get Ad-Aware “http://www.lavasoftusa.com/single/trialpay.php”

Run Ad-Aware after Spybot. The same rules apply.

If your issue persists, HJT that stands for “hijack this” found here “http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/programs.php”

You can join their forums “http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/forums.php” and get help from people who spend all day, every day just helping people decipher what HJT finds in it’s logs. They all will tell you what to keep and what to kill. They are an excellent group.

In most cases, you would have prevented this from ever happening if you would have started with MVP’s “hosts” file. That is a very good practice. Also, it would be wise prevention to not install anything and everything you find on the internet. First thing you must always do when you download anything is scan it with as many virus scanners as possible. I use Jotti’s site for the online single file scanner. It scans with like 20 different virus scanners at one time and shows you a real time results area at the bottom of the page. If you watch the scan result, you can see what scanners are worth a darn and what scanners are worth being cup holder….. AVG is garbage.. See for yourself. “http://virusscan.jotti.org/”

If anyone has protection tips of the malware kind, drop a note here ..

Good free firewall to prevent this kind of thing:

Sygate firewall:

http://smb.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm

Trojan killers:

http://swatit.org/download.html

Trojan Hunter trial version:

http://www.misec.net/

Do this immediately:

Disabling system restore in Win Xp
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2001012513122239?Open&src=sec_doc_nam&docid=2001111912274039&nsf=tsgeninfo.nsf&view=docid&dtype=∏=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl

More Xp resource:

XP resource info:

www.blackviper.com

http://grc.com/dos/xpsummary.htm

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp
If you do not have SpyBot and Adaware, do this:

Spybot:

Download and Read the SpyBot tutorial here:

http://s89223352.onlinehome.us/mirror/spybot/index1.php

Download it, Unzip the program, and immediately check for updates, install the updates and then do the scan.

Let it fix everything marked in red. Reboot but not with restart, shut it down for two full minutes. You�ve got two measely minutes and it�s worth it, and let Spybot run if it indicates.

To add an item to your �Ignore List� click on the little �+� sign next to the item and left click it to highlight it, then right click it and a menu appears, select the function you want.

When you are done reboot again same way. Two full minutes shut sown is best.

Tea Time discussed by designer here:

http://forums.net-integration.net/index.php?showtopic=13433

Also, go to the update page. Notice 3 icons across the top. Between “Search For Updates” and “Download Updates” there is an icon for the download mirror location. After you click on �search for updates,� the one in the middle will change. If it doesn’t say “Spybot.US by Rootboxen.net USA” click on the dropbox arrows and click on Rootboxen, and use only that one. If you got a “checksum error” trying to download –that’s why.

Ad-Aware:

Download AdAware from http://www.lavasoft.de/

check for updates at “webupdate”.

I use these settings (green check)

From main window click “Start” then make sure ” Activate in-depth scan” has a green check next to it.

Put a black dot nest to “Use custom scanning options� and click Customize” next to it, then green check these options:
“Scan within archives” ,”Scan active processes”, “Scan registry”,
“Deep scan registry” ,”Scan my IE Favorites for banned URL”
“Scan my host-files”

At the top of the �STATUS� page notice the Tweak (gear) icon. Click on it.

The first setting is �Scanning Engine.� Click on the little plus sign next to it, and in the drop-down green check “Unload recognized processes during scanning”, and �include basic Ad-Aware settings in log file�. Next click on the �+� next to “Cleaning Engine” and in the drop-down green check “Let windows remove files in use at next reboot” and Delete quarantine objects after restoring�

Click “proceed”, that will save those settings.

Click “Scan”

When the scan finishes, mark everything for removal and delete it. Right-click the window and choose “select all” from the drop down menu, press �next� and then �yes� to the prompt: �remove all these entries�.

However, if you have certain programs running that will give a false indicator of a browser hijack attempt, such as Script Sentry, which places a monitoring function in the registry and looks like a browser hijacker but is not, then you may want to add that to the ignore list because you want to keep it there to do it�s job. To add an item to the ignore list, put the a cursor on the file it reveals and left click it to highlight it, then right click it and a menu appears. Click on �ignore list.�

Shut down, two minute shut down is best, and let Adaware run on reboot if it indicates.
When you are done all that, go into Safe Mode and run Adaware, SpyBot, and Av. Then go to ‘search files and folders’ and search for the file name of the trojan and delete it in Safe Mode. If you are clean there, that’s about it. Re-enable your system restore.

I also use these:

Spyware Blaster

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

MRU Blaster

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/mrublaster.html

and Script Sentry.

Run Adaware, SpyBot and your AV in normal mode. Clean? good. Go here:

Jason�s Browser Security Test:

http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/BrowserSecurity/

Gibson tests:

http://www.grc.com/default.htm

I use LeakTest, DCOMbobulator, ShieldUp, and plugnpray.

Love for the tech community.

Social networks and the people within

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Ok, I have been on digg since it came out.

I kinda enjoyed it, but it always left an empty feeling.

I really think that type of social networking is very unsocial.

I mean, you really can’t interact with other people. Now, I just go there to help rate my friends and stuff they produce. I truly believe that the ability to argue opinions is how people actually communicate and create group minds that solve issues. If I can’t tell someone how they are screwing up, then I’m not talking to them, and vice versa. I want to know where and how I messed up.

So, I am at that type of place to give a big “how do” to my buds and their work, but I go to lockergnome and to live.pirillo.com to really talk and hear other opinions.

where do you go?

TruXter

Owner and writer of :

iworkwithtech.com and iworkwithpeople.com

Have You Seen jPod?

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Have you seen jPod yet?

It’s yet, another very good Canadian comedy from our beloved favorite director Mike Clattenburg, the guy known for the viral indy series Trailer Park Boys, based on the Douglas Coupland novel of the same name. No, it does not have Robb Wells or John Paul Tremblay. It is not in any way a remake of the Internet hit that we all know and love.

It is on the other hand something that stands a chance of being one. See, there was a glitch with the Y2k bug that threw a handful of game designers at E.A. into a basement area of their game development building. It’s okay, though. This crew of three guys, two girls and their obsessive leader boss are pretty much the biggest cut-ups in the company.

The new boss comes in and decides to overhaul the game that the jPod crew has been working on for some time and turning it into a few things it should never have been. The new boss has no frickin’ taste whatsoever. It’s a blood and guts game, but Steve, the new boss, wants turtles and role model women incorporated into the game. Not against women, just you can not make that big of a change that far into developement.

One guy is a hacker kid.

One guy has screwed up parents. His mother wants him to bury a body and hide the remnants of an illegal plant she has growing back home. I think his dad used to be “Mr. Seaver” from Growing Pains. His wife thinks he is gay and losing his mind.

One girl is an ex-fatty turned hotty with low self-esteem.

One is a hot Asian female with a strong attitude and a mean dad.

And then there is “Cowboy,” the resident Gigolo. He is cool.

TruXter

Owner and writer of :
iworkwithtech.com and iworkwithpeople.com

Job Expands

Posted onAuthorTruXter

New locations coming to our fire alarm company, pretty good stuff.

Our Main office will stay the same same in Houston

We have purchased the property for our new locations and have construction on the way.

Our austin Facility is up and running. This is a great year.

I may even transfer to our San Antonio location as soon as it has ac .. lol Texas is fricken hot. anything to get out of Comcast’s capitolism.

I like to think we are better than all Texas fire alarm companies . I am sure we are the better fire alarm and detection company in Houston .

We are upgrading hundreds of fire alarm control panels (facp) from the 7100. it seems people want the new stuff. Really i am just the bew guy and all so I have no idea why they want the new one that sounds an alarm just the same as the current one that sounds the same alarm. I am sure it’s the ease of use in the new ones that allow the ‘actual owner’ a chance to understand what to do and how to do things, in certain situations. The E3 Facp is the “broad band” panel, The new. Maybe I’m old fashioned and like the old everything, Vintage means ” all bugs have been noted” and you can actually get help from past users< but this planet seems to be full of wealthier people than who are out for the E3 type things in life. Maybe it’s the security of knowing that you have the latest when your establishment is built and it should be good for a while that sales them to go that route. I myself will buy it used and and hack what I can into it’s firmware and make stuff better for me. But that is me. I guess that is me and why i am in the office doing cad instead of out in the field programming the panels. lol.

I mean it’s not like everyone in the world wants to have cool specialized interface that comes at the price of having to reboot every time you do something or what ever expense that modded software usually causes you to have to endure.

it sure would upset a fire marshal if every time he inspects my panel he sees his name on the display. lol

The Breath of Blu-ray

Posted onAuthorTruXter1 Comment

 [tags]blu-ray, blue ray, definition, detail, flat screen, hidef, high, high def, investment, lcd, liquid crystal, online investment, plasma, progressive, Resolution, share holder, sony, stock, stock market, xbox[/tags]

Looks as if Sony has taken its deep breath and sucked the last stitch of life out of HD platform disks and media. This makes HD players a soon forgotten, obsolete, useless media, much like what happened to Sony years ago with the beta max.

The Death Blow.

NetFlix went exclusively Blu-ray. Anyone with pre-ordered HD NetFlix will be getting regular dvd’s. Best Buy will exclusively recommend Blu-ray. (Thanks, Andrew McCaskey from Slash Dot Review). If you want more detail on this listen to the episode of 2/11/08

My question is, “If you people see this like I do, then why have you not invested in Sony as I have?” I mean, you guys do realize that Blu-ray is Sony.. Right? Now, is the time to move as much of your stocks over to Sony, because the Goliath of a machine they have for a gaming platform (that is the most convenient form of Blu-ray player). As of right now, it is the one gaming console with the least amount of games. There is just three months before it explodes, ending its typical first quarter with a mess load of games. This, of course, will bring even more people into purchasing Sony’s games & company stock.

Now that huge, high definition televisions are holding down the carpet in your house is about to become a greater resource as the video standards start sliding towards Blu-ray’s quality. Your 52″ HDTV with it’s 1080p resolution is about to become typical and common place, but you do not get there without selling a few million first.

The moment you know it’s way to late, is when Microsoft announces “Yeah, we are releasing a Blu-ray drive for the XBOX 360.”

You do have to realize that every kid is going to want to drop their current console because they want be ‘like the rich kid’ and get the more expensive one. Kids are that way, ‘the rich kid’ always gets the stuff no one can afford and brags to everyone how cool it is. Then when everyone has it, he drops it and gets something more expensive. Well, there is no console more expensive than the Sony Blu-ray. The rich kid and poor kid will soon have the same thing and they can actually play the same game online. Although, online games are free with Sony and you have to pay monthly fees for XBOX Live. Maybe, if the timing is just right, Microsoft will release the 360 Blu-ray with 300 gig hard disk and a more expensive version of XBOX Live to give the rich kids something to run to when all the other kids convert. Of course, that means Microsoft will have to pay Sony for rights to use the Blu-ray format. :-) Do you get what I am saying here?

Watch the dang stock!

Blu-Ray Umd For a Blu-Ray PSP ? Rumor?

Where did that start?

[tags]high def, definition, HDTV, high, Resolution, lcd, plasma, xbox, sony, blue ray, blu-ray, liquid crystal, flat screen, progressive, hidef, detail[/tags]