Patrick's Space

I was just browsing through some security-related blogs, and came across this posting on Security Tips & Talk.  They’re talking about the ease in which Governor Palin’s e-mail address was hacked, and how it affects you and me.

Here’s the problem…  Sites are using “information that’s only known to you” questions for their password resets, and in some cases, once you answer the questions they allow you to change the password right then and there.  Sounds like a good thing right?  And an easy thing to remember too, so what’s the problem?

The problem is, you may have blogged or put something up in a website or forum about how your first pet was “Georgie” and you miss him dearly.  Or pictures of “Georgie” are floating on the Internet (complete with his name).  So, when a person is trying to break into your account, they get your secret questions, and then Google (used as the “common” term only—any search engine works wonders) you for the answers.  If you’ve posted anything with that answer, they can find it.

So, what can we do about this?  Well we can’t tell our banks or other places not to use those questions.  We can, but it will take an effort by a lot more than just you and me to get them to look at it.  What we CAN do is this:  Go to every site that we use frequently, and change those answers.  Make a fake name for your first pet, or if there was a nickname that you and your friends had for your school, use that (ONLY if you’ve never posted it online).  Same thing with your first car—use the nickname that you had for it, instead of what type it is.

Another tool that is extremely useful is a Password Manager.  These programs are a one-stop spot for all of your password needs.  All you have to do is remember one password to unlock the vault, and you can get into any site that you’ve stored in the manager.  Some of them will allow you to generate passwords as well.

I’ll look into a few of them and tell you about them tomorrow.

Have a great day:)
Patrick.

Hey again everyone...

Ok, in my last post, I described the backup solutions that I've tried and my opinions of them.  Now, I'm getting into my recent lesson.

The problem:

    Ok, to start, I've had some problems with Vista and updates for a while.  Everyone's had the "failed update" and "repeat update" occasionally, I'm sure.  My first "issue" was with Service Pack 1.  I had to hard reset my computer a few times to get it to actually install.

     A few weeks ago, I tried to install Internet Explorer 8 (Beta).  When I would try to run it, I would get a Data Execution Prevention (DEP) error, and it would crash immediately.  So, I uninstalled it.  From then on, IE7 would give me strange problems.  Like error messages saying that it couldn't open the page (even though it was open) with "Operation Aborted", and when I would type in a page, half of my keystrokes wouldn't show up at all.

    A friend of mine gave me a pre-release copy of the Windows Media Center TV Pack update.  So, I installed that, and ran into issues with it.  I would get fake "Broadcast Flag" messages from TV programs-- regardless of whether I was recording them or not.  So, I called Microsoft and went through the troubleshooting steps with them.

     The first thing we tried was uninstalling the TV Pack.  That wasn't possible, since the update (installation) was corrupted, and it didn't put an uninstall option in.  So, our next step was to do an in-place upgrade (also known as "Repair") of Vista.  That failed, because I have Service Pack 1 installed, and I was using an original Vista RTM DVD.  So, I was told to uninstall SP1, and then do the in-place upgrade.  Then reinstall SP1 and the TV Pack.

The attempted solution:

    When I tried to uninstall Service Pack 1, the computer needed to reboot.  In the process of rebooting, it shut itself down.  Been here before....  Well, no matter what I did, I couldn't get SP1 to uninstall or the computer to boot up. 

     So, here I am thinking "I'm going to lose everything."  I haven't backed up this computer at all..  OK, I used One Care to back it up in 2007, then uninstalled One Care shortly after.  If you've used One Care and tried looking at the backup, it's a series of .zip files that only OneCare knows what's in.  You can find out, but it would take forever to go through them all.

    I grabbed my Image For DOS disk, and made an image of the corrupt drive.  The reasoning behind this is, while the updates and programs are worthless to me, the data and user-settings are still good. 

    Then I proceeded to completely reinstall Windows Vista.  And I updated it until it said there was nothing else.  Strangely enough, I haven't received the Media Center TV Pack update yet, but I'm not too worried about that one.  Then I took my USB drive and made an image of the base system.  Now, I'm installing everything else.

    Image For DOS worked like a charm. The only glitch that I had was this.  I tried to image the base system to an older 20G hard drive-- using a third party enclosure that I bought a while back.  The imaging program claimed that there was no room on the drive (in reality, there was no actual partition).  So, I had to put the image on a different USB drive.  No problem... It validated and everything.

    I copied the base image to the 20G drive, and tried to validate it.... No dice.  It wouldn't complete the validation.  But, it did validate on the other external drive.  Then, I used TerabyteUnlimited's TBIView (their image viewing program) to see if the 20G drive was good.  I was able to open the file, and go through the folders without a problem.  So, I'm guessing that it's a good image.  (TerabyteUnlimited makes Image For DOS.)

    What I've learned from this is three things. 

1. Make sure you back up regularly and have contingency plans set up for your data (normally I store everything on external or network drives, so an Operating System reinstall doesn't affect my files).
2. When you first install an OS (or reinstall one), make a base image of the installation and all current updates.  That way, if you have to restore your image, you don't have as many updates to get.  Do this before you install your Antivirus and Firewall programs, just in case you decided later on that you don't like the ones you originally started with.
3. Validate your backups.  If it means doing a restore, then that's what you have to do.  Most third party programs (Acronis, Image For DOS, etc) will have ways to validate the backups without a restore.  The good ones do for sure. 

Hopefully this set of posts inspires people to backup regularly.  I can tell you that I'm cleaning out my laptop, and am going to make an updated image of it.  Then, I'm going to start imaging it on a weekly basis.  The same with my desktops and their data.  In the end, it doesn't matter who's program you use.  Just as long as you use them, and test them.  And if you make any MAJOR changes, then redo your backups-- although you should be redoing them regularly. 

Have a great weekend everyone:)

Patrick.

Hey everyone,

    I know everyone's heard over and over again that you should back up your data and programs once in a while.  But, you're thinking "Who has time to do that?" or "Why should I do that?"  Well, I found out last weekend first-hand, why it's a good idea to keep backups of everything.

A little background:

     I have two computers and a laptop running most of the time.  My main computer is running Windows Vista Ultimate, my second computer is running Ubuntu Linux, and my laptop is running XP Media Center (I haven't upgraded it to Vista). 

My backup strategy (or lack of):

     I've tried various backup strategies including Vista's Complete PC Backup, Acronis True Image trials and betas, and Image For DOS. 

     Vista's Complete PC Backup was a failure when I tried it.  Now, I have to admit that I tried it during the beta, and haven't touched it since then.  But, when it didn't restore a base system, I wasn't impressed.  Also, I backed the image up to DVD's, so that may have been a factor.  My biggest gripe with Vista's backup is that the only way to "validate" your backup is to restore it.

     Acronis is nice.  I've used it for my desktops in the past with great success. I've even restored an image with it.  However, for some reason it totally locks up my laptop.  I can run it in safe-mode, however I'm limited in my options there.  The "Full version" locks up.  So, I can't recommend it for laptop users-- although my situation could be a one in a million occurrence.  I need to note also, that my laptop is a Toshiba Satellite from Wal-Mart, so that may be a factor as well.

     Image For DOS is the one that I'm currently using.  It's $29.95 for the full version, and you also get a copy of Image For Linux.  Does it work?  Yes.  I was able to back  up all of my PC's to external hard drives.  And the nice thing is that I can validate the backups simply by booting to their CD/floppy, and selecting the Validate option.  I had one minor glitch with this that I'll mention in my later post-- but it was more a hardware than software glitch.

More to come...

Have a great weekend:)
Patrick.

Hey everyone,

    This post is a bit late in coming, but still applies.  Occasionally I still get questions from friends (and others) about the differences in Internet speeds, and about the 32-bit/64-bit processors.  So, I thought I'd post my analogies about them here. 

     They are intended to oversimplify the concepts, so I don't touch on technical aspects too much.  Feel free to comment on them, and help me improve on them.

Internet Speeds:

    Ok, the two main questions that I get here are what is the difference between dial-up and broadband?  and what are the differences between satellite, cable, and DSL?

The analogy that I use here is if you look at an hourglass.  If the hourglass has a tiny hole, then it takes a while for the sand to fall through. But, if the hourglass has a bigger hole, then the same grains of sand will fall quicker.  Dial-up is a tiny hole, and each of the "broadband" speeds are bigger holes.  So, the bigger the hole, (Internet Speed) the faster the sand (your downloads, games, web pages, etc) will flow through it.

As for Cable/DSL/Satellite, my analogy is this.  For cable and DSL, I use the concept of an Interstate with exit ramps.  If you're on cable, then there's an exit ramp, and you are among a group of people and businesses on the road from that exit.  If you're the first in line, then you get the most traffic.  As you move further back in line, you get less traffic.

DSL is the same Interstate, except that you are the only person on your exit.  So, you always get the most possible traffic.

How this translates to your connection is, if you're further back on the cable line, you get less "bandwidth" (see speed above) than your neighbors.  It's not like they'll be on broadband and you'll be on dial-up, but for extremely bandwidth intensive things (giant downloads or online gaming) you'll be a bit slower.  On DSL, within reason, you get the bandwidth that you're supposed to.

32-bit vs. 64-bit Processing.

    To describe this, I use the Interstate analogy again with a twist.  I tell people to imagine an interstate with 4 lanes on each side, and one with 8 lanes on each side.  Then I tell them if you put the same amount of traffic on both of them, which would go faster?

    As for the fact that 64-bit programs don't work on 32-bit processors and that you have to do special things to make 32-bit programs work on 64-bit processors (with a 64-bit OS), I basically say that the 64-bit programs/OS need more lanes than the 32-bit ones.  For the reason why you have to install something (WOW, for example) to allow 64-bit OS's to use 32-bit programs, I just say that the new OS isn't normally designed to run the older programs, so you have to give it some help.

Hopefully these analogies help someone understand the differences.  And as I mentioned before, please comment and help me to improve on them.  If you have your own analogies or explanations, I want to hear them.  Maybe, I'll use them as well (and put them into another blog post).

Have a great weekend everyone:)
Patrick.

Well, I've found something with the University of Phoenix that I'm not too happy about as far as Chrome goes.  I noticed this the last few days, but didn't think much of it.. Until tonight.  When I post in the forums and download them into a newsreader, Chrome's rendering of HTML is horrible.  In fact, the newsreader that I'm using (Windows Mail) shows the actual html tags in place of their formats.

Now, someone is thinking "That's because you're using Windows Mail (or OE)."  Here's the thing though.  Posts written in Firefox and Internet Explorer come through fine.  And my instructor asked me to fix my HTML problem, because it's clogging the school's servers. 

So, in as much as I love using Chrome there, it's out of the question until they fix that issue...

Now, as for what Google hypes about Chrome.  No, it's not totally perfect as far as security goes.  Within hours of their release, four vulnerabilities were discovered.  All four of them would have allowed someone to execute code on a user's system.  And at least two of them didn't require active user intervention (one automatically downloaded files to the desktop, and one activated if you hovered over a link).

So, what's different between Chrome and Internet Explorer or Firefox?  Chrome has been out a week, and all four of those vulnerabilities are fixed (pending testing by researchers).  The new version was distributed via automatic updates.

How about the crash-proofing?  Well, it's not perfect.  I've had a couple of crashes where Windows just popped up the Problem And Reporting dialog box.  As for "one tab crashing and not taking the whole browser down" I've seen it in action. 

I opened up my myspace account, and had another tab open.  Myspace locked up, but I was able to go into the other tab without any problems.  This afternoon, the Adobe Acrobat Plugin crashed in one tab.  I clicked "Ok" on the box, and the tab went blank.  But, the other tabs were working fine.  I simply closed the pdf file tab, and went on with my day.

So, while certain sites won't work with Chrome (Sharebuilder is one that I know of off-hand), and it doesn't play very nice with my college site, I have to give Chrome two thumbs up.  It won't be my default browser until I can safely use it in my college, but it's good enough that I'll manually choose it over anything else.

Until next time, have a great night everyone.

Patrick.

Hi everyone,

    Last week, Google decided to enter the browser wars with their "Chrome" browser.  Two of it's biggest claims are the "Sandbox" feature (which improves security) and it's ability to not crash if one tab crashes or becomes unresponsive.   Within a couple of days, I downloaded it and took it for a test run...

   The first thing I wanted to test out was whether or not it would work at the University Of Phoenix's online campus.  Currently they only recommend Internet Explorer and Firefox (although other browsers may work there).  I logged in, and proceeded to go to my class.

    What I like about using Chrome at UoP.  In Internet Explorer and Firefox, when you click the "Go to Class" button, it opens a new window.  Chrome opened it in a new tab.  In fact, about the only things that didn't open in a new tab were my grade summary and new message compositions.  It worked smoothly, and was faster than IE or Firefox. 

     I didn't risk taking my "Math assessment" through Chrome, although I'm tempted to go back now and try it.  The only thing I can think of off-hand that I didn't like was that when you download a file, it prompts you to save it (regardless of whether you choose the "View" or "Download" option.  And you have to single click to open the file in the download bar (double-clicking opens two copies).  But in reality, those are minor issues that they don't need to mess with.

Well, that's enough for this post.  I'll do part two in a little while, after I go play around with Chrome some more.

Have a great day everyone :)

Patrick.

Hey everyone,

     Just a short note to ask people to check out my web sites and my other official blog.  If you see anything that you want me to cover on them, let me know by dropping me an e-mail or a comment.  I'm looking for any ideas and motivation to keep them updated, since I think I'm about the only one who's actively checking them.

The links are http://patscomputersolutions.com   http://pats-computer-solutions.no-ip.biz http://patscomputerservices.com and my blog at http://patscompservices.blogspot.com.

The computerservices.com site is on Office Live and is done in ASP format.  The no-ip.biz site is my home server, and is what I'm moving my other web site too.  The patscomputersolutions.com site is my freewebs site, and is a combination of the older template and the newer one. 

Please let me know which template you like more of the three.  If I can, I'll try to make all three look the same (although I can't change the template for the Office Live space, so it may look different anyhow).

Have a great day everyone:)
Patrick.