The blog

Anti-spyware software sucks

Mike at Techdirt has a perceptive rant on the current state of anti-spyware software:

As spyware becomes a bigger and bigger issue for users, it’s
becoming clear that the current crop of anti-spyware tools is, in no
way, keeping up with the spyware writers. A test of a variety of
different anti-spyware tools shows that none of them work particularly well,
and most do an awful job protecting your computer. In fact, it appears
that some of the fee-based anti-spyware tools do even worse than the
free ones. Still, even the best tool missed quite a bit. Considering
the amount of spyware out there, and the overwhelming nuisance it
causes, it’s about time someone tried to take a much more holistic
approach to stopping spyware, rather than simply trying to solve each
case on a one-by-one basis.

He’s absolutely right.

Problem #1: No one seems to quite agree on what spyware is. Some zealots insist that cookies are spyware. Others want to label as “spyware” programs that I think are completely legitimate and desirable.

Problem #2: Makers of anti-spyware software have a vested interest in making you believe the problem is bad and getting worse. So when you scan your system, you’re certain to find something, thus fulfilling their prophecy.

Problem #3: The people who make hostile software go to great lengths to make it hard to detect and remove, raising the ante dramatically for anyone who wants to fight it.

I’ll have more thoughts in a follow-up post.

Free replacement of counterfeit Windows

In the UK, Microsoft has launched a fascinating new program under the Genuine Product Verification label. If you purchased a computer that was pre-loaded with a counterfeit copy of Windows, you can send them the CD and a statement showing where you purchased the computer. Here’s what happens next:

If your copy of the Windows XP Home or Professional Operating System is genuine we will return it to you along with the documentation you submitted. If your copy of the Windows XP Home or Professional Operating System is not genuine we will retain it along with the documentation you submitted. If we retain your submission, we will replace your software with a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows XP Home or Professional Edition (as appropriate).

The goal, of course, is to gather evidence against counterfeiters without punishing their victims, who no doubt bought the computer in the good faith belief that the software on it was legal. I wonder if a similar program will be available in the USA anytime soon?

Best computer books of 2004? Not!

I was so excited to read that Amazon.com had selected their Best Computer Books of 2004. Surely Ed Bott’s Your New PC or Windows XP Inside Out, Second Edition or even the massive Windows XP Inside Out Deluxe, Second Edition would be on the list!

Fat chance. I don’t know who was in charge of assembling this collection, but I sure would like him to pass along whatever he was smoking.

The list gets off to a promising start with Excel Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools. Lots of people use Excel, and this “small, fact-dense book” is probably going to be very useful. I might even learn something from it.

But then the selection just heads off into the woods.

How many people do you know who are planning to take the Sun Certified Web Component Developer 1.4 exam and need to learn more about Head First Servlets with JSP? Is the American public really just dying to learn about the “extract, transform, and load (ETL) phase of the data warehouse development life cycle”? Is a strategy guide on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Edition really a computer book? Were 30% of the best computer books of the year really all about the nuts and bolts of using advanced workstations to create big-budget Hollywood movies?

And while The World’s 20 Greatest Unsolved Problems sounds like a fascinating read, it is billed as a look at “current debates in astronomy and cosmology, physics and astrophysics, biology and paleontology, neuroscience, geology, chemistry, and energy.” So why is it on a “Best Computer Books” list?

Nothing on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Nothing on Linux or Mac OS X or cascading style sheets or PHP or Adobe Photoshop or computer security or digital music or photography. You know, topics that lots of people might actually be interested in.

From all of us computer book authors, thanks for the support, Amazon. (Not.)

Outlook Express Expertise

Tom Koch has forgotten more things about Outlook Express than most Windows experts ever learned. When I have to deal with an Outlook Express issue, I always turn to his superb Inside Outlook Express site first. So I was particularly excited to see a new article from Tom on Microsoft’s Expert Zone this week. The Other E-Mail Threat: File Corruption in Outlook Express does not disappoint.

It is a rare day on the Internet that we do not see some scary warning about the latest e-mail threat from viruses, worms, and Trojan Horses. But there is another e-mail threat that can be just as damaging as a virus and yet is rarely discussed in computer media. That threat is file corruption, a somewhat nerdy term for damage to a file that prevents a computer program from being able to use it. For Outlook Express users, file corruption can often mean the disappearance of entire folders of saved e-mail. In this article we’ll look at the common causes of corruption, how to avoid it, and how to recover messages if it occurs.

Well written and full of good advice. Excellent reading!

Memo to Dell CEO Kevin Rollins

Update September 2006: If you’re having a problem with a Dell product and haven’t been able to get satisfactory service, Dell has established a special group to help you. See my follow-up post, Dell rolls out Cluefulness 2.0, for more details. Comments are closed here.

CNET News interviewed Dell CEO Kevin Rollins:

How’s Dell doing on customer service these days?

Customer service has been a challenge, but I think if you watch the scores now, we have hit the trough, and that’s now coming back up. The whole company is focused on the customer experience, first and foremost. So we think we’ve got that one now under control.

Memo to Kevin: No, your customer service problems are not under control. Not even close. Do you have anyone at your company reading blogs like this one? I didn’t think so.

Comparing HD-DVR interfaces

Lost Remote has some screenshots of the new Microsoft TV software found on Comcast boxes in Seattle. (Elsewhere? who knows…)

story_mstv3.jpg

My cable company, Cox, is using a competing software design called SARA, designed by Scientific Atlanta. You can see it at PVR Comparisons. Confusingly, their review is filed under the Comcast DVR heading and the screen shots are on a separate page.

story_mstv3.jpg

I like the look of the Microsoft software a lot more, but without trying it I can’t tell whether it’s really more usable. For most people, the question is academic anyway, as you’re stuck with whatever box your cable company decides to go with.

Oh, and one of the first things I did was to ditch the hideous purple and pale yellow color scheme on the Scientific Atlanta box. Yeccch.

Thanks to Thomas Hawk for the pointers.

Malware/spyware at a glance

Over at Ars Technica, Adam Baratz and Charles McLaughlin have produced an interesting article entitled Malware: what it is and how to prevent it:

You can get infected by malware in several ways. Malware often comes bundled with other programs (Kazaa, iMesh, and other file sharing programs seem to be the biggest bundlers). These malware programs usually pop-up ads, sending revenue from the ads to the program’s authors. Others are installed from websites, pretending to be software needed to view the website. Still others, most notably some of the CoolWebSearch variants, install themselves through holes in Internet Explorer like a virus would, requiring you to do nothing but visit the wrong web page to get infected.

The vast majority, however, must be installed by the user. Unfortunately, getting infected with malware is usually much easier than getting rid of it, and once you get malware on your computer it tends to multiply.

If you’re a security expert, you won’t find anything particularly insightful in this high-level overview. However, I still recommend it because of the clear explanations and the screen shots that the authors included to illustrate some common adware/spyware programs. If you’re in charge of keeping unwanted software off a home PC or a small business network, this might be a good educational tool.

Part 2 of the series covers Spyware removal tools. Again, no great insights but good descriptions and illustrations of how five popular tools work.

Bye-bye, Tivo

Microsoft evangelist Jeff Sandquist says, “I’ve turned off my Tivo.” Me too.

Last Friday morning, I found out that Cox Cable here in Phoenix now offers high-definition digital video recorders. By Friday afternoon, I had one in my hands, and by Friday evening I was merrily recording HD content.

Cox uses a Scientific Atlanta 8300, which is unlike the Comcast boxes Jeff Sandquist uses in Seattle (my friend Michael in LA is going to get one of those models today). So far, I like it a lot, especially the two-tuner capability so I don’t have to choose between “Lost” and “The West Wing.” Observations:

  • The recording capacity is much less than my old TiVo, which I had upgraded to a capacity of 180 hours or so. Fortunately, this box has a SATA connector in the back that supposedly allows me to connect an external drive to immediately bump up storage capacity. A 200GB SATA drive with external enclosure should be here by the end of the week.
  • Picture quality is superb, although I noticed last night some visual artifacts and audio dropout. Only a minor annoyance, but still…
  • TiVo has better series recording options, including the ability to specify first-run shows only (no reruns) and automatic conflict resolution.
  • My video distribution system still works. In fact, I can stream the recorded high-definition signals to a TV in the other room and the picture is impressively sharp and clear, and it appears in the HD letterbox format.
  • After four years, it’s nice to finally be able to see real high-definition content on my high-definition TV!
  • I’ve officially crossed into remote control overload. The Cox remote for the HD-DVR doesn’t recognize my Pioneer receiver, so I can’t use the DVR’s remote to control the system volume, and my MX-500 Universal Remote Control doesn’t have a preprogrammed code for the Cox remote. So I’ll have to get out the manual and “train” the Universal remote this week.

For now, I have the TiVo box hooked up to basic cable, and it’s still merrily recording away. We’ll see how much use it gets in the next few weeks. My guess is you’ll see it on Ebay before too long.

I also set up Windows Media Center 2005 over the weekend. Although it doesn’t do HD, it’s still very, very impressive, much more so than I expected. I’ll have lots more to write about it later.

RAID 1 Q&A

Yesterday I offered Prof. Michael Froomkin my services as a Windows adviser. Today, he takes me up on the offer with this question:

I’m never one to pass up the chance of free advice from a real expert. So, Ed, here’s a question that’s bugging me:

My home computer runs WinXP, with RAID 1 provided via the ASUS motherboard [for the non-techies, RAID 1 is when your hard disk is mirrored by another identical hard disk]. The machine came from the suppliers with XP on one huge partition, and I’d like to repartition my hard drive(s) into several smaller
partitions — not necessarily all for Windows — without losing any data.

I had thought to use partition magic to do the job, but apparently Partition Magic 8.x doesn’t’ support RAID 1.

Can it be done? How about if I

  1. 1. Turn off RAID mirroring.</li
  2. Use Partition Magic or something else like it.
  3. Start RAID mirroring from scratch (will it catch all the partitions? will it faithfully copy all the changes to each one?).

I did a Google search, and all I know now is that I’m not the only one who wants the answer to this one…

That’s exactly how I would do it. Caveat: I don’t currently have a computer in my lab here with drive mirroring enabled on it, so I can’t physically test these steps. But the procedure is fairly straightforward.

First, note that the article you reference is referring to RAID volumes created using the software tools in Windows NT/2000/XP. It’s possible (but hardly guaranteed) that Partition Magic will recognize your hardware RAID volume. Have you tried?

Hardware RAID solutions work by creating the illusion that your two physical drives are a single unit. The array is managed by the hardware controller. You need software drivers in whatever operating systems you plan to use so that the operating system can work with the RAID array you create. As far as Windows is concerned, you have a single drive; the hardware hides the individual members of the array completely. (The same is true for other operating systems.) After you load the correct driver, you can partition the drives however you want.

The first step, of course, is to make sure you’ve got a really great backup, just in case something goes wrong.

Your hardware controller should allow you to break the RAID mirroring. Doing so should leave the data on the first drive intact. If so, then you’re good to go. Re-partition that disk as you please, using Partition Magic to shrink the main partition and create new ones from free space. Then create a new array. If you’re using a Highpoint controller, choose the Duplication option to copy the data on the source disk to the mirror disk. The hardware RAID controller doesn’t care what’s on the disk; its job is to mirror the content from one disk to the other for reliability’s sake, and it works at a very low level, independent of operating systems. All of your partition information should be intact. When you view it from an operating system that has the correct drivers, it looks like a single disk, which you can manage using whatever partitioning tools you like.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of hardware RAID. I would rather use that second drive as a backup device, using Norton Ghost or a similar disk-imaging program to keep compressed copies of each partition on the main drive. If you have a problem with the original drive, you can restore a backup of one or more saved partitions easily. You don’t have to mess with low-level utilities, and you have more flexibility, including the option to save your backed-up images to another medium (such as writable CDs or DVDs) for offsite storage.