Technology Bytes

Allright. I’m back in full swing, with all the appropriate keyboard mappings in place. Last week’s blunder was actually a brilliant segue into what has become known as the Collins Incident in several college communications classes.

When Waco’s K X X V’s regular TV sportscaster became ill, college freshman Brian Collins agreed to step in. All you have to do is read the lines, right? Not too tough… Unless you happen to have been working with an inexperienced teleprompter operator who accidentally fast-forwarded through each of the scripts, leaving Collins with only a few occasional words to use. The video can be found on YouTube, and is fairly painful to watch. When you *do* get to that magical meme, Boom Goes the Dynamite, you will have suffered sufficiently to knowingly command the phrase yourself. Don’t cheat. Feel the pain. It’s the kind of awkward pain that probably made The Office such a hit…

Now that the president has delivered a teleprompter-error-free State of the Union Address and Jobs, who also achieved elocutionary excellence, has dropped the iPad on the nation, it’s time for our own local State of the Mac address to be given by Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus at the general meeting of the Houston Area Apple Users Group next Saturday, February 20th. That gives you a full week & a half to make peace with whatever feelings you may have about the Apple iPad before Dr. Mac puts his finger in the wound once again.

I’m not letting my own personal feelings show, am I?

A number of Special Interest Group meetings take place between nine and two, with the main presentation kicking off at eleven. 7008 South Rice Avenue at the Bellaire Civic Center is where you want to be to hear what Dr. Mac has to say about everything Apple. Hit www.haaug.org for details and directions to February’s general meeting and to catch up on the group’s activities.

And if you find yourself on the PC side of the fence… Amend that. If you find yourself on the *North Side* of the PC fence, then you may want to check out the 1960 PC Users Group. That’s Farm to Market 1960, not a group of people still stuck on the Intel 4004 processor. They’re a support group of volunteers from the Spring, Tomball and Northwest Houston areas of Texas with an interest in personal computers and their usage.

And as luck would have it, their Investors Special Interest Group is meeting tomorrow night, Thursday February 11th, from seven to nine PM. This month’s special topics include Preferred Dividend Stocks and Exchange Traded Funds. There will be an open discussion during the meeting, at which point you could pose questions about modifying your investment strategy to siphon off a few dollars every month for KPFT.

I’m guessing that they would probably tell you that you’d be hard pressed to find a return similar to the one you would realize by investing in KPFT at any one of our various membership levels. Now, I haven’t looked at a prospectus in ages, but I’m pretty sure none of the Fortune 500s are offering coffee cups and t-shirts along with welcome letters. You’ll also get better voting rights with KPFT. One share out of 906 million won’t sway any elections at Apple, but a single membership in KPFT has the same voting weight as our very own Jay Lee’s membership.

Once you’ve devised your new investment strategy, you may wish to display it graphically. A personal investment pie chart, with a big slice for KPFT may be the way to go, but you’ll want to spruce it up a bit with some text overlays. If that’s the case, then next Thursday’s Graphics SIG may be for you. In addition to following up on some questions as to ‘how best to overlay text onto a photo’, the group will be discussing some non-photographic uses of graphics editors, as well as taking a quick look at the photo organizing program, Picassa.

Both of these meetings take place at the Cypress Creek Christian Community Center, located at 6823 Cypresswood Drive in Spring, Texas. The group’s website is www.1960pcug.org, where you can find a full calendar of the group’s monthly SIG meetings.

And finally, if you’re not on either side of the PC vs Mac fence, but are instead frustrated by the lack of a third option, then the Houston Linux Users Group, aka the HAL-PC Linux SIG, is where you will find like-minded individuals and a quality presentation over something Linuxy. The group meets this Saturday from two to four in the afternoon at the HAL-PC Headquarters, located ever so close to MicroCenter at 610 and San Felipe. Hit www.hal-pc.org then surf to their SIG Calendar for further details and directions.

That’s it for forcasting your financial future and that’s that for BarretTime.

While working on a co-worker’s computer that was infected with spyware I was able to remove just about everything using the tools I outline in Jay Lee’s Patented Spyware Removal System save for one persistent troublemaker that was redirecting every Google search through something called Triplexfeed.

Malwarebytes didn’t detect it. Spybot didn’t detect it. Combofix didn’t detect it. I couldn’t even see it as a BHO using HiJackThis. It was simply invisible to me, but each and every Google search popped up a window that clearly showed my Web browsing traffic being redirected.

I did a little research and was able to figure out I had come across a nasty TDL3 rootkit.

From Rootbiez

TDL or TDSS family is a famous trojan variant for its effectiveness and active technical development. It contains two compoments: a kernel-mode rootkit and some user-mode DLLs which performs the trojan operation (downloaders, blocking Avs, etc,.). Since the rootkit acts as an “injector” and protector for the ring3 bot binaries, almost technical evolutions of this threat family focus on rootkit technology so as to evade AV scanners. As in its name, TDL3 is 3rd generation of TDL rootkit, still takes its aims at convering stealthy existences of malicious codes. Beside known features, this threats is exposed with a couple of impressive tricks which help it bypassing personal firewall and staying totally undetected by all AVs and ARKs at the moment.

Thanks to Daejin Media I got tipped to a program called Hitman Pro 3 – Second Opinion Malware Scanner.

Hitman Pro 3 scanned the infected system, detected about 5 things and removed them and had me reboot at which point it scanned again and found two more. After the second re-boot the system was free of the hijack.

It doesn’t install anything on your computer, either. Just a single executable that scans your computer and cleans up the mess. Hitman Pro is FAST, too. I had everything cleaned up in about 10 minutes.

Part of the magic of this program is how it uses a scan cloud to determine if suspicious files are, in fact, dangerous or not.

From the Hitman Pro Web site:

For the files that are classified as suspicious, the Hitman Pro client sends a request to the Scan Cloud for confirmation if these files are indeed malicious. The Scan Cloud is a cluster of multiple computers, residing on the Internet. The Scan Cloud will respond to this request with the answer:

* Safe
* Malicious
* Unknown

When the file is unknown, the Hitman Pro client uploads the file to the Scan Cloud where the file is scanned using the anti virus programs of 5 different vendors. Each of these anti virus programs analyzes the file and responds with “safe” or “malicious”. Click here for more details about the Scan Cloud.

Hitman Pro is not free. They do offer a 30 day free trial, though. After that the price is subscription based.

Not since discovering Spybot Search & Destroy have I been THIS enthused about an anti-spyware tool.

Discussing the Apple iPad and mobile computing in the first 1/2 hour. Great conversation. Also went back to original intro and bumper segments.

Technology Bytes Podcast for Feb 3rd, 2010 [ 1:59:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Before the Internet, sayings and memes had to travel by word of mouth, so it’s not surprising that many of the sayings with staying power are still around because they protected their main transmission vector, namely, your mouth.

No one’s familiar with the prehistoric saying, “This is how you taunt a t-rex” because the people who picked up and practiced that catch-phrase didn’t get the chance to use it frequently enough for it to catch on in popular culture before being torn apart by a T-Rex in a tiff.

But when I mention something like the “5 Second Rule”, everyone knows what I’m talking about because that’s advice that has kept its sayers relatively safe for hundreds if not thousands of years. While not every culture expresses this concept in the same manner, they all seem to have a general equivalent. For example, the Russian translation goes “Promptly picked up is not considered fallen.” We now know that five seconds is more than enough time for bacteria to get a foot hold in our freshly fallen food, but at its inception, the other competing phrase was, “Just flick off the flies.”

“Don’t take candy from strangers” has much more notoriety than “Strangers have the best candy ever” for similar reasons.

Another saying that’s been around for ages is, “Don’t touch that, you don’t know where it’s been.” Mothers seem to drop that one a lot. As geeks, we have a natural predilection for anything electronic, regardless of its bacterial history or proximity to raptors. An iPod found in the gutter is still an iPod… Just like an iPod given to me by a stranger in a windowless van is still an iPod. I may be using it to listen to podcasts from therapists for the first few months I have it, but it’s still an iPod. (Ironically, it was the iPod Touch…)

I think the point here is that if someone is tempting you with something like comic books or graphic novels, you need to stay out of the van.

If you are looking for comics or graphic novels, or if you have some that you’d like to put back into the world without the aid of a windowless van, the web site www.wheresthatbeen.com has been launched to help you safely get your hands on new reading material without someone getting their hands on you.

Thanks to the efforts of our own LoopyLow in IRC, you can now accept comics from strangers *and* have a detailed retort prepared for your mother the next time she drops the phrase “You don’t know where that’s been” or otherwise accuses you of accepting goodies from strangers. You can get started this Friday by possibly accepting some goods from the good strangers of the February Geek Gathering, where the launch party will take place. Just like the IRC channel is the show within the show, this will be the party within the party.

wheresthatbeen.com is up now, and if you’re into comics or graphic novels, you’re invited to participate. Actually, I think that the site could be used for all sorts of things from sci-fi books to open source hardware. Really, whatever physical thing that you’d like to put out into the world to share with others could get a new lease on life via this site.

So, the Party that encompasses the Where’s That Been Launch Party, the Arduino Party, the Photography Party, and even last month’s knitting party, is indeed happening this Friday, February fifth, at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston. 2503 Bagby at McGowan is where you want to be.

Things get started around seven, or shortly thereafter, depending on how people do on McGowan. The WiFi and general geekery are free, but the coffee, food, spirits and beer will cost you. No promises as to whether the knitters will show up again, but we will have the usual array of open hardware to play with. Well, half the amount. KD5 has headed to Florida to see the Shuttle launch, so the Arduino army will be at half strength until the March Gathering.

Well, That’s it for Where’s That Been (and where we will be) and that’s that for BarretTime!

Technology Bytes will not be on the air Wednesday January 27th so that KPFT can bring you coverage of Barack Obama’s first ever State of the Union address. We’ll be back NEXT Wednesday.

Technology Bytes t-shirts and coffee mugs for sale at our Printfection shop located at printfection.com/geekradio

Shirts are available in a variety of sizes and colors. Check out the selection!

Users could face fines of up to £500k if they cause a data security breach!

London, 20th January 2010 – A survey released today reveals that in the last year, 4,500 memory sticks have been forgotten in people’s pockets as they take their clothes to be washed at the local dry cleaners. From 6th April onwards if data is lost and it causes a major security breach, this could now cost a company up to £500k with new powers given to the Information Commissioner’s office (ICO) to fine companies who have not sufficiently protected customers details under the Data Protection Act[1].

However, when compared with the same study twelve months ago, the number of these devices languishing forgotten in people’s pockets has halved, and yet it’s still a staggering number of possible data breaches and a potential money spinner for the ICO.

However, the study sponsor – data security experts CREDANT Technologies, has a theory that this decline is likely to be a change in users’ habits as opposed to a significant breakthrough in people’s vigilance. In fact, its experience on the frontline of this battle is that users are now downloading information onto smartphones and netbooks, which have boomed in popularity in the last year, so although on the surface the decline looks promising in reality the situation has just been spread across a multitude of other devices.

Sean Glynn – vice president and chief marketing officer at Credant Technologies said “Although this study shows a positive drop in the number of lost memory sticks we would urge users to take more care than ever not to download unprotected customer details and other sensitive information that if lost could lead to a security breach, especially now there are harsh fines afoot. ”

The survey was carried out in the UK to gauge the frequency and ease with which mobile devices, such as memory sticks, are lost or forgotten in strange places such as dry cleaners and should warn people across the globe to demonstrate prudence when downloading information to carry around with them as it does frequently get lost. In previous studies conducted by Credant Technologies amongst taxi drivers in London and New York over 12,500 handheld devices such as laptops, iPods and memory sticks are forgotten at the back of taxis every 6 months!

Concluding Sean Glynn said “This survey is just one illustration of the stark truth that device losses are happening everywhere, everyday, worldwide. Organisations want to leverage the business benefits of mobile computing and provide their employees the flexibility to work wherever and whenever they want to. However, this must be balanced with the requirement of protecting the organisations data, especially to avoid penalties – such as that promised by the ICO, brand damage or even embarrassing press headlines. If sensitive or valuable data is being carried then people should protect it with encryption to prevent unauthorised access at any point – as it could easily end up in the wrong hands.”

Not just USB sticks left at the dry cleaners……but wedding rings, lipstick and ……….
When asked to recall what the strangest objects were that they’d found in customers pockets most had found pens, lipstick, stockings and a wedding ring, however one unfortunate dry cleaner had found a pair of false teeth!