The Associated Press:
House, Senate Call CEOs of Mattel, Toys "R" Us to Testify About Unsafe Toys
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3571313
Another week and another recall.
Should companies with U.S. names and once made products in the United States but now have their product made anywhere but in the U.S. (cheap labor, cheaper products) be classified as foreign companies doing business in the U.S.
Quality
Quality control has gone out the door, after all if it’s not made in my back yard why should I worry. Wonder if anyone even knows what a ‘C of C’ or ‘AQL’ means.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Color me Red China
The Associated Press has reported that: “Toys "R" Us has recalled 27,000 crayon and paint sets made in China because the packaging of the wooden box contains lead, as does some of the watercolor paint within, company and government officials said Thursday.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Consumer/wireStory?id=3541291
China must be getting pretty red in the face from all problems, wonder what’s going to be next!
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Consumer/wireStory?id=3541291
China must be getting pretty red in the face from all problems, wonder what’s going to be next!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
China + Toys "R" Us + Bibs = More Problems
Toys 'R' Us Pulls Bibs As a Precaution
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070817/D8R321N80.html
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070817/D8R321N80.html
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
China + Mattel + Toys + Lead = Problems
Mattel’s Quality Control department was obviously Out To Lunch on this one.
Mattel chief executive Bob Eckert kept dodging the lead when asked a series of questions by ABC’s Chris Cuomo.
ABC Interview details:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Consumer/Story?id=3478878&page=1&GMA=true
Mattel chief executive Bob Eckert kept dodging the lead when asked a series of questions by ABC’s Chris Cuomo.
ABC Interview details:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Consumer/Story?id=3478878&page=1&GMA=true
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Toys and Seafood
Didn’t need to wait very long for the next round of problems from China, both of which have been around for awhile.
AP: Seafood From China Wasn't Screened
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070808/D8QSJJS00.html
More children's jewelry recalled for lead; China questioned risks
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/safety/2007/07/more-childrens-.html
AP: Seafood From China Wasn't Screened
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070808/D8QSJJS00.html
More children's jewelry recalled for lead; China questioned risks
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/safety/2007/07/more-childrens-.html
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Milk up, OJ unchanged, Gas down, Michael Vic ???
Milk has gone way up in price and is now $4.50 a gallon, Orange Juice is $3.00 a gallon, and Gas is down to $2.67 a gallon. Michael Vick (Biteball QB) was bitten by a dog rap and is most likely out for the season.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Chinese Recalls China
Chinese Recalls China
Things are so bad these days that about every other week there is another high profile recall involving Chinese goods.
Pet food, Tires, Toothpaste, Toys and more toys and this time it’s Fisher Price in a one million toy recall,
source: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070801/D8QOHPNG1.html.
In 2006, the U.S. imported about $288 billion in goods from China and you know what that means, even more potential recalls. Do yourself a favor the next time you go shopping, pick up an item, any item and see where it’s made, chances are it won’t be from the United States.
Probably the best thing China can do at this time is to recall the country of China, before the next big product recall is announced in the coming weeks.
Things are so bad these days that about every other week there is another high profile recall involving Chinese goods.
Pet food, Tires, Toothpaste, Toys and more toys and this time it’s Fisher Price in a one million toy recall,
source: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070801/D8QOHPNG1.html.
In 2006, the U.S. imported about $288 billion in goods from China and you know what that means, even more potential recalls. Do yourself a favor the next time you go shopping, pick up an item, any item and see where it’s made, chances are it won’t be from the United States.
Probably the best thing China can do at this time is to recall the country of China, before the next big product recall is announced in the coming weeks.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Windows Vista Launch
When a new ship is launched they usually break a bottle of Champagne, the crowd cheers and the ship enters the water with a big splash. Today at midnight Vista was launched, the local TV news had a camera crew at one of the stores that was open and waiting as if some crowd of people would magically appear. This was not the case, a few people walking around with a boring look on their face and the rest of the store was empty.
What happened between the great Windows 95 launch and all the associated hoopla and today is a tribute to Microsoft’s marketing staff. In a word they blew it and you need to go back a few years to see why.
Windows 95 and 98 used calendar years as part of the version and that changed for consumers with the release of Windows ME, you remember that OS don’t you, ME who, while at about the same time they were courting the corporate community with Windows 2000 as if these were the people who would run out to the local PC store or vendor and buy like there was no tomorrow. Take note that a lot of consumer goods are marketed with the year as a selling point …. “Here is the new 2007 version” as if last year’s model is horribly obsolete, but the ploy works like a charm and that why sales people like it.
This time around Microsoft released Vista to the corporate folks late last year and to us consumers today. Why to business users first I have no idea, the local hospital is still advertising jobs openings for technicians who know Windows 95 and 98, no mention of ME or XP.
Not surprisingly most corporate types take years to adopt a new version of Windows and for good reasons as all there applications must continue to run flawlessly and the change over must not cause major headaches. So around 2009 or 2010 Vista should be in use in the corporate community.
On the other hand there are millions upon millions of home users who could upgrade to Vista immediately if Microsoft had changed its marketing strategy in such a way as to put some hype and incentive to do so. Guess they will have to wait another five years and call it Windows 2012.
What happened between the great Windows 95 launch and all the associated hoopla and today is a tribute to Microsoft’s marketing staff. In a word they blew it and you need to go back a few years to see why.
Windows 95 and 98 used calendar years as part of the version and that changed for consumers with the release of Windows ME, you remember that OS don’t you, ME who, while at about the same time they were courting the corporate community with Windows 2000 as if these were the people who would run out to the local PC store or vendor and buy like there was no tomorrow. Take note that a lot of consumer goods are marketed with the year as a selling point …. “Here is the new 2007 version” as if last year’s model is horribly obsolete, but the ploy works like a charm and that why sales people like it.
This time around Microsoft released Vista to the corporate folks late last year and to us consumers today. Why to business users first I have no idea, the local hospital is still advertising jobs openings for technicians who know Windows 95 and 98, no mention of ME or XP.
Not surprisingly most corporate types take years to adopt a new version of Windows and for good reasons as all there applications must continue to run flawlessly and the change over must not cause major headaches. So around 2009 or 2010 Vista should be in use in the corporate community.
On the other hand there are millions upon millions of home users who could upgrade to Vista immediately if Microsoft had changed its marketing strategy in such a way as to put some hype and incentive to do so. Guess they will have to wait another five years and call it Windows 2012.
Friday, March 03, 2006
The 4th D
DP World, I been sitting back and watching the flap over DP World managing several U.S. ports. In addition to that DP just announced this little gem:
http://www.dpiterminals.com/mainpages.asp?PSID=1
This should heat things up even more.
But then again almost everything we buy is made outside of the United States. Just the other day I went shopping and after I came back home the though occurred to me to look and see where each item was made. Yes they had names of U.S. based companies but none of the products were made in the U.S. An energy saving lamp being sponsored by and sold at less than normal prices by the former Governor Cody of New Jersey was made in China. The Energizer ‘bunny’ batteries were made in Japan. A Fruit of the Loom sweat shirt was made in Honduras. A Jerzees brand T-shirt made in Honduras. Another brand of T-shirt was made in Nicaragua. The Master Lock for my shed was assembled in Mexico.
So with these and a whole host of other products made everywhere but in the U.S.A., doesn’t make sense to have foreign company such as Dubai run the ports that import all these foreign made goods or does it?
http://www.dpiterminals.com/mainpages.asp?PSID=1
This should heat things up even more.
But then again almost everything we buy is made outside of the United States. Just the other day I went shopping and after I came back home the though occurred to me to look and see where each item was made. Yes they had names of U.S. based companies but none of the products were made in the U.S. An energy saving lamp being sponsored by and sold at less than normal prices by the former Governor Cody of New Jersey was made in China. The Energizer ‘bunny’ batteries were made in Japan. A Fruit of the Loom sweat shirt was made in Honduras. A Jerzees brand T-shirt made in Honduras. Another brand of T-shirt was made in Nicaragua. The Master Lock for my shed was assembled in Mexico.
So with these and a whole host of other products made everywhere but in the U.S.A., doesn’t make sense to have foreign company such as Dubai run the ports that import all these foreign made goods or does it?
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Three D’s
I heard it on the news, all within the last three days.
Don Knots:
Don Knotts, TV's Barney Fife, Dies at 81
http://entertainment.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=216727
Dennis Weaver:
Dennis "McCloud" Weaver dies at 81
http://www.star-ecentral.com/tvnradio/tracks/tracks.asp?file=archives/tracks/2006/2/28DennisMcCl&date=2/28/2006
Darin McGavin:
Darin “Kolchak” McGavin dies at 83
http://www.spielbergfilms.com/news022606b.html
Don Knots:
Don Knotts, TV's Barney Fife, Dies at 81
http://entertainment.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=216727
Dennis Weaver:
Dennis "McCloud" Weaver dies at 81
http://www.star-ecentral.com/tvnradio/tracks/tracks.asp?file=archives/tracks/2006/2/28DennisMcCl&date=2/28/2006
Darin McGavin:
Darin “Kolchak” McGavin dies at 83
http://www.spielbergfilms.com/news022606b.html
Monday, January 23, 2006
Will your digital photos still be around for your grandchildren?
Recently there was a discussion of the quality of film versus digital media on PC World’s blog site: http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/001323.html
I have been using film cameras and computers since the 1960’s and here is my insight on this issue.
Let see now, you bought that great top of the line digital camera, stored the photos on the best quality CD/DVD money can buy and let’s say the CD/DVD is still good 50 years from now.
I still have a 35mm camera I bought in the early 70’s; I also have paper tape used to load Fortran (a popular programming language in the 70’s, all but dead now) on an early computer, guess which of these items still works. I have a slightly newer model camera from around 1980 and 8 inch floppy disks, again guess which of these items still works. I bought a still newer camera about the time 5.25 floppies were popular, I use the boxes from the 5.25 floppies to store my CD-R(s) in.
The point is that all my old digital media is all but useless just like that CD/DVD will be when your grandchildren try to find a device to load and read today’s digital storage media. Will film be surpassed in quality, most certainly? Will we be able to use what we stored from that digital camera 50 years from now is the big question.
I have been using film cameras and computers since the 1960’s and here is my insight on this issue.
Let see now, you bought that great top of the line digital camera, stored the photos on the best quality CD/DVD money can buy and let’s say the CD/DVD is still good 50 years from now.
I still have a 35mm camera I bought in the early 70’s; I also have paper tape used to load Fortran (a popular programming language in the 70’s, all but dead now) on an early computer, guess which of these items still works. I have a slightly newer model camera from around 1980 and 8 inch floppy disks, again guess which of these items still works. I bought a still newer camera about the time 5.25 floppies were popular, I use the boxes from the 5.25 floppies to store my CD-R(s) in.
The point is that all my old digital media is all but useless just like that CD/DVD will be when your grandchildren try to find a device to load and read today’s digital storage media. Will film be surpassed in quality, most certainly? Will we be able to use what we stored from that digital camera 50 years from now is the big question.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today we celebrate the life, times and dreams of Martin Luther King. But let me start by going back a few years to when John F. Kennedy was killed. Every year for a long time on the anniversary of JFK’s dead the media would ask if you remembered where your where when you heard the news that Kennedy was killed. My answer is yes, I can still remember where I was driving in my car and most likely can still mark the spot on the road to within a few feet when I heard the news on the car radio.
I have never heard this question asked about MLK’s death. No I can not remember where I was at the time, but I can remember with perfect clarity what went through my mind when I heard the news.
Imagine if you will a room with no furniture. In the center of the room towards the back wall is a single candle, it’s light illuminating the walls and ceiling. Slowly the flame starts to go out, it’s light receding back towards the candle, the walls nearest you slowly getting darker as the flame grows smaller. Smaller and smaller the flame becomes, as if in slow motion the light in the room seams to be going in toward the candle as the walls get darker. The flame finally goes out and the room is now totally dark, with nothing visible to your eyes.
That was the moment in time when I heard that Martin Luther King, Jr. had died.
I have never heard this question asked about MLK’s death. No I can not remember where I was at the time, but I can remember with perfect clarity what went through my mind when I heard the news.
Imagine if you will a room with no furniture. In the center of the room towards the back wall is a single candle, it’s light illuminating the walls and ceiling. Slowly the flame starts to go out, it’s light receding back towards the candle, the walls nearest you slowly getting darker as the flame grows smaller. Smaller and smaller the flame becomes, as if in slow motion the light in the room seams to be going in toward the candle as the walls get darker. The flame finally goes out and the room is now totally dark, with nothing visible to your eyes.
That was the moment in time when I heard that Martin Luther King, Jr. had died.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Re-Bloging
In my January 2005 blog I mentioned outsourcing, so just like re-gifting I'll repost my old blog with a small update (new gift rap).
Outsourcing Is Bad
There are a number of companies that believe that Outsourcing is the key to profitability and the cure for all ills. If fact, the ideal goal would be to outsource all U.S. based jobs to countries with significantly lower wage rates. The logic would be that with no employees to pay, except for a privileged few, there would be nearly infinite profit.
But wait, with no employed U.S. citizens, who would have any money to buy their products, certainly not the people employed at their outsource locations as they are paid too low of a wage to afford what they make.
Think this is all a bad joke, take a look around your house and see how many item you own that are still made in the United States. Oh sure the name may be that of a company based here, but where is the item actual made?
For my money any company that outsourcers more than 50% of there product or gross earnings should not longer be considered U.S. based and therefore are subject to tariffs and other trade restrictions so as to truly level the playing field.
Fair Trade
2006 - GM and its parts suppliers are now in deep trouble, what was once known as 'The Big Three' auto makers may be in a short time mean a group of football teams, not U.S. auto makers.
Outsourcing Is Bad
There are a number of companies that believe that Outsourcing is the key to profitability and the cure for all ills. If fact, the ideal goal would be to outsource all U.S. based jobs to countries with significantly lower wage rates. The logic would be that with no employees to pay, except for a privileged few, there would be nearly infinite profit.
But wait, with no employed U.S. citizens, who would have any money to buy their products, certainly not the people employed at their outsource locations as they are paid too low of a wage to afford what they make.
Think this is all a bad joke, take a look around your house and see how many item you own that are still made in the United States. Oh sure the name may be that of a company based here, but where is the item actual made?
For my money any company that outsourcers more than 50% of there product or gross earnings should not longer be considered U.S. based and therefore are subject to tariffs and other trade restrictions so as to truly level the playing field.
Fair Trade
2006 - GM and its parts suppliers are now in deep trouble, what was once known as 'The Big Three' auto makers may be in a short time mean a group of football teams, not U.S. auto makers.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Second Term Presidents
In 1951 the Twenty-second Amendment of the Constitution set a two-term limit on how many times a person shall be elected to the office President of the United States.
Ever since then each president who was re-elected has had problems that were significant enough that the chances are they would not be re-electable even if they could run for a third term. Could this be the jinks of the 22nd Amendment.
Many reasons could be offered as to why things seem to go down hill. It could be they try too hard on leaving a ‘Legacy’ or by now the media has had enough time to dig up some dirt. Not to mention that no sooner than they have won the election and they are already called a Lame Duck President. Even their own party will gives him grief on proposed legislation. By the second term the charm has worn off and reality sets in. In the case of President Bush the past few months have given us a Supreme Court nomination failure, Katrina, Fema, a spy in the White House and Bush using the No Such Agency to spy on us.
I propose a change to the amendment that would allow for no limit on terms as it was so stated in the original un-ammended constitution. However the third term would require more than a simple majority of the popular vote (and the electorial college requirements), say 56% of the popular vote and the four term would require 60% of the vote to win the election. Raising the bar would give each second term president real goal in order to win our vote and be re-elected.
Ever since then each president who was re-elected has had problems that were significant enough that the chances are they would not be re-electable even if they could run for a third term. Could this be the jinks of the 22nd Amendment.
Many reasons could be offered as to why things seem to go down hill. It could be they try too hard on leaving a ‘Legacy’ or by now the media has had enough time to dig up some dirt. Not to mention that no sooner than they have won the election and they are already called a Lame Duck President. Even their own party will gives him grief on proposed legislation. By the second term the charm has worn off and reality sets in. In the case of President Bush the past few months have given us a Supreme Court nomination failure, Katrina, Fema, a spy in the White House and Bush using the No Such Agency to spy on us.
I propose a change to the amendment that would allow for no limit on terms as it was so stated in the original un-ammended constitution. However the third term would require more than a simple majority of the popular vote (and the electorial college requirements), say 56% of the popular vote and the four term would require 60% of the vote to win the election. Raising the bar would give each second term president real goal in order to win our vote and be re-elected.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Your Internet Cable Service may be running at Half Speed
About two months ago I started receiving email notices from my internet cable service provider which mentioned that download speeds had been increased to 6.0Mbts. Being excited about this I decided to check my actual speed by using one of many web sites that test and report your speed. To my surprise my speed had actually gone down and not up. The best numbers I could get at any time of the day or night where about 2.2Mbts (Mega Bits Per Second), which is about one third of the advertised speed. I’ll include a list of several test sites at the bottom of this article.
So I called Tech. Support and explained the situation. The technician then checked my cable modem from his remote location and found that I had far too much signal strength at the input to the cable modem and scheduled a service call.
The technician showed up on time the next day and replaced the cable running from the line strung between the two poles to the point where it enters my house. He also replaced the splitter which is used to provide a separate line for cable TV. Another check of the signal strength showed it was now even higher and further out of specification than before. There was no increase in cable speed. A second service visit was scheduled.
On the second visit another tech. replaced the signal attenuator on the telephone pole to reduce the amount of signal down to a value that was within their guidelines and also found a broken box located two telephone poles before my house. Still no speed increase. The technician did notice that I had an old modem and scheduled for a replacement to be installed.
On arrival the third technician looked up the model (DOXport 1110) of my current modem and found that it was obsolete and no longer supported. This was the modem that was installed when I first subscribed more than 4 years ago. The new modem (Motorola SB5120) he installed was defective and had to go out to the truck to bring in another modem. This was an older model (SB4200) than the modem that was defective but still newer that my original modem. A speed test showed about a 50% increase to 3.0Mbts.
Next we disabled my firewall (Zone Alarm), Anti-Virus software and other Anti-Spyware software I had running in the background. With everything disabled there was no increase in speed which at least showed these utilities were not the problem. Note that some earlier versions of Zone Alarm can cause a speed problem so you should update to the latest version of the freeware or paid version. We then bypassed my router and connected the output of the cable modem directly into the input of my network card, still no speed gain.
The tech. then connected his laptop to the new modem and instantly got a speed increase to about 4.0Mbts. Could it be my PC or some software that was the problem? I wasn’t satisfied with the current state of things and a friend of mine had an extra and newer model (SB5100) of the Motorola modem installed by the technician, so I asked Bill to drop it off.
Read on for the answer
The next day I called the cable companies tech. support department and together we tested my existing modem and then installed the Motorola SB5100 modem. Bingo, speed was now up to 4.2Mbts, definitely an improvement but still not 6.0Mbts as advertised.
Now I remembered some old tricks that use to work for Windows 98, but will not work for Windows XP which I'm now using. Still I searched the web and found a simple utility named Dr. TCP provided the final boost in speed. Using this utility I found that my TCP Receive Window was not set to any value, so I entered a value of 56940, leaving all other fields in this utility unchanged.
No reboot of your PC is necessary so I immediately checked my speed again and found I was now up to 5.0Mbts or more on a consistent basis. Keeping in mind that 6Mbts is a theoretical maximum under ideal conditions and finding that values greater than 56940 did not improve my speed I decided that a 250% speed improvement was not bad at all.
Just the other day I had a need to download a file that was more than 200Mega Bytes in size. My download speed was above 700KBts per second (5.6Mbts) from this web site.
Tools and speed test sites
Dr. TCP
http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp
Why and what is a TCP Receive Window:
http://cable-dsl.home.att.net/index.htm#WhyItMatters
Test your download and upload speeds in Mbts
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
Test your speed in KBts
http://speedtest.rochester.rr.com/
Another test site and tools to use
http://www.dslreports.com/tools
One final note
My web pages now load noticeably faster, more importantly large file download times are more than twice as fast.
So I called Tech. Support and explained the situation. The technician then checked my cable modem from his remote location and found that I had far too much signal strength at the input to the cable modem and scheduled a service call.
The technician showed up on time the next day and replaced the cable running from the line strung between the two poles to the point where it enters my house. He also replaced the splitter which is used to provide a separate line for cable TV. Another check of the signal strength showed it was now even higher and further out of specification than before. There was no increase in cable speed. A second service visit was scheduled.
On the second visit another tech. replaced the signal attenuator on the telephone pole to reduce the amount of signal down to a value that was within their guidelines and also found a broken box located two telephone poles before my house. Still no speed increase. The technician did notice that I had an old modem and scheduled for a replacement to be installed.
On arrival the third technician looked up the model (DOXport 1110) of my current modem and found that it was obsolete and no longer supported. This was the modem that was installed when I first subscribed more than 4 years ago. The new modem (Motorola SB5120) he installed was defective and had to go out to the truck to bring in another modem. This was an older model (SB4200) than the modem that was defective but still newer that my original modem. A speed test showed about a 50% increase to 3.0Mbts.
Next we disabled my firewall (Zone Alarm), Anti-Virus software and other Anti-Spyware software I had running in the background. With everything disabled there was no increase in speed which at least showed these utilities were not the problem. Note that some earlier versions of Zone Alarm can cause a speed problem so you should update to the latest version of the freeware or paid version. We then bypassed my router and connected the output of the cable modem directly into the input of my network card, still no speed gain.
The tech. then connected his laptop to the new modem and instantly got a speed increase to about 4.0Mbts. Could it be my PC or some software that was the problem? I wasn’t satisfied with the current state of things and a friend of mine had an extra and newer model (SB5100) of the Motorola modem installed by the technician, so I asked Bill to drop it off.
Read on for the answer
The next day I called the cable companies tech. support department and together we tested my existing modem and then installed the Motorola SB5100 modem. Bingo, speed was now up to 4.2Mbts, definitely an improvement but still not 6.0Mbts as advertised.
Now I remembered some old tricks that use to work for Windows 98, but will not work for Windows XP which I'm now using. Still I searched the web and found a simple utility named Dr. TCP provided the final boost in speed. Using this utility I found that my TCP Receive Window was not set to any value, so I entered a value of 56940, leaving all other fields in this utility unchanged.
No reboot of your PC is necessary so I immediately checked my speed again and found I was now up to 5.0Mbts or more on a consistent basis. Keeping in mind that 6Mbts is a theoretical maximum under ideal conditions and finding that values greater than 56940 did not improve my speed I decided that a 250% speed improvement was not bad at all.
Just the other day I had a need to download a file that was more than 200Mega Bytes in size. My download speed was above 700KBts per second (5.6Mbts) from this web site.
Tools and speed test sites
Dr. TCP
http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp
Why and what is a TCP Receive Window:
http://cable-dsl.home.att.net/index.htm#WhyItMatters
Test your download and upload speeds in Mbts
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
Test your speed in KBts
http://speedtest.rochester.rr.com/
Another test site and tools to use
http://www.dslreports.com/tools
One final note
My web pages now load noticeably faster, more importantly large file download times are more than twice as fast.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
More on the Sony DRM/Rootkit issue
SEE Mark's Sysinternals Blog - Updated 11/16/05
http://www.sysinternals.com/Blog/
Next version of Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal tool - 11/16/05
The December release of this tool will should detect and remove Sony's DRM rootkit!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123543,00.asp
List of CD’s that contain the copy protection Rootkit:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004144.php
Sony/BMG Music’s new policy?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/index.php?p=701
Questionable Anti-Spyware products
Before you download what you believe is a good spyware removal tool read this:
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm
http://www.sysinternals.com/Blog/
Next version of Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal tool - 11/16/05
The December release of this tool will should detect and remove Sony's DRM rootkit!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123543,00.asp
List of CD’s that contain the copy protection Rootkit:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004144.php
Sony/BMG Music’s new policy?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/index.php?p=701
Questionable Anti-Spyware products
Before you download what you believe is a good spyware removal tool read this:
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Atlantic City – Does anybody live here?
Atlantic City N.J., you know the place, casinos, beaches, Miss America pageant and more. But does anybody live here?
Based on last night’s election results the winner of mayor’s race received all of 4,520 votes. Yes that’s the number, not 450 thousand, not 45 thousand but 4,520 votes. This is a city, not a small town with one traffic light or does everyone live elsewhere!
With this many votes the mayor has a mandate, a mandate to do nothing and still win the next election.
Source: http://www.nj.com/elections/electioncoverage
Based on last night’s election results the winner of mayor’s race received all of 4,520 votes. Yes that’s the number, not 450 thousand, not 45 thousand but 4,520 votes. This is a city, not a small town with one traffic light or does everyone live elsewhere!
With this many votes the mayor has a mandate, a mandate to do nothing and still win the next election.
Source: http://www.nj.com/elections/electioncoverage
Friday, November 04, 2005
20 Years of Microsoft Windows
In November of 1985 Microsoft released for sale Windows version 1.0 which ran on top of DOS 3.0. So I though it would be interesting to list the cost and performance of a PC at that time and every five years thereafter to the present day. As a side note 1985 was also the year that Gateway computers was founded, then known as Gateway 2000.
I contacted Gateway (my thanks to Lisa Emard, Gateway Media Relations) and she was able to provide the cost for a 1988 Gateway (which I’ve included in the list below), as it gives a good idea as to how much PC prices dropped when sold by what were then called ‘IBM Clone’ manufacturers. Note that Gateway stated “Completely IBM Hardware and Software Compatible” as not all PC clones were 100% compatible back then. Also by 1988 the Intel 386 processor was king of the hill and a 16MHz 386 PC cost about $3,600.00.
Note: The cost of the year 1985 was derived from various articles on the web. Pricing for all other systems (except 1988 as stated above) are based on actual advertisement from that time period, mostly in the Fall of each year.
1985 IBM PC AT – Approx. $6,000.00
8Mhz Intel 286 processor
512KB RAM
1.2MB 5.25 inch floppy disk
20MB Hard Drive
14” EGA Color Monitor – 640x350 resolution (64 colors) - $800.00
MS DOS 3.0 and Windows 1.0
Serial & Centronics Printer ports
IBM Dot Matrix Printer – $595.00
1988 Gateway 2000 Model A12 - $1,995.00
12 MHz 80286 Processor (Switchable to 6)
1 Meg 0 Wait State RAM (100 NS)
1 – 360K Floppy Drive and 1 – 3.5” Diskette Drive (Made by Teac)
40 MB Seagate ST251 Hard Drive
1-Parallel and 2-Serial Ports
101 Key Enhanced Keyboard (Keytronic)
14” Samsung EGA Monitor (640 x 350) with Sigma Designs Autoswitch EGA Card
200 Watt Power Supply and Battery Backed-Up Clock Calendar
8 Expansion Slots (6-16 Bit, 2-8 Bit) and Space for 5 ½ ht. Storage Devices
Completely IBM Hardware and Software Compatible, 1 Year Warranty
Not included in the above package was Windows 2.0 – Price $100.00
1990 Gateway 2000 - $5,295.00
25MHz 486
4.0MB RAM
1.44MB 3.5 inch and 1.2MB 51/4 inch Floppy Drives
150MB Hard Disk
16 Bit VGA card with 512K RAM
14” Monitor
DOS 3.3 and Windows 3.0
CD-ROM Purchased from Tiger Direct - $800.00
HP DeskJet 500 – List Price $729.00
1995 Gateway 2000 P5-133 - $3999.00
133MHz Pentium processor
256K Cache
16MB EDO RAM
1.6GB 9ms DMA Mode 2 EIDE Hard Drive, 1.44 Floppy
17” CRT Monitor + 64 Bit Matrox Millennium with 2MB WRAM
6X EIDE CD-ROM, 16 Bit sound card and Speakers with subwoofer
28.8 Fax/Modem
Windows 95, MS Office95
HP DeskJet 560C - $499.00 (Approx.)
2000 – Dell 8100 Series - $3,248.00
1.5GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor
128MB Rambus 400 MHz RDRAM Memory
80GB Ultra ATA-100 (5200 RPM) Hard Drive
19” CRT Monitor, 64MB AGP-4X NVIDIA GeForce2 Graphics
12X DVD ROM and 12X CD-RW Drive
Digital Sound Card, Surround sound speakers with Subwoofer, 56K V90 WinModem
Windows ME
Printer, HP DeskJet 990Cse (2400 x 1200 dpi on photo paper, 17 pages per minute) - $399.00
2005 – Gateway FX-400XL - $3,179.96
3.0GHz Intel Pentium D (Dual Core) Processor
2.0GB (2048MB) DDR2 SDRAM Dual Channel Memory
500GB (Two 250GB Serial ATA II drives, 7200 RPM) and 1.44 Floppy drive
21” Widescreen High-Definition LCD Flat Panel display
16x Double Layer DVD+/- Read/Read/Write and second DVD-ROM drive
256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 7800 Graphics with DVI and TV Out
Integrated Intel 7.1 Sound with Logitec Z-2300 THX Speakers, 56K data/fax modem
Integrated Broadband Ethernet (10/100/1000 Gigabit) Network interface.
Windows XP SP2 with Backup CD, Price includes 3 years part/labor/tech support plan
Printer, HP Photosmart 8250 (4800 x 1200 dpi, 31 pages per minute) - $199.99
If you are interested in more detailed information of how Windows matured over the years see the article recently published by PC Mag.com.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1868492,00.asp
and Computer Hope.com at:
http://www.computerhope.com/history/windows.htm
Some PCs may have included some minor additional hardware, software and service contracts included as part of the advertised configuration but are not listed in this article. Printers were priced as a separate item. Windows was usually an option in the early years. Today Windows XP Home is standard and XP Professional is still priced as an option from a number of vendors for home computers.
Note: Configurations are for high end or near top of the line systems available for a given year, therefore some PC configurations may have cost more or less than the prices shown above. Today’s entry level PCs can cost as little as $500.00 and can go easily over $4,500.00 if you want all the bells and whistles.
Inflation factor
$6,000.00 in 1985 is the equivalent of $10,650.00 today!
$3,999.00 in 1995 is the equivalent of $4,975.00 today!
Source: The Inflation Calculator at: http://www.westegg.com/inflation
I contacted Gateway (my thanks to Lisa Emard, Gateway Media Relations) and she was able to provide the cost for a 1988 Gateway (which I’ve included in the list below), as it gives a good idea as to how much PC prices dropped when sold by what were then called ‘IBM Clone’ manufacturers. Note that Gateway stated “Completely IBM Hardware and Software Compatible” as not all PC clones were 100% compatible back then. Also by 1988 the Intel 386 processor was king of the hill and a 16MHz 386 PC cost about $3,600.00.
Note: The cost of the year 1985 was derived from various articles on the web. Pricing for all other systems (except 1988 as stated above) are based on actual advertisement from that time period, mostly in the Fall of each year.
1985 IBM PC AT – Approx. $6,000.00
8Mhz Intel 286 processor
512KB RAM
1.2MB 5.25 inch floppy disk
20MB Hard Drive
14” EGA Color Monitor – 640x350 resolution (64 colors) - $800.00
MS DOS 3.0 and Windows 1.0
Serial & Centronics Printer ports
IBM Dot Matrix Printer – $595.00
1988 Gateway 2000 Model A12 - $1,995.00
12 MHz 80286 Processor (Switchable to 6)
1 Meg 0 Wait State RAM (100 NS)
1 – 360K Floppy Drive and 1 – 3.5” Diskette Drive (Made by Teac)
40 MB Seagate ST251 Hard Drive
1-Parallel and 2-Serial Ports
101 Key Enhanced Keyboard (Keytronic)
14” Samsung EGA Monitor (640 x 350) with Sigma Designs Autoswitch EGA Card
200 Watt Power Supply and Battery Backed-Up Clock Calendar
8 Expansion Slots (6-16 Bit, 2-8 Bit) and Space for 5 ½ ht. Storage Devices
Completely IBM Hardware and Software Compatible, 1 Year Warranty
Not included in the above package was Windows 2.0 – Price $100.00
1990 Gateway 2000 - $5,295.00
25MHz 486
4.0MB RAM
1.44MB 3.5 inch and 1.2MB 51/4 inch Floppy Drives
150MB Hard Disk
16 Bit VGA card with 512K RAM
14” Monitor
DOS 3.3 and Windows 3.0
CD-ROM Purchased from Tiger Direct - $800.00
HP DeskJet 500 – List Price $729.00
1995 Gateway 2000 P5-133 - $3999.00
133MHz Pentium processor
256K Cache
16MB EDO RAM
1.6GB 9ms DMA Mode 2 EIDE Hard Drive, 1.44 Floppy
17” CRT Monitor + 64 Bit Matrox Millennium with 2MB WRAM
6X EIDE CD-ROM, 16 Bit sound card and Speakers with subwoofer
28.8 Fax/Modem
Windows 95, MS Office95
HP DeskJet 560C - $499.00 (Approx.)
2000 – Dell 8100 Series - $3,248.00
1.5GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor
128MB Rambus 400 MHz RDRAM Memory
80GB Ultra ATA-100 (5200 RPM) Hard Drive
19” CRT Monitor, 64MB AGP-4X NVIDIA GeForce2 Graphics
12X DVD ROM and 12X CD-RW Drive
Digital Sound Card, Surround sound speakers with Subwoofer, 56K V90 WinModem
Windows ME
Printer, HP DeskJet 990Cse (2400 x 1200 dpi on photo paper, 17 pages per minute) - $399.00
2005 – Gateway FX-400XL - $3,179.96
3.0GHz Intel Pentium D (Dual Core) Processor
2.0GB (2048MB) DDR2 SDRAM Dual Channel Memory
500GB (Two 250GB Serial ATA II drives, 7200 RPM) and 1.44 Floppy drive
21” Widescreen High-Definition LCD Flat Panel display
16x Double Layer DVD+/- Read/Read/Write and second DVD-ROM drive
256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 7800 Graphics with DVI and TV Out
Integrated Intel 7.1 Sound with Logitec Z-2300 THX Speakers, 56K data/fax modem
Integrated Broadband Ethernet (10/100/1000 Gigabit) Network interface.
Windows XP SP2 with Backup CD, Price includes 3 years part/labor/tech support plan
Printer, HP Photosmart 8250 (4800 x 1200 dpi, 31 pages per minute) - $199.99
If you are interested in more detailed information of how Windows matured over the years see the article recently published by PC Mag.com.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1868492,00.asp
and Computer Hope.com at:
http://www.computerhope.com/history/windows.htm
Some PCs may have included some minor additional hardware, software and service contracts included as part of the advertised configuration but are not listed in this article. Printers were priced as a separate item. Windows was usually an option in the early years. Today Windows XP Home is standard and XP Professional is still priced as an option from a number of vendors for home computers.
Note: Configurations are for high end or near top of the line systems available for a given year, therefore some PC configurations may have cost more or less than the prices shown above. Today’s entry level PCs can cost as little as $500.00 and can go easily over $4,500.00 if you want all the bells and whistles.
Inflation factor
$6,000.00 in 1985 is the equivalent of $10,650.00 today!
$3,999.00 in 1995 is the equivalent of $4,975.00 today!
Source: The Inflation Calculator at: http://www.westegg.com/inflation
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
PC Security - November Update
Some Sony CD’s ship with sneaky (rootkit) software.
Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals, one of the PC security sites I mentioned in my last blog, has uncovered the installation of ‘Hidden’ copy protection software on a user’s PC without their knowledge. For general information about this see:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123362,00.asp
For detailed information on how Mark found this unwanted piece of software and what he did to remove it, read Mark’s blog: (http://www.sysinternals.com/Blog).
Prevent Viruses From Disabling Your Protection.
This is one of the tricks I use, not previously mentioned because of some minor side effects when browsing web sites. PCWORLD has a basic article which will get you started without any of the browser side effects and it will stop hackers from disabling your anti-virus protection updates:
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,121213,00.asp
Note: I always make a backup of my original ‘HOSTS’ file (this file has no extension) before making any changes.
For a more robust approach visit: www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
Make sure you read the full description on this web page, then download the file named hosts.zip. Next make a backup of your original host file (C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\HOST) which if you open using notepad should look like this:
# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost
After making a backup (name it ORIG_HOSTS) unzip the file you downloaded and replace the HOST file with the one you downloaded. Right click on the file, select ‘Properties’ and check the ‘Read-only’ attribute box.
Note: Most likely your browser back button will not work on some web pages and you will need to click the pull-down arrow located just to the right of the back button to go back to the previous web page, note the number of adware listings your host file blocked when you do this.
Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals, one of the PC security sites I mentioned in my last blog, has uncovered the installation of ‘Hidden’ copy protection software on a user’s PC without their knowledge. For general information about this see:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123362,00.asp
For detailed information on how Mark found this unwanted piece of software and what he did to remove it, read Mark’s blog: (http://www.sysinternals.com/Blog).
Prevent Viruses From Disabling Your Protection.
This is one of the tricks I use, not previously mentioned because of some minor side effects when browsing web sites. PCWORLD has a basic article which will get you started without any of the browser side effects and it will stop hackers from disabling your anti-virus protection updates:
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,121213,00.asp
Note: I always make a backup of my original ‘HOSTS’ file (this file has no extension) before making any changes.
For a more robust approach visit: www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
Make sure you read the full description on this web page, then download the file named hosts.zip. Next make a backup of your original host file (C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\HOST) which if you open using notepad should look like this:
# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost
After making a backup (name it ORIG_HOSTS) unzip the file you downloaded and replace the HOST file with the one you downloaded. Right click on the file, select ‘Properties’ and check the ‘Read-only’ attribute box.
Note: Most likely your browser back button will not work on some web pages and you will need to click the pull-down arrow located just to the right of the back button to go back to the previous web page, note the number of adware listings your host file blocked when you do this.
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