I think I may have discovered a potential security hole in Windows2000, possibly in XP as well.
Meghan’s computer had some hard drive issues this morning and as a result, her profile became corrupted. When this happened, Windows logged her in with a temporary logon, as I’ve seen happen countless times when I was network admin at my old job. What I’d never noticed before, was the fact that when logged in on this account, it allows you to change the administrator password. Without knowing the old one. I don’t know if this is normal or not, but it seems really, really insecure.
Posted by Ron as Computers at 10:28 AM EDT
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Not sure what that means exactly, but I think it has something to do with a radio for my car. Kids these days.
The wiring harnesses are on their way, and as soon as I get a new total amount for the paypal transaction, the radio will be too.
I’m pumped. I can hardly wait.
Posted by Ron as Fire-in-a-can at 1:34 AM EDT
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I just found out that the latest revision of the nVidia nForce2 chipset includes a built-in hardware firewall in its onboard Gigabit network PHY. That rules on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin. Once firewalled NICs spread to most or all computers, suffice to say, computer repair shops will have a lot less to do.
Posted by Ron as Computers at 2:02 PM EDT
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Before I was laid off from my last job, I used my sometimes-useful employee discount to pick up some black ink for my family’s hp DeskJet 880C printer. To save on cash, I picked up a brand-X cartridge. Big mistake. My dad was printing a document off the internet and ran out of ink, so my mum swapped in the new cartridge. That’s when the trouble began.
It would occasionally refuse to print a given page or pages of text, but the colour would still be there. The puzzling part was that the Windows test page printed perfectly, and the regular print jobs worked, the head was moving, but every so often you would get blank pages.
After some basic troubleshooting failed to solve the problem, I correctly concluded that the cartridge must be bad. I went to Staples and grabbed another knockoff, this one a “modified” hp cartridge that was recycled by Ko-Rec-Type and it is working perfectly, so far. I also netted a nice 64-pack of unpainted, vinyl erasered pencils for cheap. You’d be surprised how many get used or lost while playing RPGs.
Anyway, ‘Let This Be A Lesson To You All.’
Posted by Ron as Computers at 1:22 AM EDT
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Today I received a lovely little email form letter from Shaw Cable, my ISP. It stated that my bandwidth usage was 30-50 times that of the typical user, and that I’d better put a stop to all my rampant uploads before they start charging extra. D’oh!
Here is a little exerpt of the modem usage statistics for this year. See if you can guess when I reinstalled eMule…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Ron as Computers at 3:09 AM EDT
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Just recently, two pieces of software that I use frequently have been updated significantly.
OpenOffice.org has released version 1.1.1 of its semi-popular office suite, and while I could probably get by with wordpad, I do occasionally write for the sake of writing and do, believe it or not, use spreadsheets from time to time. Besides, I can export documents to .pdf format with this, which if not entirely vital, is at least useful from time to time. I have no idea what was changed. Bigger number = better.
The other software that was updated is SpyBot: Search and Destroy, which goes up to version 1.3. This one does have some significant updates. For one thing, it now detects even more nasty stuff, swatting a few cookies that I didn’t even know were there, and, unfortunately, falsely identifying a link in my Mozilla bookmarks to the Sault Area Linux Users Group as being affiliated with CoolWWWSearch, which, of course, it is not. Other than that, it worked well and included more options for safeguarding systems against hacks and hijacks by locking them down. Which, for me is kind of annoying, since I do occasionally mess with those settings, but would be immensely useful if I were still in the computer service technician racket, which thankfully, I am not.
Posted by Ron as Computers at 1:51 AM EDT
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It is immensely encouraging these days to see a modern musical group with a brain. I think System of a Down fits that description nicely. They seem to be globally aware and encouraging their fans to get involved. Check out the ‘News,’ ‘Global Action,’ and ‘Links’ buttons to see what they are all about. The only thing I didn’t like about their site was the blatantly HUGE animated button for their online merchandising, labeled ‘STORE’ but I suppose even activists got to pay the bills.
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming: Comments about Roberto Shamasio’s wanker.
Posted by Ron as Music at 3:06 AM EDT
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The last, and only two cars I’ve bought, have both had faulty CD players.
The one from the Stratus, a trunk-mounted Sony 10 Disc changer, refuses to play some discs and now just won’t do anything at all. No problem, since Meghan drives that car mostly now, and this Saturday, we swapped in (easiest thing, ever) the one she got for her birthday last year. It is a JVC KD-SX1000R. Tacky, but effective.
The Panasonic one in my SVX, the now 12-year-old Subaru OEM unit, never worked for me. All it would do is promptly eject your disc after thoroughly scratching the hell out of it; it leaves two nice concentric rings on the data surface. The other day, I finally got it to play something. I used the disc I first tested in it, so no harm done to anything, but it still only works when it feels like it and gets halfway through track 3 then errors out and gives me my disc back. Also, I can’t change tracks at all, or use the seek features. So I get 15 minutes or so of audio, then nothing.
That was initially encouraging, but, alas, ultimately frustrating. So I finally cracked and will be installing a deck from a WRX. I’ve had to order 2 custom made wiring harnesses, mainly because I don’t want to splice into the wires in my car. They are coming in at about $15USD each. Then the deck itself is likely going to run about $150USD plus shipping. There are cheaper ones on eBay, but I don’t trust them as much as other members of the SVX community.
In the end, it’ll be worth every penny. This replacement is a 6 Disc in-dash changer, whereas the old unit was a single disc only. Apparently it sounds better than the stock one as well, which at 80 watts, was already good enough for me. That will be 8 hours of uninterrupted tuneage for the upcoming long drives I’m going to have to make while moving, which was the biggest motivating factor here.
Posted by Ron as Music at 2:34 AM EDT
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Check out this bad boy right here. 17 inches of raw, unadulterated, 16:9 aspect ratio screen, nVidia GeForce Go5600 graphics with 64 megs of dedicated RAM, integrated wireless 802.11G, 512MB of DDR system RAM, 2.8GHz Pentium 4 CPU, oh it just goes on and on….
I’ll gladly accept donations.
Posted by Ron as Computers at 10:24 AM EDT
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Took my beloved SVX to my friendly, neighbourhood mechanic a couple days ago. Got the usual lube-oilchange-filter replacement, and had them check out some things that had been bugging me.
As it turns out, the vibration I had been feeling from the rear end was both back rims being out-of-round. Not worth fixing (the rims suck), so I need all four replaced. Nice. Time for some nice 18″ forged ones when I have the cash again.
The buzzing sound under acceleration was rocks stuck in an exhaust heatshield. Still does it sometimes. I think the shield is loose after putting it back or something. I’ll look more into that later.
Nothing wrong with the suspension (tie-rods, bushings, sway bars, shocks, springs, bearings, brakes, ball joints), thankfully. That stuff always sucks, and besides, when the cash flow is happening again, I’ll just get Luke to pick up some coilovers for me from Flatt Racing in Japan.
Unsurprisingly, they couldn’t find a diagnostic computer that would read the OBD (onboard diagnostic) computer’s output though, so no answer to the question of why my fuel economy is so poor, or why I get a Check Engine Light every once in a while. They also didn’t get around to hunting down the reason my left foglight isn’t getting power. I tried some basic tests and found nothing; only that there was no voltage going to it. Electrical gremlins are the bane of car owners and mechanics alike.
I still need a new transmission, full tune-up (timing belt, coolant flush, spark plugs, wires, air filter), and a new CD player (or carputer). Well, once I have a job again, there’s a list of things and this is on the top of it.
Posted by Ron as Fire-in-a-can at 11:52 AM EDT
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