Windows

Norton to the rescue? Wow it actually did something useful

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Hmm, for the first time in my life I’m actually glad that my Mom runs Norton on her PC.

She got an e-mail from the bank warning about repeating login failures on the account and that it was going to be suspended for T time unless she updated the account. I think that would have my heads anti-fraud warning bell ringing on it’s own right but hey, I’m paranoid at heart >_>

The message had a dead give away (for me) that someone might be trying to fake it, you probably would have to be familiar with building such things or just a heavy web surfer to spot that one though. When she clicked it it redirected her to a fake page to login which Norton shouted FRAUD before harm could be done.

The address was an obvious fake once you see the real URL, but how many causal users even look at that I wonder? So maybe despite it’s annoyance to people like me and those that just want to get stuff done, useful for watching over the uneducated.

She’s currently going through a spell of FUD over security but I’m familiar enough with the possibilities and they ain’t that bad thanks to Norton. The next best thing to actually educating users — babysit with resource hogs :

Now if only it could do something about her (greater then mine) paranoia, so I could get back to rewriting code lol.

Oh wells.

So Winucking funny, it’s pitiful !!!

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I honestly don’t know if I should laugh or cry, it’s really that bad but I’m laughing my ass off right now lol.

Like last week I set up Microsofts Services For UNIX 3.5 on my XP machine, configured user/group maps from my Windows XP user account to my account on the OpenBSD server with the NFS shares. I followed the documentation that came with the software to get it set up.

If I try to access \vectrasrvnfs through Windows Explorer I either get an error message or I get the files, or I get BOTH. And trying to even right click to highlight any thing in Windows Explorer causes lock ups for several seconds. If I use the IP address rather then the alias ‘vectra’ that I setup in %SystemRoot%System32Driversetchosts it works slightly faster if I try to use the dir command in the command prompt which is stupid.

When I try to map the share to a network drive in Windows Explorer it dies with an error at \vectrasrvnfs, but I can ‘browse’ for it and then use it some times. It also ignores the maps I set up in the graphical SFU admin program so I can’t access files — and still buggers up when I tell it the login datam.

So finally pissed off after a week of this lag & lock crap, I open a command prompt with SFU’s shell and check the mount commands documentation which tells me to use the Windows Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) syntax for the file paths.

mount \vectrasrvnfs N:

And I get an error message about \vectrasrvnfs being an invalid command line argument to mount. So I for the hell of it I try the unix style host:share syntax to see if that works.

mount vectra:/srv/nfs N:

and BOOM it friging works !!!

I open windows explorer and go to N: in the nav bar and it works QUICKLY just like the NFS Shares mounted on my PC-BSD system do. Now my NFS shares are working through Windows Explorer properly, not like a piece of garbage as it was when doing through the GUI on Windows.

THE IRONY OF IT ALL !?

Microsoft Windows is noted by some people for giving easy, graphical ways to do things that ‘unix’ systems are supposed to lack quality documentation.

I used the ‘easy’, ‘graphical’ interfaces in Windows to do what takes 2 seconds in Unix which is ‘supposed’ to lack documentation and it works like shit or not at all in Windows.

I used the ‘hard’, ‘command line’ like way on Windows, only to find that the ‘supposed’ good documentation is wrong, and guess what — Doing it from the command line on Windows works ____better____ then the GUI once you figure it out.

Time to roll on the freaking floor laughing until my sides hurt !!!!

Windows will make you bald

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Today I had to set my Sister (in-law) with an e-mail account and access to it via my moms Desktop. So of course the obvious question is either she needs her own user account (in windows) plus the e-mail account or ma’s outlook would have to be setup to deal with the multi-login.

So I created the new user account for her, gave her an icon for outlook express next to the recycle bin and internet explorer (v6.x) on the desktop, set a wall paper and user pic (she loves Betty Boop).

Trying to find the docs on Bellsouth/AT&T’s website for creating a new e-mail account was not exactly as quick as I hoped but still easy as pie. I used my PC for that and RvS crashed in the process lol.

On Ma’s PC while logged in as the new user account for set up. I got a pop up from the windows security center just to tell me info I already knew. The Dell Support Center came up too, which we haven’t seen come up in many a year now ! Internet Explorer came up 404 on the pre-set home page (dellnet or some thing) and outlook express gave an error about the computer having no internet connection. Told it to go fsck itself and moved on and arranged for a pop-up less user log in.

Either AOL must have/had an in with Microsoft or a nice hackling plugin because outlook was set to launch AOL Instant Messenger on start up! And a general option for it too, like what the heck man. Now M$N or some thing from Microsoft I could understand but not AIM rofl. Although that PC’s got the good AOL client for AIM, the install is like 3 years old so it’s a version before AOL bloated the thing out. Which is really why I took to using all in one messengers like Kopete.

So I had to get that disabled, change the user picks, change the user names to match blah blah. Norton 360’s added toolbar in IE6 is not exactly welcome by my family — note to self, under no condition allow users to use IE as a default browser if I’m ever tasked with admining windows machines. And ban all Nortan and Mccfee products on machines with less then 768MB of Memory. In point of fact, make sure they pay extra for the psychiatrist bill for working with Windows.

So kicking about with Windows XP, Dell, Outlook Express, and AOL it was no problem to set up. But oh boy oh boy will you never find me using Windows for more then “Gaming” and similar reasons while Microsoft and other companies still are in power.

I’m a Unix man by nature and have a militaristic mind set. I value clear concise no shit assessments and not being nagged by pointless and flashy programs popping up taking several seconds to display only to tell me what I already know or worse try to sell me some thing 8=)

Windows, wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot long cattle prod if I had a choice… Still it’s the only decent platform for playing *real* video games on. Experience has shown the consoles are, uhh I’ll zip my trap before some googler flames me <_< hehe.

This reminds me of why I do not want to buy Microsoft VISA, why my laptop and file server run Open Source unix based operating systems, and why I use few programs that are known to “annoy” me. I want to get work done, I know how to read the fine manual, and software that bitches at the user should be fed through a hex editor, operating systems included 🙂

FreeBSD, now that is a sensible design… it won’t nag you ever ten minutes or so.

With similar hardware specs between my laptop and ma’s desktop, the only other principal difference being I have a Sempron Mobile (AMD budget model laptop CPU) and hae has an early Pentium 4 (when 2Ghz was new and costly). My laptop running FreeBSD runs faster then her Desktop running Windows XP SP2 + NAV and now Norton 360 – even while running KDE on the laptop. Programs like Norton remind me why I’ve heard jokes about system admins automatically having a users quota reduced for trying to run heavy programs on time sharing systems hehe.

Vista gone loco, connection limits!

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Windows Vista tcpip.sys Connection Limit Patch for Event ID 4226

I have officially lost any respect or regard for Microsoft Windows Vista and I’ve yet to have a chance to test the bloody thing.

My Windows XP machine has SP2 installed by the connection limit is returned to a extremely high level. Because I was getting some crap with being the only box to drop off the ‘net connection, making that change had a noticable impovement for me. The difference between VISA versions shows it all to true, it’s about the money.

Instead of doing some thing about it, they make a buck off it. What ever happened to passion ruling OS development? Not the dollar…..

Temptational joke

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Three Distros for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Steve Ballmer on his dark throne
In the Land of Redmond where the $hadow$ lie.
One distro to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One distro to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Redmond where the $hadow$ lie.

There can only be one distro and its MicrosoftSUSE !

Sorrry, I couldn’t resist doing that just for the laughs !!!