Pickle’s Perspective

Don’t support these guys. Why? Simple. I’ve taken a new approach. I hate Spam and in your face advertising. A German Singer/Songwriter named Reinhard Mey said it very well when referring to wathcing a movie that was being interrupted by commercials. “I pay attention to those companies that advertise, and then I don’t buy any of their products. You see, I tell myself, I can’t buy the coffee in the morning from the company that steals my time in the evening.”

So with this very reasoning in mind I’ve decided to have the same approach. These Gentlemen spammed me today. So they stole my time, and internet bandwidth in attempt to sell me a service I don’t want, nor need. Since there’s little I despise more than spam; I urge you to use a competitor that doesn’t solicit via spam when you purchase or sell your next home.

Hear Reinhard Mey’s quote from above here mp3(155k) and wav(2.2MB)

What’s your thought on this?

I’ve had a Lexar Jump Drive Sport 256mb. Lasted 2 1/2 years before it crapped out, lost some valuable photos, and documents. I expected this one to die as I dropped it in the snow and didn’t find it until sprint. It was rusty, but worked for another 1/2 year at least.

Then bought a San Disk Cruzer 512MB. I figured, I have their memory sticks for my digital camera, and they seem rock solid. Shortly after I bought the Cruzer, one of my camera cards died, Sandisk replaced it under warranty. After a little more than a year the Cruzer died. After months of looking for the bill so I could make a warranty claim, I tossed it.

I replaced the cruzer with a Memorex Traveldrive Mini w/U3 512MB drive. the drive was on sale @ futureshop for like 15 bucks. I’ve maybe had it for 7 months now (’cause I just recently tossed the Cruzer) and just minutes ago, my computer made the USB device disconnect sound. Guess What… Flash Drive’s dead!

I kept the bill for this one. But Damn! I’ve had them die in different PCs so it’s not my computer.

Are these flash drives even worth their hassle, or is it just me? SIGH…

Okay, Get your mind out of the gutter; this blog isn’t about sex. I just wanted to talk about a little application I found that I think is absolutely amazing. Chances are pretty good that you’ve downloaded videos from the web at least a few times. Tell me. Have you ever seen your video player tell you that it can’t display the video because I codec wasn’t found? I think that it’s so wonderful that the program knows what codec it needs, but the programmer didn’t think it was necessary to tell the user which codec it couldn’t find. So as a user your stuck trying to figure it out on your own…. Well not any more. This is the GSpot application. It tells you what video and audio codec you the video file uses and whether or not you have it installed. So lets say for example, you get a file from a friend’s digital camera. You go to play it and you get the error. Now launch GSpot and open the file in GSpot. It will now say, for example, Video codec MJPG. Status Not present. Now all you need to do is surf the web for a free MJPG codec. Simple huh?

Best of all … GSpot is Free… You can get it here.

I’m posting this from outside using my new Palm Zire 72s w/wifi! as luck would have it, I locked myself out of The house and with pda in hand, decided to tryout the wifi

I really like the Zire. Like my Clie, the Zira has a camera. the screen isclearer and the stylus has nicer weight. 1t appears that battery life isn’t as good though.

Anyway, I’ve tested the pda wifi now, so MERRY CHRISTMAS All
the Pickle
p.s. goin’ wardriving……….
..

For those of you who listen to my podcast, know that I’ve been following the details on the “Scandal” (for lack of a better word) Sony Copy Protected CDs containing the XCP rootkit. These CDs were only supposed to be distributed in the USA, although there’s been reports of numerous infections in the UK and other places.

The BBC News website as well as others indicated that Sony announced that they are recalling titles with the XCP copy protect rootkit, existing copies off store shelves. Sony released a tool that removes the rootkit from computers, however there’ve been problems with this, so there’s also rumor that Sony may be offering a swap for customers that already own a copy of the CD with the rootkit.

There are 20 CD titles known to contain the rootkit; they are:

1. Trey Anastasio – Shine
2. Celine Dion – On ne Change Pas
3. Neil Diamond – 12 Songs
4. Our Lady Peace – Healthy in Paranoid Times
5. Chris Botti – To Love Again
6. Van Zant – Get Right with the Man
7. Switchfoot – Nothing is Sound
8. The Coral – The Invisible Invasion
9. Acceptance – Phantoms
10. Susie Suh – Susie Suh
11. Amerie – Touch
12. Life of Agony – Broken Valley
13. Horace Silver Quintet – Silver’s Blue
14. Gerry Mulligan – Jeru
15. Dexter Gordon – Manhattan Symphonie
16. The Bad Plus – Suspicious Activity
17. The Dead 60s – The Dead 60s
18. Dion – The Essential Dion
19. Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten
20. Ricky Martin – LifeIf you own one of these CDs, and would like a swap. Please call your local retailer, and inquire about a replacement.
    
    

Not too long ago I saw a TV show on Internet Predators. The show talked about young kids that were role playing as well; a 12 year old girl claimed she was an adult and was having an online affair with an adult. This isn’t the only senario. There’s also cyber-bullying and other types of harrassment. This problem is now surpassing the Internet; they are spreading to Text/Picture/Video Messaging on mobile phones because they are so accessible. I am concentrating on the Internet in this post.

So you have a kid on the Internet; what can you do to protect yourself? Chances are that if your kid is in adolescent age, he/she will most likely want privacy at the pc. This isn’t neccesarily a bad thing, but if the pc is is in another room, you can’t watch what the kids are doing.

Worst part is that Internet chatting is heavy into the Lingo and Leetz.

Lingo slang is used by online chatters. is different than Leetz as it’s mostly abbreviations or acronyms. Did you know what these mean?

• LOL – Laughing Out Loud
• LMAO – Laughing My Ass Off
• BRB – Be Right Back
• NP – No Problem
• TTFN – Ta ta for now
• IMHO – In My Humble Opinion

Those were simple harmless ones…. but what about seeing ones that could be less innocent?

• ASL – Age, Sex, Location. – can be innocent, but this is used by predators too.
• NIFOC – Naked (Nude) in Front of Computer
• POS – Parent over Shoulder
• *K* – Kiss
• IWSN – I Want Sex Now

Leetz means Elite speak. It’s common amounst hackers and hacker wanna-bes. Just because a kid is using leetz, doesn’t mean they’re up to no good. but wouldn’t it be nice to understand this so you know what your kids are saying? You may use leetz at the office with out knowing it. Leets is when you replace letters with other characters. For example, a guy I play online with on Xbox is named Spartan Elite but he spells it 5par7an 3L173. The 5 replaces the S, the 7’s replace T’s and the 1 replaced the I. Common is also replacing s with z, and replacing F with ph

Here are a couple example

• D00d – Dude
• kewl – cool
• k1ck A$$ – Kick Ass

There’s lots of good website out there for figuring out this stuff. Here are the ones I like.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/kidtalk.mspx - Microsoft’s Primer

http://www.netlingo.com/ – has an online dictionary

http://www.teenangels.org – They have a program called Teen Angels Chat translator

We’ve all heard of these terms even if some of us may not know what they all mean.

• Trojans
• Spyware
• Malware
• HiJacks
• BHO (Browser Help object)

Whether you know what all these terms or not isn’t important. The important thing you know is that they’re all BAD news. You’ve done your homework, I know you have. You’ve got a spyware cleaner, maybe even two; antivirus software is always watching your PC’s health and you’ve got Ad-Aware “just incase.

This is all great news. But there’s one common demoninator here. In all cases your “Protection” is really a “remedy”. Much like a Flu shot, you’ve given your PCs Immune system a boost, but all these tools are designed to clean your PC after the evil buggers have arrived on your PC.

What if there was a way to prevent the crap from even hitting your computer in the first place? It may sound like Eutopia, but there is a very simple way you can limit your PCs exposure to these parasites on the internet.

Enter the HOSTS File.

The hosts file is a text file on every Windows® computer. This file has a mapping of host names to IP addresses. This overrides the DNS Server you normally use when connected to the Internet. Essentially Hosts Files are used if you want to connect to another computer with a name rather than a number. For example, you may have a home network and the other pc could be at 192.168.1.2 but you want to connect to it using the name “KidsPC” you can put this in the HOSTS file of your computer and then you can reference the Kids PC by the Name “KidsPC” rather than the number. Infact some viruses in the past have modified this file to prevent users from browsing to antivirus websites.

Okay. Now that you know what the HOSTS file is. What can you do to protect yourself? So. If you had a list of all the websites out there that propigate parasites you could override the ability for your PC to access these websites by adding fake IP addresses for each Hostname.

There’s one very important IP address to know. Luckly it’s also very easy to remember. 127.0.0.1 This IP address is “Home” or the local computer. Infact your computer will have 1 entry in the HOSTS file. this entry is:

• 127.0.0.1 localhost

This means that your computer is known as localhost. You can define any website as 127.0.0.1 in your hosts file and this will prevent browsing to that website. (parents, this is a simpleway to block your kids from going to certain sites too.)

So How Do I Know What Sites to Put in the HOSTS File?

Here’s the easy part. Somebody’s done this for you. All you need to do is download the hosts file from MVPs.org Website. Then either replace your hosts file with the one from MVPs.org or if you’ve tweaked your hosts file, add the mappings from their hosts file to yours.

Google Sat Maps! Photo of my parent’s place,
originally uploaded by GermanPickle.

Google’s done it again! Google maps now has a Satellite mapping option. These pictures are full color and appear to be fairly recent as Winnipeg’s Riverfront Drive and the round-a-bouts are on the maps. The MTS Centre is on the map too. The details vary depending on where you zoom in. I guess the more remote areas are updated less frequently also.

This is a free service (so far) and most impressive, One day I bet GPS software will have these kinds of maps standard.

The only thing I noticed so far, is that I couldn’t pin point according to Co-ordinates. That may have been user error, or maybe it’ll be a possibility in the future. For now, Mapquest is history.

See if you can see your home. go to http://maps.google.com

This morning Bruce was working on some stuff on our PVCS server here at work. While running a file compare on several files he checked out of PVCS he noticed that the Modified Time on those files he checked out onto the Windows XP were different from the exact same files checked out onto the Novell Network. The time difference was exactly one hour.

What we determined is that Windows will adjust the time in accordance to it’s own time settings. If you change your time zone, your file modified timestamps will change. Therefore in Windows, Time is Relative. So can you even trust Date Related File Attributes? I don’t think so.

I did a little experiement. I took a text file that’s on my hard drive, and did the following. for sake of argument the file will be called index.html (modified Date: 05/14/2004 11:42am)

1. Changed Local windows setting from CST to CDT by advancing the month to April.
   - File Time advanced 1 hour to 12:43pm
2. Moved index.html to the LAN where windows can’t control the date paramenters.
3. Changed Local Windows time back to CST by setting month back to March
4. Moved index.html back to my hard drive.
   - File Time stayed at 12:43pm
5. Changed Local windows setting from CST to CDT by advancing the month to April.
   - File Time advanced 1 hour to 1:43pm
6. Moved index.html to the LAN where windows can’t control the date paramenters.
7. Changed Local Windows time back to CST by setting month back to March
8. Moved index.html back to my hard drive.
   - File Time stayed at 1:43pm
9. Changed local time to (GMT+2:00 Cairo)
   - File Date/ Time ajusted to 05/19/2004 6:43AM
10. Moved index.html to the LAN where windows can’t control the date paramenters.
11. Changed Local Windows time back to cst and Central Time
12. Moved index.html back to my hard drive.
    - File Date/ Time stayed at 05/19/2004 6:43AM

I understand why this happens. If time’s relative and I save this blog at 12:05PM it’s really 1:05PM in Toronto. Also a File I changed in June of 2004 may have been changed at 11:30am but the fact that it’s now Standard time I really did this at 10:30am in relation to the current time structure. To prevent people from doing needless math, Microsoft decides to “Fix” this for you. This can cause problems too.

In the past there have been many incidents regarding Daylight Savings Time changes. My issue isn’t that Microsoft does this, (I haven’t decided for sure yet.) my real issue is that Billy boy must think that EVERY computer out there is running Windows® and that all systems will accommodate this. This is either very optimistic, arrogant or merely an oversight. However, the excuse of, “Sorry Prof. My essay is late because my printer broke and my Internet was down, but the file date proves I was done on time.” doesn’t hold water anymore.