As the IT manager where I work, in the past couple weeks, I've had to clean two computers with a 'scareware' infection, as well as a website for another company which had been hacked to host scareware. Since these types of malware seem to be on the rise, I sent a note to the employees of the company to warn them to be careful of these types of infections, and figured I'd repeat that here as a public service.

Scareware infections usually come from compromised websites. The site will load a page that looks very much like a legitimate antivirus program, with fake messages about the computer being infected or a virus trying to run, tricking users into installing the malware on their computer. Once infected, these programs are very difficult to uninstall, and will usually block legitimate antivirus software from working. The main purpose of these programs is to scare users into paying for software to clean the supposed virus infection, but some versions will also install viruses or password stealing malware.

If you're browsing the Internet, and you get what looks to be an antivirus program warning you of an infection, chances are that it's scareware. Do not trust any warnings about infected files on your computer unless you're sure they're coming from your already installed anti-virus software.

Here is more detailed information on these threats, including a slideshow with some known examples.

• http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373975,00.asp
  
• http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,3253,l%253D257810%2526a%253D257808%2526po%253D1,00.asp?p=n
  

Also, do not assume that these attacks only come from disreputable sites. The majority of sites with scareware are legitimate sites that have been hacked or which have security holes in advertising. These include large, popular sites such as Sony, so exercise caution at any website.
http://www.websense.com/securitylabs/docs/WSL_Report_1H08_FINAL.pdf

If you happen to use a Mac, keep in mind that criminals have expanded to targeting Macs as well.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216335/Fake_security_software_takes_aim_at_Mac_users

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Jun 6 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I finally upgraded my phone. I was extremely happy with my old phone when I first got it, but technology has advanced quite a bit in that time. So, my wife and I decided to get each other early Christmas presents. We'd already pretty much decided to stick with AT&T (I won't get into the details of that decision). So, my debate was over the iPhone 4 (which I've blogged about previously) or one of the Android phones. I played around with all of them at the store, and they seemed really close in capabilities, so I decided to just go with the one that most of my friends already had so that I could ask them how to use it - the iPhone.

So far, I really like it. It does a lot of things really well. I browse the web a lot more than I ever did on my old phone, and the games are more fun, too. But it's definitely not perfect. And, since this is my blog, it's my duty to gripe about it here. Granted, I knew about some of these issues before getting the phone, and some I would have realized if I'd given it a bit of thought, but they're things Apple could change to make the phone even better.

Hardware Issues

1. No Keyboard I really hate typing on the iPhone. Touch screen keyboards don't have any tactile feedback, so you have to go really slowly to make sure you position your fingers just right before pressing the screen (and the autocorrect is no help – it changes things I meant to type more often than it fixes mistakes). I don't know how easy it would be to make an iPhone available with a keyboard, but I'd definitely have bought that one if they'd offered it as an option.
2. No Stylus It's nice that Apple made the iPhone to be able to do so much with just your fingers, but every once in a while, fingers are just too bulky. Even if you're not going to include an actual stylus with the phone, at least make the screen sensitive to where I can use my own stylus (which was usually the back of my mechanical pencil with the Tilt).
3. No Phone Button This is a phone. Give me a button that I can press that takes me directly to the phone function without having to go through all the menus to get there, and that I can just tap again to call the last number dialed. Every phone I had before the iPhone did that. It's such a simple thing, and lets me dial my wife while I'm driving without having to take my eyes off the road. Another button to cycle through a quick-dial would be nice, too. For a cell phone that people will use while driving, you really should be able to dial common numbers by feel without having to look at the phone.
4. #*&! Proprietary Plug The universal serial bus was designed more than a decade ago. Practically every device I buy for my computer now hooks up through one of the standard USB plugs. Except the iPhone. Apparently, Apple thinks they're too good to follow industry standards. So if I ever lose the damn cable to hook up the phone to my computer, I have to go buy a new one from Apple, instead of just grabbing one of the regular USB cables I have lying around.

Software Issues

1. iTunes Practically every other device I own, I can just plug into my computer, and Windows treats it like a removeable drive, from camcorders to other phones to the Kindle. I use the standard Windows interface to just drag and drop files between the device and the computer. Apple forces me to use a bloated media player (that I don't use for anything else except occasionally buying music, then immediately burning it to a CD that I can rip with Media Player), that doesn't even run properly on my work computer because they don't support XP 64.
2. No Real WMA Support I have a pretty sizeable music collection - around 10 GB worth. I'm sure other people have more, but that's still a decent chunk out of my hard drive. Most of that is in wma format, from when I ripped my CD collection onto my computer. But the iPhone doesn't play wma files. iTunes can convert wma files to a format the phone can use, but that basically doubles the size of my music library on my hard drive. Plus, it means a second round of compression, resulting in a loss of quality. It shouldn’t be hard to play wma files – the CD player I got for my RX-7 seven years ago could do it.
3. No Auto-Complete when Dialing This is such a simple thing to do. My three year old Tilt did it. When I start dialing a number, the phone should give me a list of numbers that could be the one I'm dialing, sorted by how often I call them. It's so much quicker to just type in a couple numbers and then pick the autocomplete, than to go to the contacts folder and search for the person I want to call.
4. No Arrow Keys It's bad enough typing without a real keyboard, but Apple doesn't even provide arrow keys on the soft keyboard. Just imagine that you're well into a text message, when you notice a mistake back towards the beginning. Remember my complaint about not having a stylus? It's a pain to try to 'click' onto the right spot with a fingertip to put the cursor where you want to make the change (the magnifying glass makes it a little better, but it's still cumbersome). Four little arrow keys would make revising text so much easier.

Social Issues

1. Apple's just really not all that nice of a company. From their lack of charitable contributions, to their overreaction to leaks, to their censorship of apps, to their sneaky installation of software, Apple's a pretty sleazy company. Now, I know that a lot of companies are sleazy to some level - it just goes along with capitalism - but Apple seems particularly bad. Here are a few articles to give you an idea of just how bad.
   • 5 Reasons You Should Be Scared of Apple
   • Is Apple evil?
   • 5 Things Apple Must Do to Look Less Evil
   • Is Apple more evil than Microsoft?

So, after a few weeks with the phone, those are my biggest complaints. Maybe I'll find work-arounds for some of these issues as I use the phone more, and maybe I'll get more accustomed to things like the touch screen keyboard. On the other hand, I may find more things to complain about.

Remember, though, that this was a one sided review. I really do like the phone, and I use it a lot. However, when it comes time to upgrade again in another few years, I'm sure there will be a phone that fixes all these problems (well, at least the hardware and software issues), and that's the one I'll probably buy. If they're smart, Apple will make sure it's their's.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Jan 4 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you've tried to join a SBS 2003 domain with Windows 7, you may have run into the following error message:

To join the small business server domain you must be a member of the local administrators

The first thing you should try to do is to follow all steps listed in Microsoft Support:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926505

However, if you're like me, you'll still get the same error message, even though the account you're working from is an administrator account. What I found is that it turned out to be an easy fix. You just have to enable the built in Administrator account, and then run the setup wizard from that account.

There are several ways to enable the built in Administrator account. Here's one.

1. Run 'secpol.msc' from the Start menu.
2. Go to Local Policies -> Security Options
3. Double Click on 'Accounts: Administrator account status'
4. Click 'enabled'
5. Click OK

Once the Administrator account has been enabled, log off, then log back on as Administrator, and then try to run the client setup wizard from the server.

If you're still having problems after that, then you're worse off than I was, and I don't know how to help you.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Jul 13 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I use Excel a lot at work, and I use Solver pretty extensively for some calculations that almost have to be solved iteratively. One of those spreadsheets has grown pretty big, to the point where in Excel 2002 (Excel XP), it was taking around 35 seconds to solve a particular scenario.

When Excel 2007 came out, I thought I'd give it a try, but solver took forever to run. So, I decided to hold off on upgrading.

When Excel 2010 came out, I downloaded the beta version of it to give it a try. Again, solver took forever. The scenario that took 35 seconds to run in 2002 took 8 minutes and 7 seconds to run in 2010 - 13.9 times longer.

Well, this time I did a little more digging, and saw an option that I suspected might be giving it a problem. Under Options -> Advanced -> Formulas -> Enable multi-threaded calculation, I unchecked that checkbox. I ran solver again. Lo and behold it was down to 46 seconds - still slower than in 2002, but at least now it was something I could live with.

I went back and checked on a colleague's computer with Excel 2007, and even though I didn't time it this time around, disabling the multi-threaded calculation made a huge difference.

So, to anyone who's having a problem with Solver being mind numbingly slow, this may help you out.

As another side note for Office 2010, Microsoft apparently decided that they didn't want to support it for XP 64. For the beta version, at least, this isn't a problem. Just run the compatibility wizard (Start -> Run -> hcp://system/compatctr/compatmode.htm), and set the installation program to run under 'Microsoft Windows XP'.

Added 2010-10-01 Well, I've been using the officially released version of Excel 2010, and Solver has been working okay. One more thing to add - after you disable multi-threading in the options, exit out of Excel and start it back up again for the option change to take effect.

Added 2010-10-26 I've been working on a project where I've been having to use Solver quite a bit, and it's more buggy than I originally thought. First of all, there's a second option that needs to be disabled. In Options, under the Advanced tab, in the General category, look for 'Enable multi-threaded processing' (right below the 'Web Options...' button). Uncheck that option.

With those two options unchecked, Excel will run fine for a while. However, it periodically re-enables the 'Enable multi-threaded processing' (not calculating) on its own. Worse, it sometimes seems to re-enable it without showing the check box as checked. So, whenever you're getting ready to start a project for the day, go back and double check that 'Enable multi-threaded processing' is disabled. If it shows to be disabled but Excel still seems to be running slow, enable it, OK out of the options, then go back in and disable it. This is a pain, and very irritating that the program messes with options that I've already set, but at least it's been working for me for the past few weeks.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, May 18 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I often get asked about image file types – mostly which formats are best for which applications. So, I figured I’d type up something to give a quick explanation of how graphics are handled on computers, and how the different file types actually store their information. I've saved the whole thing as a pdf, for anyone who's interested. I know you could find more detailed explanations other places, but I think this is a good, short summary.

Explanation of Image File Types.pdf

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jan 15 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)