SteveWords

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Attack on Estonia!

Recently I was reading in Wired magazine about a digital attack on Estonia that basically brought the country’s internet to a halt. Literally thousands of computers from several parts of the world were sending garbage requests to servers in Estonia and overloading them. This continued for the better portion of a day until the ISP’s in Estonia blocked all requests to their servers from outside their country. This solved the problem temporarily, but it also cut Estonia off from the rest of the world.

What caused this to happen? In part the computer in your home if you have a Windows machine. It was determined that thousands of the computers sending the attack were in the USA. These computers were infected with a virus or spyware/malware that made the computers into “zombies” at the beck and call of their controllers. In this case the controllers were apparently in Russia. People in Russia were controlling your Windows computer from afar and using it to attack servers in Estonia. Macintosh computers are immune to these types of malware so all the attacking computers were infected “zombie” Windows PC’s.

This leads me to observe that something interesting has happened here that Wired magazine did not pick up on. It was only Microsoft Windows machines that participated in this attack. Not Macintosh, Linux, or any other operating system-just Windows! Windows computers are vulnerable to something like 300,000 different versions of malware. Some of this malware sits in your computer at home right now. It sits there waiting for the signal from someone from across the world to activate a program that lets them use your computer for their purposes.

If you have a Windows machine your computer has some type of malware on it. They all do. You don’t see it running in the background silently waiting for someone to activate it to do their bidding. The interesting thing is that a lot of companies will put malware in your computer without your knowledge. A good example of this is the secret rootkits that Sony installed on Windows machines when customers put Sony music CD’s into their machines to play them. This happened automatically when the CD was played on the computer. You had no choice in the matter-Sony conned you because you owned a computer that runs Windows! As long as you own a Windows computer you will have complicity in crimes that you had no knowledge of.

How do we solve this problem? Part of the solution is get a new computer that does not run Windows. Macintosh and Linux are two that are immune to Windows malware. Linux will install on your current Windows computer and run very well. Probably better than your Windows machine ever did! It runs a lot like Windows and very rarely crashes. It is also completely immune to Windows Malware! Linux is also free of cost and free of software keys. Software keys are those ridiculously long letter-number combinations that you have to enter to get a Windows program to run.

Another solution is to invest in an Apple Macintosh computer. Every Mac is made of quality parts, made to last a long time. Yes they cost a little bit more to own in the beginning, but you will rarely have to spend more on a Mac. They just run and run well. They are completely immune to Windows malware and they last 2-3 times longer than a Windows machine. During that time they will run well and be easy to use. A Mac has a user interface that is beautiful to look at and looks much better than the Windows Vista interface. When you connect something to a Mac it just runs-no drivers and CD installers to deal with to get it running. It just runs!

So the next time you sit in front of your Windows computer think a little. Do you support crime on the Internet? Or do you support something better and safer? The choice is yours! Leave comments for me!

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

If one life isn’t enough-try Second Life!

Remember Walter Mitty-the guy with a secret life?  Well you can have one too! It doesn’t necessarily have to be secret. But there is something that I have discovered. It is called Second Life. This is a highly addictive chat type game that will eat your time up! But it is way fun! In your Second Life you will have a new name and a little avatar that you can dress any way you like. You can then go on adventures and chat with and make new friends. I have several wonderful friends from such diverse places such as Florida, Texas, England, and Iceland. I have gotten to know these people very well through our chat. I have also learned a great deal about many different things through our conversations and have had great fun bantering and teasing each other. Second life is a huge world with everything in it that a real world has. You name it and it is there. There are thousands of people there for you to chat with.

If you want to have fun and like to chat with people from all over the world, Second life is worth checking out. Just ask for Sal Biedermann!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Do You See The Vista?

Miscosoft’s new successor to Windows XP is called Vista. I have been hearing a lot about Vista lately. If I used a PC would I buy Vista? Probably not. Here’s why. (Remember that I use a Mac to do most everything I do. My opinion might be slightly slanted-or refreshingly observant as a spectator, as I have no intentions of ever becoming a Windoze user in a regular basis, other than repairing them.)

1. Vista, from what I have learned is just a rehash of XP. Windows XP really has a lot of problems with malware and other issues like drivers, security and crashing. Will Vista be any better? Probably not if it is only a bloated XP.

2. Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make Vista so that you can’t use one copy on multiple computers. So much so that there will probably be millions of people making the change to Linux or Mac OSX. Windows is probably good only if it is free. Why pay for problems when you can get them for free? Linux is free and Ubuntu is a good choice to rid yourself of the Evil Empire. Although Linux is ready for corporate environments where everything is carefully controlled by fearful administrators, Linux in the home is not quite ready yet. It will be ready when we don’t have to use the command line to do basic tasks like install Flash into Firefox. Apple, with OSX is already there. OSX is based on Unix like Linux is, but the user interface is very good and everything is easy to install and uninstall. All this makes getting away from Windows easier every day!

3. Microsoft is cocky! McAfee and Norton as they are now won’t work in Vista. Even though I don’t use either, a whole lot of clueless people will be very lost without their old virus checkers. This will slow adoption considerably. Maybe M$ needs to realize that people do not change easily and will want Norton and McAfee to protect them. Even though there are other better free solutions the two giants still prevail. and will continue to. To make Vista really work and be a success, Vista needs to be more like Linux and Mac and be impervious to viruses.

4. Vista requires a very fast, heavy duty computer to run on. If you bought your Dell or HP cheapie computer at Wally World, most likely it won’t run Vista very well, even if it is only a year old. It won’t have have enough speed or memory or the special video card required to run Vista correctly. Buying a cheapie computer today will leave you unable to upgrade.

Microsoft, in my opinion is crusin’ for a brusin’. Mac and Linux are very much on it’s tail and gaining market share daily. In the server market Linux is king. In the graphics and creative market Mac is king. 40% of laptops sold today are Macs. The percentage of total machines in use is now about 10% Mac and growing every day. This leaves Microsoft in quite a position as their solution is still to try and be more Maclike. Why not just buy a Mac and solve the problem? It seems that the future belongs to the Unix-based machines, not to Windows.

What do you think? Leave me comments!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Nerd Note! Lightnin’ and your computer…

This is the time of the year when thunderstorms hit our area. Lightning is your computer’s worst enemy. So you have a surge protector in the power line. Yee-haw! Think about how big a lightning bolt is. See how big your surge protector is. Nuff said, eh? A surge protector helps for little surges, like when your refrigerator starts. A lightning bolt is humongeous.

How do you protect yourself? Easy! Just unplug everything when lightning is near. You can tell the approximate distance away of a strike by counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder sound. Each second is one mile away. If the strike is a couple of miles away you are relatively safe. Any closer and it’s unplug time. This also includes the computer, the monitor and all accessories. You also need to disconnect the modem or ethernet connection as lightning also destroys bunches of modems every year.

Also think about the other things in your home that are electronic. Your TV, clock radio, stereo, VCR, etc all need to be unplugged too. They are in the same position as your computer when it comes to surges, and could even start a fire and burn your house down!

If you are going to be gone you also might want to be disconnecting everything just in case!

Monday, August 14, 2006

Nerd Note!

Nerd Notes will be about computer use or repair issues.

First of all I should warn you that I do not consider myself to be a nerd or geek. I am that way in some ways, but computers are not my life. At the end of each day I shut everything off. I see no reason to waste electricity keeping something on when I am not using it. It just costs money that I don’t want to spend. I even go around after my son and turn stuff off that he leaves on. I probably turn off 2 or 3 times the stuff that I turn on! A geek leaves his computer stuff on all the time and computers are the main focus of his life. I have many, many other things in my life!

Should you turn your computer off or leave it on? My feeling is to turn it off when you are not using it. Some people have told me that turning a computer off and restarting it every day makes it die earlier. How many computers die from hardware failure? Practically none. Windoze needs regular restarts to work right. A Mac doesn’t, usually. I have never in all my years in computer repair seen a regularily maintained machine that was harmed by turning it off. Give your computer a rest and it will last longer and work better!

Category note. What this is about!

Beginning notes for catagory-about me and the way I think.

I need to explain where I come from in this category. The computer that I use everyday is a Macintosh. Most of these entries will be typed on my MacBook. I do everything from video editing to web page design to audio program creation on my Macs. I own several of them that I use everyday.

I also own several Windows PC machines. I have tried all the things that I use my Macs for on them. I have one Windows 2000 machine that I built just for video production. I use it for converting film to DVD. It does a passable job at this but it is a rather badly thought out program. It makes a DVD that works and looks OK, but it is hard to use and slow. I have been in computers and networking for over 20 years but I still have yet to get a decent video signal out of this machine, even though it has the best video card available in it.

The Macs on the other hand, with a Sony video converter connected by FireWire, put out a pristine video signal. There has never been any problems in this area. It just works and works very well. This is the way things generally work with a Mac.

I have been involved in computers for a long time now and have used Macintosh, Windows, Linux, Amiga, BSD, and a bunch of other operating systems over these years. When I say something, I don’t just blow wind. My decisions and opinions have been formed through experiance on these platforms. When someone tells you that they hate one operating system or another, just ask them how much they have actually used the system that they speak of in the last 5 years. If they are truthful with you, you will have a better idea of where they are coming from. Then make your opinion from this information.