Watchdog - Why you should TALK to your engineer

Something got me quire riled this week.  The BBC's "Watchdog" program did a piece on a Computer Support company that ripped off it's customers, and as part of the "undercover investigation", they nobbled a PC so that it could be fixed by an engineer.  So far, so good, until they showed how they nobbled the PC in the first place.

They chose to remove a jumper from a disk drive.

I take affront to this test for several reasons.  Firstly, it's not a "natural" fault that would occur during normal use, instead, it's a fault that should only occur if a) the user has been fitting hardware, or authorised someone else to fit hardware (like a new disk), or b) on the day the computer was built.  Secondly (and perhaps more damningly), the "user" (an actor in this case) was instructed to tell the engineer some cock and bull story about the machine getting slower and slower, before it stopped altogether - at no time mentioning that the case had been "opened".

I'm sorry Watchdog, but you're out of order.  I don't doubt that the company concerned were a bunch of cowboys (you just had to see the prices they were charging), but this evidence misleads the public.  Engineers rely on the information that the user gives to them to make an accurate diagnosis of the problem - in this case, your information was not just incorrect, but deliberately misleading.  A computer engineer is like a doctor - both have to make a diagnosis based on reported symptoms and tests.  It's like swallowing lots of laxatives, experiencing a bad case of Bombay Belly , and then complaining to the doctor that you feel unwell, you wee a lot, and then showing surprise when he says you might have Diabetes...  

This is what a disk crash looks like...

If you've ever wondered what goes on inside your hard disk, now's the time to find out.  I recently had to try and recover some data from a disk, but with no success.  I decided it might be useful to see what had happened, so I opened the disk up - by the way, these pictures are quite high res, so they may take some time to load, but it's worth it...

A bit of explanation is called for here.  Your data is magnetically stored on the platter (the large silver disk) by the read write head, which is moved over the surface of the disk by the arm.  In the next two pictures, you can see the circular scratch over the disk, caused when the head smashed into the platter...

End result?  Damaged head, damaged surface, loss of data.  Moral of the story?  ALWAYS back up your data to an extral hard drive, or dvd.

BRAAIIINNSSSS!

You've made the decision - it's time for a new computer.  Off you toddle to PC World, with your hard earned readies in your sweaty little mitts.  You walk in the door, walk straight over to the computers... 
...
...
"MY GOD - I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS GARBAGE!  DAMN YOU!  DAMN YOU ALL TO HELLLLLL!"
... and sink slowly to your knees, weeping for your lost innocence....


Have no fear!  It's honestly not all that bad, and I'm here to help you.  When buying a computer, the three most important things are processor, memory and disk space.  As I've dealt with the last two subjects before, I think it's time we looked at the biggy - Central Processor Units (CPU's, or processors) - the brain of the computer.  So, without further ado, here we go...

Intel & AMD are the main manufacturers of computer processors (known as CPU's) used in home/business computers (note: for the sake of this thread, I'm ignoring Apple - no offence iFans...)

Intel produces several ranges of CPU - in descending order of computing power (and age) we have...

i7 - most powerful and newest (up to 6 cores)
i5 (up to 4 cores)
i3 (2 cores)
Pentium (1-2 cores)
Celeron - least powerful and oldest. (1 core)

AMD have their own chip range....

FX - most powerful and newest
A-series
Phenom II
Athlon II
Sempron II - least powerful and oldest.

Cores: In computing terms, a "core" is one logical processor. Years ago (back in the 90's) all CPU's had one single core. As technology has progressed, the CPU designs have evolved and many now contain more than one logical processor in their physical CPU chip (For example, i7 CPU's can have 4 logical processors) - the advantage of this is "hyper threading" - that is, having the computer run more than one task simultaneously, with no performance hit (older CPU's can't do this).

Quad Core: A CPU with 4 logical processors
Dual Core: A CPU with 2 logical processors

The more logical processors, the better your computer can "potentially" multitask - this depends ENTIRELY on the operating system installed (Windows 7 for example)...

This, combined with the move to 64bit processing, means that computers these days are incredibly powerful beasts compared to 10 years ago...

For buyers, here are the following recommendations....

1. Buy an Intel based chip. There's nothing wrong with AMD chips (I've used lots of them in the past, and they're great), but Microsoft work hand-in-glove with Intel, which means that Windows will not only be better supported, but will run better too..

2. Buy the best processor you can afford - i.e If you have the choice between I3 and I5, choose I5 - you can always upgrade memory / disk space later...

ASP, Access, ODBC & 80020009, 80004005 errors

Just a quickie here for my own benefit.  When trying to get ASP pages working with VB Dlls that access MS ACCESS DB's, you may get 80020009 & 80004005 errors.  You've checked the permissions on the database folder, and the IUSR has the right access - yet, you still get the errors.

Check your date & time settings - especially if you've created this using a VM.  Make sure that your regional settings are as you expect.

PDF - the most AB-used file format on the planet...

In days of old, when knights were bold, before the O/S war,
You couldn't share you documents, and see them as before,
Then the Knight Adobe, presented PDF to the King,
Who rejoiced and said "At last!  An open documenty-thing!"
Alas Adobe cautioned his royal Haughtiness,
"It's read-only your Majesty - sorry for the mess..."

We all love PDF files.  In the world of information, the Portable Document Format means that everyone can read your document, on whatever device you wish - and the document will look the same on each device.  At the time of it's inception, PDF was perceived as the Holy Grail by many folk, and the format made Adobe a household name.

However, not all is rosy in the world of PDF, and the wise old silver surfer should be aware of all the pitfalls, misconceptions and stupidity that goes on within it, so here is a quick guide for those of you with you own teeth - especially if they're on the sideboard...

1.  PDF is open source
Yes and no.  PDF was created by Adobe, who released the details of the format to the IT community.  It's format is now controlled by the International Standards Organization (ISO)

2.  Once you've created a PDF for sharing, no one can edit it.
Wrong - ANY file format that can be read, can be re-created.  PDF's do contain secure features, but in essence, if you can read a PDF, then it's data can be extracted by a third party tool, and reused.

3.  All text in a PDF is true text - that is, it's a set of characters
Wrong - Any text you see in a PDF can be either character text, or a bitmap representation of text (a picture).

4.  PDF's contain either character text or bitmap pictures.
Wrong - they can contain vector images too...

5.  PDF's are small
WRONG!  The size of a PDF depends on what's in it.  A PDF containing a simple text character version of "War & Peace" is going to be MUCH smaller than a PDF created by scanning in a copy of "War & Peace" from a book (which will be mostly bitmaps).

6.  You NEED Adobe Acrobat Reader to read PDF files, and Adobe Acrobat to creater them...
Wrong - Foxit make a good replacement reader, and free utilities like Ghostscript or CutePDF can create them...

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Abuse of power - why Windows Security Fails...

Windows has one very nasty habit, that it has kept since the first days of it's creation. It's a habit so deadly, that Windows has never really been able to ditch it (despite several attempts), and rather like a junkie always needing one last desperate fix, Windows defends it's use, and will continue to use it, until the bitter end... I am of course, referring to default administrative rights.

Back in the old days of DOS (that's the operating system before windows - some of us over 40's are quite fond of it), networks existed only in business, and one user / one computer was the norm. In those days, the ideas of multiple users was more for large scale computing, such as big business or Universities. From these hot-beds came the idea of networks, multiple users on one machine, and user rights. In short, a human needed a user account to use a computer, and that account needed access rights to use files/printers/resources - all this, controlled by an Administrator: the one person deemed trustworthy enough to organize these resources on the User's behalf.

Microsoft had already created Windows - not as an Operating System at first, but as a Window Manager - that is, a nice, graphical way to view your files, edit notes etc. Windows was not the first, but it became the most popular, and in the way that popular things do, it created demand. There was now a demand for Windows to have network access to files, printers and resources, but Windows was a single user environment.

Enter "Windows for Workgroups" - Microsoft's answer to the network problem. Windows could now access network files, share network resources, and assign user rights - right? Wrong - Windows could assign network rights to other people / computers, but it was still a single user environment, and that user had FULL Administrator access to the computer. Microsoft got it right with Windows NT however - a version of Windows DESIGNED to be a computer server. It had users, printers, rights... but the USER computers that used it's resources were still running WFW - single user, full Administrative access to their own machine. The users HAD to have Administrative access to install printers, device drivers, anything that was actually useful. This problem would continue for a VERY long time...

In 1995, Microsoft tried again, and released Windows 95. 95 was Windows For WorkGroups with a new front end, as well as some improvements to the back end engine, but it was still essentially the same Windows / DOS combination that WFW was, and it shared the same single user philosophy. Yes, you could have separate user profiles, but each user was still "the Administrator". We also now had "Windows Update" - Microsoft could keep your computers up-t0-date for you, but they could only do it if the user had full access to the machine...

Then came Windows NT4, and NT4 Workstation. These were version of Windows designed for full network use, and actually had true user accounts practice. Now, only the Administrator could make system changes to the machine, and everyone else could be user's of lesser power... except that user's expected to be able to do things the way they were used to. People now had PC's running windows at home, and the "single user" experience was what they were used to. The user's also had to keep the machine up to date with the latest patches, to stop the growing virus threat, so the average user STILL had to have administrative access. Savvy network admins locked down the machines as best they could, but those who didn't know better still allowed the standard user's full Administrator access - is it any wonder that Windows is responsible for more viruses spreading than any other operating system?

In 98, we had Windows 98, and then Windows ME, and once again, Microsoft dropped the ball, allowing the Single User ethos to continue. 2000 brought Windows 2000 / Server 2000 and for the first time, Windows on both Client AND desktop had the notion of access rights. This should have been the turning point for Microsoft - their poor record of virus spreading and compromised security should have stopped here... but it didn't. In fact, it spread like wildfire. By default, new users in the client environment were MADE administrators!!! This madness carried on, and by the time of Windows XP, was commonplace.

Windows Vista tried to do something about it, by alerting the user when administrative access was required - but all the user had to do was click a button and say "ALLOW". Give a user a button that says "ALLOW", and they'll always press it...

Windows 7 went one step in the right direction, by getting rid of the Administrator account - but not before granting the first user set up FULL ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS...

In the UNIX/Linux world, we have the ROOT account. You can do anything with the root account, but it is never used as the primary account for users. This is the primary reason why UNIX/Linux computers are inherently safer than Windows ones.

Below are two links that you may find useful at some point - the first tell you ways you can manually remove spy ware from your computer (always useful knowledge), the second, explains why running as the Administrator is such a bad idea...



http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/how-to-clean-up-a-windows-spyware-infestation.html

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/the-windows-security-epidemic-dont-run-as-an-administrator.html

Running as Administrator is like Arnie armed to the teeth, walking through a Nursery class - a friendly fire incident waiting to happen...