Beyond

A beta version of Windows 7 is out on BitTorrent.

You can get a copy and run it before you’re supposed to - but it’s illegal; and if you live in the UK, or possibly some other countries in Europe, you’ll be aware that certain ISPs are watching you.

It might be a mistake to download it, because it’s not possible to apply security updates to the bootleg version. That includes the recent "out of band" update for a seriously critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer.

The build which was leaked was a daily build for the beta, probably only for the development purposes of Microsoft staff. It wasn’t supposed to be leaked; and those who do have legal access to it have access to a proper beta version which may include the fix.  Microsoft has no reason to release a patch for this version; after all it’s not supposed to be in the wild. If you download this version you are risking your online safety.

British Telecommunications (BT) appear to have a good and fairly reliable standard of service with respect to their technology and technological services; such as internet, telephone, and the other technologies that they cover. I find that it’s pretty solid, made of sturdy stuff, and things rarely go wrong.

When they do go wrong, though, the flaws start to show. I’ve mentioned this a few times before, and I feel that it’s a subject that I should cover again, as despite my earlier posts, as well as the public’s experiences with their appalling customer-services regarding their foreign call-centres, combined with my reporting them for dodgy advertising practices and awful customer relations practices, nothing seems to have changed: They just nonchalantly carry on regardless.

Whenever I ring BT for whatever reason I get stress. They usually pass me around departments; each one of which interrogates me with the same stet spiel before passing me on to the next. Most are in India and I have to say everything in triplicate before they understand me anyway. As a bonus they appear to have been trained to think that no BT customer is intelligent enough to use a word of more than 2 syllables or to have any idea whatsoever of using a computer. When I do finally get through to the right department, I usually find that I’m talking to a fairly young Indian girl with an extremely strong Indian accent who appears to think she knows everything there is to know about everything, talks down to me in a patronising manner - slowly as if I was retarded - avoiding using technical terms, and despite my indicating that I build computers and install software + have qualifications in analogue and digital electronics, treating me as if I was a technophobe with an IQ of 10. If I ask to talk to her supervisor it takes about 10 minutes to get her supervisor on the line after 5 minutes of requesting; only for the supervisor to read from the same script that was earlier read to me, and tell me that she can’t help me any further than she already has, but if I’d like to pursue the matter further I should ring another of BT’s trillions of departments, (Probably in a room next door, or at the back of the call-centre in India.) on such-and-such a number. (When I do I find that I’m told that I’m speaking to the wrong department, and after being transferred through another X departments - undergoing identification interrogation at each of them, I find I end up speaking to the same Indian girl who offers to put me on hold while she transfers me yet again; after which the line goes dead.

Right BT: I’ve had enough. - As have millions of others who’ve switched their telephone service and/or ISP to another provider.

- They’re crafty bleeders too: Every time I phone them to get a better deal from them, (I must admit that they can be bargained and bartered with, and that’s a good thing. - But they’ll only drop a certain amount: If you push them too far they’ll just end the call.) I end up signing a 12 or 18-month contract in order to get what I want. That means that I spend over half the time tied to them.

A bit more on bartering with BT: If you feel that you’re not getting a fair deal, and/or you know that you can get a better deal elsewhere as regards price; ring their sales department - Which is at least partially located in the UK, ask to speak to someone in authority, and tell them exactly why you think you’re not getting a good deal from them.

Don’t lie: They may be incompetent but they’re not stupid. If you lie they’ll just politely tell you that they are unable to help you and end the call. Be honest with them and they’ll hopefully be fair with you. I can almost guarantee that they’ll tie you into a contract; but don’t be put off by that: If you’re properly self-aware then you’ll be able to negotiate further deals whilst under contract on the basis that you renew your contract for a full-term.

Snide Ba—rds!

OK back to the point: BT; you are getting to a point where you are going to shoot yourself in the foot if you squeeze any harder: That thing which you’re squeezing has become a trigger which will lead to your eventual self-destruction in the present economic climate. Either get your act together or prepare to slowly and tortuously go under.

I feel that the only reason why anyone would use BT’s internet services is because they’re less fault-prone than anyone else’s: That’s the positive side to them. They work and they work properly 99.99% of the time. - However, aside from their abysmal PR efforts, BT are rather expensive, also they’re neither the fastest ISP in the UK, nor are they future-proofed at the present moment. In fact Virgin Media are beginning to appear a nicer and nicer alternative as time goes by.

Virgin Media aren’t quite as reliable as BT in my opinion: They have got a lot better in this respect though, and they continue to do so. To anyone in a cabled area who’s thinking of changing ISP; I suggest Virgin Media as one of the best options. As for those in a non-cabled area; I suggest Virgin Media or BT - BT being the most reliable of the two for now, as two of the best options; whereas Virgin Media will probably have more chance of being the better of the two in the future. The choice is yours out of the two.

There is a single lower-cost provider who I would recommend to the same, even in some cases to a greater, extent than either of these two, though. More on that further down.

Other ISPs?

Other ISPs? Well I’m not too bothered about most other ISPs as far as landline communications are concerned. Mobile communications are a different matter and are outside the scope of this article. Most other ISPs probably use BT or Virgin Media’s equipment to carry their data, and probably buy up spare capacity in wholesale amounts; hence their pricing policies being discounted in some way. When something goes wrong, though, they have to check their own equipment first -The delay caused at this point can be anything between immediately and eternally. Following that, if they can’t find a fault, they have to ask their providers to check if there are any faults on the carrier equipment, which is requested but usually goes to the back of the queue. Some parts of some cheaper networks have been known to be down for weeks at a time in the past. - If you pay peanuts you get the services of monkeys.

BUT…

There is one that is cheap-er than BT, but is pretty reliable: That being the Utility Warehouse, who actually own a percentage of the network that they use, in addition to purchasing spare-capacity from other carriers. - Which is why I advertise them on this site. A FTSE-listed company that can win an award from Which? magazine must be worth considering as an option. I’ll say no more; but why not click on the ad and find out more about them? They’re a UK-only service currently, so I hope I haven’t wasted your time if you live outside the UK.

If there’s anything you’d like to add, contradict, or express an opinion on, then please do comment.

Blogging: It’s another popular bandwagon; and it seems that everyone is trying to climb on it these days. Of course there’s only so much room; so those who don’t stay balanced and upright are going to end up falling off and left behind as the bandwagon moves onwards.

With so many millions of blogs online these days; a large percentage of them trying to generate some kind of profit for their owners, it’s starting to get, shall we say "crowded" out there. Many bloggers are complete rookies; first-timers who are just getting their feet wet in the blogosphere. - People who may be being hit by the current economic climate and who have turned to blogging to make a little extra perhaps; or possibly full-time newbie-bloggers who are hoping to make their total income from blogging.

The unfortunate thing is that not all are going to make it: The laws of probability state that there must be losers for there to be winners.

The fortunate thing is that there are those who already have the necessary experience, and who have been watching the scene unfold and the changes taking place in the blogosphere over the last few years.

Two such people are Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick: These two experienced bloggers are quite successful in their field,

and have been observing the blogosphere changing with times and trends. They have teamed up to share their knowledge and expertise with the less-experienced and even the currently operative bloggers today.

They have put together the becomeablogger course; a course which takes you through the very basics, like initially setting up your WordPress blog, to optimising, monetising, and correctly commercialising your blog in the light of current internet-marketing trends, in order that you can make it a profitable operation whilst at the same time making it interesting and readable. - Generating enough traffic to make it a viable commercial and social knowledge-base, so that it not only pays for itself but it actually generates revenue from its operation.

The internet is changing; if you didn’t realise it already. The old ways of operating now have limited, if any, success. As a result of this, those who weren’t able to evolve are falling by the wayside. Yaro and Gideon have kept their fingers on the pulse and have adapted their strategies accordingly: In this course they’ll show you how to blog successfully in today’s online marketplace.

There is a mass of material you should read if you’re new to the blogging scene, and a lot of it is absolutely free of charge at Yaro and Gideon’s site. The real McCoy though - the bit that puts the meat on the bones and provides you with everything you’ll need to be a regular successful blogger who makes an income from their blogging activity, is contained within the becomeablogger tutorials.

That’s enough rabbit from me: Click on the ad below and grab yourself some free samples so that you can see for yourself that they know what they’re on about. You’d be crazy not to.

Microsoft have issued a patch to cure the recent vulnerability issue in all versions of Internet Explorer. They have been rolling it out via Windows Update and Microsoft Update; however some computers may still not have received it yet.

(I state this since at time of writing one of my computers received the patch around midnight GMT, while I have just browsed to Microsoft Update to install it on the other one at 03:30 GMT.)

The patch is MS08-078: Security update for Internet Explorer, and is referenced in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as KB960714. There are several versions available, detailed here. Automatic Updates should deliver the patch to your computer. If you have Automatic Updates switched off, or you don’t receive the update as expected, you should go to http://update.microsoft.com or http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com using Internet Explorer to do so. (Other browsers will not work at these links.) It will be necessary to restart your computer after applying the patch.

If you are unsure whether or not your computer has been updated you should check your update history at one of the links above.

Internet Explorer will be safe again once the patch is applied; but if you’ve downloaded Firefox or another alternative browser and like it, then my advice would be to stick with it. It is nevertheless safe to start using Internet Explorer again following the installation of this patch.

Malware writers have started Christmas early this year (2008): A backdoor trojan used in malicious spam campaigns is linked to from a bogus animated electronic Christmas card from postcards.org . When activated, the file allows hackers to access the machine’s resources via IRC.

This campaign has been around since November, and the malware writers are well in tune with the current economic situation. E-card sites are promoting e-cards as a cheap environmentally-friendly alternative to paper and card.

As the trojan installs the Christmas jollity continues with a picture of a Christmas tree. How coy.

Your computer is being targeted in many different ways these days, especially if you’re running Windows; and users should be vigilant and more careful than ever about what they click on. The best way to be is, if you even suspect it just that tiny bit, don’t click on it. Delete it instead - Don’t let curiosity kill the cat - or your computer either come to that.

Open=Source takes one in the eye as Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.B  secretly works as a Firefox plugin and steals bank login details on any of 103 domains belonging to mainly non-US banks. BitDefender identifies ChromeInject as “…the first malware that targets Firefox.”

Fortunately the infection rate thusfar is low; but there’s always a chance of this type of thing escalating. The false plugin works by running a JavaScript and a Windows executable file: Seemingly this trojan only affects Firefox running in Windows; Linux and Mac are most likely safe, at least from this version of this trojan. How long this will be the case is anyone’s guess.

Is this the start of a long-running malware campaign against Firefox. Will a plethora of variations of this trojan be targeted at Firefox by the malware writers? Judging by previous form I would expect that to be the case. What would you suggest? Do you agree with me, or do you think that this is just a one-off?

Mozilla are getting ready to produce a third beta release of Firefox 3.1. Are all these beta releases really necessary though? Mozilla say yes; and they’ll be subjecting their new baby to at least 1 more before a final release candidate is produced:

Although it’s in essence just another minor release; there are a number of new features in 3.1, such as the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine as well as a privacy mode. Mozilla want to fully iron out the bugs by means of beta-testing before committing to release candidate phase. Microsoft take note.

Do you think they’ll still release as scheduled; or do you envisage there being further issues that could easily delay the release?

Microblogging service Twitter used to allow users worldwide to update their status via free SMS from their mobile phones. In August of this year, 2008, the available 250 free SMS updates were withdrawn from European countries and Australia due to the greed of the mobile-phone companies causing Twitter to be unable to strike a reasonable-priced deal with them in order to subsidise these free SMS updates.

Three months later in November 2008 the same fate has befallen Canadian users, once again due to the greed of the service providers.

Writing for Venture Beat; M G Siegler expresses disgust at AT&T’s charging another $15 a month for conveying such a tiny amount of data.

Like Siegler; I don’t blame Twitter: it’s the greedy mobile operators that are slowly choking Twitter who should bear the brunt of any anger.

When India becomes Twitterless as far as mobile phones are concerned; will the US eventually follow suit and Twitter’s free SMS service be a thing of the past? Will this be a state-by-state shutdown or a nationwide outage? How will this affect the many Twittereers and Twitteresses in the USA who rely on SMS to tweet?

The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that 42.3% of broadband connections are slower than 2Mb/sec.

Last year, telecoms regulator Ofcom was claiming that "the average headline speed has doubled in a year to reach 4.6Mb/sec". That’s the headline speed; the fastest it peaks at. In reality the average speeds are much slower. - I myself have known my broadband connection to drop below 2Mb/s on rare occasions, yet my average speed is 3.5Mb/s. - It’s supposed to be 8Mb/s, and I don’t live miles from the exchange in some far-flung corner of the British countryside in the middle of nowhere.

The ONS figures could be taken to imply that average speed figures are being heavily weighted by  truly high-speed connections, such as the 24Mb/sec ADSL2+ broadband offered by ISPs with Local Loop Unbundled services. These decent connections amount to only a small percentage of UK broadband connections.

"The proportion of broadband customers unaware of their connection speeds has continued to grow - 55% were unaware of their connection speed (actual speed)." Claimed a separate report issued 25/11/2008 by Ofcom, whose Consumer Satisfaction report also claimed that almost 20% of broadband customers were unhappy with the speed of their connection.

This is a general trend amongst British businesses these days: Give as little service for as much money as is possible, and rip the customer off in as many ways as can be accomplished without the customer realising it. Meanwhile their workforces use a similar principle in doing as little work as possible for as much money as possible, ripping their bosses off too if at all possible.

This is rip-off Britain; and the trend has caught on countrywide. Something has to change; this greedy moneygrabbing culture can’t continue without severe consequences. I can see how it started; looking back at the Thatcher years of the 1980s, where the divide between rich and poor became pronounced as the yuppie-culture fed off the poverty-stricken; driving them into deeper poverty whilst those with the upper hand continued to get fat from the losses of those that they exploited.

Not that much has changed today either…But that’s another story.

Back on-topic; and the ONS figures show that the number of fixed-line broadband connections has fallen by 0.4% of late; probably due to the growing number of mobile broadband connections contributing to the decline of their fixed-line counterparts. If you’re on the move all day then what’s the point of only having a connection at home?

Do you agree with my "rip-off Britain" synopsis? (it’s not actually my original idea, but a widely-held view which I am fully in agreement with.) More to the point; do you think that UK broadband speeds suck, and that something should be done about it? After all it’s the British citizen who’s paying for it; yet those taking the money with glee are promising one thing and giving less than half of what they promised in a lot of cases.

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Last month; October 2008, I reported on BT’s plans to create its own fibre-optic network in the UK, starting with Muswell Hill, London, and also Whitchurch, South Wales, (Not Whitchurch in Hampshire.) at a total cost of some 1.5 billion. Short-sighted shareholders, however have basically vetoed those plans for the time being. The shareholders expressed concerns about spending that much money in the current economic climate.

Chief executive Ian Livingston was better foresighted, and said that he still believes that BT should go ahead and make the investment, which he initially announced not long after becoming chief executive. Although he echoed the shareholders’ concerns, there appears little point in cutting back on investment, job creation, resources, and investment, simply because the media have decided that everything financial is doom and gloom. All that will do is aid the recession to deepen, and amplify its effect upon the company in question.

“‘But we need to have the environment in which our shareholders feel there is a good chance of us making a return,” Said Livingston. “If we cannot have that environment this is not the time to be taking on sure-fire losses.”

Also, last week, BT announced that it plans to lay off 4,000 of its own staff and also 6,000 contractors, in order to reduce operating costs by £1.25 billion.

That seems a rather silly move to my mind; but in the light of that move it can now fund all but 250 million for the above project. - It will not do so, however. - So where does the money end up? Probably it appears on the end-of-year profits so that the BT bosses can award themselves another pay-rise as a reward for increased productivity under "detrimental economic conditions": I wouldn’t be at all surprised; the greedy ba—-ds!

On October 10th 2008 I stated the following:

"In general I think that most computer users are too lax don’t take security seriously enough.

I am fairly certain that the number of machines that are still unprotected by any kind of firewall is fairly big.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines unprotected by any kind of anti-virus and anti-spyware software is quite high: Higher than you’d imagine.

I am fairly certain that the number of people who have anti-virus and anti-virus software installed, but whose databases have never been updated is quite colossal.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines that have not once taken any update to or Windows components is probably in the twenties.

I am also fairly certain that there are a number of people who’ll click on links or open attachments from unknown sources without giving it a second thought."

A new survey by the UK Government’s Get Safe Online Campaign allows me to put some actual figures to those statements:-

Overall almost half of UK internet users fail to keep their security software up-to-date.

48% do not update their anti-virus software frequently enough to ensure it remains effective.

47% do not have website authentication software to protect against phishing attacks.

23% do not have any protection against spyware.

As a result cybercrime is on the increase, especially phishing, according to the campaign.

23% of those people surveyed said that they or someone they knew was the victim of a phishing attack this year, 2008. In 2007 the figure was only 8%.

According to Tony Neate, managing director of Get Safe Online: “If internet users invest a relatively small amount of time and money in ensuring they are fully protected and up-to-date, the risk of such financial loss is almost negligible.”

‘Typical couldn’t-care-less "Der I’m a Brit so I don’t need none ov this crap" attitude. What is wrong with people? Are they really so unthinking and irresponsible in the UK? Unfortunately the figures seem to speak for themselves. I’m still getting visitors to this blog who are using Windows ME and 9x. Read this article - I wasn’t joking; these operating systems are a security risk, even if you do apply all the patches available.

"Oh who’d want to bother hacking Windows 9x? It’s outdated and Microsoft don’t have anything to lose ." Bad answer; you’re missing the point: The attacks aren’t so much virus and other malware attacks by criminal Linux zealots designed to discredit Microsoft these days. They are designed to rip off the public in any way possible, to steal money from you and me. Criminals launch malware designed to target old Microsoft operating systems still in use which aren’t patched against the latest threats. Your old relic machine running Windows ME/9x is probably being used right now as a malware relay and/or a remote server under the control of a criminal gang; and I also bet you that those criminals have any of your security details left on that computer too.

There’s no need to buy a new computer necessarily: If your machine will run Windows XP, or Ubuntu Linux even if you can’t afford a second-hand copy of XP, then all you need do is change the operating system. I’ll write an article at some point on this.

Please please please peoples; for the sake of all internet users, follow these simple rules: Yes it’ll take a little extra time; but you and everybody else will reap the rewards of doing so:-

1. Ensure that you have antivirus software installed and that it is updated daily. If you can’t or don’t want to pay for it then download Avast! Free Edition. Avast free edition includes antispyware. It updates automatically and will inform you audibly when it has done so. (Male American voice: Unchangeable.)

2. Get website authentication software. (Microsoft have this built into Internet Explorer 7 and above.)

3. Get spyware protection. Avast! free antivirus has built-in spyware protection. Some antivirus programs do not. (If your antivirus program is more than a year old it needs changing as it’s unable to detect or cope with current threats.)

I’ll be blunt here: If you can’t be bothered to stick to these simple rules then I hope you get scammed/robbed; after which you might just take some care to abide by them. If you can’t be bothered then you deserve anything and everything you get. Despite that I suggest you do the sensible thing and ensure that your online security is 100% - Before it’s too late for someone else; or more importantly before it’s too late for you.

ank

There’s a rumour going around on Twitter that Twitterank is no more than a rather clever phishing scam.

Twittereers and some Twitteresses world-wide have disclosed their details to discover their numerical rating for the purpose of massaging their egos. This colossal waste-of-time venture appears to be just another no-brainer Twitter App that is doomed. However there are suspicions that it may be more of a waste than at first thought.

Oliver Marks of ZD Net saw the following retweet on Twitter:-

"@t RT @brianoberkirch Twitterank is a vast conspiracy I created to steal all of ur passwords + shame Twitter into OAuthing. + make u look vain."

My advice, if you’ve got your Twitterank, is to look at this, read this, and then change your Twitter password - just to be on the safe side.

They will stop at nothing to get your personal details, bank details,, and as many other details as they can. They are out to get you and they will have the shirt off your back if they can.

Read Microsoft’s advice and don’t become another unfortunate scammed-statistic. Even if you get an official-looking email and are 99.99% sure that it’s genuine; all you need do is phone your bank or whoever it purports to be from to check that it really is the real McCoy.

There’s a very simple set of ten rules that you can apply to avoid waking up one day to find yourself up to your eyeballs in it - and the only escape is via un rue d’merde’:

• Microsoft and other reputable companies don’t ever send patches and updates by email.
• If your bank emails you requesting details after a "security alert",  merger, or anything else; phone up and check before you click or send anything.
• If you get email from someone you don’t know, or for someone else, with an attachment - delete it.
• If your computer’s been compromised, the only way that you can be 100% sure that it’s clean is to reformat and reinstall.
• The only thing cheap online Viagra makes hard is your financial recovery afterwards in many cases.
• If the spelling’s bad then the deal is commonly worse.
• If you unsubscribe from spam you’ll get a hundred times more spam.
• If you have suspicions they’re probably right.
• If the address (URL) of the page on which you’re just about to make a financial transaction doesn’t begin with https:// then don’t make the transaction.
• If it seems too good to be true then it’s probably bullsh*t.

Ignore the above at your peril.

Be safe online.

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Fire Your Computer Technician!

A computer technician spills the beans and makes available the knowledge he has charged clients hundreds in service fees for.

CLICK HERE

^Wrong Type of Spam^

A study carried out in early 2008 by computer scientists from University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD) reveals that spammers might not be on to such a good thing as was previously imagined. It also suggests that spammers may be vulnerable to attacks that make it more costly to send junk mail.

Despite the above statements it does suggest that a big-enough spamming operation can turn over a multi-million dollar profit nevertheless.

Spoof Spam

The team ran a fake-spamming operation as part of the Storm network, sending their own fake-spam through the tens of thousands of hijacked machines infiltrated by the Storm-worm from a number of proxy-bots that they created to act as conduits between the command and control system for Storm and the infected spam-relays. One of these fake-spam campaigns was a fake-pharmacy site which always returned an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details, but nevertheless registered the number of hits.

They sent out over 465,000,000 fake-spam emails; most of which contained links to the fake pharmacy site, the others mimicked the storm-worm’s self-spreading tactics.

Result?

"After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted," the researchers wrote.

That’s less than a 0.00001% response-rate - Well below the average of 2.15% reported by legitimate direct mail organisations.

"Taken together, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of $2,731.88—a bit over $100 a day for the measurement period," said the researchers.

Scaling this up to the full Storm network the researchers estimate that the controllers of the vast system are netting about $7,000 (£4,430) a day or more than $2m (£1.28m) per year.

Although these are good numbers and a sizable amount, it nevertheless suggests that spammers aren’t making as much capital from their operations as was previously estimated. 

The conclusion that the researchers arrived at was: "The profit margin for spam may be meager enough that spammers must be sensitive to the details of how their campaigns are run and are economically susceptible to new defences."

Challenge

Give me a first: Would any spammers like to break their silence and confirm or deny this? If you’re a genuine spammer you’ll be adept at spoofing your comment source and faking your email address so that you won’t get rumbled. (Pretend spammers need not answer this - even if they can hide their identity.)

What about you non-spammers; do you think the team’s findings are likely to be correct, or do you think that they, by an amazing chance, were left with a spurious result?

There are those in the geek community who say that Microsoft have seen every error report and there’s no point sending in error reports to them. As a consequence of this they switch error reporting off, advise others to do likewise, and no longer bother sending error reports to Microsoft.

Admittedly I was starting to formulate the same opinion lately: Fairly recently I had a computer - a self-build - that had started repeatedly encountering stop errors. My primary hard-disk had recently died, which’ll teach me not to use second-hand disks in computers that I build for myself. (To save on costs I’d bought a batch of few second-hand disks off eBay which I thought I’d use for experimentation and in prototype-builds at the time. Most of them were still stuck in unused prototypes etc that were stored in the junk cupboard, but one of them was lying around spare when I built this computer, so I used it as a primary disk and used the larger disk that I’d bought new and intended for purpose as an additional disk.) This caused a spate of stop errors, ending in the computer’s refusal to boot at all. Having replaced the faulty disk and reinstalled everything I assumed that the system would operate as normal. I was surprised when, a week later, I encountered another stop error, followed by another the next day, and the next…

Several days of fairly intensive tests showed that the component causing this problem was the floppy drive, which I replaced and the stop errors stopped. I had sent every error report to Microsoft, who each time informed me that the error was caused by a device or driver.

Very helpful: I checked every driver and updated if possible. I checked every device thoroughly; ending with the floppy drive which was faulty. All those hours could have been saved if Microsoft had been more specific about which device or driver had caused the errors.

I started to think that Microsoft were just deleting most/all error reports from Windows XP users: After all XP was now considered outdated by them, and it appeared that Microsoft were only interested in Vista. I didn’t switch error reporting off, neither did I get any more stop errors. - Until yesterday.

This time M$ reported that the stop error had been caused by malware in the form of spooldr.sys. I ran all the checks Microsoft suggested, but found nothing, and no spooldr.sys either. I’d had an identical report when my disk was dying- surely the new disk wasn’t on its way out too? Today I encountered another unexpected stop error. The error report went off to M$, and I was expecting them to say either it was caused by a device or driver, or by spooldr.sys: The former telling me that they couldn’t be bothered to be specific, the latter telling me that they didn’t have a clue.

I was extremely surprised to see the message that they returned on sending the error to them:-

"This problem is being researched"

"Thank you for submitting a problem report to Microsoft. At this time we are researching the cause of this problem."

So they are still interested in error reports regarding XP!

"Please continue to submit all Windows problem reports. This will ensure that when a solution is available, you will receive updated information."

Either way round; to my mind it’s a Microsoft fault. The other computer that I built for myself shortly before this one is a totally different model. (One from my "Exel" line of "Kustomised" computers, and which runs like a dream with only a single hiccup so far after a year plus.) The one in question is from my "INXPense" line of "Kustomised" computers; of which I’ve built quite a few, and none of which have been plagued with any unexplained issues. The component models currently incorporated in this computer have all been previously used in other INXPense computers which have all been shipped to customers and which as far as I am aware are still working perfectly today.

The only untested, "un-prototyped" shall we say, thing about this individual unique computer is the combination of components: The power supply and motherboard are standard and are used in all INXPense computers, as is the case and lower front panel, recessed and covered by a sliding flap. The IDE DVD-RW drive is of the type used in most INXPense computers. The graphics card ditto. The processor type as far as core and speed is concerned has been incorporated in one other INXPense computer. The identical Seagate SATA HDD has also been incorporated into one other INXPense computer, but as a secondary disk. Identical RAM with identical frequency of operation has been incorporated into a number of… All INXPense computers bar one are fitted with a floppy drive.

At some point in the future I’m going to try installing a different HDD, processor, and probably almost every other component too, until and if I can discover what is causing this latest issue, if it has anything to do with the way the machine is constructed, unless Microsoft beat me to it.

Yes, you’re right; I was going off topic somewhat. Microsoft have said in essence that they are interested in what went wrong, that they don’t know what went wrong, and that they want to try and work out the problem so that they can find a solution. They are interested in my error reports that I send in to them.

Perhaps they have seen 99% of error reports before, and maybe they do know what your particular problem is, despite their reply only being sketchy in nature. I suggest, though, that despite this Microsoft’s customers don’t switch automatic error reporting off and that they do continue to send error reports to Microsoft for their analysis. - Even if they have seen most error reports 1000 times or more before, what happened very recently to me proves that they maybe haven’t seen every conceivable error report, that they don’t have a cause and/or solution for every error, and that they may still be totally clueless as to some, possibly extremely rare errors, that can occur with even "outdated" operating systems.

Your thoughts? Please do comment.

Addendum: I eventually discovered that the fault was file-system corruption which was causing a mis-read of data and a subsequent BSOD, as well as an old outdated driver installed for the graphics card from an installation CD. It took a while to locate the f/s corruption, and the problem was initially pre-diagnosed by deduction. However the system works fine now.

As expected, malware dealers are attempting to capitalise on the results of the US Presidential Election: A spammed news message arrives in email with a link to a web-page that supposedly has a video of the event. Of course it claims to require a special viewer, said to be adobe_flash9.exe (MD5 47c86509a78dc1edb42f2964bea86306) and nags you to download it.

The viewer is not a viewer: It is rather Trojan-PSW:W32/Papras.CL, that hides itself by using a rootkit, steals all your personal details, and uploads them all to a server in Ukraine.

The link in the email takes you to this page: Note the download link for the "viewer".

• Some of the subject lines of the email include:

• USA Election 2008 Results

• Election Center 2008 - Election Results

• Obama’s Win Reshapes the Race

• Election 2008: Time lapse of U.S. counties

• The new President’s cabinet?

• Obama win preferred in world poll

• Can Obama win popular vote but lose election?

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While on the subject of Flash Player, there is a new version of Adobe Flash, version 10.0.12.36 which fixes a bug in previous versions.You should, of course, download it directly from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ rather than from any malware-dealer’s email.

New research data from Point Topic, which details profiles of broadband DSL and ADSL services worldwide, indicates that the number of new broadband lines added to the UK’s infrastructure between July to September was a clear 20 per cent below previous forecasts.

"To keep on track Britain needed to add 390,000 broadband lines in the July to September quarter, said Tim Johnson, chief analyst at Point Topic. "We estimate that the actual number was only 313,000. That’s 20% down on the target". Point Topic also estimates that Virgin Media may have gained another 60,000 cable modem customers at the expense of BT and other smaller alternative broadband ISPs, who actually lost around 70,000 customers during this period.

Local loop unbundling - where ISPs such as Carphone Warehouse, Utility Warehouse, and Sky install their own equipment in BT’s telephone exchanges - was found to be the main driver of continuing growth in broadband, adding 323,000 lines in the third quarter of 2008.

"By the end of 2009 there should be about 18.4 million broadband lines in Britain, 300,000 short of what was expected six months ago." Continued Johnson.

He predicts that this means that fewer people will switch from dial-up lines to broadband, and about 240,000 more homes will be without any kind of internet access by the end of 2009.

To my mind that is utterly diabolical: Nearly 1/4 million homes giving up internet access altogether! It underlines the tightfisted nature of the British consumer in general; slashing costs indiscriminately in the face of a shortage of beer-money or reserve cash for cosmetics, without a second thought for the effect on themselves caused from the denial of a principal technology. Of course this shortsighted approach is in the face of a financial assault by the money-grabbing profiteering UK ISPs who, as with most British business, will stop at nothing to rob the public of as much money as possible while at the same time delivering the minimum service that they can possibly get away with.

I honestly didn’t realise that there were so many people in the UK who still used dial-up! Why use dial-up? At the end of the day it costs more than a broadband connection, is far slower, and in some cases less reliable too.

I know that in America many people in far-flung reaches of the continent have no choice as there is as yet no broadband or cable service in their area. That’s possibly acceptable in such a huge country, at least temporarily so anyway. This is the UK though: This is a small group of overpopulated islands. Th4ere is no excuse whatsoever for there not to be a countrywide broadband service in the UK at this point in the 21st Century. If the powers that be would invest their profits rather than pocketing them, I’m quite sure that the task could be completed in a short time. The only thing standing in the way is British greed.

What do you think about this subject? Do you agree that the UK needs to pull its socks up, and fast?

November 1st is, surprisingly, the first day of the month (Not much gets past me!): Here are the percentages of users, out of a total numerous original visitors since July 2008, who are using a certain one of a number of various operating systems. (There is a reason why I’m presenting these figures, which will become evident further down.):-

(The percentages are rounded off to the nearest full 0.1 percentage point above the actual decimalised percentage points less than 0.1; which is why the total percentage figure adds up to a fraction just under 100%.)

24838 of my (original) visitors were using Windows: That’s approximately 92.5%.

1124 of my (origi