Beyond

..Fans inside computers; that is, not fanatical computer users.

If your fans aren’t working correctly inside your computer then you’ll likely have problems: The first and main one of those will probably be overheating:

There’s probably a "chassis fan" on the back of your computer: This fan sucks hot air out of the case. The hot air rises from the components, which get hot and heat the air around them. If heat builds up in the case then the components get even hotter. - The chassis fan helps to prevent this from happening.

You might also have an "intake fan" behind the front panel of your computer, or perhaps on the side panel of the case, or both. Some cases have a side-panel fan built-in when they’re manufactured. Intake fans assist the chassis fan by blowing air of room-temperature into the case, where it circulates around the components, picking up heat, and then being blown out again by the chassis fan(s).

These aren’t the most important fans though. A lower-powered computer can often work fairly well without any intake fan. Some can operate satisfactorily without a chassis fan, or both in some cases. (Though I recommend always having a chassis fan if at all possible.)

The most important fans, usually a necessity, are the "CPU fan", and the "PSU fan":

The CPU fan is usually located on top of, or adjacent to, the large heatsink attached to your computer’s CPU or processor. These two components are collectively known as the "CPU cooler". Their joint function is to prevent the processor from overheating. Without either you’ll be lucky if your computer gets a chance to boot up before its processor overheats. Most processors these days include a thermal shutdown mechanism, where if the processor chip gets too hot it senses this and shuts itself down so that it doesn’t "fry" itself.

If the fan on a CPU cooler fails then although the heatsink portion of the cooler continues to conduct heat away from the processor, once the heatsink reaches thermal equilibrium with the processor there’s nowhere for the heat to go, and the processor consequently shuts down or fries. The fan blows air onto the heatsink which removes the hot air from between its fins and thus most if not all of the heat dissipates into the air inside the case; which can then be evacuated from the case via the chassis fan.

The PSU fan is normally located within the computer’s power supply unit itself. This is normally located at the top of the case at the back. Its function is to draw coolant air from inside the computer’s case, across the internal components - which get very hot with all the wattages flowing through them, and to eject it out the back of the case into the atmosphere of the room. If it fails you might smell an acrid stench first as the PSU’s components begin to fry themselves (Maybe giving off smoke.); soon after which the power supply unit will almost definitely fail; possibly with associated fireworks.

In a few cases there may be another critical fan; that being the "chipset fan": The SiS chipset on the Shuttle SS21T motherboard, for instance, requires one. The chipset fan works on a similar principle to the CPU fan; though the availability of thermal shutdown might vary between chipsets. (?) You may also find a "GPU fan" attached to a large heatsink on your graphics card if you have one fitted: This also works in much the same way as a CPU fan.

We’ve now covered pretty much every type of fan you’ll find inside a computer, apart from the tiny fans inside HDD bays, perhaps. Now we know what they are and what they do, you’ll understand why they have to be maintained.

Air is full of dust and vapours. Lots of air passes through your computer. therefore we can assume that lots of dust and vapours also pass through your computer. It’s like a vacuum cleaner: It sucks in air and expels air, except that your computer’s not intended to remove the dist and dirt from the air. Nevertheless it does do that to a certain extent: Where does the dust and dirt it removes from the air end up? Mainly on and around the fans and between the fins of heatsinks.

That’s not good: A heatsink that has the air passage between its fins blocked by debris can’t work efficiently. A fan that’s spinning in dirt is slowed down by friction with the dirt and by the weight of dirt sticking to its blades due to the adhesive effect of accumulated condensed vapours. If a heatsink can’t work properly and the fan that’s supposed to be keeping it cool can’t spin its blades fast enough then heat builds up because it’s not being removed properly: Result = component(s) overheat and shutdown and/or fry.

Your computer itself might notice that it’s getting rather warm inside, and could display a message such as "System fan error: Check system fan." That’s probably a warning that something’s about to fry or to shut down. OK so which fan is the system fan? It’s not specific; but all or any of them could be at fault. The first ones to look at are the important fans; the CPU fan first. The exercise: Clean it. if necessary and you have the expertise, close down and unplug the computer, remove the entire CPU cooler unit from the processor, and clean it thoroughly. If possible separate the fan from the heatsink and clean the spaces between the fins. Clean the fan; its blades and its bearing. - A tiny 500ul drop of hi-grade lubricating oil may be of use when applied to the bearings of some fans such as sleeve-bearing fans, but usually a clean is all it needs.

If you’ve not removed a CPU cooler before I suggest that you ask someone who has to do it for you, as you’ll need to clean off and reapply the heat-conducting grease between the processor and the cooler on reassembly and refitting: If you don’t do this there is a good chance the processor will overheat due to insubstantial heat conduction to the cooler.

Having done that, clean the GPU fan if you have a graphics-card fitted, (It may be difficult to remove the heatsink, so just do your best at cleaning the fan without disassembling the graphics card.) and the chipset fan if one is fitted. I’d also recommend removing, cleaning, and refitting any intake and chassis fans at the same time. Also use compressed air to blow out any dust in the computer’s case and on the motherboard. You can buy cans of compressed air for this purpose from most computer retailers.

Whether or not your computer is warning you of a fan error; I suggest doing this operation at least every couple of years at least.

We haven’t attended to the PSU fan. This fan is probably inside the PSU itself. Trust me it’s not a good idea to open up a PSU, especially not long after it’s been in operation: There are potentially lethal charges stored within the capacitors inside; and even if you avoid the capacitors themselves there’s always the risk of a triggered electromotive-induction shock through discharging a capacitor through a low-resistance inductor. If you need to clean the PSU fan I suggest unless you know exactly what you’re doing, you get someone who does to do it for you, or maybe even replace the PSU if your existing unit is more than a few years old. (If it’s an old AT-model PSU then I suggest that you get a new computer: You’re probably suffering from geriatric computeritis. (Using an ancient substandard computer.))

Clean fans = healthy computer.

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?

There are times when things can be hard to write; and maybe this is one of them, but what the…

OK I’ve been somewhat of an anti-proponent of Apple up until now; and I have to say that I’m still having problems in my mind with what I term "the Steve Jobs modus operandi". I’ve borrowed incidental comments from others and expanded upon them, slating Apple and Steve Jobs in the process. I’ve even used the name "Jobsweh" as a derogatory name for Jobs, (A parody of the all-powerful and demanding Yahweh in the Bible.) which I picked up from a term used once in fun by Ded Ryzing in July of this year, 2008.

But it’s starting to get to my head, and after almost actually, without realising it, trolling in a comment I made on PC Mech earlier, which owner David Risley described in his follow-up comment as a "knee-jerk reaction every time he mentions the word "Apple"", I’m beginning to realise that all that’s happening is that I’m, without meaning to, starting a pointless one-woman-crusade against Apple; which is a ridiculous thing to be doing.

So what got me started on this foolhardy idea in the first place? Well during July I had a long conversation with a taxi-driver whose brother-in-law worked for Apple, and who had passed on some insider-information to him that Apple had rushed out the initial iPhone platform to get the iPhone to market ahead of the LG Viewty. I looked up the LG Viewty on the web and realised that it was a very nice cameraphone. From then onwards I became a proponent of the Viewty in opposition to the iPhone.

At the same time the world went iPhone mad: Suddenly everyone had an iPhone, but very few people owned a Viewty, despite the Viewty’s camera being far better than that of the iPhone. The thing was that the Viewty was a top-class camera-phone, but that’s all it was; a camera and a phone. It wasn’t a mobile personal computer like the iPhone.

At this point I was on the verge of admitting defeat and going with the flow; when suddenly up popped the news that Steve Jobs; control-freak extraordinaire, had a lever that would remotely block any chosen application on any selected customer’s iPhone. The iPhone suddenly became just like a Mac: The property of Steve Jobs, right down to which applications you could run on it. It was no longer a personal mobile computer as in your personal mobile computer; it was Steve Jobs’ personal mobile computer that you’d paid to lease on the proviso that he dictated what Apps you can and can’t run on it. It was yours to do what Jobsweh liked with, literally. It seemed like people were paying Apple for a computer that they were told was their property, but was under the remote control of Apple, with Steve Jobs at the controls. That; to my mind, is a con.

From that point onwards I’ve been expressing my distaste of Apple and Steve Jobs; which is starting to go overboard and is serving no useful purpose as such other than possibly to negatively affect my popularity of late.

Unfortunately it’s time for me to accept the fact: Apple, despite what I may think, and regardless of my opinion, have pulled it off, and they are a successful company, and growing too. Whatever I may think of the tactics of Steve Jobs; they work and they have made him a fortune: More than anything ethical or that I consider ethical has ever made for me. Do I need to redefine ethicality within my own mind? It may be so; maybe not? - I have to think a lot on that one.

Whatever the case; Apple have the iPhone as probably the most popular phone on the planet. Apple are the only company who managed to get everybody excited about their phone product: Think about it; no other mobile device has such a buzz associated with it. Why? The iPhone seems to just work the way people want it to. I don’t know if they envisage Steve Jobs at a remote-control booth somewhere in iWorld booming "I am the Almighty Jobsweh! Thou shalt not run that program upon thine iPhone that I have granted to thee." and pulling the lever. I have no idea whether they see it anything like I do but just put it out of their minds. Whatever they do or don’t do they buy iPhones - millions of them. - And now everyone is trying to make their latest mobile device look nd feel like an iPhone to the greatest extent that they can. Am I missing something here?

Why iPhones? Why not Blackberrys? Why not Sony Eriksson z750i like I have? Why not a Windows Mobile-powered device like I have? Evidently the others seemingly don’t have what it takes. I love my z750i - It’s cute, it’s a cool girly flip-phone. I’m content with my Windows Mobile-powered device to a certain extent too; although it could be better. - But I heard something today which went down like a lead balloon with me: Microsoft are prepping the ancient IE6 to work with Windows Mobile: In itself that’s good news, the current browser I’m using is insubstantial. - BUT would you believe it - here’s the bad news - it’ll require a 500MHz processor to work properly! My device has a 201 MHz processor, 64MB RAM with 128MB flash RAM. Great! No wonder they’re not offering it as an update; millions of people will require a new device! Thanks Microsoft!

Will I be getting a new Microsoft Windows Mobile device? Will I fsck. I’m getting an iPhone next: Not right at the moment; but when I decide to upgrade, which might not be until a better model iPhone is released, I’m getting an iPhone. There you are all those who I’ve slated iPhone to. - Flame bait for you all.

I don’t know if it’s a wise move; I don’t know if I’ll regret it, but in for a penny, why the heck not: It seems to be the better of a bad bunch.

As time goes by I expect mobile devices to improve, and the future is anyone’s guess. Right now; if I can’t beat them - join them.

In the UK; VAT will drop from 17.5% to 15% from Monday. The cut in VAT is one of Chancellor Alistair Darling’s tactics to encourage UK consumers to start spending again.

I think it’s a joke, and that the UK government have given too little away to make any real difference. Why so little? Because the UK Government, just like UK businesses; are greedy, and they don’t want to impact a high-income source too much.

Had they dropped it to 10%, or even 12 1/2%, that would have made a difference; but the proposed miniscule reduction will have negligible if any effect.

(Don’t forget; we’ll be paying for this eventually with a 20% VAT rate: I give this particular prediction a 4/5 chance of becoming a reality within the next 5 years.

The next government; if it’s Labour, will realise that there just isn’t enough revenue from GDP, despite a partial recovery, to balance the books against the massive debt built up when today’s Labour government threw money at the recession in the hope that it would go away before the available coffers ran out. (It won’t, but the excessive spending will help to cushion the depression.) Up will go Income Tax in the higher rates band for people earning £150,000+, and National Insurance Contributions, by up to 2%: But the prominent rise will be in VAT; which will then be raised from the reset figure of 17.5% to 20%. That will leave some people up to 5.5% worse off in order to pay for the current governments current plans, in addition to an increased burden on an already well-overstretched NHS.

A Conservative government would also increase VAT to 20%, if it’s not already at 20% when they are elected, and make cuts in public services rather than increase taxes, although the National Insurance Contributions rise appears unavoidable at some point.

The first thing they’ll be considering is their own pockets, and then paying off the huge debt.)

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So let’s take a look at how the 2 1/2% reduction will affect you; the British computing/geek public:

Your "cutting-edge technology" computer from PC World (UK retail store.), with a dual-core processor, 2GB generic RAM, and a 500GB hard-drive (Hardly cutting-edge!) will drop by £12.50 from £499.99 to £487.49. The 5-year warranty that they nag you into buying will only be £341.25 compared to £350. At the end of the day, then, your "yesterday’s technology at today’s prices" cloned computer will cost you a total of £829.74 compared to £849.99. (Operating system included.)

If you were to buy an equivalent purpose-built computer from Kustom Komputa with a 1TB hard-drive and 2GB branded RAM, but with only the standard 1-year warranty other than for some components with a longer manufacturer’s warranty, you’d still be paying £487.49 compared to £499.99. (Operating system included.)

Yes, I suppose that was an advert for Kustom Komputa. Of course, if you’d rather; you could always build your own:

Your new 1TB hard-drive by itself will cost you about £1.60 less. 2GB DDR2 RAM will cost around 25p less. A new chassis-fan will cost less than 5p less…

Across the board, then, the savings are so small as to be academic. Even a £16,000 Porsche will retail at £15,600: That’s £400 the government won’t be getting its hands on; it’s only £1600 rather than £2000 the greedy parliament will have to add to their coffers, but I very much doubt in itself it’ll get anyone spending any more: People will just offset the miniscule saving against inflation so far this year.

Someone’s bound to say "PC World are the bees-knees: Without PC World there wouldn’t be computers. PC World are great value-for-money. Kustom Komputa must be utter crap if they only charge that much…" (Someone actually said that to me already in essence!) Each to their own. I won’t argue with an "expert". Please email me and I’ll happily sell you a Kustomised Computer with those specifications for over £800, just to make you happy.

Do you think 2.5% is enough to get the nation spending; or is it too little too late? Leave a comment below:

I couldn’t be arsed to hypelink this article as I normally do. Let it be an exercise in the reader learning to use Google.

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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When AMD have setbacks then it’s usually not a good sign for the chipmaker that’s currently struggling to stay anywhere near Intel and not lose any more ground to them. The news today is that AMD appear to have a setback, in that they’ve shelved development of the 45nm-based Fusion processor, putting its release date back to 2011, if they actually do develop it at all, from the original release schedule of 2010.

There are several ways of looking at this: The main one being ‘better late and working than early and a fiasco’, a fiasco as occurred with the initial release of the Phenom, which subsequently allowed Intel to surge ahead and lengthen their lead.

Right now, AMD are seemingly the underdogs by a huge margin: Intel are rolling in money and surging ahead, while AMD are in debt and still playing catchup after their Phenom farce: A development marketed with best intentions using a new core architecture technology that emptied their coffers whilst on development and when the release date came there was just that one bug that needed to be ironed out. Naturally, when Intel replied by stapling 2 dual-core dies together, upping the architecture, and selling it at an increased price compared to AMD’s offering, everybody bought Intel’s product without any bugs in it. AMD were left behind to pick up the pieces and try to fathom out what went wrong while Intel; loaded with the proceeds from their victory, developed better, faster, offerings.

AMD’s senior vice president Randy Allen said at today’s launch of AMD’s 45nm Shanghai-cored Opteron processor that it was "the best server processor on the planet". - A side swipe at Intel who had said that their new Core i7 is the ‘fastest processor on the planet’.

Fusion was originally scheduled for 2009, but now appears to have effectively been cancelled according to some commentators. If that is the case than that is a setback; because if Intel produce 32nm processors in 2009 then AMD have their work cut out for them and won’t be able to catch up until at least 2011 by all analyses.

AMD aren’t finished yet though; so don’t go writing them off just yet as they live to fight another day. Do you agree?

First-off let me state that this is not a how-to article: It’s an analytical article designed to prompt discussion, (If anybody can be bothered to comment.) on the subject.

In this Twenty-First Century I’ve tried pretty much everything regarding partitioning; and to be honest, I don’t see much point to it, other than if one is intending to run a dual-boot. (Linux and Windows installed on the same disk in different partitions, for example.) Even then I prefer to use a different physical drive for either operating system.

Partitioning was used primarily back in the early days of personal computers, when Windows and Mac operating systems, as well as at times the hard-disk controller architecture itself, were unable to recognise, and to interact with, a partition greater than 2GB in size. Some hard-drives were around that were larger than 4GB, so it was necessary to partition those. These days most operating systems can handle partitions of 2 terabytes or more. (One day we’ll think of a terabyte as a small disk size no doubt. I have a 760MB hard-drive floating around somewhere: Once upon a time even that was considered a massive-sized disk.)

I’ve tried the method of having many partitions: One for the Windows swap-file, one for the operating system itself, one for active programs, one for storage… Too confusing; and the operating system finds it so too, leading to unnecessary corruption. In addition the hard drive encounters more wear, having to keep changing the arm between partitions, and as a consequence system response time is increased.

Some people think that by keeping the operating system on a separate partition they can just reinstall Windows if the operating system goofs and carry on as normal. They’re forgetting one crucial factor, however: The Windows registry won’t re-register their programs which exist in a different partition on install. In fact the new operating system won’t even see their existing programs on another partition as it installs. The only true way to preserve things as they were is by regularly backing up to a source external to the computer; such as another computer, NAS box, external hard-drive, or online backup.

Putting the swap-file onto a different partition isn’t that good an idea either: Head-travel and hard-drive wear come into play as the arm swings wildly between partitions, causing a reduction in response time too.

Some think that if they put the operating system on a drive other than C: it’ll be safe from malware as malware writers target their wares at the C: drive. Utter crap. Get decent protection and learn how to use a computer while staying safe online is the solution to that; not trying to outwit the malware writers.

I have 2 computers: Both run XP and both currently have a single hard-drive. On the main computer, the one I’m writing this on, the drive is not partitioned. On the other one, the backup computer as well as the computer I’ll be watching TV on from now, having just installed a TV card, the hard-drive is partitioned into two. This is from the days when the drive was in a different (now dismantled) computer and I was playing around with Ubuntu. I use the second partition for storage and for backing up files, and the first one for everything else: Basically the second partition is for inactive files and folders, while the first partition is active.

Windows; at least the versions available within the last ten years, is designed to all be put onto a single partition, and it’s good at managing itself on a single partition. ‘Spread it across multiple partitions and it gets funny, becomes harder to maintain, uses more resources, slows down, corrupts easier, and wastes time. I’m not anywhere near as well experienced with any other operating system as I am with Windows; so I’m mainly referring to Windows in this article. I’d imagine, though, that the situation is the same or similar with other operating systems too.

Your comments are invited.

This symbol is causing some controversy and has sparked a furious row between Microsoft and HP in addition to causing the software giant to be sued by customers in the USA. It’s also kicked off some internal bickering within Microsoft itself.

‘See it’s turning out that the claim is exactly what it says on the tin: "Designed for Windows XP". Although the systems concerned will run Vista, they’ll only run Vista Home Basic.

The future? I predict that Microsoft are going to lose this case and get another hefty fine plus maybe a compensation order. How about your opinion and prediction? What do you think?

In an unexpected turn of events, Microsoft have become rather chivalrous by aiming to provide a free tool, code-named "Morro," that will provide a basic anti-malware service; protecting against viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.

This will be offered at the same time, June 30th 2009, as they discontinue their Windows Live OneCare consumer security service.

Morro will have a small footprint and use only a few system resources. The idea is that it will run on low-power PCs and low-bandwidth networks. As a stand-alone download it will support Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Existing OneCare customers will be directed toward using Morro instead when it becomes available. If you are currently and/or up to June 30th 2009 a OneCare user you will continue to be able to use the online backup feature as normal until that date; probably with the same charges attached.

The Windows Live OneCare blog says that this is not due to a poor sales figure, but rather a tactic aimed at bringing protection to millions world-wide who have none. Personally I think it’s probably a bit of both - Oh please; Microsoft aren’t known generally for being that public-spirited, despite being nowhere near as tight and money-grabbing as Apple. I very much doubt that they’d drop a product line that was making them a fortune.

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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.

I’m not going to say much about this: It speaks for itself, but I felt that I needed to blog it. Haggard was a money-making-minister who was preaching against such "evils" as homosexuality (Evil?- WTF? Certain people have some strange ideas!) while ripping off the US Bible-Belt to pay for his gay affairs with male prostitutes and his secret drug habit. - One among many similar stories that have surfaced this year, 2008. Personally I fail to see why being gay is such a big deal that they make such a great fuss about yet ignore the reality that they themselves are spreading phobia-based hatred throughout society based on the ramblings of a bronze-age book. They do a lot more harm than good as it is; and when one or more of them at Haggard’s level is found out to be a total hypocrite it hits the headlines.

In my opinion I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they’re all up to much the same thing; from the average lay-person (Pun intended.) in the congregation to the leaders.

It’s all a huge farce; the only point of which is to fill empty lives with some sort of meaning, in addition to making the select few stinking rich: It’s a joke; and not a very tasteful joke either.

This kind of thing appears to be fairly standard and widespread practice in the USA; although only the reports of bigtime hypocrites ever make it to the newsrooms. Draw your own conclusions:

Three London hospitals; Barts Hospital in the City of London, Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and the East-End London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green, have been forced to shut down all their computer systems since lunchtime on Monday 17th November after being infected by a computer virus.

No information has been released regarding the nature of the virus attack. Official press releases stress that everything is under control and that the institutions are handling the matter competently and effectively: "The Trust’s well rehearsed emergency procedures have been activated to ensure that key clinical systems continue safely while the system is being stabilised and a solution is being found." This is the official British way of saying "We’re hoping that we can handle it and that the resultant losses aren’t that bad." Stiff upper lip included. The spokesman said the virus was "not malicious", and the infection was "self-contained".

From the above it appears that it probably wouldn’t be all that difficult to get a rootkit into the NHS computer system and steal confidential information by having it downloaded to a remote server. Maybe that’s what they discovered was happening and covered it up?

Aside from Government incompetence in leaving sensitive personal information on a train in a laptop, the Government losing unencrypted disks full of confidential records; or the banks dumping sensitive customer information including account numbers, PIN numbers, and the like, into open skips outside their premises in paper format, it makes you wonder just how secure the UK actually is.

All it would theoretically take is for one employee to open one attachment and every piece of personal confidential and private data stored by all government departments gets into the public domain. Maybe that’s already happened; but the standard cover-up operation has been executed?

Privacy is maybe becoming a thing of the past? What do you think? What security threats would this pose if it were true?

During 2007, Computer Shopper magazine tested a number of free and paid-for antivirus solutions. NOD 32 came second to Kaspersky. By the time I tried Kaspersky for myself they’d released a new version which was so bloated I thought of Norton. I’d tried NOD 32 previous to this on a single-cored Pentium 4-driven system, however, and was quite impressed by its functionality, ease of use, and small footprint.

During this month; November 2008, I got the chance to try out the full version of Smart Security from ESET, the makers of NOD 32. As a rule I always try out anything new on my second machine, which happens to be currently fitted with a 2.2GHz single-cored Athlon 64 processor.

I installed the product: Installation was quick and painless and I soon had it up and running properly after it had updated itself with all the latest files.

The firewall isn’t intrusive. It keeps track of what’s going in and out; but unlike some it doesn’t continually ask you whether you’d prefer to allow or deny every single connection. It accepts everything acceptable that’s flowing from trusted software which is already installed and does its job silently.

The antivirus scan is well hot: It even informs you if files are corrupted, incomplete, or don’t have a valid checksum, in addition to telling you if any files are infected with spyware or a virus.

The anti-spam I didn’t really try out so I won’t present any data on that.

My overall verdict is that it’s a very good security suite; but the problem is that it has a large footprint: If it almost occupies an entire core; even on a single-cored 64-bit processor, then it’s too big for my liking. On a quad or six-core processor-driven machine things might not be so bad; but certainly I’d say it used far too much CPU for a single or dual-cored machine.

A strange twist to this article occurred whilst I was writing it: I heard a loud click from my second machine, which was right next to me, and a metallic noise. Then nothing appeared to happen out of the ordinary for about a minute, when suddenly that machine stopped, switched off without shutting down.

I hoped that the fault wasn’t as I expected; but on opening the machine my worst fears were confirmed:

The Shuttle motherboard used in its construction, like most other socket AM2 motherboards, keeps the cooler attached to the socket AM2 CPU by means of a fixing where a metal loop attached to a lever is hooked over one of two lugs on the enclosure around processor socket. This lever appears on the other side of the cooler with a similar metal loop attached to it. This other loop is hooked over the other lug and tension is applied to it by means of another lever; therefore the processor and cooler stay in close contact while the cooler is tensioned downwards onto the face of the processor so that heat transfer is maximised with the help of some heat-conductive grease.

The model of Shuttle motherboard used (Now discontinued.) uses a rather brittle material to make the CPU surroundings including these lugs that the cooler depends on to stay in contact with the processor: Not a noticeably brittle material, but nevertheless to brittle for the purpose. I’ve had one or two of these machines returned under warranty with the lugs snapping off after a number of months, rendering the entire motherboard worthless and inoperative. That’s exactly what had happened to my machine (Kustom Komputa Exel model A101-s) which was one of the original machines built by Kustom Komputa in the days when a single-core Athlon was incorporated in them rather than a dual-core. This syndrome I’ve affectionately christened "lug-rot".

So what to do? Suddenly I was reduced to a single machine. Of course I can get by quite easily with only one computer; but it’s always better to have two: I use both at once occasionally, and I always have a spare if one breaks down, as had happened recently when the hard disk died on the other one.

I was planning to publish the article about ESET SS that day; but needs must, I had no backup, and if the other machine went down, as Sod’s law would make sure that it did if I had no backup, then I’d be totally stuffed.

I checked the junk cupboard: I had an old wrecked machine from about 4 years ago which the PSU had burnt out on. It had been checked since and the motherboard was still working. It was an Asrock board, still in a case, and the processor and cooler were still attached. I’d removed and dumped the burnt-out PSU, also I’d used the DDR RAM sticks and the hard drive from it. - Otherwise it was complete except for DDR RAM