In a new technological development using principles based upon a derivation of the principles of power distribution which were originally conjectured in the early 20th century by Nikola Tesla; Korean company Zalman Tech Co have succeeded in the invention and prototype building of the world’s first wireless computer power supply unit.

The unit, which is the same size as the normal computer power supply unit, is revolutionary in that it allows the distribution of power throughout the computer without requiring the mass of wires that normally protrude from the back of such a unit, and are routed throughout the case’s interior to the various components. This can result in a disruption of the airflow in the case; especially in the upper regions where the cables are densest, causing heat to build up in certain upper areas, thus reducing the life of some components considerably.

The internal layout of a working computer’s case can now be much less cluttered by the profusion of power leads which can cause the inside of a computer to look untidy in addition to restricting airflow.

Based upon an original idea of wireless power distribution envisaged by Nikola Tesla, combining his polyphasic power distribution techniques with a major development known as short-burst DC induction; believed to be based upon the common AC induction principle but using a half-wave directed DC semi-square-wave pulse created by using the electromagnetic induction of electro-motive force in a circuit which they described as a kind of digital-inductor. The pulse is then somehow directed at a number of tiny receiving antenna affixed to individual components and power receptors on the motherboard.

According to Project Manager and Chief Development Engineer Hung Baiderbals; the new technology does have a little way to go yet before it is released into the wild, as the power-efficiency of the EMF-transducer-coil as yet leaves a lot of room for improvement, as does the amount of energy lost in both the wave separation and partial rectification at the point of origin in the unit itself, and also that energy radiated as heat by the receptors. Nevertheless; the cumulative effect of the EMF pulses at a frequency of some 200MHz, combined with the re-absorption of unused distributed energy by a device which Zalman are seemingly unwilling to comment further on, other than that it is capable of re-absorbing up to 86% of radiated energy that would otherwise be wasted, all in all give the device an overall efficiency of 91% according to the figures claimed by the development team.

Even when pressed, Baiderbals wouldn’t give a definite date for when the unit was expected to reach full development, which would mean the start of marketing it. All he would say when hassled for an answer is that we can expect to see it in production within the next year.

Although Zalman revealed sketchy details about some of the working principles of some parts of the unit, they wouldn’t be drawn any further as to the way in which it works; saying that at this stage of its development they wanted to remain tight-lipped about the technology.

The new concepts being devised in the field of technology lately are quite amazing. This idea goes to show that the ideas and dreams of our forefathers and the original pioneers of the technologies that we today take for granted do indeed have substance; and that, given progress in the light of scientific advancement, ways of utilising such techniques which once seemed destined to only be used in science-fiction stories are today becoming a reality.

It’s a bit difficult to know what to ask for in the form of comments on this subject. In the light of that I’ll just invite you to comment if you would like to do so.

If you happen to have any further information or insider information that you’re willing to share then I invite you to do so below.

This article is the first in a yearly series of April Fool’s messages here on kkomp.com.

What is DNS?

The term DNS stands for Domain Name System. DNS allows a server to be addressed by a domain name. – For example kkomp.com is the domain name of this blog. The DNS nameservers connect the IP address of a server with a domain name in order to make this possible.

When you type http://kkomp.com into your browser bar; the connection request is sent to a DNS server, which translates it into a request for connection to the appropriate IP address. The computer/server at that IP address is then sent the request that you made and responds by sending the data that you asked for.

Using DNS means that you don’t have to refer to every server by its IP address directly: If you had to address this blog as 213.171.218.220 then you’d have to write it down somewhere along with a note that it’s the IP address of kkomp.com. The DNS server does this for you; so that all you have to remember is kkomp.com.

*This article has no pictures. It’s difficult to know how one might go about getting pictures of DNS.*

What is a DNS cache?

When you visit a website, your computer may store a snapshot of what it finds there in the DNS cache of the DNS Resolver in your local operating system. This allows your computer to display a picture of what it last saw from that location at that IP address; therefore speeding up the time it takes to display it in your browser. Although the image in the local computer’s cache is only a temporary file, you might be viewing a cached image of the website in question rather than the actual content; which could have changed since then.

Flushing the Local DNS Cache

If you flush your local DNS cache; your computer is forced to make another DNS lookup when you request to see a website, as in flushing the DNS cache the locally stored image is deleted, and the computer has to store another one. This is useful if the website content has changed but your computer is still displaying the cached image of how the site looked previously.

Here’s how to flush your local DNS cache: -

(¬ = return.)

In Windows XP:

Click Start>Run.

Type “cmd” and click OK.

Type “ipconfig /flushdns” at the command prompt. (Note the space between “ipconfig” and “/flushdns”.) ¬

The message of confirmation will appear.

Type “exit”. ¬

In Windows Vista:

Right-click the Command Prompt icon and select “Run as Administrator”.

Type “cmd” and click OK.

Type “ipconfig /flushdns” at the command prompt. (Note the space between “ipconfig” and “/flushdns”.) ¬

The message of confirmation will appear.

Type “exit”. ¬

In Mac OSX 10.5.1 or below:

Open a terminal session.

Type “lookupd –flushcache”. ¬

After confirmation that the cache has been cleared; close the terminal session.

In Mac OSX above 10.5.1:

Open a terminal session.

Type “dnscacheutil –flushcache”. ¬

After confirmation that the cache has been cleared; close the terminal session.

Target neutralised.

I was working on this blog on Monday 30th March 2009, having installed Apture on 28th March 2009, when suddenly I got a 404 error when I tried to go to a certain page. I checked the rest of the blog; which was initially for the most part working; but piece by piece started returning the same 404 error.

It was as if my blog was being taken down piece by piece.

I rang Fasthosts Customer Support to ask if they knew what was going on.

I was informed that a ticket had just been raised on the matter a few minutes ago; and that my blog had been taken offline by the abuse department. I tried to enquire further; but was told that an email was being drafted by the misuse department as I spoke explaining the issue. All I could get from technical support was a brief overview of the situation.

Ten minutes later I received the following email:

“Dear Sharron,

Re: Your website – kkomp.com

We have recently become aware that your website, kkomp.com, was causing performance problems on the shared webserver on which it was hosted. Our monitoring system detected a resource problem on the server and we are confident that that your site has been contributing to this issue. More details as to the nature of the problem will be found below.”

It gives the impression that they’re still using 386s with 8MB RAM as servers.

“As a result of this problem we have acted to move your website to our probation servers, these servers provide a separate hosting environment that we maintain specifically to allow our customers to diagnose and resolve performance issues with their sites. This action on our part gives you the opportunity to alter the site as required so that we can then consider moving it back to the standard hosting environment without affecting the performance of the other hosted sites.

While your site is hosted on our probation servers you are likely to experience performance below the levels that we normally provide to our shared hosting customers.

The move has meant that the IP address associated with your website has now changed to 2**.***.***.*** “

Thanks: I really needed that. ‘Much unappreciated!

“The problem is:

Your site was found running a number of php processes, using up excessive amounts of memory. At one point we suspected it on Sunday but were unable to gain sufficient evidence. However, today your site was caught running 5 php processes, each using up over 50MB of RAM and on a further check just now, we found 7 php processes using similar amounts of RAM each, plus a further 8 php processes using up around 28MB of RAM each.”

WOW: 574 MBs of RAM: – Big Deal! That’s on a 64-bit quad-core Linux server serving 26 customers I believe. That means that if everyone was using the same amount of memory as me there’d be 14 GB RAM fitted to cope with the load. Assuming that you have 4 RAM slots with 4 GB DDR2 cards in each then that’s 16GB RAM in total… But you clearly don’t have 16 GB  RAM fitted: Which means that you have 2GB sticks, fitted making a total of 8GB.

I find it astonishing that you’re too tight to spend less than £100 on 4 x 4GB sticks and fit them so that I can use the server properly, considering the fact that you bring in over £250 a month from that server alone!

Oh I almost forgot: It’s a British hosting company. What did I expect? Charity? Is this yet another example of rip-off Britain?

“In a shared hosting environment, this sort of RAM consumption can cause severe performance problems.”

It sounds a bit like British housing: We have 28 flats in your 20 x 12 metre-cubed tenement block, all sharing a single pipe. Since 45% of the residents are also geeks, please be considerate of the needs of others and don’t hog bandwidth or you’ll be disconnected. A limit of 1 GB per day at an expected speed of 512Kb/s is the maximum you should expect, despite the advertised 8Mb/s speeds. If you have any problem with this, RTFM including small-print.

“Beyond the description of the symptoms given above we are unable to offer assistance in diagnosis or resolution of the problem. We cannot advise you on how your site should be changed to resolve the problem. If we have been able to identify a particular script responsible for the problem then this information has been included in the notes above. If there is no indication of a particular script that we believe is causing the problem then you should assume that we have not been able to identify one. We will not take any further action to diagnose this problem.”

Ah I detect British Workman syndrome here:

“We didn’t find exactly what the problem was as it was time to clock off. You sort it out yourself, as we’re not getting paid for overtime.”

“While we recognise that this move may be inconvenient for you we would like to remind you that, when you opened your Fasthosts account, you agreed to be bound by our terms of service and to be responsible for the domains in your account. We feel that we have fulfilled our responsibility to you as a customer by providing this alternate hosting environment and giving you the opportunity to resolve the problem.”

What a weird way of going about things. Why not just email me and say “There’s a problem with your site overusing server resources. WE can’t be bothered to work out exactly what the problem is as we’re clocking off shortly. Please do our diagnostics for us and then fix it, or we’ll remove your blog from our servers.”

“We regret that we cannot allow your site to remain on the probation server for longer than 7 days. To prevent the suspension of your site you need to contact us within 7 days and tell us what steps you have taken to resolve the problem. If we do not hear from you within 7 days of the date of this email we will act to suspend your website and associated services including email. This step is not reversible and so it is imperative that you act quickly if you wish to continue to host your website with Fasthosts.

Should you require us to remove any unacceptable data and related services in order to resolve this problem we will require your explicit authorisation to do so.

On receipt of your reply, we will assess the situation again with the aim of moving your website back to the shared environment.

Once we are confident that the problem has been resolved we will move your website back to the shared hosting environment. Any further performance issues caused by your website will result in the site being permanently disabled and so we strongly advise that, in future, you actively monitor the resources used by the domains that you host with us.”

That seems a bit draconian!

For further information please refer to:

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/knowledge-base/?article_id=1115

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/companyinfo/termsofservice/

.
Regards,
***** *****
Misuse Team
Fasthosts Internet Ltd.”

Bloody heck: What a palaver!

Well it didn’t require a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist to guess what was causing the issue: Logically, since the Apture plugin was installed on Friday, and the issues had initially come to the fore on Sunday; just after I had configured a number of posts and pages to fully utilise the Apture plugin; it was logical to assume that the Apture plugin was the cause of the server memory usage issues. – So I removed it and rang up the host to check that the problem was resolved. There appeared to be no further problems, so the site went back onto the usual server.

I was getting 404s still; so I also asked them to check that the site was getting out. It was, so I flushed my DNS cache and everything returned to normal.

Now then; I want your opinions readers please: -

1) Do you think my host is tight-fisted and draconian, or is this normal behaviour for a web-host in your opinion?

2) Do you think; in your honest opinion, that I should find a better web-host?

3) If yes to #2; who would you recommend?

Please comment below.

Yes indeedy; micro-blogging service Twitter are in a league of their own when it comes to downtime. Their poor fail whale is overworked; just like their servers, it seems: –

Akamai research reveals that Twitter had markedly more downtime than even a few of its rivals put together. With over 80 hours of fail-whale-fuelled failure during 2008; Twitter almost doubled second-placed LinkedIn’s downtime of 45.8 hours.

If Facebook only have 7.2 hours of downtime, then why do Twitter need to have over ten times that much?

During 2008 Twitter had its problems; and in June/July the fail-whale became a sensation; with entire blogs and followings devoted to it. In recent times however, since Twitter have got their act together with a new content delivery infrastructure, CEO, and marketing strategy; so we are led to believe, the fail-whale’s appearances has been relatively scarce. In my opinion the massive amount of downtime was just a one-off teething-pain as Twitter grew.

Although these figures could be seen as bad news for Twitter in the corporate environment, combined with the recent spate of fake accounts delivering malicious spam on the network; it is my opinion that Twitter will continue to grow and flourish, given the right management strategies. Only time will tell if my predictions are correct.

What do you think? Will Twitter continue to expand and grow; or will such reports inevitably stunt its growth? Please comment.

Before the internet became prominent in the UK, in the days when the British railways were nationalised and trains invariably turned up when they arrived rather than on time, despite the timetable; the then government-sponsored British Rail which ran all tracks, trains, and stations, became known as British Snail because of its poor performance. I’m not saying that the train-times have drastically improved that much; but today there’s a new British Snail, in the form of the UK broadband network. The UK internet is supposed to deliver speeds of up to 8Mb/s. Unfortunately it does just that; mostly at 3Mb/s:

When the recent Akamai report listed some findings on broadband speeds, the UK once again missed out the top ten places for countries with the largest percentage of 5Mbps-plus broadband users, despite most UK ISPs advertising speeds of up to 8Mb/s or faster.

That’s rather shocking in what the British Government like to loosely refer to as a leading developed nation; as nearly 20% of internet users globally are now able to connect at speeds above 5Mbps.

The UK’s performance was so bad that it even languished well below countries such as Latvia, Belgium and Romania. South Korea had the highest broadband speeds, with 69 per cent of connections at speeds over 5Mbps Japan came in second place, with 54 per cent of users experiencing 5Mbps-plus speeds, with, surprisingly, Romania in third place, improving by a staggering 124 per cent, allowing 45 per cent of Romanian internet users to connect at speeds in excess of 5Mbps.

One good thing for the UK was the fact that the Akamai report said that the UK was not among the top originating countries for malicious internet traffic. In this category the United States topped the leader-board with 22.85 per cent of traffic observed as malicious. China was in second place with 19.3 per cent malicious traffic.

Hello and welcome to another kkomp.com newsletter.

I suppose it’s a good idea to start off with the news that another Firefox update is out. I just opened Firefox and it automatically updated. If you’re running Firefox then yours should follow suit shortly if it hasn’t already done so.

So what’s new on kkomp.com this week? Four articles since last Newsletter sent out on the the 23rd; listed in reverse-order below: -

Zune Theme (Free Software)

It’s been around a few years, granted. The Zune theme makes your desktop look really nice. – And it also saves a tiny bit of power on your monitor with less bright pixels. – In theory at least.

The System File Checker

A function of Windows that Microsoft have conveniently buried deep in the OS; but which can be very useful in efforts to avoid data-corruption. – With regard to the protected Windows files at least.

Capture the Rapture of Apture

Apture is a free piece of software that has many features which you can use to enhance your blog: Particularly useful if you run a Blogger blog or the like, where hard-coding in features and media links can be a lot less than easy at times. The only problem is that you have to publish your post or page first before Apture can be utilised. That can be a bit of a nuisance if your blog is set to notify Twitter, along with other social networks at time of publication.

How to Set Network Permissions + Plus

A networking trick, if needed, to transfer files onto drives that aren’t readily available on the network for whatever reason. The article also describes how to set file and folder permissions related to networking in XP.

If you haven’t read the bounties of kkomp.com yet then why not use this weekend to get stuck in and give your eyeballs a feast?

Enjoy the rest of the weekend; whatever you’re doing.

Blessings.

Sharron Field. – Author and Creator of kkomp.com.

If you buy your computers pre-built with the operating system and other software pre-installed, you’ll notice that over time the unit’s operation becomes slower and slower. Eventually things might start to go wrong: Existing programs may crash unexpectedly, new programs that you install may not work properly and/or may affect other programs and/or the operating system itself. Even the operating system itself may seem to start behaving strangely. Why does this happen? In this article I’m going to be looking at the issues from the perspective of a Windows XP Professional user; such as myself.

In a lot of cases the issues arise due to a lack of maintenance. Imagine if you bought a new car but never checked, maintained, or serviced it at all: Eventually it would start to go wrong and eventually break down. A computer is like a car in that it requires constant maintenance. Just like a car won’t work well or long if all you do is fill it up with petrol for a long time, ignoring maintenance; so a computer won’t work well or long if all you do is plug it in and use it for a long time, ignoring maintenance.

In such cases the first thing people normally do is blame their hardware or somebody else. The somebody else is usually a tech; primarily the tech that built it. I once had someone insist that the reason why their machine wasn’t working very fast after they’d been downloading virus-laden files using p2p software and installing pirated software was because I hadn’t built it properly and that it was definitely a hardware fault. – This despite the fact that this person’s computer-literacy was virtually nil, and they had no idea of what went on inside their machine.

Even if the user practices safe-computing to the letter; there’s still a need to maintain the software. If your anti-malware software requires manually updating then do it regularly and routinely; or upgrade the entire program to one that automatically updates. There are free anti-malware programs that update regularly from the internet and will cost you nothing, nada, zilch. The one I recommend is called Avast! .

Even though your anti-malware program may regularly update itself from the web; there are still chances that a new virus might get in before the update occurs. There are also chances that a particular type of malware that’s got into your computer may not be recognised by the program. Always run a full virus-scan at least weekly; using both your installed software as well as an online virus scanner.

There’s also the chance that data residing on your hard-drive, including your hard-drive’s file system itself, can become corrupted. (Especially with Windows.) The more time this is allowed to continue the worse it’ll get; until it eventually becomes noticeable and the user starts suspecting a hardware malfunction after a system crash or some other symptom. I suggest that every month you run the chkdsk program. Although this can be run from the graphical user interface inside Windows; it’s easier to run it from a command line in my opinion: -

Click Start>Run and type chkdsk /r. This instructs the computer to run the chkdsk program which checks the hard-drive for errors. In this case, since you’ve used the /r parameter; it’ll check for any errors that it finds in the file-system and the data, and it’ll do it’s best to repair any errors that it finds. – It’s not infallible but it usually works. If you’re running chkdsk on your primary drive you’ll be asked to reboot so that chkdsk can work while the drive’s not in use.

If you have more than one hard-drive, or a partitioned hard-drive, you may find that you have to specify a drive letter in the command. For example: chkdsk E: /r  This command instructs the computer to run the chkdsk program on drive E: and repair any errors that it finds.

There’s also data fragmentation, which builds up over time. (This only happens with Windows and some Linux distros. It doesn’t happen on a Mac.) What’s going on here?

When Windows writes to disk it writes to the next available space on the disk. If that space is less than the data that it needs to write then it moves on past the data already on the disk to the next available space, where it starts writing again. If it still hasn’t finished writing the file but runs out of space again, then it once again uses the next available space…and so on until the write is completed. As a consequence you end up with several fragments of the file strewn across the disk. Although the system knows where these fragments are, and that they’re bits of a single file; because the information that tells it so is stored in the registry, the read-heads of the hard-drive have to spend longer seeking out and reading all those fragments when Windows wants to access the file again at a later time. If that’s just the one file then it doesn’t make much difference to performance. If it’s lots of files that are fragmented then the hard-drive can take twice as long or more reading them all, and hence performance is slowed down significantly. If it’s a large lot of or all the files that are fragmented them the computer becomes disorientated, sees data errors where there are none due to slow read-times, and crashes. Also the amount of strain on the hard-disk’s mechanisms can vastly increase reading fragmented files; therefore the lifetime of the drive decreases with use.

You can buy programs that automate the defragmentation process. I personally recommend Diskeeper for this purpose. Although it’s paid-software, you can currently use the software free for 30 days trial if you’d prefer to try it out first.

If you’re not using automated defragmentation-software, however, you should manually defragment your hard-drive at least weekly. Failure to do so will result in impaired system performance and eventually a BSOD if you leave it long enough.

Finally the obvious: If you run pirated software you’re breaking the law and are liable for prosecution if found out. Also pirated software might contain corrupted data and/or viruses/spyware/keyloggers. It might also use techniques to bypass the program’s anti-piracy measures that are detrimental to your computer hardware. If you insist on running pirated software than be prepared for anything to go wrong.

If you use p2p software; even if you don’t make illegal downloads, be very careful what you download: There are viruses out there that can get into your system and disable all of its protection; leaving it vulnerable to any and all kinds of attack.

Your computer is a machine: Like any machine; including your body, if you don’t maintain it then it WILL fall into disrepair and eventually break down.

Please comment.

*I am not currently at time of writing affiliated to Avast! or Diskeeper: Therefore whether or not you use these products; I will not gain or lose anything.

Every now and again Microsoft develop something that is a real hit. A few years ago they developed a desktop theme for XP that went down very well with the critics.

( Please excuse the low-resolution of this pic.)

I’m talking about the Zune XP theme, which adds so much to the desktop experience.

The default blue, olive drab, or silver, theme of XP looks OK, depending upon personal taste; but the Zune XP theme makes the entire XP experience that bit better, with its sharp and well-defined colour-co-ordination.

I could write more; but I really don’t want to steal the thunder of other earlier commentators. – Therefore I’ll just link to Steven Harman’s commentary from 2006, which includes a download link.

“System File Checker?” You possibly repeat, inquisitively.

“Wasn’t that something in Windows 98?”

Yes it was; and I’m not encouraging you to use Windows 98 either. (Far from it: Windows 98 is now a significant security risk.) It still exists in Windows XP, and even in Windows Vista too.

“It is? I’ve never seen it in XP or Vista…”

Oh it’s there; ‘just that Microsoft buried it deep in the operating system.

We’ll talk about how to get it going in a while. First I wanted to explain a little bit about it:

There are certain files in Windows that are critical components of the operating system. If they weren’t there or they became corrupted, (As they might do from time to time.) then Windows doesn’t function properly; usually with the result that it crashes with a BSOD. These files are known as ‘protected’ files, and are hidden by default from all users. (They’re easy-peasy to unhide; but that’s for a different article perhaps.) At times if you inadvertently attempt to replace one of the protected system files; by installing crappy software maybe, or accidental deletion, Windows may respond with an “Are you sure you want to do that? You’re attempting to replace a protected system file.” type-message, and/or will put the original file back in place afterwards on some occasions.

- But as I said; these files can get corrupted; causing Windows to behave strangely, to malfunction, and even crash in a resultant blue-screen. Also – And even I’ve done it in the past; so there’s no need to feel ashamed of it – if you click ‘Yes’ when Windows asks ‘Are you sure you want to do that? You’re replacing a protected system file…’ – Because you’ve just paid for the piece of software you’re installing, so there’s surely nothing wrong with it or harmful to your computer. – and a protected system file gets replaced with one that’s almost identical, but probably has spyware in it too: Windows doesn’t always notice the difference at first, if it’s well coded.

System File Checker reads the digital signatures of all the protected files and checks their parity. If it finds something not quite right it replaces the file with a new copy. System File Checker will use the on-disk i386/cache if possible; but it prefers to take the relevant files straight from the installation disk if it can; and in some cases it might have no alternative anyway.

How to start System File Checker:

In Windows 98 you just clicked on a sub-menu item on the start menu.

– But in XP it’s easier to do it from a command-prompt. Click Start and type sfc /scannow.

In Vista; according to  Microsoft Help and Support: -

Type the following command, and then press ENTER:

sfc /scannow

 

If you don’t have an installation disk but you need to run the System File Checker, and the System File Checker asks you for the installation disk, don’t panic. There should be a partial disk-image on your C: drive containing all the files you need. It’s called i386. There are probably several; but the one we’re looking for here has close to 7,000 files in it and contains the files winnt.exe and winnt32.exe. (You won’t actually need these files for System File Checker; but if you find them in the i386 directory then you’re looking at the right one.)(C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles may be a good location to start looking for it.)

When the System File Checker tells you to insert the installation disk, just click OK. It’ll bring up a dialog box asking you to provide the location of the installation disk. Just browse to the i386 folder you’ve located or type in the path to it.

Not only will Windows use that directory at the time; but it’ll also remember it and it’ll be the first place it looks in a similar situation. ‘Handy eh? – Especially if your installation disk has been chewed up by the dog or accidentally used as a coaster when you forgot to put it away safely.

It doesn’t say this in any Microsoft documentation; but I’ve heard it from MVPs and others in the know, and I agree that it’s a good idea: After running SFC; reboot. It’ll set any file replacements in stone as it were.

There’s more on SFC in more detail here at Microsoft’s knowledgebase; so if you think I’ve missed something out; click this link for Windows XP and Server 2003, or this link for Windows Vista.

And that’s yer lot. Please comment.

You what? – You want pictures with it too? Do you want me to come over and run the thing for you too? Jeez!

Scroll down…

            

Here:

‘Satisfied?

 

I like writing blog-entries like this one: The fully-descriptive videos save me much typing.

Are you getting frustrated with Twitter? Do you have a  lot of hassle in following tweeted conversations? If so you need the Apture. Play the video below for more: -

But Apture isn’t limited to viewing Twitter. – Oh no. Apture can dramatically enhance your blog too; giving your readers a rich and meaningful multimedia experience. Play the video below for more: -

This may give the impression that these are two separate products: In fact I thought that at first; but it’s all one platform which can accomplish several individual purposes.

I’ve recently discovered Apture; and I’m so glad I did. I have now  installed Apture on this blog; and I’m looking forwards to treating my readers to a vivid and unique range of choices in onsite and offsite content from this point onwards.

Don’t fret; it’s not only me who can benefit from it. Other bloggers across a number of blogging platforms can also benefit from it too:

– And the best thing is it’s FREE! – Yes I had trouble believing it too when I saw it; but I tried it out and it really is indeed free to use.

I know what you’re thinking; but they said Twitter wouldn’t last long too initially. – Well let’s hope it continues going strong; and the same applies to Apture too.

I’ll rabbit on no further: Get yourself over to apture.com and take a full look at what’s on offer. – Remember it’ll cost you nothing whatsoever.

Please let me know what you think of Apture.

- ‘Excuse the weird title: It was too long if I used anything else.

If you’ve ever set up a home network, you’ll notice that the first place you get access to is the Shared Documents folder on the other computer. You don’t get access to anything else on the other computer by by default; but you can access all drives on the other computer, including most of the files and folders on them, by setting permissions.

How to set permissions:

Click on My Computer. Right-click a drive that you want to share on the network and click “Sharing and Security”. Click the “Sharing” tab and look in the “Network sharing and security” section in the middle of the box. Check “Share this folder on the network” to allow the drive to be shared on the network. (You might find that you have to set permissions on some of the sub-folders too before you can access them from another computer.) Check “Allow network users to change my files” if you want to be able to alter anything from another computer; otherwise you’ll only be able to read files. (Remember that anyone using the other computer will be able to get into that computer and change anything that has sharing permissions.)

If you have a peripheral device attached to your computer, and you have files and folders on it that you need to transfer across the network, you might run into a problem: You may be able to set permissions for that device; but chances are that the other computer may not be able to see your device; no matter how big it is.

Sometimes there’s no problem, and the other computer sees the device, lists it, and transfers happily. – But Windows can be a bit unpredictable as far as a network is concerned: -

For instance; if I set up my external USB hard-drive on my old computer, my newer computer can’t see it at all: It only sees the internal SATA-connected drives, C:, D:, and F:. If, however, I set up my USB hard-drive on my newer computer. then my older computer sees it and can transfer straight to it without a problem: It all depends on the hardware used, as well as how the motherboard is constructed, among other things.

There are a number of ways round the problem: I could copy everything I wanted to transfer to an internal drive, say F:, but that’s hassle, I might not have enough space on F:, and I’d probably have to erase it all again afterwards even if I had enough space. = Wear on the drive and time unnecessarily taken for a somewhat pointless exercise. _ But I can still transfer the files straight from my external USB drive on my older computer to my newer computer, even though my newer computer can’t see the drive. Here’s how: -

My older computer can see my newer computer, and vice-versa. That’s all it takes: A little manual exercise will sort the problem out. Let me explain: I find my external USB drive in “My Computer” on my older computer; Drive J: in this instance, and I also find the drive on my newer computer that I want to transfer the files and folders to in “My Network Places” on my older computer.

Now I select the files and folders that I want to transfer from the place they’re stored on my newer computer via “My Network Places” and drag them to my external hard-drive in “My Computer”>J:  It’s just a matter of dragging between windows.

Transfer starts; target neutralised.

It’ll also work with most peripheral devices like digital cameras, mp3 players, USB sticks. I’ve never managed to get it to work with a webcam though. – But that’s streaming rather than storage; so it’s a different kettle of fish. Oftentimes it works otherwise.

(I’ve yet to meet anybody who keeps fish in a kettle, or come to that, a different kettle.)

Have you tried this? (No; not keeping fish in a kettle silly; I meant the other thing with the network.) Did it work? Did you need to do it? Do you disagree with me? Please comment below.

(To set up a network you need to have either a patch lead between two computers, or network them through a router or switch by means of a wireless connection and/or a wired ethernet connection. Simply setting the file permissions alone will not network computers together. Use the Network Setup Wizard (NetSetWiz) in XP to accomplish this having connected the computers.)

Hey.

This is something new that I’m doing on kkomp.com. I’m hoping to be doing one of these newsletters weekly; probably towards the end of the week rather than the beginning of it as in this case. In these weekly newsletters I’ll be reviewing things for the preceding period since the last newsletter.

This newsletter is only going to be concentrating mainly on the last week – although I will; just for you recap on some of the other popular posts of 2009. For the time being though, let’s look at the preceding week:

I didn’t manage to get as much done as I’d hoped during this last week; and therefore only 5 posts were written. This was due, in part, to a lot of background work that I was doing on this blog as well as my other blog http://shazzalive.com .  (That’s what I term as my “lesser blog”; but do drop by from time to time: Posting may well be sporadic, and you may find it in one heck of a state at times if you happen to browse in and catch me doing an experiment on it: But I’ll try and keep it looking nice most of the time. It’s not only my “lesser” blog; it’s also the test bed and laboratory for some of my more zany ideas for this blog that I feel are just too risky, or risqué’, whatever, to try out here without wrecking something or frightening my readers away. I’ve probably made it sound much worse than it is; but you get my general drift I hope?)

-_-

Back on the track; and last Tuesday I posted a video I discovered by chance on YouTube on how to recycle your old CD-ROM drives; or at least part of them: Use the case as a drive-bay converter so that you can mount your hard-drive(s) – PATA or SATA – in a 5 1/4-inch drive bay, complete with a fan, cooling vent, aerated front-panel:

Drive-Modding

During my brief foray into YouTube I happened to notice a video-review of a very nice top-spec Zalman 1000watt PSU; which became the topic of Wednesday’s article.

Zalman ZM1000-HP 1000W Power Supply Review

I did correct the video presenter’s definition of “rails” – that being power-rails, in the article; as they were described incorrectly – either as an error of the English language, or an error of the video author’s technical knowledge. I hope I didn’t come over as being a bit too forthright and brash about it. – Anyway that article didn’t get a lot of attention compared to some of the others, so Thursday I got even more technical, but in a different direction, and shared an experience re. power-leads with Molex plugs on the end left wandering about inside a computer’s case:

Tidy up Those Power Leads

One thing I didn’t mention in that article is that it can also assist with ventilation if the loose power-leads are nicely tidied away and tied up somewhere, rather than left hanging around.

In

Running Windows? Don’t Rely on Microsoft Alone to Keep Your PC Clean

on Friday, I reminded readers that, although Microsoft are doing a good job in helping prevent malware attacks associated with criminal activity etc, which can be also detrimental to Windows users’ system speeds and the general health of computers, they shouldn’t just rely on the Patch Tuesday updates alone to keep their PCs clean.

If you’re a well – experienced and technically astute reader as far as computers are concerned, then you might think it was a bit of a silly post. – Yet you’d be described (Oops. – Massive typo!) surprised how many people who’s computers I’ve done a malware-clean on who can’t understand why they need an antivirus when Microsoft look after them so well. As to the fact that they had their hard-drive infested with malware and lost all or some of their data because they didn’t back it up; well I think they tried blaming everyone else including me, Bill Gates, and anyone else they could think of. I was tempted to direct them to the nearest mirror; but felt that it might end up backfiring on me somehow.

Saturday I felt that I needed to post again, as I’d missed Monday out: Luck had it that I came across a new WordPress plugin which I took to like a duck to water as soon as I tried it. Read

BetterSearch – WordPress Plugin

and you’ll know which one I mean. You too might like it if you’re running a self-hosted WordPress blog. It’s worth a look if nothing else.

I did say that I’d recap on some other posts from this year too: Well the most popular one so far from this year’s list is How to Upgrade an AMD Socket AM2 Processor . It’s up there at the top of the popular posts competing with a few from 2008 that have only managed to get near the same number of readers in twice the time or more.

Another popular one is Desktop Piano Keyboard – (Free Software) . You’d be surprised how many budding musicians and the like simply want to make their keyboards tinkle without paying a fortune for doing so.

Well I must, like the time, press ever onwards. – So I hope you enjoyed this recap. Please do get your friends to browse in and; whether or not they’re geeks in the true sense of the word, all they need is an interest: Not every article requires a degree in physics and computer science to understand it on this blog. In fact I’d say that such were in an extreme minority. I try to write for the technically-inept as well as the geeks. Everyone has a right to understand science and technology. Hopefully people find the articles herein explanatory and not over-geekistic. I hope to teach everyone who can be bothered at least the basics of whatever I’m writing about.

People could always subscribe to the mailing list. It’s free, and there’s no obligatory contract of subscription: ‘Just that if a subscriber unsubscribes within 2 months they won’t win anything or benefit from any free offers. – Otherwise things get given away, and they might be onto something good, in addition to the reading material etc that I serve up on a regular basis.

Right; pop goes the brain-cell, it’s time for me to bring this newsletter to a close:

Thanks for reading; and I’m looking forwards to bringing you more on hardware, software, practical electronics, & more, in the future. May this week, as others, bring you happiness and success. Blessed be.

Regards

Shazza.

Today I found a new WordPress plugin produced and developed by Ajay D’souza: It’s called Better Search; and that’s exactly what it adds to your blog.

I’ve just started using this plugin on kkomp.com, as of this post: On other blogs that don’t use the plugin, WordPress finds the posts that contain the search term as you’ve entered, and lists them out. – Very simple logic. Now, on this blog, when you conduct a search, the posts which are most relevant to the search term are listed out in order of their relevance. – A step in the right direction which makes searching easier and better.

The plugin replaces the inbuilt WordPress search functionality – adding contextual and relevant searching,rather than just matching the search term.

The plugin is supplied with the relevant widgets; which display up to two types of “heatmap” in the sidebar, or wherever else you’d like to display them if you hack about a bit.

Being a new plugin – this being only version 1.0 – (I suppose you might describe it as a beta in a way.) – it’s a work in progress, as are most plugins, this blog, most other blogs, and even the WordPress platform itself. Expect new and improved features to appear as time goes by.

In fact; if you’re a php whizz and have time on your hands then why not help Ajay improve it? If you’re like me and unable to make any reasonable donation in that form, (I’m not much good at php, and I don’t have much time to spare.) then you might like to help Ajay out with an unspecified financial donation if you have a spare dollar or two perhaps, especially if you decide to use the plugin on your blog.

In my opinion, anything that makes life easier for the reader is a bonus for a blog: It makes the visitors want to come back because that blog seems to work better than others. – So as an aide to boosting traffic, every little helps. This plugin does just that in its own way, and therefore the blog that it’s installed on will appear more attractive because of the extra functionality that it adds.

- So go forth; install it and/or try it out in your sandbox. Please do comment about it on this blog and/or the author’s blog too.

‘More here.

___

When it comes to keeping your computer free of malware; Microsoft do their bit to help their customers out: There’s a regular schedule of update releases from them known as “Patch Tuesday” on the second Tuesday of every month, there’s also an updated Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool released as a critical update along with the other patches every Patch Tuesday. There’s Windows Defender, and there’s also the late Windows OneCare and it’s successor – All from Microsoft.

- But do remember; Microsoft are not an anti-malware vendor. Although the patches issued on Patch Tuesday are released with the intention of enhancing the security of your computer’s operating system that they provided; they are in reality only corrections of errors that could lead to a security-breach that Microsoft missed when they originally designed the operating system: What they’re not is magic bullets that will keep your system safe. The Malicious Software Removal Tool won’t stop malicious software infecting your computer. It’s a post-infection measure, designed to detect any serious malware infection that exists on your machine and warn you about it: Nothing more.

If you want to view the results of previous scans by the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool ; click Start>Run and type:

%WINDIR%\debug\mrt.log

Windows Defender is a defender of Windows against certain forms of malware; but it’s not infallible. Windows One Care was designed to replace an entire security-suite; but its effectiveness was questionable. Personally I’d rather use a rival product any day; but that’s academic now as it’s a doomed product. If you’re still using it, (If you can still use it.) then I suggest that you get rid of it and get a different security suite, as it’ll stop updating soon if it hasn’t done so already.

Get an antivirus/antispyware solution from an anti-malware vendor. You don’t have to pay for it if you don’t want to either: I recommend Avast! for a free one: It’s quite possibly more effective than a few of the paid ones that I could mention. I recommend Kaspersky as one of the best paid ones

Prevention is better than cure; so keep the malware out in the first place rather than letting it in and dealing with the mess it leaves afterwards.

Also; whilst Microsoft have enhanced the Windows Firewall fairly recently; I suggest that you only rely on that alone if you’re running your computer behind a router, which acts as a hardware firewall. – Otherwise I suggest using something with a little more bite to it.

Plus, of course, always practice safe browsing: If unsure then don’t click it.

Nasties can only get in through an open door. Keep as many doors as possible closed and put guards on those that are left open by necessity. – That way nothing nasty will get in.

Has your machine ever been compromised? Please comment.

Above: An abortion of a mess of untidy wiring.

A number of years ago a friend gave me an old computer that had “just died” in part-exchange for one of mine (Not my own build.) that I was selling. She said that her husband had been tinkering with it and had upgraded the graphics card. (He works at IBM; but in the office department, not the practical computer maintenance department.) It worked after he had been fiddling with it – Until it had been moved to a different location; after which it had been totally dead from then onwards.

On opening it up the reason became apparent: All the unconnected power leads from the PSU were hanging around loose and swinging around as it was moved. It appeared that one of the the power-carrying contacts of one of the loose Molex connectors, which had become somehow extended out from the plastic sheathing, had touched the inside of the case.

A Quick Lesson in AC Power

The electricity supplied to your computer is in the form of AC (Alternating Current) electricity, at between 110 and 260 volts, depending upon where in the world you are and what time of day it is*. The job of the power supply unit in your computer is to convert this AC voltage into a very accurate number of lower DC (Direct Current) voltages with which it supplies the various components of your computer.

AC electricity is made up of a waveform which alternates in electrical polarity between negative and positive. A complete alternation; where the waveform swings from zero-volts to positive, through zero volts again to negative, and returns to zero volts again, (Also known as a 360-degree phase.) is referred to in electrical terminology as a cycle. The number of cycles per second are measured in hertz, and are the frequency of the AC waveform.

In the UK the AC mains electricity supply is approximately 220 to 260 volts (Depending upon the time of day and the area of the UK.) at 50 Hertz (Hz). (It’s actually over 400 volts before it flows through a transformer on every home’s distribution-board, which reduces the voltage. (The unmanned electrical substations you see dotted around the UK reduce the voltage to around 450 volts from several thousand volts.)) Due to the dual-polarity of AC power, it is commonly conveyed at a number of different (high) voltages using a single cable or wire, right up as far as the domestic power unit attached to each house in the UK. At that point another wire is introduced; that being the neutral (blue) wire. It is connected to a well insulated electrical earthing point. (Not to the same one as the safety electrical earth (Green/yellow) wire.) When electricity is used by an appliance in the UK the power flows from the live wire, which is indirectly connected to the supply via the transformer I mentioned, through the appliance, and to earth via the neutral wire. The safety electrical earth; which is totally unconnected to and completely separate from the neutral earth, is only there to prevent people getting electrified if the live wire somehow becomes connected to the metal case of a faulty appliance. In modern homes there are resettable circuit-breakers fitted to the power-distribution board that will cut the power to a whole section of the home’s wiring if such a fault is detected.

The computer’s case is connected to the safety electrical earth in the UK. Although it’s not the same as the neutral connection it works in the same way; carrying electricity safely to earth and away from metal objects. Although the DC power rails of the power supply unit in a computer seem totally unrelated to the AC mains electricity in your home; that AC mains electricity is nevertheless the source of that DC power that your computer uses. (The power is stepped down in voltage using transformers inside t6he computer’s PSU, changed from AC into DC current by a number of devices called rectifiers, stabilised and regulated by various high-wattage integrated circuits and other regulation devices, and supplied to your computer’s components via the supply rails from the PSU. Allowing one of these supply rails to touch the case, therefore connecting it to electrical earth, completes a circuit, and electricity flows through that circuit to earth. Due to the nature of the build of the PSU combined with the nature of the circuit created by doing so, the power supply unit overloads and stops working. (I could explain it in detail; but neither time nor space allow currently.)

Amateur Upgrade

That’s just one scenario; the one that had happened in the case of this computer, where my friend’s husband had left the power connectors lying loose around the inside of the case after he’d changed the graphics card: Moving the computer to another location had caused a protruding connector on one of the Molex plugs that should have been insulated and inside its plastic sheathing to touch the outside of the case; therefore overloading the PSU and the computer stopped working as a consequence. (In this case I just changed the PSU and the machine worked fine.)

It could have been worse of course: The connector could have touched a metal case or a connector of something on the motherboard; rendering the motherboard useless as well as the PSU itself.

To be fair my friend’s husband wasn’t an engineer or technician: A colleague at the office had told him how to change a graphics card after learning it himself from somewhere, and he’d done as instructed. It worked; but an unforeseen snag caused a problem. He had no idea of how a computer works, and no ideas as to electricity: He followed instructions, correct instructions, and fitted a new graphics card. The power connectors were tied up and tidied; but were in the way of what he needed to do; so he moved them. He just didn’t bother to tidy them up again afterwards.

Nightmare

The sight of loose power connectors (Molex or SATA) lying around inside a computer case make any engineer or technician’s hair stand on end on sight. All unused power connections should be secured by a twist-wire or cable-tie, attached to (But obviously not connected to) the chassis or to other wiring, and kept away from anything metal. Ideally they should be bunched and woven into bundle with the used power leads and secured well away from all surfaces. Anything else is just tempting negative providence and asking for Murphy’s Law to come into play.

Although it can be difficult to make the power leads secure and also look nice at the same time; that’s the constructor’s way of doing it. Practice makes perfect. Power leads/Molex & SATA power connectors (Used and unused.) should be easy to find and/or to trace back to or from the PSU itself by any repair technician or engineer at any time. They should also be safely secured, separate from other wiring, and restricted from movement to as great an extent as is possible. Wherever possible they should be kept away from and not cross the path of other leads/ data transmission leads. (Although this is often unavoidable in many cases, at least to some extent.)

Keep it tidy, keep it traceable, keep it safe.

In November last year I wrote a guest article on PCMech.com called “Why Your Power Supply Choice is so Important”. With today’s power-hungry top-spec gaming rigs, a lot of them custom-built by supergeek-gamers/power-users (In more than one sense of the phrase.), probably using Intel Core i7 Extreme processors, and multiple juice-guzzling nVidia and/or ATI graphics-cards; the requirement to have a top-class, noiseless, and reliable PSU which is able to deliver all the massive power needs on demand is paramount.

Fortunately there are a number of them around; and the Zalman ZM1000-HP 1000W Power Supply is one of the best of them.

This video is fairly self-explanatory; which not only aids the presentation, but also saves me a bit of typing. There’s just one point that the narrator makes in the early part of the video, though, that I have issues with: -

He says:

“…To understand that you need to know what rails are: Rails are basically well-regulated transformers which convert domestic voltages into voltages which your computer system can use…”

Bzzzzzzzzzzt! With due respect to the author; no: That’s not correct: -

Rails are the final voltage output lines – from those well regulated transformer[/rectifier] units[/circuits] that convert [the domestic supply from AC to DC current at] voltages[/wattages] that your computer system can use.

What I’m saying here is that (power) rails aren’t the power supply unit itself; any more than train-track rails are the railway station. The electricity flows from the regulated transformer/power units along the power rails, in the same way as a train runs along a train-track after coming out of the railway-station.

This may appear to some to be just a minor issue; but I thought it prudent to correct that terminology-error before proceeding further.

…And another point that I’ve only just noticed on April 2nd is that he talks about a combined power of 80 Amps

Bzzzzzzt! : Incorrect use of terminology: Electrical power is measured in Watts; not Amps. He should have said a combined currentof 80 amps. – Amps being a measurement of electrical current: So; just to be ultra-pedantic; that means that the total power output available from all +12 volt rails is 80 amps X 12 volts = 960 watts Max: That’s quite something! However; having said that, since the whole unit is rated at 1000 watts; that won’t leave a lot on the 3.3 and 5 volt rails: Only 40 watts remains; which at 3.3 volts leaves only 12.123 amps available for the CPU without consideration of the 5 volt rail.

Therefore; whilst the +12 volt rails are designed to be loaded to a maximum of 80 amps without damage ocurring; the actual available load will be somewhat less than that with respect to the loading on the 5 and 3.3 volt lines.
If the processor (and motherboard, combined) were using 65 watts of power that would be 19.7 amps accounted for at 3.3 volts. (For the sake of simplicity and clarity I’m ignoring the 5 volt supply in these calculations.) If we were to relate that loss to the 12v lines thus: –

12v / 3.3v = 3.64 ¬ 19.7/3.64 = 5.4121 amps away from the previous figure of 80 amps leaves 74.5879 amps; which translates into 74.5879 X 12 = a fraction over 895 watts in total available on the 12 volt rails. – That’s still one heck of a shedload of power; but not as much as the narrator makes it out to be.

Having cleared up that little matter; on with the video: -

- So if you’re building a top-spec gaming-box; forget buying cheap: This PSU isn’t – BUT it’s an excellent buy, and, as you may see, it does its job very well.

Here’s a novel idea I found on YouTube: You’ve probably heard of case-modding: Well here it is taken to a new level: Drive-modding.

You can recycle that old CD-ROM drive’s case, rather than sending it to landfill.

What you’ll need is some silicon/mastic sealant, an old CD-ROM drive (Working or broken.), a small fan, possibly one from an old CPU cooler, and a hard-drive (SATA or PATA/IDE), a can of compressed air, some plastic mountings, and possibly some (black) spray paint. (The bit with the spray-paint isn’t shown in the video: That was my idea; I’ll explain further down.)

Take your old CD-ROM drive and open it up as demonstrated in the video. Take the guts out. Use the can of compressed air to blow out any grime that may have accrued inside the case. You may also like to wash and dry it.

At this point here’s the bit that’s not in the video that I suggest: That is that you spray the outside of the case the same colour as your computer. Allow the paint to dry.

Draw an outline of your hard-drive with a pencil, central to the baseplate and towards the rear-end (See video.). Position the mountings appropriately on a thin bed of sealant and sit the hard-drive on top of the mountings. Apply the silicon sealant as demonstrated; making contact with the baseplate, mounting, and outside of the hard-drive’s casing in all six events.

Affix the cooling fan to the outside of the case as shown, using the sealant solution.

Allow the silicon solution the recommended time to cure.

Reassemble the case with the hard-drive in position; and put some form of mesh where the CD-ROM door once was.

Connect the cooler fan to the drive’s 12 volt supply. Insert the modded drive into the computer and connect up appropriately.

Note: This modded drive will require space at the top due to the external cooler-fan.

I encourage all my readers to donate to this person who is the original author of the video, (As I myself have done.) due to the sheer ingenuity of their idea.

What exactly is eSATA?

eSATA means external SATA. Although both eSATA and SATA are serial ATA data transmission lines; the two are not interconnectable:

From Wikipedia:

“eSATA, standardized in 2004, provides a variant of SATA meant for external connectivity. It has revised electrical requirements in addition to incompatible cables and connectors:

• Minimum transmit potential increased: Range is 500–600 mV instead of 400–600 mV.
• Minimum receive potential decreased: Range is 240–600 mV instead of 325–600 mV.
• Identical protocol and logical signalling (link/transport-layer and above), allowing native SATA devices to be deployed in external enclosures with minimal modification
• Maximum cable length of 2 metres (6.6 ft) (USB and FireWire allow longer distances.)
• The external cable connector equates to a shielded version of the connector specified in SATA 1.0a with these basic differences:
  • The external connector has no "L" shaped key, and the guide features are vertically offset and reduced in size. This prevents the use of unshielded internal cables in external applications and vice-versa.
  • To prevent ESD damage, the design increased insertion depth from 5 mm to 6.6 mm and the contacts are mounted farther back in both the receptacle and plug.
  • To provide EMI protection and meet FCC and CE emission requirements, the cable has an extra layer of shielding, and the connectors have metal contact-points.
  • The connector shield has springs as retention features built in on both the top and bottom surfaces.
  • The external connector and cable have a design-life of over five thousand insertions and removals, while the internal connector is only specified to withstand fifty.”

Some of the recent motherboards have an eSATA port attached; however a lot don’t. In fact USB and FireWire are a lot more common than eSATA. This is partly because USB and FireWire actually carry power, whereas eSATA does not.

USB 2 can carry a 5 volt supply at a power rating of 2.5 watts. (1/2 amp (500mA))

USB 3 can carry a 5 volt supply at a power rating of 4.5 watts. (0.9 amp (900mA))

FireWire can carry a supply voltage of 12-25 volts at 15 watts. ( 600 to 800mA )

eSATA carries data only at a voltage of around 500 to 600mV. (Approx. 1/2 volt)

Most computers around at the time of writing don’t have an eSATA port. (Unless one has been fitted after purchase.)

What do you do, then, if you need to use an eSATA-connected device, but your computer doesn’t have an eSATA port?

Answer = You fit an eSATA port.

A lot of PCI or PCIe RAID-controller cards have (an) eSATA port(s) attached to them. While you may not want to use the card for the primary purpose of running an extra RAID array from it, the eSATA port can still be utilised nevertheless.

For instruction in fitting a PCI or PCIe card; see here and here.

If you’re using a WordPress self-hosted blog, then depending upon your theme that you’ve chosen you might find that the widgets that you use in the sidebar tend to run into one another; making the sidebar appear cluttered and untidy. This happens especially where two pre-created widgets meet: -

Example: -

<< If these two widgets (Left.) on this blog didn’t have any space between then they’d appear to merge together and could be indistinguishable at a casual glance.

End of example.

When I write a widget myself, or I insert the code from an external source such as a box on another website offering code for a particular widget, the job appears fairly simple; as all I have to do to space it from the one above or below is to write this code at the top or bottom of the existing code: -

<p>&#160;</p>

This leaves a blank gap; the size of a paragraph space, between the widget and the next one up if it’s written at the top of the text, or the next one down if it’s written at the bottom of the text.

Sometimes that gap just isn’t big enough though; so  it calls for 2 identical spaces thus: -

<p>&#160;</p>

<p>&#160;</p>

Now that’s OK providing that I’m writing the widget myself; i.e. grabbing an empty text-widget and filling in all the php or JavaScript or html code in text myself. If, on the other hand the two adjoining widgets are pre-built with the theme, as a number were in the theme I’m using, ( I chose a free theme to begin with, and I customised it to suit myself.) and present a GUI when opened for editing; then it’s not possible to add that line or lines of text. (See illustration below for an example.)

If, as it happens, a widget directly above or below that widget is also pre-built and presents a GUI when opened for editing; then it’s not possible to use that code on either widget as a break, and thus the two widgets are too close together and appear to merge untidily into one.

The solution to that, without having to delve deeper and rewrite the underlying pre-written widget php code, is to think outside the box: Create a “spacer-widget”: -

Create an empty text-widget and enter the line  <p>&#160;</p>  as many times as is necessary, depending upon the amount of space you require between the two (pre-built) widgets, into the text-box.

Click “Done” and drag the spacer widget that you’ve just created between the two pre-built widgets.

Click “Save Changes”, and voila; you now have a gap between the two widgets.

Target neutralised.

As a PC builder and a geekette I love this kind of thing: -

Samsung took two quad core QX9775 processors – added 800MHz FBDIMM 4GB RAM, 24 SSDs totalling 6TB in a RAID setup…

The result was well hot: 2GB/second data transfer, all of M$ Office opened in the blink of an eye, the entire Windows start menu in under 20 seconds…

..And yet the Linux zealots say that Windows is slow: Not if you run it on the right machine it isn’t! OK some Linux distros will run happily on a 486…Yes; I’m not even going there: I wasn’t advertising Windows – I was going to show you this amazing machine.

Note the SSDs at the end: He gives them enough abuse to wreck some standard HDDs; and yet they all worked well afterwards. I look forwards to when SSDs come down in price to something near their spinning-disk predecessors.

Enough of my spiel: Watch the video; you’ll be enthralled:

Now that is just utterly incredible! – But it’s real.

…And just in case you missed it; here are all the design specs that they provide at the end very quickly: -

What this shows is that the major bottleneck on inferior computers is the hard-drive.

Yes you can speed up any PC by adding more RAM; to a point. – But look what haoppens when a decent PC has optimum access to fast drives.

You may notice, at the bottom of each page and post, that there is now a reader-interactive star-rating system which you can use to personally rate any of the said pages and posts.

This can seemingly be applied to any blog by its owner. I was a little dubious about it at first as it seemed from the spiel that it would only work on a blog such as Blogger, WordPress.com as hosted by WordPress, etc. However it appears to be working on my self-hosted WordPress blog without a problem.

(I’ve only recently installed it; so I’m not yet 100% clued up on it yet.)

How does this plugin help me as a blogger?

It allows my readers to provide feedback to give me some idea of the overall quality and/or their personal opinion of the content I’m publishing. This allows me to see which posts go down best with my captive audience. Up until now I have relied on visitor statistics alone. Whilst this provides some general guidance on the popularity of any particular post; it is a combination of the subject’s search popularity and the article’s quality: Many readers of the article may be arriving from Google or another search engine not knowing what they’ll find, just looking for advice. They’ll then read my article, followed by which they’ll think to themselves:

“"That was a good article”, “That article was total crap.”, or somewhere in between. One or two may comment, most won’t: They’ll either take or ignore the advice and browse on.

Now, however, the reader; whether they specifically came to my blog to read my article because they like my articles, or they just arrived from a search engine looking for advice, can give feedback with a single click of the mouse without having to bother about writing out text as to whether and why they thought it was a good or crap article.

(*Note: To be able to use the plugin properly you need to register with outbrain and get an outbrain key, which you’ll need to enter into the settings panel of your plugin/widget to activate it and to claim your site.)

The Outbrain plugin includes a widget too; which you can adjust to suit yourself as set out in the video below: -

Outbrain Tutorial: Changing your Blog Settings from Outbrain on Vimeo.

How does this plugin help you as a reader?

As I stated above; you can give feedback with a single mouse-click, rather than typing text in the form of a comment. It’s not compulsory, obviously; but if you like or hate it you can tell me easily.

I do still encourage comments of course; but if you’d rather not bother you can just click a star to give your opinion instead. Also everyone else who reads the article can see an aggregated opinion of what other readers thought of it too. While this isn’t a guide based totally upon expert opinions, it gives an overall idea of what the internet community in general think of it.

This text is copied from Digital Musings.com:

“A few points about the Outbrain Rating Widget:

• No registration required
• Installation is super-easy… we adjust the widget’s design to your blog’s look& feel automatically
• It’s absolutely FREE

You can get the Ratings Widget here. And the Developer Blog is here.

And yes, Don’t forget to Rate this Article! “

- So I do encourage other bloggers to adopt this for their own purposes.

I have no commercial interest in this product; so I’ll not be affected in any way whether you use it or not. At this point in time I would think that it would be a good idea to at least give it a try all the same.

The video below informs you how to read ratings reports generated by the plugin: -

Outbrain Tutorial: Blog Reports from Outbrain on Vimeo.

That’s all for now.

(I fully expect my internet stalker; Syphilis Syndrone (“Sarah Palin”) to go through all my entries rating each one “Poor”. I also expect that he’ll use more than one ip address to multiply-underrate each article. He’s a mindless alcoholic thug with a number of hang-ups who’s never grown up: If you see a single rating for every post, and it’s “Poor”, then you’ll know that I pre-empted him correctly.)

A lot of your data is probably sensitive; such as security-codes, passwords, PINs, bank details, credit card numbers, etc. In addition to that there may be other data of a personal nature on your computer that isn’t meant to go public.

When you back-up your hard-drive, (If you don’t then you should or you’ll regret it one day.) all of that is copied onto your backup.

If you back-up online; your data is normally encrypted by your computer using a 256-bit algorithm before being sent to the online-backup server. Anyone trying to intercept it online will receive a scrambled nonsensical mess that could take thousands of years to decode. It’s stored in the servers in encrypted format too; so if you need to recover data it’s returned to you encrypted, and your computer translates it using an encryption key stored on the hard-drive inside the relevant online-backup company’s software.

So your online backups are fairly secure in-transit across the internet and in storage. It’s your home backups that are a security risk: Imagine returning home one day to find that burglars have raided your house and stolen your computer with all your personal details including your personal data decryption key on the hard-drive. Not only that but they’ve stolen your external hard-disk with your backups on it too. You may nave an online backup facility; so if that is the case then you haven’t lost the data. However criminals now have the original copy of your data; and who knows what they’ll do with it? Maybe steal your identity, raid your bank account, even impersonate you online and take over your blogs.

You could encrypt your entire disk and store the encryption key on a USB stick perhaps: That’s a fine idea until you lose the stick, or it becomes damaged on your person. You could do likewise with your backups, with the identical risks.

The easiest way to deter the issue is to use a removable drive-caddy on your computer. Fit the caddy/ies so that your main disk(s) are removable; and when you go away from home for extended periods, remove them and put them somewhere secure, such as a bank-deposit-box or something, at another location, along with your external hard-drive with your backups on it. Then, if a burglar steals your computer they’ll discover that they can’t even boot it up; and when they finally realise what’s going on they’ll still not have your data even if they do get it working. All you’ve lost is the physical computer itself; but your data is safe.

It may seem like a lot of extra hassle; but it’ll give you a lot of extra peace-of-mind.

For those who aren’t aware; this coming Tuesday 10th March 2009 is Patch Tuesday: Patch Tuesday is the day when Microsoft release the month’s round of security patches for its Windows operating system(s).

Microsoft have today planned to ship three security bulletins for software vulnerabilities. One of these carries a “Critical” rating, affects all versions of Windows, and covers (a) flaw(s) that could be exploited to launch remote code execution attacks. Further details can be found in Microsoft’s advance notification.

Here I’m going to spout on about one of my favourite security; or should I say “lack of security”, subjects: That being running obsolete Windows operating systems: –

I, as others, currently refer to the obsolete operating systems as “Win 9x” : This list currently includes Windows 95, Windows 98 and 98SE, and Windows ME.

This vulnerability, mentioned and rated “critical” by Microsoft, affects ALL versions of Windows, including Win 9x: The problem is that, since all of Win 9x are now obsolete; Microsoft aren’t supporting or providing critical updates for Win 9x. Therefore if you’re hanging on to any Win 9x version and using it as the main operating system on your computer, you’ll be an open target for the malware masters, and if they choose to run code on your unprotected computer then there’s nothing you can do about it.

Maybe, just maybe, it hasn’t happened yet, and you’ve got away with it so far; or at least you think that you have. More than likely, though, you don’t realise that your computer that’s running Win 9x is working in a botnet, relaying spam, porn, and lots of other nasties, infecting other people’s computers, and under the control of criminals.

Yes it may well be that you don’t see why you should have to fork out for a new operating system, and maybe a new computer too that’s capable of running the new operating system; but think carefully: Even if you’re not the least bit concerned on the effect that your spam/virus relay is having on the rest of the internet community, and even if you never entered your bank account details into the computer so that they can be harvested and used by villains, remember that your ISP is probably watching your internet traffic: So whether or not you realise that you’re relaying spam, child pornography, and malware; your ISP is aware and you may be hearing from them and other legal authorities fairly soon.

Maybe you’re so far totally innocent and unaware that you’re allowing your box to be involved in criminal activities? Maybe you’ll end up having to prove that to your ISP and the authorities? Maybe you’ll end up on the wrong side of the law? It’s a high price to pay for saving a few groats right now; wouldn’t you agree?

Penultimately, I’ll mention that there’s something of importance that the softies have either forgotten to include in their patches this coming Tuesday, or haven’t yet developed; and that’s a fix for a vulnerability where a rigged Excel file can execute code via Microsoft Office. This vulnerability is already being exploited, and could do with patching fast. See this article.

And finally; for those who are still living dangerously in the past without adequate protection due to their tight-fistedness and refusal to purchase a supported operating system; Windows 7 is going to be released soon. I suggest that you run the free release candidate for now, if you can, and then purchase the RTM when it’s released. Yes it may well mean that you need to purchase or build a new computer; but is it really worth the risks involved in running Win 9x?

Addendum: While we’re on the subject of the March Patch Tuesday; I’ll throw in the URL to this article for your further reading.

Every internet-connected computer gets infected by malware at some point, and I’ve yet to find a single Windows user of more than a year on the same computer user who can honestly say that they’ve never had any malware infection. Windows is targeted by most malware: That’s the simple fact.

Fortunately there are a number of programs; some paid-for and some free, that disinfect malware infections, remove spyware and viruses, root out rootkits, and generally clean up an infected system. Although you can never be 100 percent sure that your system has been fully restored to its original infection-free, pristine state, after a malware infection; there’s always a good chance that it’s fairly close to being so.

There is one place, though, that malware likes to lurk on a Windows system in the hope of re-activation at a later date; and it’s a place where many programs find it hard to capture the malware and eradicate it: That place is in the System Volume Information folders.

The System Volume Information folders record a snapshot of the system state and the registry whenever a System Restore Point is created by either automatically by the system, or manually by the user. If there’s malware on your system at the time a System Restore Point is created; then its registry key will be recorded, along with details of the process, and stored for possible future reactivation in the System Volume Information folder.

System Restore is a process rather than an intelligence: It doesn’t discern between programs, it doesn’t have a preference, it has no ability to think “That’s malware: I won’t include that in the restore point.”; it just does what it’s programmed to do. – To take a snapshot of your system at a given time and record it. Therefore any malware that’s resident on your disk will be recorded along with everything else. Its registry key will be recorded along with all other registry keys of entries in your disk’s file-system.

At times an anti-virus or anti-malware program might notice that a registry key of a malware process that is known to it and that it recognises is residing in a System Volume Information folder. It might also see the same key in your actual registry too. It deletes the key in your registry; but has trouble accessing the copy of the key stored in your System Volume Information folder. It reports that it can’t eliminate that entry, and may ask you to reboot the computer so that it can get to the entry before Windows locks it again. This may or may not be effective: Your anti-malware program may report that it was unable to delete the infection in C:\System Volume Information…

Well naturally the last thing you want is a malware infection hanging around waiting to reactivate itself in the case that you ever need to do a system restore. Your regular anti-malware program won’t clear it. You might try an online scan; but that might not clear it either; and so you’re left with a potential malware-infection on your system – triggered and reactivated whenever you do your next system restore. Fan-bloody-tastic!

But there’s good news and bad news: There is a way to get rid of it, and it’s pretty simple. The bad news is that you’ll lose all your restore points that you or your system have generated along they way up until then. unfortunately it’s the price you’ll have to pay: -

How to do it:

The following was done in Windows XP

Right-click on the My Computer icon and click Properties in the drop-down box that appears.

Click on the System Restore tab. Check which drive the anti-malware program found the malware on inside the System Volume Information folder and single-click on the appropriate drive letter in the Available drives window inside the dialog box. Click  the Settings button to the right. Put a check in “Turn off system Restore on this drive”.

Before you do anything else you’ll notice that the slider below is set by default to use 12% of your drive. That’s a ridiculous amount of space to store restore-points if you ask me. 6% is probably quite enough, so set the slider to 6%.

Click OK. Windows will instantly warn you that “You have chosen to turn off System Restore on this drive. If you continue, you will not be able to track or undo harmful changes on this drive.”

“Do you want to turn off System Restore on this drive?”

You have no choice under the circumstances: Click Yes.

Now highlight the same drive in the Available drives window in the dialogue box and click the Settings button. Remove the check from the Turn off System Restore on this drive checkbox and click OK.

Click OK again at the bottom of the dialog box. Windows should immediately create a Restore Point for the contents of that drive; but without the malware in it, provided that you or your anti-malware program removed the malware infection from your system and the malware infection’s key from the registry.

Target neutralised: The malware is no more. You have only one very recent Restore Point for that drive, or for those driveS if you had to do it on more than one drive; but the malware is dead, eradicated, exterminated, removed totally.

Any comment(s)?

The answer to that question depends a lot upon circumstances: -

• 1) Has your existing computer broken down?
• 2) Are you simply fed up with poor performance?
• 3) Have you just been given a computer and decided that you’d like to rebuild it?
• 4) Are you just an ultra-geek who likes to stay at the cutting edge?

Section 1: Your existing computer has broken down/ gone tits-up.

If your existing computer has broken down, do you know exactly what is wrong with it?

• 1.1) Hard-drive or other drive.

• 1.2) PSU.

• 1.3) Motherboard. (Including chipset, audio codec, internal onboard NIC, etc…)

• 1.4) Graphics card.

• 1.5) Processor.

1.1) If it’s just the hard-drive or another drive that’s gone tits-up, then replace that drive.

There really is no need for a total rebuild unless you really want to do so: SATA and PATA drives are both still available new from suppliers at time of writing. Even if PATA drives have been phased out when you read this, it’ll probably still be possible to buy one secondhand from eBay or Craigslist. (See this article for more about SATA and PATA.)

1.2) If it’s the PSU at fault then a rebuild/new PC may or may not be necessary, depending upon the age of the motherboard. As a general rule I’d say that if the motherboard is 5 years old or more then rebuild or replace the entire machine. If you replace the machine it may be worth buying a secondhand PSU of comparable age, replacing the PSU, and using the machine as a second computer or server until it finally gives up the ghost.

Even if the motherboard is less than 5 years old at time of writing (March 2009) there may be issues with replacing the old PSU with a newer model. If the motherboard is 4 years old or more then I’d suggest doing as above and buying a secondhand PSU of comparable age and model. The reason for this is that, on older motherboards, the main supply wattage was delivered through the 5 volt rails, whereas with newer motherboards the power is mainly delivered via the 12-volt supply-rails. Also most newer motherboards have a 24-pin power connector to the motherboard and a 4-pin low-voltage connector exclusively to power the CPU. Older power supply units may not have provision for a 4-pin low-voltage connection, and also might only have a 20-pin power connector.

Whilst there are some brand new power supplies that have a 20-pin connector and an additional 4-pins available from another plug as an accessory to the main motherboard power connector – therefore the extra 4-pins can be left unconnected, as can the 4-pin CPU supply in the absence of a relevant socket for it on the motherboard; running such a setup will probably result in the motherboard demanding full-load or more from the 5-volt rails while drawing very little from the 12-volt supply.

This would be contrary to the purpose for which the new power-supply has been built; i.e. to supply the greater wattage via the 12-volt lines and deliver only a subsidiary supply via the 5-volt lines. The result being that the motherboard can’t draw enough wattage from the 5-volt supply and therefore fails in some way to deliver even the performance that you’re used to from the machine. This may even result in a frequent BSOD.

Ensure that the power supply you replace your old one with is up to the job as mentioned above… And don’t use a cheapo power-supply either: See here.

1.3) If there’s a fault on your motherboard then, if your PC is 3 years old or more, a total rebuild or a new computer would be the best option for reasons stated above, as well as to replace other ageing hardware before it goes to the great recycling plant in the sky. If your motherboard is less than 3 years old then it might be worth replacing the motherboard only; possibly upgrading it – and the processor to a better model.

1.4) If the graphics card fails then you’ll probably just be able to replace it with a better and newer card. If it damaged the motherboard by its fault, or if it’s onboard graphics running from the chipset on the motherboard, then section 1.3 applies.

1.5) If the processor dies, then there may or may not be a fault on the motherboard which has caused it to do so: Processors generally outlast motherboards in my experience*, so I’d probably be looking at section 1.3 in this case.

(*Here I’ll tell you of a case with one of my computers recently: A BSOD caused the computer to die. When I tried to boot up again the BIOS indicated that it was unable to find the processor. I didn’t rush to the conclusion that the processor had died, however. Further investigation revealed that the chipset on the motherboard had died; and as a result the BIOS was unable to access the processor via the chipset as it usually did. I don’t know whether the processor was damaged or not. I still have it but have never tested it. It’ll probably end up in recycling as I have no real use for a possibly faulty 32-bit single-core Sempron these days.)

Section 2: You’re fed up with the poor performance of your existing computer.

In that case yes; buy a new one, or if you particularly like the case, do a total rebuild. Sometimes it’s just not worth faffing around with a machine: It may be getting on, and you’ve tried many things to make it work better but without much success. Save your time and money: Replace/rebuild it instead.

Section 3: You’ve just been given a machine and you’d like to rebuild it.

Do so after checks; totally if you do: People give away machines because they’re old and/or faulty. Unless someone was feeling overly charitable and gave you a new or good-as-new computer, you can bet that there’s something not right with it.

- But remember; a lot of people are uneducated and/or non-computer-literate; so it might not necessarily be a hardware fault: It might just be a virus or corrupt operating system causing the problem possibly, so check to ensure that it’s not a software fault before doing anything else. Alternatively you might just want to rebuild it anyway, regardless of what the problem is.

In the case of it being the navigational computer from Noah’s Ark; or some such other ancient relic, rebuild it if you like the retro-style case (You could even do some retro-case-mods.), or use it as a boat-anchor: It’s probably too old to bother with, and you’ll just end up with extra hassle.

Finally -  Section 4: You’re just an ultra-geek who likes to stay on the cutting-edge.

You don’t need to be reading this article. You probably know what to do better than I do.

Just one thing I’d like to ask you though: Has anyone actually constructed a computer that really does do the washing-up? If yes; please sell me the blueprints.

Anything you’d like to add to the above? Disagreements, agreements, commendations, awards, whatever? Please comment below.

If your Windows computer takes a long time to boot up; longer than you’d like, that is, the reason may be that there are too many programs starting with Windows. A lot of programs that you install on your computer automatically decide to include themselves at Windows startup. Others may have an option to start with Windows which is already ticked by default, yet you didn’t really notice it on install.

There’s a way to check what is actually starting with Windows: -

Click Start>Run, type “msconfig” and press return. Click the startup tab and you’ll see a list of programs that start with Windows. To aid your box’s boot-up time a number of these can maybe be excluded from starting with Windows by removing the check from the box.

You’ll see in the illustration that there are many processes scheduled to run at startup. This is from my computer: Not all of the processes are absolutely essential in this case, but I choose to have them start with Windows, (XP in this case.) as my computer with its dual-core AMD processor and 2GBs RAM can handle it without a problem.

Older and less-capable computers may have difficulties in starting a large number of programs with Windows; causing the disk to thrash wildly, caused an insubstantial amount of RAM, combined with slow performance. This is caused by the single-core processor’s inability to cope properly with the workload put upon it. – Therefore the choice is to add more RAM; which’ll help, but the bottleneck is more than likely the single-core processor on this instance more than anything else: So therefore a multi-core processor would be the best option. Installing that would probably necessitate fitting a new motherboard, which would possibly require a new power supply unit too… But since the only issue is startup then it would be much easier and cheaper to lessen the load on the system resources at startup, rather than almost totally rebuild the machine.

Newer machines with multi-core processors and a decent amount of RAM shouldn’t have so much difficulty with startup, regardless of the number of programs starting with Windows: Nevertheless a performance increase in terms of boot time can be made by excluding a few programs from starting with Windows.

Windows isn’t selective about its startup routine; neither does it schedule consecutive programs to be started in sequence. Rather the startup is concurrent: Windows starts everything it’s been programmed to start at once; hence the large-system-resource-loading at boot. As I’ve already mentioned; if that’s too much for the amount of RAM fitted it uses the hard-drive as extra RAM, and in trying to access it as it would with RAM causes it to thrash-about wildly. At the same time the processor is working more than it usually does in processing the data from the numerous programs that it’s trying to start together. If you have enough RAM then the hard-disk is less affected: Generally I find that 2GB with XP Pro is sufficient for almost everything. With Vista I wouldn’t be so confident as Vista utilises all available resources at all times. How it does this is a bit of a mystery to me, as I see no point in its using resources that it doesn’t need at the time. – However I see Vista being remembered historically as the second ME.

Microsoft are quite manic in that way: They brought us excellent operating systems; XP in particular, and it seems like Windows 7 is going to be another one of their triumphs. ME and Vista, however, are among the worst operating systems ever produced in my opinion. Each of them promoted Mac and Linux better than Mac and Linux ever could; especially Vista. – Which almost toppled Microsoft off its perch.

Back to the issue at hand then; and when you’re excluding programs and processes from the bootup you’ll need to be able to recognise the essential Windows processes. If you prevent these from running you could get application hangs at boot, startup may fail altogether, or you might even get a BSOD leading to data and/or file-system corruption.

- So if you don’t know and can’t work out what a process or program is then ask. – No not me; I’m not a helpdesk: Ask Google; Google is your friend. Type the process name into Google and search for information on it. Doing so is beneficial in a number of ways: The main two being that you’ll get to learn what each process does as well as maybe a bit about how it works, as well as being able to spot and learn about any malware processes that have written themselves into your computer too.

On that note it might not be enough to simply uncheck a malware process’ startup like you would with a Windows process: If it can write itself into the startup list then you can bet your bottom dollar that it can also reset itself to start with Windows after you’ve disabled it in most cases. You’ll either need to use a program to exterminate it totally, or delete all corresponding registry entries for its processes.

- And though I’ve said it a million times I’ll say it again: Unless you know exactly what you’re doing; editing the registry can lead to massive data loss and even to your computer being unable to boot in some cases. It is not advisable to edit the registry unless you are very well read up with Windows. Even I hesitate or simply don’t do it at all most of the time.

Anyway; once you have unchecked entries that you know you don’t need to start with Windows, have closed msconfig after saving changes, and restarted your computer, you should notice an improvement in boot-time. It may not be a dramatic improvement, but every little helps.

Have you any comments? Perhaps you have experience(s) with this, or maybe you know something not mentioned herein? The comment-box is below: You know the routine…

This security-related article has been issued as an extra to the scheduled articles on kkomp.com .

Adobe are currently under attack by shedloads of malware and have recently become the number 1 target. They’ve just had to issue an urgent update for their flash player, after a remotely exploitable vulnerability resulting in code execution with user privileges was discovered. Read this security advisory.

Having read that; the best course of action is to upgrade your flash program to 10.0.22.87. If you can’t or won’t do that then there is also an update for Flash 9 to version 9.0.151.0 for Windows & Mac, and 9.0.152.0 for Linux. (For unsupported operating systems.) Please update all browsers that you are using and have Flash installed on.

Your system is always targeted. 

Also having vulnerabilities of script injection attack are RoboHelp7, 6, Server7,  and Server 6 on Windows.

At least Microsoft are in effect getting a breather. It seemed only a short while ago that Adobe were untouchable: But why should Microsoft have all the fun?

First; what is SATA and what is IDE?

From Wikipedia:

“Conceptually, SATA is a ‘wire replacement’ for the older AT Attachment standard (ATA). Serial ATA host-adapters and devices communicate via a high-speed serial cable.

SATA offers several compelling advantages over the older parallel ATA interface: reduced cable-bulk and cost (8 pins vs. 40 pins), faster and more efficient data transfer, and the ability to remove or add devices while operating (hot swapping).

As of 2009, SATA has all but replaced the legacy ATA (retroactively renamed Parallel ATA or PATA) in all shipping consumer PCs.”  

“The current ATA/ATAPI standard is the result of a long history of incremental technical development. ATA/ATAPI is an evolution of the AT Attachment Interface, which was itself evolved in several stages from Western Digital’s original Integrated Drive Electronics interface. As a result, many near-synonyms for ATA/ATAPI and its previous incarnations exist, including abbreviations such as IDE which are still in common informal use. With the market introduction of Serial ATA in 2003, the original ATA was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA).

Parallel ATA standards allow cable lengths up to only 18 inches (46 centimetres). Because of this length limit the technology normally appears as an internal computer storage interface. For many years ATA provided the most common and the least expensive interface for this application. By the beginning of 2007 it had largely been replaced by Serial ATA (SATA) in new systems”

“OK; so you can copy & paste:” Says the reader. 

“- I’m wanting to replace my hard-drive. Do I go for SATA or do I go for IDE?”

The question might be more like: “Which will my existing motherboard allow me to install?”

If your existing motherboard is 5 years old or more then it’s unlikely that there is any provision made for SATA drives. If you want to stick to the same motherboard and have a SATA drive installed then there is a way around it; but it depends upon what operating system you’re running as to exactly what that may be. The basic idea is to install a PCI RAID card and run the SATA drive(s) from that. However there may be problems with older operating systems with regard to this:

I’m thinking Windows here: If you’re running Linux or something similar then I will leave it to you to suss it out, as there are so many distros that it’s impossible for me to cover them all herein.

If you’re running Windows XP or earlier and you have an older motherboard without provision for SATA drives then you’re probably stuffed as far as SATA is concerned, and you’ll have to replace your old IDE hard-drive with another IDE drive.

The reason is that Windows XP runs SATA drives in an IDE emulation mode, and older versions of Windows have no support for SATA drives whatsoever as far as I’m aware. (If anyone knows otherwise then please comment below.) Therefore, in these cases, Windows will look for a storage drive to boot from on the motherboard. Since there is no provision for the SATA drive you installed to a RAID card on the motherboard the BIOS will not find any hard-drive and will report this. The SATA drive you installed via the PCI RAID card won’t be seen, because the RAID card needs drivers before it can work – and where are the drivers? On the SATA HDD, which the system can’t see because the RAID card has no drivers.

IF you installed an IDE hard-drive, from which the BIOS could boot the operating system and install the RAID card’s driver, then the system would be able to see the SATA drive in Windows XP and use it as a second drive.

Actually I’ve just realised here that any operating system would do much the same; as regardless of the way that it operates SATA drives, it simply won’t see a SATA drive connected via a RAID card without any drivers. – So whatever the case you’re screwed unless your board has a built-in SATA capability. If it doesn’t then as you can see above, you can use a SATA drive via a RAID card as a secondary drive; but not as a primary.

Having said all that I’m willing to be proved wrong; as that lot was something I worked out by complex logic.

Anyway, regardless of this; it’s fairly unlikely in this day and age that you’ll want to run a SATA drive on a board that doesn’t support SATA, if any such motherboards are still in use that is. If this should be the case in your situation, however, then I’d advise you either to install a new IDE drive, (They’re still available to buy new from most computer component retailers at time of writing, (1st March 2009) and even if they disappear from that source I would imagine that there’ll be a number of secondhand IDE drives available on eBay or Craigslist for a few years yet.) or get a new motherboard or a new computer.

(I’m not saying that it’s not possible to run XP on an all-SATA computer: I’ve actually built an all-SATA computer, running 2 HDDS in RAID 1, and installed XP on it without a problem. The customer is still using it to this day without any issues.)

Wow we spent a lot of time on that didn’t we? Most motherboards in use these days will have provision for SATA drives: Normally at least 2 SATA ports on the motherboard itself that is. There’ll possibly be at least 1 IDE port too. So back to the question: SATA or IDE?

If your motherboard has provision for both then the choice is yours, after all it’s your machine. You might have an IDE DVD-RW drive which uses the IDE port, and an IDE hard-drive which shares the IDE ribbon with it, or you might just have the IDE DVD-RW connected to the IDE port and a SATA hard-drive connected to one of the SATA ports.

Whatever your setup, and whichever technology you replace or add to your hard-drive(s) with; remember that IDE is yesterday’s technology and is obsolescent: It’s being phased out. SATA is today and tomorrow’s technology, and it’s being phased in. In the light of that it makes sense to choose SATA if you can, and only use IDE where you have no other choice.

Would you agree with this or any other issues raised herein, or do you disagree? Please comment below.

In a departure from the usual computer-oriented postings on this blog; I thought I’d mention an astronomical event that very recently occurred:

The following video of the incident was placed on YouTube by Dave Herald; an astronomer in Canberra, Australia. You can see the rock moving from the right side of the frame as it flies past planet Earth.

Yes it missed, and that’s a good thing. If it had hit the planet it would have been like a single nuclear-missile strike; causing devastation over a wide area of hundreds of kilometres, and similar to the Tunguska impact of 1908.

The fact is that space is peppered with these rocks, which are still hanging around as debris from the formation of our solar system billions of years ago. Although they’re mainly concentrated as a couple of rings of them, orbiting around the sun between Mars and Jupiter, as well as beyond Pluto; every now and again a few of them drift towards the sun, and a few of those hit a planet.

According to astronomers’ calculations; nothing that we know is out there will hit our planet within the next few hundred years. All the same, nothing is certain: We don’t have data on every possible event, nor have we seen every asteroid in the solar system.

There is geological evidence that several impacts from such space debris have occurred over the last few hundred million years; one of which allegedly wiped out the dinosaurs.

Who knows what’s going to be hurtling towards our planet in the future?

I think I’ll keep this short and sweet. There’s no need to overdo it with the spiel. – It’s just that every now and again I stumble across something uncommon which I’m glad that I found. This is one such item: -

Adobe Air: A breath of fresh apps. – If you don’t have Adobe Air installed on your computer then I suggest that you install it ASAP: The desktop apps that are coming out that run in Air are starting to get rather good.

Particularly this one; ReadAir: Google Reader on Adobe Air on your desktop.

In short: I tested it; it works. Look: -

If you’re a Google Reader user then this will prove invaluable to you.

Here’s that link again. Enjoy.