Practical Technology

for practical people.

February 11, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Fixing the XP Patch Blue Screen of Death

I so didn’t need this. I’m a long way from my home office and I helped some family members to update their Windows XP PCs with February’s massive set of Windows patches. Since they fixed a lot of serious bugs in these patches-including the one Google blames China for and the 17-year old security hole — I figured this was a must patch job. What could go wrong? Lots.

One of the XP PCs started having BSODs (Blue Screen of Death) even before it could properly boot up. Two others booted up just fine, but then Windows Explorer started locking up. I needed this like a hole in the head.

It turns out I wasn’t the only one seeing BSODs in the aftermath of this XP fix. Many others are seeing the same kind of XP lock-ups. So, if after you patch your XP system, and you then reboot to see a message like the one below:

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

Technical Information:

STOP: 0x00000050 (0x80097004, 0x00000001, 0x80515103, 0x00000000).

Congratulations and welcome to the party. You’re in good company.

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February 10, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Paranoia and Chinese High-tech Espionage

It appears that some parts of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) government wants to snoop on Western governments and countries. Since then, I discovered that at least two news bureaus in China have had some of their e-mail accounts hacked. This only furthers my fears that China is engaged in wide-spread high-tech spying that may even go so far as exporting hardware that comes with built-in security holes.

Am I being paranoid? My buddy David Coursey thinks I may be “a tad over the top.” As he points out, of the major PC manufacturers, only Lenovo is based in mainland China

Coursey also wrote: “Can you imagine the firestorm that would break out if it could be proven that computers were bugged?” Sure. Gigantic.

But, that presumes that those parts of the Chinese government that want to spy on the West care about Western public opinion. I doubt they do.

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February 10, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Never reboot again with Ksplice

If you use Linux, you don’t reboot very often. In my case, the only time I reboot is when I upgrade a system. But suppose, just suppose you didn’t have to do that. Suppose you could even make major updates and never have to reboot your system? You don’t have to imagine it anymore. Ksplice delivers the goods.

That may not sound like much to those of you who are used to Windows and it’s ‘improvement’ to having to be only rebooted every month or so. For IT departments though it’s another story. If a desktop has to be rebooted every now again, so what? But, if it’s a server or several hundred servers than it’s another matter entirely.

Ksplice can’t promise zero downtime, nothing on God’s Earth can do that. But, what they can do is seamlessly merge most major upgrades into CentOS, RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) Debian or Ubuntu servers without missing a beat.

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February 5, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Canonical picks open-source leader for COO

When Canonical’s, the company behind Ubuntu, CEO Mark Shuttleworth stepped down and former COO (chief operating officer) Jane Silber moved up, there was concern that the popular Linux company might suffer from a lack of corporate leadership. Worry no more. Open source industry veteran and leader Matt Asay has joined Canonical as its new COO.

As the COO, his job will be make sure operational activities match up to the company’s strategic goals and make sure that day-to-day operations go smoothly. Asay will also head up Canonical’s marketing.

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February 5, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Can you trust Chinese computer equipment?

As you surely know, Google has accused China of hacking into its systems and is considering pulling out of China altogether. The U.S. government is taking this seriously, and Google has partnered with the NSA (National Security Agency) to get to the bottom of this. What you may not know is that the United Kingdom’s MI5 — Americans can think of this as a combination of the FBI and CIA — has reported that the Chinese government has been giving UK executives electronics with built-in security holes.

According to the Sunday Times, “A leaked MI5 document says that undercover intelligence officers from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of Public Security have also approached UK businessmen at trade fairs and exhibitions with the offer of ‘gifts’ and ‘lavish hospitality.’ The gifts — cameras and memory sticks — have been found to contain electronic Trojan bugs which provide the Chinese with remote access to users’ computers.”

That’s bad. But why, if these stories are true, should the Chinese government stop there? U.S. and British citizens buy billions of dollars every year of Chinese-made USB memory sticks, computers, hard drives, and cameras. Why not just add security holes as a matter of course to the firmware of all of them?

It’s not hard. Heck. It’s trivial.

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February 4, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

There’s No Reason to Wait for Windows 7 SP1

Historically, adopting the first version of any major Microsoft software release has been, well, a mistake. Sometimes, as with Windows NT, it took several iterations — until NT4 SP3 — before the operating system really worked well. And, with the far more recent Windows Vista fiasco in mind, no one could blame you for not aggressively looking into shifting your business desktops from Windows XP to Windows 7. But, more than six months after Windows 7 was released to manufacturing, it’s become clear that there’s no reason to wait for SP1 before moving up to Windows 7.

I’ve had little love for Windows over the years. But this time, while I can still give you chapter and verse on why a Linux desktop is worth considering, I have to say that I’m impressed by Windows 7. More to the point, after over a year of working with Windows 7 from late beta until now, I’ve found it more than stable enough to consider as a Windows XP replacement today.

People’s usual reasons for holding off on an upgrade until SP1 is fear that an early Windows version will break underneath them. That’s not the case here.

I have been beating the heck out of Windows 7 on a variety of systems and to coin a phrase, “It just works.” Along the way I have also run on the OS mainstream business software such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, QuickBooks, and dozens of other programs, and I’ve yet to find a need for Windows 7’s built-in XP virtualization. At the same time, I’ve also found that most everyday business peripherals such as printers, scanners, and the like also have no trouble with Windows 7.

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