Spyware Sucks

Confidence shattered but tomorrow is another day...

You know, I love a challenge, but the whole idea of a challenge is that there should be the possibility of success at the end of our efforts.

The hardware at the place where I work is *old* .. seriously old.  I'm talking Windows 95 with IE3... boxes with 16 and 32 meg of RAM.  Because we use Citrix and published applications older hardware was ok - the server supplied all the oomph ... but now the desktop hardware is hitting end of life.

When desktops fall over its an easy fix; reformat and reinstall to keep things going, or buy a new box... Easy to set up compared to a server.

The past few days have been more serious battles.. I have a well specced up SBS2003 box which has issues, but is running, and I have two terminal servers - Windows 2000 boxes with a Gig of RAM in each; both running RAID1's (but only two installed drives in each) and hosting Citrix Program Neighbourhood applications. 

I swear, the 2000 boxes are dying.  48 hours ago I got a call from my boss - one of the servers is screaming (bloody Adaptec alarm settings). 

<point of interest> One of the 2000 servers is a beeper, one is a screamer.. easy to tell the difference between the two, assuming you don't go deaf first </point of interest>

My primary contact at my new IT company is online, despite it being 11pm his time... I ping him and we get to work.  Hmmm, methinks those potted irises were *not* enough of a present for him and his family.  Note to self: send Cointreau - MG loves the stuff ;o)

Remember: the following occurred over roughly 48 hours.

The mirror drive has apparently failed.  So we get a new drive, but it won't install. Its not detected in Bay 4, 3, 2 or 1.  Then Bays 3, 2 and 1 start showing yellow drive failure lights *when the bays are empty*.  Adaptac Storage Manager is showing a failed drive in ID5 .... um, that's a bit of a problem... there is no such thing as an ID5 in my RAID array (I have an ID0, 1, 2, 3 and 4).

Then it is spotted that our two 36 gig drives are, according to Storage Manager, of different sizes, and that the new mirror drive is apparently smaller than ID0 by about 60Meg, therefore the RAID doesn't accept it as a mirror.  Shyte, ok, what do we do about this.  We decide to boot up using Win98, use Ghost to image ID0, copy image to ID4, move ID4 to ID0, put the old ID0 into ID4 and make it the mirror. No more problem. New drive is smaller than big.. problem solved...   Ya think???

<note to self> Rant about hard drive sizes and inconsistences in how they are assessed will make a very good column when I've calmed down </note to self>

I get everybody off the network and shut down all servers (hey, I'm pedantic).  Stick the startup disk into the floppy and power up... damn, A drive is not part of the boot sequence.  "No Operating System" error... seems somebody left the Adobe install disk in the CD drive which *is* part of the boot sequence.

Ok, remove Adobe disk, power off, power on...... gets as far as "hit Ctrl A to enter Adaptec setup" and things goes no further.... awww hell.  Leave it for 10 minutes more, 15 minutes.... no joy... ok, ctrl A it is.... the Adaptec utility is seeing the drive... so why the hell ain't it booting?

Power off, reboot, hold down Del key to get into motherboard BIOS to add floppy to boot sequence.... hmmm, seems our motherboard doesn't actually have a BIOS program - if there is one, its hiding from me .... let's try F2... no joy... by this time I am on the phone to our new IT guy (the poor guy is trying to get his Christmas shopping done - we're doing all this by mobile phone), I've slashed a finger big time on the edge of a RAID bay, am suffering some serious blood loss and am making a mess of the floor.... I asked the Office Manager to grab me a tissue to wrap the hand because I was on the phone to my new IT guy... I got a "look".... (nothing compared to a Flamethrower Queen look, but still a look) ;o)  OK, grab tissues... that's under control. I'll mop up the blood later. 

Power off. Remove new drive in ID4 and reboot ... no joy.  Remove drive from ID0 and put it back in making damned sure its well seated (again) (trying really hard not to get TOO much blood everywhere).. no joy.

This is a serious issue; the two terminal servers, on their own, cannot support all employees... the demand on RAM and CPU is simply too much... so I've shared the user load between the two boxes.  If I can't get this box running, with less than three working days until the Christmas break, I have got serious problems.

Ok, I have two choices... ship the box to my new IT support who are in another State (hey, they're the best of the best and I only use the best) or make a very humble phone call to IT company who have just been given notice.... the old guys, without hesitation, agree to come in.  Very cool :o)

I leave the server as is.. hung at the "press ctrl a to enter adaptec setup" (it should have continued to boot after a few seconds if that command sequence is not used) and go to find a tournique for my hand.

The IT guy from the old company walks in within 20 minutes ... to his credit he's a consummate professional... "so what's happened?" says he.

Fast forward an hour.... the server is now booting via ID0.... but it ain't happy.  Adaptac Storage Manager shows ID0... ID4 as 'ready' and ID5 as failed.... you may remember, we don't have an ID5!!!  ID4 will NOT join the array... nohow, noway.... it tells us to take a long walk off a short pier (if anybody happens to know the meaning behind error code RC:385, feel free to drop me a line).  We can't find any way to remove ID5 without breaking the array.

Y'know what bugs me? (and this is where the shattered confidence comes into play)... the IT guy that came in from the old company didn't actually *change* anything to get the server to boot; he pulled out ID0, blew on the contacts, and put it back in, and it booted... BUT I DID THAT DAMN IT.... well, I didn't blow on the contacts to get the dust off...

I'll be honest, if this guy from the old IT company had been around for the past few months (he's been promoted and is only on site because they're short of staff during the Christmas break) we may have kept our old IT company on.  He listens, he talks, he knows the history of our hardware, and he knows his stuff, and when he doesn't know his stuff he knows how to research, and ***he has an eye for detail***.  And, damn it, he is willing to sit down and talk through issues with a female (me) who, although she is not server skilled, still has a bit of an idea about what is going and can think outside the box.  The other guys... when I said to them, for example, "the Metaframe XP toolbar is broken on Server 2 and the buttons have generic Windows icons, please fix it" (yes, I could fix it myself but, damn it, we have an authority stream here - its *their* job to fix such things and its *my* job to manage them) they said to me "that doesn't matter, use the Program menu instead".  When I said to them that I wanted the old fashioned administrative utilities available (because I hate the slow loading Citrix Management Console), they would say to me... "you don't need that, use the Citrix Management Console".  AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!  I *hate* Citrix Management Console.. for example, it takes minutes to load whereas Terminal Services Manager takes seconds.  This is a big issue when we are having ADSL and network problems and I am constantly having to release orphaned terminal services sessions.

I have chatted to the gentleman from our old IT company over the past few days... asked him if he misses being on site.. he reckons he hates computers and is much happier in an office.... but, damn it, he's got a fantastic troubleshooting brain.  What a waste.

Anyway, back to the server.... all I can say is that it is dying... everything has been replaced except for the drive bays themselves, and if the old IT company guy is right in his theory that the backplane is f**ked, then realistically replacing the bays is the only thing that will fix the problem.  My challenge now is to keep things going for 3 months or so until we can:

1) get all new desktops, dump Citrix and go local, or

2) buy all new desktops AND a new server to host Citrix.

I'm not sure it is possible to keep things going :o(   Oh, and that finger slash and all that blood... nasty infection developing :o(

IE6 / IE7 side-by-side hack causing problems...

The latest blog entry from the IE team makes for interesting reading.

IEBlog : IE December Security Update - addressing scattered reports of odd browser behavior:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/12/16/504864.aspx

What can I say apart from "TOLD YA SO".

An MVP came to me the other week, asking for information about a "workaround" that he heard could be used to allow Internet Explorer 6 to be run side by side with Internet Explorer 7.  My response was that I knew of this "hack" (I refuse to call it a workaround) but I strongly discouraged him from using it.  I warned him that it was unsupported and would cause problems - perhaps not problems he could see right now, but they would occur.

When I asked him why he wanted to run IE6 and IE7 together, the only reason he gave was that some sites do not work with IE7.   He was surprised to discover that this is an issue that is easily addressed, without running the risk of causing problems for your PC (such as those being reported to the IE team).  Advice and instruction on how to get around User Agent String sniffing, which is in 99.9% of times the only reason you may see problems trying to access a web site when running IE7, can be found here:
http://www.ie-vista.com/sites.html

I agreed, developers sometimes need to test their sites and programs against multiple browser versions.  Two suggestions - Virtual PC or multiple computers. As Developers with access to MSDN we can do this.  As professionals we should not be using hacks to get our work done - as the IE team's report illustrates very well, hacks are not the way to go - you cannot predict what may be happening behind the scenes.

There was, once, a 'usability mode' years ago that allowed us to run IE4 at the same time as IE5 or 5.5, but that that protocol is no longer in use:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;197311

I hate dialup....

I am at my holiday unit north of Perth to train the new complex manager on how to use Outlook Web Access.  I love it up here; there is no phone line (no airconditioning either, but we live with that), no computers apart from my laptop, no fax machines, no stress.  Sealions, dolphins, fishing, only 3 tv channels (when they're all working)

So why do I hate dialup?  I'd forgotten how *slow* it is.  When travelling I use the Telstra Minimax which provides wireless broadband anywhere in Australia where the CDMA phone network works (which is just about everywhere including the middle of nowhere) but when I'm out bush the speed drops back to standard dialup - not nice when I've got media intensive sites to visit as part of researching my next Internet Explorer Community Column, and somebody sent me a two megabyte email!!!  What can I say.... please send me a link so I can download that funny video at a time of my choosing.

Even more irritating about dialup is although I can VPN into my office, Citrix won't connect - either my server is down (again) or dial-up is simply too slow for it (strike that, my server's responding again, but it is SLOW!!!)

Talk about Citrix... maybe somebody can help me make sense of something.  Currently I VPN into the office, then fire up whatever programme I need as a published application using Program Neighbourhood.  Sweet, and easy when it works. 

So anyway, our IT outsourcers have decided we're going to swap to Citrix NFuse... how does it work? I VPN in, fire up Citrix Program Neighbourhood, start Internet Explorer, navigate to the NFuse log-in screen, log-in again, and am then presented with the same Program Neighbourhood that I used to fire up Internet Explorer in the first place .... ummmm, am I the only person wondering what's the point?  We have to fire up IE via Program Neighbourhood to be able to access NFuse, said NFuse then offering us the same Program Neighbourhood, via a different interface, including, you guessed it, Internet Explorer...

I think I'll keep using Program Neighbourhood and published applications instead of jumping through all those hoops to use NFuse.  And, if I were completely honest, I'd rather we didn't use VPN - its too risky security wise for my network if somebody with an infected pc hooks in... we probably would have been better off in some ways to continue using the Citrix ICA client to log into the network.

The December Cumulative Update for Internet Explorer has been released

Microsoft have released the December Cumulative Update for Internet Explorer:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms05-054.mspx

It is important that you read the information about 'known issues' (aka problems) that may occur after you install the update:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905915

One issue that I would like to highlight is the ActiveX changes.  This has been seen to cause some seemingly unrelated effects such as the error message "Object doesn't support this property or method" when trying to open Add/Remove Programs via Control Panel, or the folder setting "Web View" not working properly.  The fix for these two issues is simple (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909889/)

The update is available via Windows Update and Microsoft Update (Microsoft Update is the new all-in-one update service that covers updates for Windows, but also for the Office Suite).

Note: This update also sets a kill bit for the Sony First4Internet 'rootkit' that has received so much press.  The uninstallation activex that Sony released to remove their 'rootkit' carries its own security risk - a risk serious enough that Microsoft released a patch that will stop the activex control from running.

More information about the Sony Uninstaller vulnerability can be found here:
http://secunia.com/advisories/17610

IE7 for XP - announcement of release of public build

Messenger Plus, Patchou, the Sponsor Program and suitable advertisement content

Tochjo (forum super mod at www.msghelp.net and official tester) said on 12 April 2005 that the MP Sponsor “contains no adult content”.

Patchou said on 2 November 2004 that “I assure you my sponsor doesn't display any adult popup”.  He also said on 25 September 2004 that his sponsor program is "100% 'child friendly' ".

Cookierevised said on 8 July 2005 that “It also does NOT contain any adult related materials“

And on 11 January 2005 he said “there is a strict contract between Patchou and the sponsor of what the sponsor may do (eg: not including adult popup ads, etc...).“

Somebody is telling someone fibs, the rules have changed, or we have a basic disagreement about what are 'adult related materials' and 'adult popup(s)'.

Check out this page:
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/graphics.htm

The screenshot on that page was captured on October 30, 2005.  I have screenshots of several other 'adultfriendfinder.com' popups that were generated by the Messenger Plus! sponsor program.

Does adultfriendfinder advertise with lop.com elsewhere? Yes!!

Remember, the Messenger Plus sponsor program is popular with kids!! Yes, kids!!  Do you want your *children* exposed to such things?  Do you want your *teenagers* exposed to such an environment?

Maybe Patchou has no idea that his sponsor programme is generating such non-family and non-child friendly, adult advertisements.  If he is unaware, he needs to take a serious look at his relationship with his sponsor and ask himself how the hell something like this happened.  If he *does* know, then he needs to come clean and clarify exactly what he thinks “100 child friendly“ popups are.

adultfriendfinder.com is in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/adultfriendfinder

Did you know that the Messenger Plus! sponsor program stipulates that you must be over 18 to install the sponsor, and that you must get the explicit approval of any person who may use the computer on which it is going to be installed before installing (unless you have legal authority to give permission for all users).

More to come later.  Other information about the Messenger Plus! sponsor program:
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/answers/43.html

The changing face of friendship

I think that I am as ‘wired’, if not more ‘wired’ than anybody I know.  But is that necessarily a good thing?

The Christmas season is fast approaching, and the Christmas greeting cards have started arriving at my home.  The traditional English habit of writing (sorry, lets use the modern terminology … typing) a long letter about the family’s year, and then photocopying it for inclusion with all cards, persists.  Often it is the only correspondence passing between family members during the entire year.

Then there are some of my friends.  I hear more about what is going on in their lives from their blog than I do from phone calls, letters, emails or IM chats.  I wonder if they consider how it makes their friends feel when they say ‘sorry I’m too busy to chat’ (or write) while at the same time they post extended spiels about their day to a blog.

I’ve been trying to remember the last time I received a real letter… you know the type… pages of chat, written by hand on thin ‘airmail’ paper so that the cost of postage is minimised - much treasured and kept forever.  I have a large box full of such letters, but sadly the last that I received is a few years old now although the person who wrote it keeps in sporadic touch via email.  A few years ago I was going to purchase a new box because the old one was so full…. a beautiful fancy chest to hold the letters I had received… but such correspondence stopped arriving – email was so much easier – so the chest purchased now holds DVDs – that is so sad.

I remember when I was in school we had a ‘pen pal club’ where we were able to pick a country and were then given the address of a correspondent in that country – I chose one of the Arab countries, and ended up corresponding for years with a young man over there – he was a Formula 1 fan and I still have his photograph taken while he was wearing his much loved red Holden jacket.  Apparently such pen pal clubs no longer exist – well they no longer exist in the Australian public school system.

So, are we granting ourselves any real benefit by giving up on the traditional forms of contact in favor of the instantaneous gratification of email or IM?  Tonight, I don’t think so.  Maybe I’m just being sentimental but I miss the effort that traditional correspondence requires.  The thought that somebody would make the effort to sit down and devote an hour or so to write to us alone is so very special.  I know that I always spend hours working on a letter to my special friends, even if it is only to be sent by email – two line rapid responses have never been my forte – my email will sit there in draft, and will be edited, and re-edited, and re-edited before sending.  I also have several elderly friends to whom I write by hand, using oversized letters, so that it can be read by their elderly eyes.

Is there somebody in your life that is special to you?  Don’t restrict yourself to email or IM to stay in touch – its too instantaneous, and the love demonstrated by effort is missing.  We all need to know that somebody gives a damn, and how better to prove that care than to write more than a short commentary.

Important changes to Internet Explorer

Back on October 9 I reported in this blog that the EOLAS patent was rearing its ugly head again:
http://msmvps.com/spywaresucks/archive/2005/10/09/69848.aspx

Back then I said I didn't know what the end result of the resurrection would be.  Well, now we know.

From http://msdn.microsoft.com/ieupdate/

“After a forthcoming update, Microsoft Internet Explorer users will not be able to directly interact with Microsoft ActiveX controls loaded by the APPLET, EMBED, or OBJECT elements. Users will be able to interact with such controls after activating their user interfaces. A new MSDN topic describes how Internet Explorer will handle ActiveX controls, shows how to load ActiveX controls so their interfaces are activated, and describes the impact of this behavior on accessibility tools and applications hosting the WebBrowser Control.

For more information, please see Activating ActiveX Controls:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/activating_activex.asp“

End result: Users of Internet Explorer will have to either click on the Control or use the TAB key to set focus on the Control, then press the SPACEBAR or the ENTER key to activate it.

Back in 2003 Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer would be modified to address the EOLAS patent  (a downloadable update was made available on MDSN, and maybe Technet, but was never released to the general public per se).  The modification stopped activex controls from loading in a page until the user clicking on OK in a dialogue box.  On some sites a user could be forced to click on multiple dialogue boxes while a page was loading.  I remember testing the contemplated changes way back then at www.javaboutique.com - it was a very painful experience.  Thankfully the update was scrapped in early 2004 after a successful appeal against the patent.

The current design is, I am relieved, far less disruptive for a user.

Which “forthcoming update“ will contain the changes?  Well, I don't expect it before Internet Explorer's February security update.

A really old page of mine about the EOLAS patent, long since archived, can be found here:
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/archive/eolas.htm