Windows Vista Employee Timekeeping:

The first bad idea comes to light as a series of lawsuits against employers.  Their bad idea?  Tying in a time-keeping system for logging hourly employee hours into the startup and shutdown of an employee’s Windows Vista PC.  At first glance the idea sounds reasonable enough.  You identify how many hours an employee has worked by how many hours their computer has been on.  Simple and efficient.  Way better than some error-prone clock and paper stub system, right?

Well.

…Err…

Wrong.

Hence the lawsuits.  Now you’d think Microsoft might be to blame in this one, because everyone loves to blame Microsoft and it is Windows Vista.  And in a way Microsoft is to blame… just not legally.  The problem, you see, is that in some cases Windows Vista is taking over 15 minutes to start up or shut down.  And so employees on this computer-driven clock are sitting there for fifteen minutes at startup before being “clocked in” and likewise again at shutdown before being “clocked out”.  In these really bad cases, that’s a half of an hour a day that the employee is not being payed.  At five days a week that’s two and a half hours of unpayed time.  It adds up fast.  Even the employees who suffer less because they have faster PCs are still accumulating hours and hours of unpaid time over the course of their employment.  And obviously, to them, that stinks.

Clearly the idea of using the computer for timekeeping is in need of some adjustment.

US Army USB Sticks:

So you’re a soldier in the Army.  You don’t always have access to a nice handy network for delivering files.  So you have your handy-dandy military issued USB stick.  It’s a simple solution to data mobility.  Which is great.  Until some schmuck brings in a virus.  Uh oh!

Yeah.

The Agent-BTZ worm, a modification of the SillyFDC worm, has been thrashing the US Army so badly that until they get it nailed down, no one is allowed to use any portable media solution.  No USB sticks!

Once the infection is removed, military issued portable media will be allowed once more.  But all of those naughty naughty soldiers and civilian contractors will have to stop using their own personal devices.

It actually comes as a surprise that the US Army didn’t see this coming.  Or maybe they did but they had no solution.  It seems like Windows autorun feature would be the first hurdle to tackle.  In a high-security environment, it’s kind of bad to just automatically run executable code when you stick a device into a PC on a highly secured network.  Next would be a good idea to do the opposite: Run a security program to scan any device for viruses automatically when it’s plugged into such a computer.  (Or even on any CD/DVD/Blu Ray/etc.)  And then of course, obviously, control the use of non-issued media. There are always rules about such things, but never complete enforcement.

Because keyloggers and remote executables on highly sensitive military servers is “A Bad Thing”.

Apple MacBook DisplayPort:

So you bought a shiny new Apple MacBook, and you’re all happy.  You hook up your old monitor to it (or one you bought on discount, et cetera) using a DisplayPort to DVI or VGA connector and sit down to watch this great video you bought from iTunes to celebrate your new purchase.

Only to have your new computer tell you that you can’t play your protected content on your unprotected screen.

Doh!

Yeah.

Because Apple’s DisplayPort is basically an HDMI port, using a built in copy-protection system like HDMI’s High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP).  Only, because it’s Apple, they made it proprietary and call it DisplayPort Content Protection (DPCP).  It’s basically the same thing.  Before it will play, the media player asks if the media displayer (the monitor or TV) can decode the encrypted signal it’s about to send to it.  If it can’t do so, it doesn’t play.  This keeps pirates from grabbing an unencrypted video mid-stream and recording it.

There’s just one problem.  Apple’s DisplayPort is basically new and basically unused, because it’s proprietary.  So there aren’t many monitors or TVs out there that support it, and certainly buying a new one is expensive.  And Apple, the micro-managing control monster that they are, don’t give you unprotected VGA or DVI ports on MacBooks.  So you can’t connect your monitor or TV up to your MacBook in a way that skips this annoying layer of DPCP copy protection.  You have to do it through the protected DisplayPort in some way.  Meaning, basically, you’re screwed.  So you either have to buy a brand new Apple monitor, or settle for watching the video on your little laptop screen.  (Is there even a TV that will support it?)

You see, this is where PCs have that awkward advantage.  Because PC manufacturers really don’t care.  They’re not there to control your ever move.  In fact, they’re quite “open”.  So even though your PC might have a similar (though much more widely used standard) HDCP copy protection over an HDMI cable connection, it will also have a DVI or VGA port (or even component, s-video, or composite video cable option) where it will let you connect up to any old TV or monitor and play your protected videos.

I don’t think Apple really appreciated the number of MacBook owners that would, you know, actually use iTunes?  Or Apple just didn’t appreciate the number of people that actually wanted to watch their videos on a screen larger than a laptop?

Hmm…

Either way, Apple is not exactly impressing customers with this.

And so long as Apple continues to ship notebooks with only a DisplayPort (no DVI or VGA port) Apple customers will continue to have this problem.

At least until some inspired hack builds a DisplayPort to DVI converter that uses the converter to respond back to the MacBook that all is secure instead of letting the monitor/TV do that.  But that would probably be illegal as it’d circumvent security measures.

Now we only have to wait a year for devices to start actually using it.

But yes, you heard right.  “SuperSpeed” USB (hopefully to always just be known as USB 3.0 as I am not going to be asking people if they have a “SuperSpeed” port) had its specs finalized.  So now we can get a move on replacing that darned old USB 2 standard.

Okay, so on a more serious note, USB 3 seems to not entirely use the same cable.  Somehow the port is meant to be backward compatible so that USB 2 and 1 devices can plug in, but USB 3 devices will be physically different.  And the cables themselves will be more like ethernet cables than USB cables with a lot more wires inside.  Though rumor has it that an optical system in USB 3 may even be in the works.  Goodness knows how this is all going to work out.  It sounds rather like a mess to me.  The more complex a system is, the more places for things to go wrong.

But on the plus side, compared to USB 2’s 480 Mbits/s speed, USB 3 will have 5.0Gbits/s, which is a bit over 10x faster.  This is handy, as disk drives keep getting larger and larger.  Also, while USB 2 and 1 have used a single direction (unidirectional) data flow, USB 3 will have full duplex flows.  That’ll be nice. Plus this time around power management and rest/sleep states will be a part of the spec from the beginning, so we’ll be getting better energy savings.  Green is always good.

Now comes the hard part: waiting.  The spec may be finalized, but the production doesn’t seem to have been jumped on by pre-spec hopefuls, so literally, the production only now begins.  R&D using the new spec is just starting.  First the electronics and chips to put into USB 3 device controllers and in the USB 3 devices themselves have to be developed.  For that matter, the cables too.  And then the crap that actually uses these like motherboards, add-on cards, joysticks, external disk drives, web cams, et cetera all have to be worked on.  It’ll likely be 2010 before USB 3 devices really come to market in earnest.  That’s over a year, and a long time to live with USB 2 when you know that something better is just around the corner.

So in less than a month Grisoft has issued false-positives for their AVG (free and pay editions, 7.5 and 8 versions) virus definitions that claimed the incredibly commonly used firewall - CheckPoint Zone Alarm - is a virus, as well as that almost always used (because it’s Windows)  Microsoft Windows XP kernel file: user32.dll.  Now one, but two extemely commonly used files marked as viruses when they’re clearly not.  This should have been caught in testing before release to the world at large, because if these programs aren’t installed on the test bed, then what the heck is?

Well, it ain’t over.  Not by a long shot.

Because now in less than a month we have three, yes, count them, three false-positives from commonly used software.  That’s right.  Just shortly after smearing egg on their face with the Windows user32.dll false positive, Grisoft went and released a false positive of … Adobe Flash.  Yes, that’s right.  That little bit of software used all over the place on the internet.  That practically anyone who surfs the web has installed.  That just as clearly should be in Grisoft’s test bed.  That Adobe Flash.

I don’t think it could possibly get much more embarrassing for Grisoft at this point.  I mean it was bad enough when they instituted their Link Scanner that automatically pre-scanned common search results, causing web page hits across the world to jump insanely high when people weren’t actually visiting the sites, just getting them returned as search results.  That was bad.

But now three major false-positives, one of which rendered customer’s computers inoperative if they acted on it, in less than a month.

Hello?!

There was a time when I would have said that Grisoft AVG was hands down one of the best anti-virus software packages out there.  It had a lot to offer, and was well refined, even for the free version.  It used less resources than the majors from Norton and McAfee and worked just as well.  And so I’d used it for years.

In all fairness, I can no longer make such a statement.  There are others out there that are better.  There are others out there that are actually taking the time to test before release.

I’m not saying don’t use Grisoft.  If you have it, and like it, then by all means, the choice is yours.  But if you’re looking for something new, maybe, sadly, it’s time to look somewhere else.  Grisoft no longer inspires confidence.

Grisoft, makers of the AVG anti-virus software, have made a bad mistake.  Correction, have made two bad mistakes.  The first was identifying CheckPoint’s Zone Alarm as a trojan not long ago.  The second, was identifying a Windows system file (user32.dll) as a virus.  Of course it wasn’t.  It’s a false positive.  But if you make the mistake of believing your AVG antivirus, you’re going to end up with a computer that can’t boot up.

Now, false positives happen.  But false positives on core software, like a very commonly used security firewal, or worse, like an extremely often used operating system, these shouldn’t happen.  Any basic testing should catch these false positives before the virus definition update is released to the public.

Clearly, that isn’t happening.

Grisoft is failing to perform even basic quality assurance.  And customers have every right to complain.  Free and pay users of AVG 7.5 and 8 are all affected by these obviously untested virus definition updates.

For what it’s worth, Grisoft has fixed their virus definitions, so if you have performed an update as of today, you’re safe.

And for those who let their AVG anti-virus break Windows, Grisoft offers a support page, without a direct link.  Look for item 1574 here.  Let’s hope that you still have your Windows XP install CD handy.  Heck, with as many OEMs that just ship recovery CDs instead of Windows install disks, and as many OEMs that don’t even ship you an actual CD - just an ISO you can download or an equally useless measure, let’s hope that you actually have a Windows XP install CD, period.

Random false positives are to be expected.  Nothing is ever fool proof.  But false positives on operating system files are just unconscionable.  Grisoft, you should be ashamed.

Seagate announced their new Savvio 15K.2 hard drives, and I have to say, I’m impressed.

Not by the 115 per cent performance improvement over 3.5 inch 15,000 RPM drives.  Not by making a 15K RPM drive in a 2.5 inch form factor that works so well.  (And is that much easier to cool.)  Not even by the 6GB/s transfer rate and SAS2.0 feature set.

Nope.  Not by any of these mightily impressive things.

But by the 70 per cent less power usage vs. typical 3.5 inch 15K drives.

Because this is thinking smart.  Less power.  Less heat.  Less size.  Better performance.  It’s everything a good server needs.  It’s green computing.  Good job Seagate!

Now if only there were affordable equivalents for the mainstream desktop market…