Phasor Burn

Check out this video of the wmf 0-day exploit which is currently burning up the ‘net.  Don’t go to any of the URLs visible in the movie unless you know what you are doing (or feel like spending the next 6 hours reinstalling your PC).

Crafty buggers, I almost admire their presumably gigantic balls that they must have, to try obtaining credit card numbers and validation info directly from the poor victim in this manner.

After more than two and a half years, SCO must finally turn over to the U.S. District Court in Utah any proof it has that there’s Unix code in Linux.

How much longer can this drag out? Does anyone other than SCO itself still believe they have a case?

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Starchoice has been promising a PVR for years, in fact the reseller that we got our system from 3 years ago said it was “within a month or three”. Hah, little did we know it was going to be three years, not three months.

In late April they have been advertising a DVR530 aka DSR530 which is a dual-hd-tuner unit that looks really great. Slick ads on starchoice information channel, etc. Starchoice put together a special pre-order deal for existing customers. Some free PPV credits and so forth. Order between May 1 and 15 and get the units before the general public does in the retail stores.

Great, so here’s what happened …

May 11 - Ordered the DSR530 (listed as DVR530 on weborder form)

May 15 or so - DSR530 available in Future Shop, The Brick, BestBuy. Adverts on regular network channels.

May 21 - Left feedback on dialogue zone asking for eta.

May 24 - Response on dialogue zone saying 7-10 days if I had already received a phone call to confirm details, otherwise I was to call them or leave info in dialogue zone to get it rolling.

May 28 - I respond with info they wanted in dialogue zone (I was busy that week..)

May 31 - I call the # from the weborder form, talk to sales person, ask them for ETA. They said someone would call to confirm some information soon and then give eta on delivery.

June 2 - CSR Calls to confirm type of dish, lnb, etc. Says receiver will ship the next day and we would have it Saturday at the latest.

June 9 - No sign of the unit. Called sales dept number again. Got told that it was originally scheduled to ship out on June 10th, but now it was pushed out to June 16th.

I expressed my extreme displeasure at being jerked around by them and said if I didn’t have it PDQ I would be calling the credit card company and have the charges reversed, and also let them know it was verging on FRAUD to take money in advance and then not deliver product for 30+ days.

Lack of proactive updates was also very bad of them. They had my number(s) and email address….

Left feedback in their Dialogue zone yet again (just in case the CSR I was talking to before had their head up their butt) and basically said all of the above.

June 10 - Response from them in the Dialogue Zone. Said to go ahead and get a unit elsewhere if I wanted, and then to call them to cancel the order.

June 11 - Went down to the nearest Future Shop. Paid $699 plus another small amount for a 2 year service plan (no questions asked over-the-counter replacement, in case the hdd burns up or whatever, initial product runs CAN be flakey, I know…).

Asked the Future Shop sales critter a few questions, apparently they get batches of the DSR530 delivered to their store three times per week, and they keep flying off the shelf.

So the pre-order delays simply can’t be due to lack of product.

Called Star Choice, cancelled order.

I was able to retain the $50 / 10 PPV credits, and as well the CSR told me the installers would call on Monday (it is Saturday today) to arrange the install time.

I have an elliptical dish, dual lnb that looks like a pair of cylinders. CSR said the installation would be FREE, even if the installer decides to replace the existing single coax, the dish, the lnb’s, etc.

So . . .$699 + 2 year service plan + free install + keeping the 10 PPV credits == cheaper than the preorder . . .

Awaiting call from the installer….

HP can’t write stable, decent software if their lives depended on it. Or at least that’s how I feel based on several years of fighting with the HP multifunction printer management software on various platforms. 2000, XP, and Mac OS X.

We have an HP Officejet G85 swiss army printer that does fax, scan, print, and has a nice hopper feeder for the scan/fax functions. As a piece of hardware, we don’t have much to complain about it other than the usual bit with inkjet cartridges costing so much and going dry at the worst times.

The software is another matter.

The printer started life on our home office network attached to a Windows 2000 Pro machine. USB support for anything under 2000 was a joke at the best of times, so we went with legacy parallel port. The G85 worked reasonably well for the machine it was directly attached to, but really only worked as a printer for anything else on the lan. The HP Directory fancy pants software that was supposed to let you scan and fax from across the network just wasn’t up to the task.

As new versions came out, we attempted to upgrade in a failed attempt to get the remote scanning working. The software would not uninstall cleanly and we ended up using a 30+ step procedure found on HP’s support site for doing a full uninstall and (re)install of the newer drivers + director software.

After a year or more of this, we went to XP for the print server. Similar issues ensued except the HP now had an uninstaller that actually worked. At some point we moved to USB for the connection, on the theory that the ECP/EPP parallel port stuff might be at fault and XP had fairly decent USB support when compared to 2000.

We still ended up using the G85 as a printer from afar and doing scanning from the directly attached pc due to HP Director instabilities.

As part of our home office network consolidation, we wanted to get rid of the XP box that was acting as print server, and so a JetDirect device was purchased. I think it was the 170x or similar. This has an ethernet interface on one end, and a USB on the other. HP Director software was still flakey but now we could scan from remote by using the web interface of the jetdirect device.

This was better but still depressing that the HP Director software was basically a big pile of stinky poo when it came to anything related to the non-printer functions.

Enter the Mac.

We’re continuing the desktop machine consolidation in the home office network, and are going to be 100% mac on the client side shortly. Maybe the HP Director software for Mac OS X is better than the windows stuff.

Ha. Not. Even. Close.

Issues under Mac OS X included the HP Director application being re-added to the dock everytime you logged in. Most annoying.

The other problem was the functioning of the HP Director software itself. Actually, the setup assistant — which everytime you wake the mac from sleep or login the HP Director Setup Assistant jumps in the way and says you haven’t finished setting it up yet. So, plug the config info in again …. during which some of the info is coming from the G85 such as fax number which is already programmed into it …. and at the end screen the setup assistant complains about inability to communicate with the printer.

Immediately after that it says hey the ink levels are low. So which is it, you can’t talk or you can and the ink is low? Bugger me.

Here’s the fixes to these two problems under Mac OS X.

1) Find this file /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist and remove the dict stanza that deals with starting the Director Docker.app

2) trash this file /Library/Preferences/Hewlett-Packard Preferences/com.hp.setupassistant

Aside from needing to do these two things, you will find that the HP Director actually works under Mac OS X for doing remote scanning and such. Yay.

Unfortunately it took us something like 4 years to get to this point, and the printer is likely ready to wear out soon. Murphy says it will. My recommendation for anyone contemplating buying an HP multifunction device is to find some other vendor that actually knows how to write software that works with their products. Read the support forums at their sites first.

big. steamy, pile. of. poo. printer. software. icky. ptooie!

Bend over and take it like a man

The preview version of the database will include all planned features for SQL Server 2005. Rather than have a third beta program as originally planned, Microsoft will release updates every six to eight weeks until the product is finished, said Tom Rizzo, director of product management for SQL Server.

For both the SQL server and Visual Studio betas, Microsoft will offer customers the option to sign a “GoLive” license, which will allow them to deploy production systems on the beta software. Typically, beta software agreements do not allow customers to run applications because Microsoft does not officially offer support.

Fsck me gently with a chainsaw. Their regular releases were buggy enough, now they want people to put their explicitly designated beta versions on production systems?