Shorten The Road

In September 2005, 4 million players were infected with a virus in the online realm of “World of Warcraft.” Quarantine areas were circumvented by infected players, cities became uninhabitable and were abandoned, and players avoided large groups. The game never recovered. Blizzard, the game’s creator, had to reset the game to eliminate the outbreak.

Since then, this scenario has been studied by various groups including the CDC (Center of Disease Control), to determine how a real epidemic would spread. I was inspired to post this article, because almost two years later, I heard a BBC report on it. An August 22, 2007 yahoo news search for ‘Warcraft virus’, returned 30 articles for the month of August 2007. One of my favorite headlines from that search was ‘Nerd Plague to Save the World.’

So, the next time you are being nagged by your spouse or significant other to stop playing your games, remind them the important role you are ‘playing’ in saving their lives and the lives of the human race.

Bubble Game.

I was cleaning up some folders and came across this project. It is a very simple java applet game which the player, utilizing their mouse, ‘pops’ the circles by clicking inside the circumference of the circles.

It can be played at:
http://www.martinbutler.com/Bubble/BubbleGame.html

The code, along with the comments, should be self explanatory, but if you have any questions please let me know.

java files:
http://www.martinbutler.com/Bubble/BubbleGame.java
http://www.martinbutler.com/Bubble/Bubble.java
http://www.martinbutler.com/Bubble/CanvasPanel.java
binary:
http://www.martinbutler.com/Bubble/Bubble.jar

First, buy hundreds of thousands of shares in a penny stock.
Second, spam the world about the how great the company is and mention that they will present a fail-safe plan for world peace, plus they found a cure for cancer.
Third, as soon as a very tiny fraction of the targeted audience of the spam reacts to the best stock tip they ever received by buying some shares and pushing the price a few cents higher, sell the stock and gain a 30 – 40 % profit!
Lastly, repeat steps 1 - 3 with a different stock.

Today we saw an increase in email that got past our filters. Spammers, good bad or indifferent are always finding ways around the industry filters. Spam filters get updated and spammers find another technique around them.

According to a report by the California Business and Professions Code, the cost to US organizations is more then 10 billion dollars. So, could there be a vested interest in the continuance of this industry?  (yes, but I don’t subscribe to that conspiracy).
http://www.spamlaws.com/state/ca.shtml

Here are a couple of sites I came across while looking up today’s abuser. The first link is a good FAQ regarding stock spam and the various techniques:
http://spamnation.info/stocks/FAQ.html
http://www.qwoter.com/spam.php
http://www.spamnation.info/stocks/

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

My team supports 500+ computers (both laptops and desktops) and occasionally someone will ‘crash’ his or her machine. We have various methods for recovering the data, including a product called SpinRite. Our success rate on this product is 33% on a sample size of 6. We wished we had a higher success rate from the product, however, for those who fell into the 33%, they were ecstatic to recover all their data. Productivity gained from them not trying to recover data from various sources was well worth the licensing paid for the product.

There has been some criticism of the product, which can be found at:
SpinRite_Criticism

PST19UPG - Password Strip

At work, we are currently using Microsoft Outlook 2000 and occasionally have some users who have password protected their PST files. Most of these users choose to utilize the automatic login, which eventually causes the users some heartache when their machines are replaced and need to re-enter their passwords (which they don’t remember).

Thank you Microsoft for creating a utility to help us with this situation. The utility was not originally created to strip passwords; it was designed to upgrade the PST format to version 19. Imagine the outlash Microsoft would have endured if they created the utility with the primary purpose of stripping passwords; although, it was a pretty big oversight to release the utility with this type of side-effect.

Using this utility is a quick way my team handles many of these types of situations. For the later PST versions, we have the users create a new PST file on the older system (along side with the original PST file) and then copy their content.

Hello Dummy!

I had the honor of seeing Don Rickles this past weekend and at 81, he made me laugh just as hard as any other comic I have ever seen, live or recorded. The average age of the audience – retired. There was a sprinkling of us in our 30’s and even a few in their twenties. Spread the word; younger people should take the opportunity to see this master before he can not do it any longer.

His performance had its spiritual moments. A man his age has seen many friends and family pass before him, including most notably, Frank Sinatra.

God bless you Don! And I wish you many more healthy years of gracing this world with you humor.

Years ago you would drop your film off to be developed and along with your developed pictures you would get the negatives. Some of us still have that drawer in the house with numerous envelopes full of negatives. That day and age is long past us; now we have hundreds to thousands of images from our digital cameras sitting on our computer hard drives.

Do you back these images up?
How important are these images (memories) to you and your loved ones?

DVD burners are relatively cheap these days, at a minimum you should put a reoccurring event on your calendars to back up these memories.

A more convenient solution is using network-attached storage devices or external hard drives. Take some time to review the benefits of adding one or more of these devices to your home infrastructure. My preference is the external hard drive. I personally own the Western Digital MyBook – 500GB and have been very happy with it.

Remember, adding these devices still doesn’t ensure your files are protected from losses (i.e. hardware failures). You still need a viable backup scheme. I have a copy of all my important files (i.e. images, music, videos, etc.) on my external drive and my internal hard drive. In the near future, I will purchase a second MyBook and keep both of them synced.

There is another benefit to the external hard drive, I can take it with me to the homes of my friends and families and ‘bore’ them with my latest vacation photos.