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This is what five thousand dollars of SDRAM looks like… if it was early in the year 2000. Now it’s only worth a few hundred or so.

One of the blogs I’ve been reading lately is Baghdad Burning. If you have ever wanted to know what it is like to live in Iraq day to day, read this. Riverbend writes it well and pulls no punches. She is angry about the invasion, her nation getting ravaged by the Coalition and most of all, I think, losing her job as a database analyst. They had grrl DBAs in Iraq once, doctors and lawyers too, but not now. Iraq is descending into fundamentalist Islamic chaos and you can thank the Coalition for it. There was a time in Iraq when Christians and Muslims worked side by side and women could wear jeans. Not now.

In one post, she describes how on-site computer hacks get done:

My father has a friend with a wife and 3 children who is currently working for an Italian internet company. He communicates online with his ‘boss’ who sits thousands of kilometers away, in Rome, safe and sure that there are people who need to feed their families doing the work in Baghdad. This friend, and a crew of male techies, work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. They travel all over Baghdad, setting up networks. They travel in a beat-up SUV armed with cables, wires, pliers, network cards, installation CDs, and a Klashnikov for… you know… technical emergencies.

I’m glad I don’t live there. But I feel bad that she does.

Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications (WGA Notify) is an annoying upgrade to the Windows Genuine Advantage system Microsoft uses to deal with bootlegged copies of Windows XP. If you boot up your machine one day and see the message:

You may be a victim of software counterfeiting. This copy of Windows is not genuine and is not eligible to receive all updates and product support from Microsoft.

Click Get Genuine now to get more information and resolve this issue.

your computer has automatically downloaded service patch KB905474 and you are now the proud owner of WGA Notify. It thinks you have a bootleg copy of Windows!

I don’t care if you run a bootleg copy of Windows. I personally own a legal copy of Windows XP but I’ve already had a run-in with the WGA system thinking I wasn’t “legit”. I figure this little Notify bugger is going to screw up on some people as well. We can’t have that, can we? The following isn’t a crack, it is merely a way around an annoying problem.

What is it?
WGA Notify is basically a persistent nag screen with some malware-like capabilities. It is started at boot, but not with the usual startup vectors. You won’t see it using msconfig. If you look in Add/Remove Programs, near the bottom along with the other software updates you will find a update called “Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications (KB905474)”. When you click on it, text underneath the title will inform you that “this update cannot be removed” and you will see no remove button. If you bring up the process list with Ctrl-Alt-Del you will see a process called WgaTray.exe. If you try to End Process it disappears and comes back. A lot of viruses and malware systems do this very same thing.

Stopping It
If WGA Notify thinks your copy of Windows is not “genuine” the nag program will be running, even if you have told it to go away. The process viewer in Windows can’t stop it. But a process viewer like prcview can. Download the prcview Zip file then extract it somewhere. There is no installer. Double-click on prcview.exe to run it. Using prcview, select WgaTray.exe in the list and right-click on it. Select “Kill” in the menu. When prcview asks to confirm click the “Kill” button. This will make the nag screen go away.

Preventing It From Starting
The dropper for WgaTray.exe is WgaLogon.dll. This library is run by winlogon.exe, one of the normal Windows XP components activated on boot. If you are feeling frisky, you can use prcview to see the module usage of winlogon.exe; you will find that WgaLogon.dll is one of its modules.

To make winlogon.exe not load WgaLogon.dll, Run regedit.exe from the Start Menu. Find this key in your registry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify\WgaLogon

and delete it. This will prevent WgaLogon.dll from starting.

Uninstalling It
An analysis of the KB905474 update.inf file tells us why WGA Notify can’t be automatically uninstalled: it does not copy an uninstaller and it toggles a number of registry keys so the option isn’t even offered. It does not make an $NTUninstallKB905474$ folder in your Windows folder. But you can still delete its files. Use the Search Tool to search your boot drive (C: in most cases) for “wga”. Remember to check the “Search system folders”, “Search hidden files and folders”, “Search subfolders” boxes. The files that have been bothering you live in the WINDOWS folder, though a number of copies will be found in other folders. Delete all of the WgaTray.exe and WgaLogon.dll files you find.

If you don’t want to see it listed in the Add/Remove Programs list delete this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\WgaNotify

What Side Effects Does This Have?
Removing the WGA Notify tool won’t stop you from getting automatic critical updates, but it will stop you from downloading things from Microsoft and from using the Windows Update site (unless you have the legitcheck crack, of course). Since there is very little Microsoft has that you can’t get elsewhere, this is hardly a problem.

Also, this is a temporary solution. The next time you get a round of critical updates, the WGA Notify tool will return, requiring you to carry out this process again.

I just saw an ad on a website linking to this. It had salacious sounding wording like “see who’s on the list” or something like that.

While not illegal, inclusion on this very public list would be ruinous to a company’s image. Here’s the thing: these civil cases are pending, as in not yet decided by a court of law.

What I want to know is, what happens when one of these anti-piracy cases gets thrown out of court? What kind of defamation lawsuit does a company get to slap Microsoft with because of their inclusion on this list of shame?

I have just found a straightforward video explanation of net neutrality over at Public Knowledge. I think one could use it to nicely explain the complicated issue to those not so familiar.

Network neutrality is a very serious problem, not just for Americans, but for most people connected to the Internet. Why? One reason is because so much of the Net runs through the U.S. and so many great services are hosted there.

A number of large ISPs in the U.S. have started making noises about how they would love to charge both customers and websites for being connected over their networks. In their messed up little world, they see access to a popular site like Google as a premium service for which people would pay extra, kind of like adding the football channel to your satellite service.

This can easily affect Canadian customers too. If one of the U.S. backbone providers strikes up a deal with Yahoo, guess what? You won’t be visiting Google any time soon. Greedy Internet service providers in America can most definitely ruin your day up here in Canada.

But we don’t even need American companies to do this, we have our own greedy ISPs to worry about. How about if Sympatico and Rogers decide you don’t really need a Vonage phone. Going to take them to court? Good luck with that.

Don’t you just love the U.S. Congress? Bought and paid for by the MPAA…

Nevermind the RIAA music trading lawsuits, I want to see what Americans think of their government when they start sending teenagers to jail for downloading the latest top 40 hit. I can just see it now:

Uhh, so watcha in for?

I killed a man. You?

I downloaded the latest Nickelback album.

That’s hardcore, holmes. Hardcore.

Methinks some priorities are way out of wack in that land.  Luckily, this kind of thing isn’t happening in my country. Yet.

Like many things, old video games are hip again. They’ve never not been hip as far as i am concerned, but what do I know?

If you are in the Los Angeles area in the next month you can check out the I AM 8 BIT art show. Yep, an art show. Inspired by the video games from that era.

I lived through that era and played those games… wow do I feel old.

They even have a coffee table art book.

People often ask us about good, cheap computer programs for their Windows-based computers.

Well, how about good and free? Quality free software does exist, but isn’t the always the easiest thing to find. There’s so much bad stuff floating around — poorly written bloatware, crippleware, nagware and all the nasty programs with adware and spyware built in. So to get a recommendation from us a free program must also offer:

• Ease of use. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it at least has to be usable.
• Stability, even if it is still in “beta”. It’s no good if it crashes your machine every 30 minutes.
• Ease of removal. If you decide you don’t like it, you should be able to remove it easily, without it screwing up your system on the way out.
• No viruses, spyware, adware, malware or anyware; you get the program you ask for, and nothing more.
• No 30-day trial nonsense.
• No crippleware. Offering a free “lite” version is fair game, provided the program can still basically do what it is intended for. The whole “oh you can make the document, but you can’t save it” crap is unacceptable.
• No copy protection trickery. For example, MSN Messenger is free, but requires you to validate your copy of Windows in order to get it. No good.
• Licence and/or terms of use that are not too restrictive.

With that in mind, here are ten good free software programs that do what they say, with no adware, no viruses and no nonsense.

Irfanview

Image Viewer
Around for years, Irfanview is the ultimate image viewer. Small, fast and able to display and print virtually any image format, it is a great thing to have installed if you like downloading pictures. When your friends overseas send you a picture encoded in some weird format you’ve never heard of, you’ll be ready for it with Irfanview. Licence: free for non-commercial use.

Miranda

Instant messaging
Miranda is an instant messaging client like MSN Messenger. Unlike other IM clients, its simple, unobtrusive style lets you know when you’ve got messages without hitting you over the head with dancing smilies or huge popups. But more important than its minimalist style is Miranda’s multi-protocol capabilities. Not only can it do MSN, it can do Yahoo, AOL, Jabber, ICQ and IRC, all at once, all in one easy to look at window. Licence: GPL; freely usable by anyone.

7-Zip

File archiving
7-Zip is used to open and make compressed file archives, like .ZIP files. If you don’t feel like dealing with Winzip or Winrar nagging you all the time, 7-Zip is for you. The simple archiving program is small and quick and supports a wide variety of compression formats. Licence: LGPL; freely usable by anyone.

CDex

Ripping CD audio
Ever wondered where all the good MP3s come from? CDex is a popular tool for extracting audio from compact discs and turning it into an MP3 for playback on devices like the iPod. CDex is equipped with the freeware LAME MP3 encoder, which produces compressed MP3 audio of the highest quality. It also supports CDDB, allowing it to fetch the appropriate album and track names from the freeDB.org Internet database. Licence: GPL; freely usable by anyone.

Winamp

Audio and video playback
Winamp is the original MP3 music player and even after all these years you can still get it for free (the lite version, anyway). In addition to MP3 files, Winamp also plays a wide range of audio and video formats. Fast, snazzy-looking and easy to use, Winamp continues to be the industry benchmark for audio playback. Licence: free for non-commercial use.

Limewire

Peer to peer file trading
Limewire is a music and file downloading system. Having boldly and publicly renounced their use of adware in the past, a clean Limewire now finds itself the premier filesharing client on the Internet, with more users than ever. A commercial version with additional features is also sold, and the Limewire program will politely ask you now and again if you want to buy the pro version. Licence: GPL; freely usable by anyone.

AVG Free Edition

Anti virus software
If you have grown weary of paying the Norton tax every year, you might consider AVG Anti Virus Free Edition. Producer Grisoft sells a commercial version of the product, but the free edition has been available to home customers for years. It catches all the same viruses that Norton and McAfee do, just without eating so much of your money. And it’s faster, too. Licence: free for non-commercial use.

Ad-Aware SE Personal

Spyware detection and removal
Ad-Aware is one of the best adware/spyware removal tools available. Like AVG, maker Lavasoft also sells a commercial version, but offers the Personal edtion free of charge to home users. Licence: free for non-commercial use.

Abiword

Word processing
Abiword is a well featured, easy to use word processor similar to Microsoft Word. It includes all of the stuff that you might expect from a word processor: text formatting, inserting graphics, spell check, etc… all without the Microsoft baggage and price tag. It is even able to open most Microsoft Word documents. Licence: GPL; freely usable by anyone.

Firefox

Web browser
Firefox hardly needs an introduction; it is the second most popular web browser on the planet and probably the most functional. Its use of RSS bookmarks, tabbed browsing, quick search, extensions and themes make other web browsers like Internet Explorer look old fashioned by comparison. Its focus on security, along with its ease of use make it a must have on any desktop. Licence: MPL; freely usable by anyone.

Some of the runners up, also all good: Open Office, Trillian, Spybot Search and Destroy, Shareaza, Filezilla, Azureus, Opera, Media Player Classic.

To all of the basement computer hacks, please take notice: hard drives are held in place by four screws. Count the fingers on the hand, exclude your thumb. You can do this!

Being a reasonable sort, I’m willing to accept custom rails and caddies that attach to the drive in four places. I’ll even accept three screws if you can’t easily get to one of them, but not two, and definitely not one. If you only use one, even the ones with the little teeth, the hard drive can easily vibrate the screw loose. Do you what happens then? You guessed it, the hard drive falls out and goes *clunk* on the floor of the case. Now doesn’t that just scream, “wow, what kinda moron put this together?”

Now that we know all this, I feel I must also point out that in almost all personal computers the coarse pitch screws — the hard drive ones — are #6-32 1/4 inch (the fine pitch ones are M3 1/4″). You can buy these by the bag at many hardware stores. If you ask the local computer guy nicely he might even give you a bunch. If you run out of these screws while you’re on the hack resist the urge to use something like a 3/4 inch wood-screw. Why should you not use it? So real techs like me don’t get skewered on its sharp little point when we try to fix your handiwork!

grrrrr….

codesmith: hence the plan for an early night…
bob: yeah..
bob: but if i go to bed now like i want to i will be awake by five
codesmith: I did that on Sat…
codesmith: up at six, drank coffee and watched the morning
bob: this happens to me a lot.
codesmith: yup
bob: i wake up at six or so
bob: but I don’t like watching the sun rise, for some reason.
codesmith: doesn’t bother me…
bob: only when I’m around the ocean do i like it
codesmith: seen a lot of them…. :)
bob: and you know why…
bob: when my feet are on the ground and walking at sunrise it is because im heading home with a hangover :)
codesmith: hehehe
bob: mind you this hasn’t happened to me in years, but the programming is still in there