Edit: Carbonite Is a cool backup solution

Edit (1/31/09): I wrote the following without thinking about the dates. Apparently most of this happened in 2006, and some of the older review posts in question were recently deleted.

Carbonite is a needed service, they're a local company (Boston) and they have significant infrastructure so they're more likely to stay around in this screwed up economy, so I'm pulling for them.

I don't understand David Pogue reporting this like it's news, and I'm left figuring out whether I want to try the service myself - the backups I want to do are my photos that are probably 80 GB and completely disorganized - maybe they're the perfect solution.


People think they need a good system for backing up their computers. That's not exactly right - they need a system for restoring their computer in case there's a problem.

Online systems seem perfect, pay a little money, load a client, and your computer is backed up into the cloud. When there's a problem, simply get a new drive, hit "restore" and wait a little while.

Well, Carbonite seemed like the perfect solution, it's not expensive, it has some well known personalities that are fans it's got good reviews, etc.

Unfortunately it's not so simple, while it seems to back up pretty well, restore, not so much. Then when you need customer service, not so much either.

And then it turns out, there's widespread review-padding from employees. Yuck.

Oh well, I guess I need to look at another option.

Mac users have time machine - maybe PC people will get something similar someday, and we don't have to go buy a Drobo( the coolest drive out there ), but it still needs swell software.

Perry

Nasty New Worm for the New Year

There's a nasty new worm out there named W32.Downadup.B (symantec link here) that spreads in a large number of ways. The Symantec link describes it in detail, and has a great list of recommendations at the end of the posting.

Best ones are:
1. Don't open attachments unless you know what they are, who sent them and why!
2. Keep your anti-virus up to date ( and if you don't have one - get one- I'll help!)
3. Make sure your firewall is working

Have a great new year!
Perry

The Boston Globe did what?!

The Boston Globe, or someone who said they were from the Globe, called us on the telephone a couple of days ago with a weird story that our credit card for delivery had expired, and asked for a new credit card number and expiration date.

Well, the Boston Globe isn't exactly a paragon of identity protection so Sue naturally thought it was a scam. After all, in this day and age, who would call their customers asking for credit card numbers?

Well, we got a letter in the mail today - and guess what? It was the Globe, and our credit card really had expired. Haha - I wonder how hard it is for them to update their customers' credit card numbers now?

Should I sign my Credit Cards?

I'm pretty sure the answer is "Yes", although there's certainly an urban legend around that to protect your identity you should put something like "See Photo ID" on the backs of them.

I recently received an email that said it was from a lawyer and had interesting advice regarding identity theft that included this trick.

It seems like pretty good advice, and I have tried it in the past. Trust me - don't experiment with this when you travel. The merchants hate it and I think the credit card companies do too. I think it's something legal.

I found Scambusters with this Google search: "PHOTO ID REQUIRED on credit card"

They say this specifically:
http://www.scambusters.org/Scambusters80.html

And they address a letter like it here:
http://www.scambusters.org/creditcardfraudprevention.html

They're right about hotel keys, which isn't in letter; however.

I did some more searching, and found this, too - a link from the Missouri attorney general's site

http://ago.mo.gov/ConsumerCorner/blog/10398/Should_I_sign_the_back_of_my_credit_card/

http://www.mytruston.com/blog/tips/sign_the_back_of_credit_cards_or_not.html

Truston is identity protection company, but they do link to the real visa rules, but does agree with what I found. Rules are 1 and 2.5 MB pdf files, I don't think I'll read them right now. :-)

Perry

Don't Download Free Antivirus!

Well, maybe you can use AVG , but DON'T download any other free antivirus products - they ARE viruses!

There's one particularly nasty one called "Antivir 2009" that's driving sysadmins crazy everywhere.

There's another called "Winiguard.com" ( note the extra "i") , and possibly a program called "Macguard" that's also suspect.

If you want free antivirus, I think the best is to download Norton or McAfee from your internet service provider ( I'm pretty sure Comcast and Verizon have it ) or AVG

Please contact me direct if you have any questions.

Perry

The Large Hadron Collider will not destroy the universe

Update: March 1 2009: Penn State Researchers say it can't possibly happen: "The world is constantly bombarded by energetic cosmic rays from the depths of space, some of them inducing particle collisions thousands of times more powerful than those that will be produced by the LHC, If these collisions could create black holes, it would have happened by now."

The really smart people at CERN are building an enormous particle accelerator to try to find the Higgs Boson.

Some people think that the instruments that are capable of finding it will destroy the universe.

The concepts behind this are pretty difficult to understand, but here's a video that helped me understand. (I don't know why, but a synthesized voice doing rap about the LHC brings tears to my eyes)

Quiz for extra points - After you've watched the video - what kind of atoms are protons smashed against?

Update - Well, now they're not so sure. The scientists are almost certain that it won't destroy the earth, and the solar system, etc

DNS Problem

Yes, there is another DNS vulnerability and attack, and it's pretty scary.

DNS is the system on the internet that maps the name, like "www.whoever.com", to the numeric address. If it breaks, the internet breaks. If bad guys can successfully attack it, they can make you go to their servers instead of important places like your bank, Ebay, etc.

There's a long interesting story involved. Dan Kaminsky, the one who found it has a blog, which tells the story and has a program to test your ISP's DNS servers. If your ISP hasn't fixed it, please change your DNS to OpenDNS. Call me if you like to do it and need help, please call me.