However, these have all displayed similar symptoms, and I am thinking there might be another outbreak of malware coming.  I have noticed that malware seems to come in waves.  I will spend a whole bunch of time cleaning it up for a while, then I will go months with out having to clean any up… then it’ll come back in force again.

I’m not sure of the injection vector of the latest version (the previous wave seemed to enjoy Java exploits quite a lot), but I can give you a fairly obvious and quick to diagnose symptom and a quick way to clean it up.

The first and easiest check on an infected machine is try and visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com.  On the machines I have seen, regular websites will work like cnn.com or google.com, but you can not get to the Windows Update site.  It will just snap to a page not found error.

The second easy check basically confirms that Windows Updates are being blocked.  Hop in to the Event Viewer, and look in the Application log.  You should see a whole onslaught of errors from crypt32 complaining that it “Failed auto update retrieval of third-part root list sequence number from…The connection with the server was terminated abnormally”.  This is almost a guaranteed sign you’ve picked yourself up some new malware, and more specifically a rootkit.  This rootkit is sort of nasty in that it makes you think you have got the machine all cleaned up.  If you run a Malwarebytes Antimalware scan the scan will come back clean, and the system will seem normal (aside from the errors in Event Viewer and not being able to get to Windows Updates).

To get rid of this bugger you’re going to need a bit more powerful medication.  If Malwarebytes Antimalware is cough syrup, this thing is full-body radiation.  I am speaking of Combofix.  First a word of warning:  Combofix can seriously hose your computer.  Do not run it unless you are a computer expert and able to manually repair any damage that may be inadvertently caused by Combofix.  That said, I have never had a problem with Combofix, it has always worked great for me.

Don’t be afraid by Combofix’s low-level appearance.  It appears that way because that is what it is, low-level.  It gets deep in the system and does what it needs.  How it actually works is a trade secret that only the author of the program knows.  He must keep the methods he uses secretive so that malware writers won’t be able to stop his cleanup efforts and make his program useless.

So you run Combofix and follow it’s steps and take note of it’s warnings and you’ll eventually get to it’s notice that it found rootkit activity:

Excellent news!  Not so excellent you have a rootkit, but excellent that Combofix has detected it and will now proceed with the cleanup.  Your machine will reboot at least once to continue with the cleanup and Combofix will go about it’s business of cleaning up the mess you have.  combofix has over 50 stages, so it can take a while to run.  Just be patient, let it do it’s thing, and never interrupt it.

After Combofix has done it’s thing, it will display a notepad window with a log file of what it has done.  If you’re bored you can browse through the logs and see it’s work.  At this point your machine is rootkit free, and you should be able to once again get to the Windows Updates web site.  At this point I always do a couple things.  One, make sure to go ahead and run a Malwarebytes Antimalware scan to clean up any remaining malware not picked up by Combofix (Combofix only goes after the major problems, where as Malwarebytes goes for a full system cleaning).  Next, update the browser, java, and flash plugins on the machine, and run all Windows Updates to insure the machine hasn’t missed anything important while the rootkit was blocking it from checking.

As I said, I am not sure of the injection vector of this particular rootkit as I have only seen it’s aftermath, but regardless, the cleanup method is the same for this as is with many other malware infections.  Combofix it, Malwarebytes, and then update the system.  Good luck and feel free to sound off in the comments with any questions.

You seemed to be on top of the world in design and function.  Then you released the iPhone 4.

What a horribly designed piece of hardware.  Apple seems to have chosen the “form before function” approach here and the swaths of people who lined up for the next iDevice from old Jobs and gang now feel brutally raped and left out in the cold.

Within hours of the iPhone 4′s release, reports already flooded tech blogs of massive reception issues with Apple’s new heralded antenna design.  Apple remained fairly silent on the whole ordeal until last friday when they all but admitted the phone has a fatal flaw… the new antenna system they talked up at the press event.

Apple tried to put a positive spin on the whole thing basically saying it’s not their fault, ALL antenna systems do this, and they even tried to demo the problem in OTHER phones.  Well you know what Steve?  Explain why the iPhone 4 is the only one dropping calls when held.  Other companies are even firing shots across Apple’s bow regarding the design.

Nokia:

Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.

In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That’s why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.

RIM:

Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.

Samsung:

The antenna is located at the bottom of the Omnia 2 phone, while iPhone’s antenna is on the lower left side of the device. Our design keeps the distance between a hand and an antenna. We have fully conducted field tests before the rollout of smartphones. Reception problems have not happened so far, and there is no room for such problems to happen in the future.

HTC:

According to Apple, nearly 0.55% of iPhone 4 customers have been in contact with them regarding reception or antenna issues on the new phone

So what percentage of people have complained [about the Droid Eris Antenna]?

“Approximately .016% of customers”, Eric Lin, the company’s global PR and online community manager exclusively revealed to us before adding that “we have had very few complaints about signal or antenna problems on the Eris”.

If you’re keeping track, that is over 34 times higher than the iPhone 4 complaint rates.

Even Consumer Reports tested and proved the serious issue and rated the iPhone 4 a DO NOT BUY.

So you have the biggest names in phone manufacturing all telling Apple they screwed the pooch on this one.  Apple obviously did not test the phone enough in the real world and pushed the device out before it was ready.  Apple’s solution to this disaster?  A product recall with a fixed design?  Nope, you get a free ugly case to wrap around your phone to prevent your hand from coming in direct contact with their magical and revolutionary antenna.  Wow.  Thanks Apple.

Add on top of this whole Antennagate thing, the fact that the phone’s proximity sensor also seems to be suffering from serious issues, causing people’s phones to hang up, mute, or put calls on hold when the phone is brought up to someone’s face, it’s a wonder if Apple seriously tested this device at all?  I think it is pretty apparent they did not.

With Apple’s iOS being quickly hunted down by the mass influx of bad ass Android devices, the iPhone 4′s massive problems could spell big trouble for iOS and it’s now dated and played out interface.

Can you hear me now?   No Steve, we can’t.

Windows Phone 7 will be a miserable failure.  There are many countless reasons why it is going to epic fail, but here are some of the most important:

1) Microsoft doesn’t know mobile phones from a hole in the ground.  Just look at the current state of Windows Mobile.  It’s built on the Windows CE platform, created in 1996.  Yes.  Let me repeat.  Windows Mobile is based on a platform created in 1996.  Sure, the platform has seen updates, but it’s still based on a world created 13 years ago.  Back when Windows 98 was nothing but a dream.   Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows CE.  Yup.  Microsoft’s newest “cutting edge” Phone OS is STILL based on Windows CE.  They just couldn’t get rid of it.  Thanks Microsoft.  The same bullshit you’ve been jamming down our throats for the past how many years that has NEVER worked right is your platform for the next Windows Phone?  EPIC FAIL.

2) The Kin is a disgusting failure.  The Kin is running a hacked down version of Windows Phone 7.  Don’t believe me it sucks?  Here are a few quotes regarding the Kin and it’s abilities:

“…Lofty goals indeed for a product like this, and unfortunately for everyone, Microsoft misses the mark by a long shot. It’s not even close.”

“…we also take issue with the browser, which is abysmally slow and buggy (it consistently crashed while trying to load any complex web pages like Engadget), and the email client, which seemed to have trouble displaying even the most rudimentary HTML messages”

“While using the One and Two we found ourselves consistently confused or surprised by how many bad little interface problems there are. Not only does the phone make it hard to do simple tasks — and not only are the social networking features poorly implemented — but the handsets are often sluggish, hiccupy, and downright crash-prone. We were told by the devices on more than one occasion that we needed to restart (while performing basic tasks), and often it would just throw us a blank screen while we waited for the device to come back from whatever tragic internal situation was occurring”

That’s enough of that.  If you want to read more though, you can head over to Engadget’s review of the Kin One and Two.

3)  Microsoft does not care about the mobile market.  Microsoft is simply doing this so they can say “us too!”  Windows Mobile 6 SUFFERED from multiple issue that have existed in the Windows Mobile/CE platform for literally a decade now.  Simple fucking tasks like the built in alarm have never worked right (I know I have bitched about this before, but it’s such a shockingly easy feature to fuck up, I can’t believe they have never gotten it right).  Microsoft can’t even code a proper alarm function, nor do they care about EVER fixing it.  What makes you think that Microsoft is going to give a rat’s ass about building a competent useful device and keep it regularly updated?

Which brings me to my next point

4) Microsoft has no sense of time frame in the mobile market.  This market is an incredibly FAST paced arena.   If there is 1 thing Microsoft is definitely not, it’s fast and agile.  Let’s just take a look at some quick time frames:

The Windows Mobile 6 line was released in February of 2007.  They are on Windows Mobile 6.5 right now with nearly zero improvements aside from MAEK BUTTONS HUEG!  Windows Mobile 6 was nothing more than a skin over Windows Mobile 5, released in 2005.  Like I said, WM6 was released in early 2007.  In the 3 years since it’s release, it has seen 1 very very minor update from Microsoft.

In that same time frame of 3 years, we have seen:

• Original iPhone (2007)
• iPhone 3G [With it the launch of iPhone OS 2] (2008)
• iPhone 3Gs [With it the launch of iPhone OS 3] (2009)
• iPhone 4 [With it the launch of iPhone OS 4] (2010)
• Android 1.1 (Feb. 2009)
• Android 1.6 (September 2009)
• Andriod 2.1 (January 2010)
• Android 2.2 (June 2010)

That is 4 seperate iPhones with 4 seperate iPhone OS versions, each one substantially better than the one before it.

4 seperate major Android releases, each one substantially better than the one before it (don’t let Androids weird number versioning system trick you up, each release is pretty substantial).

Windows Mobile, 1 minor release.  The other big players, 4 MAJOR releases.

5)  The Windows Phone Marketplace is a joke.  Microsoft has created a costly CLOSED platform.  You can’t install non-marketplace apps, and developers have to PAY to release $0 cost apps.  How in the fuck is that going to ENTICE developers to your completely fucked platform when there are already other infinitely better and cheaper platforms out there to develop for like the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices?  Windows Phone 7 will have no developer support.  Current Windows Mobile has no developer support and it’s been around longer than iPhone and Android.  Don’t believe me? I dare you to download a properly functioning Pandora app on Windows Mobile.  You can’t.  Because developers don’t care about a shit platform and won’t develop for it.

It doesn’t take a genius to clearly see and understand that Microsoft doesn’t care.  They don’t care about making substantial releases and they don’t care about making progress, and they certainly don’t care about mobile devices..  This is even shown in the current version of Windows Phone 7.  They have made no progress other than throwing an interesting skin on top of Windows CE, the same broken piece of shit from before.

It’s pretty pathetic.  I used to be a Windows Mobile fan.  I was using Windows Mobile doing things the iPhone couldn’t even do at launch for 2 years before.  Microsoft could have owned the mobile market, they could have controlled it.  But they don’t care.  They didn’t care about it then, and they sure as hell don’t care about it now.  Thinking anything else is foolish.

Basically, the touch-pad and buttons are all one surface.

Observe:

The problem comes from the fact that the “button area” is still part of the touch-pad.  So you place one finger on the button, and now you can’t use the fucking touch-pad.  Your cursor will either sit there and stare at you like a vegetable or it’ll jump all around the screen like crazy.  Either way, the touch-pad is completely unusable if you’re touching either button.  This is incredibly frustrating because my style of laptop mousing is resting one hand’s fingers on the buttons while using the other hand to navigate the mouse, or resting one finger on the button, while the other navigates the mouse for faster mouse action.  The only effective way to use this touch pad is with one hand and one finger.  Christ.  It’s awful.  Seriously.

I ended up grabbing one of those USB ball mice and plugging the damn thing in and using that, because trying to use that bloody touch-pad was making me want to kick puppies.  And I love puppies.

Thanks for the SHIT design HP.  I’m sure as hell glad this isn’t my machine.  I would be returning it if I had to put up with that damn thing.

I can’t believe it took 7 months… but yes folks, Fox has FINALLY canceled the Wanda Sykes show.  Let us all rejoice.

That is all.

Seriously?  2 items should warrant a receipt no longer then 4 or 5 inches.  A 15 inch receipt is just an extreme waste of paper.  I can’t believe your shitty commercials when you pull crap like this hundreds of thousands of times a day across the country.  No one wants to take your crappy survey, shrink the Xbox-huge logo at the top, shrink the barcode, reduce the white space.  Bam, 4 inch receipt.

Here, I even mocked one up for you.

If you hadn’t… well, hit the 2 links above to catch up.

When I fired up Firefox today I got an interesting message:

Nice!  Apparently Mozilla has decided to act where Oracle has not.  Mozilla has disabled the Java Deployment Toolkit, responsible for probably hundreds of thousands of malware infestations, across the board in Firefox.  Thank you Mozilla for taking responsibility where Oracle has not.

Orace: You suck.

On Tuesday this week I was contacted through my site by a high-up guy over at New Wave’s marketing department (Evidently he stumbled upon my post via search engine.  I guess the Search Engine Optimization plugin is good for something!).  He seemed genuinely concerned about my situation and getting it corrected from his email, so I replied back.  With in a half hour he called me and we discussed my situation on the phone.  He was very very nice about the whole thing, as was I.  He told me they would have someone out that very evening when I got home to get my HD installed, and on top of that they were going to waive the installation fees and credit my account for a nice chunk of HD service.  I was pretty happy to hear this but still couldn’t quite believe it.  But sure enough, at 6:30 on the dot, the New Wave tech pulled up in my drive way.  He installed an HD-DVR box and had me all up and running in probably 10-15 minutes.  I finally had my HD!  And let me tell you, it is gorgeous!  It’ll be even nicer when my HDMI cable comes in  (New Wave only had component cables.  I would’ve liked to have seen HDMI since it’s been around for a while and a pretty accepted standard, but no big deal).  I found a 10 foot HDMI cable online for less then $4 shipped to my door.  A lot better then the $48 Walmart wanted, but that’s a rant for another day.  The HD-DVR works great!  I finally got to put it to the test last night when I recorded Bones in HD while grilling out.  Then we came in and sat down for dinner and watched it.  It was a fantastic picture.  So crystal clear you can see individual hairs on their head.

I just felt like I should make a post updating my situation.  New Wave righted my wrong, and their Marketing guy assured me that if I ever have any more issues, to let him know and he will get it taken care of.  It is reassuring to know that someone out there at New Wave does care about their company.  I just hope that my situation has brought any problems existing with my local offices (or maybe wider spread) in to light and New Wave can work on ensuring that my lack of care doesn’t happen to others.

Thank you New Wave for fixing my situation.

But there was one “link” missing.  If you spent time entering birthday information for as many of your contacts as possible, they don’t show up in your calendar.  Even my girlfriend’s Blackberry does this, surely Android can.  I had downloaded an App from the market call EboBirthday.  While the app worked, it still had a flaw.  The birthdays didn’t show up in you calendar.  If you wanted to see what birthdays were coming up, you had to actually open up the EboBirthday app.  And on top of that, if you added in any new birthday information, you had to manually resync the EboBirthday app.  Rats… this isn’t the best solution.

Well, last night I was playing around and Google Calendar, and there is actually an option tucked away, built right in to Google Calendar, that lets you show your contact birthday infromation right on the Calendar!

Here is how you add it on:

Go to the Google Calendar web interface on your computer (google.com/calendar).

1) Click the settings button in the upper right

2) Click the “Calendars” settings tab

3) In the Other Calendars section click “Browse Interesting Calendars”

4) Click the More tab here

5)  You should see an item labeled “Contacts’ birthdays and events”, click the Subscribe link. (While you’re in here, you might want to poke around.  There may be some other calendars you’re interested in adding in to your own as well, such as holidays and stuff!)

That’s it!  In a couple minutes, all your contact birthdays will show up on the Calendar in your phone.  How cool is that?

While this is a nice feature to have available, it highlights one of the issues with Android and Google integration right now.  When you’re looking for a setting, it’s not always in the most obvious place, and some times you can only change it on the web.  However, I do expect as Android matures, we will see a lot more features and options added directly in to the Android OS.  I love Android and I suspect will be sticking with it for a long time to come!

Since the very first day New Wave took over and my IP address switched to their network I have had atrocious service, and no one from New Wave cares about it.  By fall 2008 I had called them no less then 10 times over a network congestion issue. I honestly lost count of how many calls I made and every single time I reached a “tech support” person, they were 100% incapable of understanding my problem and 100% unwilling to even do anything to attempt to solve it.  The exact problem I was having was network congestion.  During peak internet usage hours (evenings after work and weekends… basically any time I wanted to actually USE my internet), the service was unusable.  My ping times would often shoot from 30ms ping times to over 500ms ping times during peak hours.  Trying to use my “broadband” service for any “broadband” activities like streaming video, playing games online, was 100% out of the question.  Pages would often take minutes to load, streaming even music was not even possible.

At the time I didn’t know exactly what was happening, so I took it upon myself to write a script that sent out 1 ping per minute and log the response time.  After running the script for a few days I quickly realized that my problem was because of network congestion.  The sad thing is, I diagnosed in a few days, what New Wave had been unable to tell me for months.

Here is one example form Fall of 2008.  I was still suffering from unusable internet at this time (blue lines indicate ping times under 100ms, which was my cutoff for “acceptable” pings.  Red lines indicate pings over 100ms.  The taller the line, the higher the ping)

As anyone with half a brain can see, the internet functions more or less ok until peak usage hits (late afternoon), then everything goes to crap.  In November 2008 New Wave FINALLY fixed the issue.  It took them around 6 months to correct the congestion problems.  For 8 months my internet was basically unusable.

Since then I haven’t had any serious problems with my internet.  There were outages every once in a while, but whatever.  It happens, and I understand that.  But, I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth from dealing with New Wave for such a long time and them dragging their feet for so long on this issue, that I doubt they could ever do anything to make me happy with the service again.

Early this year I found out New Wave was offering HD service in my area.  Finally, something improved over New Wave’s pretty shitty “digital” cable picture, sweet!

But, I should have known that coming from a company like New Wave that simply does not give a shit about it’s customer, dealing with them again would be a frustrating experience.  Boy, was I right.

A couple months ago my cable modem gave up the ghost.  The tech who replaced it mentioned HD service, and I told him I would like to sign up.  He called up the main office in town and put me down for an HD receiver.  Like any other truly awful company, they were out of stock and had to put my name on a waiting list, assuring me they would call me when my receiver came in.  They never called.  Days turned in to weeks, weeks turned in to months.  I never heard a peep from them.  So, I suffered along with my fuzzy cable for a few more months.

A couple weeks ago I was feeling ready to be ignored and abused by their “customer service” department again, so I decided to stop by their home office in town.  I walked in and was able to order HD.  They scheduled a tech for the following Thursday to come out and install it.  I asked them right there if they could just give me the hardware, as I was PLENTY capable of unscrewing a coax from the old unit, and screwing it in to the new unit.  She told me that was not an option and they had to come out and do that.  Fantastic.

Wednesday night rolled around and we got an automated call from New Wave reminding us that they would be there to install the HD box the following morning from 8am to 10am.  Wow… I was finally going to get my HD service!

HAHAHA, YEAH RIGHT!  Thursday came and went.  Not a single word from New Wave.  They never showed up.  They never called me.  A week later, I still have not heard from them.   Wow.  Awesome job New Wave.   I have never had such trouble trying to PURCHASE a product from a company like I have from New Wave.  You would think that if I was willing to fork over more cash to their shit-fuck company, that they would actually want to take it, but apparently not.

The problem here just isn’t New Wave, but it’s the illegal monopolies cable companies are allowed to have over service areas.  Companies like New Wave are allowed to put a strangle hold on their customers and treat them as shitty as they want, while the customer has no other option.  We either take it in the two-hole from them, or we go with out.  And being the geek that I am, going with out broadband wouldn’t work very well for me.  So here I am.  A broken desperate man, who only wants HD service in his home.  Why is this so much to ask from a company?

UPDATE (4/9/2010) – New Wave has fixed my situation and I finally have HD!  Read about it right here.