Camtica Review

DO NOT download or purchase Camtica 4.3.48970 screen recorder software.

It is promoted by spam emails to owners of blogs by Jiteco. The emails from Deborah Gill offer the author of a blog a free copy of the software in exchange for a review. As such, a review written in response to this request is unlikely to be one that you can take with any authority. 

Having received many requests I have decided to write a review - this is it. 

It is suspected that Jiteco do not read the blogs that they solicit. If they do then they can comment on this blog posting instead of just sending me offers of evaluation copies of software. If I were to review anything I would purchase it.

Links: 

• Social comment on The Technology Muse
• This is an example of BlogSpam

Comment

A commentary on things relating to technical issues.

• Blog Spam
• Activities of Shills
• Dubious Business Practices
• Use and abuse of Social Media
• My definition of a scam
• Why Web 2.0 is broken
• Social Networking - reviewed

Each of these topics may contain there own comments and links to other parts of this blog.

Silver Bullet

I would suggest that those looking for ways to unlock hidden menu items for their Insyde H2O BIOS look-up the WikiP page for the idiomatic meaning of "Silver Bullet".


This also goes for the overclocking of AMD E-450 APUs

reader.mac.com

This is a new one to me.

Torrenting

All about P2P and torrents - these are my collected notes on my findings with downloading from file sharing sites. This post is a work in progress, please follow the links below to other posts relating to my research on P2P and and the avoidance of being detected when torrenting.

• BTGuard and TorrentPrivacy review
• Peerblock (Peer Guardian II)
• VPN use and torrenting - the importance of an independent service.
• The relative risks of Torrenting - is downloading a movie or music more of a risk than TV "catch-up"?
• IPTorrents.com  - is this any safer?
• APOs - Anti-P2POrganizations 
• Copyright Protection discussed on The Technology Muse
• Running Torrenting and IP obfuscation software, such as in a Virtual Machine 

The list above is not an exhaustive list of all the work that I have done in this field. Please visit some of the posts and then find links from those posts. This is only a starting page for my work in the observation of techniques to keep you safe when downloading from P2P sources.

Network Attached Storage

• Systems and programming on The Technology Muse
• Using the D-Link NAS as a Raspberry Pi server

My experiences with the D-Link DNS323 - NAS

The DNS 323 has a lot of space to house an attentional controller (computer) to enable the configuration of Samba Serves. This would alleviate the deficiencies in the Debian Linux controller that is fitted by D-Link.

Nomen Nescio - an anonymous name

I can across the name Nomen Nescio when I was looking at anonymous re-mailers.

It is a generally accepted term used for anonymity (see the WikiP entry for this). What I am surprised about, however, is some of the vitriol that can be found on Google Groups with regard to the Cyber-Bullying of those that appear to be homophobes on a quest to bring down the host of a gay photography website.

DMCA Violation Letter

That is forwarded by your ISP

• See example here

3322.net and 3322.org

A Chinese Internet registrar and Portal.

Maybe the host for GhostNet

Paranoia in the extreme

As Zack Whittacker will will know,  governments have trouble in locating a princess and protecting the prime minister from a certain sow.

I know it was a work of fiction but I don't really care if the government can read my GMails and knows what websites I've been to. It is not as if I am plotting against them.


In any case, they can easily find out who I am  from my IP address.

Investigating Internet users

This is a re-post of my website page on Web Forensics

Forum Independence

Companies often setup a forum that is supposed to look like it is an independent group of users of the product that have got together to swap ideas and tips.

They are also used to provide Customer Service for a product where the website for the product itself does not. There are many reasons for this. The first reason is that it is a cheap option as a company can get its users to solve the other customers problems. The second, and this is particularly the case when a product may help you break a law in your jurisdiction, a forum provides some sort of detachment from the company where forum members can post solutions that the company would be prosecuted for if they were to tell you to do something in an official capacity.

I can think of many instances of this taking place and I don't need to name them here. The reason you are probably reading this is that you have come across one.

I am not saying that you should not participate in such a forum or not to believe anything that is posted on them. Only that you should be aware that they may not be as impartial as they would like to appear.

A characteristic of this type of forum is that a large proportion of the posts are those that are either overly enthusiastic about the merits of the service or site "this the best torrent tracker site" or those that are asking about log-in problems. Take a look at the date of some of the posts, many are years old.

Examples of forums that I deem to be less than independent.

• IPTorrents.com
• 1ClickDVD Copy - LGSoftwareInnovations forum
• Most forums dedicated to copying digital media Including the one above)
• Most forums dedicated to downloading from P2P
• Isohunt- BTGuard
• TorrentFreak - BTGuard and TorrentPrivacy
• Number1onGoogle's Chris Jones - A spokesperson for Lamnia (formerly SBA Media) tvontheinternet.co.uk.

Virtualization

Start page for enabling vt-x or AMD SMV. (if some of the topics listed below do not have links please use the Blog search function)

Pages on the blog:

• Systems pages
• All pages relating to Windows 7 XP-Mode 
• Integration Features Fail to Load - Windows 7 XP-Mode
• AMD Virtualization System Compatibility Check Utility
• Intel's vt-x and vt-d compared  
• Dual Booting as an alternative to a Virtual Machine
• How to setup a Dual Boot
• Using Win7BootPro to manage the Windows (and other o/s) boot-up
• vt-d vs vt-x
• Microsoft Virtual PC vs. VirtualBox  - Nov 2009
• Virtualbox and Virtual-PC Compared - redux
• What you see if you turn off VT in BIOS
• AMD Virtualization System Compatibility Check Utility
• AMD Virtualization
• amd neo mv-40 virtualbox enable virtualization
• Intel Processors that Will Not Support XP-Mode
• Unlock the power of your Netbook
• Multimedia Audio Device drivers for 64 bit Windows guests on VirtualBox
• XP-Mode Hardware Requirements
• ERP systems not compatible with Windows 7
• Current Computer product is VT deficient
• How to Determine if an AMD CPU Supports AMD-V
• Intel T4200 and XP Mode in Windows 7

Campaign to boycott the "Like" and "+" buttons

Why would anyone want to share their friend list with a company that then uses that list to target those on your list with advertizements?

Hopefully Internet users will work out what is going on as they see all the Facebook and the like ads appearing on their walls.

• The Facebook "Like" Button
• Google's version of this

It is one thing to actually like a product or service it is an entirely different thing to give that company permission to use your profile in an endorsement.

How to overclock an AMD A6-3500M

Run your new AMD Quad powered notebook at 2.5GHz and above.

• My guide to overclocking
• Hardware specification for a Hackintosh

Visits from Saskatoon

Nice to see that there are some today (27th November 2011)

I guess I can be prepared for the second onslaught!

The Business Cyber Bully

There is a world of difference in the antics of the traditional Cyber-Bully and businesses that don't like what is being said about them on the Internet.

The use of the word "World" is quite fitting here!

Over the last few years I have been seeing the Internet degenerate into a free-for-all that is now largely abused by the masses. For a system that was developed for the interchange of scientific information it has now become a morass of uneducated and illinformed computer users.

My main concern is the use of this new technology to dilute the original useage and usefulness of the World Wide Web  as a research tool  into what is now largely an entertainment. I am also not concerned with the use of this technology by businesses for the furtherment of their marketing and other commercial activities. However, where this breaks down is the use of the Internet to provide customer service and allowing of consumers to post to freely to forums.

When I started my critique of the use of the Internet my observstions were related to the nonsense that I was seeing on most forums and the general low quality of the content seen on many websites. The ability and the use of the medium as a platform for shill tactics and spreading hate on RIP-Tribute websites.

---

A very minor incident involved a company that I happened to comment about on this website. The page, I thought was fairly non-confrontational at its  outset. However due to the communication with one employee of that company, and many follow-ups from the owner, some of the information was escalated.

The dialog that then ensued degenerated into a bout of Cyber-bullying conducted by the owner of the company and was fueled by an unknown number of either former employees or others with "axes to grind" with respect to the company in question.

The extent to which this bullying developed has been detailed on other pages on this website. In comparison to the current nonsense that other cyber bullies have stooped to, the incident to which I was reacting pails into insignificance.

At no time have I made threats although I have been intimidated to remove content from this website. This is not only childish and unprofessional (in my opinion - theRCMParecoming) it is not the way to carry out business using the Internet.

A screenshot from my website - tempusfugit.ca

The Occupy Movement

The problem  that I have with all this is that the people, largely young people, that follow all this are the same as those who do not see anything wrong with file sharing and copyright violation.

The issues may not be fair and the laws governing them ineffectual but this does not mean that actions of the Occupy/Anti Globalization lobby are just.

I guess it is because I consider, I am, one of the 1%.

I bet they all have smart phones! I don't but I do have a fair investment in Apple. I remain to be skeptical about Facebook.

• EFF  - the Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Copy Protection and methods used to protect Copyright

Open Season on Blogs

It would seem that it is seen to be a worthwhile activity  to spam the authors of blogs with email offering things to blog about.

These offers, generally of a technical bent (this is supposedly the theme of this blog), sometimes are accompanied by free copies of software on the strength that you review it on your blog.

The originators of these emails have obviously not read any of the posts on this blog or they would have seen that I do not review anything by request. In fact if they persist in sending me the emails they will get a review naming them and their practices.

Comparing the AMD E-350 and E-450

• Systems pages
• Overclocking the AMD APUs 
• AMD APUs- Accelerated Processor Unit - APU

See website for more details on the differences between the AMD E-350 and E-450 APUs

I have configured an Asus EeeBox PC EB1021 which uses the E-450 APU. Looking at the UEFI BIOS I could not see any options that would allow overclocking or adjustment of CPU or memory timings.

• The AMD Brazos platform

UEFI BIOS

The "pre-boot" environment.

Sometimes referred to as BIOS, the pre-boot environment (PBE) is the location of the code that is responsible for starting your computer when it is first switched on. Hardware is defined and configured for a specific operating system to load and perform in the way that is required by you the owner and the manufacturer of the hardware.

The PBE is where you can control what drives to use and their type, the memory allocation and timing, the cpu settings and much more. Some of the features of the hardware used in your computer may not be addressable  from the PBE. This is usually by design as changing the settings would either compromise the operation of the computer or the wishes of the operating system vendor.

Links:

• Tools to diss-assemble executables and dlls (bios_tools.html)
• enable Intel vt-x or AMD SVM on a computer with an Insyde H2O pre-boot
• Un-hiding menus on an Insyde BIOS - what can and cannot be unlocked. (insyde_unhide.html)
• Enabling and Native SATA modes on an Insyde BIOS  - to enable the installation of an alternative operating system such as another version of Windows or the configuration of a Hackintosh
• Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) setting in BIOS
• The business of BIOS mods
• Why manufacturers use Insyde H2O BIOS 
• Phoenix BIOS
• The Mac and BIOS
• AMI BIOS
• Award BIOS

Activation

Pages on this blog relating to Windows Activation. How Activation works and what can be done to circumvent the steps taken to ensure that you have a legal copy.
The effects of Windows Updates on the performance and features of your computer

• Removing WAT
• Understanding WAT 
• Using Task Scheduler to monitor and disable WAT (KB791033)
• KB971033 breaks RemoveWAT? 
• Windows Update and Daz Loader
• Previous posts on kb2533552
• Why it is not in Microsoft's interest to "fix" Windows 7 piracy
• KB971033 and MS blocking OEM Product Keys
• An update to Activation problems
• What Windows Updates do for you

Methods to circumvent the methods used by Microsoft to combat piracy are discussed here in theory. There are no step-by-step instructions on "how-to" do this for yourself. This is the realm of other websites such as Lifehacker and MyDigitalLife.

Aircrack Android

Running Aircrack-ng on an Android powered tablet or smartphone.

Aircrack-ng

Aircrack is  the popular WiFi hacking program.

Here are the links to other posts on this blog and to re-posted pages from www.tempusfugit.ca.

• Running Aircrack-ng in a virtual machine
• CoWPAtty for Windows
• Hacker Ethos
• Atheros ar5007eg drivers for Windows
• Linux Driver for Atheros W/L adapter - madwifi-0.9.3.3.tar.gz
• Download drivers from The Technology Muse
• Running Aircrack on an Android phone or tablet
• Aircrack for Symbian

Blog Spam

The Spamming of Blogs and websites.

The following are some examples, not exhaustive, and more will be added as I re-post from my website and as they come in.

• Example of Blog Spam: Camtica by Jiteco
• Another example Digeus Registry Cleaner
• FileMaker
• Twinlinks link exchange scheme
• Three-way Links - Same as above (2 in-bound links for every outbound) 
• All link exchange schemes
• Blog spam and scams in general
• Social Media in general - an analysis

Blog Spam is the unsolicited approach by the vendors of products to owners of blogs in the hope that they will promote the products. Often a free copy of the software or some other incentive is offered.

Another popular tactic is for a spammer to make a comment on a blog posting. The comment often contains a link to the website or business that they are trying to promote. Depending on the sophistication of the spammer the comment may have a click-able link (A tag or Hyperlink) embedded in the comment. If I see comments like this and I determine that the comment was made just for that purpose I will either delete the comment or I will re-post it with the hyperlink removed.

I started a page previously, but this will be the main page.

CoWPAtty for Windows

What Joshua Wright says about coWPAtty:

 "coWPAtty is designed to audit the pre-shared key (PSK) selection for WPA networks based on the TKIP protocol." - Joshua Wright.

Along with CoWPAtty, the author (of CoWPAtty) has claimed to have written a suite of "Offensive" tools for 802.11 security auditing (with one "Defensive" tool)

External Links:

• "Mobiles Unleashed Systems and Engineering" Technologies - MUSE Technologies website
• Download Version 4.5 -  Will Hack for Sushi - the willhackforsushi website

Pages related to WiFi cracking on this blog:

• Aircrack for Windows
• Installing Aircrack in a VM

iPlayer

This is the starting page for all the posts related to the BBC iPlayer that are featured on this blog. Please follow the links and search this blog for information on specifics.

Links:

• Systems Index
• Using BBC iPlayer outside the UK
• Using Vidalia Tor to access iPlayer
• iPlayer and torrenting compared
• Downloading BBC media - using get_iplayer.exe
• Downloading BBC programming from You Tube - YouTube Downloader by Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez
• PoRu's iPlayer downloader

Aircrack Symbian

Running Aircrack-ng on a Symbian powered smartphone.

VLC - VideoLan Media Player

The media player of choice.

VLC player is Open Source, hence free, it is the most versatile media player that I have found. I install this as a matter of course on my newly configured media machines.

You can download VLC from the VideoLan website. VideoLan also host the libraries for libdvdcss - for defeating CSS encryption on DVDs. As far as is known this decryption library is only for the Linux platform and possibly works compiled  with the OSX operating system on Apple hardware.

• error 0x80030309 vlc - This error is most likely to be due to the fact that the file attempted to be played by VLC was encrypted.

Bill Gates on the BBC's "World at One"

I  never thought that I would agree with Bill Gates in his assessment of the current economic situation (or anything for that matter!).

He remains optimistic in that there will be a solution and that this temporary "stagnation" (as opposed to a "down-turn") will eventually sort itself. He was hinting, but didn't come out and say directly, that a global economy that is based on perpetual growth is not sustainable. The extension of the debt crisis is fueled by the desire to return to a situation of growth.

Perhaps the "stagnation" is the new normal.

This was probably something that Bill was saying as part of his Foundations work on Sustainability. 

• Q&A: Bill Gates on the World’s Energy Crisis   By Chris Anderson, Wired, June 20, 2011

The mistake of using a dash in a domain name

While the domain name may be easy to read and look like the name of the entity with the spaces replaced by dashes it is both difficult to spell out to whoever you give it to and is a paint to type, especially on a mobile device. You are far better off using your imagination and come up with a name without the dashes. You cannot use the underscore character but that would yield the same problem.

I know this as in the past I registered a domain with the hope of establishing a business in "Vanity" domain registration and email provision and administration. This venture was not successful for a number of reasons one of the least of which was the domain name.

Windows Validation

Page to start the discussion on the validation of Microsoft Windows either legally or otherwise. 

Why Anonymity Matters

Anonymity is the corner stone of Free Speech.

If cannot make anonymous comment then you are beholden to those that do not want you to say things about them that they don't like or if your views are of a differing standpoint to theirs.

Governments have an upper hand on this as they can control Internet access and pass legislation that companies and citizens within their jurisdictions abide. When it comes to those citizens themselves and when the disputes are cross-jurisdictional things are not so clear. Issues with national security take presidence and to a lesser degree issues with copyright enforcement.

It is likely that this post is going to be found by those that are looking for ways to avoid being detected when they are downloading copyright protected media. This is not my main concern. Although that this is big business and there are many that would like to offer you a solution, I am more interested in this from an academic perspective. I have in the past detailed and reviewed such services, however, due to the type of response that I was getting from some of the posts I have changed my emphasis in this regard. You will still find some of these reviews on this blog but I am not really interested in helping others break laws and circumvent legislation. I am interested in what the industry and governments are doing to combat this problem.

The more general issue of anonymity as it relates to the ability for citizens to make comments on things that may not be in line with the views of their governments and other citizens is the real issue here. The evolution of technology is potentially allowing a far greater level of vulnerability and "Big Brother" will have tools that make the current abilities look like those from the Stone Age.

• Lawful Interception - how Governments spy on you
• Cybersecurity - An example of this spying
• Cyber Spies - the program on the BBC 
• Privacy Rights

Preventing page content from being indexed

You can post information on your website that contains information that you don't want the Google Search engine finding and including it in their index.

You can either add the page in question to a robots.txt file or you can add a Meta Tag to the page so that the page is not indexed.

That way someone who is looking to find information on themselves, which  call "Narcisurfing",  they have to follow links on pages that they know about or have found by making searches.

Page tracking

I formerly used both Google Analytics and my web server visitor logs to determine who had visted and what pages they had accessed.

I have since replaced this with just Google Analytics as I no longer run the Linux web server.

Update: 18 April 2012.
A search found this page and a new page was generated with the contents that were previously on this post.

How to look in Google Cache

If you find that the page that you are accessing on this website is not what you were expecting you may be able see the page that it replaces by looking in the cache of the search engine that you used.

Below is an example of a Google search that that found my website:

To see what is in the Google cache for the page that appears in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) click on the "cached" link.

Other search engines such as Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo have similar page cache display methods.

• How a cache visit is recorded by Google Analytics
• More about why I am interested in Google Cache visits
• What is an Organic Result?
• Why and how I have removed content from search engine cache
• Looking at a cached page when you are using Bing

I am more interested in the mechanics behind how Search Engine Cache is maintained and how people access it rather than what can be found in Google Cache. The examples that I give are from searches that I have seen finding my website and blog. The search terms and the associated pages visited are a way of me trying to determine what and why visitors are looking for.

Link Local Network Addressing

The mechanism by which local IPv6 addresses are assigned to devices on a network.

A link-local address is an Internet Protocol address that is intended only for communications within the segment of a local network (a link) or a point-to-point connection that a host is connected to. Routers do not forward packets with link-local addresses.

Local-link addresses ..........are normally only used to assign IP addresses to network interfaces when no  external, stateful mechanism of address configuration exists, such as the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), or when another primary configuration method has failed.

Please Stop

This post has been re-posted - This is a link to it

Rogers Yahoo Mail

I use multiple email addresses that were supplied to me by Rogers as part of my Internet package.

I do not use the Primary account to carry out my main communications, I reserve its use for system messages from Rogers in the event that they need to contact me about my account and service. I not not use my Rogers account for my main communications.

I (used to) have a "catch-all" re-direct on my domain name so that all mail to me @tempusfugit.ca gets sent to my primary email account. I generally do not use my primary email address for general communications. If I give my email address to a 3rd party I still use an alias.

You Tube Downloader

I have a working You Tube Downloader.

There are many pieces of software that are available to do this but many are nothing more than "shill-ware" and function by capturing the You Tube video in real-time and then saving it in a format likley to be only compatible with the program that downloaded it. The reason for this is to encourage you to buy other products from the company that gave you the downloader.

Other reasons why the popular You Tube downloaders are of secondary usefulness is becuase of copyright restrictions. It is not a good idea to offer a program that can capture the video streams so that they can saved to your drive and then uploaded again to file sharing sites.

The program that I have is a command-line Python script that was developed by Phil Lewis and needs to have a Python interpreter installed on your computer.

Files downloaded are in the .flv format as they are processed using the RTMP library and FVStreamer programs. The .flv files can be converted to any format you desire for playback on devices such as the Apple iPad and Touch. The .flv files will play on your computer without conversion using the VLC player.

The script has to be run from the command prompt and the install of Python for Windows confuses this as there is a GUI that is provided in addition to the interpreter.

The confusion for me, but then I know that I am stupid! is that the youtube-dl script had to be run from the command line with an argument that was at least a URL for the YouTube to be downloaded. This was not possible if the Python interpreter was run using the menu option that the Python for Windows installs as a default. To run the script you have to go to the Python directory and run it from a command prompt from there. I guess that you could make the path of the computer such that the interpreter can be found from anywhere.

YouTube Downloader by Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez - running in Python command prompt

Links:

• YouTube Downloader - Himili - Lime Consultants
• The YouTube Downloader website.
• Python 2.7 for Windows

Pageinsider

Pageinsider.com returns a listing of the previous owner of www.tempusfugit.ca

Some of the other listings you may find for this earlier version of tempusfugit.ca include a photographic essay of Toronto Northern Ravine - Alexander Muir Memorial Garden

The previous owner has nothing to  do with The Technology Muse. 

More Blog Spam

I really wonder why some people bother in sending Blog Spam to me.

I very much doubt that Veronica has any clue about Search Engine Optimization or she would not be spamming insignificant blogs as "The Technology Muse".

In addition, this blog is not a website. I have one and it does not need the help of outfits such as Rank High S E O.

I don't have any competition, so is is not relevant about "outranking"

Hello,

I know your website is important to you, and I was wondering if I could go over a few things.  I work for a marketing company, and wanted to show some businesses, visually, how they compare to the websites on the first page -- Truly understand why your competition outranks you on the Search Engines. 

We have been doing this for years and are great at what we do.  We have an extremely knowledgeable staff that sincerely analyze your site; showing you exactly how to increase your rankings. 

I'm asking for the opportunity to show you what I can do for your business before you pay a dime.   I can do it in 10 to 15 minutes depending on your questions.   

I need the best way to reach you and any comments you want me to consider before I do your research. 

Thanks,

Veronica
Rank High SEO
P.O. Box 286 Newport Beach, CA 93472

• SEO pages on The Technology Muse

AVG - A lost cause

I just discovered I still have one of my machines running AVG Free.

NO! I don't want to install AVG Free 2012! - I have pulled off AVG from most of my computers - this is worse than the NOD32 experience.

• Anti-Virus Pages
• Microsoft Security Essentials 
• AVG finally shoots itself in the foot
   

Google Plus +

G+ - Google's answer to Facebook and Twitter

The trouble is that I remain to be convinced that Social Media is something that benefits the consumer or just something that the providers of these networks see as a business opportunity.

I wasn't invited to participate in the beta trials - I would not have taken it up even if I had. The "Real Name" issue is a deal breaker for me as the ability to maintain an alias or anonymity is important to me.

A quote from Google:
 

Our ultimate ambition is to transform the overall Google experience, making  t beautifully simple, almost automagical as we understand what you want and  can deliver it instantly. This means making identity and sharing into all of  our products so that we build a real relationship with our users. Sharing on  the web will be like sharing in real-life across all user stuff. You'll have  better more relevant search results and adds. Think about it this way. Last  quarter, we shipped the Plus and now we're going to ship the Google part.

By the "Google part" I guess they mean all the Social Web motherhood?

The "+" button
This is Google's method to capture activity streams.

• The Facebook "Like" button
• Whether to use Social Media for business
• Google+ Doorway Pages / Scraper Site  SEOBook- Sep 15th by Aaron Wall  - Google outrank aggregators (or later copies) over the original source - Google being aggregator #1
• All pages related to Social Media on The Technology Muse

The New Sharing

This I think is something that is going to come back and bite!

• Social Media pages
• Programming and System on The Technology Muse  

More and more "Social" Apps are asking and getting access to your personal data. The premise behind this is that when you share your data then you will doing yourself a favour and you will get some sort of reward. These rewards can take the form of more and more useful information for you and even some sort of financial benefit.

These benefits can be in the form of coupons or discounts for products and services. I maintain that the price you have to pay in loss of control of your information it too high. I am not alone, I have recently (April 2012) seen a few articles that point this out and there are also articles dating back to 2010 when Facebook announced their Open Graph Interface/Protocol. What Open Graph allows programmers of Facebook Apps is to get access to Facebook users profile data. The way that it is supposed to work is that you have to give the App permission to do so. However, the fact that the mechanism exists to allow the retrieval of your personal data and also that many companies cannot be trusted makes the whole situation one that is fraught with potential to abuse.

Chilling Effects Clearing House

The Chilling Effects site contains a wealth of information pertaining to Internet rights and legal issues.

It maintains a database of requests for the removal of information from the Internet and other violations of copyright.

If Google receives a complaint filed under the DMCA or a copyright infraction claim it make take down the reference to that work in accordance with the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA. This protects ISPs and network providers from liability if they take down material if they receive a complaint.

When such a "take-down" has been made an entry will be made in the ChillingEffects.org's database and you can search that for entries.

Scripts

This is a start page for various scripts that I| have looked at:

• Web Form processing scripts
• Javascript
• Perl

Blackballed by Canon

Either I have been blackballed by Canon or I have fallen off their developers email list.

The question is: Do I care?

The last version of the SDK that I attempted to download the process that Canon use to approve and allow downloads from their servers was "screwed up", The invitation to download after the filling of the on-line form did not arrive. It was not as if I did not make the application and it was not that I had the application refused - it was just that I heard nothing. I guess that could mean the same thing?

I blogged on the fact that I was having problems with the download and I also had a page on my website. I did not make a further application as I was not interested in carrying on with the development using the SDK as I saw no point.

I continue to blog about the versions as I see them released. I did not receive an application to download version 2.11.

I also continue to see searches that find this blog that are from those that are looking for places to download the SDK. I am of the opinion that there are two things at play here, the first is that Canon have problems in communicating with developers and could be over-protective in who they allow download their software. The second is that they could have read what I have written about them and have blackballed me. I really doubt the second thing as I am really not that important.

Update 18 July 2012:
I see that there are searches still being recorded from those looking to download version 2.11 - it is NOT on my intranet.

If you actually read what I have written above you will see that I do not have the latest version of the SDK. I realize that many that are looking for a download link do not take the trouble to read the content of the sites that they find them. Also, in many cases the links that you will find are scams on sites that just want you to sign up for their file sharing scheme.

Please stop

Please remove all information about myself. The information of my address and so forth is my private information. I wish not to be continuously harassed by Bill Poplawski, who is a criminal and that has stolen from the company that unfortunately we gave him a chance to work for. He has done nothing but harassed our family, driven by our home and break our windows. If this is someone that you really want to continue to entertain, well, it goes to show your character too, and I am sure, if you met with Bill, you would not want to be associated with him. By the way, I feel very much taken advantage of by him as he needed help and a fresh start so I was paid for food, glasses, clothing, gas, cigarettes and a car to drive, and once I decided to stop helping him, he began this hate campaign against my family and I . We have been to the police and have formal complaints against him. If you would like a great project, dig into his past. His full name is William Poplawski. He needs to move on with his life and we would appreciate that you do not continue to add the fuel to his fire. And if you really want to know on how he trades information with the police whenever he is out of money, he sets up drug dealers in Saskatoon and Edmonton. If you would like to have more of a dialog, lets get on a call together about safe disk. It was a joint venture between bit defender and oneworld to help drive their sales and the project failed. Anyone that purchased safe disk insurance was dealt with. The volumes were not there to support the company, which almost bankrupted the company. http://www.innovationplace.com/newslttr/2009/MarchTHEscene.pdf perhaps you should look at actual facts versus half cocked information, I prefer that facts are talked about, not assumption. It is just poor etiquette. Thank you, Wayne   wayne.mcalpine@1wn.com to pleasestop@tempusfugit.ca -  10/8/11 I might had had some sympathy for him if he had not tried to threaten me and appear to impersonate the person he is referring to in this email

I did look at the information on the Innovation Place and not only did I find that Oneworld were located there, but a new company, Core Data Recovery, seemed to be at the same location.

As I still had no desire to talk with Wayne McAlpine and I was pretty sure that he was the "bully" I had heard about, I continued with my research. I was also now curious to know what all the fuss was about and what the connections to Terry Bradshaw, David Nagorski and other VATSIS people.

Update: Glendale, Ca

Acer AO722-0465 - AO722-0490

11.6" SNB with 1366 x 768  AMD C-60 APU (Radeon HD 6290)

The AO722-0490 is a Netbook and only has 1024 by 600 screen resolution.

If you install a clean copy of Windows 7 on the 0465, or upgrade it to Professional or Ultimate, you will have problems in finding drivers for the HD 6290 graphics. You will probably reduce the screen resolution to 800 by 600.

I am currently running an AO522 with a C-50 APU  - 1280 by 720 on a 10.1" screen. I also own a AO522 with a C-60 (Netbook with 1024 by 600 resolution). I do not notice much of a difference between the C-50 and C-60  but the extra screen resolution is the key to why my first 522 is far more use. This could also be said for the 722 with a slightly bigger physical screen and 1366 by 768 resolution. (This resolution is the most common  for Sub Notebooks - and is the same as the Lenovo X100e  that I also have control over.)

• All Acer related posts on The Technology Muse

Perl Scripts

• Systems and Programming on The Technology Muse
• Scripts

Cyber Spies

BBC Radio 4 - File on 4 - broadcast 25 September 2011 -  b014q04r

In the current digital age security has taken on new faces. Cyber Spies are not, but are in some cases, figments of TV and radio program script writers imagination. Some of the material on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Cyber Spies" was that, and FUD put out by those that are responsible in keeping us "safe" - or at least providing the illusion that we are.

Stephen Grey investigates the use of computer hacking by the police and security agencies to combat criminal exploitation of the internet and asks if it is legal.

• Lawful Interception 
• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000  - the reason that my frame of reference is from a UK perspective is that we listen pretty much exclusively to UK radio, even though we currently live in Canada.
• Cyber security

Finfisher

Finfisher IT - Gamma International gammagroup dot com - Andover, Hampshire UK

Mentioned on the BBC programme "File on 4 - Cyber Spies" for supplying cyber-surveillance solutions to the Mubarak government in Egypt pre the Arab Spring uprising. Denied by Gamama International but reports of how it allowed the Mubarak regime to monitor Skype, Hotmail and GMail messages of dissidents.

Hosni Mubarak, his former prime minister Ahmed Nazif and interior minister Habib el-Adli seem to have been instrumental in government run cyber-spying.

• BBC Radio 4 - File on 4 - broadcast 25 September 2011 -  b014q04r 
• The Gamma International website - details of the Finfisher IT Intrusion Training Program
• Mubarak fined for mobile, Internet cut - By Ashraf Madbouly - The Egyptian Gazette. Saturday, May 28, 2011

Quote from The Egyptian Gazette:
In February, Vodafone also accused the authorities of using its network to send pro-government text messages to subscribers.

• Lawful Interception on The Technology Muse
• Cyber-security

AMD Llano Notebook review

The following notebooks are now available:

• HP DV6-6144ca with Radeon HD 6755G2 - Vision A8-3500M
• HP DV7-6188ca with Radeon HD 6755G2 - AMD A8-3530MX
• Acer Aspire AMD Quad-Core A6-3400M (AS5560-SB410)

The Twinlinks Scam

If you receive an email from Rebecca Wilson (Mary McKibben) claiming that she has a unique scheme to help you build your page rank by participating in her link building program, then you may wish to know that many see this as a scam.

Hello,

Let's do a 3-way link swap with your website www.tempusfugit.ca. I'll give you 
two links in exchange for one from you.
3-way linking is a very effective link building strategy. Since you're getting 
the links from third party websites, they appear totally natural to search 
engines. Such inbound links help your website rank higher in Google and 
other search engines.

    Visit (link removed) to submit your website.

    Thanks,
    Rebecca Wilson

    Founder & CEO, TwinLinks

The difference between a "normal" and "deep" links

With reference to the screenshot above, there is no definition of what a "deep link" is and how it differs from a normal one. It is assumed that if you fall for this scam you are also likely to be taken in by the promise of these extra links. 
  

• Other SEO Scams
• Three-way Links
• My definition of a scam

Number1onGoogle

Chris Jones - A spokesperson for Lamnia (formerly SBA Media)

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, is an Officer of Parliament who reports directly to the House of Commons and the Senate.

• Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
• Personal Property Security Act - PPSA.ca

Apache Rewrite Conditions and Rules

In my rebuild of the content of this website I don't want all requests for pages that were on www.tempusfugit.ca to be redirected to tempusfugit.ca/techwatch.ca

Asus drop asuswebstorage

The new MeeGO Netbook is specified with DropBox for cloud storage.

Does this mean that they are admitting that their web storage solution sucks?

They have finally given up pestering me with extending my 10G storage that I got with my Netbook over 2 years ago. I have bought at least half a dozen computers since then and I never did get Asus webstorage to work as they said it did.

I still get hits from those looking for a review

Deleting the IBM/Lenovo Service or Recovery Partition

Deleting the service partition will recover disc space, however this is a non-trivial exercise.

The basic procedure is to restore a partial image of the HDD to a new HDD. The main partition  is restored only. The manufacturers service partition (IBMSERVICE in the case of Lenovo) is NOT restored.

You can also increase the size of the HDD at the same time - going from a 30G or 40G drive with only 20G of usable space all the way to a 320G, 500G or more - all space usable!

Alternatively you can completely re-install Windows (or the operating system of your choice) after reformatting your hard drive. All of the drivers, for Lenovo at least, are available for Windows on the Lenovo website. You may have more of a problem with obtaining Linux drivers. Lenovo/IBM/Thinkpad do have a very active support forum.

Other posts related to RRBACKUPS on this blog:

• How to recover lost disc space taken up by RRBACKUPS 
• Deleting the SERVICE partition and recovering even more disk space

A recap on RRBACKUPS

Having featured many pages on the Lenovo/IBM backup software Rapid Restore & Recovery on my website I am making this post on this blog so that I have a reference to the archived pages.

Links:

• How to recover lost disk space used by RRBACKUPS
• Deleting the IBM/Lenovo Service or Recovery Partition
• File recovery from RRBackups data files  It probably can be done, but the effort to do so is too involved.

Transferring vidoes from your PVR to your computer

I have started a detailed "how-to" on my website.

ipdl.exe

ipdl.exe is the iplayer downloader that was developed by PoRu and was broken in December 2010 when the BBC made changes to the way that they encode their streamed Internet content.

Links:

• Download the last working version of ipdl.exe
• Systems and programming on the Technology Muse
• get_iplayer pages on this blog
• RTMP - Real Time Message Protocol 
• The Po-Ru website that describes the demise of ipdl.exe

The TorrentFreak forum and website

This is a forum that is dedicated to all things that are related to downloading from P2P sources.

Design and administration of a website

In addition to the posts relating to running a webserver from your broadband Internet connection these are my posts related to website administration in general:

• Analyzing  web server logs
• CMS - Content Management Systems (Software)
• The Legal implications for your ISP - w.r.t. running a webserver on your broadband connection.
• The personal information held by ZoneEdit - a DNS service
• The selection of a DNS service
• Remote administration of a webserver using VNC

How do I stop my ISP seeing my torrents

•  All pages relating to torrenting and downloading from file-sharing sites - P2P
• How you ISP can tell what you are downloading
• AP2P Organizations
• BTGuard TorrentPrivacy Review
• Does Blocking Peers help?
• Choosing a VPN service

 
Your ISP will know that you are torrenting irrespective of what steps you take to mask your activity.They may not know what you are downloading but the sustained download has a distinct signature.

Even if you use a VPN service that uses encryption (tunneling) the signature of your activity will be such that your ISP will know what you are doing. The encryption will only prevent them knowing WHAT you are downloading.

It is not the ISP who detects or cares what you are downloading,  it is the copyright holders that detect you when your IP address appears as part of a P2P seed-pool. The copyright holder then contacts your ISP as they have logged the fact that you are providing parts of their media. Your ISP may or may not have provided the APO with your IP address, this depends on the ISP.

In my case the copyright infringement letters are forwarded to me by my ISP who hopes that I will abide by their End User Agreements, which say that you are not allowed to download copyright material through your Internet connection.

Services such as BTGuard are likely to be blocked by large ISPs such as Rogers Cable and Bell Sympatico.

BTGuard and TorrentPrivacy now blocked

It looks like word has finally got out to the major ISPs that they should block these two services.

As they are the two most popular methods to download from P2P networks and avoid detection by copyright holders it makes sense that they would be candidates to be filtered out by the ISP firewalls.

As there are many VPN services that may or may not allow torrenting using their services, it does mean that they would be a far bigger target for the ISPs to block.

• The in-depth analysis of BTGuard and other techniques to avoid detection whilst downloading.
• BTGuard Vs. TorrentPrivacy  

My pages on Torrenting and P2P:

•  All posts on this blog relating to Torrenting
• Anti-P2P Organizations
• The "Six Strikes" proposal

The TAC Shop

Maybe it is because that I am a bit of a pacifist, any enterprise that presents itself in this way should be target for criticism.

It could be a North American, good old boy, NRA (or the Canadian equivalent) thing, I am NOT A CANADIAN or North American by culture, but this is just not right (IMO).

OneWorldOffice - Private Militia stuff

The term "Red Neck" comes to mind.

Terry Bradshaw, TBU Security Solutions Inc.  at the same address in Kelowna, BC

and, is there a connection between Terry Bradshaw and Wayne McAlpine?

TheTacShop was run from the same address as Zemana - not that there is any conclusion to be drawn here apart from there as a connection as they both seem to have been represented by OneWorldoffice.

AV Paranoia and FUD

• All pages relating to Anti-Virus software on The Technology Muse 
• A comparative study of A-V software

I am pretty much of the opinion that a lot of what the vendors of A-V and other computer security solutions tell you is in a large part FUD.

In a technological world the issue of security is one that there is a lot of spin! Due to the lack of understanding of what is actually going on - the paranoia of the masses runs rampant.

It would seem that a lot of folks are afraid to cross the street, let alone use their computers to actually  do anything useful. Still, it all makes work for the vendors of operating systems, software and schemes to keep us all safe!

----------------------------------------------

Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson

Now this, in 2012, could be seen as a "blast from the past", but these two were masters at FUD

The Marcan Method to enable vt-x

The Marcan Method to enable vt-x on an Acer Aspire 8930g laptop (other makes and models probably can use this technique to unlock the hidden menus in an Insyde H2O UEFI BIOS.

Hector Marcan says:
The easiest way to enable the setting as far as I can see is to dump out the entire BIOS, patch the setting into the Setup variable (which is part of the data storage section - we aren't modifying any actual BIOS code, as this is the equivalent of changing a CMOS setting on other BIOSes), and then flash the resulting image. These laptops use a weird flash-behind-EC hardware solution for which there is no open flasher, so instead we can just use the normal BIOS flashing tool. In short, we'll flash the existing BIOS back on, but in the process also modify a Setup setting.

The list of programs below are those suggested for use by Hector Marcan in his blog - Abort, Retry, Hack?

These are the tools used by the "Marcan Technique"

The tools listed above were available for download from the Marcan Blog

Links: 

• Programming and Systems on The Technology Muse
• All pages relating to unlocking your UEFI BIOS
• Pre-Boot Environments - UEFI and BIOS

Google Analysis

Using Google Analysis.

Things need to be uploaded from tempusfugit.ca on this.

WARNING: Stream does not start with requested FLV frame, ignoring data...

Funny really.

My method of using get_iplayer still works and the mailing list goes in ever smaller circles.

My Digital Life

Some of my observations

Having come across many references to My Digital Life web pages and forum quotes in my research of many topics including Windows 7 Activation techniques, I feel that a few comments and observations of my own are in order. While the antics of many who participate in their forums is a mixed bag, the web site itself seems to be primarily a front for monetization for its owners.


Links:

• Unlocking your UEFI/BIOS to allow the configuration of a Hackintosh
• The Daz loader - as featured on My Digital Life (MDL)
• How to use RemoveWAT - by Hazar
• The instructions on the LifeHacker forum on how to configure a Hackintosh 

Wikibase

Wikibase is an exercise in Social Engineering

This site came to my attention with a search for the fictitious Insyde H2O CD

• The Insyde H2O CD
• Wikiopens is another such scrapper website

Acer Aspire AO522-BZ623

Is it a Netbook or a Sub-Notebook?

eHow

eHow is a website where "authors" post articles that are supposedly "how-to"s. In many cases the information so presented is inaccurate. This is not to say that there is not good information there, just that it is of no authority and exists mainly for the promotion of the owners of the website.

• Using the Incycle H2O CD
• Content Farms
• Social Engineering
• The Internet seems to some as one gigantic Business Opportunity  
• What I see as scams 

If you are really interested in unlocking your Insyde BIOS

One of eHow's authors: