Roll Over, Play Dead

Among the many, many things this could be in your system, I (re)discovered that a Hauppauge WinTV PVR350 was installed in my computer after a recent mobo swamp and Windows reinstall! Grab the drivers, install, and the ugly yellow exclamation will disappear!

Great article from Bruce Schneier on anonymity, privacy, and how both are hard to come by on the WWW. Be sure to read page 2 of the article, where he discusses research on how you can be personally identified by your writing/posting style. Scary stuff indeed.

With two YUI menus on a page, often the top "main" nav is desired to overlay any additional menu in the page.  Unfortunately, items rendered later in the document take a higher z-index and the secondary menu will remain on top of the main nav.

In the main nav, be sure to set the following configuration properties:

zindex:1000, lazyload:false

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

The answer, unequivocally, is no.

Almost a year ago I touched on this same topic.

I just couldn’t figure it out:  after numerous attempts to install Win2k3 Service Pack 1, I continued getting the 0x8007F0F4 error through Windows Update.  I read a few newsgroup posts and decided to download the network installation SP1 package in hopes that I was just having trouble with the WU services.  No joy…except when using the network install, the error messages I got were even less helpful.  No amount of Googling or newsgroup searching seemed to help.  After quite a hassle and no effective leads, I was ready to give up on Windows 2003 SP1. 

Luckily (or so I thought) Win2k3 SP2 was released and my problems were solved!

Wrong.

The same error was continuing to pop up when using the WU service:  0x8007F0F4

Google and the newsgroups were even less help in relation to SP2.  Most problems centered around Windows XP SP2 and the 0x8007F0F4 error, which of course didn’t apply because I’m sure my servers aren’t on battery power.

When I checked the %windir%\WindowsUpdate.log I couldn’t find much to go on except "Update is not allowed to download due to regulation." 

Normally, it seems, the "regulation" problem happens when too many clients try downloading patches all at once.  That, or your Windows license is invalid.  For me, however, the problem occurred over and over, spanning at least a couple months (the log overwrites itself after a while) and I knew our enterprise license was still valid.

I continued getting 0x8007F0F4 errors no matter what time of day I attempted the download through WU.  Finally I decided to try the network installation version of SP2 and I finally got a reasonable error message:

Setup has detected that the Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) service is disabled.  The MSDTC service is required for the successful installation of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2).  Please enable the MSDTC service, and then restart the installation of Windows 2003 SP2.For (sic) more information about enabling the MSDTC service, contact your network administrator.

Luckily I was the network administrator and I had a slight clue about the next step.  A quick trip to the Services Manager allowed me to set the MS DTC service to "manual" and I was back in business after starting DTC!

Why did was DTC disabled in the first place?  The lockdown guide I used a few years ago suggested disabling DTC due to the chance of exploitation.  Evidently, you can operate normally for years, receiving every other update except Service Packs, with MS DTC disabled.

I’d love to find out why this is the case.  But then again, ignorance is bliss.

Thanks for nothing, MS.

If you’ve attempted to install GNUMP3d on a Windows XP machine, there’s a good chance you’ve made it to step 4 and received the following error message when running C:\gnump3d2\gnump3d-index.bat:

Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at c:\gnump3d2\lib/gnump3d/config.pm line 140.
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at c:\gnump3d2\lib/gnump3d/config.pm line 140.
Can’t read configuration in : No such file or directory

If you were brave enough to move on to the second step 4, you’d find there’s not actually a file even located at C:\gnump3d2\bin\run.bat.  Turns out, you can still run the program by running C:\gnump3d2\bin\gnump3d.bat but many of the statistics don’t work and will kick out the same error message above.

I was unable to find any fixes on teh intarweb, so I set about creating my own.  I’m no professional programmer, but here’s what I did (and it worked):

• banged head on wall while attempting to use SysInternal’s FileMon to see exactly what was going on…
• …and failed

Finally I relaxed a little and used Perl’s debug and trace features to see what was happening.  Because the steps posted at http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/README.Windows are so erroneous, I’ve posted the new steps below (steps 1-3 were taken verbatim from the GNUMP3d website, with the exception of my note in #3).  Remember, this information is accurate as of 03-05-2007 and only pertains to version 2.9.9.1 (and possibly earlier versions as well, but I don’t want to check the changelog or test this fix on previous versions).

1. Download and install a recent version of Perl from ActiveState.
2. Unzip the gnump3d-2.x.zip file; and move the extracted directory to C:\gnump3d2 - preserving any existing configuration file you might have.
3. Make any changes to c:\gnump3d2\etc\gnump3d.conf.win (make sure to change "root" if your music is not located at C:\mp3).
4. In C:\gnump3d2\bin\gnump3d-index, put this at line 162 after the end of the first IF statement

else
{
$CONFIG{’file’} = "C:/gnump3d2/etc/gnump3d.conf.win";
}

5. In \gnump3d2\lib\gnump3d\filetypes.pm, change line 72 from

if ( -e "C:/gnump3d2/file.types"  );

to

if ( -e "C:/gnump3d2/etc/file.types"  );

6. Create a folder to hold the logs at c:\gnump3d2\logs\ (normally this is created by gnump3d-index.bat in the next step, but for some reason the Win XP version doesn’t)
7. Run C:\gnump3d2\gnump3d-index.bat one time
8. Edit C:\gnump3d2\gnump3d.bat to reflect your music’s root location (the default is C:\mp3).  This value should match the value used in Step 3.
9. Run C:\gnump3d2\gnump3d.bat to start the program
10. Enjoy your tunes from anywhere

The new Win XP-based computer I built was up and running for more than 43 days (over 1,043 hours to be exact) when it received an auto-update that forced its shutdown.

Unbelieveable.  I haven’t had a Windows machine run that long continuously since Win NT 4.0.  Too bad, too, because I know it had a lot left in it.

 This new system has been rock stable and eats anything I throw at it:

• 2 GB G-Skill RAM with 4-4-4-12 timings
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800 (socket AM2)
• BFG Nvidia 7600GT with 256 MB DDR3 RAM (overclocked from the factory)
• Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe motherboard

Next steps:  Disable the auto-restart feature after auto-update.

Interesting article from the Cato Institute on how fake IDs are saving lives around the world: 

Cato-at-liberty » Fake IDs Save Lives

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that’s why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

Wired News: The Eternal Value of Privacy

For all of you in LE and those interested in psychology, here’s a bit of a crazy study done by Stanford University in the 70’s IIRC.  They "jailed" a few college guys and put a few college "guards" in charge of them.  The study was slated to last nearly a week but was cut short after an attempted jailbreak and mental breakdown of numerous "inmates."

The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment