Robot.Floss

You can find directions on how to fix the Woot Watchter yourself or you can download it here at RobotFloos.

Instructions:

1. Depending on your operating system, go to the following directory:
   • OS-X: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles//Extensions/{a92aadf8-193f-4a62-8740-5cce81775afc}/chrome/
   • Windows 7/Vista – C:\Users\[Your UserName]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[Your Profile Name]\extensions\{a92aadf8-193f-4a62-8740-5cce81775afc}\chrome\
   • Windows XP – C:\Documents and Settings\[Your Account Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[Your Profile Name]\extensions\{a92aadf8-193f-4a62-8740-5cce81775afc}\chrome\
2. Rename the file “wootwatcher.jar” to “wootwatcher.old” in case you ever want to revert back to it.
3. Now, copy the wootwatcher.jar file from the .ZIP file to the directory
4. Relaunch FireFox and enjoy your w00ting!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Note: As of February 2010, this flaw still exists.

Update (Sept 25th, 2009):

The problem with Mozy having difficulty restoring large files with lengthy revision histories still exists. In the end, Mozy did restore the file for me, but only after the ticket was escalated to level 2 support and finally to level 3 – at which point the tech had to manually restore the file. This took about 7 days.

I needed an Entourage database file restored that had initially been uploaded/backed up to Mozy about 14 months prior. That meant there were thousands of entries in the history of the file that had to be processed. When you request a restore, the machines go back the original file and then move forward through the revision history. If the revision history is long enough, the machines time-out and the restore never completes.

Update (Sept 3rd, 2009 @ 1:51pm):

As you see in the comments, this posting grabbed the attention of the Dan from Mozy.com. The problem isn’t with large files, but rather larges files that have had many changes. For example, a 2.7gb file that changes multiple times a day has a large revision history. A large history can cause a timeout problem when restoring the file. Dan  looked in to the support ticket for me, and here was his response:

“I’ve looked into this more, and it looks like the issue surrounding restoration of long files is that if the file is changing often, then it can take a long time for Mozy to reconstruct the “current” version of the file. We start from the “original” version and then apply each change in sequential order. The restore may timeout before the reconstruction process is complete.

I hadn’t heard of this issue before and am still looking into it. I will forward your comments on to our Support team too.

Thanks,
Dan”

Why no one from Mozy’s technical support took the time to explain this from the start, I’m not sure. But in the end there is a problem, and it is being worked on. I’m not sure by who, but I’m assured it is by top men. Top men.

Original Posting:

I’m a big advocate of Mozy and Mozy Pro. I use the Mozy backup solution at home for 3 machines, and I’ve implemented Mozy Pro across all of the laptops I support at work. I’ve beta tested the product quite a bit for the company, and I even use it as a very last resort backup for my Apple Xserves (this is not the primary backup though, and I do not recommend that).

A few days ago one of my users lost a critical file. I requested the file to be restored, but the restore request  never completed. I called Mozy and spoke to a tech only to learn that it is a known issue – “Mozy has difficulty restoring files over 1gb.”

How much of a problem? Well, they’ve had an engineer working on the problem for over 2 days, and still the issue hasn’t been resolved. I’d love to know more about the back-end situation creating this problem, but for now I’m content to let the level 2 techs work on a solution.

I’m not sure what Mozy is thinking and why they’ve not addressed the problem sooner, but having multiple gigabyte files is not uncommon. Microsoft Entourage databases can easily get the large (even ones that are well maintained and archived), video projects I work on are often much larger than this, and some design files reach this size as well.

So for this issue to exist with Mozy is unacceptable. Until they problem is resolved, I’m going to downgrade my rating of Mozy and Mozy Pro from an A to a D+. The problem is that significant.

Popularity: 36% [?]

While reorganizing my MP3 collection, a large number of files were incorrectly renamed. Instead of having an extension of mp3, such as “SomeSong.mp3″, they’re now “SomesongMp3.mp3.” I decided to correct the problem. First, I needed a list of all files with the phrase “mp3″ before the extension in the filename. I fired up search and looked for: “*mp3.*”

That should result in a list of all files with the phrase “mp3″ in the filename before the extension to be displayed. However, in Windows 7 it now means “Show me everything with the phrase ‘mp3′ anywhere in the filename.” Also, the asterisk and question mark now mean the same thing – this is most likely a side effect of the new, crappy implementation.

The asterisk should mean “any number of characters”, and the question mark should mean “a single character”. For example, “*.mp3″ should show list all files with an mp3 extension. And “?.mp3″ should only show all mp3 files that have a filename that is 1 character in length and an extension of “mp3″. It has always worked this way, and it should stay this way. Otherwise it is too hard to limit the search results to a more specific range.

I thought that it might be a UI option for ease of use, so I dropped to the command line. The result was the same. I’m not sure why Microsoft in blissful idiocracy has changed the way the wildcards work when searching in Windows 7, but it is a massive inconvenience, especially if you’re working with files in the command line.

You can still do it from the command prompt, but now you have to do something along the lines of this – which still isn’t a perfect cure:

for %a in (*.*) do @echo %~na

Popularity: 21% [?]

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is decent, but it presents too many security problems. If you love Firefox or Chrome, and you should, then eliminate the threat of IE to your system. Whether by the built in Windows firewall or from another vendor, block all of IEs access to the internet and don’t let up.

I’ve made this a standard practice for years. And when I must use to IE, I’ll tweak the firewall, take care of business, and then return everything back to its locked down state. A few months back I let the rule slide. Like clockwork, a few days later my girlfriend was surfing around on IE, hit a malicious website, and my computer went to shit. I then spent the rest of the weekend formatting and reinstalling.

Be smart. Stop IE.

Don’t chance it. Ban IE. I promise your life will be happier and your computer safer.

Popularity: 7% [?]

When I say I have nine D630s, I’m not trying to boast. Rather, I’m trying to gain some sympathy. I’ve worked in IT for years, and I’ve always had a great Dell experience. And I encourage people I know to purcahse Dells as well. Not because the machines are necessarily better than others, but because the tech support is incredible. They once sent a tech to rural Oklahoma on Christmas Eve for me.

The only problem with having nine identical laptops is if a manufacturer defect exists, your odds of being affected are massively increased. And the D630 has an almost 100% failure rate for its graphics card.

In fact, the issue was so bad that Dell went back to Nvidia and said “We need to replace these graphics cards due to a defect” and Nvidia said “Well, we don’t make them any more.” Dell must have wielded a bat in the form of a legal threat, because Nvidia quickly started the line back up. (This was relayed to me via a Dell rep with decent knowledge on the situation)

I can understand the situation from Dell’s perspective. But here is my problem – the replacement graphics cards are as bad as the originals. I’m having replacement cards getting replaced. Since the graphics card is tied to the motherboard, this means that both are being replaced. And the systems never behave correctly with the new motherboard, so you have to reinstall Windows. I don’t know about you, but I have better things to do then waiting for Dell techs to replace parts, then reinstall Windows (even if I’m doing it from an image, it still eats up time).

Of the nine D630s I have:

• Four have had the graphics card replaced.
• Three more of my machines are showing signs of the graphics cards going out.
• Of those three, one or two of them have had the card replaced before.
• Three I’ve had to order new batteries for (these die almost perfectly a month after their warranty)

And I’d like to point out that batteries are not covered by the 3 year extended service warranty you paid extra money for. But that is only listed in the small print. You don’t get to find this out until the batteries start dying and Dell makes you cough up $169 for a new one. Also, don’t get me started on how fragile the AC adapter is – barely kink that cord once and you’ll be buying a new AC adapter.

Basically:

• The graphics cards have a 100% failure rate (verified by a rep and a field rep)
• The replacement graphics cards have almost the same failure rate (from my experience)
• The batteries have a short life span, terrible reviews, and are expensive to replace
• The details of the battery warranty aren’t as apparent as they should be
• The power adapters die with ease

The bottom line:

If you need to purchase a D630, just purchase a cute puppy and shoot it in the head. It is about an equally worthwhile investment and is just as painstaking.

I’m tired of dealing with Dell and with this issue. As someone who makes a lot of purchases and has always been a major Dell supporter, I have to say that I’m quickly becoming burnt out with them. Hell, at this point I know more about the situation than the Dell reps. It reminds me of the capacitor fiasco with the GX270s, and it seems like Dell is just praying that no one gets organizes enough to bring up a class-action lawsuit.

And if you’d like to see what a failed graphics card looks like on the monitor, here are a few of the images from my sample library:

Popularity: 10% [?]

Today I’m headed from Oklahoma City back to San Francisco. Before I arrived at the airport, I downloaded the User Agent Switcher for FireFox and added a profile for the iPhone. A lot of airports allow free wifi access for iPhones, and the User Agent will allow you to pretend that your computer is a iPhone. And it works perfectly.

I tried connecting to the airport’s wifi without the User Agent addon enabled, and I was promptly asked to pay for access. I turned on User Agent, selected the iPhone profile, and viola! Free wifi. After 15 minutes I’m asked to watch a 15 second add, and then access continues.

Knowledge is glorious.

Here are the iPhone Agent settings you need to use once you’ve downloaded the User Agent addon:

• Description: iPhone
• User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
• App Name: AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko)
• App Version: Version/3.0
• Platform: Mobile/1A542a Safari/419.3

Popularity: 3% [?]

Today a co-worker summoned me to fix a Microsoft Office problem. She had opened a PowerPoint 2007 .docx file and needed to save it as an earlier PowerPoint file format, but when she received the following error:

“You are attempting to save a file type that is blocked by your registry policy setting,”

I won’t go in to the details behind the error, because Microsoft already has, but it can happen to any Office 2003 or Office 2007 program that is trying to open or save documents made in the opposing version. (I consider Office 2003 and Office 2008 opposites, because the programs are filled with compatibility issues).

Microsoft gives the following solution:

In PowerPoint 2003, there are no trusted locations. You can create an exempt location to override the registry policy settings. To create an exempt location, follow these steps:
1. Exit PowerPoint 2003.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click one of the following registry subkeys:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common
4. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Key.
5. Type OICEExemptions for the name for the key.
6. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click String Value.
7. Type a string name, and then press ENTER. For example, type ExemptDirectory.
8. Right-click the string name that you typed in step 7, and then click Modify.
9. In the Value data box, type the path of the directory that contains the file, and then click OK. For example, if your document is in the C:\My Documents folder, type C:\My Documents in the Value data box.
Note You must create the folder. Any subfolders are not automatically exempted. For any additional folders that you would like to make exempt, repeat steps 6 to 9 by creating string values such as “ExemptDirectory1″ and “ExemptDirectory2.”
10. On the File menu, click Exit to exit Registry Editor.

Popularity: 17% [?]

At work I converted a Toshiba Satellite A135-S2386 from Vista to Windows XP. Initially, the A135 didn’t run Vista at an amazing speed, but after I took the time to remove the excess of startup programs, 3rd party vendor software, and all the other useless bells and whistles that came pre-installed, the machine ran Vista to my satisfaction. (Though heavy multi-tasking might have pushed the system had I tried it).

The only problem with switching from Vista to XP on the A135 is that the Toshiba never offered it as an XP machine. Therefore, the only drivers offered on the official product support page are Vista drivers. I went through countless forums and hundreds of dead links to XP drivers before I managed to get a working set together. So, in an effort to save other people time, here is a driver set that won’t be disappearing any time soon.

If you have problems with the set, please let me know. The installation order is marked in the file names.

Important Note About the Graphics Driver: In order to get the video driver to work, extract the drivers to a folder. Then you need to install the driver manually – do not use the setup.exe! Do this through the Windows Device Manager. When prompted, select to add a new driver, select to choose the driver location, and then manually select the driver from the extracted driver folder. If I remember correctly, there are several driver files, and you might have to try this a few times. (It has been a while since I did this, but I do remember the video driver installer not working properly, so you have to install it manually).

Download the drivers.

Note: A few of the comments ask about the password on the .ZIP file. I find this puzzling, seeing as there is no password on the file. If you’re prompted for the file, you’ve either downloaded the wrong file or you need to download a more up-to-date ZIP utility.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Recently, my parents started to suffer the following error any time they tried to view an image in Firefox (note: not an embedded image, rather just the image by itself):
“The image cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.” Turns out, the nasty little error is caused by Skype’s Firefox extension (my parents had recently installed it). The solution is to disable the Skype extension for Firefox under: Tools -> Add-ons

Popularity: 2% [?]

Basically, we’d started converting a group of OS-X users to active directory, and problems with directory permissions were arising. However, once on AD the users lost permissions to access their original local folders (note: it has been a while, but it was along those lines).

I had been asked to find the solution (which is very simple) because I have a mad love affair with command line interfaces. These directions are fairly specific because not all of techs helping implement the solution had working knowledge of command line interfaces or OS-X. For advanced users this solution most likely seems obvious.

How to Change the Owner of a Folder via CLI (command line interface)

1. Open a terminal
2. Change to the /users directory
3. Enter the command: ls -l

This will display a list of the current directory, and all of the owners and permissions of the sub-folders/files within. The output will be similar to the following:

total 0
drwxr-xr-x 15 OnADNow OnADNow 510 Nov 9 11:59 OnActive.Directory
drwxr-xrwx 12 PreAD PreAD 408 Nov 9 10:47 PreAD

The third column tells us who owns the folder and the fourth column lists the directory names. In the output above, the folder \users\PredAD is owned by the user named PreAD. The problem is that the user, whose account on AD is named OnADNow, doesn’t have permissions to access his old folder called PreAD (ie – he can’t access his pre-migration folder).

Enter the command: sudo chown OnADNow /users/PreAD
This will change the owner of the folder /users/PredAD to OnADNow. Note: Issue the command with sudo and use the absolute path. The user name and path are both case sensitive.

Reissue the command: ls -l
The output will look similar to this:

total 0
drwxr-xr-x 15 OnADNow OnADNow 510 Nov 9 11:59 OnActive.Directory
drwxr-xrwx 12 OnADNow PreAD 408 Nov 9 10:47 PreAD

The owner of the folder users/PreAD/ has changed to the user named OnADNow. This changes the owner of the group to support, but it doesn’t change the ownership of the contents of the folder. If you change in to the directory /users/PreAD and issue the command ls -l, you will notice the contents of /users/PreAD still belong to the user named “PreAD”.

So, to change the ownership of the folder’s contents the -R delimiter must be used: sudo chown -R support /users/PreAD/
The -R delimiter will recurse through all of the sub-directories and change the ownership of everything in /users/test.

Popularity: 1% [?]