http://trace5.com/fb/fb/0F365CE6ECE11D44AA96CC4B1441D016ECD54962070B0526C755486C0D97C488/show.aspx
The answer: “Not much”.
That’s what’s wrong with a “put everything in the cloud” architecture.
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SERVICE: What do you do when the “cloud” is out
Saturday, April 23, 2011
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SERVICE | 
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Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: McGraw-Hill and ebooks
Thursday, April 21, 2011http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/64169
McGraw-Hill Create: Customized eBooks for the Classroom
April 14, 2011 12:28
From CNBC:
*** begin quote ***
The McGraw-Hill Create platform enables instructors to easily customize digital content for their courses, combining their own course-specific materials with a range of other resources. Instructors have instant access to a vast library of McGraw-Hill resources to develop instructional materials adapted specifically to the needs of local markets. At Create’s core is a Google-like search engine functionality that enables professors to immediately pull from a wide range of quality content, including 4,000 McGraw-Hill textbooks, 5,500 articles, 11,000 literature, philosophy and humanities readings, and 25,000 business case studies from prominent providers such as the Harvard Business School
*** end quote ***
Perhaps they are feeling the heat, as their “franchise” swirls the bowl? I guess the days of big over-priced textbooks is over and the inet hosted ebooks is just over the horizon. Obviously, this has implications for MC, the faculty, and staff. Not to mention the Library, and the Technology Architecture. Argh! I guess my big concern would be who own’s the copyrights and the “organization of the dikw (i.e., data, information, knowledge, wisdom)”. Maybe I’m a skeptic, but, since “crowd sourcing” is all the rage, perhaps the “customized digital content”, and the organization there of, becomes the property of McGraw-Hill. Then, they turn around and “sell” it as a new “title” to anyone who will buy it? Bet some evil lawyer has billed a lot of hours writing that licensing agreement that will be a quick pop up. Hmmmm?
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Posted by reinkefj
SERVICE: Yahoo email hacked … …
Saturday, April 16, 2011Greetings from XXXXX – Alive and Well in Singapore
Posted by: “XXXXX”
Sat Apr 9, 2011 12:01 am (PDT)
HI Guys, Saturday, April 9th, 2011.
Greetings from Singapore.
I understand that on March 22nd an “Emergency Help!!!” SCAM e-mail was sent in my name to the Manhattan Prep 1964 Yahoo Group.
My apologies if it created any alarm.
However, I am sure that any Prepster who received this e-mail would have realized that the exaggerated emotional tone and piss poor grammar gave it away as a scam…
Here is the background on the scam…
On the evening of March 22nd, someone hacked into my Yahoo/Prodigy Account, hijacked my address book, which contained about 1,400 addresses and then proceeded to send out an “Emergency Help” E-mail asking for money. The hacker even changed my password and set up a forwarding address edward1.coll@yahoo.com to which all my incoming e-mails went so he could try and continue to perpetrate this scam.
Within a few minutes of the scam e-mail being sent, I started receiving phone calls and e-mails from all over the world from people on my contact list enquiring if I was O.K. and whether they should send money to me via a Western Union Office in London .
I told them that this was a big SCAM and to just ignore the e-mail and not even reply as the hacker had arranged to have all the replies forwarded to him. What an operator !!!
It was really frustrating as this hacker also changed my password so I could not initially access my account to see what was going on
I was finally able to get in touch with Yahoo’s Customer Service Department and spent about two hours on the phone with them to get my password reset so I could access the account and cancel out all the forwarding addresses that the hacker had set up.
The worst thing was that he erased my Yahoo Address book and the 1,400 names it contained. Fortunately, I had backed up the address book so I was able to re-import the contacts to my yahoo account.
I hope this matter is settled now. and that no one was duped into sending this hacker any money.
My e-mail address, {Privacy Invoked} should be secure now.
Best regards,
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I’m glad you’re OK. It’s not that we have any fellow alum to spare.
On a technical note, were you able to determine, how the hack was accomplished? I’m interested from an InfoSec pov. The default assumption was that someone kept “knocking on the door” with passwords until it opened. It’s not hard to imagine a bot (software robot) doing that. But, it’s also possible that it was malware on your computer or malware on a site you visited with an old browser.
Interesting?
May I suggest that you, or anyone, have your own domain? The common wisdom, or is that common whizdumb, is to own your own name as a domain name. I own “reinke.cc”. (I like saying “sea sea me at reinke.cc”! me@reinke.cc will actually work!)
I can send you some links to stuff that I’ve posted on my blog “Reinke Faces Life” about how to “do” email to avoid such unpleasantries. It’s neither hard not expensive.
Unfortunately, having a yahoo, gmail, or hotmail account makes you are target for the black hats. Eventually they find everyone who has one of those “free accounts”.
At the very least, one can hide by using a very long random string password. I use twenty characters. Of course, I use tools like roboform, last pass, and even the infamous yellow stickie to remember them.
But I doubt anyone has as many unique ids and passwords as I do. I’m a little nuts about it.
I’m now off to change my Yahoo password to something longer. I’m sure someone is listening.
:-)
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Posted by reinkefj
SERVICE: Defending against the Epsilon Hack
Friday, April 8, 2011http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/epsilon_hack.html
Schneier on Security
A blog covering security and security technology.
April 5, 2011
Epsilon Hack
*** begin quote ***
I have no idea why the Epsilon hack is getting so much press.
Yes, millions of names and e-mail addresses might have been stolen. Yes, other customer information might have been stolen, too. Yes, this personal information could be used to create more personalized and better targeted phishing attacks.
*** end quote ***
You should shift to your own domain. Sorry, but yahoo, gmail, and hotmail make you a sitting duck for this hack.Your own domain just moves you out of the target zone.
Alpha spammers just keep trying every id from AA@yahoo.com to ZZZZZZZZZ@hotmail.com and then they turn around and repeat.
So you get “MYDOMAIN.COM”. (You can even push all the email to GMAIL for free.)
Then you create a spreadsheet or use a tool like LASTPASS, ROBOFORM, or such.
Now you assign email addresses to your correspondents. And, add a magic random string to the name, like, k7sa yk2k3 ggfn a2zq
Best Buy ==> BestBuy_k7sa @ MYDOMAIN.COM
Target ===> Target_yk2k3 @ MYDOMAIN.COM
Verizon ===> Verizon_ggfn @ MYDOMAIN.COM
Walgreens ==> Walgreens_a2zq @ MYDOMAIN.COM
You can then write email filters that will quarantine emails that arrive without the proper address.
If Best Buy messages come without the “k7sa”, you know that it’s not the address that you gave them.
If non-Best Buy messages come in with the “k7sa”, you know that it’s a compromised email address.
Go change your address at Best Buy and write a filter to trash any “k7sa” email.
It’s just like having unique passwords for all accounts.
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SERVICE: Epsilon #1, #2, and #3
Wednesday, April 6, 2011A good reason to use unique email addresses for each of your “special” correspondents. Just like passwords, unique. A little bit of trouble to administrate, but it certainly isolates the trouble. And, it’s trivial to do when you have your own domain. You can even subcontract the email to GMAIL if you want by repointing a few records. It also automagicaly detects financial spam, when a message purporting to be from “your bank” arrives on the “wrong email” account. Wish I could teach this technique to more people. We could have email “security” even if the ISPs don’t want to do IPv6 or email providers, like Yahoo, won’t authenticate when email arrives from outside labeled as if originated from Yahoo itself. (I even tried to sell them a consulting engagement but they said “it wasn’t their problem”. With an attitude like that, no wonder we have problems.)
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| ©2011 Verizon. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy Verizon Online – PO Box 33056 / St Petersburg, FL 33733 |
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Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: China’s building nuke plants
Saturday, April 2, 2011http://dumpdc.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/china-embraces-new-nuclear-technology/
China Embraces New Nuclear Technology
by Russell D. Longcore
*** begin quote ***
Did I say ALL the reactors are using old technology? Pardon me. China has build a 10 MW (megawatt) prototype “Pebble Bed” reactor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. It holds the promise of safe nuclear-generated power going forward into tomorrow.
The Pebble Bed reactor was actually invented in 1947 by Dr. Farrington Daniels at Oak Ridge National Laboratory here in the USA. Then, German scientists took the concept and have been perfecting it since. America…to its shame…has not embraced this technology.
*** end quote ***
We need nukes to wean ourselves off imported oil. Americans tamed the frontier. Are you telling me we can’t have safe nukes?
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Posted by reinkefj
HARDWARE: POGOPLUG becomes much more valuable
Thursday, March 31, 2011
http://www.pogoplug.com/home-en.html?
For a C Note and an external USB hard drive, you have your own “cloud”. This is an amazing solution. And, the fact, that it has no monthly charge, is stunning.
Put one in a friend’s house and you have off-site backup. And, it doesn’t preclude him putting his own along side it. I can see a lot of mutual back scenarios being created.
Hurry before they raise the price.
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Leave a Comment » | HARDWARE | Tagged: cloud, cloud computing | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
NOTRECOMMENDED: WD MYBOOKFORMAC
Wednesday, March 30, 2011IMHO this has been a technology disaster.
Not so much the device. I had that working in minutes.
In the accompanying software. What good is a backup device without the snazzy software that will make the backups painless.
Otherwise it’s just a USB Hard DIsk. Which is nice, but there are many on the market and many much cheaper.
I have a WD Go Flex that I bought without the snazzy software and use IBACKUP with.
During the “panic attacks” I feared for my data. And despite CARBONITE and DROPBOX and GOFLEXDRIVE, the TIMEMACHINE failure scared me. So I wanted more protection.
(I’ve done bare metal restores on WINDOZE and MACBOOKAIR, they are NOT pretty. Stuff never comes back 100%.)
I bought the MYBOOKFORMAC based on the box’s promise of simple complete backup. And, I got something that was Adobe Flash dependent and browser dependent. That’s not what I bargained for.
CAVEAT EMPTOR
And, I may be wrong but in the “support email exchanges”, I think I was dealing with a softeware robot, not a real person, Even dial 1 800 a third world country is more honest. Did these guys watch WATSON on Jeopardy and think they can fool people?
# – # – #
Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support center. Below is a summary of your request and our response. We hope we have answered your question(s). If we do not receive an update from you within 4 business days, the incident will automatically close. However, if you still need further assistance from us, please do not hesitate to update your question(s) or contact us at 1-800-ASK-4WDC and we will be happy to assist you further.
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To access your question from our support site, click here.
| Subject | |
| wd smartware doesn’t exec | |
| Discussion Thread | |
| Response Via Email (Carmen D) | 03/29/2011 02:18 PM |
| Dear Ferdinand,
Thank you for your reply. Once again I apologize for the inconvenience. If you decide to return the product to the store you do not need an RMA number to get a credit refund from retailer. An RMA number is used for replacement purpose with our company. If you wish to get your money back for the product from store, this is something that is handled by the retailer you purchased the product. Western Digital does not refund back money to customers, if the drive is defective or needs replacement for some other reason, we proceed with RMA options. If you wish to replace the drive, we have two warranty replacement options available to you, Advance RMA and Standard RMA. Both options are available online from our we bsite. In an Advance RMA, we will ship you the replacement drive prior to receiving your defective drive. A credit/debit card is required to insure against the receipt your defective drive. If we do not receive your drive 30 days from the date the replacement drive was shipped, the fair market value of the replacement drive will be charged/debited to your credit/debit card. In a Standard RMA, we will ship you the replacement drive only after we have received your defective product. No credit/debit card is required in a Standard RMA. The current turnaround time for an Advance RMA is 3 to 5 business days and 5 to 7 business days for a Standard RMA. You may create your RMA online by visiting the links below. Please remember that an RMA number is required in order to replace your defective drive. Title: How can I check the warranty of my drive? Title: How can I replace a product under warranty? Title: Where can I get packaging and shipping information for an RMA? Current RMA turnaround: http://support.wdc.com/warranty/rmapost.asp If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further. Sincerely, Note: If you have not visited our community forums, please make sure to do so. You may also find answer(s) to your question(s) there. This electronic message contains information from Western Digital and is intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is confidential. The dissemination of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please respond back to this e-mail or contact us by phone (http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?wdc_lang=en). |
|
| Customer By Email (Ferdinand Reinke) | 03/29/2011 11:44 AM |
| > > How about if you just give me an RMA and have Best Buy issue me a > credit? This is far more than I wanted to do to get this to work. > Nothing on the box disclosed this torture. > > > |
|
| Response Via Email (Carmen D) | 03/28/2011 10:23 AM |
| Dear Ferdinand,
Thank you for your reply. I apologize for the inconvenience. Is the file downloading but once you click on the executable file is not running? Does the application get installed but is not performing the backup? Could you please send me a screen shot of where the issue is occurring and of any message that you get when your trying the installation of application. If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further. Sincerely, Note: If you have not visited our community forums, please make sure to do so. You may also find answer(s) to your question(s) there. This electronic message contains information from Western Digital and is intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is confidential. The dissemination of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please respond back to this e-mail or contact us by phone (http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?wdc_lang=en). |
|
| Customer By Email (Ferdinand Reinke) | 03/28/2011 04:42 AM |
| > > Are you seriously telling me that I have to install another browser? > Where exactly on the box does it say that? I don’t see anything, even in the Now what exactly do you want me to place where to execute? > |
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| Customer By Email (Ferdinand Reinke) | 03/28/2011 04:12 AM |
| > So what you are saying, that is not on the box, that this software doesn’t execute with Chrome? Are you seriously saying you want me to install ANOTHER browser so that What do you want me to put where and execute? |
|
| Response Via Email (Carmen D) | 03/27/2011 03:04 PM |
| Dear Ferdinand,
Thank you for your reply. I truly apologize for the inconvenience. If it is not executing in Chrome try another browser. Also try to save the executable on your computer then try to install. If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further. Sincerely, Note: If you have not visited our community forums, please make sure to do so. You may also find answer(s) to your question(s) there. This electronic message contains information from Western Digital and is intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is confidential. The dissemination of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please respond back to this e-mail or contact us by phone (http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?wdc_lang=en). |
|
| Customer By Email (Ferdinand Reinke) | 03/27/2011 02:42 PM |
| > > *** begin quote *** Your Google Chrome browser already includes Adobe® Flash® Player To learn more about the enhanced support for Flash Player in Chrome, *** end quote *** Still doesn’t work. I can copy files to and from the device. But none of |
|
| Response Via Email (Carmen D) | 03/27/2011 09:31 AM |
| Dear Ferdinand,
Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is Carmen D. I apologize for the inconvenience that you are experiencing. Please, follow the troubleshooting steps below. 1. Uninstall any versions of Smartware from your system and reboot after disconnecting the device. Answer Title: How to uninstall WD SmartWare from Windows (7, Vista, or XP) and Mac OSX (10.4, 10.5, and 10.6) 2. Double-check that you have all high-priority AND optional updates for MAC 3. First uninstall from your add/remove programs adobe flash player, and then reinstall. Check for latest versions 4. Reconnect the device and Update the software here: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/wdsmartwareupdate/Step1.asp?id=wdfMB_forMac&os=MAC Download this updated version of the WD Smartware, and using this version, install the application, do not install the version bundled with your drive and then update to the latest version, install directly from the file downloaded from the link. 5. Try running the Smartware backup. If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further. Sincerely, Note: If you have not visited our community forums, please make sure to do so. You may also find answer(s) to your question(s) there. Link to WD community forums at: http://websupport.wdc.com/rn/cl.asp?i=110326-003152&e=reinkefj@gmail.com This electronic message contains information from Western Digital and is intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is confidential. The dissemination of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please respond back to this e-mail or contact us by phone (http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?wdc_lang=en). |
|
| Auto-Response | 03/26/2011 01:07 PM |
| Dear Ferdinand,
Thank you for your email. If you need to update your question, please click the link below to update your question. Our goal is to answer your email within one (1) business day. However, sometimes due to heavy volume, it may take us a little longer to respond (Hours of Operation: M-F 8AM-5PM PST). If you have not visited our community forums, please make sure to do so. You may find the answer(s) to your question(s) there. Link to WD community forum: http://websupport.wdc.com/rn/cl.asp?i=110326-003152&e=reinkefj@gmail.com Link to update my question: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/acct_login.php?p_userid=reinkefj@gmail.com Link to contact us: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1048 Our knowledge base may have some suggested answers below which may resolve your question. If no answers are listed or the answers are not helpful, please allow us one (1) business day to reply to your email. Title: How to remove (disable / hide) WD SmartWare Virtual CD (VCD) for Windows or Mac OSX on a WD My Book or WD My Passport Title: WD SmartWare for Mac OSX has an inaccurate file count in the backup and retrieve tab Title: Backing up a large file to a drive creates an endless backup loop in WD SmartWare for Mac OSX (ver. 1.2.x.x) Title: After updating WD SmartWare for Mac OSX, the backup and retrieve gauges no longer properly update Title: Switching Users on a Mac OS X 10.4 computer after installing and running SmartWare causes an error Sincerely, |
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It goes back to Best Buy today.
# – # – # – # – # 2011-Mar-30 @ 08:13
Leave a Comment » | HARDWARE, NOTRECOMMENDED | Tagged: Backup, NOTRECOMMENDED | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
SERVICE: AMAZON CLOUDPLAYER just stopped
Wednesday, March 30, 2011I knew it, I knew it. “Cloud Services” are subject to network and hosting issues.
AMAZON CLOUDPLAYER just had a “brain fart”. For at least three minutes.
For me listening to music sadly, who cares. For folks betting their ranch on a cloud strategy, they better care.
It’s back now. Let the finger pointing begin.
# – # – # – # – # 2011-Mar-30 @ 10:59
Leave a Comment » | SERVICE | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
SERVICE: AMAZON CLOUD_DRIVE and CLOUD_PLAYER scoops Google and Apple
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Seems like Amazon has scooped Google and Apple. It appears to work.
Just as you should buy your ebooks for Kindle, seems like you music should be from Amazon. (The buying process is clunky! imho)
# – # – # – # – # 2011-Mar-29 @ 19:31
Leave a Comment » | SERVICE | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
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