Ross Brown dot net

My cousin’s site is back up, looks like he’s gone for Wordpress too.
I know they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but even the site’s name is strangely familiar to me

My wife’s boss came to me with a broken laptop. “You’ve got to help,” she said. “It’s got all the finances on it and if you can’t fix it then nobody gets paid”.
I powered it on and the prognosis wasn’t good - STOP 0×7B error, the BSOD said - INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE.
“Leave it with me,” I said. “I’m sure it’s not terminal.”
Back in the lab I burned a CD of the latest Knoppix version and booted the notebook again. Using my wireless PCMCIA card, I was able to copy off all the data to my desktop machine, for safe-keeping. With the data safe, I started trying to fix the XP bootup problem. It turned out to be an NTFS problem, I just booted to the XP Recovery Console and ran CHKDSK /F. Simple really, but for some people a problem like that is so far beyond them that they end up buying a new computer.

So the data is safe, the notebook is booting OK again, now to check out the state of the machine. This particular notebook isn’t used that much, mainly for company finances (accounts spreadsheets, payroll, money transfer). They use a modem connection to their ISP, I’m guessing for a little browsing & email but that’s about it. Given the level of usage, I wasn’t too surprised to learn that there wasn’t any AV software installed, but thankfully there was only one virus. I was more surprised to find a massive 114 items of Spyware and other crap (thanks to Spybot S&D), including the annoying Bonzi Buddy.
I also managed to find a never-activated copy of Norton AV 2002 lurking on the hard drive, so that got installed (and many updates got downloaded!). I then headed over to Windows Update and got the myriad outstanding patches, including the massive XP SP2.
Once the hard disk had been defragged, the machine was back in tip-top running condition. All in a day’s work.

I’ve never really understood fashion. If I ever needed to explain why I just don’t ‘get it’, then I think these retro phone handsets demonstrate it nicely. I’ll admit that maybe I’m more of a geek than some people, but the trend for ‘vintage’ tech escapes me - personally I can’t think of anything worse than lugging a huge bakelite handset around for use with my dinky mobile phone.
I’ll admit that the Bluetooth Star Trek communicator is a nice concept though.
If you’re interested, here is a site with lots of techno bootlegging projects. Hey! I used to own a Sports Walkman like that one!

Seems that there is a scam involving Barclays cashpoints, particularly at London Underground stations. Look out for anything suspicious and tell a member of staff if you see anything. I’ve heard the criminals use a wireless camera to beam images of you inputting your PIN to a laptop in a nearby car, so they can drive off quickly if the scam is discovered.