Category: communication

RATS and Right to Privacy

While some may find them cute and cuddly, and some, absolutely disgusting; this rat that I am speaking of is neither.

The rat that I want to educate about is really an acronym for Remote Access Trojan.

Just about everything electronic today has a built in camera. Not to mention a microphone.

Some smart TV’s actually have them built in to allow you to voice command the TV.

Your car may very well have something like this built in.

I have long held that our government could if they wanted, under some obscure interpretation of the Patriot Act, access your camera and or microphone to peek into your home. I have also thought that this could be done with the microphone and camera on most laptops and of course desktops that have them.

Not only is there news of the Feds hacking your cell phones and either listening in or downloading your contact list and other information through something called String Ray but there are theories that your local police may be doing this as well without a warrant! (1)

It is not enough that we may have our government spying on us without warrant but, we have Trojans that copy your keystrokes and send them to some server in Russia, or some other obscure third world country looking for passwords and banking information now we have RATS.

Today we know that perverted individuals out there have in fact used the cameras in laptops handed out by the school to indeed spy on kids in their bedrooms. While this made the news, little attention was really paid to this, as conspiracy nuts are everywhere.

(2) The Case in question

We now know that the Chinese among others have created Trojans that allow them remote access to your camera and or microphone in your laptop! Simply click on the wrong thing and the writer of the software has access to your machine.

One couple received a picture of themselves lying in bed watching a movie on Netflix. This came to them from someone using a made up name, via their Facebook page.

(3) Naked Security Story

You really have to be smart when you are cruising the internet and checking e-mail as the crooks and other creeps are smarter. I have often said that these folks are probably kids sitting around in their mother’s basement in their underwear, writing Trojans, seeing who can outdo the other via groups like Anonymous.

I would like to see devices like phones have an actual on off switch or removable customer replaceable battery. If you want to make certain that the thing is off, remove the power. Apple has made this task about impossible for the everyday user and that is problematic. Placing the device in airplane mode might be your closest bet to protecting your privacy but I would bet that there is a work around for that.

I would also like to see on off switches on cameras and microphones that absolutely can be switched off until required.

The simple truth is we have no idea what these phones are doing in the background and with viruses and Trojans, we have no idea when some remote access Trojan will activate or be activated by some creep in some basement somewhere.

Someone write an app that tells you what the phone is dong or has done.

When you sit back and think that I am a crazy conspiracy nut, I would remind you of the porn scanners that are still in use at some airports today.

full-body-scanner-image — Yes, if you invert the negative with any cheap software you get a positive…

Who in their right mind would think that it is ok to use ionizing radiation to undress the public by the tens of thousands for the purpose of what, looking for weapons? We are so politically correct that we can’t profile but we can strip search the public, grope grandma and feel up children! Political Correctness is a way to control the masses and not something that we should be doing as a people. We have free speech, and other than yelling fire in a theater or threatening to kill someone, I would not surrender the first amendment for anything!

Did you read about the whistle blower who worked for the TSA and admitted that it was a big joke to watch people stripped of their clothing and then make remarks and jokes about what they saw? (4) (5)

If I could have any job in the world, currently it would be to be in some position of authority at the TSA! I would love to clean that bunch of people up and while I am at it, assist them with security as currently they are loath to do much right, of course it is the government so …. What do you expect?! They need folks who think outside the box and currently they have a bunch of automatons.

The news media commonly carried stories about the TSA scanner as equivalent to being at altitude for a couple of hours. The lying bastards however did not tell the truth. While pilots do suffer more cases of skin cancers than non-pilots as cosmic radiation is more intense at altitude, it is not the same as ionizing radiation.

To further exacerbate the privacy issue you are undoubtedly aware that cameras are everywhere. You must assume that wherever you are, or whatever you are doing, there may be a camera watching you. Every red light contains cameras that I maintain can and do look at people in cars collecting bio metric data, looking for who is doing what when. These are not the low end cameras that you can buy on-line, these are high end cameras that have good quality optics.

How about some of these cameras:

st-sony640-dvr — There is a wifi enabled camera in there. Have you seen these in your hotel room perhaps?

These are just a scant few. These things are tiny and easily concealed. Assume that you have no privacy. If you scratch it in public, chances are someone saw you.

Orwell was ahead of his time, and you my friends need to be aware of this, and act accordingly.

(1) http://thehackernews.com/2015/04/police-spying-cell-phones.html

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District

(3) https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/08/14/webcam-spy-sends-couple-photos-of-previous-nights-netflix-snuggle-session/

(4) http://mountainrepublic.net/2012/12/24/ex-tsa-screener-officers-laughing-at-your-naked-image/

(5) https://takingsenseaway.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/letter-from-a-passenger-what-really-happens-in-the-tsa-private-room/

-Best

The digital Era

The digital Era

One of my neighbors was talking via a group regarding cable and internet and what have you. Since I took the time to write this to them I thought that I would also share this with you my “virtual” neighbors.

Shopping Saves Money

I had Time Warner for years. The bill had eventually reached $300 a month, the picture was hardly HD and often pixelated and too often went out. The service technicians had been over too many times to fix it and I was over paying that kind of money for interference and snowy pictures. The Internet was slow 6mgb I think and, the two phone lines of course went down when the cable went down.

Truth be told, we don’t recognize the up time, we only really recognize and pay attention to the down time! So when it went off or they had issues, it was an issue. As things are “bundled” it is a real problem!

Howdy Neighbor!

Because the e-mail is also through Time Warner, now all of the communication other than the cellular is dead, if it dies for whatever reason.

While I would argue that this is a good time to pick up a book, or go sit on the porch with a glass of tea and say howdy to the neighbors, as we hardly ever meet our neighbors anymore. We are too happy with our gadgets, and our air conditioning, another story.

Un-Bundle

The old adage about not putting all of your eggs in one basket is salient advice, and germane when it comes to communication.

Some of the easiest things to do is get another e-mail account that is not tied to your provider. Gmail, or some other freebie is a good start. Yes there are security issues with this so don’t broadcast your banking information through un-encrypted e-mail. I would argue not to put anything on there that you would not put on social media, but that too is another topic.

Next, as someone pointed out, who needs a land line. POTS lines or ‘plain old telephone lines” are a thing of the past, much like pay phones. If you really want a phone line that looks like a regular line, there are options.

First and the cheapest I have found is “Magic Jack.” Yep, looks cheesy but for $100 for 5 years, pick your number and exchange, which is an easy choice. Phone lines through your cable provider have all sorts of taxes and fees including *“universal fees” , which are fees tacked onto your phone line to pay for someone else’s phone.

I personally like to choose who I donate to and I don’t like to have it extracted from me, so that too was an easy choice. No fees or other hidden theft of money with Magic Jack.

There are devices that you can get that utilize the Cell phone service and hook up to your home wiring that actually use a cell phone number as a home phone thus not doing business with the cable company in that regard. More expensive and fees and other hidden charges will be there. It still might be less expensive than the cable company.

There are other options for entertainment as more and more services are streaming online as someone else pointed out. I still like the TV services offered by Verizon but, if that price gets too high, I will switch again.

Broadband is changing constantly and some say that you should get the fastest around including the company that sells it via some upgrade by some carriers on some channel.

Since most companies are using something called QoS (Quality of Service) they can actually throttle certain types of packets so, streaming video may be fast but other types of files may crawl. This is what the whole net neutrality argument is all about.

Should NETFLIX for instance be able to pay the FCC or some other government entity to have priority traffic over some other streaming service? Those that have a business like this lobby for it as it would make them more successful and those that think the internet should be unencumbered from government regulations lobby for neutrality. Your online game packets should have the same priority as VOIP. (Voice over IP) I would argue that some companies are already doing it to some degree with or without regulations but proving it would be difficult. Verizon has in its “fine print” an option to slow the traffic to your MAC address of your router, if you violate any of the rules on the internet such as downloading copyrighted stuff so trust me when I say this, they can do it easily.

My point to this is that I would not pay extra for faster or more bandwidth in that your “cable speed checker” may say that you are blazing but, in fact the traffic that you are interested in may be throttled back for something else. There are other issues that could also slow down the traffic to your particular site that you are interested in so, before you buy a racecar, make certain you can use it.

Should your Internet be sold to you like water, or electricity?

There are, and have been arguments by greedy politicians and others who believe that you should pay for what you use or cause to move or transverse the internet. Not only should you pay for your connection to, and the speed thereof, but you should also pay for the amount of data downloaded or uploaded much like cellular providers already do. Even if the price was negligible, once they got the camel’s nose inside the tent, you would quickly find the whole camel inside the tent. I would fight this at every turn of the road.

Network cable is not wire

Start with the basic and see if it is acceptable. Ramp up slowly and this is a biggie, make sure that the slowness that you are experiencing is not on your own home network. Often I see companies that have paid big bucks for superfast internet access and have placed their network cables on top of fluorescent lights, or other em emitting sources. Another huge mistake that I see often is the use of zip ties to keep them all neatly bundled. Like building a home, make certain that your networks foundation (physical layer) is solid and installed per specifications.

Too many companies hire some handyman to install network cable thinking it is like any other kind of wire. IT IS NOT. There is a reason that there are so many different standards of cable and it has to do with shielding and something called TPI or (twist per inch.) Along with all of that, there is a spacer inside the cable that actually holds the different pairs at certain distances from one another as to not adversely affect the impedance of the cable. Hire a cable specialist to do this for you; as not only does it need to be routed correctly, but it must be terminated correctly.

Threaten to Fire them

When the cable company gets too pricey call and tell them that you are going to “cancel” and change providers. They will most probably send you to a “retention specialist” who is authorized to cut your bill, or offer you some free something or other for some amount of time.

Be prepared to cut the cable.

If you are just un-happy with the service and the retention specialist tries to low ball you, simply tell them no; and come get the stuff, or write the letter as some require etc. I see many people bringing cable boxes and Satellite boxes and what have you to the UPS store or to the FED EX store as those folks have a contract with the provider to wrap the stuff up, and ship it for them. Read and understand your contract before you engage the company and certainly before you terminate services. The fine print in some of these contracts is ambiguous at best. If I need a lawyer to look it over that is a red flag for me. If I cannot within a few moments read the contract, and understand it completely; I am uninterested in the product. That is sage advice that 40 years of dealing with vendors has taught me.

Important Information

A note about Magic Jack and or other VOIP services. 911 may not be a function that you have with it so remember if there is an emergency, use your cell phone. 911 is an emergency number (obviously) and when there is an emergency people often forget things like (that phone does not have 911!) when seconds count, you don’t have time to call 911 on a line that will not do you any good!

With Magic Jack they sell it with a network cable that plugs right into your router. The problem is the cable is “flat.” A flat cable picks up EM “electromagnetic” interference too easily and effects the performance and quality of the device. Toss it and use a regular cat 5 or cat 6 jumper cable.

Alarm systems can be dicey with VOIP and certainly with some cable providers. There are companies that offer cellular connected alarms and while I would not want that exclusively, I would want that as an option. Crooks can be smart so one must be a step ahead of and smarter than them. A good alarm company should have specialist that can make certain that if there is an issue that the police or fire or other emergency services will indeed get the call. One other small pearl of wisdom I would pass on regarding this is simply to test your alarm once a month at least. When you pay the bill, go test the alarm. Make it a habit. You don’t want to find out that it does not work, when or if you need it.

-Best

CFL, LED Revisited

Big corporations really suck when they go the extra mile forcing one to buy expensive stuff.

Under the guise of “saving the planet” we have lost it!

First off let me just rant a little about the planet. The Earth has been around 4.5 billion years. Man has been around for about 6 million of those years but, we only have we been a “threat” to the planet the last 150 years or so.

When I say threat, not really. One lucky strike from a meteor and we are done! Toast, the next life form to take hold will hopefully be more evolved than some of our peers who think money is the answer to everything no matter who they screw!

Industrialization is claimed to be the largest threat to the planet along with the ever increasing population. I agree that millions of people all creating waste emissions from gasses to solids, probably are not doing the earth any good but, do you really for just one minute think that one Volcano, or large fire does not do as much if not more damage to the eco-system than man?

There is a super volcano that is due to erupt any moment in Yellow stone park. When that bad boy goes off it will be a life changer!

Then tell me about coal power plants or Gas guzzling SUv’s.

Despite High Emissions, New Coal Power Plants Planned in Germany...AACHEN, GERMANY - MAY 15: Behind the open-pit coal mine Gartzweiler exhaust rises from cooling towers at the lignit coal-fired power stations Frimmersdorf, Neurath and Niederaussem May 15, 2007 near Aachen, Germany. The four German major energy providers Vattenfall, RWE, E.on and EnBW plan to invest more than 30 billion euros in construction and infrastructure of cole conducted power plants in Germany. (Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images) — Despite High Emissions, New Coal Power Plants Planned in Germany…AACHEN, GERMANY – MAY 15: Behind the open-pit coal mine Gartzweiler exhaust rises from cooling towers at the lignit coal-fired power stations Frimmersdorf, Neurath and Niederaussem May 15, 2007 near Aachen, Germany. The four German major energy providers Vattenfall, RWE, E.on and EnBW plan to invest more than 30 billion euros in construction and infrastructure of cole conducted power plants in Germany. (Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images)

Yes, we are burning fossil fuels “dinosaurs” to heat and cool our homes and to drive our gas burning vehicles to and from the job and what have you.

If you really want to solve global warming first you really need to get truthful with the numbers, and facts, as what has been published thus far is to push a “carbon credit agenda” to make the rich richer and in the end is simply another tax!

Now, back to bulbs.

Edison through trial and error “brute force” came up with an incandescent light bulb.

The typical light in your home burns 60 watts of electricity.

It took me a few minutes to do the math for you, so here it is in a spreadsheet.

You can do any further multiplication you like, as in how many of these bulbs do you have and how long do you really leave them on.

The 100 and the 60 are representing incandescent “old school” bulbs.

The 12 is representing a CFL bulb and the 3 watt is representing the LED variety.

Basing the cost per kilowatt hour at 8.5 cents, this is what it would look like to run one bulb for a year never turning it off.

So, if you want to save the earth…or money, lets look at how and where you would put what kind of bulb.

defective GE bulb — Here is the bulb that failed prematurely. Notice the black around the inside of the plastic. This thing got hot before it stopped working and the important part of this is that the fuse did not blow!

I also think that we were pushed into using them by congress via some backroom deal with GE or some other maker of these things through the good folks at AVE K, you know lobbyist. Like republicans or not, this was a GW Bush thing and I think it smells.

CFL or any fluorescent bulb must stay on for a minimum of 15 minutes or you shorten the life of the bulb. That means, don’t put them in places that you turn the light on for a few moments and then off again. CFL or fluorescent tubes should go into places that you energize them, and then leave them on for hours, like a kitchen, family room or porch light.

This bulb died because the capacitor died. If you look at it you will see that it has bubbled up on the top. Checking the capacitor it is non functional.

GE must have purchased a plethora of bad capacitors from China!

If you look at the actual glass you will notice that there is no black around the base, this bulb died way too young…

LED bulbs don’t just quit “usually” unlike an incandescent of fluorescent. They grow dim over time as they age and one day you will notice that it is not very bright, and replace it. I like them in bathrooms and closets, desk lights and lights in areas where I don’t want a lot of heat generated.

LED bulb replacing CFL bulb which replaced an incandescent bulb.

The average cost of a CFL or LED bulb however is much higher than its incandescent counterpart.

While they have come down in price, they are still no where as inexpensive as an incandescent.

A box of 4 or even 6 on sale, was around $1. The CFL is around $2 each but that is now. When they first came out they were about $4 each. As other manufacturers entered into the arena the price came down.

The same is true of LED bulbs. These bulbs can get downright pricey!

As far as function goes we have the incandescent with fewest complications. A filament across the two electrodes sealed into a vacuum. Apply the right voltage and suitable current that the filament will light and there will be light, and heat!

Fluorescent is much more complex in that there is two filaments and high voltage applied which ionizes the gas inside. This gas reacts to the phosphorescent coating inside the bulb making light, And oh yes, they have mercury in them.

The CFL takes in 110 or 220 depending upon your location and converts it into the voltages and currents needed to start the process as well as maintain the process while voltage is applied. If you look inside the base of a CFL bulb you will see a host of associated circuitry to accomplish this task.

LED Bulbs are less complex in that they use minimal components to convert the voltages into the needed voltages to run the LED’s.

There is not much heat and the circuitry is not complex. LED bulbs should really be less expensive than CFL and I look for that to be the case as time marches on. Currently you are still paying for the novelty much like the early adopters of flat screen TV’s.

Pay attention to these bulbs when you buy them as they must be set up for “dimmable” circuits if you intend to use them in a legacy lighting system that had incandescent lighting in it.

It is up to you, do the math!

-Best

Dash Cam

Not terribly long ago I was headed to lunch. Pulling into the parking lot I was met by a lady screaming out of the parking lot in “hot pursuit!” She was flying out of the middle of the entrance to the parking lot!

The driver was a Dallas Cop who had setup her “speed trap” in the parking lot of a busy restaurant in Addison Texas. Evidently someone went a couple miles over the limit and she was going to stop them and protect us all from someone going 40 in a 35!

Tracy Jones, K. Beth Burnside, Mia Shagena, Sarah Ramsey, Melissa Person

Had I not stabbed on the brakes, we would have had a head on.

You see, when you leave a parking lot headed for a main road there is this “stop sign” either painted on the road or standing there or assumed. Even if they don’t have one, you should stop and look both ways before screaming out of the parking lot! The drivers license manual even tells you to stop, use your turn signal and then proceed when clear. No where does it say if “you are a cop it is OK to go blasting out of a parking lot without looking, stopping, using a turn signal etc! Stop hiding in parking lots! Had she not been blasting out of the parking lot she would have most likely been to the right of the entrance and we could have avoided one another. She was in HOT PURSUIT!

The wreck was narrowly avoided but, had we collided who would have been at fault? Let me re-phrase that, who would have been blamed?! Do I trust the police??? I would rather not have to. We have seen too many times where if there is a possible way to cover your ass, these guys are good at it!

She would have hit me left front. I was traveling between 5 and 10 mph, no telling what she was doing, as she was flying!

Without dash cam footage, we would have to depend upon forensics and “he said she said” and she is a cop. Had there been a wreck we would have had to call the “cops.” Do you think for a minute that they would have sided with me? Even with the overwhelming preponderance of forensic evidence that would have been there, I can hardly think that it would have ended well for me. Maybe I am jaded but I have been around a long time, you don’t screw with cops! They are innocent until proven guilty, and you are guilty until proven innocent; which with cops, your evidence may never see the light of day. Just saying….

Would she have said, “Oh, I screwed up” and accepted the blame, or would she have somehow blamed me.

She has more to lose than I do. Her job could be in jeopardy where, I would have simply had a wreck on my record.

Dash Cameras take the mist out of mystery.

Dash cameras in theory are supposed to record in 3 minute increments, a loop of events.

When the car is running the camera is running and not only does it get video but, it also serves as a “cockpit recorder.” That is right, your voice or radio are recorded for posterity. If there is no event within that three minute window, that section of “tape” goes into the queue to be recorded over.

If there is an event, there is a “g” sensor in the camera that acts as a mechanism to flag that section of tape(1) as nonvolatile or protected thus, ignored in the subsequent record process. You can also activate that process by pushing a button telling the machine to save the last 3 minutes of tape.

Problems

The button to control that function needs to be easily pushed as we don’t want to cause an accident by saving the tape sequence that is important. “Someone does something incredibly stupid and you want to upload it to YouTube!”
Two cameras that I have tested thus far put out copious amounts of RF that “swamp” the GPS as well as the Satellite radio.
The camera plugs into the cigarette lighter socket or 12v power source and starts shortly after voltage is applied. Problem, those outlets are “hot: when the key is off so there needs to be another form of activation. Not all cars are like this but mine is.

If I were designing the perfect dash camera, I would tie it to GPS and have it actually encode the coordinates into the data stream. Along with the coordinates, I would encode speed. I would make the camera function dependent upon movement either of the vehicle and I would look for movement within the cabin. If someone gets into the car, the camera starts recording.

I would include a rear facing camera as not all accidents happen from the front of the car.

I would tie the camera into the Automobiles security system so if the shock sensor or other sensor is activated, it starts recording.

If it were a commercial vehicle I would tie it onto the on board computer to let me know if the lights were on, were the brakes hit, was the turn signal activated, What was the RPM of the engine, was it going up or down, what was the speed of the vehicle?

I would also offer a version of the camera that incorporated cellular technology that actually sent a data stream up to the cloud for later retrieval. I would do this on all commercial vehicles so at any point in time the person responsible for them could go to a web site and see were their vehicle is, what it is doing and possible retrieve other information like the status of the vehicle.

The creator of such a camera could offer “cloud storage” as part of a complete package, thus not simply selling a device, but a service with a constant revenue stream that goes into perpetuity.

The RFI issues need to be resolved as we have come to rely on GPS as an everyday thing, much like road signs.

Shielding the camera to contain the RFI needs to be looked at, in the factory.

What is generating RFI in the GHZ range? Is it the on-board processor? Can it be shielded?

This is not rocket science, it is simply best practice engineering.

-Best

(1) Tape is simply used here as vernacular that the public would easily understand. There is in fact no more tape, as everything is recorded digitally. The storage in most cameras are some form of memory card.

Guns, Violence and Video games, is there a connection?

My heart goes out to the people in Charleston. The senseless violence in this country seems to be more and more frequent. While the left will tell you it is the lack of gun control, and use this and every occurrence of gun violence they can to push an agenda; they are dead wrong.

Going after the law abiding citizens’ guns is like going after silverware because there are so many fat people around. Yes, it really is that ludicrous!

While the country is grieving for these folks; we have idiotic politicians out there using this as a bully pulpit to push a very liberal agenda which also happens to be a dangerous one.

In my business it is necessary to do something called a “root cause analysis.” Simply stated, what happened, how did it happen, and how can we prevent it from happening again.

It is more than putting magnetometers at the entrances of all public buildings with security guards.
Do we attend church via skype, and turn Xenophobic?
Do we use this as an excuse to not attend church?
Do we listen to it on the TV or Radio and think that is good enough?
Maybe we use this as an excuse to qualify the absolute lack of a god as a good “god” would not allow this to happen.

The problem is much deeper than this and I am glad that this kid is still alive so we can learn from him, what set him off.

Instinct tells me that when investigated, you will find that he spent untold hours playing violent video games with other on-line people, and simply took it to the next level. These games are so realistic that I fear that after enough of it, the lines between reality and fiction become so blurred that killing for real is simply a “level up” for him.

Since he gave up so easily, my guess is that he is a coward, and picked a soft-target like a church where the odds of him getting hurt were minimal. Being a black church, there may have been an element of racism involved, which made the target more palatable. His racism again would be interesting to study as how and why? Was he picked on or bullied by blacks as a school child?

With the uproar in Baltimore and Ferguson, who knows if that pushed him in that direction?

We cannot afford to ignore these “simulators for killing” any longer. Mental health needs to be a priority for this, and all future administrations as technology pervades our lives and these “kids” who have so much time on their hands and play these games for hours and hours on end.

Cars kill, knives kill, baseball bats kill, just about anything can be used as a weapon!

The common denominator is people. People kill,
and the motives need to be looked at. Go, look for yourself at some of these games and the realities of them. Go to your local game store and look at demos of them, watch these kids as they play these games.

They are dropped into a war-time situation where killing with realistic effects are over the top. I would not be surprised to find that this creep that killed those folks suffers from some sort of PTSD from video games!

Now, go take on the day!

http://www.guard-protect.com

Interesting Scam

There is not a day that goes by that someone does not try to scam me or “my e-mail” into opening some document. Of course it will be infected or at the very least take me to some porn-site or some site for Viagra or some such non-sense.

I have spoken about these ad nauseam so I won’t go in to too much detail about the latest.

The e-mail starts as an email from the bank regarding a wire transfer that was aborted by my bank from my account. “Click on the link to view the reason why it was aborted.”

There is a number with a dollar amount, my e-mail which was collected from something and…a link to a dropbox account which is where the Trojan or what have you lives.

This could be anything from some innocuous advertisement to ransom ware.

There was no bank logo on the e-mail and hovering over the link you can tell enough that you should not click on it.

The criminals and ne’er-do-wells are forever trying to get you to self-destruct, so don’t take the bait.

Keep really good anti-virus and malware software updated and running on your computer and make certain that your important stuff is backed up to some sort of non-volatile medium.

Oh, and Happy Friday!

-Best

The CFL, Good idea or Bad

The CFL

The CFL Good idea or Bad

I have spoken about this bulb before and how we as Americans have been duped into paying for expensive bulbs to replace the .25bulb with one that cost several dollars. Today I had one of these bulbs fail and it was not a normal failure.

Seated inside base of the CFL bulb is this circuit board with a couple of dozen components on it. Fluorescent bulbs work by ionizing the gas inside the tube where it interacts with the phosphor coating the inside of the tube making light.

Let me stop here for a moment and say that I am a large fan of folks who think outside the box. Huge fan! I like it when people don’t accept status quo and look for a better way to do something. The fluorescent bulb is one such invention. LED bulbs are another. I think we can do better and we should.

Having said that I have issues with the government forcing it down our throats by doing away with the incandescent bulb forcing us to adapt “pay for “much more expensive technology.

These CFL bulbs have mercury in them which is bad. These bulbs if broken have special cleanup procedures that just about require a hazmat suite.

CFL bulbs are expensive. Researching the issue I think that they have finally come out with models that work in dimmers but that was not the case with my failure, it was a simple on-off lamp.

The pluses are that these things are supposed to last much longer than a normal incandescent bulb.
They uses about a 4th the wattage of an incandescent.

When an incandescent bulb goes out there is typically a flash associated with the energizing current hitting the filament and poof, you are groping around in the dark looking for a flashlight or other lamp to find a new bulb and replace it.

CFL bulbs start out much dimmer than a normal bulb and while they may get to a brightness that is acceptable, most need that brightness when they flip the switch, not 10 minutes later after it warms up.

CFL bulbs should never be used in places where the light needed is just for a few moments i.e. closets or bathrooms. CFL bulbs should not be turned off before they are allowed to reach operating temperature as doing so shortens their life.

LED bulbs start out bright and as they age lose their intensity or luminance as they age so, a bright bulb will eventually turn into a very dim bulb.

The prices of the alternatives are still higher than they need to be to rationalize an ROI on the product. The average house does not use enough electricity on bulbs to generate an ROI to justify using expensive bulbs. Stores and office building do but, the average home does not.

Typical government thinking is that one house, no, two houses no, a neighborhood full of houses all using $6 bulbs vs .25 bulbs, and you save some energy and the bulb companies make a hell of a lot more money than on a few $0.25 bulbs.

The energy company then has to raise their rates to make up the difference in the losses of lower usage, so everybody wins! Everybody except you the consumer.

Because larger incandescent bulbs are being removed from the market, we are forced to buy an alternative whether we want to or not.

When a CFL bulb just stops working instead of dimly glowing or flickering before its time, why? What happens to it if it simply stops!

The circuit board which I alluded to earlier produces the voltages necessary to make the bulb work. As I have done with the Wall wart in an earlier post, I have also done with the bulb. In my job, I have to determine the “root cause analysis!” What failed and why. In this case it is a design flaw.

Scott's Bulb Look at the dark area on the board you can see where it has gotten plenty hot! — Scott’s Bulb
Look at the dark area on the board you can see where it has gotten plenty hot!

Scott 100 watt CFL that died prematurely. — I am not sure if you can tell but, the solder joints that hold on that three legged component which I think is an SCR of some sort (guess) has become much too hot and actually melted the solder away from the pins. This part should have a heat-sink on it. Using the rule of thumb method of engineering. If you cant put your thumb on it because of the heat, better re-engineer it. This is the 100 watt model of the CFL which uses 23 watts.

Here you will see the circuit board and its associated components. You can see where the board has gotten hot, so hot in fact that the solder connection to this part have come loose causing the failure of the bulb.

burned-bulb — Failed bulb found on the internet. There are many such stories out there but I am trying to determine why.

One cannot help but wonder how much of a fire hazard that these bulbs are.

I would not leave my house with these things on, as I don’t think that they are that trustworthy.

I would certainly make sure that my smoke detectors had good batteries as well.

-Best

www.timedok.com

www.guard-protect.com

I want a good deal! #Rapidprint #Widmer

I want a good deal! #Rapidprint #Widmer

WWW.TimeDok.Com

How many time have you yourself searched and searched online to find the best deal?

We are all guilty of looking for the best deal and if we can save a few dollars, we are all for it. How could you not be?

The truth of the matter is, the best deal is not always the best deal.

I submit to you “Radio Shack.”

Why has Radio Shack become the latest victim to go by the wayside?

What is its competition?

As far as small components are involved they have little competition, most probably a small percentage of folks order direct from China however there are very few specialty electronic stores who specialize in small electronic components.

Fry’s electronics being one of the largest.

Small hand held or other consumer grade electronics would also be Fry’s, Best Buy, and to some extent Wall-mart to name a few.

Cell Phones have way too much competition including the carriers themselves.

Radio Shack indeed has survived past its time with all of the competition and one has to wonder how much of it actually comes from China direct.

On-line sources such as Amazon and eBay are probably responsible for more than just a few dollars going away from the retail giants here in the states and I would imagine that we will soon see legislation introduced by someone in the pocket of the large retail chains to levy heavy taxes on imports from China by way of eBay and other online partners.

While the “Walmart Effect” took out the mom and pop shops all across America other big box stores will put the nail in the coffin of the smaller stores who try and sell consumer electronics.

As a business Owner; I sell and service a device that is made lock stock and barrel here in the USA. Because these two companies that I represent have not farmed their stuff out overseas the prices are higher than what you would expect. The interesting thing though is that these devices last for over 10 years and even with abuse can usually be resurrected and sent back into to the office for another 10 years.

productline1ad — Full Rapidprint line of file mark machines.

t3led-127x153 — Widmer T-LED 3 Time Stamp File Mark machine

Widmer Check Signing Machine 300 checks in about a minute.

One interesting aspect of this is there are Internet companies that sell a plethora of equipment including my two lines and they depend upon volume to make ends meet. Doing so, they sell with little markup and make it tough on the little guys to compete as we don’t do volume. Basically what WalMart does.

While my prices are competitive, I am not the cheapest. I provide something that most internet companies do not however, I provide service. That is service after the sale!

http://www.timedok.com/gallery.html

Many companies find me after they have had an unpleasant experience with one of my competitors and I earn their business as well. While I may not have made the original sale I get their subsequent business because I stepped up and actually lost money doing a warrantee repair for their customer!

bad_wiring-405x294 — Electrical tape has no place in these machines.

My point to all of this is simply don’t look for the cheapest, look for the best.

I build relationships with all of my clients and work hard to keep them. I must however turn a profit to stay in business.

There are times I feel like one of the last American business hold outs as I have managed to stay in business while many of my competitors are going or have gone by the wayside.

The technology involved is over 30 years old. Very few know how to repair these things as there are so many variables that must be taken into account when they are disassembled and re-assembled after the cleaning process that one missed step will cause the machine to not perform accurately.

There are no shortcuts. They might use a Band-Aid of sorts, but it is a shortcut and will not last.

There is an air-conditioning advertisement on the radio here in North Texas. They de-bunk the outrageous prices the other guys offer and then tell you to call the other guy first, check out their prices and then call them. Honesty above reproach.

I don’t know if that commercial is gaining traction, but it caught my attention as that is the way I do business.

Do business with the mom and pop companies, if you want them to stick around. Small towns all across America have vacant store fronts because of retail giants and I would submit, online direct from China.

www.TimeDok.com

Dok at TimeDok.com

Let’s Get Physical

Let’s Get Physical

While a huge fan of Olivia Newton John am I; that is not what this is about.

Today I want to visit with you about networking stuff, in short the physical layer of the OSI model.

Network cable is not wire!

Well technically it is wire, you cannot simply have “Jake the handyman install it!”

More than a few of my many network installations that I have troubleshot for people involved such installations.

Example one:

Company A calls me out because they have many computers simply dropping off the internet, dropping off the file servers, losing files, e-mails not downloading and the list goes on and on.

The OSI model (open system interconnect) is a hierarchical model representing the sum of how data gets from one point to another.

Layer one or the lowest layer is what I am addressing today because let’s face it, without this, ain’t nothing happening!

Bringing up a protocol analyzer it is obvious that there is trouble in river city!

Not only were there many dropped packets, tons of broadcast packets using the most basic of routing protocols looking for this or that but, there also appeared to be 5250 traffic getting into the data stream! No 5250 emulators in the day, there were separate terminals.

As the company grew the “cheap information officer” did not want to spend money on silly things like “hiring someone that did this for a living so…” he got one or two of his employees to improvise.

They did indeed. In the computer room the cable went up into the ceiling as cat5. At the wall socket to the desktop it was cat 5. Somewhere in the ceiling during the time of expansion someone spliced cat 5 onto cat 3 “electrical tape glob” and then back to cat 5 going to the wall.

I forgot to mention that they also shared a pair for the phone, even after they went to a digital phone system.

It is important to also keep in mind that unless you are using STP or “Shielded Twisted Pair” the cable has to be elevated away from sources of RF, EMI or other types of noise hence, the signal will be effected. It is a good idea to use J hooks anyway, just to keep the cable from getting in the way of future work.

The CIO was still not convinced that he should spend thousands of dollars to replace the mess so he allowed a one off repair for the most affected users. His reasoning was that in the next few years they were going to expand and at this point they would “do it right.” Never mind that screwed up packets from other workstations effected the network as a whole.

Soft dollars meant nothing to him as he was not the one experiencing the pain and if the President of the company complained he just simply blamed the people under him.

To be fair, some of the fault was theirs as they, did make the mess in order to gain favor with this idiotic boss and secondly they did stupid things like used silver satin cables as patch cables right next to each other. Yep the terminal for the AS400 and the computer.

Layer one is the bedrock. Everything must be solid or you are wasting your time.

Company B:

“I have this huge internet pipe and it is slow to the desktop, look at this!”

Indeed surfing the web was a nightmare.

Another Jake the handyman installed cable along the same paths as the electrical lines, zip tied to fluorescent lights and put switches everywhere at the end points as they got tired of running cable as the company grew.

If that were not bad enough the switches in the computer room were all daisy chained together in the back with fiber and then, someone had patched the switches together up front as well.

A quick look with the protocol analyzer showed routing loops, lost packets and the list of networking nightmares went on and on.

This was an RF technology company so there were live RF transmissions in the building around the UTP or unshielded cable. When expansions were needed the cables were tied together in the wall in much the same fashion as the previously mentioned company.

This company would have been better served to simply go all Wi-Fi with one of the many solution provided by different providers. If you don’t know what you are doing, humble yourself enough to seek help! Mistakes are costly; one of the largest dangers to company’s data today is arrogant, uninformed IT people who think that they know it all and refuse to seek help from a VAR.

In my business of disaster recovery, most of the disasters are self-imposed by “No Toes MgGrew.” Ready-Fire-Aim!

Company C is pretty much indicative of a company that does not want to pay to hire it done so they hire “Jake.” Good ole Jake has a ladder and truck and some tools to fish cables down the wall.

Jake simply bundles the cable up and pulls it from point A to B and wherever it lies it lies. Again using the cheaper UTP he simply pulls it to the final destination and then leaves it where he is told so someone else can come in and terminate it.

The owner “has a friend” who has done this before, somewhere.

Cable plants are the bedrock of your data center and the highway with which all of your data will traverse. Do you want multi-lane highways or alleys?

A word about soft dollars.

In the business world there is such a thing as soft dollars. If your employees are not able to function because of impediments of any kind it cost you money. If there are time deadlines and they are not met because of impediments of any kind, it could cost you customers.

Business today in order to stay competitive must do as much as they can with as little as they can and that means staff, product, and infrastructure and so on.

That means that everything must perform like a Swiss watch.

Not only do policies and procedure need to be in place and proper management of your IT assets but for the rest of the business as well.

The company that waste the least in time and material will be the one that survives over the competition and if publicly traded, the one that has the highest earnings for their stock holders.

Inefficiencies in organizations like, let’s say our government cannot exist in business. Unlike the government who simply prints more money to pay their bills; business cannot.

Whoever your CIO is should not only possess a high degree of technical savvy but, also a high degree of business acumen.

I will spare you the conversation about the differences between cat5 and cat 6 and cat6a and so forth, I am certain that a google search will give you more than you could ever want.

The bottom line is use STP or shielded and use the higher speed rated cable as we have no idea what the future will hold as far as data. This cable must be terminated properly, and that is an art all of its own.

Doing it right the first time may be a little more costly than hiring Jake and ordering cable off of Amazon and switches from New Egg but, the results will be far more satisfactory.

VARS do this every day so they know what to get, and why?

-Best

http://www.guard-protect.com

Open Letter to Apple or Darkware , the new frontier…

Problem: There needs to be an easy way to sync your existing iPhone and or iPad with a new computer, and here is why?

I met Steve Jobs years ago when I was working at an agency that used Next Step computers. Steve was an out of the box thinker “creating things in his garage” before the first apple anything ever was created.

Apple enjoys being one of the “big dogs” today not because of the mac, although it didn’t hurt but, the iPhone and of course tablets which they have excelled at.

Recently when the hardware crashed on my PC, even though I had a backup of the data, the iTunes files system to me was lost as it was tied to that computer. The OS with Microsoft dies with the computer so you get to buy everything over again.

One of the success stories of Microsoft was and is, to keep their software “intuitive and consistent.” Apple does this as well, once you know the basics, you can fumble your way through the rest. When however; you have an issue like this, what are the workarounds?

I need to move my data over to a new computer, migrate my iTunes stuff to the new computer, install the newest version of iTunes and sync the phone, iPad etc. right?

Folks, it should be this easy. It should not take more than just a couple of steps in keeping with “apple simplicity.” To recover from something like this.

I do not want or need a laundry list of things including standing on one foot while reciting the star spangled banner backwards, pressing a combination of half a dozen keys in separate sequences and purchasing some “Darkware” program that has no guarantee of working because, it too was invented in some basement by some pimple faced kid.

There is in fact no way that I can see to do this without wiping out the phone, iPad (s) and starting from scratch which would not aid me in importing my contacts into Outlook at all! I also have no idea how much data that is on the phone / iPads that I would lose!

Outlook by the way has an equally convoluted way of doing this but, at least they have a way!

Outlook, why don’t you write a program to do this all “programmatically” for your faithful users?

I de-authorized the dead computer but when I tried to authorize the new one, no such luck, still too many computers authorized! 3, three computers authorized and there are still too many! Out of a possible 5, 3 is too many! So, I de-authorized everything! Now what!? Now you have to wait something like 90 days to re-authorize things…..?

Doing the normal search thing, reading the blogs, researching all of the work around(s), I became frustrated to the point of thinking, “maybe it is time for a switch!”

Maybe, just maybe I really don’t need a smart phone at all. How about a flip phone that just makes calls and receives calls!? Have we come to that? Have we come full circle?

Not only do I need a device that works as I expect it to but, I need it to play well with other operating systems. I should not be forced to follow the threads of other frustrated users until I discover some clandestine piece of software that could cause your device to no longer work! I need something that “Apple” has invented, created or has included with iTunes as an easy way for people like me to recover from!

If I have to search the web and buy some third party software to fix Apple’s short shortsightedness for convoluted way of keeping people from sharing their songs with their teenage girlfriends, we have gone too far!

I would much rather find another product that has already done that. Things break and there needs to be some part of the program that allows for this.

This is Apple’s problem and they need to create a solution. A solution that does not include forcing people like me to drive to the mall and to wait in line at the Genius bar to find out how much of a genius they are or are not. Also to find out that I should simply “google the problem, someone may have written something!” Really, is that the best you got!?

One of the first issues I had with the iPhone is I needed a way to organize my apps with the computer. Do you think for a minute there is a way to contact Apple to get their attention? I posted the idea for “free” to them in a public forum and I will be damned in about nine months’ time, it was there. What would you care to guess that some employee who read my post offered the idea us as his?

Well Apple, here is another free Idea, just fix the damned thing so I can get on with my life!

Thanks!

-Best to you and those that you care about.