If people would take the time to think, all it takes is two seconds. Do they do something out of a sheer act of kindness or do they do it to become more then friends? Yes people can still act kind; I don’t want to take part of a world where people think kindness is a form of perversion. This would mean the people serving at those food lines are the worst kind of people. Seems kind of stupid, no?

So there I was, talking about any of the vague subjects I could remember about the subject. She has said to other people “I hate that guy” referring to me. That’s fine, I was happy with that as I didn’t care for her very condescending and annoying attitude. Not that I generally dislike people, it takes a while to get on my nerves. For her it took about 3 months before I couldn’t stand it. People who want to force you to like and do everything they like don’t impress me. I have spent a long time becoming me and I don’t want to change that. While discussing these vague subjects she was impressed I remembered so much about her.

She directly asked “I thought you hated me.” To which I quickly responded “no” which was true at the time.  I’m not sure where things got out of hand there but I remember being bored and decided to watch a movie that she was watching. I was starving before the party and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Most parties have snack foods and junk food, but I needed real substance. I invited many people to go on a food run with me. No one would go with me. So I offered with a friend who I don’t speak to very often. He agreed and not being rude we invited the girl, yea oops?

Well we had a good conversation, except every time the girl opened her mouth. She wanted to talk about herself and what she likes. My friend and I didn’t care, but was polite to let her speak and have conversation.  It was this time the three of us got barrage of text messages asking what we were doing and where we were. I felt generous and paid for the entire meal.

Come to find out we had stolen the date of another friend of mine, who had paid for dinner earlier – to which she didn’t eat. She just had dessert but still? When we arrive back on the scene of the party it was winding down, the friends or closest people to the party were still there. I said good night and left after some lengthy conversations. The girl assumed that she was going out with me somewhere around that time. My friend who had asked her out had left in rage. As I was driving home, about to fall asleep at the wheel, I got a few text messages asking if I was going to take the girl home. I responded I knew nothing about it, that no one had even asked me about it then proceeded home. Which was my mistake, I should have gone back at that point.

Come to find out that she had told everyone that she was going out with me and that I was taking her home. This is the same person who dumped her boyfriend because he wouldn’t leave a hospital to give her a ride to “hang out”. So now I’m stuck with the image that I stole a girl from one of my best friends and dumped her on someone else.  I don’t know why I keep getting in these situations people make a lot more difficult than they should be.

So let’s look at the aftermath. The girl who has done all these flimsy acts trying to satisfy her hormones is not in contact with anyone of my group that I know of. What has come of her? Well I don’t know, nor do I care. She has now offended everyone that I know of and has no indirect communication with me. She prefers being “home” and is almost done with school; I don’t expect to see her again.

As for my friend, it’s just awkward with him. I knew he was avoiding me, but I don’t know the extent of it. I sent him a few text messages. I’m not sure if he got them. I said sorry, if he wants to be butt hurt about something I knew nothing about, well that’s his problem. I have no remorse anymore and I am moving on with my life.

I’m the kind of person who tries to do things, bring people together. I try to have my friends meet and become friends with each other. One on one I’m treated as an equal. Yet I get the distinct impression that my friends or would be called friends have no respect for me when together. I’m the reason any of my friends know anyone else to hang out with. Do they remember this fact at all? I. Don’t. Think. so. Sometimes don’t even get the respect for being a human. If I said “well I don’t care” that wouldn’t be true. But I don’t dwell on it. I’ll just move on. Because, making friends is VERY easy for me.

Well it’s not all bad news. I have more situations that are much more positive. Like when I was at a party and met a group of girls. I didn’t think anything of it; I just joked around with them and had a good time. Well they started to flirt back and it was really fun. We did this into the night and they decided to go, they got my contact information and left.

Well a friend of mine liked one of the girls as well. But it was a triangle of miss matched love thing. In the girls wisdom she decided to just drop it and go her way. She essentially ended contact. I was mad at the time but looking back. I have the utmost respect for her decision and sensitivity of her friends. Not only did she spare her friend’s feelings but she stopped a situation from becoming a lot worse. I tried to push my friend to go out with the friend that he liked. He declined and said ‘That wouldn’t be fair to you.” And life goes on…

There are many software development companies out there. I’ll be speaking about the gaming industry. I’ve been studying this industry for a long time. I study this industry because it’s one of the hardest and most competitive.  If I can understand this one, I can understand other markets as well. The title pun aside, many companies are trying to make money via the golden cow via the subscription fee called Massively Multiplayer Online game or MMO.

As a development company, you make a product, than sell the product. You have a lot of options and various degrees of success.  I mean your imaginations the limit, well it should be but it’s not. You’re limited by your budget, your overhead down to the shareholders. Taking the decision making from a few key people down the line to as much as 10,000 people trying to think for you isn’t exactly a successful business model.

As a fine example of this, I’ll use the worst the development company in the industry, Electronic Arts [EA]. They have a very long history and one of the oldest companies in that market.  Their recent practices from about 1991 on have been questionable. While from a business standpoint, they are doing great, but they will never obtain the golden cow.

To start off, they have been acquiring and stomping out the competition by unethical practices when it comes to the employees and treatment of staff. They have acquired the companies like Distinctive Software, Origin Systems, DROsoft, Bullfrog, Kingsoft, Manley, Maxis, Tiburon, Vision, ABC, Westwood, PlayNation, Kesmai, Dreamworks, Pogo, Black Box, Studio 33, NuFX, Criterion, Hypnotx, JAMDAT, Mythic, Phenomic, Digital Illusions, Headgate, Singshot, Super Computer International, VG Holding, Hands-On Mobile, ThreeSF, J2MSoft, J2Play, and Playfish to name a few, there are more.  Now out of all of those, can you think of one memorable game out of the 28 years of publishing that you could call a classic? I can only think of one. Compare that to any other company that has been around for at least 10 years. Just like the employees of EA, you have fun with them for a while, than throw them away as useless garbage.

Why are they so successful though? As a business company they can pump out more quality products faster, and cheaper then competitors. But it’s exactly this practice that causes a lot of short comings to their products. For an off the shelf product, it works great, but there is no large fan following, and the playability only goes as far as you make extensions for it. EA has attempted many MMO games, each has failed horribly.

But the Cash Cow is the goal of any serious company these days. Let’s break down the elements shall we? Before we can do that we need to go into the technology that people put into a game in the first place. Well you have a product you want to make interesting, right? Well that’s the initial sell and works for traditional games. But for a Cash Cow, you need to keep people’s continual interest. This will lead into further sales of traditional games. It comes down to how many times you can use the product. This is the mark of a successful product in this industry.

Achievement systems activate! It’s a simple concept, but it works. The idea is to have goals for people to reach. This adds an addicting layer to anything you have. Let’s say a basketball simulator. With an achievement system in basketball you can have a 4^th quarter shutout award for keeping the opposing team from scoring. You could have a Hail Mary award for making a 3 point shot at the last second. The list goes on. These systems work with little more coding on your part, greatly extending the work. The player has a goal to go through the story and also explore your achievements. Close to that is a leveling system, where you have a goal of getting and advancement in abilities. All of these add depth and extended playability, or in other words enhances the shelf life of your product.

Well that’s a sample of things that go into typical products in this industry. The Golden Cow has to have a lot more; it has to be so polished, entertaining that people willingly give their lives and freedom to enjoy just moments of your product. This is the epitome of the Cash Cow.

Like a good boyfriend or girlfriend, every relationship is required to have some basic things. A Cash cow product is no exception. You need stability, reliability and quality in every aspect of the product. You cannot cut corners here and you cannot rush this process. However, there is a way around this. I’m surprised not a lot of companies do this.

It’s called Beta testing! People are willing to give you brilliant market research that’s worth millions of dollars for free, how? Beta testing! People are willing to sign up for a free game before the release date and give you feed back (ask for more features and ones they don’t like). You can refine a game to exactly what the people want and need. You have a price tag down the line that will always be there to let people know what they are getting into. If you have success here, guess what? You have a successful product! How can that go wrong?

Yes things can go wrong it’s called management. I’m still shocked on how management effects on how food tastes. I eat out at a few of my favorite restaurants frequently. I never bother to check why, but these restaurants are successful, but keep changing management and ownership. The employees, the ones that actually make the food never change. But the quality of food changes with every manager that comes in! I make friends with some of them and get kickbacks, but that’s only because I’m frequent, and for good reason. I only frequently visit the places that are well managed. I can taste it in the food!

In short, open up your development to the public and get some real managers in your team. I know I’d be very successful if I was ever given the chance to make a Cash Cow, the color of gold.

Why is XP still around? Because of something called the ‘netbook.’ When they first came out they were tiny computers with a lot of potential. Designers from HP, Acer and Dell jumped onto these little guys. However, they shot themselves in the foot. Or rather they shot at Linux. They took a great OS and snipped it away until it was little more than a glorified browser. People were not impressed and they demanded more. Microsoft jumped on and lo, XP will be around for some time longer. A point I will make later.

XP is around and kicking, but its greatest flaw is the way it’s managing drivers. In 2001 the internet wasn’t a required thing and mainstream wasn’t on the bandwagon yet. They were still climbing on at that time. So drivers were included by the manufacture via CD’s. Not a big deal right? Well unless you’re super organized to the point where you have your underwear spread out from how much color is faded on them, you have lost the drivers and manual. The exception is that you’re a packrat, and cannot find it anyways.

Needless to say, today the only place to find them is in the furthest reaches of the worst humanity has to offer, the Internet. Now back in 2002 through 2006 it was easy to find drivers. You just had to type the name of the thing you were looking in a search engine and put in ‘driver’ at the end of it. You found exactly what you were looking for. Around 2006 you had to put ‘driver download’ to get what you were trying to locate.

Things are totally different now. Remember those market niches? Here’s where they not only haunt you, they cause you to lose faith in your humanity and question your sanity. All of those tricks to look up drivers are taken up. They use those to flood the Internet with their garbage they call a product. Some lowlife trying to impress his own teenaged kids has spent the time to put every single driver search to forward to a ‘paid driver service.’ Any attempt to put download or driver in the search engine spits out pages of useless pay to download services. Do these actually work? Just pray to your unknown god that you didn’t waste your money on a scam. These pages fool you into downloading what you think is your driver, but really only a download program. Do how do you really find drivers these days?

In 2010, here’s how the process goes. You have a driver, and your customer or friend has a computer that crashed. Some poor sap built it, and you somehow were suckered into fixing it. After installing windows and doing extensive data recovery, which is the easy part. Your task is to get the sound, graphics and everything else working. This software to do this is called a ‘driver’. In my previous blog I showed how to use old drivers. In this case you have to search the Internet.

You start by searching the company’s website. However, it’d be easier to drive 3,000 miles to the company head quarters, take hostages and demand software drivers from the SWAT. Yes, corporate WebPages’ are that bad. How often to you go to Sony.com to look at some useful information? Never! It’s called Google. The company is so big, it’s now a verb, you ‘Google’ something and like magic, the Internet pigeons deliver content. Now finding the driver is just finding the right phrase to look for. If you describe your problem, you get pages full of forums where teenagers or likely just as intelligent adults try to solve a problem they know little about. Just pray you find something useful. This will be useful 8% of the time.

But it’s XP, people love XP, people want to worship XP. If you don’t want to change, move to the country and become Amish. They would appreciate your lack of a want for change.

I have found the holy grail of windows today. Too bad I didn’t discover this five years ago, could have saved me a lot of headaches. But in order to understand what the Holy Grail is, we have to back track a bit.

It’s all about getting the computer to work, drivers. In the DOS era there were little drivers. There was usually a CD ROM, Sound if you had a sound card, and a mouse driver. Despite those configuration files many programs had to write in support for that hardware, mouse included.

It wasn’t usually a problem but you could spend a bit of time trying to configure a program to work with your hardware. If you didn’t know the settings you had to guess. There was a limited amount of hardware, so there wasn’t a lot of guessing to do. There was also auto detection, if that worked.

I moved from DOS to Windows 95. In that era Windows was optional, DOS was still the main supported software. Windows 3.1 I really don’t count because it depended on DOS, but 3.11 is a different story, but developed too late to be an era. I still remember that day I moved from DOS to 95. It was because my mouse stopped working. My brother said I needed to install a 20 megabyte mouse driver. That was Windows 95 on a slim install. I trimmed it down to about 6-8 megabytes. That’s very tiny, about the length of a 30 second high quality song.

Windows 95 had great DOS driver support. Upgrading was a dream, everything just worked, usually. Reloads were frequent, but if you were a DOS user, it made you a “tech.” Manufactures started to jump into the game; they had to write their own GUI (Graphical User Interface) to make a computer more suitable for the average user. Before that it was usually a text screen where you use the arrow keys to select what you wanted, press enter to go into the directory, and backspace to go out. But with Windows 95, you just had to slap your own software in the box.

Slap they did, and this trend continues today, but it got kind of harry in the Windows 98 era. When Windows 98 came around they improved many features of 95. You no longer had to restart the computer for changing the time; the interface had more options, more system control. Software got a lot more complicated. A lot of manufacturers installed software that would slow down the computer, not on purpose to get sales, but to add more features.

Despite how similar Windows 98 is to Windows 95, the drivers were drastically different.  DOS was still needed to do repairs but no longer supported. CD-ROM and sound drivers for DOS were very harder to get a hold of. All of your hardware by this time needed a driver’s disk. This software, usually contained on a CD, allowed the hardware to function. But, it often installed a lot of annoying useless programs that you’d never use. Computer retailers were worse, they would preload junk onto the computer.

Drivers were not a problem with 98 though, because when you backed up your old windows installation, you could just point your drivers to where the old ones were. They would install and as long as they were not corrupted, they would work fine. You had to pick and pull between a few directories or folders in windows but they worked like new. Computer manufacturers included an install disc that had drivers on it usually. Though, this is the era where drive images became popular. A drive image is a picture of our hard drive or all of your data. Instead of installing a program and configuring it, it just put in the raw data where it’s supposed to go, reboot and it worked. This was a lot easier on some customers.

Windows ME or millennium was great with drives. With Windows ME the first use of a functional driver locater that would search every directory for the drivers was used. Windows ME was pushed out a little too early, and the big boom of computer manufacturers came in too. Whenever you have a lot of new guys you get a lot of bad parts. When you use bad parts, Windows will not be stable. People were quick to blame Windows ME instead of the bad hardware. Windows ME is just 98 with a facelift.

So Windows 98, which was more forgiving prolonged further. Windows 2000 was out for about a year before the next major step XP. Fading off of the windows 98 eras was the XP era. XP was robust, stable and friendly. It had many features that people needed software normally; it was built right into the system! First time you come up from a fresh install you hit the ground running. Well that was the idea anyways. CEO’s of computer manufacturers learned their lessons in the past. People couldn’t work with DOS over phone support, and this is with English native speaking support too.  The preloaded images were good, and companies only gave images to reload the system. Yet people lost the discs. It’s like losing the keys to your gas tank on your car. Why you would not keep it safe or discard it is beyond me, but people didn’t think it was important until they ran out of gas, or in this case the computer crashed.

The Windows XP era was in full swing, though the system was stable, it wasn’t perfect. DOS became dead; it wasn’t even an option to boot to anymore. No one supported it, no one used it. Computers, when they crashed ended up with a crutch… drivers. Manufacturers found out they can post their new drivers online to get better performance or stability out to help people out. While this was helpful, unless you had an update, you were screwed because most manufacturers at that time did not put up good support online.

Windows XP went through a lot of changes over the years. The World Wide Web became very popular, not just as a hobby but as a necessity. Computer manufacturers started to post their drivers online, well a few did anyways. Just about everyone was using XP now so everything was designed for XP! Programs could use a utility program called Direct X. Direct X started in the 95 era for games mostly. Instead of programming your game to work with every card out there, you just had to program it for DirectX. Direct X would point itself to your working hardware, using the drivers. Programs and games depended on DirectX to get sound or video. This is what’s called a dependency. Windows 95 was full of program dependencies. So Microsoft invented a file called a Dynamic Link Library or DLLs. The DLL was a great idea, but it had very bad consequences. Windows 95 was the first that I know of to use DLLs. But when you installed a new program that needed a new version, it would install a new DLL into Windows.  Now your old program doesn’t work. With XP, a special directory was made for keeping older DLL’s or older dependencies to keep the program working. This is why people loved XP, all of the programs just “worked” seamlessly in XP, and largely no one noticed the mess every program made.

When programmers write a program, they don’t want to start from nothing, making a program to interpret the keyboard strokes and where to write ‘1’s and ‘0’s. Someone else did the work for you, so just plug in a dependency and you have a head start. The wheel is invented, just use the wheel, and don’t reinvent it every time you use it! Improving the wheel is different, that can always go forward.

So XP handles all of these interoperating dependencies almost independent of each other, thus makes the file structure very complex. This was also the era for anther hardware boom. To date there hasn’t been as big of a boom as the Edge of the Pentium 4 era. Especially the 3GHz (3 gigahertz) Pentium 4, though that’s the most popular processor out there STILL, It’s one of the worst garbage scows to work with.

Quickly coming with the big boom still underway was the coming of the Vista era. Vista hit at exactly the wrong time. Like Windows ME, people hated it. Largely due to the huge amount of hardware suppliers that came out at that time. Hardware failed which it often did, people, blamed Vista. Vista had to support every piece of hardware from every sweat shop from every corner of the world.

The other problem was 64-bit. With so much going on and complicated programs and hardware, it was time to step things up. Problem with switching from 32-bit to 64-bit is everything in 32-bit had to be remade from scratch to work with 64-bit. You have many years of software from 98 and XP eras trying to work with Vista. People expected their 10 year old programs to work, WHY? People don’t want to spend money; some people buy a car and expect it to just run forever. I don’t know anyone who has only had one car their entire life.

So many STILL use XP. To this day people struggle and try to make it with an 8 year old software system. While there is nothing wrong with Vista and Windows 7 is a heaven send, some people prefer XP. Now with Vista and 7, driver support is almost like magic, it goes online and makes it work. Windows 7 does this automatically. Vista you have to press a few buttons. But XP you still have to scour over many bad websites on the Internet. If you have a Sony VAIO, the best support you’ll have is using it as a boat anchor.

On all Microsoft Windows systems, when you install a driver it places physical DLL’s and files it needs into its structure. It can call upon these files whenever you need. Windows 98 doesn’t have driver problems, Vista and 7 don’t have problems either. After XP you just needed an Internet connection and it would almost fix itself!

Our beloved XP system was still in the dark though. As for finding drivers, if you didn’t have a manufacture website with everything or a disc with drivers on it. Which makes up is most of the cases this late after the era, you were Doomed. There are universal drivers out there, if you’re lucky to be supported. There are expensive programs to download drivers for you, but you often pay forty dollars or more to find out the program doesn’t support your computer.

So if your computer crashed, you could possibly have a dead computer. That is until now. But the strangest thing about this is the solution it’s so simple. It shocks me that I have never run into anyone ever telling me about this. If you can’t get into windows, or if you something isn’t working right and you need to get windows running right again, here’s what you do.

Fist thing you’ll need to do is backup all of your data, don’t sweat it. It’s very easy to do. Go to www.linuxmint.com and download the latest live CD of mint. After you burn that to a CD you’ll have to boot off of it. When booting off a CD-ROM a computer when first turning on it will give you a boot menu button like F12, Esc or F10. After you select this option and select your DVD/CD ROM drive Linux Mint should start to load. After it loads you just have to open up your computer. When you see all of your files, make a new folder called “backup”. Move everything into that folder. If you have left over empty folders that won’t move, just delete those. Now that your computer is backed up exit Linux Mint and shutdown the computer.

Put in your Windows XP install CD and boot off of that. The menu’s should be simple just go through a normal install but DO NOT FORMAT. After windows loads up you’ll have a pretty plain screen, usually no sound.

Open up the start menu, go to control panel. Click on Performance and Maintenance, and then go to System. Click on the Hardware Tab and go to device manager. Every yellow question mark is a hardware part that Windows doesn’t recognize.

Now here’s where the grail comes in. Double click on the question mark device, and then click on update driver. Select Install from a list or specific location (Advanced), then next. You only want “Include this location in the search:” Now the path you want is c:\backup\windows\inf\, type that into the white text box. Now you can click next.

What happens next is it will search that folder and eventually find the device you’re looking for. After it locates it needs to know where the install files are. You’ll need to search your computer backup for those, but let’s just make Windows do the work for us, right? Hold down the Windows key (the flag) then “F” at the same time. This opens up the search function, now the easy part. Click on All Files and Folders, type in the exact file it’s looking for. Now before you search, you need to go to the advanced options menu and enable all search functions, except search tape backup and case sensitive. Now click search, after a bit the file will appear. You will need to note where that file is located. Then minimize the search window and tell the driver installation where the file is located. You’ll have to do this for every file it needs. It’ll be scattered throughout the system no doubt. But it will work!

You’ll have to repeat this process for every hardware device not found by Windows. It’s a bit of work but it indeed works!

I hope this helps a lot of people out. I have a few old computers with a few devices that I can’t seem to find drivers for. I know how to hide the devices, as well as a few work-arounds.  This isn’t the only trick or hack I’ve been able to discover for windows XP. I’m the kind of person who will play solitaire on the computer that Windows is being installed onto. When I get some time I may post pictures on how to exactly do this.

Till next time!

-Ken

League of Legends or LoL came from a unique map from Warcraft III. In Warcraft the map was named DOTA, or Defense of the Ancients. It grew in popularity and many people joined Warcraft III or W3 just to play DOTA. This is typical of any popular mod for a game out there. A popular mod gets a lot of attention and when it becomes a popular mainstay? The people or developers of the mod are bought up and it usually gets put into a standalone game. Prime examples are Team Fortress for Quake 1, Counter Strike for Half-Life, ”The Kill Patch” for Quake, Desert Combat for Battlefield 1942. All of those developers for those mods were bought and put into a real company to develop a real game! Which by my count has all been very successful.  A good way to get into the gaming industry.

In LoL, each person has a character they choose, which has to be unique for your team. Matches are between 10 people, 5 on each side. The map (which the game only has 2) has 3 lanes to reach the other persons base. They are protected by powerful defensive towers. There are also minions that spawn in 30 second intervals. These minions act as the way to get experience, gold and a way to push into the enemy base.  This is where the strategy comes in to play.

Each character has a role as well as strengths and weaknesses. They are categorized by almost standardized gaming terms. The tank plays a role to protect the team and push the lines. The tank is supposed to be the toughest person in the team and the hardest to kill. The assassin is supposed to be a stealthy killer playing guerrilla tactics. The caster is someone who has a lot of damage potential in killing power, but weak in terms of defense, easily killed if caught off guard. Then there is a support, which typically isn’t very effective by you but makes the team drastically more effective. I prefer to play a tank role as well as support. I pick unusual characters that are not popular so I usually get the person I want.

Playing as a cooperative team can be difficult, but the only real effective way to win. If minions are left by themselves, they will go back and forth on a line and grow stronger in numbers the longer they are left unchecked by a player. This can cause your team to lose a tower if you leave them alone. When you take out all three towers in a lane there is a special building called an inhibitor that causes the other side’s minions to become more powerful. If you lose yours, that lanes enemies grow very powerful. Left alone they can quickly devastate your base and win. However, minions are not the most dangerous part of the game, it’s the other players.

Players at the start are not very powerful, they cannot compare to the power of a turret at all. Later in the game the player can become more powerful and easily take down wave after wave of minions with ease, including towers. Very late game, towers almost can be ignored by some players.

Each match has an average time of about 45 minutes. They can go much longer or shorter. Playing with people you know make it that much more fun.

Now here’s the strange point, or selling point. The addicting part of the game is not the play-style, but outside the game. Each match you gain experience for your account and in game currency to spend. These are very addicting points to any game. With points you can purchase characters, skins which change the appearance of your character or in game stat increases called runes. You do not have to spend any money to play or earn a character, but their skins and things you can only buy with real money. It’s not a lot but they can nickel and dime someone and that’s how they get their profits! What’s really bad is that I like how their system is. People who would normally never spend money for a game actually fork over cash to something that never helps them! I don’t know anyone who is against their way of making money! It works and they seem to do very well.

The game has a hard learning curve but it is easy to get into. The play is simple. The commands or in game mechanics are easy. There is a lot of depth to how things go together or how the skills interact with each other. Enough to anyone who loves math to spend a few weeks on the combat formulas.

The graphics are not impressive and can run on older hardware. However, it’s enough to emerge you into a fun experience for anyone willing to spend the time. I highly recommend trying it out, unless you don’t want to lose a lot of time. It is addicting.

What is the connection from the plot to the reader? The main difference between a fictional history and a story is the characters.  The hook or interest in the story is when conflict arises. Usually a character is down on his luck, you start to feel for the character. You want to see the character overcome the obstacle they have. The character will go to the lowest point when just about everything seems lost, and in a short moment the character will gain control of the situation and win. Usually they get the girl in the end, or guy pending on the case. The character ends up with a little more they then began with. This is called the story arc. It’s a good idea to not stray from this proven formula.

Now the hero or protagonist takes you through the story. Let’s call our hero ‘Steve’. Now when we write about Steve we have to consider what plot to put him in. For random sake lets say the plot is “Evil Scientist makes poison mind control plant to enslave the world.” Now that we have a plot we need to give Steve weaknesses. Let’s say to fit the story it’s pollen, women and possibly a weak immune system. Our hero Steve must now stop said Evil Scientist. When we write this story, we have to have conflict or a price. If a main character dies in an attempt of something, this shows risk. If our hero never takes ‘damage’ or slows down, the story becomes uninteresting. Still, the story seems a little dry doesn’t it?

We need to give Steve a personality! So let’s give Steve a personality make-over! Steve is a stay at home dad. He has two daughters he raises by himself. His wife left him to further her carrier as she didn’t want to be held down by family. Steve paints and referees community sports. His dream is to become a famous painter and provide a future for his two young daughters. Steve is very athletic and an ex Green Beret.

Sound a little more interesting? Maybe not, but we’re just getting started.

The story starts with one of his daughters getting kidnapped. The scientist has actually brainwashed his daughter, but our hero Steve doesn’t know that.  Steve must uncover the truth in a corrupted “sleeping” city while protecting his other daughter. Will he be able to save his daughter? Steve’s only hope is to rely on his military training as the city and system turns against him.

Sounds a lot more interesting doesn’t it? We are introducing emotion into the story. Sounds like something you would find on the shelf of a Hollywood production line. For good reason too, they use this formula. If you want people to believe something, you have to have an expression. A fight between the Protagonist and Antagonist has to have meaning. Mindless action can only go so far. If someone gets cut and the director takes 2 seconds to view the expression “ouch” and a close up of blood drawing the line as it begins to pour. Audience has just taken an interest. Without that zoom in and 2 seconds, you just made a 10 minute fight boring. In music, they call this a bridge. Though a music bridge is different, it can change a repetitive thing into something you enjoy by only a 2 second change of scenery/sound.

Now just being random we’ve come up with an alright story. By adding emotion into story line elements, we have a story. Just add well developed characters, Working plot, and mix well. Add seasoning to taste and bake for 45 minutes. But in all seriousness the emotions are what link the readers or audience to what’s going on. Emotions are powerful and very addicting. Emotions are the only thing that links our bodies and conscious minds directly. If you get someone emotionally involved, your answer will be yes or more please.

As for our story, we still need to add his weaknesses. We’ll have a temptress try to stray him off course. Bad allergies and he’ll be fighting a head cold. All of these elements make him mortal, thus interesting.

Better informed readers/audiences make better readers/audiences. So keep on reading!

-Ken

The idea is to throw stumbling blocks in front of bad programs. But good programs are sometimes affected. They can do this in many ways.

Security software often comes with what’s called a firewall. People picture a burning wall  or a line of fire when they think this, in reality it’s the opposite. The term firewall was to confine fire with in a building; the firewall would stop the fire from progressing further then that point.

Firewalls are traffic controllers; they let programs on or not. They are supposed to protect you from bad programs sending bad information, like Social Security info, personal info or loading advertisements onto your computer. However, they can prevent updates, games, and your software to log onto parts of the internet. If you have internet access, and you have a program that doesn’t have internet, disable your firewall.

Anti-Viral scanning techniques have gotten more complicated, at the same time so have viruses. In 1992 it would have been un-heard of to have a virus able to access the internet with “built in protocols” to communicate to its master. The program would have to be huge, and when little space to work with, it didn’t make sense. Viruses had to travel by floppy disks. They were called Viruses because like a biological virus, they infected hosts and made a replica of themselves. Because of this, they had to be small. Once you had a Virus load into memory, it would systematically infect every program you ran after that. This is kind of like walking into house with muddy feet. The people that walked on the dirty parts would just spread it further. Except with Viruses, it doesn’t diminish over an area. The war of virus and virus counters grows more complex every so often, a war of technology and engineering.

The world of viruses back then was different; viruses were made to protect programs (like Doom II and the gold bug). People often made viruses for the fun of it, or to see if you could, or even to send a message or protest. Viruses largely came from the United States from respected programmers in their different fields. They find an exploit and think “hey, I bet bob won’t like it if I do this…” Thus we have the mindset of early viral developers.

The anti-virus program would have to have a good algorithm for detecting viruses inside programs. Viruses could be put in anywhere in code, they could be lurking anywhere. Today, processors are so fast that security programs do what’s called “Active protection.” That means that the anti viral program is keeping track of all activity on the computer. There are not many successful viruses that will infect a program anymore, it’s too easily detected.

As technology increases, speeds get faster, there is more room to do things, thus things get more complicated. However, with the internet getting more popular a lot of money gets passed around via wire. It’s great for driving an economy forward, but it does have drawbacks. With that in mind, now think about a destitute country, where there is a failing economy. I remember being in an apartment, starving and poor, wanting to make money. I didn’t care how. I did a lot of very strange jobs, like an assembly line that smelt like urine. Being on the internet, I was trying out how to get a slice of it – in desperation. I know the motivation behind a lot of it. A few countries have turned to scamming, and causing fraud. These poor countries get away with it because they bring in revenue. The law makers will protect those that bring in money for circulation. This becomes a problem as more and more countries are jumping into this. That is the state of the world today in security. Yet it gets worse. Super hackers and/or Black Hats, come from modern countries. Black Hats exploit technology; some do it for personal amusement while others do it for a living. These threaten a lot of people. For example, this year a hospital database was broken into, this contained name, phone, age, birthdates, social security numbers, prescriptions, and medical history for over 20,000 people! Now that data is worth a lot on the black market. That can expose ALL of those people to identity theft. Where they notified? No. What does the US Government do? The Government does a media-blackout. I’m not sure why, but I wouldn’t think that they announce successful hijacks, or to keep people involved safe. Either way, people would like to know!

It also happens very often where game servers are broken into. This would be hacking for pleasure, unless they are trying to get at the credit card numbers, but that’s often handled by a third party, not the gaming company that hosts. So a hacker gets access to a few accounts and can have fun. Game hosts often take better care to their customers then say a hospital when it comes to protecting your private information.

I tell you this not to scare you, but hopefully you understand a little more about the dark side of the internet. The best defense against a hacker or a virus is your brain. You’re better protected by being informed, knowing what to look for, aware of how your computer works. Not what’s inside, but used to how it behaves? Who will you know when you are infected? If you notice a change in how your computer behaves, that should be a red flag. What changed your computers behavior? Did you install anything? What websites did you recently look at? Who was on your computer lately?

In 2007, pornography was a huge problem, still is to a good extent when it comes to viruses. Viruses and the like would infect almost any computer visiting porn sites. Porn sites are still a problem, but today it isn’t the only thing that you could be infected by. But just a warning, if you have ever seen porn on your computer or knows someone that does, get your computer checked out. Sadly, I’m alive today because of pornography. It’s given me a lot of work and a few jobs. In 2007 I was so used to how an effected computer acts; I could tell a computer was infected just by moving the mouse.

I’ve been in the business of cleaning computers from viruses for a long time. Telling an infected computer from a normal operating one is easy for me. But, for those that would like to know here are a few signs that you might have a problem. Computer one day turned very slow. Internet sites got noticeably a lot slower when the web used to be consistent with every website. A program is asking for money. A program appears on your computer you didn’t install. Your interface has suddenly lost some features like a start menu, pictures, or icons disappear. The internet browsers by itself, popup sites, ads, pornography pops up when you’re doing something that has nothing to do with the internet. Your computer tries to block a “hack” attempt when not connected to the internet.

Those are all good indicators that you could have a malicious software hiding on your computer. Now, this doesn’t guarantee you have a malicious program. But it’s an indication. Unfortunately, people typically will run their computer to the ground. By that I mean they use it until it’s not usable. For some reason that is beyond me, people will drag through misery as long as their internet or email works. This is the opposite of good. No one should drive their car into uselessness before getting it serviced. Why? Service is much more expensive and often you can lose your data. Some of my good customers bring it in at the first sign of trouble. Those are OK too, but try to clean it up by yourself before you service it. You may learn something!

I hope this helps.

-Ken

It’s a very grey area how to classify viruses, so suffice it to say we’ll call them malicious software, or malware for short.

In this blog I will post my workings and insight to anyone who stumbles upon this site. I’m open to answer questions as well, but keep in mind I am a professional. I am very hesitant on exposing my virus removal process as this is what puts food on my coffee table whilst I watch anime.

I find malware interesting; there is a strange motivation behind it all. Before 1998 it was mostly experimental and just people seeing if they can do it. Since then, it has become a large market thus it drives profits. Now that you have money entering and creating a new market, you need a product and service. But you also have to create a need.

It’s obscure to think that the large security companies rely on backdoor grey and black hat crackers (Hackers who exploit tech.) in moms’ basement for a multimillion dollar company. That’s not job security, I’m sure these companies secure their place in the world. I mean why not, it’s expanding your business. You create the problem, and later release your counter for it.

That’s right I’m accusing security companies of being the problem not the solution, but prove me wrong! It was legal for a time, but is it lawful? I would like to see the FBI do a thorough analysis on where the money goes and look at the spending for every 5 dollars for the last 5 years. If found guilty, don’t punish the companies by a fine, make them advertise in black and white on every ad they do that they create viruses. Let’s see the reputation of this company grow after that. That will be better justice then any fine you could ever give them. After 2 years of that, let the FBI do another analysis, if they are not guilty this time, let them be go. I’m not the only one making this claim; it’s suspicious that a security company can thrive out of nonsensical issues developed by engineers.  However, it’s not obscure that companies thrive on ignorance of the people.

Unlikely that will ever happen, but it would be a satisfying justice for everyone who does computer repair.

Now, the reason I created this blog is not to scream radical theories about where I think they are coming from, though I will from what I see and do. To inform the viewer.

Recently the main computers affected are XP computers and not Vista. XP has become a lot more secure with the latest updates. This causes the malware to be easier to remove, but still there is a problem keeping them off. Viruses on XP typically disable any program that’s not set to automatically launch at a fresh startup. So you cannot run any program, or look at a lot of information about the computer. Oddly enough, if you are able to bypass this malware defense, you can usually end task the problem program directly. Not something you could do in 2008 or earlier. If you’re unlucky, you have a Root-Kit, in which few things can help.

Root-Kits take over the core system files and imbed themselves into the system. Thus the virus becomes part of the system and the computer depends on the virus in order to work. They are considered the most dangerous form of malicious software. However, they won’t have as big impact if they say, took your banking records and emptied your accounts.

Malware will have defenses to keep the normal user and professional from removing it. I have seen malware disable a keyboard and mouse input. Disable any program from opening. Disable safe mode. Corrupt backup files. Corrupt anti-viral programs are a typical one you see and the first indication of an infection.

The worst case I found is when “Norton” from Symantec was compromised, giving false updates via the HOST file to somewhere Thailand. These updates would turn the anti-virus system into the virus! It was removing any picture, system file and document. Just placed a bad virus detection module and off it went to destroy the computer. Falsely identifying pictures, documents, music and system files for a virus!

More to come!

-Ken

Originally written December 4^th 2009