GeekLimit

In my last installment, we cleaned our machine of viruses and spyware, cleaned out old, unused files with Disk Cleanup, and reorganized our hard drive with the defragmenter tool. At this point, your machine should be back to where it was when you got it, except a little bit slower due to the programs you installed on it.

But what if you want to push your machine’s performance above where it was when you got it? As it turns out, if you are using Windows XP, there are a lot of settings that make XP “pretty”, but sacrifice speed. If you are OK sacrificing some of these pretty effects for raw speed, you’re in a prime position to gain some speed on your machine.

First of all, do yourself a favor and benefit from other’s research. That means getting on mailing lists, subscribing to RSS feeds, or just generally making a habit of trying to stay educated about computers in general. After all, I could tell you ‘do this and that’, but the sacrifices I make for speed might not be appropriate or even possible in your situation. What’s the GI Joe slogan? ‘Knowing is half the battle’? Knowing is about 95% of the battle in computers.

Before we get started, it’s fairly commonly known in IT circles that you are able to run XP on 128MB RAM, but for some reason, XP really opens up at 192MB RAM. After that, the more memory, the better. In fact, Tom’s Hardware just did an article on how much memory is overkill on a modern machine. It’s a long article, but the jist of it is that (unless you’re a graphic designer or big-time gamer) 1GB of RAM isn’t out of the question, and testing shows that you will use all of it if you get it. Unfortunately, a lot of RAM is expensive, but if you want to take the plunge, decide first how much money you’re comfortable spending, THEN go to a reputable online retailer like newegg.com. By deciding your budget ahead of time, you’re less likely to talk yourself into buying more.

So what if you don’t have any money, or just don’t want to spend any? Here are some settings you can change in XP that will help raise your speed:

The Desktop: we now make you ugly
Right-click the desktop, and click ‘properties’.

Themes tab
Go for ‘Windows Classic’. Have flashbacks to working in smoky offices and mustaches on everyone.

Background tab
‘None’. You can choose your own color, but that ultra-high-resolution picture of your kids has to load up every time you look at the desktop, which is a definite killer. If you really need that reminder of why you can’t fly off the handle and destroy your cubicle, try getting a cheap printed picture from Shutterfly and a cheap frame from Walmart/Target.

Screen Saver tab
This is arguable, since the screen saver does use computing power, but you obviously aren’t using the machine, so you’ll never notice. If you’ve got a CRT (boxy) monitor, a screen saver is a must to prevent burn-in, so choose a basic one like ‘Windows XP’. If you’ve got an LCD (flat-screen), you don’t get burn-in, so you don’t necessarily need a screen saver. I recommend setting the screen saver to ‘none’, but then changing your monitor’s power settings. (‘Start’ > ‘Control Panel’ > ‘Power Options’ > ‘Turn off monitor’ > ‘After 5 minutes’) This works pretty well for LCD’s, since the monitor turns on instantly when you move the mouse. It’s your call what is more annoying with CRT’s, the delay in making the screen saver go away, or the time it takes for the monitor to turn back on. You’ll definitely want to do only one or the other.

Appearance tab
You should already be on ‘Windows Classic Style’. Click the ‘Effects’ tab and un-check everything. These are all effects you can do without.

Settings tab
If you are using the video that came built into the computer, your computer has to process your video signal while you make word documents, etc. Most computers have dedicated memory for the video, but every once in awhile, you run across a machine that uses a portion of the main memory for the video. You’ll have to experiment here, so try out 800×600 and 1024×768. Also see which setting is easier on your eyes. You really don’t need to go larger than 1024×768 unless you have an enormous monitor. Finally, if you have a video card in your machine, it’s doing all the work, so just set it to the defaults and be happy, because it’s doing its own thing without affecting your machine too much.

That’s all for now, join in next time when I write about more system settings (and issue more warnings than you can shake a stick at) as we look at some of the more advanced things you can do for your need for speed.

Can we all just agree on something? Roads are for cars, not people. People are supposed to cross at the crosswalk, if one exists. And if one doesn’t exist, the idea is that you wait until there are no cars coming, then cross the street.

Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more people just step out in the street, looking right at the car coming, and just continue on their way. What’s the idea here? “They have to stop”? “I’ll sue if they hit me”?

Seriously, this is getting ridiculous, and it seems as if it’s getting worse around the holidays. One of these days someone is going to step out a little too close and get hit, and instead of successfully taking the driver to court, they’ll be committed for attempting to end it all on the hood of someone else’s car.

OK, as I mentioned previously, we know RFID tags have the potential to give away our private information. So far, usage of RFID for personal use has been a nightmare, to put it lightly. The people who have been trying out RFID so far have proven that they didn’t think it out compltely before they started trying this technology out on citizens, or simply refuse to let their privacy get in the way of profitability or ease of monitoring.

Here’s the deal. For companies like Wal-Mart (that allow partners to watch you in real-time while making your product selection), you’re pretty much out of luck. Until you purchase that item, it’s not yours, and you’re on their private property, so in addition to the video at the door, the cameras in the ceiling, and the RFID tags in the products, you have a group of marketers watching you, and it’s all legal.

But what happens when you leave the store with the products? They’re still able to broadcast their tags to anyone who asks. BellSouth recognized this, and filed for their patent to scan a garbage can, pick up, and record all of the RFID tags contained inside before dumping the trash into the garbage. Add a GPS unit on the truck, and it wouldn’t be difficult to record this information and build quite a database on people over the course of a few months. Since garbage is in the public domain, (i.e. you “willingly” gave up your rights to it) this marketing research can be used or sold to anyone willing to pay for it.

Starting to get the idea that RFID isn’t your friend? I’ll get into how to make it a little more friendly in the next, and final, blog in this series. In the meantime, try not to let anyone see your tinfoil hat…

You may have heard of the plans for putting RFID tags in American passports. This isn’t anything new, Wired wrote about it some time ago. RFID chipping a passport is no different than chipping your dog. A reader gets close to your chip, sends a signal to it, and the chip responds with whatever information it has been programmed with. In the case of passports, people are afraid that their passport will be broadcasting personal information like a social security number. The bad part is that anyone can provoke the RFID chip to broadcast its information, simply by asking for it with a reader, which can be concealed easily. Some states are starting to put them in driver’s licenses also, which really makes security a problem.

Obviously, the correct solution to this problem is to have the RFID tag not broadcast anything that can be used to personally identify you. Perhaps it can broadcast a unique “RFID number”. Only the people authorized to have your information would be able to link your harmless RFID number to your bank information, for example.

However, as we’ve seen in the past, you can’t leave it up to the government, hotels, etc. to guard your information. Past expirience has shown that they simply don’t care enough to take the proper measures to protect your information. In this last link, you can read about how many hotel keycards have your information on them, sometimes including your credit card number, in unencrypted format. You can buy a card reader for under $75, which would turn a hotel garbage can into a multi-thousand dollar jackpot.

As far as RFID goes, if the companies/government use the same lax security, someone can steal this information simply by standing near you, putting a reader in a fake switch on the wall of a public place, etc. In addition, if your company/government waned to, they could install readers everywhere, and record your every movement.

So far, you’re pretty much stuck begging the legislators to promise to be secure with your information. I’ll get into how to protect yourself in another posting.

The local market has a fingerprint scanner on the right of a supermarket checkout panel. How long until someone lifts the print with some tape and puts it on something else?

Can anyone else think of a reason why this might be a bad idea?

I’ll go first. I have a machine still being used in one of the classrooms I take care of. It’s an original Apple IIc that is used at least twice per week to play math games in elementary school.

I’m pretty proud of this machine, it’s proof that a well-made machine and well-thought-out software can be relevant lot longer than today’s offerings. That, and it’s as old as I am.

The thing people notice most when they have a slow machine is a slow internet connection. This article will show you how to increase your speed 5x, on average.

Your internet speed can be increased by the greatest amount by simply removing malicious programs that are using your connection to spy on you, send spam, attach other machines, etc. Here’s how to put you back in the driver’s seat of your internet connection.

Connection Counts
Those with a broadband (DSL, cable) connection are most vulnerable. If I were to take a brand new machine and connect it to the internet with no protection, it would be infected (on average) in under 16 minutes. Without me doing anything. AOL users are a little safer, as AOL acts on your behalf. However, if you have kids, all bets are off, because those downloadable mouse pointers, sound packages, etc. come loaded with spyware and viruses.

Virus Scanners are only as good as the last Update
No matter what virus scanner you have, it needs to be kept up-to-date on the latest threats that are out there. Make sure your virus scanner is set to update its “virus definition files” at LEAST 3 times per week, preferably every day. Our servers update every 6 hours. If you don’t have a virus scanner, turn off your machine, unplug the network cable, and go buy one of the ones in a box at the store. I recommend McAfee for home use. I haven’t had much luck with Norton’s home offering, and although their corporate/network version is very good, I’ll still stick with McAfee’s full product (not the web-based pay-as-you-go version).

Spyware is what makes the internet slow
Some spyware installs itself without your knowledge. Some trick you into installing by pretending to be legitimate. Most get installed along with other programs, like Instant Messaging and Windows Themes. The first step is to remove spyware with something like the free program ‘Spybot: Search and Destroy’. I know, goofy name. But a good program. Download it here. Again, this program is only as good as the latest definitions, so update the definitions first, THEN scan. Spyware studies have shown that your internet connection can be slowed to 20% of what it normally would be on average, so this definitely will help the problem. Spybot will probably find something on your machine. I’ve seen results ranging from 1 item to over 1200 on a single machine. Let me know if you break the record…

Protect yourself
Make sure the virus scanner is automatically starting when the machine starts. Spybot has something called TeaTimer, I would install it. it will tell you when anything tries to install itself on your machine. If it alerts you while you’re installing a program you bought from a store, it is probably OK to click ‘accept changes’. If you’re not doing anything, and all of the sudden it asks you to accept the changes, SOMEthing on your machine is trying to change something…don’t accept the changes if you don’t recognize what software is changing something. You’re better off being restrictive and having to re-load some game rather than allow something in that you didn’t intend to. In addition, make sure your machine is automatically updating itself via Windows Update. Also make sure the Windows Firewall is turned on.

If all else fails
If you run virus scan, and run spybot, and it can’t clean off the spyware, bring your machine to a professional. It’s not going to get better by itself, and if two good programs can’t clean it, that’s a bad sign. If you are able to clean everything off, but the machine is still slow, try a speed testing tool to see if it is the connection or the machine. If the connection is bad, contact your service provider or look into a higher-quality Cable Modem and/or router. (Standalone or Modem/Router Combo Unit) (Also keep in mind that wireless is more convenient, but 802.11g is 54Mb per second, while these wired ethernet products are 100Mb per second.)

If even that fails
If the connection is good, but your machine is slow, open ‘My computer’, right-click C:\, click ‘properties’. Click ‘Disk Cleanup’ on the ‘general’ tab. Follow the directions.
If your machine is still slow, click the ‘tools’ tab and click ‘defragment’. Follow the directions to defrag C:\.
If your machine is STILL slow, consider upgrading your memory to at LEAST 256MB of memory if under Windows XP, or possibly pick up a newer machine from someone cheap like Dell.

I’ve posted about Riya before. I like Riya. I think it will show to have great potential, as some of the comments on my previous posting get into. In reading Wired’s story, “Face It: Privacy Is Endangered“, I’m appalled at what normally is a very good publication. Not only does the author’s own sources say that facial recognition is highly unreliable, but the author uses privacy concerns to turn this article into some sensationalist story about how Riya-like services will be used for stalking, profiling, etc. Two pages of this stuff.

Here’s the deal: Riya is still in Alpha, it’s not even released yet. It’s not a finished product. And yes, I’m sure more companies will come out with comparable services. But while the author tries to make two opposing points on facial-recognition privacy concerns, there is a simple answer to both:

Facial recognition isn’t accurate enough to connect your face to your private information on the web.
OK, fine, then the security expert is telling you to not worry about it. Why is your personal information on the web anyways? I would look into how it got there to begin with before you worry about how it could be potentially used.

Facial recognition services like Riya will be used to help people gain access to your info
This is solved easily. Since this side of the article assumes facial recognition to be accurate enough to identify you on a semi-reliable basis, then you have nothing to worry about. Open an account with the offending service, and specify that whenever it sees a picture of you, to not publish your information. You could even upload a ton of non-public mug shots to train the service on what you look like. Since, as you claim, the facial recognition service is so good at finding you, then it will be just as good at hiding your information.

Seriously, this section of tech just became available. The security concern is obvious, and I’m sure there will be methods to protect the users, if they so desire. Do I know this for sure? no. But it sure is a lot more helpful to the proponent of what could be a great technology if you propose new features to develop, rather than try to slam the entire thing in an effort to get people to read your article out of fear. Doing the latter is like realizing that a meteor could crash into your house tonight, but advertising “You could die in your sleep tonight, more at 11…”

For those of you who don’t like talking to a machine, there is a great site here that has ways to immediately get a hold of a real person.

Of course, the real gamble here is if you’ll be connected to someone in India who will understand you even less than the machine.

Here’s a helpful tip: find the places you do business with, and enter their number AND the shortcut keys into your cell phone. Most cell phones will pause by using a comma or the letter ‘p’.

For example, if you would put this in your phone, you would have a way of reaching a human being at Washington Mutual, enter this in as the number in your address book:

18007568000,,,,0,0 (or possibly 18007568000pppp0p0

(each one of the commas or ‘p’ characters will pause for a specified amount of time. What character and how much time depends on your phone.

This will dial the number for Washington Mutual, wait 4-8 seconds (depending on your phone), dial 0, wait 1-2 seconds (depending on your phone) and dial 0 again.

If the phone system hasn’t changed, you will be connected to a person, without having to look at your phone (or take your eyes off of the road).

So I’m looking at the breakfast menu of a restaurant near my house. The newspaper on the breakfast table on the cover reads “…oll might hit 2,000″ and below it reads “…dreds of Nicuraguans buried alive in landslide” Nice.

Nothing like cheery news to whet the appetite… Probably should have double-checked that one before running off a hundred copies.