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2010-01-20T19:04:07Z

If you need some help with your computer, give us a call right now, and we'll see if we can help you sort out the issue. If an appointment is required, we'll schedule that, or if your issue is less complicated we will try to get you taken care of right away.

You can use this calling service to contact us; it's quick and easy. Simply click the image, insert your phone number and name, and click call. The system will call you, and then call the Geekchick. You can even keep your number private if you'd like; just tick the box that says, "Keep number private".

Quick and Easy Payments

2010-01-08T23:18:08Z

We have instituted a new billing and payments system for our clients. If you are a registered client, go to the Billing section of our website to check your balance and/or remit your payment.

Geekchick.biz is a good-neighbor, community-based business. We do occasionally accept pro-bono work for various reasons, so if you are really in need, please ask for help.

If you would like to make an immediate, one-time payment to Geekchick.Biz, click the "Make a Payment" image on this page and you'll be able to make a payment using either a credit card or your Paypal account.

Germany Sending Cops to Secure Its Citizen's WiFi

2010-05-21T09:22:10Z

Do you have an open wireless network? Well if you do, you should be glad you're not living in the BDR. Following a recent case where an accused "pirate" pointed out that since his wireless was open for anyone to use, the supposed "proof" that he was downloading - his IP - proved nothing - the court summarily declared that to be illegal, and now the cops are supposedly going to be war-driving your neighborhood, and writing tickets for unsecured wirelesses.

After the musician failed to convince the court it was totally not his fault the court was being hasseled by a bunch of whiney naybobs, the court decided that in Germany at least, it is your duty to make sure that the rights of major, multi-national IP giant's rights (profits and attorneys) are protected by securing your wireless. From MSNBC's report:

“Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation,” the court said. Internet users can be fined up to euro 100 ($126) if a third party takes advantage of their unprotected WLAN connection.”

It's a sad statement on modern society when one can - without much difficulty - see how law enforcement is really only about providing the most protection to those with the most property. It's worse when a rational society decides that the rights of corporations are of higher caliber than those of human citizens.

Think of it this way: citizens have a right to their own life, and that entails choices about when to do things as well as what things to do. When a corporation is allowed to dicate the trivial matters of a person's life in order to limit the increasingly trivial bridging of the corporation's profit stream, then the rules, norms and laws of the society are being used against society, stifling it's growth to expand the profits of a few.

Now I'm well aware that ostensibly, this is what society does. I'm pointing out however that this is only beneficial to a society to a finite degree.

When a farmer grows crops, he sells them at a price they will fetch and everybody's happy; he gets money for his labor, and people eat. When there are many farmers, the benefit to society is obvious, choices increase and competition drives value. The police are basically only around to keep people from stealing food from the farmer, and occasionally - to a lesser degree - to stop the people from stealing from each other. Ask any cop, it's natural to steal from those with the most to steal.

When it becomes completely trivial for all people to - in this example - grow food themselves, especially to the point that the farmer's farm and it's expenses become unweildy, the farmer is suddenly in need of the police. In this case however, the police have to come up with new ways to protect the farmers.

In human history, numerous generations have witnessed what happens when a status quo is usurpted by a new technology which renders their business model obsolete. It happened in with Guetenberg. It happened with the phonograph. It happened with audio tape. It happened and is still happening with digitalization of media.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Resistence is Futile - part 264

2010-05-19T17:43:45Z

Google announced they're gobbling up another VoIP provider, and this time it's the one behind everybody else's voice/video chat networks. This report from ZDnet.

Google on Tuesday said it will acquire Global IP Solutions Holding, which makes processing software for voice and video over IP, for $68.2 million. The deal means that Google will own the voice and video conferencing engine behind (Yahoo, WebEx, Lotus and AOL's) instant messaging systems.

Last year Google ate the GizmoProject, which although still operational has only seen backward steps in it's product offereing since being taken over. It's really only a matter of time before Google knows more about you than Visa. Scary, huh?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Dangers of Password Changing

2010-08-07T08:36:45Z

You know how you go to sites and you'll timeout after a bit, and they ask you to login again so you do mindlessly, only to discover that you're unable to get logged in, and you decide to change your password? Don't. The ZD net article referenced below has a nice write up about "tabnapping", which is an exploit for taking advantage of this little thing we've been trained to mindlessley do.

A Mozilla user interface specialist has published proof-of-concept code for a new phishing technique, which makes use of morphing browser tabs to trick people into giving away login information. Traditional phishing techniques generally lead a user directly to a malicious web page that impersonates a trusted page, such as an online banking login site, which can then harvest the user's login information. The new technique, called 'tabnapping' or 'tabjacking', demonstrated by Mozilla Firefox creative lead Aza Raskin in a blog post on Monday, leads a user to what appears to be a genuine site that delivers the content promised.

Technical Support Email - 1995

2010-11-10T11:02:48Z

I got this in response to a frustrated email i sent to my ISP after they replaced a really nice software bundle with an "upgrade". Shortly after I received this email, I took a job with the same ISP on the support floor.

I'm going to need more information to help you here. I realize some of the questions are redundant, but please bear with me:

1. What make, model, and speed of modem are you using?
2. Internal, external, or PCMCIA?
3. What is your operating system Windows 3.x, MacOS, or Win95?
4. Which version of the Mindspring software are you using?
5. Processor speed (for PC's) or model (Mac) and RAM?
6. What initialization string are you using?
7. What telephone number are you dialing?
8. Where do you live (city, state)?
9. What is the phone number you are dialing from?
10. Is there any history of this problem?
11. Are you running any Fax software?
12. What speed is your UART chip (8250 or 16550x)? Windows 3.x users only:
13. If you have a 16550x UART, is it enabled in your system.ini file?
14. What communications driver are you using in Windows? Mac users only:
15. Does your modem cable support hardware handshaking? All users:
16. Do you have ANY other software running? Especially virus-detection software, fax programs, or diagnostic TSRs? If so, what are they?

I'm entering you in the call tracking database to have a tech call you, but having this information handy will help!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Freepops - LUA Replacement Demystified

2010-01-20T00:33:19Z

FreePoPs is a program which allows people with email accounts at various web-based email providers to collect their mail using a conventional local email client, even if the email provider does not directly support viewing and downloading of mail. Check it out.

Close all open applications. ALL of them.
Close freepops. Find the "freepops" icon in the system tray (lower right corner of your screen, little green do lookin' thingy with "FP" in the middle), right click it and select exit... make sure you get the right one.
Locate your new LUA file (whatever.lua) and copy it into thie following folder:
c:\program files\freepops\lua
1. Make sure it goes into the "lua" folder, inside the "freepops" folder, inside the "program files" folder, it won't get used if it's not in there.
2. With that in mind, make sure there are no files that end with LUA in the "freepops" folder. They will cause problems.
Reboot...
After a restart, the mail should flow from your freepops account(s) again.

The important part is that you MUST get a prompt from Windows to the effect of "aol.lua
already exists in the location, blah blah, do you want to replace the other file?" and
you must replace the old file.

Bar Codes & QR's - What the Heck Are They?

2010-05-19T16:46:09Z

Barcodes have been around for a long time, but are just now becoming commonplace outside of retail and other stock-keeping applications where we're used to seeing them. Today it's possible to send all kinds of groovy information using QR's. Keep reading for info on how to use them for your own purposes.

First, a couple of free on-the-web type QR generators to use. There are numerous others out there, as well as many which you can install on your machine for use when you're not online. The rule to remember is that barcodes may not have more than 512 characters, and tend to become almost impossble to decode past 100 characters, unless the barcode is large enough to show the detail.

Now for your basic barcode types:

URL's - not much to 'splain here

HTTP://anydomain.com

Telephone numbers - some phones will dial these without prompting the user

TEL:9876543210

Automatic Email - this usually creates an email in the phone's default application SMTP:[email address]:[subject]:[message]

SMTP:support@anydomain.com:Hey Baby:What are you wearing?

Automatic SMS - creates an SMS (a.k.a. "text message") to a phone number SMSTO:[cell number]:[message]

SMSTO:9876543210:Text me for a good time!

vCards - a pretty common contact list/address book format, most can import the info in these.

BEGIN:VCARD FN:John D. Rockefeller TITLE:Shrimp Man TEL;TYPE=WORK,VOICE:(111) 555-1212 TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE:(404) 555-1212 ADR;TYPE=WORK:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America ORG:Evil Overlords, Inc. EMAIL;TYPE=INTERNET;TYPE=WORK:support@everydomain.com END:VCARD

All of the following are also part of the vcard format. Name Description Semantic

N Name - A structured representation of the name of the person, place or thing associated with the vCard object.
FN Formatted Name - The formatted name string associated with the vCard object
PHOTO Photograph - An image or photograph of the individual associated with the vCard
BDAY Birthday - Date of birth of the individual associated with the vCard
ADR Delivery Address - A structured representation of the physical delivery address for the vCard object
LABEL Label Address - Addressing label for physical delivery to the person/object associated with the vCard
TEL Telephone - The canonical number string for a telephone number for telephony communication with the vCard object
EMAIL Email - The address for electronic mail communication with the vCard object
MAILER Email Program (Optional) - Type of email program used
TZ Time Zone - Information related to the standard time zone of the vCard object
GEO Global Positioning - The property specifies a latitude and longitude
TITLE Title - Specifies the job title, functional position or function of the individual associated with the vCard object within an organization (V. P. Research and Development)
ROLE Role or occupation - The role, occupation, or business category of the vCard object within an organization (eg. Executive)
LOGO Logo - An image or graphic of the logo of the organization that is associated with the individual to which the vCard belongs
AGENT Agent - Information about another person who will act on behalf of the vCard object. Typically this would be an area administrator, assistant, or secretary for the individual
ORG Organization Name or Organizational unit - The name and optionally the unit(s) of the organization associated with the vCard object. This property is based on the X.520 Organization Name attribute and the X.520 Organization Unit attribute
NOTE Note vSpecifies supplemental information or a comment that is associated with the vCard
REV Last Revision - Combination of the calendar date and time of day of the last update to the vCard object
SOUND Sound - By default, if this property is not grouped with other properties it specifies the pronunciation of the Formatted Name property of the vCard object.
URL URL - An URL is a representation of an Internet location that can be used to obtain real-time information about the vCard object
UID Unique Identifier - Specifies a value that represents a persistent, globally unique identifier associated with the object
VERSION Version - Version of the vCard Specification
KEY Public Key - The public encryption key associated with the vCard object

That's pretty much it. You can put these anywhere, on shirts, on business cards, on the roof of your house... the possibilities are endless. Don't use it for evil.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Infected? 5 ToDo Items

2010-08-07T09:04:40Z

You've got a virus. Oh noes! What do you do? Well, the first and best thing to do is to simply power down the computer without clicking anything at all, period. Just hold the power button down until your computer shuts off, then call your neighborhood Geekchick to come take care of that for you.

Sorry, My marketing friend said I should say that. While you can bail yourself out if you need to, you probably cannot do anything to make better what has just or is about to happen to you. Chances are however, that you've already screwed up and clicked on something that's got your system compromised.

That's a bummer, but it happens. And anyway, you shouldn't blame yourself.. It wasn't your fault. Your computer shouldn't have been there.You didn't want it to get infected. It wasn't acting well anyway. In the end... it probably deserved it somehow.

The worst part is that the people who write these things are maddeningly clever, and they are really, really good at tricking you into making yourself worse off than you were before, even before you realize you're doing it. It's like what would happen if say, a flu made you want to kiss everyone... with everything you do you're only making things worse. Now take heed of Aunti Jen's list of things to do. (I stole this from ZD net, but then i corrected it, so I hope they don't mind.)

Understand the risks - Prepare for this inevitability.
1. Have a good backup plan and stick to it - if you've prepared, the worst thing about a virual infection is the downtime (see #2 below). Having all of your crucial data backed up someplace safe is imperative to keeping up with the times. Quit putting it off, and get yourself a backup plan.
2. Obey the First Responder’s Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm. In other words, don’t make things worse. Unless you cannot get at what you need anywhere else, turn the machine off and refer to step 6 below..
Carry a Web-enabled smart phone and carry a big (16GB USB) stick - Pay for that data plan. Get reasonably proficient with a favorite mobile browser. Store bookmarks. Setup your phone to get your mail, and be prepared to "get by" for a few days while your situation is remedied. You might even like it.
DO NOT try to fix it yourself - Cleaning a virus is practically impossible. There, I said it. It's mostly luck when you manage to clean a viral infection and never have to deal with it again. More than 90% of all infections result in a re-installation of the operating system, and in my opinion, 100% should. Fixing it needs some special tools, and - especially if you don't have all your data backed up - you'll need help.
Find a computer pro you trust - Like with a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, plumber or hooker, a relationship with a reliable, discrete and trustworthy computer technician is something a responsible adult spends their life nurturing. Your pro should help you with the three things above, making the one below a stress-free, no-brainer type thing.
Re-install the whole schmeal - It's simple enough. If you're infected, you need to format (a.k.a. erase all the data from) your computer's hard drive and re-install that operating system from the ground up. Afterwards you'll be treated to an infection free machine that will probably run better than it did the day you unboxed it, and will certainly run better than it did before you got it all gummed up with whatever is in it. If you know how to do this, great, if not, any neighborhood shop should be able to get you back to square one for $100 or so, and most will recover your data and re-install the OS for about $250... the latter of these is what most people want, but honestly, if you've done good backups, I always suggest NOT re-dumping all the crap on your backup onto the new/freshly installed OS, but rather gather up only what you need, and leave the backup drive as a keepsake of the huge mess you've just remedied by re-installing your Operating System.

BONUS: for the studious reader who's read this far...
Use a good boot-able disk from a reliable anti-virus company - this option has a 50/50 chance of cleaning your system and giving it back to you in relatively good shape after you've messed it up good. Sometimes cleaning an infestation will wreck the operating system making it unbootable, and you have no choice but reinstalling - so don't do it until you're sure you have a good backup of your data. If your infection is milder, like say you turned it off and didn't click on anything at all, chances are more like 8-9 out of 10 that something like Kaspersky's or AVG's bootable disk will fix you right up.

Or not. So it's a gamble. Which is why you should have a good tech. Thanks for reading.

Data Rates and Transfer Protocols - Part I - Local Data

2010-05-16T03:43:49Z

I wondered for a long time about the various bit-rates required for different types of "streaming technologies" (which just means "play it while you download it"). It's never been really clear to me which ones put data through at what speed, and what that translates to in terms of "How fast a connection do I need to listen to this or watch that?"

I put together the info on this page from a few sources, but mostly Wikipedia. Great resource that Wikipedia. The last bit, Peripherals, comes from this page, a case of what is possibly the highest usefulness-to-everybody/degree-of-complexity ratio of any page in the universe. Note the handy comparison of bytes to bits in that table as well. While marketers regularly use these terms interchangeably, they're very much not.

At any rate, I'm not about to go into any sort of long explanation about how all these things relate to one another... yeah, who am I kidding. Of course I will.

For now, there's two imperative things to understand: local data versus remote data. To understand the difference between the two, it's important to understand/remember how "non-computer" people see things. It's part of the reason that this "in the cloud" thing is a little more hype than substance. Hopefully I can shed a little light on that too.

For the initiated it may seem incredibly elementary, but in fact, the initiated are inerred to the more natural and intuitive understanding that your grandmother might have, i.e. there is no difference between local and remote data. As far as she's concerned, the screen is here, the computer is here, the AOL is here, the Hulu where she watches her stories is all right here.

You are always here

When i was a kid, my dad used to tease us with the "We're never gonna get there, 'cause even when you do, you're still here." As a 6 year old, the humor of the comment was lost on me, rather it was my dad being himself. It is however, apropos here, because it's about the best way i know for people to get a handle on the difference between remote data and local data. It's the same reason it's stupid for a company to tell you you can't copy their product but you can watch it; you can't do either one without the other no matter how much anyone wishes otherwise.

When you have a movie on a DVD or your hard drive or on Netflix or on iTunes or Hulu or anywhere else you might find a movie to watch, you copy it to your machine for processing. The process of viewing is EXACTLY the same in all cases. The only differences are

How you get it into your machine for processing.
What your machine does with it after processing.

Once your machine has the data ready for processing, it's been read from a temporary file on the local hard drive, which is ostensibly the fastest place to keep data. There is an intermediate step where the data is "in RAM" - meaning that it's stored in the machine's memory. Memory, or "RAM" is considerably faster than a hard drive, but far more precious. Most machines have several hundred times as much hard drive space as memory space, so the machine uses the hard drive to store things before processing them using RAM.

This article contains information about how data moves once it's local. I don't think i'll go into how it travels inside your machine, but this should give you a basic comparison of the speed requirements of various media formats, as well as the speed capabilities of various data-transfer formats. I italicized the most common connections for us home users.

Stuff

Audio (MP3)

32 kbit/s – MW (AM) quality
96 kbit/s – FM quality - This is questionable since FM broadcast is transmitted in analog 30hz-15khz...Similarly one cannot compare directly an LP record to CD using kbit/s.
128–160 kbit/s – Standard Bitrate quality; difference can sometimes be obvious (e.g. lack of low frequency quality and high frequency "swashy" effects)
192 kbit/s – DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) quality.
224–320 kbit/s – VBR to highest MP3 quality

Other audio

800 bit/s – minimum necessary for recognizable speech (using special-purpose FS-1015 speech codecs)
8 kbit/s – telephone quality (using speech codecs)
32-500 kbit/s -- lossy audio as used in Ogg Vorbis
500 kbit/s–1,411kbit/s – lossless audio as used in formats such as Free Lossless Audio Codec, WavPack or Monkey's Audio
1,411.2 kbit/s – PCM sound format of Compact Disc Digital Audio

Video

16 kbit/s – videophone quality (minimum necessary for a consumer-acceptable "talking head" picture using various video compression schemes)
128 – 384 kbit/s – business-oriented videoconferencing quality using video compression
1.25 Mbit/s – VCD quality (with bit-rate reduction from MPEG-1 video compression)
1374 kbit/s – VCD (Video CD) – audio and video streams multiplexed in an MPEG-PS
3.5 Mbit/s typ - Standard-definition television quality (with bit-rate reduction from MPEG-2 compression)
5 Mbit/s typ – DVD quality (with bit-rate reduction from MPEG-2 compression)
8 to 15 Mbit/s typ – HDTV quality (with bit-rate reduction from MPEG-4 AVC compression)
29.4 Mbit/s max – HD DVD
40 Mbit/s max – Blu-ray Disc

Peripheral

Device	Rate (bit/s)	Rate (byte/s)
Apple Desktop Bus	&0000000000010000.00000010.0 kbit/s	&0000000000010000.0000001,250 B/s
Serial MIDI	&0000000000031250.00000031.25 kbit/s	&0000000000031200.0000003.9 kB/s
Serial EIA-232 max.	&0000000000230400.000000230.4 kbit/s	&0000000000230400.00000028.8 kB/s
Serial DMX512A	&0000000000250000.000000250.0 kbit/s	&0000000000250000.00000031.25 kB/s
Parallel (Centronics)	&0000000001000000.0000001 Mbit/s	&0000000001000000.000000125 kB/s
Serial 16550 UART max	&0000000001500000.0000001.5 Mbit/s	&0000000001500000.000000187.5 kB/s
*USB Low Speed (USB 1.0)*	*&0000000001536000.0000001.536 Mbit/s*	&0000000001536000.000000192 kB/s
Serial UART max	&0000000002764800.0000002.7648 Mbit/s	&0000000002764800.000000345.6 kB/s
GPIB/HPIB (IEEE-488.1) IEEE-488 max	&0000000008000000.0000008 Mbit/s	&0000000008000000.0000001 MB/s
Serial EIA-422 max	&0000000010000000.00000010 Mbit/s	&0000000010000000.0000001.25 MB/s
USB Full Speed (USB 1.1)	&0000000012000000.00000012 Mbit/s	&0000000012000000.0000001.5 MB/s
Parallel (Centronics) EPP 2 MHz	&0000000016000000.00000016 Mbit/s	&0000000016000000.0000002 MB/s
Serial EIA-485 max	&0000000035000000.00000035 Mbit/s	&0000000028000000.0000003.5 MB/s
GPIB/HPIB (IEEE-488.1-2003) IEEE-488 max	&0000000064000000.00000064 Mbit/s	&0000000064000000.0000008 MB/s
FireWire (IEEE 1394) 100	&0000000098304000.00000098.304 Mbit/s	&0000000098304000.00000012.288 MB/s
FireWire (IEEE 1394) 200	&0000000196608000.000000196.608 Mbit/s	&0000000196608000.00000024.576 MB/s
FireWire (IEEE 1394) 400	&0000000393216000.000000393.216 Mbit/s	&0000000393216000.00000049.152 MB/s
USB Hi-Speed (USB 2.0)	&0000000480000000.000000480 Mbit/s	&0000000480000000.00000060 MB/s
FireWire (IEEE 1394b) 800^[36]	&0000000786432000.000000786.432 Mbit/s	&0000000786432000.00000098.304 MB/s
Fibre Channel 1Gb SCSI	&0000001062500000.0000001,062.5 Mbit/s	&0000000800000000.000000100 MB/s
FireWire (IEEE 1394b) 1600^[36]	&0000001573000000.0000001,573 Mbit/s	&0000001572800000.000000196.6 MB/s
Camera Link Base (single) 24bit 85 MHz^[37]	&0000002040000000.0000002,040 Mbit/s	&0000002088960000.000000261.12 MB/s
Fibre Channel 2Gb SCSI	&0000002125000000.0000002,125 Mbit/s	&0000001600000000.000000200 MB/s
*eSATA (SATA 300)*	*&0000002400000000.0000002,400 Mbit/s*	&0000002400000000.000000300 MB/s
CoaXPress Base (up and down bidirectional link)	&0000003125000000.0000003.125 Gbit/s + &0000000020833000.00000020.833 Mbit/s	&0000003120000000.000000390 MB/s
FireWire (IEEE 1394b) 3200^[36]	&0000003145700000.0000003,145.7 Mbit/s	&0000003145728000.000000393.216 MB/s
Fibre Channel 4Gb SCSI	&0000004250000000.0000004.25 Gbit/s	&0000004250000000.000000531.25 MB/s
*USB Super Speed (USB 3.0)*	*&0000005000000000.0000005 Gbit/s*	&0000005000000000.000000625 MB/s
Camera Link Full (dual) 72bit 85 MHz^[37]	&0000006120000000.0000006.12 Gbit/s	&0000006120000000.000000765 MB/s
CoaXPress Full (up and down bidirectional link)	&0000006250000000.0000006.25 Gbit/s + &0000000020833000.00000020.833 Mbit/s	&0000006248000000.000000781 MB/s
External PCI Express x16	&0000032000000000.00000032 Gbit/s	&0000032000000000.0000004 GB/s