Update the changes to your modifications

Does it seem to you that updates have gotten out of control? I use Pidgin for instant messaging; recently it notified me that a new version was available and asked if I wanted to download it. I did, so I clicked the appropriate link and Firefox tried to open. There was a message about an update for one of the add-ins, so I allowed that to happen, but then Firefox noticed that it was due for an update, too. Finally, I reached the Pidgin site, downloaded the update, and installed it. Then I started my e-mail program, which notified me that I needed to download an update and, while that was happening, the Windows Update notifier let me know that Windows wanted to download and install a new file. Before that process finished, a Tray pop-up from Adobe told me about tens of megabytes of downloads for Creative Suite 3. And, of course, some of the updates required restarting the computer.

Before I could start working on whatever it was I had planned to do, I had to deal with more than 20 minutes worth of updates. And that’s with a fast connection. On dial-up, the process would have taken hours.

It’s not that I dislike the updates. I understand that they’re a part of life in the computer age. Security flaws are located and fixed. Annoying program anomalies (aka “bugs”) are identified and retired with extreme prejudice. Developers add minor features or fix major features that were broken in the current release. Particularly in the case of open-source software, minor step upgrades happen every few weeks (or every few days).

I could avoid some of the interruptions by allowing Windows Update to modify the operating system on its own. That’s probably safe, but I like to know what Microsoft has up its sleeve because even a monitored update service can go off the rails, install old drivers in place of new drivers, and turn your computer into a smoldering pile of rubble.

No solutions in sight

Several organizations have attempted to establish uniform omnibus update services that every software vendor would send its updates to for distribution. Despite the inescapable logic of such a plan, there are concerns—some real, some imagined—about security problems. And then there’s the corporate/political question: Does anyone really believe that Microsoft, Adobe, and Corel will cede control of their own update procedures to some third party? And what about the thousands of other organizations that write applications for just the Windows platform? Who would be liable for what and to whom in the event of a malfunction?

A Windows update could break a Corel application, for example. If that happens, who’s responsible for fixing the problem? Would it be Corel? Microsoft? The third-party provider of updates? The vendors would probably have to grow third hands to have enough fingers available to point at each other while the responsibility for fixing the problem would fall where it always falls: To the user.

If somebody ever develops a third-party update service that works, I’ll be an early adopter. Who’s the likely candidate? In my world, it would be the operating system. All applications would contact the operating system’s “update service” when an update is available. It would be the operating system’s responsibility to verify the credentials of the update. It would be the operating system’s responsibility to download the update. It would be the operating system’s responsibility to show the user a list of all updates downloaded within the past X number of hours (selectable by the user), to ask the user which updates to install and when, and to coordinate the installation of the updates so that they won’t get in each other’s way. In fact, this is quite close to the procedure Ubuntu Linux uses, at least in a limited fashion.

I’m not expecting an operating system to handle all updates anytime soon, but if somebody does invent one, I already have the name for it: Nirvana.

The Maxtoring of Seagate (an incomplete story in 1 act)

A few weeks ago, I had some nice things to say about a Seagate FreeAgent disk drive. I liked the looks of the drive. I liked the packaging. I liked the elimination of complicated instructions. My opinion hasn't changed with regard to those features. But I would like the drive a lot more if it was reliable. Over the past 20-some years, I have come to consider Seagate disk drives the most reliable consumer drives on the market. When Seagate acquired Maxtor, I wondered if that acquisition would bring Maxtor's quality up or drag Seagate's quality down. Based on my limited experience and a significant amount of Internet chatter, I'm concerned that the latter is what happened. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Until now, I've never had a Seagate drive with a reliability problem. It's true that the Seagate drive in my desktop was replaced a few weeks ago as part of the troubleshooting effort to find out what was causing the system to crash, but based on la ted findings I think the drive was actually all right. The FreeAgent drive, however, has been unreliable almost from the start.

This drive's sole purpose in life is to maintain a copy of my current working directories. I use Microsoft's SyncToy to duplicate specific directories on the desktop computer on the FreeAgent drive. It's a simple procedure: SyncToy retains information about files on the desktop system and files on the FreeAgent. When I run SyncToy, it copies all new or changed files from the desktop to the external drive. This is about as simple and basic as things get.

But sometimes the copy process breaks down. Recently, SyncToy told me that it would copy more than 2000 new and changed files to the FreeAgent drive. After about 1000 files, it started pitching errors because it couldn't write files to the drive. The disk wasn't full, but SyncToy couldn't write files to it. Thinking that it might be a problem with SyncToy, I tried dragging files from the desktop to the FreeAgent using the Windows Explorer. Same thing.

Over the course of the next week or so, I tried "robocopy" (Microsoft's "robust copy" utility that's available for Windows XP and is included with Windows Vista). Same results. I downloaded a trial version of Scooter Software's Beyond Compare. Same results.

As disappointing as that was, I couldn't begin to imagine what Seagate support had in store for me. I had what seemed to be a basic reliability problem—one that would result in Seagate simply replacing the drive. Without diagnosing the problem, I visited Seagate's support website and described the problem.

Tech support strike 1

Two days later, a response from Kalidas (TS207) said that I was using "third-party" software and that Seagate doesn't support third-party software on its FreeAgent drives. (Did I mention that FreeAgent drives come with no software of any sort?)

My reply pointed out that Microsoft SyncToy is hardly a third-party application. However, I was willing to concede that point. I asked if Seagate also considered drag-and-drop copies using the Microsoft Windows Explorer to be using a third-party application. Or Microsoft Vista's built-in robocopy.

Tech support strike 2

The next response, also from Kalidas, took another tack: "I am sorry to say you that you will not be able to 'Mirror' an internal hard drive to the external hard drive. I would suggest you to make a 'Image backup' of your internal hard drive to external hard drive."

Kalidas apparently has a vivid imagination because I hadn't mentioned mirroring the drive anywhere. Additionally, creating an image backup of the drive would require third-party software, which Kalidas previously told me Seagate doesn't support. So what I have is a FreeAgent disk drive that cannot be used as a disk drive: It's a highly reliable, but somewhat overpriced, paper weight.

To be fair to Kalidas, I should mention that robocopy does have a mirror function. I had attempted to use it and it had failed in exactly the same way every other copy process had failed. To be fair to me, Kalidas should have noticed that I mentioned using the Windows Explorer to drag and drop files also failed and that has nothing at all to do with mirroring. That robocopy, drag-and-drop, SyncToy, and Beyond Compare all work flawlessly when copying files to an older Seagate external USB hard drive might have suggested something to Kalidas, too, but apparently didn't.

In an attempt to move the process forward, I provided my own diagnosis and a request that Seagate replace the drive: "All I want to do is copy some files from another drive to this one. That doesn't seem to be too much to ask. That is the core reason for having a disk drive—to copy files onto it. The failure occurs whether I use 'copy' (the antique DOS-based command), the Windows Explorer, Microsoft's SyncToy, or any other application. To me, this says one thing loud and clear: THE DISK DRIVE IS FAILING AND SHOULD BE REPLACED .... Please consider this my request for an RMA."

Tech support strike 3 (Yer out!)

Kalidas: I would suggest you to download download "SeaTools for Windows" and run "Short Generic Test" and "Long Generic Test" and check whether it is giving you any error message.

Me: I will do that, but it seems to me that the fact I CAN'T RELIABLY WRITE FILES TO THE DRIVE would strongly suggest that something is amiss. A problem such as this may or may not reveal itself to a diagnostic program, so jumping through this hoop is little more than a waste of my time and yours.

I have to tell you that I am far from impressed by this drive and likewise not particularly impressed that we are now on our 4th round of discussions with little resolution in sight.

This is not the way to treat a loyal customer who has specified nothing but Seagate drives for nearly two decades!

	So I downloaded SeaTools and the test told me that the drive had failed. What a surprise that was! CLICK THE IMAGES FOR A LARGER VIEW.
	I was equally surprised when the second test failed, too.

Me: Attached are screen shots showing the failures. Do you now believe that I have a clue? Issue the RMA, please.

Kalidas: With regards to your query,we would request you to contact our online Warranty support team at 1-800-468-3472 and initiate a discussion with them and they will be glad to assist you further.

Tech support strike 4 (Now you're really out.)

When I called the number provided, I was directed back to the website as the preferred method of contact. The website didn't recognize me, so I called again. After navigating down through several layers of menu, I learned that the warranty center isn't open on the weekend—only 7am to 4pm Mountain time. I returned to the website and selected the option to return the drive as a "guest". At the end of that process, I was asked to create a user ID and password for the account. The Seagate website generated an error, but I was able to return to an earlier page, which now indicated "success".

I now need to pack the drive and ship it (at my expense, of course) to Texas. Seagate will ship a new drive when they receive the old drive. Interestingly, the process never asked what was wrong with the drive and explicitly said not to include any information with the drive. It also explained that any data on the drive would be lost. The final point is both expected and normal, but I find it odd that Seagate doesn't even want to know what the problem was. I know that the drive will probably be dropped into the trash when it arrives in Texas, but you'd think that Seagate might want data about how drives fail so that they could look into changing the manufacturing process.

It's not just me

The problem with these FreeAgent drives from Seagate seems to be fairly widespread. A Google search for "seagate freeagent fail" reveals these comments:

http://www.epinions.com/content_381789638276
My 500 GB Free Agent also failed about a week after I first got it. My problem was with the interface controller, it would periodically shutdown and then restart. I also had corrupted data, lost a few GB of data. I arranged to send it back to Seagate, they sent me a replacement drive in about a week. The second one is working fine.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148238
I purchased two of these drives at a Retail Box Chain store and i'm glad I did. Both drives would intermittently kill my video on two separate computers. I would intermittently get grey bars on my Dell Laptop and I would lose my video signal on my gaming rig which required a hard system shutdown i.e. hold down power button. Nice design, nice price...not worth the risk, sorry. Seagate offers absolutely no help on their website. Buyer beware !!!

http://www.shopping.com/xPR-Seagate-Seagate-Free-Agent-Portable-320-GB-USB-2-0-Desktop-Drive
Failed after 3 days. Lost all data.

http://www.podtech.net/home/1823/seagates-new-drive-line-free-agent-with-john-van-bronkhorst
# By mike | July 30th, 2007 at 2:55 pm: I bought a free agent hard drive to have it fail after three days. Seagate won't even pay for the shipping to replace it.

http://www.yolksmoke.com/
I’ve bought two of these drives now, and both have completely failed within the first few weeks of using them. DO NOT buy this drive! It is particularly tempting to get a 500GB drive for roughly $150 and consolidate/backup all of your data, but you WILL be sorry.

The bottom line

I'm hoping that Seagate's quality control went awry on these particular drives and that they have things under control again. Any company can make a mistake and I hope that's what this was. After all, when I upgraded the hard drive in my notebook computer, I still specified Seagate.

Remember to vote on Tuesday

A few years ago, I was summoned to be a juror for the Franklin County Municipal Court (Columbus and Franklin County) and I was impressed by the people who ran the system. They were passionate about having jurors available, as required by law, even though something like 99% of all muni court cases are settled without going to trial. This year, I volunteered to be a poll worker for the November election. On Tuesday, I'll be a "presiding judge", which means that I'm the "manager" of 5 other judges at one of the county's 750+ precincts. I'm not going to tell you which one.

Last Saturday I attended a 4-hour mandatory training session. The Board of Elections official who conducted the class is passionate about ensuring that every qualified voter gets to vote. I learned about voting machines, about real-time audit logs (paper tapes), and about triple-checks to assure accuracy.

On election day, I'll be one of about 4500 poll workers in Franklin County. Each precinct has 6 "judges" who maintain the voting logs, monitor the voting machines, and determine whether a prospective voter is in the right precinct and, if so, whether that person should be treated as a "regular" voter (machine) or a "provisional" voter (paper).

Franklin County is just one of Ohio's 88 counties. Ohio is just one of the nation's 50 states. As one of the largest and most populous counties in the state, we have far more poll workers than average. But if the "average" county has just one tenth as many poll workers and if the average state has just 20 counties, that's 4.5 million volunteer poll workers. Wow!

I've read a 150-page manual and reviewed a training DVD after attending the training session. This weekend, I'll attend a practice session and pick up the precinct's supplies. I've visited the voting location and, when the polls close, I'll drive the results downtown. If everything goes exactly right, I may earn almost minimum wage. I'll take a vacation day from my regular job.

The manual covers my responsibilities (31 pages), the machine judges' responsibilities (38 pages), the roster judges' responsibilities (27 pages), and the process used for provisional voters (13 pages, plus a 4-page insert). The presiding judge is expected to be familiar with everything.

Overwhelming? Absolutely. But encouraging, too. Election officials and poll workers--whether Republicans, Democrats, or independents--seem to be serious about ensuring that elections are fair and accurate. I still have concerns about the software that runs the machines and questions about about the tabulating machines at county boards of election and in the Secretary of State's office, but the procedures in place to safeguard the voting machines and the results before, during, and after the election are most impressive.

Nerdly News

Mac security firm warns of OS X Trojan

Intego, a company that develops and sells desktop Internet security and privacy software for Macintosh, is warning of a new threat that —unlike most threats—is targeting Macs. According to the company, a malicious Trojan Horse has been found on several pornography websites. The Trojan claims to install a video codec required to view free videos. Instead of installing a new codec, the website installs applications designed to steal information from your computer.

The websites in question display a message when the user clicks a still image to start the video. The message says "Quicktime Player is unable to play movie file. Please click here to download new version of codec." (A codec by the way is the algorithm that describes how audio and video are compressed and decompressed.)

The page loads and transfers a disk image (dmg) file to the Mac. If the user has kept Safari's default settings, which open "safe" files after they download or if the user open the file, the disk image will be mounted and the installer package it contains will launch. If the installation doesn't start manually, the user is urged to start it to install the codec.

Installing the Trojan requires an administrator's password and this gives the rogue application full root privileges. In some ways, OS X is more secure than some versions of Windows, but all that security can be defeated easily with some social engineering. No video codec is installed. If the user returns to the website the "video" still will not play.

The Trojan changes the Mac's default DNS server so that Web requests to certain well-known websites will be routed to phishing sites where the user will be likely to give away private information. In a case such as this, even typing the correct Web address won't protect the user because the request is intercepted and rerouted.

Users of OS X version 10.4 and earlier have to way to see the changes made to the DNS server address in the graphical user interface. Under version 10.5, the change can be seen, but the modifications cannot be removed easily by the user. Worse yet, the Trojan installs a cron job that checks every 60 seconds to make sure that its DNS entries are still valid.

Intego says its VirusBarrier X4 with definitions dated October 31, 2007, and later will eliminate the malicious code if it's present and keep the Trojan from being installed. Intego also recommends that users never download and install software from untrusted sources or questionable web sites.

Going .... Going .... GOS.

You say you don't like Microsoft? You say you want a computer that doesn't use any Microsoft applications, but you're too cheap to buy an Apple and not nerdy enough to roll your own Linux machine—even with Ubuntu? What if somebody made a computer that ran a version of Linux, came with Open Office already set up, and was optimized to work with Google's on-line applications? And what if it cost just $200? (Truth in advertising: Plan on spending at least $350 to $400 because you'll need a few extras (a monitor, for example, and more memory.)

The Everex gPC TC2502 is more than a little underpowered with a 1.5GHz Via processor and just half a gigabyte of memory. It comes with an 80GB hard drive, which is adequate if you don't plan to work much with photographs or videos. Instead of Windows, the machine runs GOS, a version of Linux designed to depend on GMail and Google Documents. There's also a copy of the free OpenOffice, which can open most files from Microsoft Office.

Instead of doing most of the processing on the PC, the goal is to move the processing to the Internet. Thirty years ago, we used dumb terminals that were connected to servers. PCs, because they distributed the workload, were revolutionary. Now moving away from distributed processing and back to centralized processing is being seen as "new". How very last century.

The gPC comes with a mouse and a keyboard, but no monitor.

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