A Mind Lost
Anything and everything.
Upgrading my Interwebs
Lately I’ve had to keep a closer eye on my bandwidth usage. With a sibling forced to return home, as well as myself, my parents, and my kids, it really doesn’t take long to burn through 95 gigabytes of bandwidth in a month. YouTube and the various other Flash laden sites, Steam’s digital distribution, and all manner of sundry entertainments conspire to consume our bandwidth limit. Throw in a pair of XBoxes, a PS3, two smartphones, all on top of the 5 computers (6 if one counts my notebook) that can all be running simultaneously, and it really doesn’t take long to chew through what’s available.
While checking our usage this morning, I noticed that Rogers now provides something called Usage Assurance; five bucks a month gives an extra 20GB of bandwidth. This certainly beats their $1.50/GB overage charge. I Googled it to see what the specifics were and along the way found out that they had grandfathered our plan (“Extreme 95”) in favour of a newer one. The same plan, at the same price point (although with higher transfer rates) now grants 100GB of usage. As for the Usage Assurance, I sort of got sidetracked weighing the cost benefits of switching to a newer plan and didn’t really give it any more thought.
Unfortunately, upgrading requires a new modem. We’ve been using a Motorola SB5100 since we bought it five years ago (it has more than paid for itself in saved rental fees); I’ve never had any problems that I could definitely attribute to the modem itself. It’s been a rock-solid piece of hardware.
A lengthy chat with a CSR ended up with an order placed for a new “D3” modem to be purchased and an upgrade to the ExtremePlus plan for an extra $10 a month over what we’re currently paying. That’s 150GB per month for $69.99, rather than 100GB (or 95GB) for $59.99. A quick trip to the most convenient Rogers store and I had my new modem. Yay.
The modem is an SMCD3GN-RES modem/router:
The SMCD3GN-RES is a powerful DOCSIS 3.0 gateway providing 802.11n wireless connectivity to high-speed “Wideband” Internet services. Taking advantage of DOCSIS 3.0 technology, the gateway operates on up to four downstream and/or upstream bonded channels supporting speeds of up to 160Mbps downstream and 120Mbps upstream. In addition, the SMCD3GN-RES offers numerous remote management options, provisioning via GUI, CLI or downloadable configuration file, advanced troubleshooting capabilities, Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall, PPTP, L2TP, and IPSec VPN passthrough, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), and DOCSIS Quality of Service (QoS).
Basically it’s a modem and router in one with all sorts of fancy pants stuff that I don’t really need. I suppose it’s easier to troubleshoot problems for ignorant people (ignorant in its benign meaning) when everything’s all in one box, but I’m not too keen on the whole thing.
I already have a D-Link DIR-615 (B2 rev, no OpenWRT for me sadly) that’s served me well for a few years now, but I figured I’d give the SMC’s WiFi a go since it’d be one less electronic device sucking up juice. Configuring it was pretty easy, although it took me a while to find the login and password that allows access to the device’s more advanced features (rogcesadmin/wra8uje) rather than the “customer” administration panel (cusadmin/password). Incidentally, if you have one of these and are looking to access the control panel, it resides at 192.168.0.1.
Messing around with things, I noticed a couple of issues that really started irritating me after just a short time. The first was that the device appeared to spontaneously reboot…
In fact, while I was typing that, the modem went ahead and rebooted, except this time it didn’t come back. I spent an hour and a bit messing around with it, including power-cycling, trying multiple cable outlets, and even factory resetting the damn thing before finally calling tech support. The techie asked me to move it back to its initial position and jack, and blammo, it came right back up. Sometimes I really hate technology, especially when it screws up for no apparent reason, and makes me look like a tard in the process.
Aside from the inexplicable reboots, the built-in WiFi was performing absolutely terribly. The ExtremePlus plan’s download rate is around 32Mbps, I was pulling a third of that:
I dug around and figured out how to disable the built in WiFi, opting instead to go back to my D-Link router, and sure enough my rate tripled:
Even better is the occasional burst speeds:
The D-Link is within a few feet of the modem, so it’s not a distance or interference issue. Anecdotal evidence indicates the SMC is a crappy wireless router.
One thing the technical support fella did say was that plugging the modem directly into a wall outlet for electricity, rather than a power bar, would eliminate the reboots. I jimmied mine around to get it into an outlet (our home’s electrical outlets appear to have been placed by a clueless twit), so we shall see if that fixes things.
The only other gripe I have right now is that my modem also randomly disconnects from the network. It’s been doing it with the old modem for the last two weeks or so, and now it’s doing it with the new one. I’ve called them about this problem too, but the tech I got on the line was less helpful. He tried blaming it on my router. I’m really starting to get fed up with Rogers, and can’t help but wonder if I should have looked in to an alternative provider rather than sinking more money into a new modem and upgraded plan.
If the disconnections continue, I’ll be back on the phone with them tomorrow… or Tuesday, not sure if their support lines are open on Monday. It’s really frustrating, particularly while gaming. I dusted off my LoTRO account, but eventually gave up after getting disconnected thrice in one hour. I think there was something else I was gonna mention, but I got disconnected again, then side-tracked by YouTube for a moment, and just realised it’s time for bed. Got a bit of a headache from messing with things…
Dead Island Sucks
My son got this for his birthday for the Xbox. Being a fan of zombies and RPGs, I’ve been playing after he goes to bed. I’m 60% into the main storyline and I finally shut it off for no reason other than it’s a terrible, terrible game.
A quick list of why it sucks follows:
– I run my Xbox in 1080 on a 24″ monitor, and the game still looks pretty crappy. The soft blur on outdoor areas is annoying, indoor textures are bland, and overall the whole thing just looks kinda “meh” for a 2011 title.
– Weapons degrade too quickly. The constant need to repair after smacking a dozen zombies around is both unrealistic in some cases, and irritating in all cases.
– Firearms suck. Really badly. Kicking is more effective than a shotgun blast to the face. At least the kick has a chance of knocking them down.
– The focus on melee combat would be wonderful, except that it’s often difficult to judge when an enemy is range, resulting in a missed attack (while the zombie then proceeds to smack you around). Two foes can easily swamp you. Also, the introduction of “Floaters” (a zombie with a ranged and AoE attack) makes forays into the sewers (a not infrequent thing once you get to the city) frustrating rather than challenging.
– Even though you level up, you don’t actually get any tougher. It seems that while I’m spending hours whacking zombies and doing quests, these same zombies must be doing quests themselves (Retrieve three brainsssss for me?). They level up when I level up, and the amount of damage they do isn’t quite proportional to the health gained. As the game has progressed (my “character” is mid-20’s now), it seems to take fewer hits to kill me than it did when I was level 1.
– Chugging endless drinks to regain health is boring. Seriously. A drink fills one bar. An apple or snack fills half. Medium medkits heal two.
– Mediocre to terrible voice acting. This one speaks for itself. There’s nothing good to say about the voice acting.
– Cut scene dialogue is pretty bad too. And in every cut scene, the black guy looks like he’s retarded or something.
– The audio system could use some work. In many looped sounds there’s a noticeable pause between each loop that ruins the immersion.
– Human opponents are often even more frustrating than the dead. The first time I got jumped by a Punk, with full health, I died without even injuring said Punk. I tried to bash him, but apparently he was immune. The only reliable way to kill a Human is to shoot them in the head.
– Finally, with firearms you can Iron Sight to improve your aim. This would be great if only the gun (a pistol mind you) DIDN’T WAVER ALL OVER THE PLACE! Again, firearms suck. Badly.
Overally, I give Dead Island a 35/100 score. The idea was great, the implementation not so much. I was hoping for a Diablo 2 meets Left 4 Dead, instead it’s a turd that just gets worse as the game progresses. I should mention that I only played solo as I don’t play online on the Xbox (and can’t justify paying for a Gold Live subscription, screw Microsoft). Perhaps it’s more enjoyable as a multiplayer co-op game, but I doubt it. I just can’t understand why my kid loves it so much (he’s only 12, maybe that’s it).
An amendment: I came across this video review based on the accidentally released developer version on Steam. I almost pissed myself laughing.
And Zero Punctuation. This one has an advert at the beginning, but it’s worth it. I forgot to mention the horrible follower AI. He does not.
How I Miss Thee, Weapons Factory
I used to play Quake 2 Weapons Factory, and I loved it. It was the best mod for Q2. I came across the YouTube page of one of the other fellas who used to play, Rom; he has videos of some of the demo recordings he made during WF’s twilight years. Naturally, I nostalgia’d, hard.
Mostly I miss the people who played. Tonnes of great guys (and a few gals) who I don’t have opportunity to talk to much any more. If any of you come across this, you’ll know who you are. Particularly there was (*) Nabaroth, Scarab, Samha1n, Nereq, GenNuisance, Rom, Zombie, Mort, nolegs, nospam, Lorsen, Moxi, Mavi, (I’m struggling to remember names after all these years), Madhatter, Riptcage, and even Ace2k that little bastard. If you remember Guln/Andrew, then you’re probably somewhere on that list too. Really, there were far too many great people who I got to play with to recall.
I should dig up all the demos I have and see about making videos out of them. It would be nice if we could get some sort of a revival going, but after a few failed attempts over the last few years, I just can’t see that happening. Sadface.
I wanted to throw a screenshot up, but can’t seem to find the disc I burnt my Q2 files to.
Update March 2016
This is, by far, my most commented on post out of all the crap I blather about. It’s a treat to still get comments five years after posting it, and ten years after I quit playing WF. I never did find that disc I burned, though I’m pretty sure it’s around here somewhere; it’s past time I dug the damn thing up and relived some of my best years of gaming.
To everyone who has left a comment, and those that may in the future, thank you. Even if I never got to play with you, that you were a part of such an enjoyable experience earns my appreciation regardless.
(*) I’m going to add more names as I remember them, or if they chance to comment and refresh my memory, down here. If I miss someone, it’s not by intent. Honestly, the whole WF community was an awesome bunch, and I enjoyed every minute I spent with you guys!
Impugn, Spectre, Lonedust (or was that Ronedust? 🙂 )
Update July 2017
This is probably my most visited post. If you played WF, I encourage you to leave a comment. Even just shout-outs to individuals or clans. Keep ’em coming.
Update June 2019
I’m still getting the occasional comment here. Took me a while to approve the last few as WordPress was giving me some problems (not sure why, but clearing my cookies and site data seems to have fixed it). Eight years later and I’ve not yet managed to find that burned disc I mentioned. Perhaps I threw it out during one of my many great purges? 😢 Regardless, hello to everyone who continues to leave a comment! I’ve often wondered if it might be worthwhile to set up a sort of reunion site, like Samha1n’s Biosentral from way back, so people could possibly reconnect after 20 (!!!) years.
Update February 2020
Keep the comments coming, guys. Still love seeing old names stopping by to say hi almost ten years since posting this, and almost 20 since WF kinda died.
DTP – Deconstruction & Ghost
I’ve now had a week and a half with the Devin Townsend Project’s “Deconstruction” and “Ghost” albums. I’ve been a fan of Devin’s since I first heard his vocal work in 1994 on Steve Vai’s “Sex & Religion”. While I’m a fan of guitar “wanking”, it was Dev’s singing that really stood out on that album. I had no idea who he was at the time, and it wasn’t until 1999 that I heard him again when my (long since ex-) wife bought me a heavy metal magazine that included a CD with “All Hail the New Flesh” off of “No Sleep ‘Til Bedtime – Live in Australia”. I didn’t put 2 + 2 together at the time, and it would be a few more years before I came across a couple Strapping Young Lad albums and it finally clicked that the vocal style was very similar to the singer I’d enjoyed so much on Vai’s album almost 10 years before.
As far as metal goes, SYL quickly tied with Megadeth as my favourite band (I’ve been a fan of theirs since 1992 when I was gifted a copy of “Rust in Peace”, and later “Countdown to Extinction”). At the time the only metal band I was familiar with was Metallica, with “… And Justice for All” being the last album of theirs that I enjoyed (everything after that, including the much lauded “Black” album was just crap).
But I digress. I had downloaded (yes, tsk tsk shame on me) SYL’s “City”, and loved it so much I bought it. Take that RIAA! In fact I prefer being able to listen to an album before I decide to purchase it. In the general case, it’s a group or musician I enjoy and will buy it anyway at the first opportunity. Some of the stuff I enjoy is pretty out there, making legal acquisition of their works difficult, if not impossible. In fact, on one occasion, the law has worked against my buying an album – Freekbass’s “The Air is Fresher Underground”. I only wanted one track, “Minute to Forever”, but was willing to buy the album anyway. Amazon refused to sell me a digital copy as I’m Canadian, and the Canuck Amazon doesn’t have an MP3 option. While the CD was (and still is) listed as out of stock, a used copy was going to cost me $32! I’m not paying that for a used CD, sorry.
Anyway, I digress again. I do that a lot.
Fortunately, ordering Dev’s stuff has been a pretty painless experience. When “Addicted” and “Ki” came out, I bought them in addition to “Ocean Machine Biomech”, “Accelerated Evolution”, “Ziltoid the Omniscient” and “Alien”. More recently I also purchased his newest two (“Deconstruction” and “Ghost”) as well as “Synchestra” (the special edition of course, I wanted the DVD). I also ordered, via e-Bay, an Ocean Machine Biomech long sleeve shirt.
I’m a little miffed because the CDs and the shirt were ordered through independent channels, and shipping was paid individually for both orders, but the items were all shipped together in one package. The shipping on the shirt was the more expensive of the two, but it looks like the lesser of the two amounts ($13 for the CD’s) was what was actually paid to get the items to me.
Not that I mind too much. While the cheap part of me balks at having had to pay an extra $20 or so, the money has gone to a musician (yes, I prefer to call him a musician rather than the more pretentious artist most of them call themselves these days) whose work I thoroughly enjoy. Besides, I’ve still got a few digital copies of his albums I haven’t got around to purchasing yet. It’s easier if I think of that 20 bucks as a rental fee for items as yet unbought. Of course, we in Canada already pay a tax on media, supposedly to offset “illegal” copying of copyrighted works; the Private copying levy, which is bullshit in my opinion, but it does grant us one important privilege – “Some argue that CRIA wanted to limit the scope of the private copying levy, given that it legalizes copying for the private use of the person making the copy, possibly regardless of whether the source is non-infringing or not.”
Unfortunately, due to the way the funds collected by the PCL are distributed, Devin likely wouldn’t receive a cent of it. The proceeds are distributed based on commercial radio airplay and sales samples. Devin, in spite of his large fanbase, is a fringe musician. I’ve never heard one of his songs on the radio, and would be surprised if anything he’s done has received any airplay at all. Anyway, I don’t mind Dev getting that extra whopping 20 bucks at all in the end. I just wish he’d be bothered to come out and perform in Toronto so I could see that bald bastard live. C’MON DEV, MAKE IT HAPPEN YOU YELLOW TOOTHED, SAGGY FACED JOWL MAN!
Wow, I’ve blabbed this much and haven’t actually said anything about the albums this post is supposed to be about.
Ghost is the mellow album of the pair. Lots of soft guitar work, a flute motif that runs throughout the entire album, and very subdued vocals (especially in Devin’s case). It’s a pleasant listening experience from start to finish, the kind of album that one puts on and just floats along with it. A few songs really caught my ear – “Fly”, “Feather”, “Ghost”, “Blackberry” and “Texada” are my favourites, but the songs all blend together so well that each track flows into the next.
Deconstruction is Strapping Young Lad on LSD with a bit of crack-cocaine thrown into the mix. It starts soft, gets heavy quick, and doesn’t let up until the disc stops spinning. Much as I enjoy Ghost, Deconstruction is my clear favourite of the pair. Many of the riffs are just so awesome sounding, heavy Devy at his finest. My fave tracks include “Juular”, “Planet of the Apes”, “The Mighty Masturbator”, and the title track “Deconstruction”. The orchestral work, performed by Prague Philharmonic Orchestra is wonderful as well.
What began as a post about these two wonderful albums turned into a long blurb and two scant paragraphs actually about the albums. How disappointing. Really, beyond saying they’re great listening, I can’t really think of anything else. So instead I’ll leave a pair of YouTube links to one song from each album.
First, a live recording of “Feather”, from Ghost.
And second, “The Mighty Masturbator”, from Deconstruction.
Oh and one more, “Ocean Machines”, from Ass-Sordid Demos. Love this track.
Reinstalling… again
Back in March I picked up a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB drive for my notebook to replace the Toshiba 250GB 5400RPM drive that came with it. After the initial setup and installation of a dual-boot Windows 7/Slackware system, I barely touched the machine until two weeks ago. Away on vacation with my kids, I fired up the notebook and, during the BIOS POST, received an error.
Specifically, it was a SMART error from the now four month old (technically about 6 months, from the manufacturing date) drive complaining that there was an End-to-End error (184). I had to look it up, but found that this indicates a mismatch between data in the drive’s cache and what it actually found on the disk.
Western Digital’s warranty support site marked this drive as being “Out of Region”, which makes no sense to me. I live in Canada, I purchased it in Canada, and it’s never left Canada. The only support option open to me is to take advantage of their Customer Loyalty Program and “upgrade” the (brand new) drive to a Scorpio Blue of a larger capacity (640, 750 or 1TB). Unfortunately, this is neither cost or performance effective. It’s roughly $100.00 to “upgrade” the drive, and while the sizes are larger, the reason I bought a Scorpio Black in the first place was for the faster rotational speed and larger buffer size.
I did e-mail their support folks, and received a reply in which the respondent claimed he was going to elevate this through the proper channels to get the region status of my drive changed. When that goes through I should be able to get an RMA.
In the interim, I first switched back to the 250GB drive and reinstalled. Then I picked up a 640GB Scorpio Blue anyway (the price was right and cheaper than what Western Digital was offering) and reinstalled yet again. I swear I could probably do this in my sleep with both hands tied behind my back.
Setting up Windows is so mind-numbing now. Install drivers, reboot, install drivers, reboot, hunt for drivers because ASUS never put out anything for 64-bit versions of Windows. The notebook is an ASUS F8Sn-B1, sporting an Intel Core2Duo @ 2.10GHz, 3GB of DDR2, and an nVidia GeForce 9500M GS with half a gig of memory. Certainly not a powerhouse by today’s standards, but it gets the job done. Unfortunately, it shipped with Vista, which I was quick to replace, and finding drivers first for XP and later for Win7 X64 has proven to be an annoying task.
Not so with Linux. All the hardware works just fine, wireless (Intel 4965AGN), wired (Realtek 8111 GB Ethernet), Bluetooth, sound; I even recall managing to get the webcam working at one point, though I don’t bother with it any more.
The first thing I usually do is grab the latest kernel source and roll my own. Slackware’s default kernels are great – I’ve never had one fail to boot a machine – but since they include just about everything (mostly modules, of course) they tend to be large and slow to boot. I prefer a lean kernel that only provides for the hardware in the machine or could possibly be plugged in to it. I also like using uvesafb to get a console in the display’s native resolution of 1280×800. The smudge effect the console suffers from when it’s scaled it very hard on my eyes.
After the kernel comes X, which is also fairly trivial to configure. I’ve kept my xorg.conf between installs, so it’s simply a matter of grabbing the latest nVidia driver for notebooks and letting its installer work its magic. I’ve only once had a problem with the nVidia driver, a few years ago, when there was a change in the kernel that caused an error when compiling the blob (a structure had a member renamed, if I remember rightly).
With X I forgo the usual desktop environments in favour of OpenBox and tint2. I used to like KDE, but these days I prefer the simplicity and flexibility OpenBox offers. I let wicd handle my wireless connection.
Finally, I follow the excellent tips provided by Dugan Chen for further tweaking Slackware, including rebuilding the various font rendering components for a nicer appearance. He has made this fairly trivial, and I appreciate the work he’s put in to it.
While fully configuring Slackware (13.37-current) to my tastes usually takes a few days, compared to Windows’ few hours, it’s much more enjoyable and educational. The only thing I haven’t got working yet is suspending/hibernating, but otherwise everything works perfectly. I just need to figure out why coming back from suspend leaves me with a blank screen.
UPDATE: Suspending while X is running works fine, from a console it does not resume properly. I believe this is caused by the video mode not being properly restored upon resume. I believe there’s a program, vbetool, that can be used from by the scripts which manage suspension/hibernation to save and restore the proper video mode. However, since I usually have X running I haven’t bothered looking in to it further.
Boycott Capcom and Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D
Do not purchase Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for yourself or your child. From DVice.com:
Basically what Capcom has done is make Mercenaries 3D a one-time play affair. Once you’ve unlocked all the goodies and played the entire game, you will not be able to erase the game’s save data and start fresh as if it were a new copy. Consider this: lending Mercenaries 3D to a friend, a little brother or sister will be worthless because they’ll only be able to continue playing the game with your saved settings and create their own.
Ostensibly Capcom’s looking to keep gamers from buying and selling this one in a used game shop. In just about any other business this sort of behaviour would be completely unacceptable (used vehicles, homes, books, movies, computers).
With this decision, Capcom has been added to the household boycott list. Of course, buying this game was not a happening thing for me anyway, thanks to Nintendo’s unbelievable EULA for the 3DS hardware, but Capcom’s lost my business too.
Spread the word. The only way the customers can hit back to this sort of idiocy is by keeping our money away from companies who think they can get away with such egregious nonsense. It’s unfortunate, but the software industry and the people behind it keeps getting worse and worse.
Windows Service Centre
A few minutes ago I received a phone call (with an unavailable name & number according to Call Display) from an East-Indian sounding woman with a thick and difficult to understand accent claiming to be calling from “Windows Service Centre”, while in the background I could hear many other similar sounding voices making the same pitch to others. Since when people ask for Mr. Whomever they usually want my father, I asked instead if I could take a message. Ignoring it, she started on her spiel which I was completely unable to understand due to both her accent and the noise. I ended up putting the phone down until she’d hung up.
Googling turned up several reports, some quite old, from Australia and the U.K. where people have received similar sounding phone calls. I’m located in southern Ontario, Canada (the GTA), so it looks like they’re broadening their horizons. They try to trick you into thinking they’ve somehow found out your computer is full of many nasty malicious virii, and with some remote access (and for a fee of course) they’ll “fix” your computer. Do not trust them, it’s just another scam.
ConTEXT
As I mentioned a while back (three weeks already, how time flies), I’ve been trying to find a replacement for ConTEXT, my editor of choice. While I’m slowly becoming accustomed to Vim, the whole modes paradigm still confuses me.
Feeling brave this weekend past, I decided to see if I couldn’t make sense of the ConTEXT source code. Checking a copy out from it’s repo on Google Code, I started poking around. I also spent a bit of time catching up with Borland Inprise CodeGear Embarcadero Delphi. I’ve always considered Delphi, known outside of the commercial camp as Object Pascal, to be a toy language. Aside from a brief affair with Pascal in the early 90’s, during highschool, I’ve had little to do with it over the years.
A New Editor
I’ve been looking for a new text editor for Windows lately. For years now I have been using ConTEXT, and it has been a faithful friend. Unfortunately, my editing needs have outgrown the features that ConTEXT provides. While ConTEXT is now open source, progress on it seems to have stalled. Written in Delphi, it is beyond my means to contribute to as my knowledge of Pascal is over 15 years behind me. I considered trying to port it to an open compiler (Free Pascal), but being as unfamiliar with it as I am with Pascal/Delphi, I didn’t consider it for very long.
I’ve alternately (and infrequently) tried dabbling with both Vim and Emacs. They’re pretty ubiquitous these days, running on just about everything under the sun. As a Windows and Linux user, having a cross-platform editor that I can use on both operating systems would be a great boon.
Unfortunately, they’re both complicated as hell!
The Rapture and Malware
Supposedly today marks the End of Days for the world, with weeping and wailing and, presumably, much gnashing of teeth.
I’m not holding my breath. I seem to recall it being said somewhere in the Bible that no man would know the date of Christ’s return, although I could be mistaken. I was raised Christian, and I’m now Agnostic with Christian tendencies (the good ones, not the bad like the pedophile clergy).
Aside from that, I had to spend a few hours fixing my son’s computer this morning. Infected with malware and a rootkit, everything had been “hijacked”, rendering the system unusable. Fake security and anti-virus warnings popped up at every turn, and every resulting link from a Google search was redirecting to a handful of harmful sites.
HijackThis showed nothing out of the ordinary, but MalwareBytes managed to locate and clean several items, including registry keys, task scheduler entries, and several binaries. The programs were located in the temp subdirectory of the user profile, as well as in the Windows directory. It had commandeered the .exe file association, as well, making it difficult to clean properly.
After running MWB, Firefox was still plagued with the hijacked search results. A bit of reading, and playing with many registry entries (as well as uninstalling Firefox, Java, Flash, and several other plugins) and I was left with the conclusion that there was a rootkit involved. I downloaded Kaspersky’s tdsskiller, and sure enough it detected a variant of the rootkit. One scan and reboot later and everything appeared to be working as it should.
Hopefully I managed to completely disinfect the computer, but one can never be sure that it’s entirely gone. These things can be pretty tenacious. I’m not even sure where my son picked it up from, but I believe it may have come from the software/driver CD that accompanied the Hip Street “Kids Camera” his grandmother got him for Christmas. I cautioned her against it, recommending it be returned for a refund as Hip Street’s products are pretty flimsy and, to be honest, shitty. I might give it a test in a virtual machine to see if that was the source. The problems only started today, and my son installed the software yesterday.
I’ve a friend who has repeatedly stated his belief that hackers (the bad ones, not the good ones) and virus/malware/rootkit authors should be shot (literally), a punishment I believe to be too harsh by far. Right now, though, I wouldn’t be adverse to knocking a few teeth loose.
A Mind Lost 
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