welo

They have a bad reputation as forum spammers... you wouldn't know anything about that?

http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/xilisoft.com

I'm no expert in the field of IT security, but as a software engineer I do have good knowledge of IT stuff in general. Maybe I'm comparable to one of the guys in IT.

So what would I do to get my hands on some sensitive documents...

As part of the IT department it is usually easy to access file shares on the network and get whatever documents you need from there. Nothing you can do about it. Of course this depends on how access privileges are implemented and who gets access to the Domain Administrator password.

If I'd like to get access to your PC I'd start with more conventional methods than installing malware on your PC. Again, knowing the Domain Administrator password will make things easy, since I can open the root drive on your PC as a file share (when connected to the company LAN) without an ordinary user being able to notice.

I could also setup a second Administrator account on your PC - maybe this is even company standard - which allows me to do the same. As the person who installs software and maintains your PC I'd definitely have Administrator privileges on your Laptop.

There is no need to install anything on your PC yet - nothing that might arouse suspicion and bring me troubles...

welo

Hm. Not sure why, but I tried again and now it seems to work.

Just went to Google Maps, logged in, clicked My Maps, then selected my previously created map and clicked edit. I could then add placemarks and add a description.

Still not sure if this is what you want and how to share this map embedded on your webpage. But it's definitely a progress from before when we obviously tried to edit Google's data which is not allowed and results in said error message (and that's what I actually wanted to say with my last comment).

EDIT: Played around more and it seems to work now. Added a bunch of stuff, then clicked on 'link', then 'Customize and preview embedded map'. Set the size of the map, zoomed and panned the map to get the desired view, and copied the code for the iframe into a html file.

Tested with a different browser to make sure that the placemarks also show up for other users than myself.

Cheers,

welo

Seems this feature is for editing the actual Google Map, not creating your own map or your own overlay. Only a view country maps are 'open' for public editing - try to add your Research Center in Cambodia or Myanmar and it will work

http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer....p;answer=155415

The error message is very cryptic for sure...

welo

Further check if your UPS has a data cable to connect to your PC via USB.

You can then easily configure an automatic shutdown of your PC when the battery of the UPS runs low (on a longer outage). (Windows: Control Panel / Power Options)

welo

screenshot would help!

Thai Visas in Cambodia can be obtained from the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh. You can travel by bus, shared taxi, or plane.

There are agents in Poipet and Siem Reap that will apply in your name at the embassy in Phnom Penh for a service fee - going to Phnom Penh yourself hardly safes on costs compared to staying at the border and using one of the agents.

There are Visa Run agencies that offer all-inclusive packages (transport, hotel in Poipet, Cambodian Visa fee, agent fee, etc) from Bangkok. Check Bangkok Post for ads. Look for 'Tourist Visa', not the 1-day Border-Run packages!

Double Entry was not available during the free-visa period. There were reports that the embassy had started issuing Double Entries again before but then stopped again after short time with the introduction of free visas.

Not sure what is the status is now.

You'll have to stay 2 nights in Poipet when using the agent. Friday is obviously not a good day to start your trip since the embassy in Phnom Penh is closed on weekends.

Read through the topics listed here to get more information on Poipet.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Poipet-tag.html

welo

Those of you who have already bought a NAS - did you choose any specific disks for that purpose? Low power, server editions, or just some specific model?

Did anybody do a cost comparison for PC-based vs. NAS-box?

welo

^ agreed. No other way to be 100% sure.

A (skilled) attacker will load custom malware on your PC, not one that is spread over the internet. Most malware scanners are signature based. That means the scan engine only scans for 'known malware'.

That said, most anti-virus solutions now do implement so-called heuristics and try to detect malicious programs and new variants that have not yet been added to the signature database.

I recommend Avira (free) and NOD32 (free online scanner) for that purpose. With Avira make sure heuristics is set to Maximum, not sure how this works in NOD32. Please note that this will very likely also produce some FALSE POSITIVES. So this is no basis for going to start a war with your IT department.

Malwarebytes' works mostly with signatures AFAIK, so of not much use here. Not sure about Spybot.

Hitman Pro is also worth a try. It has a database of known files that are known to be virus free/unmodified. If a file is not in the database it will mark it as suspicious and upload it to a scan cloud. This way you can scan for modified files on your PC - common applications should not show up as 'suspicous' - of course you cannot rely on the scan result from the scan cloud, and it'll take some experience and knowledge to keep going from there.

Your next problem is root kits. These are malicious programs that install 'deep into the system' and hide themselves even from anti-virus scanners. There are rootkit scanners but due to their nature root-kits are very hard to detect...

Some more basic checks:

* Check entries in Autoruns (use msconfig or Sysinternals Autoruns) for suspicous entries

* Check each task in the Task Manager for suspicious entries

* Check the user manager for other user accounts - if your PC is part of a Windows Domain you are at the Domain Administrators mercy anyway...

* Make sure the Firewall is up and running and check the exception list - you could also do a port scan on your PC

If IT put some serious efforts in hacking your installation the chances that you find the mole are low. But bringing in some security software and checking your general setup for security issues is not a wrong thing in Pirate-Thailand.

welo

I called a Citibank UK 0800 number yesterday, using SKYPE.

Must admit, I was surprised it worked as I thought 0800 numbers were not allowed.

Surprisingly it showed as 0 per minute, a free call...

I guess VOIP calls are different from standard calls in that respect, since VOIP calls get connected to the traditional phone network at the recipients national phone network. Meaning there is a VOIP gateway in the destination country that connects the VOIP call into the traditional phone network. To the recipient the international call looks like a domestic call.

The company running toll-free numbers have to pay for your call (maybe not directly but via volume discounts), and that's why only domestic calls are allowed (not sure if it would be technically possible at all with international calls). When calling via VOIP, for instance Skype Out, the call appears to be a domestic call and the system will accept the call (toll-free).

Out of curiosity - did you require a Skype account with money charged to the account to make it work or does Skype offer this service to any registered user?

Disclaimer: this post is most likely technically not accurate, and maybe my explanation is way off or even completely wrong. Evetrybody should feel free to chime in and correct me!

welo

I hope you are still around and don't mind helping with some more questions.

Sure! You're afraid that I was one of the Farangs injured during the riots?

Sorry to hear that Maxwell didn't help, but your report about the Pantip repairs sounds good to me.

Before we start I want you to understand a view tech terms, so you don't get to confused with my writing:

harddisk - OK, we know what this is - the physical device

partition - a contained data area on the disk, a logical structure. A harddrive can be devided into one or more partitions.

partition table - a small block of information at the very beginning of a harddisk that contains information about how this disk is devided into partitions (number, size, etc).

file system - a raw partition cannot be used to read/write data yet, it has to be formatted with a specific file system. The file system is a way of organizing directories and files within a partition. The format process creates all required structures within a partition, basically sets up the partition to allow data to be written and read.

*****

The most important thing during the whole process is that you DO NOT WRITE to the two disks, only read. As long as the two disks are not modified, you can try again and again to retrieve the data until you succeed.

*****

Foremost this means no copying/deleting/formatting/partitioning or any kind of manipulation of the data/structure on the two disks. You should make sure that any program you run to access the disks does not execute any write operations.

So for the first hdd this means that even if you can read the partition on Windows don't fiddle around with it. Windows cannot access the file structure anyway, because it doesn't support the file system - so you should be pretty safe here. On the other hand there is no real reason to connect the drives to Windows any more. There is a minor risk that any OS or application might want to format, initialize or do-whatever with the two disks since they appear empty or not accessible. Only a very untalented person would press YES/OK on such a dialog.

So I'm a bit paranoid here, but just want to point out that accidents like this CAN happen - so just watch out

- When we connected the first disk to PC, it showed the partitions and show the capacity used. But when we connected the second drive (the problem disk), it only showed the capacity but then said "unused". Is this an indication of a problem with the disk itself, even though the electronic is now working?? -- P.S. Please note that this is a RAID0 that runs Linux and we were looking at the information using Windows.

From what I read on the internet this is to be expected. The first and second harddrives differ in that respect: the first actually contains 2 'standard' partitions (system, data) and hence a valid partition table (information about the structure).

The second drive does not contain any standard partition table, I remember reading that one guy said the data/partition is created 'directly on the disk' - whatever that means exactly, I assume that any standard Operating System (Windows, Linux) would not recognize that structure and show it as 'unused', 'unallocated' or whatsoever.

Do NOT FIDDLE AROUND with any harddisk partitioning tool or partition recovery tool on those drives!

- Now that we know we can run both disks (albeit using the same electronics), the guy said he would use recovery software to extract data from each disk on to a 2TB Western Digital drive that I gave him. Will you please explain a little about the process of the recovery and transfer data, because this is a RAID0 and it runs Linux?

As I pointed out before, the most important aspect with any data recovery software is that the software DOES NOT WRITE any data back to the disk that is to be recovered. Any serious data recovery software nowadays follows that guideline. Check the website of the software that will be used and it will probably state that somewhere.

On the matter of data recovery software: there are different kind of disaster scenarios involving hard-drives. Many deal with damage to the magnetic surface (bad blocks), and will try to find those and recover data from those sectors. This is NOT what you need (though often applications try to cover all aspects of harddisk recovery)

I assume that guy wants to use software that is able to read data without partition table or file table (meaning the information where to find files on the harddrive is lost, but the files are still there). This happens when somebody accidentally formats a partition, or deletes the partition table information or deletes data on the drive. Of course this might also happen as a result of physical damage (bad sectors) and therefore those areas are overlapping.

Data Recovery Tools often provide several features to retrieve 'lost' data. In case of an inaccessible partition they will try to restore the partition table first so that data is then accessible by standard means. If this doesn't work out they will scan sector by sector of the hard-disk reading the data and trying to identify the structure (files). This is a lengthy process and stresses the hard-drive due to the extensive read operations. In case of a physically damaged harddrive this will often worsen the situation - since your harddrives most likely don't have any damage to the magnetic surface it should be OK. But we don't know for sure if the damage was limited to the electronics or if the magnetic platters have been damaged, too.

If your drive doesn't make any weird sounds when spinning up it should be fine. Check out the audio files on the following website (on the right) - this is the sound physically damaged harddrives produce.

http://www.acsdata.com/lacie-data-recovery.htm

I guess the technician at Pantip can identify a damaged harddrive - it happens often enough in 'overheated' Thailand - and he would have told you.

OK, back to the data recovery process: the data recovery application of course has to understand the file system that is used on the 'damaged' drive. I couldn't find information on which file system the LaCie box uses. I guess it is a standard Linux file system like Ext2, Ext3, but it also might be something less ordinary such as ReiserFS. The data recovery tool used will need to support that specific file system used. Not sure if it determines the file system type automatically.

Some tools only work with Windows file systems (FAT32, NTFS) but most professional tools support multiple file systems including various Linux types.

- Assuming that we can access data on both disks and transfer them onto my WD drive, will I be able just access and use the data immediately? I meant, will there be incompatibility issue i.e., Linux vs Windows, Lacie vs. WD, or some restrictions about data access from the recovered data from 2 RAID0 disks??

Usually this is a lengthy process (a view hours or even days) - not sure though how long it would take on an otherwise healthy drive - usually recovery processes also have to deal with bad blocks which prolongs the process. So honestly... I don't know.

If the recovered files can be accessed from Windows depends on the file system used on the WD drive. I guess that recovery software should be able to write recovered data to a Windows (NTFS or FAT32) partition even if the recovered partition has a Linux file system. But this depends on the recovery software used.

More Advice (aka my take on that problem)

I recommend duplicating the 2 drives to 2 other drives before proceeding. You can use disk imaging software to create a 'copy' of the two drives even though the partition and file system is not accessible or even supported. This is a low level binary copy that just copies bit by bit from the source to the target drive. So it doesn't matter what partition or file system is used.

The resulting disks should be identical data-wise. Any recovery process could be done on those drives then.

Of course this is an extra step that is not absolutely necessary. It is for data safety in case anything goes wrong during the recovery process.

To be honest, I am not absolutely sure if the target drives just have to have the same (or larger) size than your original drives or if they have to have same 'geometry' (same number of sectors etc). I think this is not necessary.

So my take would be to duplicate the two drives first, then connect the duplicated drives to a PC and run Linux (e.g. Ubuntu Live CD or any other) to access the RAID. Big advantage: no need to 'recover' data in a lengthy process, just access it. I guess that people might be scared of the Linux part, but with some Linux experience and the website I posted last time, it is a matter of 15 minutes to get it up and running (excluding the duplication process beforehand)

You could even try to get the Lacie box up and running again. From the log files you showed me I assume that the box is still functional. My guess - and of course that cannot be anything other than a guess since I've never seen the box in real - is that maybe only the power supply to the drives is broken, and the rest still working. You could try to power the drives from an external power supply (a standard PC power supply). Maybe the box still works that way. That way you don't even have to use Linux.

Of course it's a risk connecting the drives to the box, that's why the disks should be duplicated.

welo

EASEUS

EASEUS Partition Manager seems nice, and the free version (for private use) doesn't seem to have serious limitations in functionality AFAIK. BUT only the paid version supports 64bit Windows. You could run it from a bootable CD, since the filesystem on Windows XP 64bit is not different from 32bit - however, creating a bootable CD is - again - limited to the paid version (and you would require a 32bit OS to create it in the first place )

Btw why do you run 64bit Windows, do you have more than 3 GB RAM?

Have a read here on how to resize the system partition:

http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-parti...m-partition.htm

http://www.partition-tool.com/resource/res...partition-2.htm

GPARTED

Otherwise GParted is a (really) free alternative, and it's easy to obtain a bootable CD as others have already pointed out (Ubuntu Live-CD or the smaller Gparted Live CD)

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/resize/resizing.htm

Get yourself familiar with Gparted and some of the tech terms that you will encounter during your task by watching youtube

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gparted&aq=f

Learn from others who have tried the same...

http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:ubunt...on+with+gparted

Windows built-in Tools

If it's true that the 64bit version of Win XP has built-in tools to manipulate 'live' partitions I actually recommend to use those. MS should know how to resize a system partition without bringing troubles to the OS.

Good Luck!

welo

It is not exactly Guru magic to use one of those tools (especially Partition Magic), but there definitely IS the risk that something goes wrong. Been there, done that - Partition Magic makes everything look easy (if it works), but when it lets you down, you will end up with a big mess (=corrupted partition tables).

If you know how to re-partition a harddisk and re-install Windows, you can just give it a try (after backing up your data). Most likely it will work. Make sure you have a 2nd computer on standby to be able to consult google on any problems that come up.

If not, just install from scratch (just as Forkinhades suggested) with the additional benefit of a clean and faster system afterwards.

One more idea on how to accomplish your intended task, if your 2nd partition is less than half full.

1. Defragment your 2nd partition until all data is located in the first half. (Use freeware Defraggler or similar)

2. Shrink the 2nd partition and create a 3rd partition on the now available unallocated space after the 2nd partition.

3. Move files from 2nd partition to the newly created 3rd partition

4. Delete the 2nd partition

5. Resize the first partition to include the now unallocated space between 1st and 3rd partition.

If these instructions sound too complicated for you, better ask another person for help

Good luck!

welo

@Forkinhades

Sorry, I was wrong, you were right! Vista and 7 actually do have resizing support. But Windows XP hasn't!

A Word of Caution!

While the resizing of 'live' partitions (those containing data) has become pretty stable over the past years, it used to be very error-prone. Worst case scenario: the partition table gets messed up and all partitions on this drive are lost. (Though recovery is probably possible in such a case but not trivial!!).

In your case the tool first has to move the data on your second partition away from the beginning of that partition. Then it will shrink this partition cutting off the required gigabytes starting from the beginning. Then it can enlarge the first partition.

My recommendation:

1. Backup important data from both partitions!!! (Both partitions will be modified, in case of an error all data can be lost)

2. Depending on how much there is on your 2nd partition, it might be easier to wipe out that partition (move the data somewhere else, maybe to some offline storage as part of a backup process), delete it and then enlarge the first partition.

When resizing the system partition you might also run into problems with Windows not booting afterwards. Nothing that cannot be fixed, but still...

Here is a guide using gparted, but the scenario is different in the way that there is unallocated space after the first partition (similar to point 2. above)

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vis...ista-partition/

@Forkinhades

Windows does not allow resizing of 'live' partitions. It does provide basic partitioning options (delete, create) but data will always be lost! And of course it does not work for the system partition.

I haven't used this particular feature of partitioning tools in years since it had failed me too many times before. But from reading reports on the internet I guess it still is no piece of cake.

Maybe others have more recent experiences and can give feedback.

welo

Caught an article in BusinessWeek that pretty much agrees with my assessment of Ubuntu. I personally think Ubuntu is missing a user interface guy. One user interface God. Design by committee always results in a terrible mess, and Ubuntu is testament to that, despite the fact that Ubuntu is actually intended to clean up much of the mess in other Linux installs. It does succeed in some ways, but not enough.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-2...aroslovsky.html

Not a good article IMHO - doesn't argue its point well enough (which doesn't mean your statement is wrong)

WM (Windows Managers)[/url], how can we have an intelligent discussion? And while I'm no Martha Stewart, I think the below screenshot looks just as good as anything out of OSX-ville.

(Note that I have a 1920x1080 on the left and a 1680x1050 on the right; hence the 30 pixel gap in the right half of the picture)

[/b]

dave, user interface design is not only about the 'looks', it's about usability in general, intuitiveness, ease of use, how well things play together, the concept behind the UI, etc. Installing and managing the software on your PC is also an aspect of usability.

I dare say that Ubuntu's UI of course suffers from the fact that it is a collection of software developed by various persons/companies and are not under the supervision of a strong UI guru/department. I guess the Ubuntu team can only do so much to level out the usability aspects of the various applications they try to unite under one hood and introduce a global 'look & feel'.

Other OSes suffer the same problem with 3rd party apps. The Adobe suite on Windows used to bring some Mac style UI elements to Windows which was sometimes confusing for Windows users. With Linux the same problem appears on much 'lower levels' of the OS.

I think Linux has come a long way and improved a lot, but Ubuntu is not there yet where I personally would like to see it. The software manager that is not 'yet ready' to completely replace the standard tool set is one example.

For some those issues might be a show-stopper, other can easily accept it and embrace the many other benefits that Linux offers in other areas.

I don't think it benefits Ubuntu if users ignore or deny those problems. Which doesn't mean that all problems mentioned in this thread fall into this category and cannot be disputed.

I myself got pretty frustrated too when coming back to Linux with Ubuntu 9.10, see thread here.

I remember dave_boo recommended openSuse to me which has a longer history of smoothing the user experience and provides a all-in-one configuration & management tool to ease system maintenance.

welo

Interestingly not all softpedia web server IPs are blocked. www.softpedia.com resolves to 4 different IPs (maybe round robin or location specific - don't know):

64.225.158.191 seems to be NOT blocked whereas 64.225.158.190 IS blocked. Didn't check the other two IPs.

However, you cannot just access the website using the IP address (e.g. http:// 64.225.158.191), the softpedia webserver will send a redirect to www.softpedia.com, which then gets resolved to the one cached by Windows - and that one is probably blocked.

In my setup with the Google DNS I get randomly assigned either .190 or .191. If it resolves to .191 I can access softpedia, otherwise I get the MICT page.

Please note that resolved IPs are cached on several levels (OS, browser, provider) and most likely you will get the same IP over and over again when running a ping or reloading the web page in your browser.

You might want to play the game to clear Windows' DNS cache (ipconfig /flushdns) and then ping www.softpedia.com to see which IP you get assigned. If .191, open your web browser and load www.softpedia.com - it should be OK. Make sure you close and re-open the web browser after flushing the Windows DNS cache.

Of course there are other ways to 'hard-code' the IP for www.softpedia.com, e.g. add an entry to the Windows hosts file.

For sure this is hardly worth the effort, and I guess MICT will remove the block soon anyway. This was merely an experiment out of curiosity...

welo

I have also had trouble accessing sites using True ADSL.

Including Myspace, Windowslive and sometimes random sites like my Blogpage.

My sister in-law works for true and I asked to find out what it was and she had no idea, reckons it has nothing to do with banned sites or blocking as far as she knows.

Well, if you get redirected to the MICT page here then it most likely has to do with banned sites....

If there is no response or a blank page it might be related to MICT, bad internet service or several other reasons.

If it is not blocked by mistake (which would be embarrassing IMHO) it is just RIDICULOUS!!

Let's block GOOGLE since you can use it to find BAD THINGS

TOT/Sa Kaeo/14:20 ditto (blocked) now!

Technical incompetence?

No problem here, TOT/Sa Kaeo/10:19

welo

You wont find this annoyance on pirated local cable either because they just rent the DVD and play it through a cheap player with no subtitles or censoring.

A bit off topic...

Ever seen the VJ do a fastforward live on TV to get over a sex/erotic scene - that was on a Cambodian movie channel though. Of course it took him some time to notice and get up from his chair, but he made up by fastforwarding long into the next scene. Awesome.

Try installing the latest update (if there is any).

Google is your friend!

Just picked one link out of many as a result of a simple Google search:

http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-t...topped-working/

A very generic error with various possible causes. ATI driver issues, Windows Update issues, etc.. Check the link

or you can go into the settings of internet explorer tools>internet options>connections and set the default connection to either the modem or adsl

This looks like an even easier solution! Does this setting only affect Internet Explorer or all internet traffic (Other web browsers, Skype, etc)?

welo

It is very hard to imagine a scenario where this is related the VoIP provider. The fact that it reached your voicemail means the interconnect between the Thai terminator and AIS is working fine. The call is now inside of AIS network. So, at this point, there should be no difference really between a call from one AIS subscriber to another and a call from the AIS tandem to your mobile phone.

My guess was that something might go wrong at the interconnect, but what you write makes sense - in such a case it would not end up at my voicemail but not reach the AIS network at all.

It might be paranoid to think that maybe AIS has an interest in not always routing these calls correctly - I mean deliberately

(Did I mention that the twin towers were never hit by any airplane but...)

I would check certain things.

1) Does this happen predominantly at certain times of the day? If so, it strongly indicates a capacity issue during peak hours.

2) Does it still happen if you test in a different part of the city? It is possible the cell towers in your area are full. Your phone is still registered on the network and can communicate via the SACCH channel, but when a call comes in and an attempt is made to get a B channel, they are all in use and the system gives up. This is a very common problem.

I definitely have to run my own tests on this problem. Get my friends phone and call my cellphone several times during the day and see if I can provoke the erroneous behavior.

The problem doesn't happen that often so I could answer your questions about peak hours.

I live in a village in the countryside. I guess there is more than one sender around since I remember reading on the phone a sender named [village name 4].

Again, unfortunately (or fortunately) the problem doesnt' happen on a very regular basis, so hard to test the sender theory.

Thanks for your explanation on the different channels. I didn't know that and this could easily explain the problem.

You simply aren't that important.

I am VERY important

..to my wife

..to my parents

...

Thanks for your feedback!

welo