Install Problems:

This was a network (Ethernet) enabled all in one model. So I had connected the printer to the Linksys home router and assigned it a static IP, from the DHCP range that I had configured in the router. Next I ran the setup.ext that came with the printer and selected full install. During the install process, I selected the device as an Ethernet connected and the HP installing detected the printer on the network on its own. So all looked good and the installation finished successfully. I did a reboot to the computer after the installation was complete and then did a test print. And it printed fine. However, when I tried to open the HP all in one console for trying out other features, such as Scan and Copy, the software gave an error saying that the installation is incomplete!! And that I should re-install the software to try and fix the problem.

Attempt to Fix:

I looked around for answers on Google and HP support forums, but all I found was other frustrated people trying to install the same all in one device correctly. So I thought may be the drivers are old and Win 7 may be needing the latest drivers. So with my tech. mind, I downloaded the latest, full driver and software package from HP support site. Uninstalled the software in full and deleted the HP directory from Program Files folder. Did a restart and then tried to install everything fresh again, using the latest drivers and software package that I had downloaded from HP. So I followed the same procedure – installed the full drivers and software package. When the install wizard asked me how I was connected to the printer, I selected network and it went out and successfully detected the printer on the network. The installation completed successfully and rebooted the computer once again. To my surprise and frustration, the same problem happened again. The all in one device would print, but if I tried to launch the software to try out other features such as scan and copy, I would get an error saying that the installation did not complete successfully.

Solution:

After trying out few more things and more failed attempts, I decided to connect the device via a USB cable and attempt to do a fresh install again. So once again, I uninstalled the drivers and software, rebooted the machine, deleted the HP directory from the Program Files folder and tried to install the all in one device again using USB cable.  Behold, it worked! So clearly, there is something wrong with the install package that HP has provided. It does not install properly when the printer is connected via Ethernet cable. And the troubling part is, despite lots of people talking about it on their forum, HP is turning a blind eye to the problem.

But we have come far. Just a few hundred years ago, humans could swear that Earth was the center of our Solar system. And today we are ready to explore the outer reaches of our solar system and beyond. To concur the space and bend space and time, to save the Earth and so on.

Save the Earth sounds heroic and all good. But from whom? A big nasty rock that hits home and wipes all species out, global warming or the dying Sun that engulfs all its planets? Must be a killer virus, or even better the aliens! But if you look from above, Humans are the biggest danger to themselves. We are slowly killing our source of existence and many other species that have taken different shapes and forms on this little planet. Humans are the best and the worst, the Earth has ever had.

We now have science and technology to see far into space, yet we fail to see the consequences of our action at home, just few hundred years in advance. We keep producing things that the Earth cannot displace -Plastics. And we keep consuming more and faster than the Earth can replace. We have more than halved the fishes from the oceans and cut the forests that are the main producers of food in the food chain. We pollute the water that we and other creatures depend on and spread toxins in air and ground. All for the sake of our current physical comfort. Instant sense gratification.

What about the future? How long can we continue the way we have been doing our business, destroying our home slowly but steadily? Probably till the last of the rain forests stands, till the last of the beasts, birds and fishes roam free. We will see it all till the last of all is used, burnt, cut and destroyed. We are our own enemies – a strange one; as we are conscious and aware. May be we will find the way to get us out of this home, and go and destroy another planet. Or may be the Creator will rethink his masterpiece as “partially defective” and do a recall.

Speaking about finding another planet to pollute and destroy, we have found a planet which would thus far be the closest to having conditions necessary for existence of Earth like life. It has been named Gliese 581g, after the name of its star – Gliese 581 (a red giant). The planet rotates its sun at the right distance and experts believe that it could have liquid water on its surface. Although it is in tidal lock with its star, meaning only one side of the planet faces the light and the other is in perpetual darkness. It is about 20 light years away from us. So even if we had a space ship that could travel at half the speed of light, it will take us 40 yrs just to get there. So how do we go to that planet before we render our own home useless?

Here is how I think it will happen – The only way humanity can infiltrate and contaminate another planet is by having cyborgs as intelligent as humans. Space travel over such long distances for humans with current technology is not possible because of various factors – radiation, effects of inertia at high speed, life support systems increases payload, psychological effects of long term isolation, etc. However, if we had cyborgs as intelligent and as capable as humans, then they could take frozen human embryos in space ship and cover very long distance. Once they arrive at the destination planet, the cyborgs could create conditions and habitable place for the humans and then defrost the embryos to repopulate humans in that planet. Of course, this is not an easy plan and assumes that at some time in near future, we will have desktop computers as powerful and complex as human mind. But it is the most feasible one I think. And may be these smart cyborgs will realize the follies of humans and correct the short sightedness of our species that will make us want another planet in the first place. A classic sci-fi case of machines realizing that humans are the biggest danger to themselves and other species on our home planet and wanting to correct that by eliminating the problem. But for now, we have robots that can sing and dance, run at max speed of 20 km/hr and can only process no more than 2 images per second compared to human eye that processes 20.

• The worst and irresponsible use of plastic is done by the bottled water and soda companies. These companies have created a market and brain washed people into a terrible habit of drinking bottled water IN PLASTIC. Every time I go grocery shopping, I see someone or the other carrying a 24 pack of bottled water to their car. This is having a horrific impact on the environment.

• Plastic DOES NOT bio degrade. It will remain in the form of plastic long after humanity has perished or left the Earth because it had become inhabitable. However, plastic does photo degrade – which means that in presence of sunlight, it breaks down into smaller pieces of plastic. It just breaks into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic to the smallest particle. Which is even more devastating to the bio diversity on Earth coz then we will have a fine mixture of plastic in the soil and our water system. This is already happening. Plastic particles are found in far off places like the waters of Amazon river to the Islands of Hawaii. It enters the food chain from birds and fishes that consume these fine particles of plastic, moving up in the food chain to humans. “What goes around, comes around”.

THE SOLUTION:

Here is what we can do:

• STOP drinking bottled water. If your tap water is not drinkable and you rely on potable water, get a large bottle delivered to you place instead of buying 24 packs.
• STOP using plastic shopping bags. Do your grocery in few large reusable bags instead of using a dozen plastic bags each time. Most stores sell you reusable bags for under a $.
• Recycle the extra bags/ bottles etc. that somehow cling to you form somewhere.
• STOP getting your coffee/ soda in plastic disposable cups. Keep your coffee mug in your car, work, etc.
• STOP getting your lunch in disposable boxes, especially at work where you can keep a lunch box/ container and ask the restaurant to pack your food in it.

There are bio degradable plastic utensils available now. So why is the fast food industry not switching to those bio degradable plastic spoons, plates and cups? why is the airline industry not switching to serving water and beverage in those bio degradable cups?

Well, because we the people are not complaining. We have to voice our concern and let our law makers know what we want. In a democracy and capitalist market system, the consumer casts a vote each time they make a purchase. So purchase responsibly and reward those companies and products that are moving in the right direction and making effort to be environment conscious. The Earth does not depend on us, we depend on it. It is the home of not just humans but millions of other species that have lived on it long before we learned to walk upright. We have a responsibility to keep it habitable not just for our future generations of humans, but also all those other species that didn’t ask for any of this.

Please drink responsibly

This video is produced by “The Story of Stuff  project” and Free Range Studios.

An article about the direct effects of our uncontrolled addiction to plastic and its effects was covered by National Public Radio (NPR). The article shows the photographs and the story as told by photographer Chris Jordan. The article can be seen here and more of Chris Jordan’s work at Midway Atoll, as posted by Prix Pictet can be seen here.
Chris is also making a film called Midway, that deftly covers the horrid effects of plastic infiltration into our waterways and finally the ocean. You can also watch it’s trailer here.

I think this is good. May be this shift in media and confrontation of human follies will bring about change in young minds and actually do some good in the long run. You never know you are doing wrong, if you are NOT confronted with your mistakes. Not everyone has a live conscious to tell them if they are wrong, for if we all did, then everything would be good and perfect. Humans would be perfect and I wound not be having this discussion with you.

Our conscience is like a tree within us. When we are born, it is within all of us. That is why children are said to be closer to Angels. We nurture it by listening to it and it guides us. The more we listen to it, the stronger it gets and the more it guides us. And this relationship starts early on in life, when we are children. But if we don’t listen to it, it gets weaker and fails to guide us and gets even weaker till it finally dies. That is why we have a variety of people in our world. One that have very strong and live conscience which takes them and puts them at par with higher consciousness – like Gautama Buddha, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Dr. King etc. Then we have minds with lower consciousness like yours and mine. And then there those who do/did not have a living conscience at all – Stalin, Hitler, Joseph Fritzl, Bernard Madeoff etc.

SocialMe is a small app. on Facebook that lets users see other users SocailMe profile, pics and tag them as they please. The more tags and comments you receive, the more your virtual score increases. It lets people get attention and socialize in a virtual way, which is good.

The bad part – the application is exploited. I discovered this sometime at the beginning of 09, while I was browsing through SocailMe profiles, Firefox blanked out and asked to close the browser as it had detected an intrusion. After that incident, smelling something fishy on SocialMe/ Facebook, I decided to replicate the problem. For security, I installed McAfee Enterprize edition with firewall on my system and went back to browsing on SocialMe. And to focus on my target, I just had Facebook with SocaiMe open. And I used a brand new Windows installed system that had been patched and shielded with latest updates and detection rules.

Surely enough, after an hour of so of browsing on SocialMe, Firefox detected an intrusion and asked me to close, while McAfee displayed a message saying that it had detected and deleted an infection. A Trojan Virus. I left Firefox window open, and McAfee continued to detect and delete the same Virus over and over again.

Report the incident to Facebook help – I reported the incident to SocialMe development team and also in Facebook feedback under help section. I did not hear from SocialMe at all, but Facebook did reply back to me saying that I had to contact the developer of the application as Facebook did not support any third party applications. In other words, Facebook washed their hands off from policing any rogue application that is using their site as a launch pad to spread malicious software? Weird for a big guy like Facebook to shrug the responsibility off from their shoulders, when they have ample resources to stop their site from being exploited and abused. Of course it is not them, but it is someone that is using their site as a launch pad to spread malicious software. If a hacker exploits my site and uses it for malicious intent, it becomes my moral and professional responsibility to clean up and NOT allow that application in again. But I am sure, they have a clause somewhere in the agreement which says that they are not responsible for any damage caused by other third party applications on Facebook. Easy, so now Facebook does not have to police these application that are launched from their site.

Third Attack - After few months of not using SocialMe, I went back to using it again, hoping that they might have fixed the issue. NO, I was so wrong. This time my laptop got infected even though McAfee claimed that it had deleted the Trojan Virus and had cleaned the infection. However, it was a little too tale. This version of the Virus had already become resident to my system and was now replicating itself in any thumb drive that I inserted in my system. My system crashed trying to rid itself of the virus, and I had to reinstall Windows, and format all my drives.

Solution - STOP using SocailMe. Since Facebook is going to leave you in the wet and not take any action against SocailMe, you got to take your own cover. Even if you subscribe to LifeLock or another identity theft protection company, I’d still avoid using SocialMe. I make this suggestion because Trojan Viruses can do more than just help thieves steal your identity; they can also get into your computer and really mess things up for you. Moral: stay away from SocialMe!

It makes my wonder how many such “third party” rouge applications are exploiting good sites like Facebook, Orkut and MySpace? The industry got to change their attitude towards these third party applications, else they will continue to take shelter under these big trees, and keep spreading their nasty poison.

But here is something that is already taking shape. The computer system that takes input from hand gestures rather than keyboard and mouse. Not just that, it sees what you see, records video and sound when you want, displays information when you want, where you want, almost like your computerized “sixth sense”. The brains behind this new device being devoloped is Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry from MIT. Hats off to them!!

Source:http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/481

Follow UP:
At TedIndia, Pranav Mistry did a follow up of his invention and gave us more insight as to what really is the potential of his code and designs. I am super excited thinking and letting my imagination loose. And as he said, your imagination is the limit with this. This has the potential of being the next big leap in computer usage since the dawn of the Internet, and yet he has agreed to provide the source code for free to rest of the world instead of raking millions from his code. Hats off to you Pranav. I wish the big guys in the IT industry thought like you. Well, here is the video of Pranav Mistry, speaking at TedIndia conference and enlightening us with his invention, that will change the way we interact with digital information, forever.

Source: Ted.com [ted id=685]

Source: Ted.com

These 3 seem to be originating from the same scammer -

SCAM Email no.1:
asah witney; asahwitney04@live.com; asahwitney02@live.com

Hello to you overthere?
I am Originally from good year AZ ,am  nurse in
Arizona,i and my husband are presently in China and will be coming back from
china next month,we are going to settle and put up our big computer store as
this is what we are here for. Checking on the craigslist ,I read your
description and am interested in your service,we have about 20 laptops that
we want to install softwares on and clean them up.We are sending the
computers over and they  are laptops Hp centrino(intel) computer ..i want you
to Install softwares such as Microsoft Office and Antivirus, clean inner &
outercomputer components, update software to current status.We will like to
know if you will be able handle this job.so please get  back to us with you
total cost for the services of 20 computer excluding the shipping cost cus we
have a shipper that will come with the computers and the necessary
Softwares to you.
We await your urgent response so that we can put the arrangement in order.
Thanks

Email no.2:
Jeremy Douglas; jeremydouglas101@googlemail.com

How you doing? My name is Jeremy Douglas, i from Jacksonville, FL and
right now i work in Valdosta, GA. I read your description and am
insterested in your services,I just brought some computers and they
are are laptops HP 530 computer ..i want you to Install software such
as Microsoft Office and Antivirus, clean inner & outercomputer
components, update software to current status,Get back to me with you
total cost for the services of eight computer excluding the shipping
cost cus i have a shipper that will come with the computers and the
necessary Softwares to you.
I await your urgent response so that i can put the arrangement in
order or Call 559-762-4247
Thanks
Jeremy

Email no.3:
Jeremy Douglas; douglasjeremy55@googlemail.com

My name is Jeremy Douglas, from Ocala, Florida work in Elizabethton,
Tennessee. I brought some computers and they are are laptops HP 530
computer. I want you to Format, Install software such as Microsoft
Office(2003), Antivirus(Avast), Corel Draw9, PhotoShop, Clean Inner &
Outer Computer components, update software to current status,
Get back to me with your total cost for the services of 8 Computers (Laptops).
I await your urgent response so that i can put the arrangement in order
Regard

Email no. 4:
orris jessica – orrisjessica@yahoo.com

Hello,
How you doing?
My name is Jessica,i hail from UK and right now i work in Germany I read description and am instrested in your services,I will be importing some computer into the United States.The PC are laptops pentium 4 dell computer ..i want you to Install software, clean inner & outer computer components, update software to current status.Get back to me with you total cost for the services of 10 computer.i will like You to know that my mode of payment is by check.I await your urgent response so that i can put the arrangement in order.
Thanks.

Email no. 5:

Courtesy Ted.com

Here is what you can do:

• STOP drinking bottled water. Get a large bottle delivered to you place instead of buying 24 packs.
• STOP using plastic shopping bags. Do your grocery in few large reusable bags instead of using a dozen plastic bags each time. Most stores sell you reusable bags for under a $
• Recycle the extra bags/ bottles etc. that somehow cling to you form somewhere
• STOP getting your coffee/ soda in plastic disposable cups. Keep your coffee mug in your car, work, etc.
• STOP getting your lunch in disposable boxes, especially at work where you can keep a lunch box/ container and ask the restaurant to pack your food in it.

If you just add all this up, you just reduced your plastic waste by 90%. Think about it. I have done it and we know we all should do it. Do it for your children, do it for the rivers, do it for the seas and above all, do it for our Mother Earth. PLEASE!!

Here is a good tip to get you started. If you live in Orlando, FL and want to recycle stuff like electronic waste, cardboard boxes [flattened of course], paper etc; but you live in an apartment or a place where recycling facility is not available, then you can collect your stuff and then drive to the main landfill in the area [end of Dean rd] where they have separate drop off bins for recycling. This a free service for Orlando residents and I encourage you to use it and recycle more.

Map for Orange county, FL, landfill and recycling facility:
Hrs of Operation: Mon – Sun [8:00 am to 5:00 pm]
Orange County Solid Waste Hotline 407-836-6601

View Orange County solid waste drop off in a larger map

Free Compost is also offered to all Orange County residents, provided they bring their own shovel and container. Residents may take up to one pickup truckload of compost free of charge. Compost can be picked up from landfill and transfer stations, Sun through Sat, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm

A BBC reporter covers what is happening to Islands in the Pacific. A window to the biggest human made disaster of the future, evident from this video right now. An entire island of Hawaii is being converted into “Plastic Island” with particles of plastic that have photo degraded over the years and then washed to the beaches.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8639769.stm