In2SciFi

I found a wonderful visualization of the collapse of the economy when I went to the Spirituality, Science, and Technology blog today.

The post talked about a paper on the Epidemiology of the Credit Crises which was found while reading Chemoton § Vitorino Ramos’ research notebook. I tracked it back to the original paper which you can download and read as a PDF.

The paper also refers to a page with a video of the collapse that you can download and review. The paper was written by Reginald Smith of the Bouchet-Franklin Institute in Rochester. This is very impressive and very interesting to look at. However, you also need to look at his cautions:

• This is not ‘market contagion’
• This shows correlations, it’s nor about causation
• While this uses the word ‘Epidemiology’, it’s not about a mechanism

As an educational piece, it’s an interesting insight into the progressive collapse we’re all now experiencing.

Interesting! Need I say more?

I hadn’t tried Echolink before, but decided last night I’d do what I needed to do to get it running. After editing three firewalls, adjusting a bunch of parameters, and more, I finally got it running … at least one one platform.

I downloaded Echolink for Windows and EchoMac for my Macintosh. I got both to work, but the only contacts I was able to make were on Windows. I still can’t figure out why EchoMac isn’t making contacts, if for no other reason than the fact that the Windows version is running in a Virtual Windows environment on my Mac laptop!

No matter though, I spoke to New Zealand (ZL1SLO), Croatia, Netherlands, and Portland Oregon (KB7WUK). This is great. It looks like I’ve got something more to try out and find new ways to use it. I wonder if this might be a good way to talk to students when I teach the HF Digital Course? Interesting idea!

I think this is going to be an ongoing thread. I’m gathering my tools and taking it a little at a time.

The essential problem I’m working with is my wife’s Windows XP based system. She uses it primarily for games and she’s running slow. I COULD simply strip it down and rebuild it, which would be a hassle and wouldn’t teach me anything, so I’m going to work through it more slowly to see what I can find. I’ve worked inside Windows before on low level routines and Windows based software at a pretty raw level. I’ve also edited the Registry on systems before this and worked at very low levels down to the hard disk. This will be different because I need to check the computer for possible infection. Did something slip past our protection?

—–

SIDE NOTE: I should point out that I’m not religious about operating systems. I work daily on my Macbook Pro where I run OSX of course, but also Windows (98, XP, & Vista), DOS, and Linux (Ubuntu & Knoppix). I’ve written at the OS kernal level in Unix, Linux, & DOS, at the driver level on Windows, and consider any or all of them as tools to get the things done that I need to do. Most of the clients I work with are Windows-based, so Windows is particularly important to me. Many of the tools I use are ONLY available on Windows, so again it’s important to my work. While I’ve worked in literally dozens of languages (C, C++, FORTRAN, BASIC, Pascal, Forth, Smalltalk, and more), right now I’m mostly working in Ruby and Python and writing web-based applications. Working through the low-level Windows stuff will be a good chance to refresh my memory about what goes on there.

—–

We have pretty strong protection on the system with a ZoneAlarm Firewall and AV software enabled. It’s needed because my wife is decidedly NOT a computer person. She doesn’t want to worry about it. It’ll be a good test bed for some experiments on working over the machines.

There are several tools I know I’m going to be using:

Process Explorer - available at

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

This incredibly handy software lets you look at what’s running on the system. You can select a process and right click and do a lookup for it on the Internet to find out more about it. I download it onto any Windows system I’m working if I can to help me identify what’s going on beneath the surface.

Knoppix - a Linux system designed to run from CD. For some of the work, I’ll boot the machine into a Linux system and use it to scan the disk from a position where even the most clever virus software can’t affect me. I can also do other things from there as well to check the Windows system itself. Knoppix is available at

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html

I downloaded a 700Mb ISO file that I burned to CD to turn it into a bootable Linux disk. Once I’m ready to work, I’ll need to get a virus scanner loaded and updated to check the Windows system with. Once I set it up, I tested the disk on several of my Windows systems to make sure it worked OK and I could get the virus scanning software I needed.

I’ll spend some time explaining things in more detail as I go along, but this gives me a starting point.