May 1, 2008 Listener Questions

Okay--we had lots of calls this week, and some of these were stumpers...but we're working on answers. here's what we have found for you so far....

Helkern Worm
A user called indicating that he is getting a notice of Helkern worm attack. The Helkern worm (more popularly known as Slammer) attempts to gain access to your computer through Port 1434, but your firewall is probably blocking these attempts and notifying you. That is exactly why you have a firewall.

Even if Helkern / Slammer were to make it past your firewall, your computer could not be infected unless it was running Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The worm is designed to attack that special MS database server.

These attacks, which usually originate from China are so common that they are lumped-together with other common Internet crap under the term "internet noise". So, assuming you are getting the notice from your firewall, just relax, you have nothing to worry about and you are not being specifically singled out.

Landscape Software for the Mac
This one is turning out to be a real stumper! I can find landscape design software for the Mac OS X platform costing several hundreds of dollars, but literally nothing inexpensive. The closest I could find is EazyDraw ($95), and it does not look well adapted to landscape design.

I did discover a really cool free Google app called Google SketchUp. It is free, and allow you to design 3D objects, and has a library of objects that you can insert into a drawinng/model. It might work for you.

If you had a Windows box, there are lots of inexpensive yet very good landscape design software tools you could purchase or use for free. Most would run on Linux too, via wine, but I am not sure if you can get Windows apps to run on OS X. I'll defer that to the Mac Guy.

Windows Won't Keep Correct Time
Okay, this one turned out to be quite simple. I was making it harder than it really needed to be. To fix this problem, double click the clock in the system tray. This will open up the Date/Time settings dialog. If your time is off an hour, check your time zone, and see if it is set to Central America. if so, change it to "Central Time (US & Canada). Now you'll find a check box for adjusting for Daylight Savings Time. You can also set the dialog to keep Internet Time, and pick a time reference server, so your computer can update its time from an external source.

FaceBook


Here's what a facebook encounter would be like in real life.