WServerNews: Technology can solve that!?

In this issue:

Dystopian AI? Is your org safe from insider threats? A logical solution to Windows printing problems. Stealing one-time passwords. Win11 Q&A. What Type is my printer driver? The real function of a computer. Plus lots more — read it all, read it here on WServerNews!

Are recent technological advances in artificial intelligence making our life simpler or more difficult? Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

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Mailbag

Some feedback from Peter who lives in South Africa regarding our comments about Windows 11 in our last newsletter:

Good day Mitch. I enjoy every edition of your newsletter. I always thought I am the only one with issues and then see others also have the same problems.

On Windows 11 – my 2 cents: In Jan 2020, I built a brand new computer, purchased each component, assembled it and installed Windows 10. The Win11 checker stated this “new” computer is eligible for upgrade but fails on one item the MBR disk type – states it must be GPT format. Cannot continue. I spent hours and hours trying to convert the DISK with Windows 10 into GPT and each command fails with a different error. I then decided to use a 3d party tool rather. I used AOMEI Partition assistant – it just works – no errors, no fuss. I downloaded the ISO, mounted it and ran setup.exe. Win11 then installed in less than 5 min. on a new M.2 NVME SSD. The Win11 ISO file is only 5 GB.

So far Win11 is solid, works well and to me seems more organized than Windows 10. Couple of bugs still that needs sorting such as drag and drop onto Word, Excel etc. gives a red cross, but overall a well-polished interface – modern, sleek. My friend stated Winb11 looks very similar to his MAC UI.

This article is a nice summary: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/windows-11-problems-and-fixes-everything-we-know-so-far

Sometimes I think “I am getting too old for all of this!!!”

That last sentence is exactly what my 25 year old nephew said recently because of constant UI changes in the social media platforms he uses. Go figure, eh?

Editor’s Corner

Bits and bytes from our Editor and from around the IT pro universe…

Dystopian AI?

This whole AI thing is getting out of control, don’t you think? Here’s a replay of a conversation I had last week with a friend who lives in the suburbs but busses it downtown where he works. We’ll call him George to hide his real identity.

GEORGE: I heard the bus drivers in our city are demanding higher wages because of all the stress they’ve been experienced during this pandemic. But the city says they can’t afford it so the drivers may go on strike. And if they do, how will I get to work?

MITCH: Technology can solve that. Fire the bus drivers and replace them with self-driving busses.

GEORGE: That won’t solve anything, it’ll just make things worse. During this COVID pandemic I’ve noticed more and more mentally disturbed people riding busses, there’ve even been reports of passengers being hassled or even assaulted. I’m scared enough taking the bus nowadays—how much worse is it going to be if there’s no bus driver to step in when a bad situation happens?

MITCH: No problem, technology can solve that as well. Just put more surveillance cameras on busses to record when anything bad happens. Then the police can find the culprit afterwards and throw him in the lockup.

GEORGE: Yeah but how will they find the offender? Everyone is still wearing masks on busses!

MITCH: Technology can solve that easily! Facial recognition technology is amazing nowadays, so if every citizen has their photo in the government database and you have surveillance cameras situated everywhere like in London England then it should be a snap to identify and follow the lawbreaker and arrest them. Plus authorities can track all phones so if the person paid for his bus ride using his smartphone then you’ve got him!

GEORGE: Sure, but how does that help someone in the heat of the situation when they’re being threatened or robbed?

MITCH: Of course technology can solve that too! Put an autonomous robot powered with AI technology and armed with a Taser on every bus!

GEORGE: You’ve got an answer to everything, don’t you?

MITCH: When I was a kid I used to read Ayn Rand on the back of Kellogg’s cereal boxes while I ate breakfast.

The above dialog is pure fiction of course, but my friend and I did have a serious discussion about how AI technologies are rapidly changing our world—and, we agreed, mostly toward the bad not the good. I’d be curious to hear how other readers of our newsletter feel about how advancements in autonomous transport, facial recognition, and similar technologies are affecting them. Email me if you have any thoughts you’d like to share on this subject with other readers of our newsletter.

Is your org safe from insider threats?

While new threats are emerging almost daily out there in cyberspace, lots of bad things that happen to organizations are initiated from somebody inside the organization. Those who manage IT for their organizations need to be aware of different kinds of insider threats and how to prevent or deal with them. Check out the recently released guidelines from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on how you can assess the exposure of your org to insider threats and successfully mitigate their impact.

A logical solution to Windows printing problems

There seems to be no end to the printing problems associated with recent updates to Windows and Windows Server. Workarounds are breaking and new updates are causing more problems. Why can’t Microsoft just get this fixed?

One IT colleague says he’s had enough and decided to deploy PrinterLogic for the enterprise he manages, and since then he’s had no more problems with users printing from their workstations.

Might be time to check it out. And let us know if you’ve deployed PrinterLogic in your own environment and what you’re experience has been using it.

Stealing one-time passwords

Brian Krebs has a scary article on how malicious actors are learning how to phish marks like us for the one-time passwords (OTPs) we’re being issued when we wish to access some online sites and services. Have any of our readers experienced attacks like this? Tell us more.

Win11 Q&A

And finally one more good resource that may answer some of the questions you have concerning Windows 11. Check out this helpful post on the blog of Michael Niehaus who was formerly in charge of product management of Windows Autopilot and Microsoft Endpoint Manager at Microsoft and now works at Tanium.

And if Michael’s article *doesn’t* answer your question then post the question as a comment to his blog post—Michael is a terrifically helpful guy and will probably give you an answer 🙂

Got comments about anything in this issue?

Email us! We love hearing from our readers!

Please tell others about WServerNews!

Enjoy this issue of WServerNews and feel free to send us feedback on any of the topics we’ve covered — we love hearing from our readers! And please tell others about WServerNews! It’s free and always will be free — and they can subscribe to it here. Thanks!!!

Tip of the Week

What Type is my printer driver?

Much of the problem organizations have been facing with Windows printing recently has been associated with using older Type 3 print drivers instead of newer Type 4 drivers which unfortunately may not be available if you have older printers. Here are three ways you can determine what Type the print driver is for a printer:

In PowerShell type Get-PrinterDriver and look at the MajorVersion column.
Open the Print Management console and examine what’s under the Driver Type column header .
Open the folder containing the driver files for your printer and find the INF file for your printer model, then open this text file and observe the value for the ClassVer attribute.

That last method can be useful if you haven’t installed the printer yet and want to check out what Type of driver it has.

Admin Toolbox

>> Got any admin tools or software you’d like to recommend to our readers? Email us your recommendations!

dtSearch®-Instantly Search Terabytes. Doc. filters for popular file types, emails, databases & web data; 25+ search options; Win/Lin/Mac C++/Java/.NET Core APIs; Azure/AWS FAQs. Enterprise/dev evals available.

https://dtsearch.com/

SessionGopher is a PowerShell tool that uses WMI to extract saved session information for remote access tools such as WinSCP, PuTTY, SuperPuTTY, FileZilla, and Microsoft Remote Desktop. It can be run remotely or locally:

https://github.com/Arvanaghi/SessionGopher

Bulk Crap Uninstaller lets you remove large amounts of unwanted applications quickly:

https://github.com/Klocman/Bulk-Crap-Uninstaller

Memreduct is a lightweight real-time memory management application to monitor and clean system memory on your computer:

https://github.com/henrypp/memreduct

Factoid: The real function of a computer

Our previous factoid and question was this:

Fact: LED bulbs don’t always live up to the hype about their life spans

Source: https://businesshala.com/why-led-bulbs-dont-always-live-up-to-the-hype-about-their-life-spans/

Question: What’s been your experience using LED bulbs? Are they really that much better in proportion to their cost than incandescent bulbs?

Reader responses varied on this topic. Mike Spragg who lives in the UK for example views them positively:

Yes, they do live up to the hype. I changed my whole house in 2012 to them – and haven’t changed a single bulb since ! Now, that said – it depends on the make. I recently moved house and the new light units come with a make I’d not heard of (not Philips) and 1 of these has failed already. Others are fine so could just be a manufacturing issue.

Def would recommend them – not that you’ll get much choice soon as we (in UK) have already banned halogen and old style bulbs (pearlescent) for a while. In terms of pricing – much more affordable now than in 2012 !

On the other hand Howard Rubin who lives in Brazil has this to say about them:

Led bulbs, 220v environment.

We have lots of power fluctuations in our area (salt), led products do not last as long as previous technology products.

Old technology, if dropped on the floor, glass breaks. Today, they are covered with plastic but still will stop working.

When a led product fails, I see no notice at all, it just stops working. To test a bulb, put it in another socket. Old bulbs change color or start to act differently, at least.

For those with sight problems, cornea issues specifically, led lights make things difficult to see because of their glare.

We have lived in the same house for 17 years, switched technology three times now (had to change wall outlets too). We see no energy savings, our energy/lighting bill remains about the same year round (no AC), but the cost of replacing light bulbs keeps getting higher!

The big reason we had to change technology was because it was forced upon us. Two pin/spade sockets are no longer sold. Government mandated three pin recessed sockets. All old appliances no longer fit the new ones. Incandescent and fluorescent bulbs are no longer in the stores, old two/three way lamp devices are now obsolete. Replace one fluorescent bulb with led in a chandelier, it looks bad.

Old technology was standardized. Today led bulbs are not the same. Instead of standard 40/60/120 watt bulbs, led specifications are all over the place. Buy two led bulbs from different brands will look differently when turned on. All bulbs are not shaped the same. Look carefully, is it white or yellow light? Boxed product say watt equivalent, but to whose standards?

This technology is helping no one except those who want to switch from disco balls to internet controlled color selection and the companies who create and sell this stuff.

Anyways, let’s leave the lights turned on and move over to our next factoid:

Fact: A computer is simply a device enabling the deletion of vast quantities of irreplaceable personal data using simple mnemonic commands. And similarly a network is a mechanism that allows the deletion of vast quantities of other people’s irreplaceable data using simple mnemonic commands.

Source: Paraphrased from something I read recently on a mailing list somewhere.

Question: What’s your own worst personal experience accidentally deleting data on a computer? Or even worse, deleting data stored on your company’s network. Share your horror stories with us and we’ll include them in our next issue!

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