Category Archives: Technology

Update: @CopyApp, Copy: New DropBox, Box & Google Drive’s Competitor

Updated: 5/10/2013

My company Esotech and I have moved to copy.com‘s @copyapp. Click this link to get 5 GB free on top of the base 5 GB (10GB) you get when signing up. Their sharing features are excellent, the speed of the app is excellent, it syncs fast. It basically has every feature Dropbox has, a better web menu, more sharing features that are on par with Google Drive, and a non pooled storage for sharing folders and files with clients, employees and friends. It lets you reduce the bandwidth usage (unlike Google Drive), and is cross platform compatible (Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, iOS).

Company’s are an integral feature of Copy as well. I can create a company, then manage who is connected to it. After having a nice conversation with a rep from Barracuda, right now Company Storage space is not calculated, eventually we will have to buy storage specifically for the company account, which I share with all employees and even choose administrators. This will allow me to attach as many users I want to the Company account without using anyone’s personal quota. Did I mention that company storage starts at $399.00 for 100GB with unlimited users? This is around $34.00 a month. DropBox may give you unlimited storage for teams, but at 5 users max, and more money per user (around $155.00+ per year per user over 5, $12.00 / month per user), Copy seems like a better choice for small businesses and startups with smaller data. Better to grow your storage as you need it rather than be limited by how many users are in your company. Most people aren’t going to sync terabytes of data to their desktop anyways. It is so much easier to deal with adding storage than adding and removing users if your company expands or contracts. Copy allows me to pick and choose who gets to see what folder in the company, and most importantly, who can edit or who can just view. EXCELLENT.

Barracuda Networks, I tip my hat to you as you have done an excellent job.

Now for why I am switching from Dropbox / Google Drive to Copy…Dropbox is simple…it does not allow you to share a folder inside an already shared folder. That was the deal breaker for me. The sharing features were rudimentary. I also hate having everyone else that shares folders with me automatically put in my root Dropbox directory. Copy allows me to specify where shared with me folders go. Love it. Oh, did I mention if you share Dropbox folders it eats up space on both accounts that are sharing? Not on Copy.  *Update: After reviewing this issue with a Barracuda rep, I was given mixed messages. Although the twitter reps say that they won’t make it eat into your quota, this is a half truth. If you try to SYNC the file or folder to your computer, it will use your storage as it becomes part of your sync pool. The easy solution is to only sync your own files, and use the web interface to download and manage files given to you by others.

On to Google Drive, it blew up….again. I have had so many problems with Drive. I love Google, I really do, but this is the first time I have been disappointing by one of their products. (Besides them deciding to Axe Google Reader).

One time my partner decided to drag all of my Google drive documents onto his hard drive…accidentally…i watched him do it too. This took hours to repair, I had to resync and reshare EVERYTHING with everyone, there was no easy fix. I couldn’t just drop the files in there, there was no warning, no undo. Funny thing is, the files existed in trash, but then didn’t. There was no easy way to tell where anything went. The Google docs he dragged out existed but had no method of accessing them without a direct link. Bummer

Then came the syncing issues, and this was the real killer as the above problem was more user related. My laptop has not been able to sync to drive for months “Google Drive unexpectedly quit and needs to close”. Great error message Google. After “searching web folders” for 40 minutes you just crash, awesome. No resolution besides…sync one folder at a time? For 40 GB worth of data? No way. It is supposed to work, not require me to finesse every file into my system.

The dreaded day came, I got a new hard drive and wanted to move Google Drive to it. What happens? Now my main PC blows up, can’t sync. Same issue as the laptop. Apparently if you have too much storage on drive, it explodes and can’t handle itself. I supposed it has to do with a long period of time which it has to collect meta data, and if you have tons of small files, it just freaks out and stops.

So, give Copy a try, get your free 5 GB, and while the offer lasts refer it to others so they can benefit. They are even giving out 1 TB free if you can get them some new talented hires.

Copy has said that there is no limit to the referral storage you can get, so get to it!

Update: 5/10/2013 We have been using Copy in the office for a few months and everything has run smooth. No lost files, no problems syncing, no bandwidth issues. (Lan Sync is great!). Overall we are happy. Although I was dissapointed to hear I would eventually have to purchase Company storage once they get their system further developed, I will gladly pay for a 100 GB Company account. I have already collected over 100 GB of personal storage from their referral promotion. Sign up with this link and get some free space!

Windows 8 Won’t Boot after Windows Update

I am currently investigating an issue that deals with Windows 8 Updates. When I run Windows Update, and Reboot, the system hangs at the black screen with the blue logo and white spinning circle. If I turn off the machine, and reboot, it tries to go into Automatic Repair mode, which also hangs.

After much frustration, I tried a Windows Refresh, which also didn’t work, it wouldn’t even try to do it. I tried a System Restore, which rolls back changes, and this did work leaving my updates uninstalled.

I thought this had to do with me enabling Hyper-v at the same time that I had done a Windows update, but apparently that is not the case, though when rolling back changes this also thankfully unset itself. I tried doing just the windows updates, without enabling hyper-v, and am again presented with the loading screen. My next step is to install each update one by one to find the culprit.

The thing is, while it is hanging, the hard drive light stays on solid, and does blink every so often. The blink has no real pattern…so it is doing something, but it just never completes. I am thinking about leaving it on overnight before doing another System Restore.

I will update this blog as I get more info.

10/28/2012 4:42 AM EST Update

It just takes a REALLY Long time and has no status indicator of what the hell it’s doing, even on a Quad Core Machine, with SSD and 24 GB of RAM. Windows booted up…Talk about User Hostile…now to test if Hyper V enabling was the actual culprit.

10/28/2012 5:19 AM EST Update

Going to bed, looks like it may be the Hyper V After all…it is still spinning, doesn’t look like it is doing anything.

10/28/2012 9:17 AM EST Update

Windows Booted! I left it running during my…short…sleep…and apparently it just takes a really really long time to configure Hyper V. So, don’t get discouraged, as long as that circles is still moving, your system should actually be doing something. Rebooting too quickly is probably a bad habit from windows days of yore, where we are used to seeing a crash every other day if it looks like it is doing nothing.

Now to play around with Hyper V, need to get a working copy of Windows 7 and Windows XP running so I can do design work for IE8 and IE9. Wish I could just run the browsers separately…

10/28/2012 10:24 AM EST Update

Although it did boot, it slowed down to a crawl, nothing would open. I restarted…and it hanged again. No way can I deal with an hour+ boot time.

Tried a system restore and this time it didn’t work. I had to go to “Automatically fix Problems” in the DVD, for it to tell me things were so bad that it needed to do a System Restore. When it did the restore it used a different process that was faster, rebooted, and I am in…now to test more rebootings. This time Windows Updates are still installed, but Hyper V is disabled.

10/28/2012 10:57 AM EST Update

Apparently, now my system won’t boot unless I remove all my USB peripherals including mouse.

10/28/2012 12:34 AM EST Update

Still having boot issues. System runs fine if it actually loads. I have found others on the Microsoft Support forums having similar issues, all are reporting it occurs after running windows update. I am uninstalling my windows updates to see if it works. I;d recommend to hold off on running those windows updates for now. Oh, and turn off automatic updates.

Sometimes Windows will boot, sometimes it wont, it seems to be tied to USB devices, and USB Devices being connected to the PC. Must be something that came with the update.

10/28/2012 10:24 PM EST Update

I managed to boot Windows and uninstalled the updated. I then had to use my DVD to do a System Restore in order to start booting in again. Thinking of installing the updates one at a time to see which is the cause of the increased boot time, but will have to wait till next weekend. Will run Windows 8 as it is during the work week since it boots now.

Considering creating a restore image.

How to Create a User Hostile Installation Experience: Windows 8 Pro

Ask any of your tech buddies and they may tell you that you can get Windows 8 Pro for 39.99. Wow! you say, that’s pretty good considering Windows 7 Ultimate was in the ~$400.00 price range. So you decide find whereabouts this purchase can be made.

Turns out, Microsoft sells it direct! Not only do they sell it, but they sell it through an app you download which tells you what version of the software you should buy, charge you for it, and let you download and install it immediately.

Sweet! I bust out the credit card, charge $40.00 and off I go into the following prompts.

Awesome, download begins, then gives me a prompt where to save it to and then the kicker…It asks me how I want to go about Installing this new OS. I want a Fresh install of course! Windows 8 does seem much different form a UI perspective.  So I choose “Save ISO and Burn to DVD to install on a computer later”. Perfect. The file is made and put on my desktop, and it even gives me an option to burn the DVD now, which I proceed to do.

So I shut down and unplug everything from my PC, remove my old 120 GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD Hard Drive, leaving the other 4 in my system, and install in it’s place my new 256 GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD Hard Drive of which I am eager to fill with games and apps (I ran out of room for all the BETA’s I am part of). I turn the computer on, boot into the DVD, and Voila! The windows load screen appears…and just sits there…for an hour.

Ok! Time to search the forums…after 30 minutes of searching, many don’t know why it’s doing this and are blaming processors, but it turns out you just happen to have to remove any SD card readers from the system during installation…weird…but lets give it ago. Yep! Worked! Installing. Shame I can’t find where I found the resource for that to give credit, it almost blew the day away.

Windows 8 Pro Prompts me for my new CD key, of which Microsoft e-mailed me from the purchase I made through the windows app. I choose the new Hard Drive. It begins installing; Excellent.

The rest of the configuration went without a hitch. It started up, customized, downloaded all my apps. I installed my normal software and games; all working great. Awesome!

Then I notice Windows isn’t activated…and my heart sinks when I click to activate it and it says something along the lines of “This license is only good for an Upgrade License, not for clean installs”. I thought I just blew $40.00, my time and a reformat.

I had to leave for dinner, so for two hours I furiously browsed the web on my wonderfully amazing Verizon Samsung Galaxy S3, and came up with two solutions, I only tried the one, and it WORKED!

The fix was found in a comment on this site. Here is the comment by “scottoe”:

It works similarly to Windows 7 upgrades – do it twice. You can install from a formatted disc but it will not activate because it is the wrong product key for an upgrade. You then install it a second time, as an upgrade to itself and it will activate. I did a custom install the first time, booting from the Win 8 DVD and deleted the old Win 7 partition and then installed Win 8. Then launched the Win 8 setup from the desktop and installed it as an upgrade and was then able to activate it with the upgrade key. I did it today with success. It does not give any indication of a problem the first time until you try to activate it, when it displays the invalid product key message.

So at first, I am thinking…this is retarded…why would this work? Why would they give you a full version ISO, allow an upgrade license to install the software, then require you to re-install over itself to “Convert” it to upgrade software?

I get home and pop in the Windows DVD I made, and run it. It goes through this whole process, doesn’t even ask me where I want it installed, just if I want to install it and keep my files programs and settings. I say sure, since I have already configured the rig and it then proceeds to churn for 30 minutes or so.

A few reboots later, I go through all the setup screens again, but find my profile is intact and all my apps are here. I check on my windows license status in the about computer section, and it is ALREADY activated! When the PC started itself up after the “Upgrade”, it just decided to activate itself with Microsoft.

Although I think this method is awesome and I am very happy with my purchase now, I would still like to know who at Microsoft, decided it was effective licensing and anti-piracy measure, to recommend, and then sell users a $40.00 Upgrade Only License (but only reads Windows 8 Pro, not “Upgrade”) FROM THEIR OWN WEBSTORE, that lets you download a FULL ISO, BURN IT TO CD, authorize a  FULL  CLEAN INSTALL, then after installing Windows 8, have to INSTALL IT AGAIN OVER ITSELF to flag it as an Upgrade?  Do they realize how many people are going to buy the Retail Box, which is also UPGRADE ONLY, do a clean install, and wonder WTF to do?

If you look at the this Microsoft page I think I figured out why this method works. This is how it reads:

You can install the upgrade only on PCs that have a valid base license and one of the following operating systems: Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP (SP3).

What Microsoft may have not taken into account, is that Windows 8 Pro, in it’s ISO form, provided by them to the user, fulfills the “valid base license” requirement for the upgrade to take place. The Upgrade license allows a person to install a fresh copy; it doesn’t distinguish between what type of license it is at initial install, only on activation AFTER install. The “upgrade”, in essence, performs a “reinstall” or a “repair” which, because it was installed from a Windows based Operating System, qualifies it as “Upgrade” software after the process.

Why not just…let it activate? Seriously? Why all this hassle?

I just went through like 2 hours worrying that I would have to reformat AGAIN, because after installing Windows 8, setting up all my apps, I found I couldn’t Activate due to choosing a fresh install. This had nothing to do with me having the wrong license, just with using a valid, yet poorly thought through method on Microsoft’s part, to go about the upgrade.

PROCESS! Stop making things USER HOSTILE if you want people to keep adopting your software! If you are going to give your users an install file, and a license, they better damn work. And they should work without having to go through these hoops and online research. If I wanted to do all that, I would have installed a Linux build.

There is another possible way to correct this without the re-install method, though I have not tried it. I found the solution at hard forum through Google Searches. The idea is to tell windows its an upgrade copy via a registry key, then rearm the activation sequence, reboot, and let it activate…it might be simpler and worth a try before doing what I did which took a TON of time.

This is the process:

1. hit ctrl+r
2. look for  [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE] and change ”MediaBootInstall”=dword:00000001 to  ”MediaBootInstall”=dword:00000000
3. Open elevated command prompt (Right click -> Run As Administrator)
4. Type slmgr -rearm <enter>
5. reboot
6. auto activation will occur on next boot.

If you use the first method, don’t forget to run disk cleanup when the upgrade completes, which will free about 26 GB of data from the “Upgrade of your Upgrade”. Also, pick up a free copy of Windows Media Center while they are giving them away and save yourself another $10.00, might as well!

Good luck upgrading! I am looking forward to writing GOOD things about Windows 8 as I am enjoying the new user interface, it is a breath of fresh air, and the OS seems to boot and run very very smooth. I love the windows app store concept, and their multi-platform. integration. IF they can keep the cost of their OS around 40 – 80 dollars I am sure it will be adopted quickly, barring the installation issues…

Digital Paranoia: Fear Mongering for Freedom of Speech as Cyberterrorism

There is an Article on Forbes that discusses the CyberSecurity act of 2012, yet another Bill in the battle for Internet Censorship. We won’t go into detail here about how this Power Grid shutdown theory is more than likely not true, for if it was true, something would have been done about it already (When bugs in programs are found they are patched, not left open for abuse). Not to mention that Anonymous has never harbored any ill will against the general people, only corporations and government, leaving one to wonder why the media is claiming they are going to engage in a malicious act against the people. This seems very similar to the DNS Server DDoS  Attack Rumor also being promoted throughout the internet. It almost seems that someone is trying recruit the minds of the public to view Anonymous as a Terrorist group that is a threat to the people, not just a threat the MPAA, RIAA and Child Pornographers.

This is a huge attempt to create fear in something that most people in the United States understand even less than the Middle East…the internet, and the internet elite.

Fear mongering is terrible, I can’t believe they are using Broadcast Media to make people fear Anonymous; It’s a very aggressive power play by both those in political power and corporate interests, if we are not careful they will strip grotesque amounts of freedom from us through well funded media campaigns and rumor mills.

Both television media and the internet are outlets for news media and information; the internet however, actually has public input and feedback. What the government doesn’t understand is in 2012, people will not just see The One Truth of Broadcast Media, but instead be faced with reports, information, and conversation online that may refute or contradict the nightly news. These mixed messages will either confuse or enlighten the people. Eventually online sources will discover and start reporting on the fear mongering found in Broadcast Media and general press. But will it do anything? Is the amount of people who use the internet as their primary news source at critical mass?

This is a very scary time for the net, and for technology in general.

With the way things are going, the only clear government solutions are extremes. Block this, ban that, monitor these.  I have a simpler two step solution:

1. Ban the use of technology except to authorized government officials that are allowed to use, develop, or heck, know about tech.
2. Dumb down whatever tech we need to use day to day, so that you won’t ever have to understand how it works.

Sarcasm aside, extreme measures like this seem to be the only way the government knows how to control Cybercrime and piracy, because they do not understand it. Their methods and ideology of control and enforcement methods are outdated, archaic, and dangerous!

If anything like this were to pass, it would be a huge step in the wrong direction. Even without it, the constant stream of Proposed Censorship Bills coupled with News Articles on “Cyber Terrorism” and “Online Piracy” are having a huge effect. It is creating an effect of Digital Paranoia in businesses as well as at home.

I can already feel the fear of expressing myself online building. Even as I talk about privacy, piracy, freedom of speech and other issues in Google+, I fear I will be grouped up as an Anonymous member, supporter, etc, of which I am not.

But soon, even discussing these issues will be synonymous with Terrorism. That is what they are trying to do, isn’t that frightening in it of itself?

I am afraid that all those who tweet and have tweeted about SOPA, PIPA, and Piracy will be monitored by the government (at least more heavily than everyone else.)

I am afraid for kids who retweet posts by Anonymous and hang out in their IRC channel thinking they are “cool”, not knowing that a yet to be known Bill could pass, grab records of their past yet innocent involvement (even if just looking, guilty by association) and end up losing their internet access, freedoms (jail), careers, and more.

I am afraid of the stand that I took against Internet Censorship on January 18th, along with millions of other concerned citizens in the USA and around the world; because it may label me a “target“, “threat” or “collaborator“.

I am really afraid of what is coming, and I am not sure if it can be stopped. Has the will of the people been sapped so much, by years of direct message marketing and politicking through television media advertisement, that it cannot make a change?

Congress continues to push Bills through the system to try and get “something” passed, and lately a real heavy focus has been on the topic of “Internet Control“. Yet, the same senators who have been defeated continue to bring up Bill after Bill, under the guise of different names, ethics and subjects. These politicians receive no retort for their actions, only funding from their corporate friends and lobbyists. They have never stopped to consider that the people, the internet, may want to be left alone to express themselves freely.

Why is it that when companies and politicians finally join the international playground that is the internet, the first thing they want to do is seize control of the swings and kick the cool kids out?

The Beginning of the End of the Internet: Fear of File Sharing

Two days ago I wrote a blog on the new Age of Digital Paranoia

…and here it begins…

http://www.filesonic.com now only allows Downloading of files personally uploaded, all sharing has been disabled.

There is no reason why. More than likely it is either because the company feels they are at risk of a MegaUpload style shutdown, or they are already currently being forced into this decision.

The US Government is succeeding in spreading fear in the corporate cloud world. Who is next? Dropbox ?

SOPA and PIPA are the equivalent of the government demolishing a street because I was standing on it selling a bootleg copy of Spiderman 3. – Daniel Chambliss

Any website with a Browse and upload file button, whether it is for pictures, music or movies, or even a search through files button, has the possibility of enabling, even if not promoting, piracy.

Any company, any website, with this type of functionality, (which is almost all) is at risk should a law like SOPA, PIPA or ACTA get passed. Moreso are file sharing companies such as Dropbox or Box.net .

Shutting down all channels for Piracy on the internet means shutting down the internet. Anywhere that you can share information, pictures or video enables a user to share or receive pirated digital property…there is NO avoiding this.

The spirit of the internet is free flow of information, any restriction, technically imposed, means the stifling of that spirit.

Our only hope is that the people of the World (not just the USA) want this channel for freedom to remain open.

Speak up, don’t STOP speaking up. It is NOT over. Tell your representatives first why an open internet is important to maintain. Show them the wonders that have been created. Then tell your friends, tell your family, help them understand what is going on.

The media isn’t covering this, it can only spread via the net and word of mouth. Those who primarily use television for news need to know what is on the horizon…the death of the internet.