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Malwarebytes 4, Norton 0
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Technology
- Hits: 2151
Last night, yet again, I notice the task manager has been disabled by the administrator. Yet another virus. And so update my definitions and do a scan with Norton Antivirus, but it finds nothing. Time: 2 hours. But my task manager is disabled, and this is trouble.
And so I do another scan with Malwarebytes, find 4 viruses, remove them. Humourously about halfway through the scan Norton tells me I have a virus (having just done a complete system scan and come up empty handed) - a little like a guard dog barking at it's owner to tell him his house has been robbed. The Task Manager is still disabled, I check group policy, settings are fine. I reset it, this seems to fix the issue of bringing up the task manager. The Windows Online fix-tool does nothing to allow me to access it. I have no idea where these viruses came from, but suspect that perhaps they came from the files on the other PC I fixed (and temporarily copied to my PC.). Internet Explorer has crashed 3 times this morning, despite my being unable to find any active processes or startup items that might be virus related, the reporting tool advises me that it's a windows issue and I should get used to it.
I suppose I should just get used to it. I'm on the computer a lot, maybe I should budget time for fixing these issues, or just realize that it's windows and they'll never be fixed, and be grateful I didn't succumb to all the hype about Vista and think of how things could be worse...
Now to scan it with AdAware.
5 more mice
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2255
Bringing it to a total of 8 in 2 days. 8 mice in 2 days, 3 in 1/2 an hour (a busy spell). I've been trying to relocate them to roughly the same back area of the garden in the compost, I've added some of the old hamster food there so their comfortable. Hopefully that keeps 'em. I'm starting to think I've got to be running out of mice soon....
3 mice gone, 2 to go
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2206
Since yesterday the trap has been sprung 5 times. 3 mice have been captured relocated to more outdoorsy surroundings, running pell mell across the snow, back and forth, confused by the bright sunlight, wide open spaces. They should be OK, there's plenty of bird feeders in the neighborhood, if they settle into the right hedge they'll never be hungry. Or so I tell myself. I know there's at least 2 more, but the trap will only hold one at a time. So I've set it up again and am waiting. The remaining mice have grown cautious, they've undoubtedly notice a thinning of the ranks. Gone is the line at the chew. It's a waiting game...
Theory - The Aether
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1853
The Aether is an old concept much revised. Originally from the Greek, it was a personification of the sky or heavens above. Later, in the middle ages it was the nesting crystal spheres that carried around the planets and stars in their orbits. Newton, amonst others, used the concept of the Aether to explain how light and heat might propogate through space - if regarded as waves (as some experiments seemed to show), then there must be then a medium which filled all of space, and that medium was "The Aether".
The very famous Michelson-Morley Experiment disproved the existence of the aether ironically by attempting to measure the "aether wind" the earth must create in its orbit about the sun. No aether wind was detected.
Now the aether was an important idea. It explained how the stars and planets kept their place in the sky. (They were suspended within crystal spheres). It explained how light and heat could travel across the vacuum of space (Aether is the medium through which they travel). But as we've been unable to detect it's presence the concept of an "aether" has fallen out of repute.
Or has it? Perhaps it has just been renamed.
By which I refer to the concepts of Space and Time - which provide many of the new "answers"the old aether used to. Or there's Dark Matter, which must fill the void of space to make our current view of the universe work. The problem no longer hinges on the propping of the stars up in the heavens, or the propogation of waves through space, now it hinges on one of gravitation - there's not enough observable matter in the unverse to account for the behaviour of stars, galaxies, etc. Dark Matter is postulated to be filling in the void. The problem with this is that we have no direct evidence of this dark matter, despite theories which state it must account for approximately 90% of the mass in the universe. For something of which we have no proof whatsoever there are an awful lot of theories and convoluted calculations that presuppose it's existence.
So the aether survives.
Now there is something about these theories I like to call the "Fudge Factor". It's where we presuppose the existence of something in order to explain the results we get. For example, I'm not rich, hence I can assume (presuppose) that God doesn't want me to be rich. Now we laugh, because I'm using an imaginary concept (God) to explain circumstances that might somehow be explainable by other means. We're too enlightened for my arguments. And, truth be told, the idea that "God" is to blame for anything is laughable. But it raises the question - why do we then allow for these sorts of explanations in science? "Dark Matter" is a very much accepted idea amongst scientists, despite the lack of evidence, because it allows them to explain things that otherwise would be too difficult or problematic.
So there's a similarity here, between science and religion, that the cult of science wouldn't be too comfortable acknowledging. It's not the only one - there is as well the thought of the Cosmological constant, first created by Einstein to create a steady-state universe, now borrowed by physicists to explain the accelerating universe. And if you try you'll find there are others.
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