You can defeat any fancy DRM protected cd by simply placing a peice of tape or obscuring the data track with a black marker. So, exactly what is the purpose of all this DRM “protection” if it can be foiled by a simple Sharpie?

My ReadyNAS X6 arrived last night and I got it setup and running after I had to reflash the compact flash card after talking to one of the guys from the company. Anyway, so far it is running great and I’ve now got 250gb of raid protected storage for my data.

It has been brought to my attention that stories are no longer promoted at a static +15 diggs. This helps on the “click-through” spam, but I still suggest my opinion of first promoting a story to a sub-category page, then to the front page after more diggs are added to ensure only the top stories are given front page space.

Ever since Kevin Rose mentioned digg.com on his blog, I’ve found myself using the site more on a daily basis. I eventually started submitting news articles, but I’ve noticed a peculiar trend. Some of the points I will cover more in depth:

• Digg’s scoring system needs to be revamped. Front page stories are duplicates of category page stories. Utilizing a teired approach would ensure only the cream of the crop makes it to the front page.
• There needs to be a more prominent way for users to find stories in the submission queue. I am not convinced users digg the submission queue to help promote content due to the rapid increase in a stories “diggs” once promoted to the front page.
• Meta-moderation of reported stories. This would help ensure that the reporting system is not abused.
• The ability to mob-promote a story to the front page.
• The abuse of submitting stories that “click-through” the users blog.

Digg requires 15 diggs for an article to be promoted to the frontpage, and I feel this is a fair amount of interest that should be generated before promoting an article. However, I am not completely sure people realize that there is content beneath the front page stories. I feel most stories slowly get to 15 in score (with the exception of Kevin Rose’s submissions, but more on that later) only to see an exponential increase in the diggs once the story is promoted to the frontpage. Since every page on digg contains an RSS link (which by the way I think is a great feature) why not have have tiered approaches to story promotion. The frontpage is basically a repeat of what can be found on the category pages. When a story reaches 15 diggs it should not immediately be promoted to the front page. However, it should be promoted to the category front page, much like kuro5shin operates, and not every story should go to the front page. k5 works by 50% of the votes must have been to put it on the front page, since digg only has a “digg this story” way of voting, one possible solution would be at 15 the story goes to the section pages, then at some other number, we’ll say 30, the story is then promoted to the front page. This would put only the cream of the crop and the most important stories on the front page. People could still drill down into each individual section and find more stories that are interesting, but maybe not front page material. This would also help in defining who is submitting quality content on the Top Users page a bit easier.

One of the best features and at the same time the biggest drawback is the submission queue. Stories need to be “dug” to be promoted as we previously covered. However, I feel, most users do not participate in digging stories to promote them. They digg stories after they have been promoted and such most front page stories get a tremendous surge of diggs after it hits the front page. Digg should find some method of involving the users more actively in the processing of the submitted stories. This could be done by a click-through page as you go to the next page of links or even change categories. The system could bring up a screen of 5 or 10 stories and kindly ask the user to “please read over these submitted stories and digg any you feel are worthy of promotion before continuing to the page you requested”. Obviously there would be a “No thanks, just take me to my page” link at the bottom which would allow the user to continue without adding a single digg. Likewise the vast amount of content that doesn’t get submitted allows users to see what did make it, and what didn’t, and ensure there is no bias or agenda being pushed on digg.

Slashdot gives frequent users at random the power to moderate comments, and even meta-moderate other users moderation of comments. This keeps the community moving and makes sure quality comments are posted. We need a system on digg to help ensure quality content is making it to the front pages, and when a post is removed that it was removed for a good reason.

That brings me to my next complaint, the reporting system. Basically digg’s reporting system is somewhat of a mystery. No one knows at what level a story is removed and at the same time, no one knows if a story was removed for the right reasons. Perhaps, like Slashdot, meta-moderation of this type is on an opt-in/out basis, and only the regular users are allowed to participate. If it is determined a user is reporting lots of links for the wrong reasons, maybe that user is not allowed to report links for a few days/weeks/months by the system. This would allow everyone to feel the reporting system has someone watching the watchers.

I mentioned Kevin Rose’s submissions earlier, and while I feel Kevin posts quality content, at the same time he helps show an easy way to exploit the way digg operates. Since Kevin has a highly trafficked blog of his own, he’s taken the step of adding a link to his digg user page at the bottom of every post he makes. This is great publicity for digg, but also for Kevin’s own submissions. People can then immediately digg everything Kevin has dug. This may not be the best way to rate quality content. I’m not entirely sure, but I feel Kevin could submit a story about dog shit and it would probably get promoted. Don’t get me wrong, I feel I posted uber-quality content when Kevin dugg one of my stories. His opinion is highly respected. However, I think this shows us a potential point of exploit for pushing agendas on digg.

In closing, I would also like to address the point of people posting links to their own website as a “click-through” page to the actual article. While this could expose you to a new blog, in reality as Dan Huard said, “Although this method may be good for the specific site admins, it is a blatant abuse of Digg. As always, there is a report feature that can help combat this, but it is not a solution. A good workaround is to have someone repost a direct link.” We do need a way to edit this, and maybe the users that have been meta-moderated as fair and contributed the most quality content could then be selected by the system to help combat this problem. All of the suggestions I’ve presented here would greatly increase the quality of content found on digg and help the site continue to grow as a source for tech and other content.

Dan Huard also wrote a great article about the problems with digg over at Scopetech.net.

digg has a new feature that lets you put your dugg stories on your website. You can do this for any user of digg by simply visiting their userpage and clicking the add this feed to your website link at the bottom. You can also see my diggs at this permapage.

Ran across another nasty spyware today, and again, Castle Cops was able to help me figure out how to get it out. IST Bar seems to be a rather nasty little bugger and most spyware can’t help you get it out. However, there is a tool you can use, Process Explorer from sysinternals.com that will help you get rid of it. Instructions from the thread have been copied below:

1. Download a freeware Process Explorer for Windows from www.sysinternals.com, install and run it
2. Find the mother of ISTsvc.exe, for my case, it was c:\Windows\yagoumc.exe
3. Fire up TaskManager, stop the mother process
4. Delete the mother .exe
5. Again, stop the ISTsvc.exe
6. Delete the ISTsvc.exe
7. Run Ad-Aware to clean up Registry entries

I’ve had an interesting strugle with Downloader-VA. Not that particular problem in the MS KB, but that article suggests steps to take to get rid of the Trojan. The only useful information in that entry is this, Trojan.Win32.Agent.aw, the alias for Downloader-VA from Kaspersky Lab.

From that alias, I stumbled upon these threads. The first explained a registry key, while I didn’t have the exact key entry on this system, I had a similar one which I removed. However, the registry key came back on reboot. The second find, however, mentioned two, well actually three tools which helped fix the problem. eScan’s virus tool, while it doesn’t remove or fix anything in the trial version, does show you a log of locations and files that are infected. SSS also allows you to remove some IE and Windows settings, which I did.

Basically, betwen manually deleting or renaming what eScan found and SSS I might have been safe, but I wanted to be sure, so I broke out the big gun, Hijack This. While a useful tool, it is also very easy to hose a system with this tool as it not only locates possibly spyware hooks, but legit system hooks for valid programs and helpers. However, the common 8 random character filename was in the Hijack This results in about 5 places. I removed these entries, rebooted the system, and the user no longer gets a warning from McAfee when they start Internet Explorer.

I know, I know, the logical fix to this would be to install FireFox, but some of my users are not ready for that step.

Just thought I’d share this in hopes that Google picks it up to help other techs who need help removing Downloader-VA.

This will probably be my next computer purchase, especially since Kevin was able to get into his and do the upgrades with ease.

I’m also wondering if I made the right modchip purchase for my Xbox.