If you sell 36 million Samsung or Apple smart watches, are you successful?

Juniper predicts big growth for smart watches like Samsung Gear and Apple 'iWatch' by 2018, but says it's still a 'niche'

Sales of so-called "smart watches" will surge from 1 million to 36 million in five years, according to a speculative new report from Juniper Research. But whether that defines "success" remains an open question.

Yet despite the frenzy of expectation around the rumored Samsung Gear and Apple “iWatch,” even Juniper acknowledges smart watches “will only appeal to a niche demographic when compared to tablet and smartphone for example and hence the market potential will be comparatively limited.” There are two reasons for that limitation.

One is that the utility and even usability of smart watches hinges on their wireless connections with companion smartphones or tablets. Another is that most of the apps touted for the smart watches appeal to a relatively small subset of consumers, such as heart rate monitors and calorie counters for fitness enthusiasts.

The full market study is available only for purchase, but Juniper posted a “white paper” that summarizes some of conclusions.

Juniper defines a smart watch as “a smart wearable appcessory that can be worn on a user’s wrist, offering a range of smart functionalities in conjunction with an external platform, such as the smartphone or tablet.” Those functions include displaying call, text and email alerts, accessing stock and weather information or “any fitness, sports or commerce applications such as heart rate monitoring, payments or ticketing.”

One category of smart watch is what Juniper calls the “dashboard/console watch,” which is simply a “dumb terminal” acting as a display for information and data from another companion device. One example is the CooKoo watch, with the CooKoo Connected App for iOS. It uses Bluetooth 4.0 LE wireless technology to connect with Bluetooth SMART READY devices including iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPad mini, and 3rd, 4th, and 5th generation iPads.

The CooKoo displays incoming calls, missed calls, Facebook messages and posts, Twitter mentions, Google Voice SMS, email notification and more. Press a button and you can check-in to Facebook, remotely snap photos or record video, and control music played on your phone or tablet, and tag your location on the CooKoo Connected App map.

By contrast, according to Juniper, “multi-function” smart watches can do a bunch of things on their own, in addition to working with the phone or tablet. Juniper didn’t give an example but the Pebble E-Paper Watch, a Kickstarter darling, is certainly one, offering “beautiful downloadable watchfaces and useful internet-connected apps,” according to the website spiel. “Pebble connects to iPhone and Android smartphones using Bluetooth, alerting you with a silent vibration to incoming calls, emails and messages.” Another is the Italian-designed i’m Watch.

The smart watch booster site, SmartWatchNews, recently posted its list of the “Top 5 Smart Watches 2013.” But the mini-reviews seem unintentionally to damn with faint praise. “We feel that, although the Pebble Smartwatch [ranked number 1] is your best choice right now, it is still an incomplete product,” the post concludes. “We base this statement largely upon the complete lack of useful software.” And probably the fact that you can only pre-order it.

The i’m Watch was No. 3. “The problem with this smartwatch, like most of the contenders, is that the firmware and software just feel unfinished and incomplete,” SmartWatchNews concluded. “However, this shortcoming can be easily remedied should the much need updates be released.”

The Juniper study suggests that mobile payments may be one way to broaden the market for, and use of, smart watches. Shipments will be driven, Juniper predicts, “by a new multi-function segment capable of performing an array of additional functionalities such as tracking fitness and sports activities, payments or ticketing….”

Mobile payments and probably ticketing are being driven by advances in several areas, but one Juniper notes is near field communications or NFC. But NFC poses special challenges in something as small as a watch.

NFC operates at a very low frequency, around 13.56 MHZ, as this post at AntennaTheory.com explains. The antenna for such a chip actually acts more like an inductor: “If the magnetic fields from one inductor pass near another inductor, an induced current will exist within the second inductor. This is contactless energy transfer - exactly what NFC requires,” according to the post.

The result is that NFC antennas take up a lot of space. “In general, the larger the inductance of the antenna can be made, the better it will perform,” according to AntennaTheory. “Hence, NFC antennas are often simply loops of wire, occupying as much surface area as the device allows.” To illustrate, here’s a photo of the NFC antenna – a wrapped coil of wire – used in the Google Nexus smartphone by Samsung. Cleverly, it was mounted on the back of the battery, and covers nearly all of it, under a thin plastic back cover.

New materials are being used for antenna, such as very thin sheets of ferrite instead of copper wire. One example is the ferrite sheet antenna announced in February 2013 by Pulse Electronics’ mobile division. “Pulse’s thinner NFC antenna sends and receives clear signals even when installed in a handset in close proximity to the battery or metal housing,” according to the press release. But the sheet is still 35 x 50mm in size, or 1.37 x 1.90 inches. That will make for a big watch.

There are even indications that the age group considered most receptive to smart watches – the Millenials born from 1981 to 2000 – actually isn’t. A story at Phys.org carried the headline “Smart watches might not fit millennials' needs, expert says.”

“A lot of the millennial behavior is transitory,” said Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future. “But as people age, they still are not wearing watches, and we'll begin to find out next month if that behavioral change is transformational.” Samsung is expected to release its Gear smart watch in September.

The center is affiliated with the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, which has been tracking one group of people for 13 years, according to the Phys.Org post by Paresh Dave.

“The results, which fall in line with other market research surveys, show little interest in devices such as Google Glass, Nike's FuelBand health monitor, the Fitbit activity tracker and smart watches among millennials. About 3 percent of respondents are using smart watches, Cole said.”

According to Cole, “everyone's starting to dig in their heels against privacy intrusions and the blurring lines between work and play. Having a talking, tracking and texting watch isn't about to make things easier for consumers.”

Apple may be trying to do just that. Rumors about an “iWatch” have been swirling since early this year. Apple has made trademark filings for “iWatch” in Japan, Russia and Mexico, at least. Most recently, Apple apparently has hired fitness industry consultant Jay Blahnik, who helped launch Nike’s FuelBand wearable, and create an online community around FuelBand’s data and apps. who played a key role in the development of the Nike+ FuelBand, a wearable with sensors and apps that link with iOS devices and the Nike+ online community.

Reporting on this, AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski quoted Apple CEO Tim Cook’s comments about wearable from earlier this year at the AllThingsD conference.

Here’s the quote: “You know I wear this, it’s the FuelBand. I think Nike did a great job with this. It’s for a specific area, it’s integrated well with iOS. There are lots of gadgets, wearables, in this space now. You’ve probably tried as many as I have, maybe even more. I would say that the ones that are doing more than one thing, that there’s nothing–this does primarily one thing, the ones that do more than one there’s nothing great out there that I’ve seen. There’s nothing that’s going to convince a kid who has never worn glasses or a band or a watch or whatever to wear one. Or at least I haven’t seen it. So I think there’s lots of things to solve in this space, but it’s an area where it’s ripe for exploration.”

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Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Website owners can legally block some users, court rules

Fight involves a dispute between Craigslist and online ad aggregator 3Taps

Public website owners have the right to selectively block users from their sites and anyone who intentionally circumvents those blocks may be violating provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a federal judge in California ruled Friday.

The ruling involves a dispute between Craigslist and 3Taps Inc., an online ad aggregator that basically copies and republishes online ads.

Craigslist claimed that 3Taps scrapes, collects and reposts all of Craigslist's classified advertisements in real time. In 2012, Craigslist sent a cease-and-desist letter asking 3Taps to stop accessing its website. Craigslist also separately configured the site to block access to it from any IP address associated with 3Taps.

However, 3Taps used IP rotation technology and proxy servers to bypass the blocks and continued to harvest and repost data gathered from Craigslist.

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Craigslist accused 3Taps of copyright infringement and of "unauthorized access" to its website as defined under the CFAA. Craigslist alleged that 3Taps had not only violated Craigslist's Terms of Service but had also deliberately circumvented Craigslist's IP blocking measures.

3Taps admitted that it intentionally circumvented the blocking. But in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, 3Taps noted that Craigslist, by making its website publicly available, had essentially authorized the entire Internet to access and use its content. The company claimed that allowing owners of publicly accessible websites to selectively block individuals and groups was dangerous and contrary to the notion of a free and open Internet.

In a 13-page ruling, District Court Judge Charles Breyer dismissed those arguments and held that 3Taps had accessed Craigslist without specific authorization from the website owner.

"The law of trespass on private property provides a useful, if imperfect, analogy," Breyer wrote in his ruling. "Store owners open their doors to the public, but occasionally find it necessary to ban disruptive individuals from the premises. That trespass law has enforced those bans with criminal penalties has not, in the brick and mortar context, resulted in the doomsday scenarios predicted by 3Taps in the Internet context."

Even though Craigslist set up a public website, it was still within its rights to selectively block people it considered undesirable. There is nothing in the CFAA that specifically prohibits websites such as Craigslist from blocking people from their sites on a case-by-case basis, Breyer noted.

"Here, under the plain language of the statute, 3Taps was 'without authorization' when it continued to pull data off of Craigslist's website after Craigslist revoked its authorization to access the website," Breyer wrote.

The key point to consider is not the cease-and-desist letter, but the fact that Craigslist used specific IP blocking technology to keep 3Taps away.

It was "a clear signal from the computer owner to the person using the IP address that he is no longer authorized to access the website," Breyer noted. 3Taps indisputably knew that Craigslist was blocking access its site, but it went ahead anyway by circumventing the barrier Craigslist had in place, he noted.

"The banned user has to follow only one, clear rule: do not access the website," Breyer said.

The ruling caused some concern among rights advocates who have expressed concern over what they call an overly broad use of the CFAA to prosecute people for crimes it was never meant to address.

Concerns over the law peaked earlier this year following the death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz who committed suicide over the prospect of spending up to 35 years in prison on hacking-related charges. Another case that evoked similar concerns involved Andrew Auernheimer, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison for illegally accessing emails and other data belonging to about 120,000 iPad subscribers of AT&T.

In both cases, critics contend that prosecutors improperly used the CFAA to prosecute individuals. The CFAA, enacted by Congress in 1986, makes it illegal to knowingly access a computer without authorization or to exceed authorized use of a system. In intent and spirit, the CFAA is an online anti-trespassing law targeting criminal hackers who break into systems to steal or sabotage data. Critics contend that overzealous prosecutors are using CFAA to pursue individuals for far less serious crimes.

Hanni Fakhoury, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the big question raised by the Craigslist case is whether circumventing IP blocking technology constitutes unauthorized access.

"Quite frankly, we don't think it is, since it's an easy and common thing to do that can be done for legitimate reasons -- such as not revealing your location," he said. "Plus it's not really an access restriction, but rather a disguised use restriction."

In a blog post, Orin Kerr, professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, noted that a CFAA violation must involve situations where someone breaks through or circumvents a technical barrier to access a computer system. The big question in this case is whether IP blocking is a measure that can really be considered such a barrier, he said.

"IP addresses are very easily changed, and most people use the Internet from different IP addresses every day," Kerr wrote.

"As a result, attempting to block someone based on an IP address doesn't 'block' them except in a very temporary sense," Kerr said. "It pauses them for a few seconds more than actually blocks them. It's a technological barrier in the very short term, but not in the long term. Is that enough to constitute a technological barrier?"

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Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

How to solve Windows 8 crashes in less than a minute

Windows 8 has been out for a while, featuring an interface that's as cool as it is annoying . . . until you get the hang of it. But, like any computer operating system, it can fall over. Luckily, there is an easy way to solve the cause of most crashes; just call up WinDbg, the Windows debugger; a free tool to diagnose the most common causes of Windows crashes -- misbehaved third party drivers.

In W8, the Blue Screen of Death/BSOD has been modified to include a large, simple : ( emoticon and a short message in human (if not very informative) language. (Watch a slideshow version that walks you through any crash.]


The Windows 8 Blue Screen of Death has become the frown of frustration.

Also, Microsoft has made advancements in the dump file creation and management process. While this article focuses on W8, the information applies to both RT and Server 2012. For earlier operating systems, see Solve Windows 7 crashes in minutes or, for XP and 2000, see How to solve Windows crashes in minutes.

About Windows crashes
Operating system crashes are quite different from applications crashes, system hangs or other problems. In most cases, operating systems crash as a protective measure. When the OS discovers that critical devices are failing or that an internal operating system state has been identified as inconsistent because of possible viruses, bad device drivers or even RAM failures, it is generally safer to stop immediately. Otherwise, continuing operations would allow far more serious damage, such as application data corruption or loss.

[HELP IS ON THE WAY: Where to go for help with Windows crashes]

Two out of three system crashes are caused by third party drivers taking inappropriate actions (such as writing to non-existent memory) in Kernel mode where they have direct access to the OS kernel and to the hardware.

In contrast, drivers operating in User Mode, with only indirect access to the OS kernel, cannot directly cause a crash. A small percentage of crashes are caused by hardware issues such as bad memory, even less by faults in the OS itself. And some causes are simply unknown.

Thanks for the memory dump

A memory dump is the ugliest best friend you'll ever have. It is a snapshot of the state of the computer system at the point in time that the operating system stopped. And, of the vast amount of not-very-friendly looking data that a dump file contains, you will usually only need a few items that are easy to grasp and use. With the introduction of Windows 8, the OS now creates four different memory dumps; Complete, Kernel, and Minidumps and the new Automatic memory dump.

1. Automatic memory dump
Location: %SystemRoot%\Memory.dmp
Size: ≈size of OS kernel

The Automatic memory dump is the default option selected when you install Windows 8. It was created to support the "System Managed" page file configuration which has been updated to reduce the page file size on disk. The Automatic memory dump option produces a Kernel memory dump, the difference is when you select Automatic, it allows the SMSS process to reduce the page file smaller than the size of RAM.

2. Complete memory dump
Location: %SystemRoot%\Memory.dmp
Size: ≈size of installed RAM plus 1MB

A complete (or full) memory dump is about equal to the amount of installed RAM. With many systems having multiple GBs, this can quickly become a storage issue, especially if you are having more than the occasional crash. Normally I do not advise saving a full memory dump because they take so much space and are generally unneeded. However, there are cases when working with Microsoft (or another vendor) to find the cause of a very complex problem that the full memory dump would be very helpful. Therefore, stick to the automatic dump, but be prepared to switch the setting to generate a full dump on rare occasions.

3. Kernel memory dump
Location: %SystemRoot%\Memory.dmp
Size: ≈size of physical memory "owned" by kernel-mode components

Kernel dumps are roughly equal in size to the RAM occupied by the Windows 8 kernel. On my test system with 4GB RAM running Windows 8 on a 64-bit processor the kernel dump was about 336MB. Since, on occasion, dump files have to be transported, I compressed it, which brought it down to 80MB. One advantage to a kernel dump is that it contains the binaries which are needed for analysis. The Automatic dump setting creates a kernel dump file by default, saving only the most recent, as well as a minidump for each event.

4. Small or minidump
Location: %SystemRoot%\Minidump
Size: At least 64K on x86 and 128k on x64 (279K on my W8 test PC)

Minidumps include memory pages pointed to them by registers given their values at the point of the fault, as well as the stack of the faulting thread. What makes them small is that they do not contain any of the binary or executable files that were in memory at the time of the failure.

However, those files are critically important for subsequent analysis by the debugger. As long as you are debugging on the machine that created the dump file, WinDbg can find them in the System Root folders (unless the binaries were changed by a system update after the dump file was created). Alternatively the debugger should be able to locate them automatically through SymServ, Microsoft's online store of symbol files. Windows 8 creates and saves a minidump for every crash event, essentially providing a historical record of all events for the life of the system.

Configure W8 to get the right memory dumps

While the default configuration for W8 sets the OS to generate the memory dump format you will most likely need, take a quick look to be sure. From the W8 Style Menu simply type "control panel" (or only the first few letters in many cases) which will auto-magically take you to the Apps page where you should see a white box surrounding "Control Panel"; hitting Enter will take you to that familiar interface.



Make your way to Control Panel in W8.

The path to check Windows 8 Memory Dump Settings, beginning at Control Panel, follows:

Control Panel | System and Security | System | Advanced system settings | Startup and Recovery | Settings

Once at the Startup and Recovery dialogue box ensure that "Automatic memory dump" is checked. You will probably also want to ensure that both "Write an event to the system log" and "Automatically restart" (which should also be on by default) are checked.

Install WinDbg
System Requirements

To set your PC up for WinDbg-based crash analysis, you will need the following:
• 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 8/R2/Server 2012/Windows 7/Server 2008
Depending on the processor you are running the debugger on, you can use either the 32-bit or the 64-bit debugging tools. Note that it is not important whether the dump file was made on an x86-based or an x64-based platform.
• The Debugging Tools for Windows portion of the Windows SDK for Windows 8, which you can download for free from Microsoft.
• Approximately 103MB of hard disk space (not including storage space for dump files or for symbol files)
• Live Internet connection

Download WinDbg

First download sdksetup.exe, a small file (969KB) that launches the Web setup, from which you select what components to install.
• Standard download.
• Automated download (the download will start on its own):

Space required
Ignore the disk space required of 1.2GB; you will only be installing a small portion of the kit. On my test machine the installation process predicted 256.2MB but only needed 103MB according to File Explorer following installation.

Run skdsetup.exe

Install the Software Development Kit (SDK) to the machine that you will use to view memory dump files.

A. Launch sdksetup.exe.

B. Specify location:

The suggested installation path follows:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\

If you are downloading to install on a separate computer, choose the second option and set the appropriate path.

C. Accept the License Agreement

D. Remove the check marks for all but Debugging Tools for Windows

What are symbols and why do I need them?

Now that the debugger is installed and before calling up a dump file you have to make sure it has access to the symbol files. Symbol tables are a byproduct of compilation. When a program is compiled, the source code is translated from a high-level language into machine code. At the same time, the compiler creates a symbol file with a list of identifiers, their locations in the program, and their attributes. Since programs don't need this information to execute, it can be taken out and stored in another file. This reduces the size of the final executable so it takes up less disk space and loads faster into memory. But, when a program causes a problem, the OS only knows the hex address at which the problem occurred, not who was there and what the person was doing. Symbol tables, available through the use of SymServe, provide that information.

SymServ (SymSrv)

From the Windows 8 UI, right-click on WinDbg then select "Run as administrator" from the bar that pops up from the bottom of the screen.

SymServ (also spelled SymSrv) is a critically important utility provided by Microsoft that manages the identification of the correct symbol tables to be retrieved for use by WinDbg. There is no charge for its use and it functions automatically in the background as long as the debugger is properly configured, and has unfettered access to the symbol store at Microsoft.

Running WinDbg
From the W8 UI, right-click on the version of WinDbg you will use (x64 or x86) then select "Run as administrator" from the bar that pops up from the bottom of the screen. You will then see a singularly unexciting application interface; a block of gray. Before filling it in with data you must tell it where to find the symbol files.

Setting the symbol File Path
There is a massive number of symbol table files for Windows because every build of the operating system, even one-off variants, results in a new file. Using the wrong symbol tables would be like finding your way through San Francisco with a map of Boston. To be sure you are using the correct symbols, at WinDbg's menu bar, select the following:

File | Symbol file path

In the Symbol search path window enter the following address:

srv*c:\cache*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

Note that the address between the asterisks is where you want the symbols stored for future reference. For example, I store the symbols in a folder called symbols at the root of my c: drive, thus:

srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

Make sure that your firewall allows access to msdl.microsoft.com.

How WinDbg handles symbol files
When opening a memory dump, WinDbg will look at the executable files (.exe, .dll, etc.) and extract version information. It then creates a request to SymServ at Microsoft, which includes this version information and locates the precise symbol tables to draw information from. It won't download all symbols for the specific operating system you are troubleshooting; it will download what it needs.

Space for symbol files
The space needed to store symbols varies. In my W8 test machine, after running numerous crash tests, the folder was about 35MB. On another system, running W7, and on which I opened dump files from several other systems the folder was still under 100MB. Just remember that if you open files from additional machines (with variants of the operating system) your folder can continue to grow in size.

Alternatively, you can opt to download and store the complete symbol file from Microsoft. Before you do, note that - for each symbol package - you should have at least 1GB of disk space free. That's because, in addition to space needed to store the files, you also need space for the required temporary files. Even with the low cost of hard drives these days, the space used is worth noting.

• Each x86 symbol package may require 750 MB or more of hard disk space.

• Each x64 symbol package may require 640 MB or more.

Symbol packages are non-cumulative unless otherwise noted, so if you are using an SP2 Windows release, you will need to install the symbols for the original RTM version and for SP1 before you install the symbols for SP2.

Create a dump file
What if you don't have a memory dump to look at? No worries. You can generate one yourself. There are different ways to do it, but the best way is to use a tool called NotMyFault created by Mark Russinovich.

Download NotMyFault
To get NotMyFault, go to the Windows Internals Book page at SysInternals and scroll down to the Book Tools section where you will see a download link. The tool includes a selection of options that load a misbehaving driver (which requires administrative privileges). After downloading, I created a shortcut from the desktop to simplify access.

Keep in mind that using NotMyFault WILL CREATE A SYSTEM CRASH and while I've never seen a problem using the tool there are no guarantees in life, especially in computers. So, prepare your system and have anyone who needs access to it log off for a few minutes. Save any files that contain information that you might otherwise lose and close all applications. Properly prepared, the machine should go down, reboot and both a minidump and a kernel dump should be created.

Running NotMyFault
Launch NotMyFault and select the High IRQL fault (Kernel-mode) then . . . hit the Crash button. Your Frown-of-Frustration will appear in a second, both a minidump and a kernel dump file will be saved and - if properly configured - your system will restart.


When Windows 8 crashes, you see (1) the Frown-of-Frustration in the new BSOD. After restart you see (2) the offer to send crash files to Microsoft. The final screen (3) lists the files that would be sent, displays the privacy statement and asks you for permission to send them.


Over the W8 UI will be a band of blue with the message that "Your PC ran into a problem . . . ". If you click the "Send details" button, Microsoft will use WinDbg and the command "!analyze" as part of an automated service to identify the root cause of the problem. The output is combined with a database of known driver bug fixes to help identify the failure.

Launch WinDbg and (often) see the cause of the crash
Launch WinDbg by right-clicking on it from the W8 UI then select "Run as administrator" from the bar that pops up at the bottom of the screen. Once the debugger is running, select the menu option

File | Open Crash Dump

and point it to open the dump file you want to analyze. Note that WinDbg will open any size dump file; a minidump, kernel dump or complete dump file. When offered to Save Workspace Information, say Yes; it will remember where the dump file is.

A command window will open. If this is the first time you are using WinDbg on this system or looking at a dump file from another system you have not loaded files for before, it may take a moment to fill with information. This is because the debugger has to identify the precise release of Windows then go to SymServ at Microsoft and locate the corresponding symbol files and download the ones it needs. In subsequent sessions this step is unneeded because the symbols are saved on the hard drive. Once WinDbg has the symbols it needs it will run an analysis and fill the window with the results. This will include basic information such as the version of WinDbg, the location and name of the dump file opened, the symbol search path being used and even a brief analysis offering, in this case,

Probably caused by : myfault.sys

which, of course, we know to be true (myfault.sys is the name of the driver for NotMyFault).

WinDbg Error Messages
If WinDbg reports a *** WARNING or an *** ERROR, the solution is usually simple. The following lists the common messages, what they mean and how to resolve them.

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ntoskrnl.exe

*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for ntoskrnl.exe

This is important. When you see these two messages near the beginning of the output from WinDbg, it means that you will not get the analysis that you need. This is confirmed after the "Bugcheck Analysis" is automatically run, and the message

***** Kernel symbols are WRONG. Please fix symbols to do analysis

is displayed.

Likely causes follow:

• No path/wrong path; a path to the symbol files has not been set or the path is incorrect (look for typos such as a blank white space). Check the Symbol Path.

• Failed connection; check your Internet connection to make sure it is working properly.

• Access blocked; a firewall blocked access to the symbol files or the files were damaged during retrieval. See that no firewall is blocking access to msdl.microsoft.com (it may only be allowing access to www.microsoft.com).

Note that if a firewall initially blocks WinDbg from downloading a symbol table, it can result in a corrupted file. If unblocking the firewall and attempting to download the symbol file again does not work; the file remains damaged. The quickest fix is to close WinDbg, delete the symbols folder (which you most likely set at c:\symbols), and unblock the firewall. Next, reopen WinDbg and a dump file. The debugger will recreate the folder and re-download the symbols.

Do not go further with your analysis until this is corrected.

If you see the following error, no worries:

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for myfault.sys

*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for myfault.sys

WinDbg automatically suggests the culprit as shown.

This means that the debugger was looking for information on myfault.sys. However, since it is a third-party driver, there are no symbols for it, since Microsoft does not store all of the third-party drivers. The point is that you can ignore this error message. Vendors do not typically ship drivers with symbol files and they aren't necessary to your work; you can pinpoint the problem driver without them.

So, what caused the crash?
As mentioned above, when you open a dump file with WinDbg it automatically runs a basic analysis that will often nail the culprit without even giving the debugger any direct commands as shown in the screen where it says "Probably caused by : myfault.sys"

More information

Getting a little more information about the crash event and the suspect module is easy. Often, all you need is two commands among the hundreds that the rather powerful debugger offers:

!analyze -v

and

lmvm.

A new way to command WinDbg
Normally, you would type in the commands and parameters you need. Things have changed, however, and Windows too. If you take a good look at the WinDbg interface, just below the "Bugcheck Analysis" box, it says "Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information" and that the command is underlined and in blue. Yes, it's a link. Just touch it and the command will be run for you. But, in case you don't have a touch screen, a mouse will work fine or resort to the traditional method of typing the command into the window at the bottom of the interface where you see the prompt "kd>" (which stands for "kernel debugger"). Be sure to do it precisely; this is a case where syntax is key. For instance, note the space between the command and the "-v". The "v" or verbose switch tells WinDbg that you want all the details. You can do the same where you see the link for myfault which will display metadata for the suspect driver.

Output from !analyze -v

The analysis provided by !analyze -v is a combination of English and programmer-speak, but it is nonetheless a great start. In fact, in many cases you will not need to go any further. If you recognize the cause of the crash, you're probably done.

Output from !analyze -v


The !analyze -v command reveals the cause of the crash and the likely culprit.

The !analyze -v provides more detail about the system crash. In this case it accurately describes what the test driver (myfault.sys) was instructed to do; to access an address at an interrupt level that was too high.

Analysis

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (d1)

An attempt was made to access a pageable (or completely invalid) address at an interrupt request level (IRQL) that is too high. This is usually caused by drivers using improper addresses.

Under Debugging Details the report suggests that the problem was a "WIN_8_DRIVER_FAULT" and that NotMyFault.exe was active.

Stack dump
An important feature of the debugger's output using !analyze -v is the stack text. Whenever looking at a dump file always look at the far right end of the stack for any third-party drivers. In this case we would see myfault. Note that the chronologic sequence of events goes from the bottom to the top; as each new task is performed by the system it shows up at the top. In this rather short stack you can see that myfault was active, then a page fault occurred, and the system declared a BugCheck, which is when the system stopped (Blue Screened).

One way to look at this is that when you see a third-party driver active on the stack when the system crashed, it is like walking into a room and finding a body on the floor and someone standing over it with a smoking gun in his hand; it doesn't mean that he is guilty but makes him suspect No.1.

Output from lmvm (or by selecting myfault)

Knowing the name of a suspect is not enough; you need to know where he lives and what he does. That's where lmvm comes in. It provides a range of data from this image path (not all drivers live in %systemroot%\system32\drivers.), time stamp, image size and file type (in this case a driver) to the company that made it, the product it belongs to, version number and description. Some companies even include contact information for technical support. What the debugger reports, though, is solely dependent upon what the developer included, which, in some cases, is very little.

After you find the vendor's name, go to its Web site and check for updates, knowledge base articles, and other supporting information. If such items do not exist or do not resolve the problem, contact them. They may ask you to send along the debugging information (it is easy to copy the output from the debugger into an e-mail or Word document) or they may ask you to send them the memory dump (zip it up first, both to compress it and protect data integrity).

If you have any questions regarding the use of WinDbg, check out the WinDbg help file. It is excellent. And, when reading about a command be sure to look at the information provided about the many parameters such as "-v" which returns more (verbose) information.

The other third
While it's true that, by following the instructions above, you'll likely know the cause of two out of three crashes immediately; that does leave that annoying other third. What do you do then? Well, the list of what could have caused the system failure is not short; it can range from a case fan failing, allowing the system to overheat, to bad memory.

Sometimes it's the hardware
If you have recurring crashes but no clear or consistent reason, it may be a memory problem. Two good ways to check memory are the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool and Memtest86. Go to Control Panel and enter "memory" into its search box then select "Diagnose your computer's memory problems".

This simple diagnostic tool is quick and works great. Many people discount the possibility of a memory problem, because they account for such a small percentage of system crashes. However, they are often the cause that keeps you guessing the longest.

Is Windows the culprit?
In all probability: no. For all the naysayers who are quick to blame Redmond for such events, the fact is that Windows is very seldom the cause of a system failure. But, if ntoskrnl.exe (Windows core) or win32.sys (the driver that is most responsible for the "GUI" layer on Windows) is named as the culprit -- and they often are - don't be too quick to accept it. It is far more likely that some errant third-party device driver called upon a Windows component to perform an operation and passed a bad instruction, such as telling it to write to non-existent memory. So, while the operating system certainly can err, exhaust all other possibilities before you blame Microsoft.

What about my antivirus driver?
Often you may see an antivirus driver named as the culprit but there is a good chance it is not guilty. Here's why: for antivirus code to work it must watch all file openings and closings. To accomplish this, the code sits at a low layer in the OS and is constantly working so that he will often be on the stack of function calls that was active when the crash occurred.

Missing vendor information?
Some driver vendors don't take the time to include sufficient information with their modules. So if lmvm doesn't help, try looking at the subdirectories on the image path (if there is one). Often one of them will be the vendor name or a contraction of it. Another option is to search Google. Type in the driver name and/or folder name. You'll probably find the vendor as well as others who have posted information regarding the driver.
Summary

Bear in mind that the time it took you to read this primer and to configure WinDbg on your system is far more effort than you will need to solve two of three crashes. Indeed, most crash analysis efforts will take you less than one minute. And, while the other third can certainly be more challenging, at least you'll have more time to try.

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Smartphones could evolve into password killers

The ubiquitous smartphone, which many people now depend on for business and in their personal lives, is emerging as a promising replacement for passwords used in authentication.

Most experts agree that a password killer is necessary to bolster Web site security. People's fondness for easy-to-guess passwords that are often used across sites has severely weakened their effectiveness. In addition, sophisticated decryption technology has made even encrypted passwords easily acquirable by hackers.

Because a smartphone is the one device few people are without, it's seen as the perfect place to store credentials. Add the many sensors in a phone that can be used to identify a user, and the case for using the device for authentication becomes stronger.

"I think it's brilliant," Trent Henry, analyst for Gartner, said of smartphone-based authentication. "We're finding that this will be the type of authentication mode in the future."

A number of vendors with the same view as Henry are trying their best to drive the industry in that direction. Authy, Clef and Duo Security are examples of such vendors.

Even large security companies are getting into the market. Last month, EMC-owned RSA acquired PassBan, which provides technology for using a smartphone for voice and facial recognition for multifactor authentication.

Today, most vendors use the mobile phone for two-factor authentication. If a Web site supports a vendor's service, then when a person logs in, a unique personal identification number (PIN) is sent to the phone. Inputting the PIN completes the sign-in process.

Unfortunately, most consumers are unwilling to take those extra steps, so the search for an easier and more seamless method continues.

Authy moved in that direction last week with the introduction of an app that connects an iPhone or Android phone to an Apple computer via Bluetooth. From then on, when a person visits Facebook, Dropbox, Google Gmail or another supporting Web site, the credential stored in the phone is used to log into the site automatically.

Authy founder and CEO Daniel Palacio sees the app as only a beginning. In time, the same means of authentication could be used with Google Glass, a digital watch or some other type of wearable computer.

Authy's work and that of its competitors reflect the industry's search for the perfect solution, which is still a ways off.

"The frothy experimentation in the market means we haven't found the right sweet-spot solution yet, and we may never find a single one that suffices for all scenarios," said Eve Maler, analyst for Forrester Research. "Passwords are unlikely to be entirely supplanted unless that single solution appears some day."

For mobile phones to replace passwords, the devices will have to know when the actual owner is logging into a site and not a crook that either stole a phone or found it. Biometrics is one possible answer, as long reliable and highly secure fingerprint scanners and voice and facial recognition technology can be developed. Another possibility is phone sensors that can identify the user by the way he or she walks. Such technology, called gait recognition, is currently in the research stage at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Once biometrics becomes rock solid in identifying a device's user, "we'll start to have a very, very, very secure authentication system that's very hassle free," Palacio said. "People just buy it and it works."

While such a system may be much better than the passwords now in use, it does not mean hackers will be out of business.

"The attackers continue to go after these new techniques, so we have to be very careful about the security properties," Henry said. "In other words, you still have to evaluate what kind of attacks could occur."

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Clouds are backing up clouds, with more choices on tap

Nasuni and Backupify are introducing new offerings for their cloud-to-cloud backup services

Enterprises that rely on cloud-based services are getting more options for falling back on another cloud if necessary.

On Tuesday, Nasuni introduced a cloud-to-cloud mirroring option to give customers extra assurance that their data will be available in case of a service outage. The same day, cloud-to-cloud backup vendor Backupify added more choices for where users can have their data sent.

Both Nasuni and Backupify provide backup services that operate on top of larger cloud storage operations such as Amazon S3. Many enterprises are looking to cloud services for storage, often to get away from buying and operating gear of their own, according to Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Mark Peters. Services that store many customers' data in many cases can do so more efficiently through scale, he said.

Cloud storage has proved pretty reliable, and using one cloud-based service as backup for another should make users safer, Peters said.

"Logic says the odds of Amazon and Google going down on the same day, with your data, and not being able to do something about it is hard to fathom," Peters said.

Nasuni gives enterprises access to their data through on-site hardware that looks and feels like a traditional storage controller while actually storing the contents on S3 or Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud. On Tuesday, it's adding an optional feature to its service that will mirror the data on the primary cloud to a secondary one. With the Cloud Mirroring service, customers with S3 as their primary cloud would have their data mirrored to Azure, and vice versa, the company said.

The feature is designed to give customers more assurance that they will still be able to get to their data even if their primary cloud platform fails. Nasuni has never experienced a service outage and customers are already covered by service-level agreements, but Cloud Mirroring can give them one more layer of assurance, Nasuni said. The company said it will price Cloud Mirroring on a per-terabyte basis but didn't give any more information on pricing.

Backupify backs up consumers' and enterprises' SaaS (software-as-a-service) data to Amazon S3 so they can maintain their own copy of the data from services such as Salesforce, Google Apps, Facebook and Twitter. That data is encrypted with a customer-specific key and stored in Backupify's storage bucket on S3.

Its customers will now have the option of having their data backed up to a different cloud, CEO Rob May said. Those who already have their own S3 bucket can have their data backed up to it, and other initial options include Rackspace Cloud Files and Google Cloud Storage. Additional choices, including Azure and a customer's own storage equipment, will be available later, he said.

As Backupify has moved upmarket from consumers to small businesses to large enterprises, it's started to find customers who already have their own cloud storage accounts, May said.

Backupify will still use S3 to process those customers' content, but it won't keep the data in its own S3 bucket, May said. Instead, it will send the data along to the cloud that the customer chose.

Customers who choose their own storage will be charged in a different way from users of the company's traditional service, which costs US$3 per user, per month with unlimited data. The new type of service should represent savings of 50 percent to 60 percent off that cost, May said.

By choosing their own cloud storage provider, those customers will be able to pay for capacity on their own terms, which may be a better deal if they buy a lot of it, May said. Backupify's standard per-seat deal is priced to account for consumer and small-business customers as well as big enterprises, and the big customers may be able to get a better rate elsewhere because of volume discounts, he said.

"For most large customers, they're going to be much better off under the new pricing," May said.

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Start-up Defense.Net debuts with anti-DDoS service

Co-founder Barrett Lyon says anti-DDos service would serve both enterprise and cloud providers

Start-up Defense.net makes its debut today with the aim of stopping distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks aimed by attackers against both enterprises and cloud service networks.

The Belmont, Calif.-based company is founded by its CTO, Barrett Lyon, who started another anti-DDoS company in 2003 called Prolexic Technologies. Defense.net next month will be detailing how it provides anti-DDoS mitigation as its first service is rolled out.

Defense.net, whose CEO is Chris Risley, is funded by $9.5 million from Bessemer Venture Partners.

DDoS cyberattacks are large streams of traffic that attackers can generate often through compromised botnets of servers or desktops and that can be aimed at network and application infrastructure in order to swallow up available bandwidth or knock specific devices offline.

“The key [for anti-DDoS vendors] is scalability that outpaces the rates of the bad guys,” Lyon says, noting the Defense.net anti-DDoS mitigation method is based on a cloud service without the need for an appliance.

Other anti-DDoS vendors indicate that attackers appear to be increasing the strength of DDoS attacks. Arbor Networks recently published its quarterly threat report, based on anonymous traffic data from more than 270 service providers, which indicated that almost half of the DDoS attacks it has monitored now reach speeds of over 1Gbps.

That’s said to be up 13.5% from last year, while the portion of DDoS attacks over 10Gbps increased about 41% in the same period, according to Arbor. In addition, there was a doubling of the total number of attacks over 20Gbps that occurred in all of 2012.

For his part, Lyon says he thinks the average DDoS attack is probably 16 times larger and “significantly more sophisticated than it was a year earlier.”

Last fall, the websites of about a dozen U.S.-based banks were hit by massive DDoS attacks that often rendered them temporarily unavailable. Some of the attacks against banks such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America were so pronounced that it prompted government officials to discuss them, even pointing the finger against countries with whom the U.S. had had an adversarial relationship. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), for example, blamed Iran directly, though that country denied any involvement. Some businesses, such as the online gaming industry, openly say that fending off DDoS attacks is critical to their survival.

Lyon says he has assembled a team of experienced DDoS mitigation specialists who have worked in that capacity for firms such as Apple, BitGravity, VeriSign, Juniper, Box.net and Prolexic. He says the technology that will soon be unveiled by Defense.net will seek to make DDoS defense a bit easier in certain ways.

Some mitigation methods create “side effects” that include “blocked users and fraud alerts to slow page loads, broken links, and stalled or timed out video streams,” according to Lyon. “Some companies have had to ignore their fraud alerts when DDoS mitigation was turned on because so many of the alerts were artifacts of mitigation.” In the services expected to be introduced next month, Defense.net will try to prove it can overcome any side effects of that nature.

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Whatever you do, don't search online ... for anything ...

While she was looking online to buy a pressure cook her husband was researching backpacks. Armed men knock on their door. Hilarity ensues ...

So, there you are, at home, trying to decide which pressure cooker to buy while your spouse researches backpacks.

A day or so later your doorbell brings ... you open the front door and there's a couple of black SUVs pulled up out front and six guys with guns and badges asking if they might search your house. A reasonable response would be "WTF?!"

This is exactly what happened to Michele Catalano and her husband (who took the whole event with far less "WTF" than I could imagine myself having) and underscores the concerns we all should have over who is watching us and why. It also makes it hard to believe the contention that domestic surveillance isn't, as the government keeps contending, both widespread and in-depth.

The surreal quality of Catalano's story is amazing:

They asked if they could search the house, though it turned out to be just a cursory search. They walked around the living room, studied the books on the shelf (nope, no bomb making books, no Anarchist Cookbook), looked at all our pictures, glanced into our bedroom, pet our dogs. They asked if they could go in my son’s bedroom but when my husband said my son was sleeping in there, they let it be.

Meanwhile, they were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked.

... Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did.

Welcome to 1984 ... twentynine years late.

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