John C. Dvorak, author, columnist and editor, writes for PC Magazine as well hosts the podcast show "Cranky Geeks." Fed up with the obsession with technology itself, John Dvorak targets the ineffective, pretentious and flashy in the technology field, and wants us to return to functionable, quality products that serve the consumer, not the other way around.

1. You identify yourself as a "cranky geek," or someone who has gotten over being impressed that technology exists at all, and now wants the whole package to "just work." When did you start viewing technology as a means, and not an end, and why do fewer people speak up in the way that you do?

I started out viewing technology as a means to an end in the 1970’s when I thought technology could help me get organized. It never did the job and I became cranky. I’m more disorganized than ever.

As for the meekness of others, I think there are two reasons people do not speak up. The first is because they are often bedazzled by technology and the BS that surrounds it. The second is that they are genuinely scared to speak up. I’ve been told this by a lot of people. It’s weird but I hear that and comments like, “How do you get away with saying those things?” It’s not good.

2. How does a company or individual make software and hardware that works as you'd like it to? Is it substantially more difficult than what they do now?

I don’t think so. Most people either design for themselves, which is generally good. Or they design for an imaginary public, which is bad since they are disconnected from the real public. I don’t look for something designed for me. I look for something good that I can adapt to.

3. With a growing number of people living through MySpace and dumping their girl- and boyfriends over text message chats, how do you think the social network-world affects real-world social life?

It modernizes it. If we accept that better and faster communications is a good thing in general then all this is good. If I were in high school I think it would be cool to break up over text messages. Why not? It has to be a lot less agonizing.

4. How and why are American generations growing up to become "narrow thinkers"?

They do not get a good well-rounded education. Everything is specialized. Teachers are techno-phobes. And the schools budgets go to middle managers who do nothing. The situation spells doom for the nation.

5. Everyone talks about network security today. Why is this so difficult?

Software is just hard, period.

6. What importance does quality leadership in company have on the quality of products? Are there any outstanding examples?

Everything is top down. If you have a person at the top who is a stickler for quality then you get quality. For an overall outstanding example let me go a little to the wild side and suggest the winemakers in France and Italy who practice Biodynamic winemaking.

7. Does working within certain narrow tasks have a chance of reducing our ability to think about the whole task, and consequently becoming oblivious to making stuff "just work"?

Of course it does.

8. You experimented once with a Mac; Steve Jobs is known to be a fascist, or as Jean
Louis Gassee put it, "an enlightened tyrant." How would you run a company like Apple? Would it be any different from how you would run Microsoft?

These sorts of companies can only be run by the visionaries who established them. Nobody else can fully understand what they’re thinking. If I ran these companies I would sell off the pieces and bail out since there is no way I could do anything else but let the companies slide downhill. I’d bust them up instead.

9. Do Open Source products do better or worse than the mainstream?

The jury is still out. But it seems that open source may do better, but take longer.

10. Tell us what gadgets you use, and why. Do you have a method of resisting gadget overflow?

I’m pretty much a cameras and computers guy not obsessed with gadgets. I seldom carry a cell phone and prefer a big stereo with real speakers to using deafening and injurious ear buds and iPods for music. Most gadgets have a dehumanizing aspect to them that I don’t particularly like. Over the years I’ve reflected this in my writing and don’t actually talk about gadgets much.

Interview was conducted by Alex Birch the 29th of June 2008.

Corrupt would like to thank John Dvorak for kindly participating in the interview and sharing his views on the world of technology.

John Dvorak @ PC Magazine

John Dvorak @ Cranky Geeks

Dvorak Uncensored

When you study the technological development over the last 50 years, one thing that strikes you is that products seem to include more and more features apart from their original function. Everything is maximized to perform just about anything, regardless if you need those functions or not. And more features inevitably leads to more complex products, even if they might appear simple on the surface.

Take the cell phone for example. 10 years ago, all you could do with such a phone was to make calls and possibly send text messages. Few people owned one and if they did, it was mostly used for urgent calls or business matters. Fast forward 5 years and people began playing games and taking photos with them. Today a cell phone is like a Swiss army knife: call, send messages, photograph, listen to music, hack potatoes, masturbate...it does everything. You know a product has lost its usefulness when all added features diminish or even make the original function less stable and trustworthy. It's like buying a car that suddenly stops in the middle of nowhere and you go: "Hey, at least I can light my cigarette while listening to the radio!"

The question is if we need all of these functions. Photographers will most likely buy a real digital camera at this point. There are cheap music players around of much higher quality. Playing games on a tiny screen seems like a waste of time. But because the companies market these products with new features, the consumers suddenly believe they somehow "need" all of these things and pay more and more for something that is rarely used for its original purpose.

And sooner or later we stand there with a broken cell phone and no one can fix it for us, because the technology has become so complex that you need professionals to solve the problem. So you buy a new one. Ever had a problem with your car? While the old Volkswagen models simply needed a new mechanical part, modern cars depend upon highly complex electronics, where if one tiny circuit is broken, the whole system breaks down. While finding the problem is hard in itself, replacing the whole system will make both you and your wallet cry. We've made ourselves dependent upon an abundance of technology, so that if something breaks (which it always does), we can't perform our daily duties.

While I'm not against technology and realize that more features can be positive, even though it means it's harder to fix and understand for us normals that aren't technicians on our spare time, I also believe that we're committing a mistake by simply replacing everything with flashy, complex technological systems that are fragile, expensive and often not very essential. Part of the problem with industrial society today is that we keep producing stuff no one needs. Electric toilets, blinking computer cases, remote controlled door locks, TVs with built-in DVD-computer-projector-popcorn-machine-video-game-radio functionality; all of this is abundant garbage that these companies shove down our throats to make us spend more.

I don't need 100 features on my cell phone, I need it to call and when I do so, it needs to be simple, functionable and reliable. Likewise with cars, computers, stereos and much else: first and foremost we need these things to serve their original, intended function. When they stop doing that reliably, it really doesn't matter if your cell phone can play the Blade Runner theme backwards, make your computer blink or your car track down your wife on a GPS-screen; you'll be as pissed as the rest of us who've experienced the same thing. We need to go back to the basics and do it right instead of being pretentious about things that make us look hip.

This afternoon I ran into the classic problem on my friend's Windows 2000 machine: someone had locked the administrator account and no one knew the password. Without it I couldn't access the computer. A similar situation will occur if you simply lose or forget your password. Because most people don't know what else to do, they panic and start to reformat the entire drive. Here's a guide on how to retrieve, reset and/or change your user password without having to reinstall anything.

There are mainly two ways to do this. The first and recommended way is to reset the password using a registry editor. This is easy and quick but in turn will overwrite your previous password, which in some cases is not desired. The second option, which you only ought to choose if you really need to get hold of the original admin password and not change anything, is a bit more time consuming. Let's start with with the first method: editing the Windows registry.

Reset/Change Your Password

This method works on: NT 3.51, NT 4 (all versions and SPs), Windows 2000 (all versions & SPs), Windows XP (all versions, also SP2), Windows Server 2003 (all SPs), Vindows Vista 32 and 64 bit.

Step 1: Create Boot Software

On Windows NT systems, all passwords are stored in a system file called "SAM." Because the passwords are encrypted and the file is locked while running the OS, you need to access this file "offline" and edit it using a special software. There are many free programs for this but from experience I would strongly recommend Petter Nordahl-Hagen's Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, that can be downloaded here. Download the CD image and burn the .iso file to a CD-R.

Step 2: Boot Up

Restart your computer and insert the boot CD. If your computer wants to start Windows instead, you'll need to access BIOS and change the boot sequence. Consult your motherboard manual for this but generally you hit F10 or F12 before Windows starts and then look for the settings where you select the CD-ROM as the first boot medium in the boot sequence.

Step 3: Walkthrough

When you've booted up your computer with the CD, you will be taken through a number of options to reset or change your password. Here's a quick walkthrough:

1. Select partition: If you've only got one hard drive where Windows is installed, the default option here will be 1. If you've got several hard drives installed, choose the partition where you know Windows is stored.
2. Select registry path/file: Here you specify the directory path to the SAM file. For Windows 2000 users it will most commonly be WINNT/system32/config, for XP users WINDOWS/system32/config. If you know your system is using a different path, type that in. When you've pressed enter, choose 1 [sam system security].
3. Select password/registry edit: Again, the default choice here will be to edit user data and passwords (1)
4. Select user to edit: If you wish to edit the admin password, type in Administrator. If you want to edit the password of another user, type in that username accordingly.
5. Select password edit: You'll be given lots of useful options but the most common one will be to clear/reset the user password. To do this, choose option 1 and press enter. After you've received a message that the password has been cleared, you want to quit the program and try this out. Quit by typing in an exclamation mark, !, and pressing enter, then choosing q to leave the registry menu.
6. Select writing changes: Before you quit, you're given a last option to perform the changes to the registry file or roll back the changes if something went wrong. If everything's fine, choose yes by typing y and pressing enter. Then press CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot. Don't forget to take out the CD!

You should now be able to log on to the user account with a blank password. If it doesn't work, repeat the process above, alternatively you might want to try to changing the password to something new.

This method is quick and fairly simple. There's a slight risk of corrupting the registry file when writing to it but if you follow the instructions above, you should be safe, and the program automatically writes a backup of the original file. If you lack a CD-ROM or CD-R, you can of course also choose the floppy disk variant instead, that requires some additional drivers (refer to the included manual for this).

Retrieve Your Password

In certain cases you don't want to change the password but simply gain access to the user account. For this end you will need to "crack" the password some way, meaning you have to decrypt it from the SAM file. This is done by letting a program try out different methods of guessing the password, which is the time consuming part. By brute force, or trying out every possible combination there is, this method always works.

Step 1: Access The SAM File

If you have access to another computer, which is required for this method to work, you want to copy the SAM file to this location from the computer where your password is stored. To access the file offline, you first need to boot up your computer with another OS:

1. If you feel secure with the traditional Windows DOS, download the appropriate boot disk from here and install to a floppy disk.
2. Download a CD-bootable OS like LinspireLive that supports the file system of your Windows OS (most commonly NTFS or FAT32).
3. Create your own CD-bootable Windows environment on another computer, for instance BartPE for Windows XP.
4. Boot up with your Windows installation or recovery CD and enter the recovery console. Here you may copy the SAM file using simple DOS commands.

Copy the SAM file located in WINNT/system32/config or WINDOWS/system32/config to an external medium like a floppy drive, a USB memory or a hard drive.

Step 2: Crack The Password

Now that you've go the file containing the password you're trying to retrieve, you need a software to crack it. The classic program for this is L0phtCrack, which can be downloaded here.

Open up the SAM file with L0phtCrack and follow the instructions on how to crack it. Usually you want to enable all methods but the safest one is brute force. Depending on how long the password is and which characters it contains, the process can take anywhere from 5 min to over 24 hours. Again, this method is only to be used if you really need to get hold of the password and not at any costs want to change or reset it.

Following these two guides, you can reset the lost password in less than 30 min or retrieve it in less than a day. No need to reformat or reinstall ever again!

Our computers today store all kinds of important information: schedules, work documents, family photos, annual audits and various Internet account details. Whatever we're working with on the computer, we daily rely upon the information it provides us with. Despite this, few people today are backing up their data to secure both private and company information. This article is a quick and easy guide to how you set up your own backup system and avoid a future disaster.

Why Backup?

No data is ever safe on any computer. This is what can happen to it:

- The information can be stolen

- The file system can become corrupt, making the data inaccessible

- The operative system can malfunction

- The hard drive can physically malfunction (all hard drives do, it's just a matter of how many years they last)

- The lightning or any other electric instability can break your computer

- The data can accidentally be overwritten or deleted

What To Backup?

First you need to decide what information you wish to backup. Larger size of information means larger storage medium is required. If you're trying to secure a few office documents (<1MB), a simple floppy disk might be the appropriate medium to use. For media like pictures, music or movies that usually take up much more space, you will be looking for using either CD-Rs or DVD-Rs.

For many people, backing up the entire system is a good idea. It lets you restore the entire operative system and all information stored on your hard drive(s). For this end you need an external hard drive; a medium you externally connect to your computer via USB or FireWire. LaCie sells stable, fast and reliable hard drives to good prices. Remember that the storage space of the backup medium must be larger than the total size of the hard drive you wish to backup!

How To Backup?

To backup your data you need backup software. What this does is not only to copy your information to the backup medium, it will also have the option to compress it (reducing the size), secure it with a password and automatize the process to make it easier for you.

If you buy an external hard drive suited for backups, it will commonly ship with corporate software. If you're looking for free alternatives, take a peek here if you only want to backup certain files or directories, and here if you want to produce an image copy of your entire hard drive(s) or certain partition(s).

If you want to create a complete copy of your hard drive, or maybe only copy a certain partition on it, you need software that lets you access all your hard drive information without running the operative system. Acronis sells a great piece of software for this end that lets you burn a CD-R with which you boot up your computer.

When choosing to create a backup image of a partition or an entire hard drive, the software will copy sector-by-sector data, including your MBR (Master Boot Record). This means that if your system drive breaks or corrupts, you can restore the entire drive to a new hard drive and boot up your computer again as if nothing had ever happened.

When To Backup?

There are three ways of backing up information:

Full backup: A complete copy of all the information, regardless of which files have been changed, added or deleted. This is the starting point for all backup methods. If you're for instance only looking for saving family photos somewhere safe, burning a full backup copy to a DVD-R once a month is a good idea.

Incremental backup: Stores all the modified files since last backup. If you regularly change important information, incremental backup method will enable you to restore your information from any given backup date. Depending on how much information you're saving, this is often a quick way of regularly saving small amounts of data but in turn requires first full backup and all subsequent backups, up till restore date of choice. If one archive fails, the entire backup process will fail.

Differential backup: Stores all the modified files since last full backup. This means you only need the full backup and one subsequent backup archive of choice to restore your data. In turn, depending on the size of the data you modify since full backup, the differential backup archives will eventually grow larger and larger.

You choose method after a) storage space of your backup medium, b) how regularly you wish to backup your data and c) how quickly you need to access it if something goes wrong with your original data. What's important here is that you set up a backup schedule.

An example:

Brett Stevens works a lot with web development and design. Every week he's got ~300 MB of new information he needs to save. In addition to this he's got lots of software with custom settings he'd like to avoid re-configuring in case something would happen to his system drive (160 GB). For this end he's bought himself an external hard drive (250 GB) that he connects to his computer via Hi-Speed USB.

Every evening he boots up his computer with an Acronis boot CD. He chooses to create a full image backup of his entire system drive. Brett uses the incremental backup method, which means every evening he'll produce a new archive containing around 300 MB of information. When Brett's reaching the end of the month, he usually deletes all archives and begins on a new full backup, repeating the process. If he chose the differential method, the size of the archives would grow with 300 MB every day, which would mean that the backup process would take longer for each time and require more and more storage space. If the modified files would only amount up to 30 MB instead, the differential method would make more sense.

Whether you collect photos from around the world, create music, work as an accountant on a company or simply are tired of having to re-install the operative system when the hard drive fails, backing up your data is very important. One or two hours a week can save you data you'd never be able to retrieve again. Don't take the risk, backup and secure your information before the disaster is a fact!

Cults appear everywhere today; in religion, politics, business and media. Technology is not an exception. What defines a cult is the insistence that a certain way, right or wrong, can be the only way for characteristics independent of its effect. What matters in the real world is how well something works, but cults replace this with a symbol or doctrine.

Open source was originally the idea that knowledge about software programming should be shared within a community, independent of financial reward, to compete with the costly corporate software out on the market. So far, really smart. What's happened over these last years is that the open source community has slowly transformed into a cult phenomenon that dogmatically divides software up into two binary categories: open source (good) and closed source (evil).

This a thoroughly stupid debate because what's being discussed is method and not product. Method in itself does not dictate whether the product is good or bad. An example of this open source software: while programs such as the FLAC encoder and the GIMP photoshop are brilliant, OpenOffice work system and Firefox browser are not. Same goes for corporate software: RealPlayer is a bloody joke and don't get me started with troubleshooting the ever-helpful "Blue Screen Of Death" (BSOD) on Windows XP!

The truth is that there are both white and black sheep in the corporate and open source heaven. Most people who blindly trust corporate software are the same nitwits who believe that money is the only motivating factor that's needed to create functional products. Similarly it's hilarious to hear the open source fanatics religiously exclaim how fantastic their home made pile of junk is - "hey, it's free!"

While I find that most corporate software today is pretty neat, I also realize that much of it is overpriced and seem to spy on every move you do on the Internet. Open source software isn't much better; you run into a system error and you're forced to spend the whole day googling forums after keywords related to your mysterious problem: "crash," "horse porn," "memory leak," "code line #45."

A similar discussion is always going hot among liberals and socialists; should we socialize or privatize all of our companies and services? My answer is always in the middle: some services that most or all people need access to on a regular basis, ought to be socialized. Craftwork and private businesses, such as the local grocery store and computer shop, should remain private and inspire others to compete and create something better.

When choosing between corporate and open source software; between something that costs and something that's free of charge, don't fool yourself by the crowds who want you to be a part of their technological cult. Pick the software of good quality; something that's stable, upgradeable, performs its tasks like it should and can be troubleshooted if needed. Quality is the only thing you ought to worry about and smart people are willing to pay up a minor fee to be able to use something effective for years. Think long-term and be selective; that's ultimately what's going to save you in the jungle of modern technology.

The corporate media is rapidly losing consumers. Thanks to a society obsessed with the individual, people today are no longer satisfied with simply consuming. They want to produce, vote, rate and share. Open Source fans clap their hands together and talk about the new "free media," pointing to examples like Wikipedia. Despite this development, the quality of media content online is not increasing - why?

Most people are not interested in communicating an idea, they want to be the center of attention. Wikipedia-writers play academics, bloggers document their oh-so-fascinating bourgeois lifestyles and MySpacers exercise their ego together with digital friends. The result is at best a social re-hash of what the corporate media has been promoting for years: consumer products, popularity contests and political fashion.

Furthermore, there is no such thing as "free media," especially if it's built by "the people." A prime example is Wikipedia, which regularly locks articles on "sensitive topics" because none of its pseudo-academics can agree on historical facts. Political correctness shake hands with logical fallacies and social trends, that supposedly will free us from the corporate media pressure.

The result is a sea of opinions where the majority drowns out any sane voice. You might be able to set up your own blog and express extreme ideas but since you're only one out of millions of people who're doing the same, no one will pay attention to what you're saying. Freedom of speech, ironically, deconstructs itself by regular intervals and voice only what's popular and trendy at the moment. So much for an "independent" media.

Right now the large media corporations will do everything they can to create more popular alternatives or gain ownership of these alternative channels of media. Google is one big competitor out on the market but other corporations like Microsoft will quickly follow the lead. Profit will be generated in the classical democratic ways: well placed advertising, lobbying and centralization.

We see this centralizing process in Google trying to compete with Facebook by establishing a new social network that includes many different subnetworks. We see this in record companies slowly buying up or infiltrating with pay-per-song services online. We see this in media giants like CNN who are now hosting officially on YouTube to gain more visitors. These profit monsters know what they're doing.

In other words, while the democratic process of the consumer becoming creator of his/her own media, on the surface might seem like a potential threat to the current totalitarian media syndicates that control the people in the West, the true face of this development will never be understood correctly by the majority. Democracy is like a tiger: it knows when to hunt down its prey but it does so under camouflage. Plato understood this correctly: every time we vote for "freedom," there's a smart financial interest behind it all that sees its opportunity of making profits.

For while there will be a seeming increase in "alternative" media solutions, the same political correct pressure will be present; partly because the majority will be attacking any idea that threatens their personal comfort, partly because the services who offer individuals media empowerment, have lobbyists and media police watching their back. When Facebook deleted the Jokela Highschool Shooting Sympathizers group, they did so because the media pressure became too large. Again, there is no such thing as "free media." All is under control, directly (TV) or indirectly (YouTube).

The corporate media is right now upset over Web 2.0 because it knows it'll have to change strategy to maintain media power. Without that power, democracy is useless and any political consensus will be shattered. Instead, large companies like CNN and FOX will do all it can to integrate with this new democratic model and infiltrate it without us consumers knowing it. And since most people are dumb as horses, their "alternative" media will be repeating the same corporate "truths" in a hundred different flavours. That's democracy and that's how the mass media will continue to develop in this soft-totalitarian society without any proper leadership.

My dad is what you'd call a Mac freak. His first computer back in 1994-95 was a Macintosh Performa 460. I remember as a boy, when he came home with this flat machine, our very first computer that was going to revolutionize our home. It wasn't only a computer but a sacred relic. When we started up the test software to "learn" how to use the mouse with one button, we were all very amazed. Animated graphics, blinking menus, office programs and other fancy features made it near to holy. No one was allowed to hit the "safe backup" button or enter the mysterious hard drive root. Only PCs would let you do that sort of careless stuff, my dad said with a religious sanctity.

As I grew older and got to test out early versions of Microsoft Windows 95 on my friend's PC, I started to become critical of the holy machine at home. The 33 MHz Mac didn't just seem to be significantly slower, it lacked the fun of modifying hardware and software to meet personal needs. I became acquainted with the PC and learned that it was much like life; if you wanted a blast, you first had to learn to configure it and create the desired output of choice. With Mac, you couldn't do much more than getting used to the default features. If you wanted to make it faster or replace a faulty part, you had to take it to the Apple Store, which was so expensive and time consuming on fixing things, that it in many cases was even preferable to simply buy a new computer. If you wanted better software, you had to begin saving again, because Mac software wasn't cheap. Despite that the Mac never really intrigued the rest of the family, my dad always insisted on it mysteriously being superior in every way.

"Mac-people," as they're often referred to, seem to consist of individuals who are not really technical when it comes to computers. They hear the PC-commercials on TV where they repeat a lot of advanced terms - DDR, MHz, PCI, USB, VGA - and freak out. Suddenly an Apple pops up on the screen and Justin Long from the TV-series Ed, dressed in an indie-look-a-like laid-back style, starts to talk about how cool Macs are, while the office-dressed John Hodgman from This American Life displays how neurotic and corporate-dry PCs are. We're supposed to laugh at the virus attacks, bloated features and failing software of the PC and turn our eyes toward the hip, cool and easygoing Mac. Why? "It just works."

The argument is what Apple has been marketing with for years: choosing Mac is choosing a lifestyle. You "think differently." This appeals by default to people who're not really aware of hardware or software basics. When you need a computer and don't know which one to choose, you feel good about picking something that seems simple, easy and trendy. If you're told that you automatically made the smart choice and chose something "unique," that is a double-gratification to your ego. Thus Macs have a tendency to appeal by external reasons, since the computer is no longer a working machine but a catchy accessoar for those who are "different."

Despite that Macs today use traditional hardware such as Intel processors and ATI Radeon graphics cards, you still need to cash out more for a specially designed Mac, than to simply order home a PC-equivalent for the fraction of that cost. Smart people build their own computer for an even cheaper price and optimal customization. The talk about superior stability in Apple products is no longer a fashion discussion ^{1 2 3}; even the Mac users themselves are now starting to boycott the company. The distinction between the corporate PC and the "artistic" Mac is beginning to fade out.

Despite this fact, people love to create religious camps. The Mac users insist on pulling superficial arguments in order to disguise the obvious truth - that they're buying overpriced hardware in a slick lifestyle-defined case - while PC users have a hard time admitting that Windows is slowly turning into a seriously bloated operative system, that security-wise resembles something you'd expect would pop up along the lines of Orwell's 1984. At this point any sane person with a medium knowledge of computers, would rather read up on a 10 min instruction manual, order home the hardware they need, and then put the things together on their own. Most likely you'd install something like an old copy of Windows XP Professional or DesktopBSD, avoiding the corporate disasters of Mac OS X and Windows Vista.

More than 10 years later since Macintosh Performa 460 and both me and my dad are sitting on a custom built PC. The holy Mac has been reduced to nostalgia. Although it's safe to say that it takes some time before you discover what's quality hardware and what's not, a customized PC combined with Windows XP or a BSD installation is in all aspects superior to spending money on pre-assembled Dells or over marketed iMacs. Most companies today even let you choose your own hardware, if you feel you're safer off with a guarantee. When it comes down to it, only neurotic people view technology as an extension of their personality. Apple is effectively a corporate company fulfilling that vision and those who are foolish (read: iMad) enough to buy into their campaign, demonstrate the modern dysfunction of our time.