HP Boot Optimizer HPBootOp, Infests HP Computers

Those of you with HP or Compaq computers may find a curious piece of software with the name HPBootOp living happily in your RAM. What is this fellow and what does he do? Well, he loads various services and drivers at boot time. He makes the computer boot appear faster by waiting until after the login screen appears. Most of us measure boot time from pressing the power on button until the login screen appears. Sluggishness after the login screen doesn't count.
Why do we care? Simple, hpbootop was loading a couple of drivers/ram_eaters that I didn't want loaded. In particular it was loading ctfmon, a plump Microsoft slower-downer that supports voice entry, Braille, and pareplegics tapping on the keyboard with a stick taped to their foreheads. And it eats up megs and megs of scarce RAM. There is a Microsoft documented procedure to prevent ctfmon from loading. I executed the procedure a couple of times with no luck. Ctfmon popped right back into RAM. That was a while ago, and I let the matter drop.
Yesterday, on the track of something else, I stumbled across an HPBootOp key in the registry. It had subkeys Delay1 and Delay2. Those subkeys had names of programs, including my old buddy ctfmon. Ah hah.
A bit of web surfing turned up this and this from HP explaining how to get rid of HPBootOp and how to restore him if you might want him back.
HPBootOp is persistant, and when you kill him he plants keys in the registry to start all the things he used to start. I used the StartManager program to turn off all the ones I didn't want, starting with ctfmon. This time ctfmon stayed dead.
Did HPBootOp speed up my boot? Not much, if at all. Timing with a plain wrist watch, boot time with the optomizer was 46-48 seconds. Without it I get 49-51 seconds. And without Ctfmon and his other sluggish friends, the computer runs faster.

Words of the Weasel Part 11

Invest. Obama speak for spend.

Health Care is expensive because it's free

Health care is sucking up 16% of GNP. That makes everything we buy, cars, food, fuel, clothes, houses, cost 16% more just to pay the workers health care. It makes American exports cost 16% more than our international competitors. It makes imports cheaper because no other country in the world pours 16% of GNP into health care. The rest of the world spends no more than 8% on health care. Public health in the other industrialized nations is every bit as good, and in many cases better, than in the US.
Why is US health care so expensive? Because health care providers charge as much as they want, and the patient never complains, because he has insurance. And the the health care providers do charge like crazy. A straight forward gall bladder removal cost as much as the house I had just bought. Which is ridiculous, an hour or two in the operating room and a few days in a hospital bed does not cost anywhere as much as a three story house. No problem, Blue Cross Blue Shield paid it all.
Most of us have insurance that pays for everything. So everything gets done, whether it needs to or not, and the bills go up and up and the insurance company pays them.
If we had to pay for health care out of our own pockets, a lot less money would go to health care.
Suppose nobody had health insurance? That would reduce the number of doctor visits, hospital stays, and the total share of GNP going to health care. Everything would cost less, and the average citizen would stay even.
Trouble with this is the catastrophic illness. Some things cost so much that no one can afford the bill. Even the unpadded bill. Suppose we buy insurance to cover real unpredictable catastrophes and pay the ordinary stuff out of pocket?
That would stimulate the economy far more than having Uncle Sam pay health insurance premiums for everyone.

It isn't Windows fault (this time)

I fixed the computer that would not remember passwords. It turns out to be something inside Firefox, at least Firefox 3.10. Just this once, Windows is not guilty. Here's how to fix passwords.
On the Firefox Menu Bar click Tools->Options. Click the Privacy tab. Make sure cookies are enabled and "clear private data on exit" is UNCHECKED. Remove any cookie EXCEPTIONS that might block sites you care about. Do Show Cookies and then delete all of them. Sometimes cookies get corrupted which confuses Firefox. Wiping them all out will force the websites to create new, clean cookies next time you visit.
Next click the Security tab. Check "Remember Passwords". Then click on Password EXCEPTIONS. Remove any Exceptions blocking sites you care about. In my case an Exception was blocking Facebook. I have no idea how that Exception got planted, but there it was.
Clearing it allowed me to click right into my facebook page without having to hand type my password each time.

A tale of two computers.

One computer shows a clever parchment texture behind website text and gets me into websites withOUT demanding I type in a password. Those are good things. It chokes up on YouTube video, and it doesn't change the color of web links when I visit them. Those are bad things.
The other computer shows plain white behind the website text, and demands I type my password to get to my Facebook page or log me into other websites. Those are minor annoyances. But it plays YouTube and turns weblinks into a reminder color after I visit them. Those are good things.
Both machines run XP service pack 3, patched right up to yesterday. Both browse with Firefox 3.10. Both show no malware using AdAware, Spybot, AVG, ZoneAlarm, and Malicious Software Removal Tool. Both have better than half the disk free, Both have 750 Megs of RAM and the same set of speed up tweaks. Both internet using the same router & cable modem.
Beats me. I'm sure the reason is buried somewhere inside Windows, but where? I don't feel like re installing Windows just to satisfy my curiosity.

Arlen Spector turning Democrat

Despite all the hot air and venting about Arlen Spector switching parties, no one has commented upon the real meaning of Spector's switch. Namely, Pennsylvania is turning democratic, or at least Spector thinks it is, and he has a lot of experience in PA politics. More than I do for sure.
Republicans should be asking themselves "why are we loosing Pennsylvania?" rather than "Why did Spector abandon the GOP?"
So why is Pennsylvania (and a lot of other places) going Democratic? Certainly the GOP's poor record on spending ($750 billion TARP was a Bush bill), pork, and earmarks, association with, and bungling of, the Iraq war hurt. Great Depression II happened on Bush's watch and is blamed upon the party in power. A Democratic media, and a Democratic education establishment are doing their best to raise the new generation as Democrats. GOP support of the record companies against the downloaders of music alienates the young but doesn't bring any voters into the party. The record companies don't vote. Republican concentration upon hot-button wedge issues looses more votes among the new generation than it gains among the older generation.
What should the GOP do? Certainly it needs to pull up its socks on spending, pork, earmarks, campaign finance/bribery, and corruption. It needs programs to reduce the scandulous amounts of money (16% of GNP) spent on "health care". It needs to advocate Wall Street reforms to prevent Great Depression III from occuring. Outlawing credit default swaps, outlawing the secondary mortgage market, requiring stock holder approval of bonuses, and cleaning up the accounting "profession" would be a good start.

Portraits, on Facebook

Funny thing is, very few portraits posted on Facebook are any good. Or at least, I'd never recognize the person in the real world (as opposed to cyberspace). Lots of pictures taken from 50 feet away. In a 1 inch portrait, the face is about four pixels wide and just four fleshtone pixels don't give enough detail to recognize a face. Or, the person is wearing a funny hat , silly glasses, sunglasses, or something else that makes them unrecognizable. Bank robbers used to do that stuff to disguise themselves on the job. Or, somehow in this day and age of supergenius point and shoot cameras, they manage to overwelm the camera's microprocessor and post a picture that's over exposed, under exposed, out of focus, or blurry. They must be working at it, 'cause the cameras are very clever, and take flawless pictures under the most demanding situations. Or they take the portrait with an awful background.
The pro's post good portraits. For instance the executive counselor from this district for the last quarter century, posts a professionally shot portrait that's sharp as a tack, and I recognized him immediately.