A new community helping hand

[Kevin]

As many of you know, Internet radio may show great promise as a place to hear things you can't hear anywhere else, but the technology is far from perfect. We're continuously working to improve the experience at Beethoven Radio with your help. Fortunately, many of you have figured out how to address many technical issues and we have benefitted greatly from your assistance.

In an effort to make everyone's experience at Beethoven.com a better one, we've created this forum for anyone with technical questions to post them and for those who have figured out answers to these questions to share them with others. Obviously, we'll still be here to answer your technical questions at helpme@beethoven.com, but it's our hope that this forum will provide one more way for all of us to work together to make this new medium everything it can be.

Of course, I'm obligated to tell you that we can't guarantee that everything any Beethoven.com community members say is completely accurate from a technical perspective, but we'll do our best to monitor this forum and correct any misinformation we see.

Thank you to all of our Beethoven.com community members for all your support and assistance in this as we strive to be the best station on the Internet.

[Marye]

Thank you Kevin,

I do have a question. I signed up for a beethoven email, successfully, and I have never been able to access anything. Your help line has suggested, and perhaps quite rightly so, that the firewall where I work is the culprit. I have no wish to say to my tech people, "OYE (that was for you Haggis) I can't mess about during work hours using another email address like I would really like to do. FIX THIS!" So I thought I would ask, is there a way around this?

Thanks anyone.

[barfle]

This message comes from someone with enough knowledge to be dangerous, but beethoven mail uses what's called a "named port," which is just a fancy way of saying a slightly special address in the url. There are reasons for using a named port, but I don't know why beethoven is using one for their email. From my experience, it's usually a security issue.

My firewall at work seems to let everything through except named ports. My beethoven email isn't the only site I can't get to from work, but the others also have named ports, so my conclusion is that the firewall blocks those calls.

[Marye]

Well well... that explains it then Barfle... thank you. We installed new software that has, but not now, prohibited me from viewing sites that I must read regularly in order to keep with up specific areas of law. Hmm... "named ports" I shall enquire.

Thank you.

<small>[ 08-08-2003, 10:27 AM: Message edited by: Marye ]</small>

[OperaTenor]

Thanks for adding the forum, Kevin. Your level of concern never ceases to amaze me, and I think it's a rare example of far-sighted good business sense.

[Kevin]

Originally posted by barfle:
From my experience, it's usually a security issue.

You are quite right about why we used a named port. We had to change it to this because of spam systems trying to use our email system to spoof the "from" address and use our port to send their crud. As for a fix to this issue with firewalls, I'll check with our tech staff to find out if there is another solution.

Kevin

[Kevin]

One idea might be to use POP3 access for your account, if you are able to do this. You may be able to set up a special profile in Outlook, for example, to use POP3 access to access your account.

Another suggestion is, in a worst case scenario, you can access any email account via a website called mail2web.com. You simply type in your email address and password and you can use their web interface, if you absolutely can't access ours.

Kevin

[barfle]

Kevin, thanks for the info on why you are using a named port, and also thanks for the info on mail2web. I'll have to give them a shot (since my home PC is on a creaky old dial-up).

[Marye]

Was it just me? I was booted out at 11:15 (from the website entirely) or thereabouts and just this minute (12:03)was able to get back on. :confused:

<small>[ 08-12-2003, 12:05 PM: Message edited by: Marye ]</small>

[barfle]

Nope, it wasn't just you. I lost the stream, I lost the "Now Playing," I lost the webcam (and it was Anna!), and I couldn't get to the home page.

Back from lunch and it seems OK now, although I had to start the stream twice.

[Marye]

I lost the stream again... AND AGAIN as I am writing this....

[Shapley]

I lost it all, too. Now it's back, and what do I find? Phillip Glass!

Apparently, I didn't miss anything.

[jmfryar]

Here too - booted out and unable to reload the page until now (course, I haven't been trying since I got frustrated at being unable to load it) and no more anna on the web cam either!! What am I supposed to look at while I work???

[Marye]

I keep losing the stream... big difficulties is it?

[jmfryar]

mine is cutting in and out...too many people watching the web cam?

[dkm32]

My guess, folks, is that you were indirectly hurt by the latest worm going around. Even if your machine wasn't infected, the Internet itself was a mess yesterday. I couldn't get to a lot of websites that usually stay up during one of these attacks. Hopefully, the mess will be cleaned up soon and they'll get the person(s) who did this.

BTW: To see if your machine is infected, search for the file MSBLASTER.exe on your C: drive.

The press is saying it shuts down machines. Some it does, others just keep downgrading until they can't do much of anything. Then you have to re-boot and things look fine for awhile. Then, the downgrading happens.

<small>[ 08-13-2003, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: dkm32 ]</small>

[lliam]

Hi Donna,
I think maybe You're just being a little paranoid, so forget it. If you're that concerned, do a search for
Rpcss.exe and rename it to Rpcss.bad or delete it. I deleted that bugger several
months ago, with no affect whatsoever!

That is, unless...
...we hear differently and/or get an update from a reliable source. This is only "my" thought on it, but others may differ, and if so, hopefully they can point us to a good explanation.

The latest news I hear is that only NT type systems are vulnerable to ms-blaster.
This would be NT, 2000, XP and 2003 server. 95, 98 and ME users get to read about
it but don't have to experience it first hand. In the meantime, it wouldn't be a
bad idea to make sure you have a good firewall in place, as this will close the port
(135) that ms-blaster is using to infiltrate systems. The really good firewalls not
only close the ports, but puts your system in stealth mode... the worm can't even
find your machine that way

I agree, people should install a good firewall. That aside, Win9x and ME systems
don't require the RPCSS to run, and that's how the worm travels.


For anyone who is still worried, run a test
of your system on Steve Gibson's free
Shields Up service at:

http://www.grc.com.

It has now been updated and greatly enhanced.

In particular, you can check that
individual ports are stealthed -- as
they should be. In the current instance,
Microsoft identifies the following ports
as used by the worm:

135, 139, 445, 593.

You may wish to pay particular attention to those.

If you are not using a firewall, Shields Up
is likely to give you a salutary lesson in
just how vulnerable your computer is.

The GRC site also gives extensive information
on how to secure your computer, select a
firewall, and so on.

[dkm32]

Originally posted by lliam:
Hi Donna,
I think maybe You're just being a little paranoid, so forget it. If you're that concerned, do a search for
Rpcss.exe and rename it to Rpcss.bad or delete it. I deleted that bugger several
months ago, with no affect whatsoever!

Paranoid? No, It's not being paranoid when you're hit with the worm. Firewall didn't help. And, I don't have rpcss.exe on my machine.

It took a while to figure out why my machine was behaving so badly because of the press releases saying that it powered down machines. Mine just keep getting messed up...like a memory leak. A Friend was going through the exact same thing when it dawned on us. And, sure enough, there is was! MSBLASTER.exe.


And, tell the various companies that have been hit that their paranoid. I don't think they'll like that very much!

[dkm32]

Originally posted by lliam:
If you're that concerned, do a search for
Rpcss.exe and rename it to Rpcss.bad or delete it. I deleted that bugger several
months ago, with no affect whatsoever!

That is, unless...
...we hear differently and/or get an update from a reliable source. This is only "my" thought on it, but others may differ, and if so, hopefully they can point us to a good explanation.

Having just stated that I don't have RPCSS.exe on my system...i checked both of my W2K boxes and neither has it, nor is it in the Task Manager...I found an article of interest...http://www.cexx.org/rpc.htm

(lliam, go ahead and post the whole bloody article if you wish, but I'm sure not everyone is all that interested.)

[Marye]

Have I lost the station? I do not hear anything?