Size vs. Size on Disk

This is a question you probably don’t ask yourself too much, and hey, you probably will live your life without even considering asking it, but there will be times where this knowledge could be useful and at least this way you won’t be lost.

Check that image, normally you wouldn’t care about the Size-SizeOnDisk relation, just a few KB of difference, but in this case these are 10.2GB of difference, so how to know? What the fuck are you going to do now? Well…

Let’s start from the beginning. When you format a disk (Hard Drive, Flash Drive, SSD, CD, Diskette…) you assign a File System (Fat, NTFS, Ext…) to it. The file system defines how the files are stored in your disk, and related to this article, the cluster size. The cluster size is, lets say, the minimum storage of your disk. Meaning that if I save a file of 1KB, if the minimum cluster size is 10MB, the Size of the file will be 10MB. A clean example can be seen here:

Since NTFS has a 4KB cluster size, if the file goes over it, another cluster will be automatically filled with the extra and take 8KB of DISK SIZE, not actual Size. I actually think that this image can sum up the whole post… and thousands of post on other thousand sites.

Returning to the first image, why the fuck it’s so fucked? Well, because something awesome is happening there. For starters, the files where quite corrupted, they had a size of 0 bytes, but the system “thought” that the size was another one, and in some cases it though that the files were still there even after deletion. This happened to almost every single file on that folder. And the awesome part - yes I consider this awesome - the Size on Disk doesn’t care shit about the actual size; “133903 clusters were filled, each one is sized to 4KB, that is 535612KB, so the size should be around 523MB”… I found this very awesome.

Now, each file system has it’s own cluster size, aka, minimum file size, a quick example:

• NTFS: From 1GB to 16TB, 4kB.
• Fat32:
  • From 256MB to 8GB: 4KB
  • From 8GB to 16GB: 8KB
  • From 16GB to 32GB: 16KB

These are used for Windows, of course, there are a lot of different file systems, if you want to go nuts, enjoy.

Something to remember is that Size on Disk will vary from one file system to another (if their cluster/blocks size differ), but the file size should be the same (IF files and folders are not modified in any way). This also applies to CD/DVD/BRD, these have their own file system, and since is not that easy to explain in two lines, it’s better to use a CD burner to tell you how much will the file fill in the disk.

So, in conclusion…

Can you go back to the old Facebook layout?

Nope. No. No way, Jose. You can’t do it.

Now that we establish that, let’s explain a bit further. Facebook is a social network that grew (and grows) amazingly fast from being something limited to a University to something… what it’s today. The thing with Facebook, and any popular website, is that is forced to evolve fast to keep up with the user’s need and the web requirements. You create a site where people want to talk, you try to make it universal so people talk anywhere, anytime.

Now, as any popular site, people will get bored eventually and move on to another and new popular site, completely forgetting about the previous one or just making it irrelevant (Metroflog? Windows Live Spaces? MySpace? Rings a bell?), so you have to make an effort to create new content or new features so people won’t get bored (so quickly), and keep talking and using your site.

The problem with providing new features is that you have to make them obvious somehow, people won’t spend all their free time trying to found out if you have new stuff (if any), no, they prefer that you show these to them… or instead, you should make it obvious to them, and the only way is to modify your site a little so the new feature get’s, well, featured. This is way better than showing flying notifications balloons every time the user logs in or just browse your site.

So, new features force the programmers and designers to change the layout, even a little bit. Then why we see these massive layout changes? Well, these are programmers and designers we’re talking about. If the layout doesn’t change, the user gets bored of the interface and we’re back to the previous paragraph - Just as life, when nothing happens, you can get bored very easily -, and the people behind the monitor know this, and that’s why they need to update and change the layout once in a while.

TL; DR: To keep people entertained with the site, new features and new layouts are needed.

Now, what’s with these extensions, tricks, pages, programs, Likes, hacks that allow you to revert your Facebook to the old layout? Pure crap. Bullshit at it’s best. In fact, most of the sites/extension/pages that offer this service tend to be places where you need to click an ad or install a special software in your PC to get it. Well, if you do this, sucks to be you. If there were a way to get back the old layout, Facebook will provide it, not a third party service;

• Extensions that revert the layout: change your search provider, change your homepage, can access your stored passwords and history, can modify your browser behavior, and a lot more… except revert Facebook layout.
• Facebook pages: ask likes and for you to invite all of your friends to work, why? Because most of the time they’re selling a product and they need traffic to their own full-of-ads-website to get a revenue with your clicks. Most of the time all links are adf.ly links, meaning that each click generate money.
• Install a especial Software: really? Will you go that far to revert your layout? Are you aware of how many malicious software are there? A lot. Most of these software install malware and even keyloggers on your computer with your consent. Do not install these.
• Tricks and hacks: Do you actually think that there are magical ways to make Facebook obey you? You’re so naïve.

So, in conclusion, don’t be stupid.

Driver backup tools: What are they good for?

TL;DR: Nothing, absolutely nothing.

Well, at least you do know what a driver backup tool is, right? If you don’t then you probably don’t know what a driver is either, so let’s start with that.

Drivers are those files that allow the operating system to use the devices that are currently installed/inserted on the motherboard. These drivers can be generic (installs automatically with the device or comes with the OS) or official ones (the ones you have to install manually to work).

Drivers and devices come in different shapes and colors, and they will vary depending on the brand that manufactures them. But they all have something in common, THEY HAVE A FUCKIN’ OFFICIAL WEBSITE. And this is what pisses me off, people, no, IT technicians won’t use the official sites because they are way too lazy, instead they use the old 2006 installation CD with a free copy of Norton AV, a driver backup tool, or even an automatic driver download tool. THESE THREE OPTIONS SUCK.

Let me explain further, “why driver backup tools are useless?” Well, as I said, you can know download updated drivers from official sources/websites, and in a lot of cases Windows Update will provide the most recent and compatible driver for your device.

“Why automatic driver download tools are useless?” If you didn’t read above, there are official websites for brands and Windows Update provides the best driver for your device.

“Why installation CDs are useless?” Are you even paying attention? *sigh* Those installation CDs contain the drivers of your device when they where released; it’s 2013, if you bough your PC on 2010 that’s the driver you would be getting. AKA, it sucks.

Not only that, the first two are well known sources of malwares, spywares, and virus in general, claiming that updating your keyboard drivers are going to speed up your PC, which in this case is false. Maybe you can see a difference on your video card or sound card, but that’s quite a little “maybe” and probably a minimal difference. But that’s something to discuss another day.

Just remember to use official download sites:

• HP
• Toshiba
• Asus
• Acer
• Compaq
• Lenovo
• IBM
• Dell
• Biostar
• Foxconn
• MSI
• Gigabyte
• AsRock
• NVIDIA
• AMD/ATI
• Intel

There are a ton more, but these were the ones I though when typing this. If necessary, I may create a post including all brands and their official site, but that’s only if someone ask for it, otherwise I won’t.

Is an Anti-Virus really necessary?

This is not a popular question since people think that they really NEED an Anti-Virus, and I have a personal answer to it:

No, an Anti-Virus is not necessary.

That’s it. Simple as that, an Anti-Virus is not necessary for you as a user to have a pleasant experience on whatever device or platform you’re working with. A perfect example is Linux or Mac OS; these do not need an Anti-Virus and most users using this platforms will agree with that.

“But what about Windows?” What about it? I’ve been working without an Anti-virus for about 6 to 7 years. When I started working with computers I did have one, but later I realize that I didn’t trust any AV, every time I trust them to protect me, they fail and ended protecting myself. After 2 years using AV (I used AVG, BTW), I realized that it was a memory hog; sometimes it took over 200mb and I only had 768 back then, I could barely do anything, and I was forced to shut down the AV to play games or browse normally.

Later on I disabled the AV from startup, only used it to do a check on a USB drive or things like that. Then I learn how to check for viruses without using explorer, and that was the last day I used one.

For a while I was extremely careful, and today I still remain careful, but not careless. One thing I do is help people deleting viruses from their devices and restoring hidden files and folders, or fixing anything that the virus has done. And you don’t need an AV to do that.

In fact, an AV can’t do that (restore files and folders or most virus-related disasters), that’s something you need to do by yourselves, and in most cases, you’ll pay a technician to do that, and that’s just wasted money.

So, what’s this ranting is all about, you ask? Well, I want to help people feel secure (with or without and AV), and the only way is by showing ways to prevent the attack of viruses or undo the problems a virus had caused, that’s why I’ll try to write several posts (as many as necessary) to show these ways:

• How to clean a USB drive manually
• How to know if a process is a virus
• Downloading cracks, keygen, and stuff
• P2P
• Weird links
• Check suspicious files without an AV
• Trusted websites

And a lot of stull like that. These may not mandatory, these may not be individual posts each on, but I’ll try to include all those topics and any more I can think off. I may even create a category for them and continue to post way beyond these topics are done with. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

Now Facebook with Hashtags… really?

-- Personal opinion over here--

As I just posted, Facebook is now introducing hashtags to their service, and the first thing that cross my mind was “Are you fucking kidding me?”. I can understand that Facebook is a social network and tries to implement ways for people to socialize between them, and that’s cool and all, but Facebook is not only a social network, is now an incredible big source of spam and flood on which around 10% of all accounts are not humans, almost 5% are duplicate accounts, and 1.5% are accounts for pets.

That’s a total of 16.5%, Facebook has 1.1 Billions users (aprox), it makes around 180 million users that are there just to flood every user that follows them. “Ok, then don’t follow me“, is not that simple. See, Facebook has a “Share” button that is used a lot by users and it’s constantly clicked by users who Like every single page and share every single post.

Now, the thing with Hashtags is that they can get far, meaning that if you use it, someone will find it, someone will share it. Imagine giving that kind of power to Justin Bieber fans, or Demi Lovato fans, or One Direction… it’s scary. “Again, don’t follow me”, and I won’t, trust me, the thing I’m worried about is this:

See? I used to follow her like a normal person, but everything change when hashtags arrived. Normal users use hashtags like they should, to point a general idea on a sentence/text, or to make a trend for a product, or other stuff. But I think this kind of users (pic above) have a problem distinguishing a hashtag from a word. It’s annoying and it Facebook will now be flooded like never before.

But hey, I’m not saying that this is a bad idea, it’s “social” marketing and it’s a social network, they were late. Let me put it this way: I don’t hate Facebook, I don’t hate hashtags, I hate the users.