I suspect that some of you may be wondering if I am up to something nefarious by insisting I should be allowed to run my Windows XP computer off-line. Like many members, my member name - Lusby Clark - is not my real name. As it says in my membership profile, I am a writer of stories. Currently I have some four novels in various stages of completeness on my XP machine.
Now, as to what has driven me to want my Windows XP computer off-line. Sometime in the last few years, it was hacked into by the most insidious hacker I can imagine. I do not know who it was, and neither do I know that person's gender, so I'm going to refer to that person by the masculine gender, unless of course, one of you ladies out there want to own up to this hacking.
I must have stepped away from my PC for an hour or so while it was still on. When I came back, I found my mouse did not seem to work the way it had just a hour or so earlier. I would move its pointer to activate some file or application and it would immediately go back to where it had been just before I moved it. I moved it again, and again it moved back. I turned the PC off and then back on, only to find it was doing pretty much the same thing. I tried again turning it off and this time found that there was a brief period during which I had normal control of my PC's assets. But rather quickly it went back to doing what it had been doing. As time went on, I noticed that whoever had hacked into my PC was looking over my files and other stuff.
The next day it dawned on me that someone had managed hack into my PC very much as they would gain access had I invited them in via REMOTE ACCESS. I was forced at that point to take my PC off-line so I could backup what I treasured the most - my stories, the beginnings of stories, copies of patents, scientific papers I had written some years before while I was still employed, and other such things. I then went back on-line and used my Windows XP Reinstallation CD to get rid of this insidious character. I also had to reload the Office 2003 software, Norton Internet Security software, and several other applications of lesser importance. After this, whoever the hacker was, he moved on to bother someone else, thankfully. Later it occurred to me that my stories had been at some risk while that hacker was looking over my files. Nothing has happened to give me concern that anything was stolen.
I had already had a story line stolen from me thirty years before and I now guard against this very carefully. Maybe you guys remember the Superman movie with Gene Hackman playing the villain. (It is, of course, purely coincidental that a Hack-man played a part in that story.) . Hackman's scheme in that movie was to use atomic bombs to set off a massive earthquake along the San Andreas fault thus separating the coastal portion of Southern California from the desert portion to the east, thus creating hundreds of miles of new beachfront property which he intended to sell at hugely inflated prices. Well, it turns out that in 1973 just on a whim I wrote a little short story with the idea of a massive San Andreas earthquake rupturing Southern California, thus creating hundreds of miles of new beachfront property. I showed my story to a colleague at work, a colleague who was so enamored with it, that he told it to some persons at his church, persons I later found out were movie moguls. What my colleague did was entirely innocent and I actually have no real proof that his telling it as he did led to my idea being purloined by a bunch of Hollywood movie moguls, but it did make me understand that I should take better care to protect my creative endeavors in the future.
Now, the mga test. What happens if I run this Microsoft Genuine Advantage check and my Windows XP fails the test? Is this possibly one of those questions the answer to which I may not wish to know? By the way, I did talk with a gentleman at the local generic computer store where I have previously purchased two PCs both loaded with the Ubuntu Linux operating system. He told me this was actually quite common five or six years ago and without my prompting him, said this was called a Windows Vista Down Grade.
I like Windows XP and Office 2003 for a variety of reasons. Again in my profile you will find that another of my several avocations is "ancient electronics". I am teaching myself the principles of bipolar junction transistor circuit design, something that only peculiar guys like myself still do. I have found Office 2003 PowerPoint quite helpful in circuit lay-out in this endeavor. I have tried Open Office Impress and found it less than impressive, indeed perfectly useless.