[Joseph]

Hello everyone,

I found this forum after only recently discovering the Haptek technology which I am greatly impressed by.

This forum seems to have some neat stuff which you all are chatting about. I hope to get some help from other members more knowledgeable than I with the Haptek technology on a fun web project I am trying to put together as well as perhaps to learn of other generally interesting topics.

Thank you

[Data]

Hi there Joseph

There are some members here that have played around with Haptek, Im not that clued up on it but I can tell you that it has a problem running on PC’s with multi cores, and some would say that it’s a dying technology.

Your fun web project sounds interesting though, will have to check that out when your done. 

Oh! and welcome to the forum. 

[DaveMorton]

Hello, Joseph! Welcome to AI Dreams. I hope you find your visits here both helpful and enjoyable. If you have any questions, comments, complaints, lottery tickets, old girlfriends, etc. to share, please feel free to do so. Ok, maybe not the "old girlfriends" thing, but...

[Freddy]

Welcome to the madness Joseph 

[Joseph]

Thank you all for the welcome. It really looks like some fun and interesting things here which I sincerely do hope to check out.

I don't wish to trouble anyone with to many questions, but if if I may just generally inquire with a couple  regarding the Haptek technology.

Would it be to much of a harsh assessment to categorize it as "abandonware"?

I possibly would consider purchasing People Putty, but I saw one post here from someone who said they had trouble registering it.

Does it only work in IE? I've tried it in Firefox with no luck.

It also has problems with newer multicore systems?

[Data]

To get Haptek to run smoothly, well properly really on a multicore with Vista or Win 7 you have to some how force it to run on 1 cpu core only.

Ultra Hal for instance uses the Haptek technology for Hal and it was patched to use one core when using Haptek for the character engine.

As for updates from Haptek, many have been waiting a long time and I don’t think there is any in the pipeline. 

[Joseph]

I was also looking at my latest Hijack this logs and notice how apparently the Haptek player browser plugin seems to create an entry like : {DEADBEEF-DEAD-BEEF-DEAD-BEEFDEADBEEF} - http://www.haptek.com/products/player/autoinstall/data/latest.cab

Does anyone know what that is all about?, forgive me for perhaps being paranoid but it sounds malicious
with the "dead" and "beef" part etc.
 

[DaveMorton]

If I had to guess, I would say that the entry itself is simply part of an auto-update function for the Haptek player. The GUID being a repetition of dead beef is likely just a silly, if unwise, manipulation that some over-zealous code junky thought would be funny. I've been known to make similar changes to the GUID's of the programs I've written, though the way I do it is far more obscure. I usually use the hex representations for the spelling of the names of my apps.
I'm certain that the entry can be deleted without harm, but the player plugin will likely be unable to update itself.

Perhaps someone should make mention of the dead beef GUID, and let the developers know that such things look suspicious.

[Freddy]

I think GeekCaveCreations is probably right, it's the kind of thing I might expect from the Haptek programmers.

On your earlier questions; Haptek isn't exactly abandonware yet - I think they are still doing things for people but they haven't updated the web component for the general public like us for years.  The last news on their site was in 2005.

The Haptek player only ever worked with Internet Explorer and as you have heard it has problems with modern multi-core processors.  It won't even install on my Windows 7.

So yes, there is not much optimism for the future of this technology for a lot of us who were once enthralled by it.

People Putty probably suffers from the same multi-core problems as the web player.  It's probably a risk to buy it now depending on what your PC is like, cores, OS etc...

[Joseph]

Thanks for the info about that odd "dead beef" string, I realize this isnt a malware forum. But I am trying to determine if my PC is infected.

I am on a router with another PC downstairs and on my machine in TCP view I notice
netbios ssn netbios ns netbios dgm entries  connected to 169.254.189.187 which apparently is IANA.
I am a computer novice,  but I hopefully gather that this is some legit service my computer is connecting to necessary to get me online here to this forum.

Thanks again and I look forward to reading more here and chatting with you all.

[DaveMorton]

That IP address isn't actually an internet address, since all addresses in the range of 169.254.0.0 to 169.254.255.255 are reserved for medium sized  local networks. Addresses in this range can't even be sent out past your WAN router, because of security protocols in place within them, unless the base address of that router is within that IP block. Usually, seeing addresses like that indicate that another computer on the local network isn't configured correctly, so doesn't get the proper IP address assigned to it from either a router, or the cable/DSL modem, or from another computer in the network. In short, seeing those IP addresses in the logs is an indication of a problem, but not for your particular computer, and certainly nothing dangerous.

[Freddy]

I'm glad someone knows what they are talking about 

[Joseph]

Thanks very much for the expert info GeekCaveCreations. I will have to educate myself more on perhaps discovering if there is some kind of problem with my router configuration.  Its just my computer and another one here at home. Both are successfully able to access the internet simultaneously so I assumed everything was configured properly.  That IP address doesn't seem to fit in the block associated with my router from what I have seen in the routers control panel. Basically I just have the router configured at : 192.168.2.1 and the modem is at 192.168.1.1 and the router is set to PPPOE and the modem to bridge mode.  But I do hope as you say that it isn't necessarily and indication of some infection or hacker. I try to keep on top of updating and scanning my computer periodically for viruses etc. and thankfully nothing bad has been reported so far. I also have disabled print sharing, due to the fact as I understand it that typically Net bios vulnerabilities can be associated with this, however the Net bios connections remain constant as seen in TCP view when I am connected. Again thank you for your help with everything, I sincerely do appreciate you taking the time to offer this.   

[DaveMorton]

Not a problem, Joseph. That's one of the many reasons that I frequent this and other forums. I find it to be very rewarding to be able to help others.

A quick question, though. Are your computers hooked into the network through a wireless setup, or are they hard-wired? Because if there's a wireless component to your local network, those netbios log entries may be coming from a computer other than the two under your direct control. Wireless security is often overlooked because it can be a complex thing to correctly set up. When my family first went from a wired network, where everyone was connected through a network cable to the router to a wireless setup, my brother (who decided that 'he' was the expert) failed to set up any sort of security, and so we ended up with someone outside the family "piggy-backing" onto the network, which caused some problems, and almost lost us our internet connection. When my Mom received an email threatening to shut us off, I did some checking, found the cyber-leech, and encrypted our wireless connection to prevent them from giving us any more grief. I had to do a lot of "crash course" learning then, but it's proven to be very useful time and time again.

[Joseph]

It's actually a hard-wired router. In fact I specifically choose that over perhaps a more typical wireless router because of my fear of the exact type of circumstance in which you describe, of someone "wardriving" (not sure if that's the correct term) or leeching off your connection. Anyways thanks again, you all seem like like friendly people, I historically don't do well with forums so I look forward to participating here.