Well, now’s as good a time as any to play a little catch up after the past two weeks or so of the server being down.
Tech
Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.
Privacy, shmivacy
Wheee…more fun news from our dear friends in the FBI: “Magic Lantern”, a government developed ‘trojan horse’ style virus that appears as an e-mail attachment. Once on your machine, it can record keystrokes (in other words, anything typed on the keyboard — letters, e-mail, passwords, credit card numbers, etc.) and transmit them back to the FBI for analasys. As if that wasn’t bad enough, antivirus software makers are considering intentionally not scanning for this particular virus — in essence, selling crippled versions of their software. More info can be found at Wired and The Register. Just thought this deserved some mention.
‘Twas the night before – Thanksgiving?
Well, it is. Lots of creatures stirring, though — and since they’re not content with just stirring, apparently shooting bottle rockets off outside my window is the next best alternative. Hrmpf.
XP sucks!
I got sent this image (click for a larger version) tonight. According to the site it was posted at, this is a truely genius piece of work — someone actually managed to scale up to wherever the sign is and alter it. In other words, this isn’t just some joker with Photoshop at work — this is a real-world hack job. Just wonderful…goes to show that there still are some truly cool people in the world.
What’s with the black bars?
While most of my friends have been around me long enough to understand my preference for watching films in widescreen or letterboxed format, occasionally I get questions about the ‘black bars’ at the top and bottom of the screen. While I think I usually do a pretty decent job of explaining why they’re there, one of the members of the Home Theater Forum put together a really nice Shockwave Flash animation demonstrating what’s going on. If anyone’s got any questions about widescreen presentations, this link should help get the idea across:
Why is this not a surprise?
Looks like everyone’s (least) favorite monopoly is up to its usual bag of tricks combined with lackluster security again.
As if it’s not bad enough that Windows XP prompts (or maybe browbeats would be a more accurate description) you to sign up for their Passport system at every chance it gets (according to a C|Net article, a USA Today article, a C|Net review, and a bunch more articles and reviews scattered across the ‘net), but they’re now starting to require you to sign up for a passport before you can register hardware (as reported today at MacInTouch, prompting a mac user who’d purchased a Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer to forego registering it). Then, if that wasn’t enough — they screw up the security (big surprise, eh?), creating a situation that could have been exploited to steal Passport users’ financial information, according to this Wired story.
Meanwhile, analysts looking at the “deal” worked out between the Government and Microsoft in the antitrust case pretty much agree that it “…is not even a wrist slap. It’s a love letter…” and that “…Microsoft will emerge…stronger, emboldened, and perhaps more agressive than it was before.”
Good thing I’m naturally cynical, otherwise I’d be surprised at all this. Instead, I’m just disgusted and resigned.
And people wonder why I continue to stick with Apple!
Quotes: OS X, iPod
The computing world needs an OS X ad blitz that would show people that Apple is alive and well in the OS business (and advertising would finally convince white people to relax around me, since they would then know that my wearing a T-shirt with a blue X on it doesn’t mean that I’m a Louis Farrakhan follower paying homage to Malcolm X, but, instead, I am a computer geek showing my OS partisanship).
— Rodney O. Lain, in his ‘iBrotha‘ column for MacObserver
The iPod certainly got a lot of attention when I showed it to people, including a Windows guy named Bill Gates. He spun the wheel, checked out the menus on the display screen and seemed to get it immediately. “It looks like a great product,” he said. And then he added, incredulous, “It’s only for Macintosh?”
— Steven Levy in Newsweek, commenting on Apple‘s new iPod mp3 player
No more virus alerts
I got this e-mailed to me at work today:
Warning regarding new virus:
DO NOT OPEN “NEW PICTURES OF FAMILY”Hi – This looks like a bad one that’s coming.
Forward this to others.
Please read and forward to everyone you know……DO NOT OPEN “NEW PICTURES OF FAMILY” It is a virus that will erase your whole “C” drive. It will come to you in the form of an E-Mail from a familiar person. I repeat a friend sent it to me, but called & warned me before I opened it. He was not so lucky and now he can’t even start his computer!
Forward this to everyone in your address book. I would rather receive this 25 times than not at all.
Also: Intel announced that a new and very destructive virus was discovered recently. If you receive an email called “FAMILY PICTURES,” do not open it. Delete it right away! This virus removes all dynamic link libraries (.dll files) from your computer. Your computer will not be able to boot up.
Okay, let’s take a look at this, shall we?
Please read and forward to everyone you know…I would rather receive this 25 times than not at all.
Please do not blindly forward every ‘alert’, ‘warning’, or whatever else to “everyone you know.” I don’t know about you, but I would much rather not receive anything twenty-five times. There’s quite a few good reasons not to do this, most of which really shouldn’t need to be spelled out, but people persist in doing these things anyway. If everyone actually did pass something on to everyone they knew, then each of those people did the same, everyone would instantly be getting multiple copies of every alert out there in their e-mail box. Oh, wait…we already do get multiple copies of this junk, don’t we? Hmmm….
Check to see if the information is accurate. No, I don’t mean open a suspected virus to see if it crashes your system. This ‘alert’ describes a virus that comes as an e-mail with a certain subject line, and when opened, erases your entire C:/ drive. A second virus (with a very similar distribution method and subject line) is also detailed, only this one erases all .dll files on your hard drive.
The easiest way to check the validity of the claims is to go to Symantec‘s website. Symantec is the maker of the most popular anti-virus programs for both Windows and Macintosh computers, so it stands to reason that they would have a pretty good handle on any new virii (incidentally, as one of the more popular anti-virus programs is Norton’s Antivirus, the web address www.norton.com also points to Symantec’s site). Their site does currently show a high security alert for a new virus — W32.Nimda.A@mm — however, the listed symptoms and affects do not match either of the virii described in this e-mail. The closest listed virus to either of those in the e-mail is Trojan.ZeroBoot, which writes zeros over the boot sector of a drive — this will prevent a computer from booting, and to a novice computer user, could look like the entire C:/ drive has been wiped.
Intel announced that a new and very destructive virus was discovered recently.
Think about what the e-mail is telling you. Why would Intel — a chip-maker, most known for the 80×86 line of processors (from the 286 up to and including the P4) — be releasing information about a virus? A quick check of Intel’s press releases shows nothing detailing anything about a virus. In general, virus alerts are released by either very few people (like Symantec) that you can trust, or by every bleedin’ moron with a keyboard at his fingertips (like anybody with ‘l33t’, ‘haX0r’, ‘d00d’, ’69’, or ‘420’ in their e-mail address), which you should take with a grain of salt.
Buy and use one of the many Anti-Virus/Firewall/Security products from Symantec, or any other reputable software company. This will save a lot of problems and headaches in the long run — you won’t get hit with virii, and I won’t have to wade through mass e-mails about the virii that are loose.
If you think you’ve been hit with a virus: Contact Symantec and/or any decently savvy computer geek (i.e., someone who knows how to do more than click away at the World Wide Web) to see if there is information or a patch for your particular virus. Then go out, buy, and install one of the Anti-Virus/Firewall/Security products I mentioned above.
One last little thing: If you do ignore all the rest of my little diatribe…one little thing about my computers. I’m a Mac fan for many reasons. Like, for instance — no .dll files. No C:/ drive. And — while we’re not virus free — there are far, far fewer virii out there for us to contend with. Sending me your alerts does nothing but fill up my mailbox, waste bandwidth on the ‘net, and give me a minor annoyance to deal with, which I then relieve by ranting and raving on my website for the world to see.
Let’s avoid that next time.
Nano-nano!
Just something that I find all sorts of nifty. According to an article in today’s Seattle P-I, Washington is going to house the hub of one of the centers for nanotechnology research. Nanotech has been one of the recent sci-fi concepts to really spark my imagination, especially after reading Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.
Stephenson burst upon the sci-fi scene with his second book, Snow Crash, which I babbled about a couple weeks ago when I was re-reading it. In The Diamond Age, Stephenson does for nanotechnology what he did for the internet and virtual reality in Snow Crash — takes today’s best existing ideas and theories and extrapolates them forward into the future to explore where the technologies can take us. It’s a fascinating read, and with the current apparent stagnation of the space program and George Bush’s restrictions on genetic research, nanotech seems to be one of the few sci-fi concepts with near-future possibilities. Going to be a lot of fun to see where all this could lead in the next 10 to 20 years.
New talkback feature
One last thing for today. I’m experimenting with more ‘toys’ to play with on my website, and have found a talkback system that seems to fit quite nicely between the limited interactivity of the polls I toss up occasionally and the full messageboard I have running. Whenever I turn it on (which I probably won’t do for every post), you should be able to click the ‘Comments’ link at the end of a post to spout off about my babble, should you wish. As with the other doo-dads I’ve got on here, I have no idea how much or how often they’ll actually get used…but hey, it’s fun to play with, and it’s my website, so I can do what I want. So there. Bleah. ;)