March 2004 Archives

I've said for a long time that, no matter how good the anti-virus, anti-trojan, and anti-spyware on a computer is, it is up to the user to use these tools properly and have a good head on their shoulders if they want to avoid getting infected with something. This article compares technology to the users and says that the users need to be more aware of what they're doing and what's going on in order to avoid being infected.

Nobody is saying that you don't need these scanners when you're on the internet; nobody would dare assert that a human alone is perfect. But there are prevention methods. Sometimes you get infected before the scanner updates to see the virus you've caught. Sometimes the virus hardly counts as one to anyone outside a specific community. So here are some rules of thumb for those of you running Windows.

Always run a modern anti-virus scanner, such as PC-Cillin, and keep it up to date daily. Scan regularly.
Always run a modern anti-trojan scanner, such as The Cleaner, and keep it up to date daily. Scan regularly.
Always run a modern anti-spyware scanner, such as Ad-Aware, and keep it up to date daily. Scan regularly.
Run your Windows Updates every week and install everything critical or security related.
Never open attachments you're not expecting; some virii come masquerading as attachments from your friends. Remember, your friends might get infected before you. Be prepared.
Never run commands or follow instructions if you don't know exactly what they do. Some hoaxes will suggest that you delete windows critical files by saying they are virii, or ask you to type a command to give yourself some special power over your computer. These will really cause damage to your computer. Beware.

While these are good tips, they are far from all of them. You should make sure to educate yourself when online. Be as internet smart as you would be street smart.

I'm stunned and pained by the apparent lack of intelligence involved in this decision. Apparently a city in Indiana has decided to ban the color pink from schools on the premise that it might possibly be used as a gang color. They admit to having seen no associated gang activity, but they feel they're being proactive because of the increased use of the color. Did it ever occur to them that maybe with so many other colors being used by gangs kids have chosen one that isn't? Or that perhaps people simply like the color pink?

I mean come on, people. If anything might inspire gangs to pick up the color, it's being told they can't wear it. Now the only people with the guts to wear the color are the ones in the gangs who feel they can get away with it. Or the rebels who think they're going to have fun breaking the rules, and will therefore be labeled as gang members whether they are or not. This is just plain silly!

So you know those white headphones that come with the iPods? You know how they sound real good? Well for about $10, maybe $20, you could get another pair of not-so-white ones that sound just as good, if not better. Why do you care? Because thieves recognize iPod listeners by the color of their headphones.

Beware, when walking the streets at night and wearing white ear buds you will be noticed. And you will be labeled as an iPod listener, whether it's true or not. They'll either jump you or they'll be nicer like the guy in the article and ask if you're listening to an iPod before they pull the knife on you. Sweetheart, wasn't he? So, for a price that's a fraction of that iPod's cost, get yourself some different headphones and be that much safer out there.

Can anyone explain why this is inspiring? I don't really understand why the concept of a ninety-one year old robbing a bank and not being able to remember why inspires me. Perhaps it's an inspiration to end my life in a more positive light than that. To not feel like there's so little left that the thought of robbing a bank and spending what could be my last day, any day, in prison is an appealing one. I shudder to think of being so hopeless.

And yet he will be remembered forever as the oldest person ever to rob a bank. Perhaps, in a way, he's just achieved immortality.

After watching him on the news during the campaign, I never thought I'd agree with a word out of Arnold Schwarzenegger's mouth. Then I saw this. I have to honestly say that I think he's right here. It's not this lady's fault they let her out of prison early, it wasn't all that early, she seems to have turned her life around, and to top it all off going back to prison would destroy what is otherwise a good, respectable job that's probably covering her bills comfortably. What a wonderful reward for turning one's life around. That's the point of a prison sentence, isn't it?

Perhaps this country has lost sight of the real purpose of prison: rehabilitation. We now seem to see it as a punishment and nothing else. Or as a safety to get the bad parts of society away from us. Well, I'm sorry folks but, that's really not the case.

This article talks about Microsoft's search engine, and about how they didn't do any of the research for it in house. The company says they'll improving their engine's design and effectiveness. It's a bold move for a company like this to admit that they made a mistake in the past, but this is a pretty graceful way to do it.

If they succeed as well as they say they will, we'll see google's traffic drop somewhat, I think. I see that as a probability only because people, as a crude generalized whole, are fundamentally lazy. Most people still use Microsoft Internet Explorer, and most of those people still have MSN as their home page. So if they don't have to go somewhere else to perform their search, do you really think they will? I doubt it.

One man, or woman, can make a difference. We've learned that for sure. So now I'm going to ask you to help make a difference for these two women. I know them both, two very nice people. One is a good friend's sister in law. So now I ask you to read this and, if you'd be so kind, sign their petition. Because every vote makes a difference, even if just in these wonderful peoples' lives.

I'm a big Apple fan. Keep that in mind when you read this. Apparently Apple has screwed up. According to this, Apple has delayed the release of their iPod minis in Europe and Asia.

While they blame the demand in the United States for the shortage of units to ship over seas, this announcement coming so close to the announcement regarding the dual G5 xserves concerns me greatly. I get the strangest feeling that something is seriously wrong in the Apple world. Perhaps a financial shortage, or a worker shortage. Perhaps some problem in the politics, or a factory issue. Maybe some factory was producing defective units and they found them before shipping. Who knows what the problem is. But I feel like for two major delays like this to come so close together, something's got to be wrong and related.

Microsoft has released a public beta of the Windows XP Service Pack 2. I'd rave about all the great features this adds, but the register does a good enough job of it here. I can honestly say that, even as someone who has consistently disliked Microsoft products, I think this is a huge step in the right direction for this company.

Apple has this great thing called an Xserve. Xserves are Mac OS X based servers. Ready for this? Only 1U! Because they're using Mac OS X, that means they've got a UNIX operating system with a great GUI. Furthermore, Apple has added a lot of great remote management features making this one of the most robust and usable servers out there.

So the bittersweet news is here. They recently announced a G5 and Dual G5 version. Well, while they were supposed to be shipping both a month ago, they're now not going to be shipping the Dual G5 version until April. The good part? The single processor version is shipping now! So hey, get yours while it's hot! Oh, if only I could have one of these in my machine room. A man can dream, can't he?

Wait, wait, did I say better? I don't think this is better. Look, I'm not going to run around spouting off on my opinion of legalizing marijuana. But whether we legalize it or not, we need to keep it away from our children! There is no excuse for a child taking a bag of pot to school, whether he knows that's what it is or not.

So here's a fun one. The very software that's supposed to protect you from people sending unwanted packets to your machine is now the target. Meet the witty worm, so called because of the small message it sends when it broadcasts packets. This nasty little worm exploits problems with BlackIce and RealSecure products, so I'd suggest shutting them down until a fix is released for said products.

Beware! This worm is particularly nasty. We haven't seen one in a long time that had a goal that ended in damaging hard drives. On the up side, it should slow down propagation.

Now we need to discuss the definition of "destructive nature." Does a virus have a more destructive nature if it attacks hard-to-hurt servers belonging to large corporations, or if it destroys the hard drive of the machine it's infected while in the process of sending itself out? Which is more malicious -- the one that damages the infected party directly, or the one that damages a company while the infected person is safely unaware. Of course, Witty will inspire people to be more careful with updating their antivirus software. Well, hopefully it will. But the question remains: which is worse?

When Howard Dean said get involved in the issues you care about, you have the power to make a difference, I really don't think this is what he meant. Come on, kids. Fear the awesome might of the television show fans?

Okay, that was a bad joke. But I have to wonder, in this day and age, why we see people organizing better and raising more money to save a television show than to save our country. Food for thought, boys and girls. Just food for thought.

Great. So Israel successfully killed the founder of Hamas with some rockets. Read all about it. There goes the neighborhood that was never good to begin with.

There will be all out war between Israel and Palestine now. And the United States, being their allies and protectors, will run to Israel's aid. We'll divide our forces between Israel and Iraq. Hello, world war. Hello, draft. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

I just got finished watching the renegade version of Highlander II: The Quickening again. It's been a long time since I've seen it, and I imagine that can be said for anyone who's seen it before. This is the highlander film that the film makers wish they hadn't made. It's funny, you would think that was the third one by it's lack of availability, but it's the second.

The original version of this film explained that the immortals were from another planet and banished to Earth. Bad plot. Killed the fun of not knowing where they came from. But hey, at least it makes sense. They retooled it in the renegade version to make it seem as though the immortals were banished to the future from the past. Okay, now we're not making any sense as the bad guy, played by Michael Ironside who has an incredibly diverse filmography, is standing in the past, watching the future. So they talk about how he'll be dead soon. Fast forward! You'll see if you fast forward! Time travel just doesn't work for this plot line.

And the shield around the Earth? I'm not even going to get started on how ridiculous the rest of the film is. If you saw the original, you know. So now I'm telling you that the director's cut makes it even worse. Cool, huh? I especially enjoy that considering I love the other films and the series. The animated series can go, though.

Haven't we been through this? Haven't we taken this to court a hundred times over? No prayer in public schools. No. Bad principal, no donut! And yet here I sit, reading about an investigation to take place because some lady decided to pass out a prayer, with bad spelling and grammar, to her students that goes so far as to call tests the students' enemies.

Well, I always say, if you're going to screw up, screw up right.

Hey, you! Yes, you, the Linux user who says the thing about Mac OS X you hate the most is the fact that you only get one desktop. You, the one who says you must have KDE or Gnome, because only they will provide you with multiple desktops.

Well, you nay sayer, meet Desktop Manager. Desktop Manager, found on version tracker here, is a fantastic little application designed to do one thing: give you multiple desktops. It is released under the GNU General Public License, and has a source forge page here.

I swear by this little piece of software, using hot keys to switch through four desktops. My first desktop is dedicated to web browsing, stickies, and random other tasks. Instant messages usually live there, but I frequently minimize them between messages to keep things from being cluttered. My second desktop has a terminal open at all times. I can switch to it if I need to do anything UNIX quickly and easily. That's where my SSH windows live, and all that stuff. My third desktop has Mail.app open on it. That's where I also usually work with my address book and calendar. The fourth desktop deals with my random tasks. I could have as many more of them as I wanted or needed, as far as I can tell. Four satisfies me just fine.

So to any of you Mac users out there, I say try this application. It will change the way you work.

Having been in the position of speaking with the director of anti-spam operations at AOL in the past, I can tell you that the man acts with the best of intentions in mind. he's a good guy, a nice person, and a reasonable man. That's why I feel bad when I criticize the latest tactic against spam at AOL.

This article, all be it brief, describes AOL's new effort. Now, I do understand part of the concept. Spam mailers embed tags and graphics and the like into their e-mails. These graphics and bugs have call back features that are capable of gathering data about who reads the message, where they are, what ISP they use, so on and so forth. So by blocking known spam sites, they run a good chance of blocking these call back features. If they do, they might decrease the size of the target on AOL's back for spamming. Good concept. Interesting idea.

Here's the part where I disagree. The nondescript error message bothers me. The fact that AOL members aren't being told that the site is being blocked due to spam concerns me. These are the people who are supposed to have submitted sufficient complaints against the site to have had it blocked in the first place. To deny the users the opportunity to question this decision and vote on it being a legitimate site is frustrating. When an e-mail server is blocked by AOL due to spam use, an error message is returned to the sender explaining it. This error message, should it reach the user's sysadmin, can be used as notification to the site that they're being blocked. It is a warning to the sysadmin to let them know to get in touch with AOL and find out what's going on, why they're blocked, and what they can do to resolve the issue. Something like this in the error, allowing the AOL users to inform AOL of legitimacy or contact the offending site, would benefit everyone involved.

One man's opinion.

This is why we bug you, our loyal users, to update Windows regularly and frequently. This article talks about a new variation of the Bagle virus that uses a very old trick. Some time ago there was a Microsoft vulnerability that allowed people to embed code in the body of an e-mail message. This version of Bagle exploits that vulnerability. That means that if you've been good and kept up to date with your Windows updates, you're immune. If not, go run your updates. What are you still doing on my page? Go!

These two really deserve each other. And I'm not talking about people, I'm talking about companies. I guess this marriage is more similar to mail order brides than a partnership. Microsoft is looking to purchase AOL, according to this article. Well, more accurately, Time Warner wants to sell AOL to them.

Frankly, Microsoft can have 'em! I wonder how much worse they could get. My real question is this: if Microsoft owns MSN Messenger, and AOL owns AIM and ICQ, what's going to happen to the instant messaging world when Microsoft owns three out of four of the major services (yahoo being, in my opinion, the fourth). I know this concern is silly in most peoples' eyes, but to me it's ever important as instant messaging is a very common and often critical service holding families and businesses together all over the world. It's bigger than just a toy now.

Now let's take this a step farther. iChat users AIM. .mac uses AIM. While Microsoft would do well to make AIM the standard since it's the biggest out there anyway, they could also squash a competitor by making MSN the standard all three clients merge into. Furthermore, will they let people make open source MSN clients? Unlikely. Though you do have GAIM. Still, this could bode badly for the instant messaging community.

Of course there are plenty of other concerns, but if I wrote about them what would the other bloggers have to talk about?

You've got to admit, this is pretty cool. Whether you're a Star Trek fan or not, and I have to admit that I've been known to enjoy my fair share of Star Trek, this is just fun. It would seem that the Vocera Communications headquarters has been set up with a system that allows staff to tap their badge, speak the name of the person they want to talk to, and get a direct communication with that person. Just like the "com badges" in Star Trek: The Next Generation. How neat is that?

Now the good part. It's done with Wi-Fi, as in a wireless LAN, and voice over IP. Wow. Now, all of us geeks knew it was theoretically possible. We all probably assumed it'd work. VOIP technology is pretty advanced, and so is voice recognition technology. But it's pretty damn impressive to have a piece of equipment that small handle it.

So what happens when they have two people with the same name? I'm curious how they're handling it.

Now I ordinarily don't buy into things like this. I also ordinarily don't write about politics. But this is too good to pass up. The most recent place I've seen this reported is here.

Apparently a terrorist group called Abu Hafs al-Masri has claimed responsibility for spain, and furthermore has endorsed George W. Bush for reelection.

Excerp from the article: The statement tells American voters that Abu Hafs al-Masri supports the re-election campaign of U.S. President George W. Bush: "We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections."
Addressing Bush, it says: "We know that a heavyweight operation would destroy your government, and this is what we don't want. We are not going to find a bigger idiot than you."

So this just begs one question: If Bush is reelected, do the terrorists win?

Blog for America has a new design. You'll notice the icon, "Democracy for America," up top. This is the name of the new organization being launched by Howard Dean. I'm proud to say I'm a part of it. Of course, I have to say that it's a hit to the old ego, all be it a minor one, to see Blog for America redesigned and no longer using all the work I did. But my work lasted for a good year and this is a new world. I imagine I'll be sticking my hands in he code of this thing at some point anyhow.

Today in Seattle at 9:30 am pacific, 12:30 am eastern, Governor Dean will speak in the Cascade Ballroom of the Westin Hotel. The hotel is located at 1900 5th Avenue, Seattle, Washington. I would encourage all in the area to attend. This is going to be a special appearance, one that you wouldn't want to miss if you can help it.

This article provides some excellent advice to linux software vendors, citing examples of the issues caused by the all-too-common carelessness of the companies. I have to highlight this and point out that they're right on all counts.

I also want to say that I think Best Practical, makers of RT, very much have the right idea when they provide an open source product, that works and can be used out of the box by any competent sysadmin. But they provide a level of service above and beyond. Their technical support and consulting costs some money -- and is worth every penny -- and as consultants they will happily set up your RT system as customized as you could ever desire.

Normally I wouldn't care, wouldn't write about a silly thing like this. I know many take these very seriously in this community, but I just see it as a fun little thing. Now I'm not saying it's bad, or wrong to see it as serious, but the bloggies aren't that special.

Of course, something would have to go and change my mind. Something that changes my mind strongly enough that it even compels me to write this post at all. Because I wasn't going to, really. Blog for America won best new weblog. This is the part where I gloat. I build Blog for America. I put the thing together. Now, I had a bit of help designing it, and my work has been lightly modified since, but I build the thing. And that's something I'm very, very proud of. Because now my work has won an award. Good for me!

Okay, I'm done boasting now.

This is the latest update for Mac OS X and appears to be an enhancement release rather than a bug-fix release. I'm quite happy to see that. Of course, few of these updates apply to me at all but I always love to be up to date. You can read the details posted to version tracker here. Panther users should run software update to install this.

This article claims that HP has "supposedly" been selling Linux Mandrake on the desktop for a while now. I'm not sure how true this is, but I do remember them coming out with a distribution heavily based on Mandrake. Translation of that is probably that they used Mandrake with an HP icon.

But that aside this article let's one thing be known that I hadn't seen yet. It seems that Mandrake submitted their plan to get out of the French version of chapter 11 bankruptcy last week. That's great news for the new Linux user.

Astronomers have found a new object in our solar system, far out there -- even farther than Pluto. They have named it Sedna, after a goddess, and claim that it is a planet. It's almost 2,000 kilometers in diameter, compared to Pluto's 2,300. Apparently there's much debate as to whether or not this qualifies as a planet. Those who hold that Pluto is a planet will probably fight adamantly to prove this to be one as well. The question is, how much room for error is there? An object is only about a foot long until it's more like ten inches, right? But what if it's nine and three quarters?

Anyway, I know this has been around the news for a little bit now but if CNN.com can wait this long to post this article, so can I.

Now, for those of you wondering my point of view, here's what I think. I think we need to answer a question before we move on. Is it orbiting anything? If yes, what? If no, it defies the definition of a planet by not being a solar satellite. If it orbits the sun, we have something to discuss. And the answer to this question is one I've yet to see written, though I may just not be paying close enough attention.

One stage to rule them all, one stage to find them. One ring to bring them, and in the darkness bind them. This is the one stage, forged by Kevin Wallace in the depths of the United Kingdom.

So this guy is a co-producer for a musical version of The Lord of the Rings. They're going to do it with only eight million pounds, and it's going to be over three hours long. Can they really do a novel, for the trilogy really is just one long novel, justice on the stage? We'll find out, i suppose.

I decided to rent a few DVDs this weekend. Not sure really what inspired this inappropriate money spending, but it is what it is. Thus far, National Security is the first film worth writing about. But that's only to tell you that it's a terrible movie. The previews make it look good, funny, maybe a little enjoyable from an action perspective. But those previews, in my opinion, couldn't be farther from the truth. The movie was just one long black joke. Basically Martin Lawrence ran his mouth from the very beginning, being about as annoying as he could. It's sad, I think, because he's done some successfully good stuff in the past. But this was just really bad.

You know, I'm not really sure how I feel about this. You can view the trailer for yourself here, as if you didn't already see it linked to on slashdot. Anyway, it looks really good. But can anyone ever really do Isaac Asimov justice in a film? I have my sincere doubts, and my concerns that this will turn into a more mindless action flick. Still, it looks like they tried. But then again, that is Will Smith I see. I question the choice of using him for this particular role.

I'll go to the theatre for this.

KDE is a desktop environment for UNIX and Linux that runs on top of XFree. In my opinion, the environment and it's software packages are the very best UNIX / Linux desktop environment / software out there.

Enter Ranger Rick, who is in charge of maintaining the Mac version of KDE. Basically, he maintains a version of KDE that runs on Darwin, Mac OS X's back end UNIX. He's got another project, too. He's porting KDE to OS X so that it runs natively. In other words, no XFree.

Now the software is in super alpha mode, which is my way of saying that it isn't even in alpha mode. Ranger Rick has made the software available to curious parties out of the goodness of his heart, and should all be thanking him! Here he writes that he has just updated the binaries for it, and also lists that you can get it here and read the FAQ here.

I haven't had a big chance to play with it yet, but I did install it via webdav last night, and it does run. It took several hours due to it only being on one server and that server, no doubt, being very busy. But this is a wonderful thing! I just had to share.

An internet-exclusive trailer for Alien VS Predator has been released. Watch it here. I don't think it's a very good trailer, but it still promises to be a fun action flick. I look forward to it.

I find it sort of amusing that the film is not yet rated. It's going to be an R. We know it's going to be an R. It might get an NC-17, but then they'll edit it down until it gets an R. So, yeah.

Well, my friends, I have done some more work on the site. I finally added the about page, so you can all read about me. I also added the contact page, so you can send private messages to me now. I still have to pretty up the contact form a little bit, but you get the idea.

Tonight I put it on record that I have added a hit counter to this site. I wrote it myself using PHP. It is currently invisible, and only triggered by the front page of the site. You can see the status of the hit counter at the very top of the source code. Mainly I'm saying this because when the number gets a little larger I'm going to make it visible, and when that happens I'll probably say that I started counting today. So on record I go!

Also, very much thanks to my good friend, skadz, I have fixed my RSS 1.0 and 2.0 feeds, updated my pings, and installed MT-Blacklist.

So this site has finally hit a state where I can officially say it's released and not feel like a jerk because some of the content I link to is broken. It all works now. And that makes me feel good.

I had to think long and hard about what kind of category to put this post into, and starting one called Software seemed like the best way to go. Now I can talk about other software in this category by posting reviews or release announcements or whatever.

So, with that said, I am here to write about a guy named Dean Edwards. Of course, being that I found this link on Slashdot, the site is falling victim to the slashdot effect and cannot be viewed due to too much traffic. So I'll give you the gist of what Slashdot promises this guy has done. He has created a style sheet, found here, that is supposed to use DHTML to make Internet Explorer view pages properly. He calls it IE7.

Now, I haven't had a chance to try it, but I have sincere doubts that it will work on my Mac version of Internet Explorer. That's why I call out to those of you who are a little gutsy. I ask you, please give this a shot and tell me... does CSS/Edge work with it? If it does, this style sheet has fixed major problems in Internet Explorer's rendering engine. Any way you twist it, I'm very impressed by what it looks like he's done, and look forward to viewing the page later when slashdot's link stops killing it.

Now I'm not sure that this is, in fact, the first, but it's the first I've heard about. The Register is running an article about NetSky-L and NetSky-M, both released yesterday. It seems NetSky-K, the last release prior to these gems, had text hidden inside hat promised it would be the last variant of NetSky written by the original author. It also promised that the source code would be available soon.

Well, who knows if it's the author playing games (as is known to happen with virus writers) or if its a copycat. And if it's the latter, who knows if it's because of source code being released or not.

But the thought of virus source code being released is a double edged sword. The advantages of open source code are many. Among them are the ability to adapt code to suit your needs and desires, and also the ability to learn what other coders' methods are for writing similar routines to the ones you hope to write. On the one hand, you would think it bad to let new, "wannabe" type virus authors access to this code. Who knows how many more virii (yes, that is, in my opinion, the proper plural form of virus) might be spawned. But on the other hand this will give computer forensics officers a huge advantage in investigations. Of course, those who are anti-open source will use this as ammunition, and likely soon, to try to outlaw open source in their ongoing campaign to turn the technology world into an entirely proprietary lump.

What a way to start my open source section, eh?