November 04, 2k5 - Sony Rootkit Drama continues

The murky grey area of what expectations of privacy and ownership of your personal computer takes a weird spin. Blizzard Entertainment, who makes the popular On-line game World of Warcraft, has intergrated a spyware like program in their software called The Warden to monitor players' systems to ensure that they aren't running software to cheat. In response, one player wrote a tool called Governor. Now someone has determined that the Sony/First 4 Internet rootkit in fact protects any file or program whose name begins "$sys$". The same avenue could be used to make viruses almost impossible to detect and even harder to remove. I think it's like those lock-bypass boxes you see on some business doors that allow fire and police access in case no one is there -- I'm not comfortable with something like that for my home, but the argument could be made -- like the argument could be made for Sony's intended use. But what if the lockbox was made of cardboard instead of high carbon steel? Still feel safe? The potential for abuse is just too high for the benefits offered.

November 03, 2k5 - How to remove Spyware and rootkits from your PC

One reason that there's a huge gap between the post in August and the few below in November is just a matter of time, but also because I feel like I need to try to address the concepts of removing spyware and rootkits for folks -- and it's hard -- there are some pretty good programs out there for free, like MS Antispyware and SpybotS&D, but the problem on the horizon is the rootkits which remain to reinfect your system after you've removed the viruses and spyware. If you peruse Mark's Blog wherein he takes you step by step thru the removal of the rootkit installed by Sony BMG you'll see how absurdly complex it can be. This guy know far more than I and he disabled his CD drive for a while in this process. Even the RootkitRevealer isn't what I'd call user friendly, nor does it actually reomve anything, just tells you that you caught something. And at that it take a long time to run and you can't be doing anything else on the PC (like browse the Web) at the time of it will show up as 'suspicious activity'. So even though I can't come up with a comprehensive solution to these issues, I am adding a link at the top of this page to my more frequently used tools -- use them with care. I'll try to keep the links fairly current.

November 03, 2k5 - Sony Offers Patch for Own Rootkit

I wish I could take credit for this. In view of all the concerns Sony BMG is offering a patch to enable you to remove their program from your PC The idea of their software was that it would let you make 3 copies of the CD and then stop. So obviously they didn't make it so that you could make 3 copies, un-install, reinstall and then make 3 more. The problem was in that they assumed that it would therefore be ok for them to limit your use of your computer. As seems to be more often the case in corporations and governments, if it's too much trouble to catch the guilty, they just go with punishing the innocent and hope they inconvienence the guilty as well. That said, it's unclear if Sony even knew the mechanics of the DRM being used as they purchased it from a software firm (which is where the patch actually is) which is just hooked into the install -- the happy ending, for me, is that the consumer is collectively showing some backbone and saying, "This line you may not cross." I expect this battle to be fought a few more times over whatever High-Def DVD format we end up with as well.

November 02, 2k5 - Sony's Music CD's are compromising your PC

I've talked a litle about root kits before, but here's a good disection and example in this story at the Washington Post of how a savy guy saw that a program had been added to his PC that was trying to hide itself so that it couldn't be seen or removed. The first attempt he made to remove it actually disabled his CD drive. It's part of the DRM package that Sony BMG is using to protect their new Music CD's and it warns you that software is installing and says that it can be removed, but it can't be removed in any realistic way for normal folks and trys to hide itself as well. Kinda creepy, I think.

November 02, 2k5 - Automated worm coming via IM

Just like you shouldn't open unexpected attachments in email, you shouldn't click on link in IM you didn't ask for. This story at eweek tell how the W32/SDBot Trojan already has all the making of an automated work that could quickly spread to millions.

August 17, 2k5 - Don't put off patching

Three days ago, Sunday, the Zotob worm exploit was announced on computer security lists and websites. As CNN reports,a variant was bringing down systems on three continents illustrating that the time you have to patch after a vunerablilty is announced before some malicious code is out and infecting systems is down to almost nothing. The authours of these programs were also seen to be sharing and organizing as never before.

August 16, 2k5 - Rootkits, what are they?

Frankly, I'm struggling to try to understand where that line is drawn myself. I think it's in their very stealthy approach to avoiding detection from scanners and even Windows itself. It's clear however, that they are the coming wave of black-hat code that will be used for viruses, worms and spyware in the future. There's a book out now detailing how these can be detected and written and how they function which I don't reccommend unless you understand something like: The answer is no, because the current antivirus technology is able to find all (unhidden) executable files and then perform some kind of analysis if the given PE file looks like a potential rootkit/malware installer (for e.g. check if it uses functions like OpenProcess(), OpenSCManager(), ZwSetSystemInformation() and similar) Fortunately, there are some whitehat folks that are working on tools to help us detect the undetectable, especially RootkitRevealer by Systernals which is a free tool to point out suspicious system events and registry entries -- also not really simple to use, but better than anything else I've found yet.

August 12,2k5 - MS Honey Monkeys find first 0-day

I mentioned Microsoft's Honey Monkey project before (May 17th, 2k5) Well they caught their first previously unknown exploit out in the wild on some 'seedy' websites. What's more, they were able to see that there is a common progression in that these and others that are known tend to show up first on a few websites and then spread more widely. This means that they can watch this small group of sites more closely as a kind of early warning system.

August 11, 2k5 - Blu-ray and HD DVD Compared

A follow up from Tom's Hardware on the differences, similarities and future of High Def media. Toshiba is backing HD DVD and Sony's baby is Blu-ray. I looks like there are a lot of similarities and at least a consciousness that they need to not degenrate into a format war like VHS and Beta. As near as I can tell, the patent holders (Sony and Toshiba, plus others) are all fighting for patent residuals and are being pushed by studios and media companies into DRM solutions that are thinly concealed anti-consumer ... one requires connection to the studio which looks like they will be able to say that a certain encoding scheme has been cracked and should be discarded - does that mean they can just stop you playing your own movies at will? Sounds like it. It all sounds like the Divx players which Circuit City sold, and lost their shirt on. They favored the media publishers over the consumers, make it more difficult and expensive, and on some levels expected the pull one over on the gullible public. The public was not buying and not amused. One video loving programmer was so unthrilled, he renamed his compressed video format DivX in hopes of overshadowing and erradicating the very name of divx ... and it worked; it took me several tries on google before I could find the previous link. DivX is now the standard format for handheld players and for ultracompressed video.

August 10, 2k5 - Sony Flounders with Blu-ray

Tom's Hardware has a good story about Sony's announcement about the DRM to be embedded in Blu-ray, their largely proprietary, High Definition DVD format. This controversial technology would require that disc players maintain permanent connections to content providers via the Internet, making it possible for discs that fail a security check to trigger a notification process, enabling the provider to send the player a sort of "self-destruct code." This code would come in the form of a flash ROM "update" that would actually render the player useless, perhaps unless and until it is taken to a repair shop for reprogramming. Sony's Walkman was the name for portable music players everywhere years ago. And then portable music changed to digital and iPod's took over. Sony had players too, what happened? Sony's players had a restrictive DRM and didn't play mp3's -- they weren't what the market was looking for and no one bought them.

August 7, 2k5 - 10th Planet Not Theatened by Hackers

A friend recommended I listen to the Kim Komando Show, which in general isn't bad and has some good advice, although I find that most general computer advice breaks down so often when applied to a specific computer situation that it becomes a good intentioned roulette. She mentioned one rumour that's been going around that the astronomers announced ahead of schedule because they were threatened by 'hackers'. If you read the last few paragraphs in the link below, which is the astronomer's own webpage, you'll see that they discovered that everything they were working on with the computerized telescope and tracking software was getting put on the Internet and could be found via Google. Google finds a lot of information on the Internet that isn't meant to be public. There were no threats, there may or may not have been someone who looked at their current work ... the scientists announced ahead of schedule because they found out that their work to date was unintentionally already somewhat public.

August 1, 2k5 - 10th Planet Found

Astronomers at Palomar Observatory have found what looks like a 10th planet larger than Pluto and farther out in the Kuiper Belt, also known as the comets' winter home. There was a flury of speculation and rumors of being exposed by 'hackers' but it seems like the long delay since the first images from October 2003 are due to delays in examining and comparing the images to perceive the movement (found in January on 2005) and the team wanting to take time to get a broader base of observations that will help them nail down it's exact orbit and it's mass and diameter.

July 29, 2k5 - US wants to be out of sync with the Sun

Currently, every so often (last in 1998), a 'leap-second' is added to the clock to keep us in sync with the Sun since the Earth is very gradually slowing down in it's spin. There is word of a US proposal to the UN to wait and doa leap-hour change every 500-600 years. It makes sense when you look at what a snafu is was in '98, but the industry has moved on. Every big computer network now has a central time-keeping system which syncs to government/military time servers or GPS satellites and makes things like this a minor hiccup at most, and in the mean time this plan would be an ever increasing problem for astronomers.

July 27, 2k5 - People who download music spend more

A research firm found that people who regularly download music illegally spend over 4 and a half more per month on music than those who don't. The implication to me is that we have a group here that should be seen as valuable customers demonstrating a demand that the music industry isn't meeting yet.

July 27, 2k5 - iPod too big?

MobiBLU DAH-1500 claims World's Smallest MP3 Player and at less than a cubic inch, they may be right. It's a cube 24mm per side (.95 inches) and can also be used to store files like a USB flash drive. Wal-Mart even sells them.

July 26, 2k5 - Russian Mega Spammer Murdered - No One Seems Sad

Moscow's Spam King, Vardan Kushnir, 35, was found dead in his apartment, killed by repeated blows to the head with a blunt object. His company spams millions of emails per day to Russian citizens as well as the rest of the Earth. The Soviet media in many cases hailed it as justice; however, it seems to be a more simple case of robbery gone bad.

July 24, 2k5 - Butterfly dividing into two species.

As may be expected, the two (sub-?, para-?) species look almost identical but a team from Harvard finds that the butterflies develop a team strip to allow them to recognize potential mates if both types are in the same area. This conditional genetic expression is both very cool and pretty mysterious.

July 23, 2k5 - TSA Broke Privacy Laws Wholesale

On a recent trip, the TSA broke into my luggage and left a photocopied note explaing that they had done so and the ordinence empowering them, but giving no specific information as to what individual (even an inspector number whould make me feel like there is some accountabilty) did so or even which airport it happened at. A shoe was missing -- I mean really! Who steals a single shoe?! The TSA strikes me as simultaneously the most annoying and useless barnacle attached to our government since 9/11. A congressional report claims the the TSA collected over 100 million records in violation of the 1974 Privacy Act which requires notification to the public when information is being collected about people.

July 22, 2k5 - Daylight Savings Time to be Extended

The US House and Senate are negotiating a change to Daylight Savings Time extending DST by an extra 3 weeks in the Spring and 1 week in the Fall. How this will mesh with the International community isn't discussed, but it should prove fun for airlines and companies whose computer networks cross national boarders.

July 21, 2k5 - Teens make electronic AC

With environmental concerns both about the ozone layer and the energy consumed in running air conditioners, two Utah teens invented a car AC based on Peliter chips which use about half as much gas and each chip lasts about 20-30 years with no Freon to recharge. The Peltier effect isn't new, the heating/cooling travel coolers that plug into the car's cigarette lighter use the same principle, but getting a steep gradient and getting rid of the excess heat (all 'cooling' systems are really heat pumps, moving heat away from the space to be 'cooled' and then exhausted somehow) were sure to be a challenge.

July 14, 2k5 - Bendable e-paper

Fujitsu shows off their new electronic paper which can be bent and retain its image without using power. If you read this page regularly (and I know only one person who admits to it), then you know I dig the whole e-paper, e-ink, e-book scene. I have a Rocket Ebook and hundreds of titles for it and would love to have the kind of notebook I envisioned after reading this article in Wired from 1999 Something about the size of a spiral bound notebook with batteries and data storage in the 'spiral' section and maybe 10 pages that display the section you're currently reading.

July 11, 2k5 - Air freshener may be key for Fuel Cells

Signa, a small NYC based startup, were working on a new air freshener when they found it was procuding hydrogen gas without heat and pretty efficiently. The 'energy problem' is really more about moving it around and not about producing it. There's enough power from sunlight falling on US deserts everyday to power the country for a year or more. Gasoline/oil is the energy source or choice because you can store it and move it around in trucks unlike light. There aren't any direct comparisons in the article letting us know how it does next to fossil fuels in terms of jules/kg but sounds like a lot better than pressurized tanks of hydrogen gas.

July 8, 2k5 - Arizona HS gets rid of textbooks, goes all laptops

Vail HS is Tucson AZ is going all wireless, all laptops. They have about 350 students, which will be using laptops instead of textbooks. Curriculum will be at least partly based on online articles to make it more interactive and immediate than a teacher just plodding through the textbook before the class. Since a set of textbooks costs $500-$600 per student, the investment cost isn't too far off; however, they will need some full time experts to support them unlike textbooks. The hidden advantage is that they will have the opprotunity to define their own lessons more dynamically -- currently all major school books are essentially written to the specifications of Texas and California.

July 6, 2k5 - Microsoft may buy Gator now thinks it is ok

E-Week has a story about Microsoft's Antispyware program now defaults to ignore Claria's Gator spyware programs just a week after acquisition talks. Previous to this week, the default was Quarantine.

July 1, 2k5 - Windows hacked in 12 minutes

No, it isn't the record -- it’s the average. An article in ZDNet Australia says There is a 50 percent chance your unprotected Winmdows PC will be compromised within 12 minutes of going online They go on to say that the increase is largely due to real advertising money and, in some cases, organized crime are now behind what was once simply done for notoriety.

June 23, 2k5 - High School Hacker Felons

Students at a Philadelphia High School were issued laptops (iBooks, a marketting ploy by Apple to get more market share) which all had a common administrator password. Some students used this customize the appearance, some to reconfigure their laptops so that the administration could no longer spy on their computer use, and some used it to increase their network access and then got music and inappropriate images from the Internet. Now 13 are being charged with felonies. At no time was the schools servers, which hold private records and grades, breached and stangely no seniors have been named. The pendulum is swinging the other way now, where minor computer crimes were ignored before, now they are being diproportionally ruthless in response. As now finanacial damage was done, I think they should simply get suspended at most ... now they're being fingerprinted. On a more personal evaluation, I think that having all these systems configured with the same admin password was just foolish, a master list in a secure file (or even just on paper) whould be far better both for security and to protect to the students already somewhat battered privacy.

June 11, 2k5 - Why are these sites infecting PCs with Adware? For the money!

The Russian Site IframeDollars is offering web developers 6 cents per machine infected according to Information Week. They stand to make as much as $75k for adware placed on machines just in the third week of May over the coming year which cost them about $12k.

June 10, 2k5 - New type of storm in space

During January we saw some great auroras, but scientists are just now putting together the pieces as to what looks like a new type of solar storm. Between January 15th and 19th, 2005 we saw a lot of sun-spots and solar activity; however, the storm on the 20th was something different. Proton Storms follow some solar storms hours or days afterwards are are fairly dangerous being pretty hard and able to penetrate space suits. The proton storm on the 20th followed the flare by only 30 minutes, not enough time for safety when/if the base on the Moon is operational. The best guess so far is that the Earth’s own magnetic field was aligned just right to help accelerate the storm.

May 24, 2005 - Retail Extortion Hackers

As if things weren’t bad enough, a new scam was found in San Diego where a hacker broke into systems, encrypted data files, and left ransom notes. In this case, the victim was told to wire $200 to get his files back. He was able to crack the encryption and the FBI is investigating, but this could be a new danger on the horizon. An investigator likened it to someone breaking into your home and placing your valuables into a safe without letting you know the combination.

May 17, 2005 - MS releases Honeymonkeys

Security Focus tells us about Microsoft using monkeys to scan the web for security holes in Internet Explorer. Inspired by the Honeynet Project, where virtual computers are left on the web to be compromised and hacked (all the while carefully monitoring all network traffic); Microsoft has started to investigate using Honeymonkeys (virual Windows XP boxes at different patch levels) to wander the Internet’s seedy side looking for sites than are using new, unknown exploits to gain access to the systems -- allowing MS to patch the hole, report the site to the authorities, or both -- and hopefully before any real personal computers have been compromised.

May 5, 2005 - What do they do with your PC after they take control? Online extortion

BetCris.com, an online gambling site in Costa Rica was attacked by over 20,000 zombies, PC’s which have been compromised and will attack another site without the owner’s knowledge, when instead of paying the extortionists, they decided to spend even more to fight back with the help of Prolexic. I found it an intruiging, dramatic story. It would have been cheaper for everyone if the victim just paid the squeeze, but sometimes a person’s got to take a stand -- even bookies.

March 17, 2005 - Does someone else control your PC?

The BBC has a story about a German security group which tracked over 100 networks of compromised computers. One network had 50,000 hijacked home computers. The best estimate is that one million PC’s have been taken over to send spam, viruses or engineer identity theft. The reserchers used “honey pots” which look like normal systems, but secretly record all communications in and out. These honey pots were attacked within a few minutes, some within seconds, of being connected to the Internet. If you don’t have a firewall running on your system at home which is online, it’s probably already been recruited. Windows users can right-click on a network connection and request a ‘Status’ screen which will tell you how much data has been sent and received. If your computer is sending more than it’s receiving, it’s probably being used by someone else.

March 15, 2005 - Kazaa most creepy file share program.

In a page comparing common file sharing programs, we see Kazza as, by far, the most worrying files share program with a license running 182 pages on screen and adding 845 registry keys and 638 files to you computer in 112 separate folders.

March 14, 2005 - AOL Respects privacy after all.

Monday morning AOL was seeing how much flak they were getting and sent an announcement to news media spinning it as being misread. Ben responded by saying that 1) he read it right and 2) having someone say that it isn’t done while still having a TOS saying that they can anytime they like isn’t much of a reassurance. Later that evening AIM’s chief architect reassured everyone saying ‘First off, that blurb in the TOS only refers to AIM forum posts, not IMs. I agree that it is vague and should be reworded to be clear.’ and ‘Second, the amount of IM traffic is on the order of hundreds of gigabytes a day. It would be very costly, and we have no desire to record all IM traffic. We don’t do it.’ AOL later said they would be re-drafting the TOS to clear this matter up. I want to say it’s great that AOL is innocent and that sharp eyed people like Ben are reading these darn things for the rest of us who are just too darn lazy.

March 12, 2005 - AOL Eavesdrops on Instant Messages.

Ben Stanfield actually stopped and read AOL’s Terms of Service “TOS” which contained the following ‘...by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy.’ Ben then used his weblog to start a grass roots firestorm against AOL.

March 11, 2005 - FTC shuts down SpywareAssassin.

MaxTheater, Inc. was evidently offering a free scan for spyware on visitor’s computers which did nothing but would claim to have found spyware, and then selling for $30 SpamAssassin software which continued in the fine tradition of showing some pretty graphics while not actually doing anything. Ironically, the similarlly named SpamAssassin is a very powerful and well liked filter for removing spam from email (at the mailserver, not on your PC)

March 6, 2005 - Spyware installs 65MB update

A network manager noticed that it the company’s connection was going nuts -- like everyone was downloading updates from Microsoft and movie trailers at the same time. A new piece of spyware was found to be downloading updates for its host machine (like MS’s .NET) so that it can properly display ads on computers including videos of movie trailers. I guess too many people are figuring out how to ignore or avoid spam delivered to their email, so now they are hijacking your own computer to make it show you ads even when not surfing the Internet.

March 5, 2005 - Google, it‘s not just for searching anymore

Google has been quietly diversifing. They have been offering email with a free 1000MB mailbox for a while now as Gmail. Maps are available now by going to maps.google.com with some great features. They‘re adding weather forecasts for most US locations by entering “weather place” where place can be either city, state or a zip code. Google will also Convert units like degrees Fahrenheit to Celsius can be done with the keyword ‘Convert’. In the link, it‘s converting 45 degrees F to C. Google will also lookup definitions of many words and give you hints if you misspell. Just use the keyword define followed by the word you‘re looking for.

2/27/2005 - Secret Laws

John Gilmore, who due to eplilepsy doesn’t have a driver’s licence, has been fighting the requirement that he show ID to travel by air in the US since 1998. It seems that ID is required by law, but the law is secret for security reasons. I don’t feel warm and safe about this. Among the technical errors in the article are claims that Sun Microsystems made Unix, that it is the "free software of the Web" and that they bought it from Bill Gates. As I recall it, Sun came from BSD (a flavor of unix) rewritten into SunOS (later renamed Solaris) to run on Sun manufactured hardware - which is arguably the backbone of the Internet. It is not free, or even cheap; however, on a couple occasions Sun has released a free spin-off version of Solaris to run on PC’s -- which had never really caught on.

2/27/2005 - US Education called obsolete

At a governor’s summit on education recently, Bill Gates declared “Americ’a Highschools are obsolete” Meaning that even when their properly funded and staffed, they aren’t teaching the right material. 45 governors from the 50 states and 5 territories in the US were in attendance. Some scary statistics: of 100 9th graders only 68 graduate on time, only 18 graduate college on time. Part of the trouble is that schools are controlled locally but depend so much on federal funds and it’s easier to get higher test scores by lowering standards. Two notable of 5 missing were Arnold Schwartzenegger (CA) and Jeb Bush (FL).

2/24/2005 - 7 month infant’s life may be saved by stem cells

Ishika Gupta, a 7 month old in New Delhi, has cardiac myopathy (a fatal condition where the heart muscles degenerate) and is being treated with stem cells taken from her own leg to try to restore her heart. Stem cell therapy for this condition has been shown successful in other heart patients in the past.

2/24/2005 - FCC raises max fine for violations to $500,000

You may recall Clear Channel Communications being fined $27,500 last year for 18 incidents by Howard Stern, now those fines could total $9 Million. The fines for Janet Jacksons’s “wardrobe malfunction” could be enough to pay off a wrongfully death of a nursing home patient and two dangerous mishaps at a nuclear reactor. I can‘t stand Stern, but this seems a little out there.

2/23/2005 - UK’s BBC has more on Broadcast flag

BBC News has more coverage of the appeals court questioning the FCC’s broadcast flag mandate.

2/22/205 - US Appeals Court questions FCC Broadcast flag mandate

After, no doubt, extensive lobbying by the television studios, the FCC issued a mandate that all equipment capable of receiving a television signal sold after July 1, 2005 is required to respect the broadcast flag. This is intended to stop piracy of TV shows over the Internet (which is already illegal) but also looks to prevent folks with newer VCR’s and disc recorders from recording shows they want to watch. Finally, this has been brought to the attention of the US Appeals Court who, so far, seems to feel that the FCC should stick to regulating transmission and not impose legislation on consumer receivers. HDTV is having enough trouble gaining acceptance, adding this sort of requirement won’t help by making equipment more expensive.

Feb 20, 2005 - Legal impediments to Community Internet

Big telcom and cable companies are pushing for legislation to block communities for cooperatively setting up a shared Internet service. It’s hard to see how this can be construed as representative government - it seems much more like a power bloc monopoly. There are communities setting up area wireless, fiber optics, and data over powerlines solutions where their town, or even housing development has been ignored or under-serviced by tradtional high speed Internet providers. The coming 802.11n and WiMax will make this even more attractive to communities at the same time as the Internet becomes more intergrated into everyday life. WA, NV, UT, MN, WI, MS, OK, TN, SC, AK, VA, PA all aready have these debilitory laws in place. Bills are pending in OR, CO, TX, NE, IL, OH, FL and NH. Indiana’s bill died in committe. It’s worth noting that statistics are pretty badly skewed by federal figures which, if a single home in a particular zip code has high speed access, the whole zipcode is counted as having high speed access.

Feb 15, 2005 - MS talks about IE7 and AntiSpyware

Gates gave a keynote address at the RSA conference highlighting many upcoming changes and offerings from Microsoft. The beta for Microsoft Antispyware has been downloaded about 6 Million times, and I highly recommend it. He also put fears to rest about charging for the Antispyware protection - there will be a commercial offering for businesses in need of centralized management, but the stand alone version for home users will be free. I especially like MS Antispyware in combination with Spybot S&D. He also spoke on a new version 7 of Internet Explorer. IE7 was previously only to be offered with Longhorn (the 64 bit version of Windows due this Summer), but is planned to begin being offered for testers/early adoption by XP systems with SP2 installed in June.

Feb 9, 2205 - Top ways to Kill your PC

PCstats has a review of the most common ways for a PC to die. Number 1 is death by electrocution from a cheap power supply. Rural Vermont is especially susceptible to power fluctuations, a quality UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) will include voltage regulation and even some power conditioning, which will help a lot. Why spend $100 on a UPS when you can get a surge protector for $10? Most surge protectors only kick in 500V, but I’ve seen systems cook and die when they get 180 instead of the 120V they are expecting.

Feb 5, 2005 - 13 Windows security updates

Microsoft announced that on Feb 8th, they will be releasing patchs for 13 vunerabilities. Good time to manually run update and make sure you’re caught up.

Feb 4, 2005 - Asteroid to be visible to human eye

The same asteroid we were worried about last December, 2004 MN4, will pass so close it will be visible to the naked eye. You will have to wait until 2029 for the show though.

Feb 3, 2005 - Spam costs US companies $22 Billion

CNN has an article about a study from the University of Maryland which says loss of productivity is costing $22 billion to US companies annually. They also come out with average of 18.5 spam messages per day per person.

Jan 28, 2005 - MPAA releases Parent File Scan Tool

MPAA says the Parent File Scan Tool ’helps consumers check whether their computers have peer-to-peer software and potentially infringing copies of motion pictures and other copyrighted material.’ It identifies some HP printer software as p2p sharing software, and it seems to tag every music and video file on the computer, some of which came installed with Windows. A read of the fine print reads, "The program does not distinguish between legal and illegal copies, as it is up to the user to determine whether the files found by the program have been acquired legally, or whether the material should be deleted." What good is it?

Jan 25, 2005 - More on Firefox

O’Reilly, the premier publisher of technical books, has two upcoming books about the new browser. Don’t Click on the Blue E! a guide for non-technical people on how to move away from IE and some good tricks for using Firefox better, and Firefox Hacks intended for the tech-savvy crowd, packed with over 100 tips on deployment and a safer web browser. Wired magazine also has a history of Firefox’s exploding popularity and some of the stories behind the grass-roots browser which is challenging IE from the titanic Microsoft. Although the percentage of users seems small, the people who use the Internet a lot seem to prefer it - my logs and others agree that the total traffic from Firefox makes up about 40% of total.

Jan 17, 2005 - Bored and good with a soldering gun? Build an mp3 player

Limor Fried, an engineering grad student at M.I.T., brings us a project to make your own mp3 player using an altoids box as a case for about $50. She gives some good instructions, ideas for variations and pictures of the project as it is being created.

Jan 15, 2005 - Huygens probe lands on Titan

Nasa has the first pictures from the surface of Titan, one of Saturns moons and very interesting spot for more reasons than the great view of Saturn and it’s rings.

Jan 15, 2005 - That’s no moon, it’s a space station! Oh wait ... it’s a moon.

One of my favorite earlier pictures on the Casssini/Huygens page at NASA was of another moon, Mimas, looking a lot like the Death Star.

Jan 15, 2005 - Monsanto sues farmers for holding seed to replant

Monsanto makes genetically engineered crop seed (esp. soy) and they want to sell their ’better soy’ seeds every year. Farmers have been saving part of the crop to plant as seed since agriculture began. So, Monsanto has been suing farmers since 1997 for breaching their contract by saving seed and planting it, but since 85% of the nation’s soy crop is now genetically engineered, it’s starting to be a questionable stance whether the engineered seeds are really the property of Monsanto, or just a new variant that belongs to the possesor. Nearly every piece of food we eat is from a plant or animal which has been domesticated over hundreds or thousands of years by selecting strains with traits that make them better or easier to produce. I have no trouble for Monsanto collecting a usage fee (like a patent holder) in the short term, but forever or the unworkably long terms used for copyright today I think, are unrealistic, especially given today’s unsustainable population growth.

Jan 14, 2005 - Spyware basics and one company’s history

MSNBC has a nice piece about Direct Revenue, their history and what they and others are running on people’s PCs without their permission, and what the future looks like. Also, Benjamin Edelman has tracked down some of the corporations and money behind the adware/spyware totalling over $139 million.

Jan 14, 2005 - Objects must fall at 32ft/sec^2 - it’s the law!

I have friends that are lawyers and law students, they have quirks, but are good folk. And then I read these two in one day: Cobb County Board of Education (Atlanta, GA) requires all biology books have a sticker reading "Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." OK, I think it dumb and a waste of time, but that seems to be the way of government. Then a federal judge orders them removed saying that the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. A photo of a sticker is shown -- it doesn’t mention religion. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and neither does two stupid moves ... three lefts make a right though.
Harvey Kash, 69, and Carl Lanzisera, 65, were standing in a long line with others at a Courthouse near Long Island, NY, when they were arrested for telling lawyer jokes after a passing lawyer (lawyers and court officals don’t have to stand in line) overheard and reported them. They were handcuffed (remember, these guys are 69 and 65) frisked and had their licenses run ... after coming up clean, they were charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with the court’s operation -- how telling jokes while waiting in a line is ’interfering’ I have no idea.

Jan 13, 2005 - Secure PC for grandparents introduced

In a sterotype that I have trouble with (I know an IT department head who’s also a grandfather), the Dutch company simPC is making a thin-client PC for grandparents which is intended to allow them to surf the Internet, exchange email, do some banking and look at pictures without ever being troubled with security issues like a virus, worm or spyware -- and they’re cheap! Of course, they also won’t be bothered with being able to install any personal programs, burn cds, dvds, or download large files (I have no idea what they mean by ’large’ It will first be offered only in the Netherlands and Belguim, but they plan to expand. The price structure is like Netpliance’s iOpener of a few years back m-- cheap up-front, but monthly charges forever. Netpliance is gone now, but folks are still modifying them into minimal PC’s for the cost of about $50 on ebay plus a few custom parts and them adding memory and/or harddrives for laptops. Having a thin-client as a household appliance is a nice idea, but I don’t think the time is yet.

Jan 13, 2005 - MPAA/RIAA not able to hold moral high ground

In OSDir’s article saluting the evil of 2004 the grey area of P2P (Peer-to-Peer) filesharing is explored. Recently, I’ve heard a lot about the dangers of file sharing like viruses, worms and now adware and spyware. The evil part is that they are paying Overpeer to create the adware/spyware, attach it to a file with some curently popular name and upload it to the P2P networks. While there are certainly 2 sides to this issue, it sometimes seems that the studios/labels represented by the RIAA and MPAA -- they very obviously don’t represent the artists -- are whining that the musicians are being cheated, even while the labels and studios are engaged in far worse exploitation and have been since at least the 60’s. I want to know how they can may some of these bald-faced lies without their pants catching on fire. The most cogent argument I’ve yet read is from Janis Ian who’s been recording since 1965 and finds that free samples is helping her sales .. like 300%.

Jan 12, 2005 - MS Malicious Software Removal Tool released

To go with the previously mentioned Antispyware, Microsoft has released a Malicious Software Removal Tool which is much like McAfee’s Stinger to search specifically for and remove the more recent, widespread viruses and worms. MS says it will be udated on the second Tuesday of each month, and updates will load automatically for Windows XP users who are getting their windows updates. Also like Antispyware, this will work on Win2000, XP and Server 2003 which should be run manually about once a month. If you’re still using Win98 or ME, it maybe time to think about upgrading.

Jan 12, 2005 - Another tool for tracking down load-on-boot programs

It’s free, and although I haven’t mentioned it before, it’s been around for a while. While not for casual users, Systernals utilities Autoruns and Autorunsc will give you a laundry list of registry entries and files loaded by windows at system boot. Autorunsc is the commandline version for running in scripts or automatically. If you’ve got something that the spyware programs can’t fix, this is your manual solution.

Jan 11, 2005 - MS’s DRM used to infect PCs

MS’s Media Player now allows securing audio and video by requiring a key be picked up at a licensing website. Hackers are using ’free’ Media Player files to trick people into going to websites to get the license and then getting more than they bargained for. In one test with a fresh windows build, going to the site and clicking one ’ok’ button for the license added 58 new folders, 786 files and 11,915 registry entries. One of the most valuable lessons I learned from my grandfather was, "Free things always cost too much."

Jan 10, 2005 - Titanic Ice Collision on the 15th

It may not happen fast, but the amount of force expended will be impressive. A 105 mile long iceberg (about the size of Long Island, NY) is being pushed by the current into a collision with the Drygalski Ice Tongue near US’s McMurdo Research station in Antartica. A collision so big, NASA is the only one who can give us a good view. Pack ice has been forming between the slowly moving berg and the shore, making things hard for the resident penguins, so the collision may help them out. McMurdo normally has 40 miles of ice to break, but the pack ice was 80 miles this year, this was overcome handily by U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polestar which left Seattle on Nov 4th and made a lane for supply ships.

Jan 9, 2005 - Safer, no-lead electronics may be growing tin-whiskers

Fortune tells us that the recent trend banning lead from electronics may have a forgotten cost. In 1998, the Galaxy 4 communication satellite grew a tin whisker that bridged a pair of pins on the craft’s central processor, killing the $250M craft, interrupting millions in credit card and ATM exchanges and 40 million pagers stopped working too. In the 40’s, telcom engineers found the whiskers growing on relays that were failing, and that if they added 2-3% lead to the tin used to plate circuit boards, the whiskers didn’t grow. Still, no-one knows how it happens, but it does -- in Air Force radar systems, pacemakers and fuses for bombs. Of course, the same thing could happen to computers, and is more likely to happen faster as lead is eliminated and the circuits are so much smaller and closer together.

Jan 8, 2005 - Really scary Internet Explorer 6 vulnerability found

While SP2 for XP is generally good, it left another door open. Julien McArdle shows us how it can be exploited to create a file on your harddrive ... conversely, it could be used to remove files -- say, "del c:\windows\system32\*.dll" which would leave your computer dead, dead, dead!

Jan 8, 2005 - MS Antispyware compared to Ad-Aware and SpyBot

Flexbeta ran tests comparing Microsoft’s new (purchased from Giant Software) Antispyware program (still in beta testing). The review is favorable; it looks like MS’s new program can find problems the other leave behind; however, the reverse is true too -- Ad-Aware and Spybot will find problems that the MS program missed. There are rumors circulating about MS charging a yearly subscription for updates much like most anti-virus programs, but nothing has been made official. Some of included tools look worthwhile even if MS bungles the updates. I’ll be adding it to my standard toolkit, and let you know how it works.

Jan 7, 2005 - Multiple security problems found in IE, no fix yet

Secunia advises about an issue found in the new, SP2 IE which allows for the same old address bar spoofing, plus executing commands on your pc. Have I mentioned, "Use Firefox"? Use Firefox!

Jan 6, 2005 - Worried someone may steal your laptop -- disguise it as a pizza

A UK firm has an inexpensive if unconventional laptop carrier. It’s a pizza box with some foam egg crate and velcro straps inside. You can use the extra room to store your cables and mouse and stuff. I love St. Albans’ "Pie in the Sky" pizzas, now I have something to do with the boxes I bring home.

Jan 6, 2005 - Sim-Virus?

Folks playing with the different options available in creating objects in the Sims 2 have accidentally had their modified versions spread like a virus to Sims players. For example, someone created an updated expresso machine giving super-expresso, fulfilling all your needs in just one cup. If one of these special expresso machines is in a house design that is later uploaded to be shared and put into another game, the expresso maker infects expresso makers in houses nearby. There all sorts of amusing and not-so effects in these modified versions. Interestingly, the same folks who hacked these super items, put together a miniprogram allowing people to find and remove these items before EA (maker of The Sims) got their bearings and came up with a position on the subject, much less a solution.

Jan 6, 2005 - MS AntiSpyware beta released

Although still not offical yet, a beta version of MS Antispyware has been opened to the public for download and testing. A blogger on the MS blognewchannel gives us his first impressions.

Jan 5, 2005 - New DRM encumbered DVD recorders planned, forcing the old into obsolescence

HP and Phillips announced that they’re working on a new Video Content Protection Scheme (VTCS) which promises to make recordable DVD+R systems useless. They’re latching onto the new, controversial FCC "broadcast flag" to ensure that folks can’t use their DVD recorders to record TV ... that makes sense right? Ohh, and it’s just for DVD+R(/RW), not DVD-R which is arguably winning the format war - fragmenting the DVD+R pool and then breaking half of that can’t be helping. Just like Circuit City’s DivX which died in 1999, this will mean a few people conned into buying something esentially broken at a discounted price before overwhelming consumer disdain will mean they can’t give them away.

Jan 5, 2004 - DVD-R wins the format war! Sell short stock in HP and Phillips

This is the short, executive summary for the story above.

Jan 5, 2005 - Carbon tube TVs could be what we were hoping for from LCD and plasma

C|Net reviews a new tech, carbon nanotubes, which may be poised to take over the market currently held by LCD and plasma screens. Samsung hopes to have a few tv’s out in 2006, but there still some hurdles. It looks like they would be much less expensive to manufacture since the tubes can just be spread evenly over the projection surface, and not painstakingly placed as with LCDs, also scale is not a factor, 100" screens are essentially the same process as making 2" screens.

©2003-2008 - Clint Grimes
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