Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Several people on my MSN contact list have been unknowingly spamming me with messages about the acai berry.
The spam messages look like this:
- Are you finally ready to lose some weight with no effort, well I am living proof that those acai berry pills everyone is talking about actually work, I lost 22 pounds in two weeks and it only cost me five dollars over at www.hourstrong.com
- I have been taking Acai Berry now for over a month and already lost 36 pounds, it is the same stuff that was on the Oprah show, Mikey and Karine lost so much weight too with no diets or excersise. Get it now, its only five bucks a bottle, we are living proof that it works like magic. Get it over at www.hourstrong.com
- You must have seen all those ads and messages lately about acai berry pills that make you lose weight, well I took the plunge spend five bucks to try them and its been a couple weeks and I dropped 19 pounds already, I am living proof they do work, get them now at www.townstrong.com
The senders never see this spam and are completely unaware that they are sending it.
Originally we thought this was a piece of malware that had found it’s way into their PC’s, but numerous anti-malware programs were unable to find any form of infection — and complete reinstallation did not solve the problem either.
Instead, it looks now that this is an issue of massive MSN password hacking. We’re not sure how the spammers are finding people’s MSN passwords, but changing the MSN password seems to fix the problem.
The morons perpetrating this spam appear to be operating out of Community China, so I don’t expect any legal action to be taken against them. Microsoft appears unable or unwilling to block their spam. What we can do is not reward them for spamming by purchasing acai berry products from them.
Senator Democrats are attempting to pass legislation which will give President Obama the authority to shut down the Internet and seize private networks.
On CNET News, Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), stated “As soon as you’re saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it’s going to be a really big issue.”
The bill, misleadingly titled “The Cybersecurity Act of 2009″, allows Obama to declare an emergency based upon no hard criteria. Once he declares this emergency, he can effectively shut down free speech on the Internet.
Jay Rockefeller, the bill’s sponsor, said “I know the threats we face. Our enemies are real. They are sophisticated, they are determined and they will not rest.” Unfortunately, it looks like the threat which Jay is most worried about is free speech from Americans who do not approve of Obama’s plans to impose national socialism upon the citizens of the United States.
In addition, the bill will require government licenses of any individual who seeks employment as a “cybersecurity professional”, effectively giving the Democratic party authority to prevent their political opponents from being involved in protecting either government or private networks from attack.
Late last year it became clear to us that The Tech FAQ was technologically out-of-date and that continuing to invest in the current home-grown CMS was a strategy for long-term failure.
I made a radical decision to begin development on a completely new platform and to roll out a significantly enhanced set of features. Today, I would like to ask you to help test the new platform, tell us what you like and don’t like, suggest new features, and help us harden the platform before it goes live in real production.
The next generation of The Tech-FAQ is online at TopBits.com and includes features such as:
- A forum for tech talk
- Member profiles, with photo and video sharing
- A blog for each Tech-FAQ member
- A glossary of IT terminology
- Games
- An enhanced user interface
Most importantly, this new platform adds something very important to our web site — you. The current Tech-FAQ.com is very good at sharing information from us to you, but that’s only half a conversation. We would like to hear from you and that’s why we’re investing in this major upgrade.
Please, visit TopBits.com and help us build a better platform for all of us.
Windows Vista was, from an objective standpoint, a major flop.
This isn’t a new experience for Microsoft. Windows ME was a terrible disaster which cost Microsoft tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, years of development time, and an incredible amount of public embarrassment. It was unofficially renamed “Windows Mistake Edition.”
When Windows XP was released, it united Windows 2000 and Windows ME and brought relative peace and stability back to the Windows product line.
And then Microsoft tried something new with Vista — and failed. The most common user question regarding Windows Vista has been “How do I uninstall Windows Vista?”
This environment of frustration has create a storm of interest in Windows 7. Microsoft customers want something new and most are anxiously awaiting Windows 7.
Many customers are now trying beta versions of Windows 7 and reporting mostly positive results. But, of course, beta software can be a source of constant frustration.
My friend Kamal recently created a Windows 7 Forum where Microsoft customers can find news and information regarding the new release — and technical assistance making the new release work and work optimally.
If you are testing Windows 7 now, or if you plan to run Windows 7 in the future, give the forum a visit to make your path easier.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently filed an emergency motion with the Newton District Court in Boston on behalf of a Boston College Student who was accused of criminal wrong-doing and had all of his computer and electronic equipment seized.
The warrant was issued based upon the “evidence” that the student was seen using a command line instead of the Windows GUI they teach at Boston College.
You can read the whole sad story at Boston College Campus Police: “Using Prompt Commands” May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity.
I think that anyone considering either attending Boston College or hiring a graduate of Boston College should think about how miserably low academic standards there must be if students in the Computer Science program are considered “hackers” if they have the skills necessary to use a command line.
SourceForge and Freshmeat are both great web sites for finding obscure open source software packages.
Both are very old and authoritative web sites; Freshmeat was started in March of 1998 and SourceForge came along in August of 1999.
SourceForge has a larger database of projects to search, which is a major advantage. SourceForge also has a better search feature, in that you can filter your search results by meta data fields such as Development Status, License, and Programming Language.
Unfortunately, once you find the list of projects which meet your criteria, SourceForge falls down. SourceForge presents very little data about each individial development project and the current SourceForge design makes it very difficult to find the real homepage of the development project. SourceForge is attempting to trap visitors within SourceForge’s limited environment. This makes SourceForge almost useless.
Freshmeat doesn’t have a search feature with the sophistication of the one you will find at SourceForge, but when you find an open source project at Freshmeat, it gives you all the data you need — including the real homepage of the project — with a far superior user interface.
So what am I stuck with? I go to Freshmeat and search for projects. If I find too many or too few results, I go to SourceForge and repeat the search. But then I take those search results back to Freshmeat to find useful project descriptions.
Freshmeat, please improve your search feature; SourceForge, please stop trying to trap visitors within your horrible new user interface.
Evil Science has just published Internet Explorer vs Firefox vs Opera vs Chrome vs Safari, which contains the results of an extensive competitive speed test between five popular web browsers.
The author is an Opera user who discovered that his favorite browser has slipped to the #2 spot for performance.
The author rates each browser in nine different categories. The final totals are:
I’m running Ubuntu Linux here, so Google Chrome isn’t really an option for me. Firefox’s stability and performance issues have become serious enough that I may switch back to Opera.
Have you ever been interested in how a web site like The Tech FAQ gets built and promoted? Now you have an opportunity to find out.
The creator of The Tech FAQ has recently started a forum for webmasters where he shares the knowledge he gained while building and promoting this web site.
If you have an interest in helping to build the World Wide Web, Net Builders will be a great place to learn.
Bootable Linux distributions are quite popular right now. Just by booting from a DVD or other media, they allow you to possess a dedicated security auditing or forensics workstation.
Usually though, I don’t want to reboot just to use a different set of applications. I want all of my applications available to me all of the time.
I normally use Synaptic Package Manager to add each application to my Ubuntu system manually. This is time consuming, but eventually allows me to create a system with a rich set of security tools.
A better approach is to call apt-get directly. This is much quicker than using the Synaptic GUI. Then, all available Ubuntu security tools can be installed with one shell script.
secbox is that shell script. With a single command, secbox installs every Ubuntu security tool supported by apt-get. secbox isn’t sexy, but it is very convenient for me — and for pretty much anyone who uses their Ubuntu machine for security work.
Download secbox Now
The Washington Post printed a story about the Islamist terrorists who recently went on a murder spree in Mumbai India, with an interesting technological twist.
The bad guys used technology heavily:
- They trained using satellite images and video footage of their targets
- They used GPS navigation equipment on the boat they hijacked to get to Mumbai
- They used high-resolution satellite images stored on CD
- They carried Blackberry phones for communications
- They switched SIM cards between cell phones to make it difficult to intercept their communications
- They watched television to monitor police response
- They used satellite phones and VoIP to communicate to their leaders in Pakistan
- Their leaders in Pakistan used email to communicate to the news media
The Indian police, on the other hand, don’t have the financial support that Islamist terrorists benefit from. They lacked basic modern military technologies which would have provided them serious advantages in this conflict:
Technologies like cryptanalysis and nuclear weapons helped us defeat the Nazi’s and Imperial Japan. Similarly, technologies like GPS, night vision gear, and radio communications are proving invaluable against Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The technologies needed to defeat Islamist terrorism may not even exist today. Only the future will tell us what technological advances will be developed in the next few decades to help defend modern civilization against the barbarian hordes.
