Monday, February 23, 2004

I've been living as a limited user under Windows for the past few months. Its not working out. There are so many things that I want to do that are just not possible. And I know what I am doing, so can I risk running as Administrator? The System Administrator in me says "No Way", but it would make things so much easier and faster. No wonder its an easy decision for the average joe user. Run as an admin. Who wants to deal with the problems of running as a normal user.

Friday, February 20, 2004

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column

One area of research is called "Program State Code Protection,� or PSCP, which means changing the code AS IT RUNS to make it harder for a cracker to know what is actually happening. Dotfuscator and DashO, for example, right now change all variable names to the same name. But what if all variable names were changed not just to the same name, but were changed continuously to a wide variety of names? The first technique -� making all the variable names the same -� is like building a jigsaw puzzle entirely of white pieces. But PSCP is like making a jigsaw puzzle of all white pieces that spontaneously and continuously appear to change size and shape.
IP Address
Cells can grow on silicon

This is freaking scary! Borgs anyone?

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

ebooks

Me and a friend were trying to purchase an ebook the other day. We found we could download an ebook version from amazon. It was much cheaper, and quicker to buy the ebook. So we decided, why not? She bought the book while we were in our computer science lab. Half the lab runs machines running a variant of Debian Linux, and the other half were Sun Solaris machines. Clicking on the download link threw us a small file, with an etd extenstion. Having not seen anything like that before, I assumed it was a pointer to a real file. I had her cat the .etd file. As I had thought, it was an XML file. However no matter what we did we could'nt get to the actual file. Opening the .etd file in acrobat reader for Linux did nothing. Using the link from xml file directly in a browser yielded nothing. At this point my friend was getting extremely frustrated. Why didn't they tell us that we would need Adobe Reader for Windows. Why didn't they tell us that the file was DRM protected?

I opened up my laptop (windowsxp), hooked up to the wireless network, and sure enough adobe reader launched and it wanted me to activate DRM on the machine. Which I did? It was frustrating though, and finally after switching of the firewall (dont know why I had to do that, but it worked), getting DRM activated, I finally downloaded and saved the file. At about this time, my friend was fuming. I can tell you I got snapped at almost through out the day after that. And we both are not going to buy ebooks ever again. The experience was so thoroughly bad. And then she found that she couldn't even print the pdf. Thankfully, when I told her that, I was at my home, and she was at hers, and we were talking over the phone!!!

Circles

The information technology industry seems to be moving in circles. Most of the new technologies that seem to be coming up, is actually old technology wrapped up in new methodologies. What does that mean? Improvements in Microsoft Office are one example. Its the same office suite, only this time the underlying architecture has changed to better support XML.

Everybody seems to be trying to get the internet to have a revenue stream similar to that of television and radio. Only problem is the internet is not the same medium. The television was a one way road. They made media you watched it. Thats not the case any more with the internet. The whole point is that it is not a one way street. It is a two way street, with the user having the power. People dont seem to understand that, and they dont want it either. Its frustrating when the normal average joe user when given a chance, want to give thier power to others. Who are only too willing to grab it. Its a circle. The developers gave power to the user. From what I can understand Tim Berners Lee wanted to create a two way web. The web was never supposed to be only a viewing platform. But, the people dont want it. And they turn around 360 degrees and give the power back to the conglomerates such as the MPAA and RIAA. Sucks!

I am taking a course about contemporary issues. In the class, we were having a discussion about whether the internet should be regulated. And the general consensus was that the web should be regulated. Whatever happened to "Information wants to be free"? And I realized another thing. I cant put the frustration I have into words. I'll have to keep re-writing this post until I get it right.

Thursday, February 12, 2004

IM game spreads virulent ad-delivery software

Users have got to learn to not install crap software. You've got to be sure you know what it is you are installing.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

oh well... dont have time to mess around any further.

Sunday, February 01, 2004

A visit from the FBI

What surprised me, however, were how often Trojans are used to mess with the heads of the poor unsuspecting suckers who own the zombie machines. A favorite trick is to surreptitiously turn on the Webcam of an owned computer in order to watch the dupe at work, or watch what he's typing on screen. This part isn't surprising. But Dave had countless screenshots, captured from impounded machines or acquired online from hacker hangouts, where the script kiddie, after watching for a while, just can't help himself any longer, and starts to insult or mock or screw with the duped owner.

How can the above not be fun for a 13-16 year old?!?

In one, a hacker sent a WinPopup message to a fellow: "Hey, put your shirt back on! And why are you using a computer when there's a girl on your bed!" Sure enough, the camera had captured a guy using his computer, sans shirt, and in the background you could clearly see a young woman stretched out on a bed.

In another, a man was working a crossword puzzle online when the hacker helpfully suggested a word for 14 Down (I think it was "careless"), again using WinPopup. In a third, a screenshot captured the utterly shocked expression on a man's face - mouth agape, eyes open wide in amazement - when his computer began insulting him using, you guessed it, WinPopup.


heh heh.... jeez... how can the above not be fun for a person of any age?!?

This is bad enough and it's also cruelly funny, but the scary part came in when Dave started talking about the other group behind the explosion of viruses and Trojans: Eastern European hackers, backed by organized crime, such as the Russian mafia. In other words, the professionals.

ok... not fun!
Worms hit home

My older brother is a long-haul trucker who carries a laptop with him. He bought a new top-tier machine recently, and upon returning home from work decided to plug it into the Internet. "Run Windows Update right away!" I cried, and he did. Yet somehow before the process was even completed he was already infected with the latest worm at the time, Welchia, and his machine started to reboot. I tried to explain to him over the phone how this can happen, but in his mind it made no sense at all. He had anti-virus software installed, and it was a brand new computer. He simply plugged it into his broadband connection, turned the machine on and look what happened. Well, let's step out of our shoes as security professionals for a moment and imagine yourself to be the average user -- this is the current state of computer security for a typical user's Microsoft (R) Windows (TM) experience.

Its hard to look from that perspective. I've been a system administrator for so long....

Linux v2.6 scales the enterprise

Linux 2.6 Review

A primary focus of the v2.6 kernel is large server architectures. Support for up to 64GB RAM in paged mode, the ability to address file systems larger than 2TB, and support for 64 CPUs in x86-based SMP systems brings this kernel and Linux into the more rarified air of truly mission-critical systems. The included support for NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) systems; a next-generation SMP architecture; and PAE (Physical Address Extensions), providing support for up to 64GB of RAM on 32-bit systems, is also new.

Mozilla and hypocrisy

Right, but what about the experiences that Mozilla chooses to default for users like switching to  Yahoo and making that the default upon ...