very busy at work, so nothing new for a couple of days, (yes I do this at work).Maybe I'll post about it. Have some ideas for posts though. Terrible thing how work interferes with blogging.

About email worms

I was on a message board the other day and someone had gotten an email from someone they knew, but it turned out the email was spoofed, generated by a email worm, while he opened the email, he did not open the attachment, because the person who sent it usually writes a bit more that "check this out". So he asked what is a worm, how does it work, and what can you do to prevent this. Being that I have some knowledge on the subject, I posted a response that I thought may be helpful to the novice, and I thought I should post it here also:


There is really no "easy explanation" as to how an email worm works, but I hope this helps. The worm is a program, just like your internet explorer, MSword, Excel, Resident Evil or solitaire, once the program executes it can pretty much do anything to your PC, read, write, delete, execute other programs. If you use MS Outlook, your address book is stored in a folder and its always in the same place on any PC, so the worm knows where to look and can read it. Furthermore each address entry has a specific format so the worm can sift though the file and knows what is an address and what is not. The same goes for ICQ, and your browser cache. Knowing this, the worm can now execute your email program and send a replica of itself to all the addresses it found.

As for the second part, again there is no easy answer, one way you can possible verify whether an email is actually from the person is to look at the email header, and verify that the mail server is the same as the persons email account, if you get an email from JoeBlow@hawaii.rr.com and the header says the email server was xtreme.uk.net and not the Hawaii road runner mail server then it may be falsely generated. Of course no one does this on a regular basis, the cold truth is there is no easy way to verify the sender is legit or from an infected PC. You can usually safely open any email you get, although there are some sophisticated worms that can execute when opened, the vast majority need you to open the attachment to execute, you need to have anti-virus with an email checker to scan the attachment.



Suggestions on prevention: spend $30 for anti virus software and update it on a regular basis. Get the most current updates of Outlook and Explorer. There is a setting you can turn on that will check if you have the most current version. Better yet don't use MS outlook at all, hackers know it's the most popular email program and write their virus specifically for outlook. That preview window in outlook is the same as opening it and as stated above there are some rare, smarter worms out there. Use an internet email like yahoo, hotmail, or pay $5 a month to subscribe to a messaging service like NetAddress, your address book resides on their server, and they always have the latest virus preventions. Or you can buy/download an email program that has public-key cryptography, like MailSafe or PGP which allows you to sign an email with an electronic signature that guarantees the sender is who it say its from. This also has the advantage of having the address book in a format that the virus may not be able to read. (emphasis on may not). Delete your cookies and temporary internet files and delete your history, on a regular basis, you may have to do more typing but you won't leave a trail of addresses that can be easily found.


Also very important: another way of being infected is if you have roadrunner or DSL. You MUST, repeat MUST, get a firewall installed or you will in all likelihood get infected from there.

Bold and Audacious..... exploitation

So the 2004 Republican National Convention will be held in New York City in September. Normally conventions are held earlier, like July/August. Tearful & solemn tributes up the yin yang predicted

"Emphasis" theirs

via Tom Tomorrow

From this it seems that the "Saddam has WMD's and would in fact use them against our troops" screed was, well, a lie.

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.

"We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."

Officials now say they may not find hundreds of tons of mustard and nerve agents and maybe not thousands of liters of anthrax and other toxins. But U.S. forces will find some, they say. On Thursday, President Bush raised the possibility for the first time that any such Iraqi weapons were destroyed before or during the war.

"just a matter of emphasis"...yeah right.
this article calls a spade a spade. I heard this quote from Penn Gillette, from Penn & Teller, on their Showtime show Bulls**t it's a good show, debunking such things as the environmental wacko movement, psychics, feng Shui, bottled water, and the like, but here's the money line:

"No ends justifies the means, of lying"

That's the way love goes...

Federal terrorism charges were filed yesterday against a 20-year-old California woman who allegedly threatened to kill the passengers and crew of a cruise ship sailing to Hilo last week, said U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo.
Kelley Marie Ferguson of Laguna Hills was charged with two counts of threatening acts of terrorism, Kubo said. Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. Probation is not allowed under the statute, meaning Ferguson would be required to spend some time in prison, if convicted.

snip...

"The defendant said that she never wanted to go on the cruise with her family and that she wrote these notes hoping it would shortern her time on the cruise, thereby allowing her to rejoin her boyfriend in Orange County, California,"

Why oh why do people do these kinds of stupid things?

Time for a new PC

So its time to buy a new PC, my current one is (get ready to say wow that's old), a 200Mhz pentium, purchased circa 1995 (say it now). Buying a new one is not the problem. The problem is offloading the data from the old girl. The CD-burner died about six months ago, and I have no zip drive or tape backup. I figure I have about 6 gigs of data that I want to keep. What I may try to do is to remove the dirve from the old one and try to hook it up to the new one, I have no problem opening the case and puttering with it. Maybe I can buy/get some USB/Firewire transfer utility. I just hope the old girl can last a few more weeks.

misc

I'm not all that thrilled with this template, but if I do change it I will have to copy the customizations I've applied or lose them.

using lowercase

Just read something by Eugene Volkoh about using only lower case in posts and emails and such, which is something I tend to do primarily because its easier to type that way, i.e. I'm a lazy typist, but I think he's right. So I will attempt to capitalize as per standard english. However, my spelling will continue to be a bit poor. But at least my grammar is decent, well except for run-on sentences, over parenthesizing, and other assorted (but not too egregious) offenses.

on the Sen. Rick Santorum thing

actually he was quoted out of context, but only slightly, santorum appears to be making a slippery slope argument (that goes way overboard) as to the decline of "family values". which is incorrect in this case. incest, adultery, yes they can destroy/destablize a family unit, but if its between consenting adults well, i'm not so sure, i fail to see how two male adults (or two female adults for that matter) having sex in a monogomous relationship can destroy/destabilize someone else's family unit or even their own family unit. i have no problem with someone believing or saying that what i do is immoral, perverted, a sin, or whatever because the bible said so. but when you beleive or say that i should be thrown in jail because the bible said so, i have a problem with that. seperation of church and state
also, in the literal sense, a woman giving a man a BJ or a man munching some carpet is also sodomy. definition of words change, 50 years ago the word "party" was only a noun and not a verb the definition a marriage can also change.
his only valid argument is that this issue should be a states rights case, not a federal one, but that too is also debatable. The argument being that the texas law violates the constitution because two men engaging in consentual sodomy is illegal yet man/woman sodomy is not.

i guess the issue here is how far can the courts go to regulate the behaviours of consenting adults.

i also got involved in some off topic comments at philly.com



The reason libs have their panties in a bunch over this is not because of the argument he was making at the time but that his words revealed something about his character that libs hate. Namely the conservative-christan-homophobe-hypocrite. its similar to Sen. Lott, the context in which he spoke (a few kind words to Sen Thurman in his b-day) yet his words revealed him to be, as seen by libs, conservative-racist-bigot

noticed i actually got some hits other that me (hooray!). i am thinking that this blog will probably be more personal than a news/current events type blog. I will use this to write out my thoughts on subjects and throw my opinion out but it won’t be the pseudo-journalism type, more like editorials by me. And I may also write some personal stuff. I used to like to write at one time, even kept a hand written journal. (it got stolen when someone broke into my car and took my backpack, I always wondered if the thief read it), but I will post links to other news-type blogs that I find and try to expand my link list.

still trying to decide if this is going to be a personal blog or a news blog

so this weekend it seems the looting of the national library and the surrender of a top scientist, whats the deal with the dek of cards thing? thats a bit much. But are we so surprised at the looting? not me. should the US helped secure the museum? Yes, but the military claims it's not in their job description (how very american government employee of you). could they have helped? yes. send a tank squad. Here's a question: If the US forces are not trained to be peace keepers whose fault is that? traditionally the UN is the role of peace keeper, but since we chose not to listen should we not have covered this contigent? The training recieved included urban warfare right? learnt from our past involvements. So why, after taking control of a city with, what? 2 million people, we were NOT going to have to keep the peace? seems someone missed something here.

just do it

everyone seems to be fawning over the troops these days. our brave and valiant young sons, daughters, friends and neighbors fighting the evil scourge, heroes, every last one of them. Well, yes and no. yes they are performing what is probably the most distasteful yet necessary task, they are the providing the blanket of freedom with which myself and every american sleeps. yes i am grateful for the fact that i am able to write this because our military has provided for the common defense. but i can"t bring myself to throw the kind of adulation others do. the reason is that these people are doing their jobs, they are doing what they are trained to do. i"ve never heard anyone saying "thank god for our boys at ratheon for the tomohawk missle". they all signed up to do this, for whatever reason, i would contend that if you queried the military personnel who are at the end of the chain, the privates, airmen and seamen, the e-1, e-2"s, they are absolutely hating life right now. I have far more adulation for our police who also put their lives at risk on a daily basis and they do not have automatic weapons, or bunker busting, precision guided missles.

Was reading Matt Yglesias and this from calpundit and the comments in Eschaton. I've some thoughts on this, need to gather them..

futzing around with the template... trying to add links and counters

So just about everyone of Asain descent on the web is all wet and hard over the movie Better Luck Tomorrow. Yes it's a good thing for all the reasons everyone says, breaking the on-screen stereo-types and all that, being Sansei (third generation Japanese-American) myself . One of the downsides of living in Hawaii (yes there are some) is that it probably won't be shown here till May. Guess I'll have to wait, or I could obtain a copy, but of course that would be wrong [lifts pinkie to corner of mouth] bwahahahaha.

logic excercise

via Matt Yglesias:
Suppose the country is forced to choose between two courses of action, A and B. A is guaranteed to result in situation A* which is of quality 2. B has a 90 percent chance of resulting in situation B* which is of quality 10, but has a 10 percent chance of resulting in situation B$ which is of quality -100. A-advocates will point out that their favored course of action has a higher expected return. B-advocates will say that the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence supports the conclusion that B will have better results. So what happens if the B-advocates win? Well, we adopt policy B and probably move to situation B*. At this point the A-advocates become discredited in the eyes of the media and the sheep-like public who dismiss them as a band of chicken littles. Then the situation iterates and we choose B again. Same result. And again, and again, etc. until soon enough we wind up in B$ where all our gains have been wiped out and then some.

quote...

here's a quote from Chris Rock that I thought was hilarious:
You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named 'Bush', 'Dick', and 'Colin'. Need I say more?

sticker shock

So after taking my car in to the insurance company. I was amazed to see that the cost of repainting a scuffed bumper is, taa daa $413.01. I just took the money. (hey my car is nine years old)

more warblog

So it seems that we are on the verge of the final wargasm, the taking of Baghdad. And since it''s pretty much a given that we will take it, the only question being how hard a fight it will be. What I''m wondering is what happens next? Why is the Bush administration telling the UN that they are not needed in the nation building? Maybe they feel that since we did all the work we should get the rewards? And what is up with this. As I previously posited, Saddam is not going to be captured, he is already gone. So what do we do if he is in say Syria? Just leave him there? He is not just going to go away.First it was get the evildoers, then get Osama, then the axis of evil, then get Taliban, then get Saddam. Can ayone say misson creep?

Still learning about this bloggin thing trying to do stuff like add a site meter, create comments, blogroll etc.. at least I already know HTML so that helps its just that reading raw HTML code is kind of a pain