infoSecond Blog

There are many way cool projects out there that you can participate in simply by donating cpu cycles when your computer is not busy. You can look for aliens, fold proteins, or study climate change (or disprove climate change if you are a repugnican).

Simply download the client(s) of your choice, install and you are on your way to a nobel peace prize...or maybe you will only discover aliens but that would be cool too.

Jesting aside, this is a worthy effort. Please consider participation.

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)

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In the Linux world there are many debates. I call them "Pete Rose arguments". Baseball fans will spend hours arguing over wether or not Pete whould be in the hall of fame, but after expending enormous energy, they accomplish nothing and they change nothing. Bring the subject up to a baseball fan however, and prepare yourself for a looooong and passionate discussion about the game, philosophy and who knows what else.

In the Linux world, there are equivilents to the Pete Rose arguments. One of them is vi vs. Emacs. Those who like Emacs are wrong becuase vi is better. Another in the more modern days is KDE vs. Gnome.

These desktops are both widely available and they are both better than the GUI that comes with Windows. That being said, Gnome is geared for efficiency and focus, its easy to figure out and very "intuitive" (I quote that term because it is very relative and in general hate using the word in this context) KDE is for experience; eye candy, widgets, gadgets, and fun.

The bottom line is....you can use both but that can be distracting. So pick one based on comfort and taste. In both cases you win, each is top shelf. Download Ubuntu and Kubuntu and try them both for awhile.

In the meantime, KDE 3.5 just came out and this article points to information about why it is so cool.

KDE 3.5 A visual guide to new features

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Still not convinced the patent system in our country needs an overhaul? Check out these examples:

Archive - Totally Absurd Inventions & Patents, America's Goofiest Patents

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Here is a good tutorial on the subject that includes links to the software you will need. Why you ask? Archiving, maximizing storage space, making bittorrent file....er ere er I mean compressing home movies...

DVD to CD / 4GB > 1.4GB > 700MB

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It sounds boring at first but if you are even the least bit curious about all those setting in the cmos configuration tool of your system, this guide will provide some answers.

For those in the forensics profession, this guide may provide invaluable explainations.

The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide

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Every year someones askes "Why do the Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving" but I could never answer the question. Each time I pledge to look it up but then under the weight of all that food I forget.

This year i ran across this story accidently, and now i can finally answer the question. Too bad the article doesn't explain why the Cowboys always play too. Sigh. one can't know everything....

History: The First Thanksgiving - Pro Football Hall of Fame

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Are you sure you get the best results from the engine you return to each time you need some data quick? This site allows you to perform a blind test, by asking you to perform a search and then the results are displayed without formating or noticable marks. You then indicate which result set you like best, and you can find out if it is your typical favorite.

The Search Engine Experiment | SEO Experiments | SEO Tools | WebmasterBrain

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There are many long standing souces or music and streaming content. But the value add of this website is that you provide an example or two of bands you like, and they will construct a radio station that matches your tastes. The service is free, and it works well.

You will need to register for a login after a few songs, but you can sample how it works before doing so.

Discover Music - Pandora

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Pay attention to the way brick and morter stores do business at the point of sale terminal (cash register). Many of them are simply contacting a secured website. How long before retail locations are nothing but touch and feel front ends to an amazon page?

I do not use a local email client for security reasons. I prefer a webbased service that works like a local client; http://fusemail.com, it works well and is reasonably priced for the service. Other expamples include the many AJAX based projects from Google.

Check out this example from Microsoft, I think it is a simple foreshadowing of what is to come in the next version of MS Office.

Windows Live

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If you have opinions about music downloading or follow the situation, you know its easy to hear the "pro" side of the story. Is is important to also hear comments made directly from those who believe DRM is necessary and is in fact providing a service in the grand scheme of things. I think you will find that most of the time the arguments are reasonable, from their perspective, and do have merit.

However here is my weigh-in on the whole thing...

I have always felt the RIAA stands for, as its name implies, the "Recording Industry" and this does not necessarily mean they are out for the best interests of the artists. There are many ways in which the worst enemy of an artist is his own industry. My core issue is that artists must be able to utlilize other avenues of distribution and marketing than those that exist from the collusion of record labels, publishers, distributers and so forth. Naturally the RIAA would not have an interest in allowing alternative means to take hold.

Why would the "Recording Industry" ever want artists to bypass them? I don't think they would say this is their concern, because as long as the RIAA has its systems in place, the alternatives really don't stand a chance at ever being effective and therefore they are not a threat. At best, sites such as garageband.com, myspace.com and mp3tunes.com are only a minor nuisance to the recording industry.

That is unless file sharing online breaks down that system. I think this is the real threat as there is no real proof that file sharing has actually hurt CD sales. I still believe that the selling of used cds is far worse to the RIAA. I can buy a disc on amazon for around $6.00 and have it shipped to my door. It is legal, I don't have to spend more than equal value in time and gas hunting around for the CD or dealing with any virus ridden mess online, and I can rip it and tag it exactly how I like.

File sharing is a waste of effort by comparison.

It really isn't that hard to compete with free, and the RIAA is perfectly aware of this. The issue is really not file sharing, it is about making sure the established channel of commerce remains intact.....and I can't balme them for defending these systems, that is what they are supposed to do.

Current DRM technologies are not the right way to defend IP, and future DRM technologies are not likely to be any better. The only ethical way is to simply offer a better product and let the market place agree. If this seams idealistic and not reasonable, how is letting large companies track your every move any more justifyable?

When I purchase a recording, I want to know specifically, and in large bold print, wether or not it is the expressed wishes of the artist, that spyware be installed to track how I listen. On the whole, artists would not agree to such a thing without being leveraged into it....or would they?

Malbela: RIAA President to stop downloading, save the empire

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There are Wifi finders that can be purchased to a few bucks but they only give you a blinking light when they find a network. This one includes an LCD readout that provides information about SSID, WEP key requirements and signal strength. One you have found a hotspot, plug this finder into the USB port of your laptop and it funstions as the Wifi card.

I do not know if it supports monitor mode or if it works under Linux, when I get some allowance money I will order one and find out. At roughly $75 its a pretty cool deal.

LIVEdigitally � ZyXEL AG225H review

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To lighten the load a bit from the Sony DRM thing, the link below points to a slashdot reference of an article about how IT personnel dress. Read the discussion (and od course the article) if you need a few minutes diversion.

My own take: I have to wear a tie, the owner of the company requires it. I don't mind but don't tell me that it isn't a big deal. Recently the NBA had to adopt a dress code, and many of the players shrugged their shoulders and regergitated that very sentiment.

IT IS A BIG DEAL !! Whenever a successful business person who doesn't have 5 minutes to give you takes time to construct a dress code, doesn't that indicate the importance of the situation? I don't care that much about how I dress but they certainly do. In fact they are passionate about it... and I would like to know why.

Donald Trump says "I will fire anybody who wears shoes they cannot polish" .... Why the F#ck is a billionaire even thinking about crap like that !?!

So I am on a bit of a quest. One of these days, sooner or later, and some how some way....I will get an intelligent answer to my quandry about how on God's sacred earth the way a person dresses says one thing about the quality of their character, work ethic, or value as a human being. If large gold medalions represent "gantsa" and blues jeans represent "working class" (what is wrong with that? ) why can't shirt and tie represent the scum of the Enron scandal?

I will stop my rant there, and I will also admit that "I just don't get it." In the meanwhile I dress as I am asked and wear the uniform of 'success', while I remain humbled by the many selfless giving people I have met that gracefuly sacrifice for total strangers and have never worn business attire in their life. I hope I can someday meet their standards.

Slashdot | IT Workers Worst Dressed Employees

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There have been many stories about this topic and this one is the best I have run across. It is written by one of the best authors in the realm of Information Security out there; Bruce Schnier. It is a must read if you are interested in the topics of DRM, Malware, Security, etc.

But I am wondering something. The argument about Linux being more secure is often refuted by those who remind us about the math behind market share. When 97 percent of the desktop users are running Windows, of coarse they will be attacked the most. But what if even 50 percent of the desktops in this world were running a combination of Linux, Mac, BSD and so on.....would there be problems like this?

I suppose you first have to accept this as being a problem. Read the article and please, form an opinion.

Wired News: Real Story of the Rogue Rootkit

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This book came up in a conversation today, and it reminded me that this item has been on my "to read" list for quite some time. Many questions arise about what is the "hacker culture".

Why on earth would anyone volunteer to spend hours upon hours doing something even if there was little or no money to be made?

Because..."The world is full of interesting problems waiting to be solved" and for some, being intrigued is entertainment.

Here is a site that provides the text to this story, free as in speech and as in beer.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

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In the 06:35 PM ET, 11/ 8/2005 posting in the Brian Krebs blog on the Washington times website, Brian tells us that California is suing Sony over its DRM technology.

Another interesting angle to this story is that now a large company with vast resources is actually investing RnD into creating Windows Exploits, and once they are dissected, malware authors are using the findings in their trojans.

So when MS explains that the only way to get truly high quality software is to develop it in a proprietary model, are they also now referring to malware? Are trojan horses created by commercial enterprises better than the open source variety?

In case you wanted to stay away from the Sony malware, many people are publishing lists of CDs to avoid buying.

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DRM Stands for "Digital Rights Management" and it is a framework for protecting copyrighted material. A rootkit is software that installs itself in an extremely intrusive manner, to the point that it can send identifyable information about you, may expose your machine to access through backdoors, and is impossible or extremely difficult to remove from your system.

I used to be a fan of Sony products. The beginning of my change of heart was when I realize they would not stop trying to shove the "memory stick" down my throat. Nobody else uses this memory format, so it is inconvenient and unusable. Memory stick has built in architecture for DRM, which Sony is a big fan of. In my view, DRM technology is a also a detriment to the usability of the Internet and its information.

Even if you do not empathize with the "information should be free" camp. You may still find this quote interesting: (taken from the article in the link below)

"A Regmon trace of the ActiveX control’s activity when you press the submit button on the Web page reveals that the encrypted data is actually a signature that the control derives from the hardware configuration of your computer:"

Which means information about YOU is being sent back to Sony without your awareness. If you are not sure why a signature of your hardware is a big deal, it can be combined on the back end with other instances of that same signature to pin down individual computer usage. Sooner or later you will likely give up enough personal information to one of those sources to make you completely trackable.

OK, if that statement didn't have an impact, check out this one:

"Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR[RootKit Revealer] scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files."

This is not new problem, as most Internet controversies aren't. many have heard the classic argument about police searches: "Constitutional or not, if I have nothing to hide I will have no problem letting them search the trunk of my car at any time and any place. If it helps curtail crime I am all for it." and the extention to this concept is "If you have a problem with the search, what are you hiding? You must be a criminal"

Most people double back on the idea that protecting your privacy rights necessarily implicates you as an evildoer. So the problem we are seeing with DRM is not novel or original.

So here is my question: If you will not give up your rights to the government or law enforcement, why is it OK to do so for large corporations?

That is why this issue is not about piracy. Its about the companies that are fighting so hard for their right to be above the constitution, which by the way they are as the constitution only applies to government authority. Are you OK with this? Think it over after reading this article:


November 9th entry of the sysinternals blog

and this is the more technical information:
http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

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HijackThis is an freeware advanced malware scanner. It is meant to be used in conjunction with other anti-spyware applications. Its purpose is to help you track down the changes made by a malware infection, including registry values and running processes.

If you want to see what its like to perform the investigation process, this is a great tool. Below I have provided a link to a tutorial on its use. There are also comprehensive forums with a helpful and knowledgable community of malware trackers, who help interpret log files and discuss other findings.

One thing I must stress is that tools like this do not promise to show every problem nor is everything they show necessarily part of the infection. There isn't yet any such thing as a magic one-click "here is your spyware" tool out there, and if there was I would not trust it. It takes a lot of effort and tenacity to fully understand any single infection let alone to become an experienced expert. But these resources can be used to at least get an idea of what is involved and how these things work.

Malware Help-HijackThis Tutorial-Analyze HijackThis log-Interpret HijackThis entries

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Since my big day is coming soon, I thought I would try another random blog search activity as I did a few days ago. Its an occasional unscientific study that takes under 5 minutes but I think it often reveals a rather honest and candid sampling of what people are up to.

I typed in the word marriage, and I am disturbed to report not one of the first 50 or so hits included anything fun, positive, jovial, or even satisfying. Here they are...

"'Marriage is not safe from activist courts until a US Constitutional Amendment is ratified. ... The Federal Marriage Amendment is back and the Right wants it on the fast track. They've aptly renamed it The Marriage Protection Amendment, ..."

"The usual bad destination claimed to await us after gay marriage is polygamy. But one occasionally hears that gay marriage will also bring incestuous marriages, bestial marriages, etc. Here I will consider only the polygamy variant of ..."

"The most common argument of all against gay marriage is the procreation argument. ... Marriage is for procreation, and procreation should occur within marriage. Procreation is the one important attribute of marriage that supplies the ..."

"It is not rational to simultaneously expect marriage to mean something, ... Why fight for the gay right to be married when marriage is increasingly meaningless? ... It's as if the whole world has been sprinkled with magic pixie marriage ..."

"The physical intimacy of marriage and other sexual relationships creates a fair number of situations in which each partner has a decided emotional and/or physical stake in what's going on with the other, and in which it could be argued ..."

"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. ... Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering ..."

mmmm. OK. Well, in spite of these warnings I think I'll go through with it tomorrow anyway.

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This has come up more than once as people giggle when I say "eeth-ear-eel" or something close. It never occured to me to pronounce it as "ether-real". So I googled it and as it turns out there is an entry in the FAQ that dispells the mystery. There is also a dictionary definition of the word that includes an audio example.

So :-P~~~~~~~~~

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When people tell me they are a fan of reality TV I get a little uptight. Those shows are just highly edited pieces that are far from reality. They only show the worst of humanity; backstabbiing, rumor spreading gossip hounds that think betrayal and treating people like crap is ok as long as it is just part of a game.

The usual response is that I am accused of "thinking too much".

So I try the "They are taking jobs from legit actors" argument. Which doesn't draw anything but flies.

So I thought that on occasion I would take a random word and try a blog search to get a better sampling of reality entertainment. For the first enstallment, I chose an unimaginive but effective curse word. Here are a few samples:

"I'm gonna freeze my shit [shit = sperm] and get a vasectomy. To be safe, I'll save it in different parts of the country. Then, when I want kids, I'll use it." W.'s new nominee is reigniting pro-life/pro-choice debates. ..."

"It was a cheesy Star Wars rip-off with recycled special effects, and if you're looking to remake something that wasn't that great you have to change shit around. ... behind to the Cylons because shit, we're all going to die otherwise. ..."

"I hate everything."

"of chewed wires, shit, fur, shit, smelly rooms, shit, annoying noises all night and did I mention shit I went online to look for one of my favourite websites of all time. The Ham(p)ster Dance Annoying as hell but cute, fun and in its ..."

"How do I know that my vaccine is not made out of chicken shit? So there we have it. Another chapter added to the long book of Our Culture Of Fear. To me, death is imminent. Period. It doesn't matter how it comes. When your time is up. ..."

"Shit is a powerful word. Just think of all the concepts and ideas you can communicate with it. Shit may just be the most powerful word in the English language. Consider: You can be shit faced, be shit out of luck, or have shit for ...

"Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, on why the Muslim scriptures shouldn’t be flushed down the toilet:. Disrespect for the Holy Quran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States. ..."

"Mice don't live long because they got a short gustatory and besides that they have to eat saccharine, butter, tobacco and shit like that." Hoss: "But...?" Feelgood: "What I ain't yet figured out is, When an elephant gets a cold, ..."

"I am sick of stupid girls constantly talking shit about me to people very loudly about 20 feet away from me and thinking that it will actually affect me. ... This same girl also talked useless random shit about me at camp, too. ..."

"Life’s too short to put up with unnecessary shit, although a poor job market and one’s desire for a steady income may make it necessary to come to a temporary compromise on the level of unnecessary shit worth putting up with. ..."

"And the worse thing is that it's a stupid humanities course, so the grade is completely dependant on the professor's attitude toward you. Might as well quit college and go work as a male prostitute!!! :'-( Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Try it for yourself. Pick a random word and search the blogs for it, see what you get.

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