Digital Choke Daynotes |
What's a Daynote?"Daynotes" are daily (usually) journal entries of interesting happening and discussions. They are not 'blogs', which are often just a collection of links to other information (although we do include links occasionally). Daynotes are much more interesting (we hope). These "Digital Choke Daynotes" were inspired by the collection of daily journals of the "Daynotes Gang" (see sites at .com, .org, .net), a collection of daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals. If you have comments, send us an email. A bit more about me is here. You might also enjoy our little story about the death of the 'net. |
Reports |
The Internet Storm Center's daily handler report today mentioned some updated Microsoft links about XP-SP2. And this comment:
Expecting SP 2 to fix everthing, leaving Win XP to be totally free from vulnerabilities will be a bit far-fetched. There is no perfect software.
Proper usage and configuration of the system also play a critical role. There is no point installing a good firewall when you configure it to allow everything to go through, or run an anti-virus scanner but yet do not bother to to update the virus definition. Worst still if you always click on executables without second thoughts whether they are trusted or free from malcodes.
I think that the majority of the SP2 changes are aimed towards the "Aunt Minnie" users. These are the people who got a computer to wander around the Internet, send email, balance the checkbook, and do work at home (word processing, a spreadsheet). Their kids are using instant messaging, playing games, and downloading music.
These people only know about proper security through 10 second sound bites on TV news, if anything. They don't know that they are supposed to install updates. They think that the anti-virus that came with their computer is good enough, and don't think of updating it. They blithely open up attachments in email. They click on links on web pages offering screen savers or weather bugs or news alerts or computer checkups, not knowing that spyware/adware (scumware) is often the result. They just want to use their computer.
There are people that just put gas in their car, perhaps an oil change now and again, and new tires when needed. They don't do extensive tuneups, inspect their spark plugs weekly and replace them with platinum plugs, change to high-performance brake pads, install lift kits, etc. They just get in the car and drive. But if they don't tweak their car, is it the fault of the car manufacturers for not doing that for them?
Although the SP2 patch is not perfect (and neither is Linux; I see a half-dozen alerts a day about security holes in Linux programs), I believe it will help the majority of the "Aunt Minnies" protect their computers from the computer bad guys. It will alert them that their anti-virus is out of date, and tell them in mostly plain language why they should be concerned. It will stop them (initially) from opening an executable attachment. It will alert them when they are about to do something that might be dangerous to their computer. The more Aunt Minnies that install the update, the better for the rest of us.
Sure, it is not perfect. And there will be ways to get around the protections. A light shows on my car's instrument panel when I don't put on a seatbelt. My tires will squeal when I take a turn too fast. My engine will stop if I don't fill up the gas tank. I can ignore those warning signs at my (and others) peril. But at least the warning signs are there. I can decide whether to pay attention to them.
XP SP2 should be installed on all computers. (And I'll say that three times.) There might be some problems, so you deal with them. But it should be installed.
My car air bag might deploy by mistake, and it might not be effective in all instances. But I am glad that the air bag is there, waiting to help protect me.
The usual Sunday around here. Church meetings, then dinner with the kids and grandkids (BBQ hamburgers, potato salad, pasta salad, fruit salad, corn on the cob), a trip to the neighborhood park, then a bath for the grandkids (they like the big tub), new pajamas (Pam found some great bargains at Kohl's), then brownies with ice cream and chocolate sauce while watching "Extreme Makeover".
A good day.
Here in the States, it is Labor Day. A celebration of the working man (and women). So it is a holiday for most. Which means that I stayed home from work today.
Pam had to go in to the office for a few hours. I started out with breakfast (Svenhard's Raisin Horns) and a glass of milk on the back porch with the morning paper. It was pleasant out there in the morning, although it did get up to 100F today (with 102F forecast for tomorrow).
After breakfast, a bit of cleaning up was in order. Swept the kitchen floor, vacuumed downstairs, dusted the window shutters and some shelves downstairs. But mostly relaxed, surfing the 'net, reading "Assured Response" (Joe Webber; post-9/11 terrorist fiction, but this time the terrorists went a bit too far, so there was quite a bit of payback. Fairly good book; but ended with a few things unresolved, so there will be another one.)
Pam got home about 1pm, so we went out to "Jersey Mike's" (deli sandwiches, pretty good), then decided it was going to be too hot to do anything else, so we went back home). More relaxing, with a nice dinner (meat loaf, homemade low-fat muffins, red potatoes). Pam watched one of her favorite movies ("While You Were Sleeping").
Not much happening in the security field. But be careful out there.
In our 'snail mail' mailbox, we find two to five credit card offers each day. Today was an average day; we got three. They get a bit tiresome, since many are disguised like they might be something we want to open. They go into the shredder, of course, but they are bothersome. We have a locked mailbox (one of those cluster boxes you see in new subdivisions), so we don't worry about mail theft. But many of them come with pre-approved checks, which I think are quite dangerous. It would be quite easy for someone else to use one of those checks fraudulently. So a locked mailbox reduces the risk for me, along with shredding them before tossing them in the trash.
But we do get tired of seeing them. A Google search found the toll-free phone number that is run by the credit reporting companies. It is 1-888-567-8688 (probably just a U.S. number). It is semi-automated; you enter your phone number, it tells you the house number associated with that phone number, and if that's correct, a few more button-pressing and you are done.
In my case, the house number didn't match my phone number, so I had to speak my name, address, and social security number. (Yeah, I know about protecting my SS#, but this was valid; I made sure of it.) The result will be, after about a month, no more credit card offers. We shall see.
On another subject, I see that some anthropologists say that their research...
... suggests the original inhabitants of America may in fact have come from what is now known as Australia. (See report at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5927028/)
That should wake up a few folks, and cause some excitement in that field.
On TV tonight is the "Invisible Man" movie, the one with David McCallum, produced in 1975. Pretty good movie; a nice update of the Claude Rains version produced in 1993. If you find that one in the video store, grab it. You'll enjoy it.
And some welcome editing notes from Brian C, who is now working again up in Montreal, Quebec (that's in Canada, eh [sorry, couldn't resist]) after a long hiatus as a consultant. He's happy to have the permanent gig, even with the two hour one-way commute. Don't envy that, though; I suspect it would be no fun in winter. In any event, he has sent the alert for errant apostrophes and mangled grammar. Nice to hear from him again.
I got a new computer at work today. HP mini-tower, P4-3GHz, 1G RAM, 80G drive. Should be good for a while.
So I started the process of getting all the software installed. It came with WinXP-Pro, so got that all set up, including the SP2 update, so enabled the XP firewall. Next step was McAfee VirusScan, then Office 2003, including an update. I copied the Office CD to the hard disk, and installed from there. That will make updates easier, so I don't have to find the Office CD during the update process. It will take a while to get all the software installed. So there are now four computers at my desk.
Hurricane season in full force; glad I am living on the "left coast", so all I have to worry about is earthquakes and forest fires.
There's some really interesting images of the various hurricanes at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) web site at http://www.noaa.gov . If you have a high-speed pipe, grab the high-res satellite images (DSL is OK too); quite impressive.
There are other sites that are interesting. The CBS News site has a "disaster link" that I use as a good 'portal' to lots of different interesting pages. The link is http://www.cbsnews.com/digitaldan/disaster/disasters.shtml. Sort of a one-stop shopping place for disastrous information.
Much of the day at work today was taken up with various meetings, including a security education presentation to another department. I advertise it as a "39-minute meeting with chocolate". Educating the user is quite important, so we talk about information protection, acceptable use policies, home and work computer safety, and similar subjects. I had a crowd of about 20 in this meeting, and the presentation was well-received.
Taking it easy tonight. I've had digestive problems yesterday and today (Pooh would call it being 'rumbley in my tumbley'), so don't feel like doing much more than surfing the web and the television.
I spent most of the day at work installing more software on the new computer. It's getting closer to what it needs to be for day-to-day use.
And thanks to Wayne for pointing out a link error on the 'current' page. It's got an automatic redirect to the week's page. So every Sunday, the 'make a new week file' process is supposed to change that page to point to the new week. And, if you were paying attention on Sunday's post, you might have noticed that the date was the 3rd, rather than the 5th, and therefore this page's file name was 2004-09-03. I noticed that on Monday, so renamed the file in Dreamweaver MX (my HTML editing program).
When you rename a file inside the program, it checks all other files on that "site" and renames any links using the old filename. Evidently, only looks at '<a href>' codes, and doesn't look at the <meta http-equiv="refresh"> code.
Which is a roundabout way of saying I screwed up.
All fixed now. Until it happens again.
Pam and I plan on going to the local county fair tonight in Auburn. We usually don't go to the state fair, but enjoy the smallness of the county fair. And it's on a site with lots of trees, which is good on a day where the temperature gets to mid-90's (F). So we'll wander around the exhibits, and I'll certainly have a corn dog (and maybe even a giant cinnamon roll).
Tomorrow we may wander up to "Apple Hill" to get some early season fresh-picked apples. With any luck, we'll beat most of the crowds, which tend to be quite large later on in the season.
Pam and I did go to the fair last night, but I wasn't feeling all that well, so we only stayed for a short time. The fair isn't large; it's just a county fair. But it's also not crowded, and the fairgrounds have lots of mature trees for shade. I was still having digestive problems, so didn't have much energy to wander around much. Which also means that I didn't get to eat much 'fair food', although the tri-tip sandwich was good.
Pam went to work this morning for a half day. I stayed home and did some cleaning; the usual stuff to help out a bit while Pam was working. And today was a "Bonanza" marathon on TVLand, so I watched several of those between some short bursts of cleaning.
Cousin Bob and wife Sue stopped by for a short surprise visit. Bob is about a half-year younger than me. Even though we are cousins, we look quite similar. About 20 years ago, we both moved to the same subdivision in Loomis, right next door to each other. That confused the other neighbors a bit, who couldn't tell us apart, and wondered why we were going into each other's houses.
They moved up to Foresthill a couple of years ago. (If you have read my little Digital Choke story, that area figures prominently in the story.) They have just bought a slightly larger place up there. We made plans to spend a weekend at the cabin in Strawberry (about a half-hour this side of Lake Tahoe). That's always a relaxing weekend.
... more later ...
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