Filed Under (Tech) by Don C on 24-05-2008
CISCO’S CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER on anti-virus products: “It’s completely wasted money”
Though I agree with Cisco’s John Stewart, according to the ZDNet story, security software vendors did not agree. Big surprise.
Here is the problem. If you have one person in your organization who is prone to launch a virus, either accidentally or on purpose, all your anti-virus protections have to be perfect or else you will be compromised. Every organization of any size will have one of these people and probably more than one. The problem is that computer systems are created and operated by imperfect people and thus there is no such thing as a perfect computing system. So it’s a complete waste of money, just like homeland security.
Of course I use anti-virus, but I don’t spend any money on it. If you are paying money for anti-virus software, you are a dupe. Nor do I patch my operating system unless absolutely necessary, which in the last several years has been none. I am running XP SP2 with no patches on three PC’s right now and since my installation will not pass the Window’s genuine advantage bullshit, even though I must own about 20 XP licenses from all the PC’s I’ve bought over the years, I simply do not patch. It’s as simple as that.
My primary protection from the outside world comes from a properly configured hardware firewall. My secondary protection is proper training on email use. Here is the email training: Do NOT ever open an email if you do not know who sent it and it wasn’t expected. Just don’t even open it. Like it never happened.
Considering that I am running a secure Win NT4 server I think it might be a while before Microsoft causes me to buy a new copy of Windows. If Microsoft does somehow cause me to have buy a new copy of Windows, it will be a Linux version. Heh.
Oh, I forgot to mention. I rarely get a viruses on my workstation. Maybe twice in 25 years. Even with a wife and two kids running free on the internet I bet I have only had to clean one virus in the last five years from a PC I control.
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Filed Under (Tech) by Don C on 24-05-2008
I don’t think I’ve ever witten about the lack of custom user interfaces to automotive electronics, but I have mentioned the lack of options to friends a few times over the last couple of years. There is an amazing amount of software involved in modern automobiles and for the most part the consumer has zero control over it. For example, the new Toyota Tundra I bought a few months ago has about 47,000 sensors — okay, maybe not that many — and I can not set, reset, or modify any one of them. After the car leaves the showroom having met all the governmnet required standards, the consumer should be able to modify the equipment however they wish.
The first thing I would do is modify the seat belt chime. I don’t mind the car reminding me to strap in when I first get underway, but after that, further warnings are a strict no no. I might want to disable the door chimes, running lights, and inside lights altogether if I am driving through a wildlife refuge trying to take photos.
Well, help might be on the way:
Wind River is joining Intel to develop an open source Linux platform to your car and shake up the auto industry by bringing greater innovation, efficiency and development speed to the emerging in-car infotainment market.
It’s a radical effort to force automakers — which tend to favor evolutionary, not revolutionary, R&D - to embrace open source as a way to speed up development. If Wind River and Intel pull it off, it would be a crucial step toward spurring innovation and cooperation in the growing but fractured in-car multimedia market.
This is cool. And not really for the reason of reprogramming the seat belt warning — though I would do that — but for the purposes of interfacing other devices you own with your expensive automobile. Why should I pay a premium price for multimedia gear in a car when the technology is available, and probably already owned, in much more flexible packaging as well as lower price? I don’t want to have to shop for a car that has the right combination of digital accessories; I want a car that doesn’t have any accessories but provides industry standard interfaces to my existing equipment. I don’t want to load six CD’s into my car when I already have a thousand ripped to my PC. I don’t need a GPS system when I already have one on my phone. And so on.
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Filed Under (Business, Whimsy) by Don C on 24-05-2008
THE ONION: New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks
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Filed Under (Global Warming) by Don C on 24-05-2008
DRUDGE: JUPITER IN THE BALANCE: Recent ‘red spots’ likely due to climate change…
I can’t wait to see how humanity gets blamed for this one. Probably now we will go from Global Warming to Solar System Warming. We greedy car-driving, coal-burning, McDonalds eating Americns are not only destroying our own planet with selfish consumption; we are destroying the entire solar system.
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HILLARY: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.”
Good Lord Almighty! What was she thinking? All you liberals out there need to Face the Truth: Hillary is simply pandering to her core constituency. That is, you.
If it wasn’t so sad it’d be funny. No wait. It’s funny. LMAO!
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