Slashback: Mexico, Ukraine, Oceania

More reason below on why not to eat the yellow links, as well as the ongoing interesting effects of the Sircam virus, and whatever happened to Linux in Mexican schools. (Answer: it didn't.) And please send some good news for next time.

... and you'll like it! LupusUF writes: "As everyone knows by now...Kazaa is using top text links Kazaa is using top text. But not only are they using them, they are badmouthing people who complain about them. When someone posted a complaint, a Kazaa moderator (Super_Harris) started out his reply by saying "How Dare You!" and then went on trying to explain why they are using top text. Another moderator makes some more poor excuses in the same thread. The same thread also has some very useful information about the spyware that kazaa has installed with the latest version (cydoor, Onflow, New.Net, WebHancer).

My advice would be to get ad-aware.

I hope Kazaa starts treating its users with more respect, and at least gets moderators that can answer questions without treating their users like idiots."

Sircam Sircam A quivering, cowardly reader wrote to point out that sensitive Ukranian government documents were apparently leaked by the Sircam virus. Even juicier than the steady stream of love notes, recipes, tax information, homework, bids and schedules that keeps flowing into my mailbox.

Don't look for much help from Microsoft on this, either, and hardly any from ISPs. Most of the ISPs I've contacted still claim not to have heard of Sircam, and say "it's not our responsibility." Email from Microsoft (after I cc'd them on a few of my virus alerts) equally disclaims responsibility. Funny how Sircam never made it to the front page of their site. Kudos to Charter Communications for calling customers to let them know they were infected -- and a pox on Prodigy for refusing to.

May the path of least resistance rise to meet you. Alec Muzzy writes: "Wired has a story about a failed plan to install Linux on computers for Mexican Schools in an effort to save money. Instead they have decided to run Windows, because Linux wouldn't run on their hardware. As they say, 'It was easier to go with Windows.'

Here's a perfect example of where the free cost of Linux should have been an advantage, yet they decided to go with Windows instead. Does this mean that the costs of running Linux are higher than the cost to purchase Windows?"

Comments

Re:Linux wouldn't run on their hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty amazing to me that they decided to buy a $100 OS instead of a $30 modem card, and in general Linux requires fewer system resources than Windows. And having problems installing because of old drives not being able to read CD-R's is a little silly, too -- for the volumes they're talking, they could easily press their own CD's for almost nothing. I have to believe that there's something else going on there. Like it being absurd to have 2 people responsible for every aspect of of deploying computers and software to thousands of schools without any staff for training, backed by a bureaucracy that was willing to give $millions to MS rather than building staff to support this project.

Kickbacks? Corruption? How much would MS pay to keep latin america from developing into a center of Linux/open source development? :-)

I use KaZaA without intrusions - This is how

[ciurana]

I've been using KaZaA for several weeks without intrusions or undesireable software running on my Windoze box.

The latest upgrade for KaZaA, including all the "enhancements" came over the wires either last Sunday or Monday. Neither TOPText, nor any of the other "intrusionware" were installed.

I believe "intrusionware" became a problem for us in 1998 or so with QuickBooks Pro and its desire to install AOL (Corel Draw! also installed some unnecessary crap by default). We realized that most default configurations of shrinkwrapped software tended to install things we didn't want in our (or our customers') systems. Ever since we follow these steps to prevent the introduction of undesirable code:

• Never use the default installation. Always click on "customize install"
• Always take a snapshot of the registry prior to installing the software and one immediately after running it for the first time. We use both Norton Registry Tracker and Remove-It for that. Remove-it also does a before/after snapshot of the contents of every directory on the HD.
• Ensure that the after snapshot in the previous step is taken after you run the program. Yeah, I like repeating it because it's important.
• Make sure (in your C:/AUTOEXEC.BAT) that the TMP and TEMP environment variables point to the same directory so you can view what temporary files were created during the installation.

We found that, 95% of the time, our desktops (and those of our customers still using Windows) were easily rolled back to a known "clean" state by using these tools. The other 5% we had to manually remove one or two registry entries, or DLLs/VxDs loaded during Windows start up. If we absolutely must run a piece of Windows software (i.e. QuickBooks), we can usually pick and choose what to remove and what to leave installed by following this procedure.

About the KaZaA installation
In the case of KaZaA, it drops an upgrade program in its download/share folder. That program gives the option for a "custom install". Deselect (is that a verb?) the options that you don't want such as TOPtext. Watch your registry. No changes to the system.

KaZaA installs some banners and other annoyware under C:/WINDOWS/SYSTEM/adcache. KaZaA's UI is a modified version of Internet Exploiter. It's a web browser with a custom UI. You can disable the annoying ads at the bottom of the screen by:

• Using the junkbuster proxy for filtering the sites where KaZaA is getting its banners from. The default banners come from www.qksrv.net. Block it. There may be others down the line. Block them as they appear.
• Unloading KaZaA and manually erasing all the GIF and JPEG files in that directory. Lave the two HTML/JavaScript files in place (B_416800.HTM and B_416900.HTM), though, or KaZaA won't work.

This process sounds like a lot of work, but in reality it only adds about 2 minutes to every new software installation. It saves us from endless hours of grief at a later time.

Annoyware aside, I really like KaZaA. It's quick, and I've been able to find everything I searched for on it.

(If you see my previous posts, we're a mostly-UNIX shop. We (and several of our customers) run a hybrid UNIX+Samba+Windoze environment. No flames on this, OK? I'm a realist, and business demands that we use Windows under certain circumstances)

Cheers!

E

What do you tell someone who's got SirCam?

[doom]

What advice should you give to someone who's clearly got a bad case of SirCam?

If you look at the CERT Advisory, the only fix it discusses is installing commercial anti-virus software... While that might be a good idea, I would think that there's got to be some other proceedure, like Delete this or that, reinstall MS Word, go into the Control Panel and click the little box that says "I'm not a complete fool, and I care slightly about system security, so don't run any damn macros without asking me", or whatever.

Has anyone seen cleanup proceedures discussed? I know little about the Windows world these days, but my friends still have me pegged as The Computer Expert.

Re:Linux wouldn't run on their hardware

[cr0sh]

Right! As others have said, wait for the BSA audit. What I can't understand is why all those machines even need modems? Throw some cheapo network cards in them, add a hub and put a good modem in one machine acting as a modem gateway (I tend to doubt each machine has it's own phone line, too)...

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

Hi!

[bravehamster]

I have been needing the help and advice on some things, but files send I to people, no response! Where can send I this file to get advice that I am needing?

Goodbye!

Linux wouldn't run on their hardware

[FattMattP]

...because Linux wouldn't run on their hardware

[snip]

Here's a perfect example of where the free cost of Linux should have been an advantage, yet they decided to go with Windows instead. Does this mean that the costs of running Linux are higher than the cost to purchase Windows?"

No, it's because Linux wouldn't run on their hardware. Not to state the obvious or anything, but what part of "Linux wouldn't run on their hardware" did you not understand? The hardware was already purchased and waiting for drivers to appear wasn't an option. They needed something to get up and running with.

How is it a failure?

[jorbettis]

Hardware compatibility problems have been solved, and the idea to adopt an open-source platform still stands.

This year, 1,400 schools will be equipped with external modems, and Ibarra plans to install Linux on those computers.

Dosen't sound like they're giving up to me. Also, they already have twenty schools running on GNU/Linux. They have schools already on it and they're planning to add more, it's just not a fast or as wide-spread as they had hoped. Just because a project dosen't go off as well as expected dosen't mean it is a failure.

Was Linux 2.4 a failure because it shipped a year late?

Recommended tools for older computers in education

[starseeker]

Given the odds are most of the hardware Mexico will be able to obtain will be out of date, here are some good tools to make a command line based linux distribution a little less frightening, and more importantly useful. It's surprising how much of an unnecessary luxury GUIs are for many things. Anyone with more experience or ideas, tack 'em on.

Desktop Shell:
Midnight Commander - command line mode
http://www.gnome.org/projects/mc/
Flash - An altered version of this might prove extremely useful for schools in setting up a basic, intuitive interface:
http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/flash/

Typing:
Gtypist - includes a spanish mode
http://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/

Editors:
nano - The standard easy text editor.
http://www.nano-editor.org/
emacs - Scary but powerful - for advanced students
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html

Typesetting:

teTex - fairly complete distribution of the TeX typesetting system; probably not necessary for most levels of education, but if formatted text is desirable this is definitely the none graphical way to make it.
http://www.tug.org/teTeX/

Development Environments:

Rhide - Borland like environment for use with gcc
http://home.lanet.lv/~pavenis/rhide.html

Mathematics:

I do not recommend the use of mathematical programs for educational purposes until there is no other reasonable way to solve the problem. However, a powerful and free computer algebra system does exist, and can be run from the command line, so if research projects or some such effort require it:
Maxima
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/maxima.html

Web Browser:

links - ncurses based browser. A nice piece of work. It will not do graphics, but will handle tables and frames.
http://links.sourceforge.net

Email:

mutt - mutt is very powerful. It can be configured to act similar to the pine email system in order to be slightly more friendly to new users.
http://www.mutt.org/

The murder of Georgy Gongadze

[KjetilK]

Ukrain has some human rights issues. Internet Journalist Georgy Gongadze of Ukrajinska Pravda was found beheaded last november. Gongadze had been investigating corruption on high levels in the Ukrainan government. Later, the leader of the opposition socialist party publized recordings that allegdly linked President Kuchma to the murder. On the tapes Kuchma orders the murder of Gongadze. Have a look here.

It has been pointed out however, that Kuchma would hardly have anything to fear from an e-zine like Ukrajinska Pravda, since very few have access to the Internet in Ukrain, and that it was unlikely that he had even heard of Georgy Gongadze.

It is, nevertheless, an issue to be alarmed by.

ISPs' responsibility?!

[sulli]

Excuse me, but WTF are you smoking? Do you expect ISPs to filter email for sircam, or block sircam-sending IPs, or ... precisely what exactly?

Outlook viruses are, in my opinion, the responsibility of (1) Mictosoft, and (2) the Outlook user, who should be trained not to open crap that comes from random people with attachments! I really don't see how an ISP can help. (Of course, helpdesk people need to know about it, etc.)

Re:The truth of Linux in Mexico

[MOMOCROME]

Your rant about corruption is probably accurate, lord knows it is a stereotype that has probably been earned, but I am not sure that it is entirely acccurate regarding this particular case. There are better reasons for their choice, namely that training the employees was significantly more expensive than the windows licenses.

The truth of Linux in Mexico

[letxa2000]

FWIW, I'm an American who has lived in Mexico for over 5 years now. Let me help the general public with the translation of what the article says. "There weren't enough people available trained in Linux" translates to "The organization wasn't willing to spend the money to hire people trained in Linux."

Organizations in Mexico, for some reason, would rather spend $5 on hardware/software than $1 on human resources. Perhaps it's because there's so much corruption everywhere that no-one trusts their employees to do their job and to do it honestly. Then again, can you blame them when a CS graduate might earn US$1000/month...

Believe me, the reason they went with Windows is because they'd rather pay Windows people US$800/month rather than paying Linux people US$1000/month, even if it means having to spend millions of dollars on Windows license. And, of course, some politicians will probably be taking a good part of that $124 million to their personal bank accounts.

Mexico is a wonderful country, but it's very frustrating to live here and see the incompetence and corruption in decision-making. Believe me, it makes American politics and decision-making seem PURE and reasonable in comparison. Heck, even Democrats sound coherent after witnessing the absurdities and abuses that go on down here--and for a Democrat to sound coherent ought to give you an idea of how bad things are down here.

Anyway, this isn't a blow against Linux. It's about par for the course in terms of Mexican political decision-making.

PS--For what it's worth, I can't really see the government actually paying for all the licenses anyway. They'll probably set aside $20 million for licenses, buy one license, and the politicians will keep the rest.

KaZaA and Ad-aware

[eah]

As everyone knows by now...Kazaa is using top text links [...] My advice would be to get ad-aware.

I was playing with KaZaA for a few days, but didn't install Top Text with it. (It pays to read those stupid installation screens, I guess.) Anyway, today I ran Ad-Aware and nuked a couple of hits (from Cydoor). After it finished, KaZaA refused to run, because components were missing.

The punchline was that it wouldn't even uninstall from Add/Remove Programs. I had to reinstall it just to uninstall it nicely.

I've installed Morpheus from musiccity.com, and I'm running Ad-Aware again. Wonder if this'll turn out any differently...

(Side note, damn if Morpheus doesn't look almost exactly like Kazaa.)

kAzaA quicky

[tulare]

It is definately getting interesting on the discussion thread mentioned at the top of this article. I think the kakaA folks are now realizing just how badly they have screwed up :)

Kill Smart Tags:

Sorry, kaZaa users

[tulare]

I mean, at least BearShare practices disclosure when it wants to install garbage on your machine. And (although I've never felt the need to bother with this one) I'm sure that if you complained to BearShare folks, you'd get a more coherent response than "How dare you! ... blah blah advertisments and buisness..." OK, maybe the writer wasn't a native speaker of English, but I mean, come on. When I deal with anyone, even via email, I at least attempt to make an effort to sound and act like a professional (which, if you met me, is by no means assured). These guys look like a bunch of baked s'kiddies and halfwit marketers to me. If they aren't, then their behavior needs to adapt to what are really reasonable expectations from the consumer which aren't that hard to meet. Picking adware more carefully and clearly stating in the installation what each program is, and why it is installed would be a good start.

Kill Smart Tags:

Parasite Software

[4n0nym0u53 C0w4rd]

Salon has a pretty good article on the whole parasite software thing. KaZaA figures prominently. There are some reasonable aspects of bundling such software, but it's ridiculuous to do so without a)allowing opt-out and b)clearly notifying users...