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America's Cybersecurity Czar, Howard Schmidt, Steps Down
wiredmikey writes "In December of 2009, after months of waiting, the Obama Administration named Howard Schmidt as the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator. After more than forty years in the IT community, the nation's first cyber czar will retire at the end of the month. Schmidt, after just over two years of government service, said he would retire in order to spend more time with his family and to entertain teaching opportunities in the cyber field. Schmidt was at the reins when the White House introduced its international strategy for cyberspace, and also helped create the controversial National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, an initiative that would allow people to obtain a single credential as a one-time password (on a token or mobile device) to do business on the Internet. Schmidt will be replaced by Michael Daniel, currently the head of the White House budget office's intelligence branch."
Is Mudge still available?
I mean, really.... Grey hair, Fred Thompson look alike... They don't exist in IT. Is federal security locking up the punch cards?
About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
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Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathetic over the phone. Their failure must have truly ruined their pride as professionals." I later found out that two of them had committed suicide.
After returning home, I tried to fix it myself (despite the fact that even the professionals couldn't do it). After about a day or so, I was losing my very mind. I stopped going to work, stopped eating, was depressed, and I would very frequently throw my precious belongings across the room and break them; that is how bad this virus was.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC, ran a scan, and let it remove all the viruses! They were removed in precisely 2.892 seconds. Wow! Such a thing! I can't even believe this as such never before! MyCleanPC is outstanding! My computer is running faster than ever! MyCleanPC came through with flying colors where no one else could!
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MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
Too... many... oxymorons...
Cannot... resist...
Slightly off-topic, but am I the only one that thinks the word "cyber" is a silly 90's throwback?
Dangerous, sexy, turing complete: Femme Bots
Schmidt will be replaced by Michael Daniel, currently the head of the White House budget office's intelligence branch.
Um, come again?
Someone kindly point out what makes this manager-of-auditors-of-bean-counters, with a background totally unrelated to cybersecurity or even IT in general, qualified to coordinate the nation's response to Chinese and Iranian hackers?
Now there's an oxymoron if I ever heard one.
Really, the US is going with cyber. So hi-tec sounding.. for Doctor Who 1964.
and thats going on his CV, 40 years of IT experience described for the clueless. Should get a gig that pays extremely well.
Welcome to the future.
The Bolsheviks had the right idea when they rise up and got rid of them. But since it's America you can just lay them off and not have to shoot their wives and families.
The White house can have a policy wonk, but no need to give them " czarlike" powers or any more title than "advisor." The Guy who was elected shouldn't be insulated from responsibility by an unelected staffer with a big title and media who go along with the fiction that he hassome kind of independent authority.
I'm sure he'll stamp his authority and re-invigorate the department by immediately setting up a Blue Ribbon committee to come up with the selection criteria for choosing an external consulting firm which will be tasked with planning a review of the mandatory fonts to be used on all internal memoranda.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Im not sure if you are just brain damaged or in marketing (or both) but unless CleanMyPC has a self booting disc then it is worthless for the worst infections.
It also promises things that are violations of physical laws or otherwise can not be possible.
In fact i could do better than CleanMyPC with the Windows Defender self booting disc and a couple other FREE tools.
in short Professor Elementals "Fighting Trousers" would be a good background song for this posting.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
i chuckled at this, "cyber field" , really?
Wow, totally the wrong place to spam... What next Antivirus 2012 cleaned the 4000 infections on my computer and now I have this neato russian bride.
To the federal government "Cyber Security" means "...how we protect the IT assets of banks, large corporations, and others who give us large campaign contributions. You little people are on your own. Piss off."
I mean, really.... Grey hair, Fred Thompson look alike... They don't exist in IT.
I see you've never been inside the building I work in.
Free Martian Whores!
Your "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace" credentials, or "Trusted Identity", would be naturally abreiviated as "NaSTI", so in practice when we recieved an authentication token, we would be "getting nasty", we might refer to the authentication process "doing the nasty", you could say to your friends or co-workers to "show me your nasty", or you might simply suggest "let's get nasty".
It is imperative that the public enjoy the bennefits of this hillarious technology as soon as possible.
I usually think back to a very common use/meaning of the word "cyber" in 90s chatrooms. (I have no connection to that article, it was just one of the first useful search results.)
Apathy Sucks, Nobody for President!