Back in the early 1970s my first car had large knobs and levers designed to be easily operated by someone wearing thick winter gloves without taking their eyes off the road. By comparison, many of the electronic gadgets in modern cars seem to require taking my eyes off of the road, at least briefly, while thinking about some complicated task. All the unnecessary complexity can also be a problem when I occasionally fly somewhere and have to rent a car. There is now too much of a learning curve for all the fancy electronic gadgets to make renting a car an enjoyable experience. At home I happily drive an old early 1990's full sized pickup which does not have power locks, power windows or automatic anything. I don't even mind using keys and almost always easily get the key in the keyhole in the first fraction of a second. For me, an old fashioned key is just as fast as a remote controlled door lock.
I am not totally anti-electronics, I have built several of my own computers and installed both Windows and Linux on them. I also have a general class ham radio license. When backpacking or hiking, I occasionally even navigate to remote places with a GPS unit and a topo map. I just do not want to have all the unnecessary complexity in my truck or car. For me simpler is better.
I also get a strange satisfaction in the fact that overly gadget dependant GPS using people who visit me soon discover that their GPS units are wrong about where I live. They punch in my address and are either told that there is no such place or they are sent to a spot in the middle of an intersection about 1,000 feet or so south of where I actually live. By now you have probably guessed that I am a 50+ years old person who is not part of the generation who likes that kind of stuff.
I live in Arizona and we do not go on daylight savings time. When installing Linux or Windows on a computer, the installation program always asks what time zone I am in and Arizona is listed as a separate time zone. When Arizona is selected the time never changes. My two computers can just continue ignoring the annual time zone changes like they always have.
The power plug on my desktop computer is plugged into to a Kill-A-Watt Watt meter which shows that I am using 94 Watts at the moment. My large 19 inch monitor uses a different power cord and is using additional power not included in that figure. I have an older socket 939 version of the AMD-64 3800+ which, when running a 64-bit version of Linux, throttles the CPU back to 1 GHz during light usage to save power. Under heavy usage it goes up to its full 2.4 GHz speed and uses significantly more power then. I don't have Windows XP on this computer, but my guess would be that it would probably do the same thing. It has not sure how the AMD-64's energy efficiency compares to Intel or other AMD processors. I am not a gamer and am using an ordinary video card that probably isn't very power hungry and doesn't even have a fan. The computer's power supply is the 83% efficient Antec Phantom 350 power supply, which is an energy efficient fanless 350 Watt model that Antec used to make. I also have 2 very large hard drives and 1 GB of RAM.
I haven't yet had a chance to read the article, but decided to post my power usage for comparison. A laptop would probably use even less power.
Several companies already make RFID blocking wallets. Presumably something similar could easily be designed for ID badges. I don't know for sure, but the wallets are probably lined in a way to make it act like a Faraday cage. Here are examples of RFID blocking wallets:
I was taking a part time college class at a Junior College several years ago. The students social security number was printed on the class schedule that each student carried around with them on the first day of class. On the first day, there were misplaced class schedules laying on the ground and on desks all around the campus. Nobody seemed too concerned. I don't know if the local junior college still does that or not.
Back in the 1970's, I got an Arizona drivers license shortly after moving to Arizona. Back then, by default, they would use the social security number as the drivers license number unless the applicant specifically asked them not to. My social security number was on my drivers license for over 30 years. ATM machines did not yet exist in grocery stores or small shops, so checks were typically used to pay. When cashing a check they would typically ask for a drivers license and write the drivers license number on the check. Over a few decades, that would be thousands of checks, per person, with the social security number on them. A few years ago, I went over to the department of motor vehicles and had them change my drivers license number to something other than the social security number.
For many years, the envelope for my monthly medical insurance bill always asked me to write my account number under the return address on the outside of the envelope. My account number was my social security number and I always hated having to write that on the outside of the envelope. They finally stopped using my social security number as my account number a few years ago and also stopped asking me to write it under the return address on the outside of the envelope.
A few decades ago most people also kept their social security card in their wallet. Some people still do, even though wallets are frequently lost or stolen.
For many years, identity theft was very rare and there was very little effort to keep social security numbers secret. So after decades of not keeping them secret everyone is now being told that they need to keep them secret. Who's idea was it to start using something that had never been very secret for identification purposes? Knowing a social security number or a mother's maiden name should never have been considered to be proof that someone is who they say they are.
Fortunately, I have never been the victim of identity theft other than one minor instance of having one fraudulent charge on a charge card a few years ago.
Here a several other possible scenarios. suppose an employee of the store, where the software had originally been purchased, had already secretly opened and installed the the software. He then had posted the key on the Internet several weeks before someone else purchased the software. A few stores even have their own shrink wrap machines that they use on returned hardware, so he might have shrink wrapped the software again before putting it back on the shelf.
Here is another alternative. Suppose some woman had purchased the software. Her ex-boyfriend or one of her children's friends might have secretly borrowed the installation CD and installed it on another computer and posted her key on the Internet. Then, after upgrading to a new computer she might have later reinstalled the software. She then looses her small business accounting records and the novel she had been writing for the last 6 months. The ex-boyfriend who was the actual pirate would lose nothing.
The software could also have been received as a Christmas gift. The gift giver might have already opened the software, installed it and shared the key. Perhaps the gift might have even come from a vengeful ex-spouse who knew what would happen to their computer.
These are also possible problems with trying to act as judge and jury and delivering mindless automated punishment to the supposed software pirates,
Another alternative might be to electronically duplicate the a persons brain, memories and all. The next step would be to transplant the electronic brain into an android. Another alternative to becoming an android would be to transplant a person's consciousness into a computer generated virtual world. Other electronically cloned people could also be placed there too after they die. Of course if someone already believes in life after death, an electronically generated virtual heaven might be unnecessary and redundant. Personally, I sort of believe in reincarnation (more or less). However, I do not belong to any particular religion. Since I am not really sure an electronically generated virtual heaven might be a saver bet. Actually, the thought of just dieing someday doesn't really bother me so I don't feel the need to try very hard to avoid death.
I haven't yet read the article, but perhaps they could take a recently deceased persons brain and after freezing it, maybe they could disassemble in neuron by neuron with micromachines to somehow extract the persons memories and neural connections. Then they could transplant it to a some kind of "neural net". There is also the question of whether the person's soul is something separate and possibly in addition to a person's memories. If the soul decided not to come along, there might be difficulties in creating a full normal working intelligence in the electronic brain.
My AMD 64 3800+ has FreeDOS on the 2nd partition of my 1st hard drive. It is formatted as a FAT-16 partition. It is one of the choices on the GRUB boot menu. I only boot up DOS every once in a while, but it does run on my AMD 64 computer. About a year ago or so ago I had IBM PC DOS 2000 installed on the 1st partion which also ran well. I later reformatted that partition as NTFS and installed Windows 2000 on my first partition instead. I still have FreeDOS on the 2nd partition. I have Slackware Linux installed on my 3rd partition and in that case I have 32-bit version of Linux running on a 64-bit computer. On a logical partition I have the AMD-64 version of Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) Linux which is what I like best and use most of the time.
An easier way to run an old DOS program under Linux or Windows would be to just use the free DOSBox program. In the past, I also used VMWare and had PC DOS 2000 installed on one the the virtual machines. With VMWare I was able to run Linux, Windows and DOS all at once.
I also live in Arizona where we don't have daylight savings time (except for the Navajo Indian reservation). Over the years, I have sometimes looked up television listings on-line and their listings were frequently off by one hour. On at least one major website, the Arizona television listings have been incorrect for years (for much of the year). I have heard that there is a town on the Navajo reservation where only part of the town is on the reservation. In that town, the part that is on the reservation goes on daylight savings time while the rest of the town does not. That could be confusing.
When installing either Windows or Linux on a computer Arizona is listed as a separate time zone. Of course, on the Internet we are connected to websites outside of Arizona where the daylight-saving bug might possibly still affect us too. In other words, it will be just like normal for us, the out of state web sites will sometimes be wrong by one hour just like normal. I wonder if the RIAA and the various ISPs have ever made time zone errors when trying to identify illegal file sharers? There could be multiple computers some of which might even be in unusual parts of time zones.
It is ironic how much bad publicity the church of Scientology has generated for itself by these repeated attempts to punish and silence Keith Henson. Like many Slashdot readers, I had barely heard of the church of Scientology. This discussion about the arrest of Keith Henson is my first real source of information about Scientologists. They may have won several battles in the court room against Keith Henson, but in doing so, lost several major battles for public opinion. Is publicity like this what they want people to know about their organization?
Back in the 1970s, I was once a member of the L-5 society but never attended any of their meetings. I just enjoyed reading about the ideas presented in their monthly newsletter. Keith Henson was a co-founder of that organization. I vaguely remember the name Keith Henson, but had never met him. L-5 Society members could probably be considered to be a bunch of overly optimistic technology enthusiasts who wanted to promote the idea of building self-sufficient cities in space using existing technology. It was an intriguing vision of the future which never happened and probably won't happen within my lifetime. They were an idealistic bunch of engineers, scientists and, what we would now call geeks, who in their own way wanted to try to build a better world. So imagine my surprise at reading on Slashdot that Keith Henson was a Scientology critic who had just been arrested a few miles away from where I live here in the quiet little town of Prescott, Arizona.
So far, I still don't know very much about the church of Scientology, but here is the general sense of what I have have learned today so far on Slashdot and the various links. The church of Scientology is allegedly a rich and vengeful religious cult. They apparently have lawyers who are ready to sue their critics. The church was founded by a science fiction author. People can be sued for excerpting their scriptures (are they copyrighted?). I don't know it that is a totally accurate picture or not, but that is the general impression that I get by following the news stories about Keith's arrest. If other readers are reacting the same way, then it looks like the church of Scientology may have won in court, but in doing so has generated lots of bad publicity. At least in that sense they have lost. They may have only turned Keith Henson into a martyr and symbol for the Scientology critics?
I saw a link to the "Henson Legal Support Fund" and my contribution check is now in the mail to help pay for his defense.
Vista has gone to great extremes to achieve digital content management. The Vista DRM requirements will greatly affect the design of video cards, monitors, HD-DVDs and other computer hardware in the near future. Microsoft seems to have really gone overboard to try to satisfy all of Hollywood and the music studios fears about computer owners somehow managing to access unencrypted protected content. Windows itself seems to have been designed as a digital content delivery system. Personally, I would have prefered to see a small seperate dedicated box of some kind use for that purpose instead of redisigning the Windows operating system and the computer hardware so drastically for that purpose. Here are two transcripts which talk about Vista DRM. At the top of each transcript there is also a free MP3 version available.
Hollywood, the music industry and Microsoft all seem to think that they should have the right to reach into people home computers and tell the computer owners what they can and can't do. As mentioned recently on Slashdot, the RIAA is now acting much like 17th century French button makers. It is almost as if the same people had been reincarnated again and are back again.
High speed Internet connections only recently became available where I live. The local telephone lines in my neighborhood were only good for 26.4K even though I had a 56K modem. I was unable to get cable, but recently the telephone company finally made 1.5 Mbps DSL connections available here (7 Mbps DSL is also now available). What will the bandwidth requirements be for watching this future on-line video content at an appropriate resolution? What resolution will I need for my 13 inch television when watching from my usual chair 14 feet away?.
With Windows Vista, Microsoft seems to have made a huge effort to re-engineer Windows as a secure DRM delivery mechanism that Hollywood and the music studios can trust. Bill Gates is probably hoping that we will all soon be using Windows to watch high-definition protected content on HD-DVDs or to watch online video content. He may eventually be right about that, but personally, I would rather use a separate small dedicated box for that purpose, not a Windows PC. It is doubtful that my Linux PC will be trusted by Hollywood to download their highest definition video content anyway, so for me a small separate box of some type would probably be the way to go.
Here are two links that show the extremes that Microsoft has gone to in adding digital rights management to Vista
I wonder how effective ordinary antivirus programs or spyware removal programs are on Zombie computers? Ad-Aware is one example of a spyware removal program for Windows. To help avoid problems in the first place, I have always used a properly configured firewall either on the computer or router (or both) to block access to TCP/IP ports. I occasionally check my firewall by going to grc.com and having the Shields Up test done. After going to their web page I click on ShieldsUP!, then "Proceed," then "Continue," then "All Service Ports."
On both the Windnows and Linux computers I also use the latest version of Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file to block many of the known advertising related URLs. I don't know to what extent that might or might not possibly be helpful in preventing problems. It is mainly intended to block certain kinds of ads.
I also regularly download the latest security updates for both the Windows and Linux computers. Most people only do spyware and antivirus checking their Windows computers, not their Linux boxes. There are actually a few anti-virus programs for Linux but there aren't yet any Linux viruses successfully circulating in the wild. At home, I only send and receive email from my Linux box, because it is probably safer. I also use the Linux box for the majority of my web browsing. I do use the netstat command once in a while to see what TCP/IP communication is going on. But anyway, I am not a computer professional, those are just a few thoughts from a paranoid home computer user. I haven't yet learned how to do some other security measures such as reading security log files or detecting rootkits. I also haven't yet got around to learning to use the netstat command under linux or packet sniffers.
I am not a computer professional and definately am not an expert on that type of thing, but either the netstat command or the free TCPView utility might be useful. Either one can be used to provide information about what is connecting to what on your TCP or UDP ports. The netstat command exists on Windows, Mac, Linux and Unix computers. The free TCPView program is a free Windows only GUI version of the netstat command. I mostly use Linux at home, so I rarely ever to use Windows utilities like TCPView myself.
If the comics that Microsoft comes out with are not funny enough perhaps other people should try to create their own more amusing alternative comic advertisements. They could be done in a style that is somewhat similar to the comics that Microsoft hands out. They could be a spoof of the Microsoft comics. Of course when doing a spoof they should probably check how to best do that legally.
The comic might start out with an employee of some unmentioned software company lecturing some children about how using pirated software is stealing. He would then ask the children what they would do if they owned a computer and WGA discovered discovered that their were not using a genuine version of Windows Vista and would only let them connect to the Internet for one hour at a time. A young boy might then raise his hand, and say "one hour would be just enough time to download a free copy of Ubuntu Linux. I could stay legal by using free GPL licensed software instead." A young girl might then raise her hand and say something like this. "There are hundreds of properly licenced free Linux programs that you could then easily dowload and easily installed using Synaptic (with a screenshot of Synaptic in the background). It is a complete alternative ecosystem of free GPL software." The first boy might then add that "their is also tons of properly licensed free GPL software for Windows users too. In the final frame of the comic another resposible adult might give this final moral advice (as the disapproving exasperated software company employee looks on). "Don't be a software pirate, if you can't afford to pay for commercial software use the free properly licensed GPL software instead."
Underneath the comic strip it might metion that this comic strip was created with the following properly licensed free software:
Near the bottom of the comic strip there might also be something about this comic strip having been released under the Creative Commons license. "So feel free copy make copies of this comic stip and share them with your friends at school."
Don't be a software pirate, stay legal and properly licensed by using the various free open source GPL licensed programs instead that are also available in Windows versions. Many of the best free GPL licensed open source programs which have been developed for Linux users have also been released in Windows versions. Not everyone is ready yet to move from Windows to a free GPL licensed alternative such as Ubuntu Linux. For them, a first step to freedom would be to keep on using a properly licensed copy of Windows, but to start using the various free GPL licensed alternatives to their various favorite programs. Someday, if they decide to move to a totally free operating system such as Linux they will then be able to use the Linux versions of those same programs. There is now an amazingly large complete alternative free software ecosystem of free GPL licenced software legally available for free to everyone.
Here are just a few examples of free (mostly GPL licensed) programs which are also available in Windows versions:
LEDs are extremely efficient, but in most cases aren't as bright as an ordinary light bulb. The box of ordinary 100 Watt light bulbs that I am looking at says they put out 1690 lumens while using 100 Watts. By comparison, one example of a 30 LED spotlight says that it puts out 150 lumens while only using 4.4 Watts. Perhaps someone could just use more of them, but even then the light they put out is usually a shade of white that seems harsher and less attractive looking. They are very efficient, although I don't know how they compare to fluorescent lights. Many cities are switching to LED light bulbs for their street lights, not so much because of electrical efficiency, but because they don't like having to change light bulbs regularly in such inconvenient hard to reach locations. LED light bulbs last for many years. Here are several examples of LED lightbulbs:
When backpacking, I use a Pak-Lite Flashlight. I could use that flashlight all night (at least on the low setting) without worrying about the batteries going dead. When hiking late in the afternoon I always keep a small Pak-Lite in my pocket, just in case I don't make it back before dark. Back in the early 1990s, I was backpacking with a friend over night here in a remote part of the mountains of Northern Arizona. At about 9:00 p.m. the young man and a somewhat older woman came stumbling through the dark came up to our camp sight. They did not have a flashlight and were out of water and were lost. They asked which way the campground was and he said that his new wife and some other relatives were camping down in the campground. The woman was his new mother-in-law and this was the first hike she had ever been on in her life. They had made a wrong turn on the poorly maintained hard to follow trail and got lost. We refilled their water bottle, loaned them an extra flashlight and sent them down the trail in the correct direction. That was back before the days of LED flashlights. The flashlight that I loaned them must have gone dead before they made it back, because the next day I found the flashlight laying on my truck with a thank you note. I noticed that the batteries were dead. So when starting a long hike late in the afternoon I now always keep a tiny 9-volt LED flashlight in my pocket and take some water too so that I don't end up lost in the dark and thirsty like them.
The LED flashlight would be great for use during hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or the usual ordinary power failures that are caused by summer thunder storms every summer.
I visited two local homes back in 2000 which were totally solar powered and heated. This is a small city up in the mountains of Northern Arizona. One of the homes was totally off the grid and the other sold her excess electricity back to the power company. If I remember correctly, the guy who owned the first home used some type of passive solar system for heating his house and also had several photovltaic panels. He carefully chose energy efficient appliances so that his need for electric did not exceed what his small photovoltaic system would provide. He also had some type of solar hot water heater. The mountains of Northern Arizona are a good place for solar energy because we have lots of reliable sunshine and at this altitude we also have a significant need for heat.
The second solar house has what (at least at the time) probably the largest array of solar photovoltaic panels on the roof of any house in the country. She told that she had once converted her Ferrari into an electric car and that her array of photovoltaic panels was large enough to charge her car up. I didn't think to ask how many miles per week that allowed her to drive. She showed me how her electric meter was running backwards. She explained that meant that she was selling electricity back to the power company at the moment. She also had several unusually large deep cycle lead/acid batteries which she used to store electricity for nighttime use. Of course she also had a solar hot water heater and solar heating panels filled with antifreeze used to heat the house. She wanted to build another electric car sometime, I don't know if she or her new husband ever did or not.
She was also a ham radio operator and many hams like have some kind of back-up power for their radios for use during emergencies such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. Her solar system's deep cycle lead/acid batteries provided emergency backup power for both her HF rig and her 2-meter/440 radio. She had her own private airstrip in the front yard of her ranch and raised chickens in her back yard. She seemed like a likable but somewhat eccentric woman, as anyone who would convert a Ferrari into an electric car would probably be. The local ham radio club once held a field day event in her yard while running off of her solar power and presumably with antennas temporarily set up everywhere (I missed the event myself).
There are also some ranches that do not have power lines anywhere near where they live. They had been using generators to provide power. Back in the mid-to-late 1980s several of those ranches went to using photovoltaic systems for their power. The generators that they already had were then only used for backup power on cloudy days. When pumping water for their cattle they did not even need any kind of batteries or backup power, because they did not need to be able to pump the water at night. Of course there are other solar homes around here but only a few that are totally self-sufficient or "off the grid." You be the first one to do this, but perhaps you will be able to say you did it differently or better.
It looks to me that when creating Vista, Microsoft must have spent most of their time and energy on the new Windows Vista Content Protection. It is such an amazingly complicated system, that I can easily see why see why it would have taken Microsoft 5 years to create Vista. Most other new features that Microsoft had originally announced would be part of Vista were dropped, along the way, most likely because creating the protected environment for DRM was a difficult enough task by itself.
In Vista, many of the core operating system elements have been extensively reworked in order to provide DRM content protection. Vista goes to great extremes to block the owner of the computer from gaining access to unprotected content in any possible way either in the software or the hardware itself. One example is the extreme measures taken to make sure that computer owners can not access unencrypted content on a user accessible bus. To prevent that, they plan to use 128-bit encryption on the fly at high bandwidth. I don't understand most of the details, but apparently it partly involves keeping the content encrypted as it goes from one hardware component to another. Vista is so insanely paranoid that that it also goes out about 30 times per second polling hardware to try and catch anyone playing games with any component. The system is so incredibly complicated that I don't plan to ever try to understand how it all works.
I also wonder what effect all the extra overhead required for various components will have on hardware requirements. It sounds to me like Windows Vista itself largely was designed to be a secure DRM delivery system that Hollywood and the music industry can trust. Apparently for some reason, Microsoft did not show the same level of effort and paranoia in making Vista computers secure? Apparently protecting user's privacy is not as important. Below are three articles that are critical of the effect that the various new Windows Vista DRM features might have on hardware requirements. At the top of the first two articles there are also links to mp3 versions that are also available. The last article has already been discussed on Slashdot recently.
One of the CSI type TV shows had an episode where a porn bomb was deliberately emailed to someone as a way to frame that person. In that fictional episode, the porn bomb was sent to a sex offender who was out on probation. It was either sent to his computer or one that he had access to. For some reason,someone had wanted to make it look like he had violated the terms of his parole. In that episode they examined the hard drive and found the original email message with the attached porn bomb. Other methods of accessing a computer and doing something similar might be harder to trace.
The scary thing is, that it might be too easy to frame someone and then somehow tip off law enforcement. I don't know much about the law, but they would probably need to have more than an anonymous tip to have adequate probable cause to break down the door and seize the computer. Even so, with just a little more planning, it might be too easy to frame someone such as a teacher, boss, competitor, enemy, political opponent, ex-husband, new husband or whistle blower. Imagine what could theoretically happen if an ordinary person with a poorly secured computer ever managed to greatly annoy a highly skilled computer expert, hacker or a large corporation.
I watched the 20/20 segment about Matt on ABC. If I heard correctly, I believe they said that the family computer was using Windows 98. I don't really know how well Windows 98 can or can't be secured, but it was not Windows XP with Service Pack II. Does Microsoft still provide security patches for Windows 98? If so were they applied?
A family that is still using Windows 98 does not sound like they are serious computer users. These are probably clueless computers users who don't know the first thing about computer security. I couldn't help but instantly picture this computer that was probably full of spyware and perhaps even a root kit, open ports, unpatched security flaws and who knows what else.
The 20/20 segment also mentioned that Matt agreed to take a lie detector test and passed the test. Even after he passed the polygraph exam the prosecutor continued to press charges.
Their lawyer eventually had computer expert Tammi Loehrs look at the hard drive. On the ABC website, it says that she found "... more than 200 infected files, so-called backdoors that allowed hackers to access the family computer from remote locations...." On the show someone suggested that someone may have preferred to stash those files on the Bandy family computer instead of storing it on his own.
By the way, according to a recent New York Times article, an estimated 11 percent of all computers are zombie computers that are part botnets spewing out spam. So law enforcement and prosecutors should start with always asking who else might be controlling the computer.
I mostly use my Linux box at home and do my best to try to keep it sure. I download the latest security updates regularly, I keep all TCP/IP ports closed and fully stealth. We also have a Windows XP SP II laptop that connects to the wireless router with 802.11g, but we do use WPA encryption with a very long non-random password. Both computers use the latest version of Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file to block advertising URLs. Some people think I am too paranoid, but after seeing the 20/20 segment on ABC, I can't help thinking, "I hope I haven't missed anything."
If someone ever wants to frame or discredit someone, now we know, all they need to do is send a few child porn photos to that person's less than perfectly secured computer and then somehow tip off law enforcement.
I have on several occasions tried to give several security tips to average computer users about using WiFi host spots. In two instances, I barely got started before they complained that I was talking way over their head and had used unfamiliar jargon such as browsers, IE, cookies, packet sniffing, encryption and phishing. It was clear that they did not not even want to try to understand what to understand what I was trying to warn them about. They just wanted to access their email and do their on-line banking. It would be scary having some people like that in a jury in a case like that. They could easily understand the idea of someone illegally downloading child porn but not the alternative explanations of how the files got there.
That reminds me of some scenes in the movie "Idiocracy". In that movie, for the last 500 years, the dumb people in the world have been having more children than the smart people. The smart people would postpone marriage and children until they complete college and establish their careers and can afford children. By then in many cases they are less fertile. By contrast the dumb people supposedly don't worry about when they can afford to have children and frequently forget to use birth control methods so they out breeded the smarter people. After 500 years, the average IQ has fallen to an amazingly low level.
In a forgotten suspended animation experiment conducted by they Army, a soldier and a civilian hooker were test subjects who accidentally end up in suspended animation for about 500 years. After waking up, he went to a hospital but was not able to pay the hospital bill because he did not have a bar code on his forearm. He was arrested and put on trail for being un-scannable and for not paying his hospital bill. In court, he said that he was not guilty and tried to explain the Army suspended animation experiment that that he had been part of. They did not even understand much of anything that he was talking about. The prosecutor used a more effective simplistic emotionally charged strategy with little consistent logic. The jury found him guilty but he soon managed to escape from the poorly run jail.
After being recaptured and booked in jail again they discovered that he was the smartest guy in the world, so he was released and sent to the White House to become secretary of the Interior and was asked to figure out why the crops weren't growing. With the help of the hooker, they came up with the outlandish idea of watering the plants. One week after trying that, the plants had not yet grown noticeably. For reasons that I won't bother explaining, watering plants with water resulted in millions of employees of the Brondo sports drink corporation being laid off. Mobs of angry unemployed people soon appeared and he was placed on trial. He used his best logic to try to explain everything in the televised court trial. He was sentenced to death by being crushed by monster trucks on live TV, but fortunately the plants finally started to grow just in time. He soon learned to to talk dumb and properly connect with average voters and was elected president of the United States. Rita the hooker became first lady.
It was a good movie with many that in many ways reminds me of how advertising, politicians and perhaps even the courts sometimes act in real life.
Prosecutors, police and lawmakers all seem to be making the assumption that computer owners should be responsible for everything that is sent to and from the Internet. Yet, we have average people with little knowledge of computer security who are using hard to secure Windows computers. A large percentage of all Windows computer have been infected by spyware or browser hijackers or have had back doors placed in them my hackers or the malware itself. A recent New York Times article was titled the Attack of the Zombie Computers Is Growing Threat. It says that "botnet programs are present on about 11 percent of the more than 650 million computers attached to the Internet". Most of those zombie computers are probably spewing out spam for porn, pump-and-dump stock schemes, or illegal activities such as phishing schemes that steal peoples charge card numbers or passwords. Should those 70 million Windows computer owners around the world also be arrested and sentenced to years or decades in prison?
Last night on ABC, on TV, I saw a 20/20 segment about "Prison Time For Viewing Porn". In that case a teenage boy was facing the possibility of 90 years in prison because several child porn files that were found on the family computer. Police pounded on the door of their Phoenix home at 6:00 a.m. and seized the family computer. The sixteen-year-old boy offered to take a lie detector test and passed the test, but prosecutors continued to press charges. A computer expert later looked at the hard drive and found more than 200 infected files and back doors that allowed hackers to access the family computer from remote locations. Most likely someone else used the insecure Bandy family computer as a place to store the files which they did not dare store it on their own computer.
I have heard that many computer repair people spend much of their time removing spyware from computers belonging to people who complain that computers are running slowly. Prosecutors and police should take into account that these people were not using a more secure operating system such as MAC OS X, Linux or BSD. However, security problems or other misleading circumstances can occur when using Mac, Linux, or BSD. For instance, I use Linux and when I find an interesting website with various interesting Linux, ham radio, solar energy or nutrition related files, I occasionally use the wget command to download most of what is on that web page. I latter frequently am surprised to discover that the wget command also downloaded hundreds of pictures of New England covered bridges or family photos too. I most would most likely not notice if child porn photos had also automatically been downloaded into an obscure subdirectory.
How can law makers, police, prosecutors and child protection supporters seriously suggest holding people accountable for what is found computers without outlawing the use of Windows first? Furthermore, where I live the local cable companies provide their customers with broadband routers which are wide open to being used by nighbors by default. The telephone company where I live provides wireless routers which by default use insecure WEP encryption method. About half of all wireless networks do not have any security enabled and many of the others just use WEP or are still using the defalt SSID and password. Many people also do not use antivirus software, spyware removal software, properly secured firewalls or the latest security updates. Even with Windows security patches installed there are frequently unpatched zero-day exploits out there such as the one for Word documents that Microsoft failed to patch earlier this week on "patch Tuesday." How can police and lawmakers seriously suggest holding people accountable for what is on people computers in these circumstances.
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Ooops, I accidentally posted almost the same post twice. Sorry about that, I had only intended to post one of the two versions of the message.
Back in the early 1970s my first car had large knobs and levers designed to be easily operated by someone wearing thick winter gloves without taking their eyes off the road. By comparison, many of the electronic gadgets in modern cars seem to require taking my eyes off of the road, at least briefly, while thinking about some complicated task. All the unnecessary complexity can also be a problem when I occasionally fly somewhere and have to rent a car. There is now too much of a learning curve for all the fancy electronic gadgets to make renting a car an enjoyable experience. At home I happily drive an old early 1990's full sized pickup which does not have power locks, power windows or automatic anything. I don't even mind using keys and almost always easily get the key in the keyhole in the first fraction of a second. For me, an old fashioned key is just as fast as a remote controlled door lock.
I am not totally anti-electronics, I have built several of my own computers and installed both Windows and Linux on them. I also have a general class ham radio license. When backpacking or hiking, I occasionally even navigate to remote places with a GPS unit and a topo map. I just do not want to have all the unnecessary complexity in my truck or car. For me simpler is better.
I also get a strange satisfaction in the fact that overly gadget dependant GPS using people who visit me soon discover that their GPS units are wrong about where I live. They punch in my address and are either told that there is no such place or they are sent to a spot in the middle of an intersection about 1,000 feet or so south of where I actually live. By now you have probably guessed that I am a 50+ years old person who is not part of the generation who likes that kind of stuff.
I live in Arizona and we do not go on daylight savings time. When installing Linux or Windows on a computer, the installation program always asks what time zone I am in and Arizona is listed as a separate time zone. When Arizona is selected the time never changes. My two computers can just continue ignoring the annual time zone changes like they always have.
Ooops, looking at the specs, I see that the power supply is 85% efficient (not 83% efficient). I just wanted to correct that minor detail.
The power plug on my desktop computer is plugged into to a Kill-A-Watt Watt meter which shows that I am using 94 Watts at the moment. My large 19 inch monitor uses a different power cord and is using additional power not included in that figure. I have an older socket 939 version of the AMD-64 3800+ which, when running a 64-bit version of Linux, throttles the CPU back to 1 GHz during light usage to save power. Under heavy usage it goes up to its full 2.4 GHz speed and uses significantly more power then. I don't have Windows XP on this computer, but my guess would be that it would probably do the same thing. It has not sure how the AMD-64's energy efficiency compares to Intel or other AMD processors. I am not a gamer and am using an ordinary video card that probably isn't very power hungry and doesn't even have a fan. The computer's power supply is the 83% efficient Antec Phantom 350 power supply, which is an energy efficient fanless 350 Watt model that Antec used to make. I also have 2 very large hard drives and 1 GB of RAM.
I haven't yet had a chance to read the article, but decided to post my power usage for comparison. A laptop would probably use even less power.
Several companies already make RFID blocking wallets. Presumably something similar could easily be designed for ID badges. I don't know for sure, but the wallets are probably lined in a way to make it act like a Faraday cage. Here are examples of RFID blocking wallets:
I was taking a part time college class at a Junior College several years ago. The students social security number was printed on the class schedule that each student carried around with them on the first day of class. On the first day, there were misplaced class schedules laying on the ground and on desks all around the campus. Nobody seemed too concerned. I don't know if the local junior college still does that or not.
Back in the 1970's, I got an Arizona drivers license shortly after moving to Arizona. Back then, by default, they would use the social security number as the drivers license number unless the applicant specifically asked them not to. My social security number was on my drivers license for over 30 years. ATM machines did not yet exist in grocery stores or small shops, so checks were typically used to pay. When cashing a check they would typically ask for a drivers license and write the drivers license number on the check. Over a few decades, that would be thousands of checks, per person, with the social security number on them. A few years ago, I went over to the department of motor vehicles and had them change my drivers license number to something other than the social security number.
For many years, the envelope for my monthly medical insurance bill always asked me to write my account number under the return address on the outside of the envelope. My account number was my social security number and I always hated having to write that on the outside of the envelope. They finally stopped using my social security number as my account number a few years ago and also stopped asking me to write it under the return address on the outside of the envelope.
A few decades ago most people also kept their social security card in their wallet. Some people still do, even though wallets are frequently lost or stolen.
For many years, identity theft was very rare and there was very little effort to keep social security numbers secret. So after decades of not keeping them secret everyone is now being told that they need to keep them secret. Who's idea was it to start using something that had never been very secret for identification purposes? Knowing a social security number or a mother's maiden name should never have been considered to be proof that someone is who they say they are.
Fortunately, I have never been the victim of identity theft other than one minor instance of having one fraudulent charge on a charge card a few years ago.
Here a several other possible scenarios. suppose an employee of the store, where the software had originally been purchased, had already secretly opened and installed the the software. He then had posted the key on the Internet several weeks before someone else purchased the software. A few stores even have their own shrink wrap machines that they use on returned hardware, so he might have shrink wrapped the software again before putting it back on the shelf.
Here is another alternative. Suppose some woman had purchased the software. Her ex-boyfriend or one of her children's friends might have secretly borrowed the installation CD and installed it on another computer and posted her key on the Internet. Then, after upgrading to a new computer she might have later reinstalled the software. She then looses her small business accounting records and the novel she had been writing for the last 6 months. The ex-boyfriend who was the actual pirate would lose nothing.
The software could also have been received as a Christmas gift. The gift giver might have already opened the software, installed it and shared the key. Perhaps the gift might have even come from a vengeful ex-spouse who knew what would happen to their computer.
These are also possible problems with trying to act as judge and jury and delivering mindless automated punishment to the supposed software pirates,
Another alternative might be to electronically duplicate the a persons brain, memories and all. The next step would be to transplant the electronic brain into an android. Another alternative to becoming an android would be to transplant a person's consciousness into a computer generated virtual world. Other electronically cloned people could also be placed there too after they die. Of course if someone already believes in life after death, an electronically generated virtual heaven might be unnecessary and redundant. Personally, I sort of believe in reincarnation (more or less). However, I do not belong to any particular religion. Since I am not really sure an electronically generated virtual heaven might be a saver bet. Actually, the thought of just dieing someday doesn't really bother me so I don't feel the need to try very hard to avoid death.
I haven't yet read the article, but perhaps they could take a recently deceased persons brain and after freezing it, maybe they could disassemble in neuron by neuron with micromachines to somehow extract the persons memories and neural connections. Then they could transplant it to a some kind of "neural net". There is also the question of whether the person's soul is something separate and possibly in addition to a person's memories. If the soul decided not to come along, there might be difficulties in creating a full normal working intelligence in the electronic brain.
My AMD 64 3800+ has FreeDOS on the 2nd partition of my 1st hard drive. It is formatted as a FAT-16 partition. It is one of the choices on the GRUB boot menu. I only boot up DOS every once in a while, but it does run on my AMD 64 computer. About a year ago or so ago I had IBM PC DOS 2000 installed on the 1st partion which also ran well. I later reformatted that partition as NTFS and installed Windows 2000 on my first partition instead. I still have FreeDOS on the 2nd partition. I have Slackware Linux installed on my 3rd partition and in that case I have 32-bit version of Linux running on a 64-bit computer. On a logical partition I have the AMD-64 version of Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) Linux which is what I like best and use most of the time.
An easier way to run an old DOS program under Linux or Windows would be to just use the free DOSBox program. In the past, I also used VMWare and had PC DOS 2000 installed on one the the virtual machines. With VMWare I was able to run Linux, Windows and DOS all at once.
I also live in Arizona where we don't have daylight savings time (except for the Navajo Indian reservation). Over the years, I have sometimes looked up television listings on-line and their listings were frequently off by one hour. On at least one major website, the Arizona television listings have been incorrect for years (for much of the year). I have heard that there is a town on the Navajo reservation where only part of the town is on the reservation. In that town, the part that is on the reservation goes on daylight savings time while the rest of the town does not. That could be confusing.
When installing either Windows or Linux on a computer Arizona is listed as a separate time zone. Of course, on the Internet we are connected to websites outside of Arizona where the daylight-saving bug might possibly still affect us too. In other words, it will be just like normal for us, the out of state web sites will sometimes be wrong by one hour just like normal. I wonder if the RIAA and the various ISPs have ever made time zone errors when trying to identify illegal file sharers? There could be multiple computers some of which might even be in unusual parts of time zones.
It is ironic how much bad publicity the church of Scientology has generated for itself by these repeated attempts to punish and silence Keith Henson. Like many Slashdot readers, I had barely heard of the church of Scientology. This discussion about the arrest of Keith Henson is my first real source of information about Scientologists. They may have won several battles in the court room against Keith Henson, but in doing so, lost several major battles for public opinion. Is publicity like this what they want people to know about their organization?
Back in the 1970s, I was once a member of the L-5 society but never attended any of their meetings. I just enjoyed reading about the ideas presented in their monthly newsletter. Keith Henson was a co-founder of that organization. I vaguely remember the name Keith Henson, but had never met him. L-5 Society members could probably be considered to be a bunch of overly optimistic technology enthusiasts who wanted to promote the idea of building self-sufficient cities in space using existing technology. It was an intriguing vision of the future which never happened and probably won't happen within my lifetime. They were an idealistic bunch of engineers, scientists and, what we would now call geeks, who in their own way wanted to try to build a better world. So imagine my surprise at reading on Slashdot that Keith Henson was a Scientology critic who had just been arrested a few miles away from where I live here in the quiet little town of Prescott, Arizona.
So far, I still don't know very much about the church of Scientology, but here is the general sense of what I have have learned today so far on Slashdot and the various links. The church of Scientology is allegedly a rich and vengeful religious cult. They apparently have lawyers who are ready to sue their critics. The church was founded by a science fiction author. People can be sued for excerpting their scriptures (are they copyrighted?). I don't know it that is a totally accurate picture or not, but that is the general impression that I get by following the news stories about Keith's arrest. If other readers are reacting the same way, then it looks like the church of Scientology may have won in court, but in doing so has generated lots of bad publicity. At least in that sense they have lost. They may have only turned Keith Henson into a martyr and symbol for the Scientology critics?
I saw a link to the "Henson Legal Support Fund" and my contribution check is now in the mail to help pay for his defense.
Vista has gone to great extremes to achieve digital content management. The Vista DRM requirements will greatly affect the design of video cards, monitors, HD-DVDs and other computer hardware in the near future. Microsoft seems to have really gone overboard to try to satisfy all of Hollywood and the music studios fears about computer owners somehow managing to access unencrypted protected content. Windows itself seems to have been designed as a digital content delivery system. Personally, I would have prefered to see a small seperate dedicated box of some kind use for that purpose instead of redisigning the Windows operating system and the computer hardware so drastically for that purpose. Here are two transcripts which talk about Vista DRM. At the top of each transcript there is also a free MP3 version available.
Hollywood, the music industry and Microsoft all seem to think that they should have the right to reach into people home computers and tell the computer owners what they can and can't do. As mentioned recently on Slashdot, the RIAA is now acting much like 17th century French button makers. It is almost as if the same people had been reincarnated again and are back again.
History Repeats Itself: How The RIAA Is Like 17th Century French Button-Makers
High speed Internet connections only recently became available where I live. The local telephone lines in my neighborhood were only good for 26.4K even though I had a 56K modem. I was unable to get cable, but recently the telephone company finally made 1.5 Mbps DSL connections available here (7 Mbps DSL is also now available). What will the bandwidth requirements be for watching this future on-line video content at an appropriate resolution? What resolution will I need for my 13 inch television when watching from my usual chair 14 feet away?.
With Windows Vista, Microsoft seems to have made a huge effort to re-engineer Windows as a secure DRM delivery mechanism that Hollywood and the music studios can trust. Bill Gates is probably hoping that we will all soon be using Windows to watch high-definition protected content on HD-DVDs or to watch online video content. He may eventually be right about that, but personally, I would rather use a separate small dedicated box for that purpose, not a Windows PC. It is doubtful that my Linux PC will be trusted by Hollywood to download their highest definition video content anyway, so for me a small separate box of some type would probably be the way to go.
Here are two links that show the extremes that Microsoft has gone to in adding digital rights management to VistaI wonder how effective ordinary antivirus programs or spyware removal programs are on Zombie computers? Ad-Aware is one example of a spyware removal program for Windows. To help avoid problems in the first place, I have always used a properly configured firewall either on the computer or router (or both) to block access to TCP/IP ports. I occasionally check my firewall by going to grc.com and having the Shields Up test done. After going to their web page I click on ShieldsUP!, then "Proceed," then "Continue," then "All Service Ports."
On both the Windnows and Linux computers I also use the latest version of Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file to block many of the known advertising related URLs. I don't know to what extent that might or might not possibly be helpful in preventing problems. It is mainly intended to block certain kinds of ads.
I also regularly download the latest security updates for both the Windows and Linux computers. Most people only do spyware and antivirus checking their Windows computers, not their Linux boxes. There are actually a few anti-virus programs for Linux but there aren't yet any Linux viruses successfully circulating in the wild. At home, I only send and receive email from my Linux box, because it is probably safer. I also use the Linux box for the majority of my web browsing. I do use the netstat command once in a while to see what TCP/IP communication is going on. But anyway, I am not a computer professional, those are just a few thoughts from a paranoid home computer user. I haven't yet learned how to do some other security measures such as reading security log files or detecting rootkits. I also haven't yet got around to learning to use the netstat command under linux or packet sniffers.
I am not a computer professional and definately am not an expert on that type of thing, but either the netstat command or the free TCPView utility might be useful. Either one can be used to provide information about what is connecting to what on your TCP or UDP ports. The netstat command exists on Windows, Mac, Linux and Unix computers. The free TCPView program is a free Windows only GUI version of the netstat command. I mostly use Linux at home, so I rarely ever to use Windows utilities like TCPView myself.
There are probably other additional methods that could also be used.
If the comics that Microsoft comes out with are not funny enough perhaps other people should try to create their own more amusing alternative comic advertisements. They could be done in a style that is somewhat similar to the comics that Microsoft hands out. They could be a spoof of the Microsoft comics. Of course when doing a spoof they should probably check how to best do that legally.
The comic might start out with an employee of some unmentioned software company lecturing some children about how using pirated software is stealing. He would then ask the children what they would do if they owned a computer and WGA discovered discovered that their were not using a genuine version of Windows Vista and would only let them connect to the Internet for one hour at a time. A young boy might then raise his hand, and say "one hour would be just enough time to download a free copy of Ubuntu Linux. I could stay legal by using free GPL licensed software instead." A young girl might then raise her hand and say something like this. "There are hundreds of properly licenced free Linux programs that you could then easily dowload and easily installed using Synaptic (with a screenshot of Synaptic in the background). It is a complete alternative ecosystem of free GPL software." The first boy might then add that "their is also tons of properly licensed free GPL software for Windows users too. In the final frame of the comic another resposible adult might give this final moral advice (as the disapproving exasperated software company employee looks on). "Don't be a software pirate, if you can't afford to pay for commercial software use the free properly licensed GPL software instead."
Underneath the comic strip it might metion that this comic strip was created with the following properly licensed free software:
Near the bottom of the comic strip there might also be something about this comic strip having been released under the Creative Commons license. "So feel free copy make copies of this comic stip and share them with your friends at school."
Don't be a software pirate, stay legal and properly licensed by using the various free open source GPL licensed programs instead that are also available in Windows versions. Many of the best free GPL licensed open source programs which have been developed for Linux users have also been released in Windows versions. Not everyone is ready yet to move from Windows to a free GPL licensed alternative such as Ubuntu Linux. For them, a first step to freedom would be to keep on using a properly licensed copy of Windows, but to start using the various free GPL licensed alternatives to their various favorite programs. Someday, if they decide to move to a totally free operating system such as Linux they will then be able to use the Linux versions of those same programs. There is now an amazingly large complete alternative free software ecosystem of free GPL licenced software legally available for free to everyone.
Here are just a few examples of free (mostly GPL licensed) programs which are also available in Windows versions:
LEDs are extremely efficient, but in most cases aren't as bright as an ordinary light bulb. The box of ordinary 100 Watt light bulbs that I am looking at says they put out 1690 lumens while using 100 Watts. By comparison, one example of a 30 LED spotlight says that it puts out 150 lumens while only using 4.4 Watts. Perhaps someone could just use more of them, but even then the light they put out is usually a shade of white that seems harsher and less attractive looking. They are very efficient, although I don't know how they compare to fluorescent lights. Many cities are switching to LED light bulbs for their street lights, not so much because of electrical efficiency, but because they don't like having to change light bulbs regularly in such inconvenient hard to reach locations. LED light bulbs last for many years. Here are several examples of LED lightbulbs:
When backpacking, I use a Pak-Lite Flashlight. I could use that flashlight all night (at least on the low setting) without worrying about the batteries going dead. When hiking late in the afternoon I always keep a small Pak-Lite in my pocket, just in case I don't make it back before dark. Back in the early 1990s, I was backpacking with a friend over night here in a remote part of the mountains of Northern Arizona. At about 9:00 p.m. the young man and a somewhat older woman came stumbling through the dark came up to our camp sight. They did not have a flashlight and were out of water and were lost. They asked which way the campground was and he said that his new wife and some other relatives were camping down in the campground. The woman was his new mother-in-law and this was the first hike she had ever been on in her life. They had made a wrong turn on the poorly maintained hard to follow trail and got lost. We refilled their water bottle, loaned them an extra flashlight and sent them down the trail in the correct direction. That was back before the days of LED flashlights. The flashlight that I loaned them must have gone dead before they made it back, because the next day I found the flashlight laying on my truck with a thank you note. I noticed that the batteries were dead. So when starting a long hike late in the afternoon I now always keep a tiny 9-volt LED flashlight in my pocket and take some water too so that I don't end up lost in the dark and thirsty like them.
The LED flashlight would be great for use during hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or the usual ordinary power failures that are caused by summer thunder storms every summer.
I visited two local homes back in 2000 which were totally solar powered and heated. This is a small city up in the mountains of Northern Arizona. One of the homes was totally off the grid and the other sold her excess electricity back to the power company. If I remember correctly, the guy who owned the first home used some type of passive solar system for heating his house and also had several photovltaic panels. He carefully chose energy efficient appliances so that his need for electric did not exceed what his small photovoltaic system would provide. He also had some type of solar hot water heater. The mountains of Northern Arizona are a good place for solar energy because we have lots of reliable sunshine and at this altitude we also have a significant need for heat.
The second solar house has what (at least at the time) probably the largest array of solar photovoltaic panels on the roof of any house in the country. She told that she had once converted her Ferrari into an electric car and that her array of photovoltaic panels was large enough to charge her car up. I didn't think to ask how many miles per week that allowed her to drive. She showed me how her electric meter was running backwards. She explained that meant that she was selling electricity back to the power company at the moment. She also had several unusually large deep cycle lead/acid batteries which she used to store electricity for nighttime use. Of course she also had a solar hot water heater and solar heating panels filled with antifreeze used to heat the house. She wanted to build another electric car sometime, I don't know if she or her new husband ever did or not.
She was also a ham radio operator and many hams like have some kind of back-up power for their radios for use during emergencies such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. Her solar system's deep cycle lead/acid batteries provided emergency backup power for both her HF rig and her 2-meter/440 radio. She had her own private airstrip in the front yard of her ranch and raised chickens in her back yard. She seemed like a likable but somewhat eccentric woman, as anyone who would convert a Ferrari into an electric car would probably be. The local ham radio club once held a field day event in her yard while running off of her solar power and presumably with antennas temporarily set up everywhere (I missed the event myself).
There are also some ranches that do not have power lines anywhere near where they live. They had been using generators to provide power. Back in the mid-to-late 1980s several of those ranches went to using photovoltaic systems for their power. The generators that they already had were then only used for backup power on cloudy days. When pumping water for their cattle they did not even need any kind of batteries or backup power, because they did not need to be able to pump the water at night. Of course there are other solar homes around here but only a few that are totally self-sufficient or "off the grid." You be the first one to do this, but perhaps you will be able to say you did it differently or better.
It looks to me that when creating Vista, Microsoft must have spent most of their time and energy on the new Windows Vista Content Protection. It is such an amazingly complicated system, that I can easily see why see why it would have taken Microsoft 5 years to create Vista. Most other new features that Microsoft had originally announced would be part of Vista were dropped, along the way, most likely because creating the protected environment for DRM was a difficult enough task by itself.
In Vista, many of the core operating system elements have been extensively reworked in order to provide DRM content protection. Vista goes to great extremes to block the owner of the computer from gaining access to unprotected content in any possible way either in the software or the hardware itself. One example is the extreme measures taken to make sure that computer owners can not access unencrypted content on a user accessible bus. To prevent that, they plan to use 128-bit encryption on the fly at high bandwidth. I don't understand most of the details, but apparently it partly involves keeping the content encrypted as it goes from one hardware component to another. Vista is so insanely paranoid that that it also goes out about 30 times per second polling hardware to try and catch anyone playing games with any component. The system is so incredibly complicated that I don't plan to ever try to understand how it all works.
I also wonder what effect all the extra overhead required for various components will have on hardware requirements. It sounds to me like Windows Vista itself largely was designed to be a secure DRM delivery system that Hollywood and the music industry can trust. Apparently for some reason, Microsoft did not show the same level of effort and paranoia in making Vista computers secure? Apparently protecting user's privacy is not as important. Below are three articles that are critical of the effect that the various new Windows Vista DRM features might have on hardware requirements. At the top of the first two articles there are also links to mp3 versions that are also available. The last article has already been discussed on Slashdot recently.
One of the CSI type TV shows had an episode where a porn bomb was deliberately emailed to someone as a way to frame that person. In that fictional episode, the porn bomb was sent to a sex offender who was out on probation. It was either sent to his computer or one that he had access to. For some reason,someone had wanted to make it look like he had violated the terms of his parole. In that episode they examined the hard drive and found the original email message with the attached porn bomb. Other methods of accessing a computer and doing something similar might be harder to trace.
The scary thing is, that it might be too easy to frame someone and then somehow tip off law enforcement. I don't know much about the law, but they would probably need to have more than an anonymous tip to have adequate probable cause to break down the door and seize the computer. Even so, with just a little more planning, it might be too easy to frame someone such as a teacher, boss, competitor, enemy, political opponent, ex-husband, new husband or whistle blower. Imagine what could theoretically happen if an ordinary person with a poorly secured computer ever managed to greatly annoy a highly skilled computer expert, hacker or a large corporation.
I watched the 20/20 segment about Matt on ABC. If I heard correctly, I believe they said that the family computer was using Windows 98. I don't really know how well Windows 98 can or can't be secured, but it was not Windows XP with Service Pack II. Does Microsoft still provide security patches for Windows 98? If so were they applied?
A family that is still using Windows 98 does not sound like they are serious computer users. These are probably clueless computers users who don't know the first thing about computer security. I couldn't help but instantly picture this computer that was probably full of spyware and perhaps even a root kit, open ports, unpatched security flaws and who knows what else.
The 20/20 segment also mentioned that Matt agreed to take a lie detector test and passed the test. Even after he passed the polygraph exam the prosecutor continued to press charges.
Their lawyer eventually had computer expert Tammi Loehrs look at the hard drive. On the ABC website, it says that she found "... more than 200 infected files, so-called backdoors that allowed hackers to access the family computer from remote locations ... ." On the show someone suggested that someone may have preferred to stash those files on the Bandy family computer instead of storing it on his own.
By the way, according to a recent New York Times article, an estimated 11 percent of all computers are zombie computers that are part botnets spewing out spam. So law enforcement and prosecutors should start with always asking who else might be controlling the computer.
I mostly use my Linux box at home and do my best to try to keep it sure. I download the latest security updates regularly, I keep all TCP/IP ports closed and fully stealth. We also have a Windows XP SP II laptop that connects to the wireless router with 802.11g, but we do use WPA encryption with a very long non-random password. Both computers use the latest version of Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file to block advertising URLs. Some people think I am too paranoid, but after seeing the 20/20 segment on ABC, I can't help thinking, "I hope I haven't missed anything."
If someone ever wants to frame or discredit someone, now we know, all they need to do is send a few child porn photos to that person's less than perfectly secured computer and then somehow tip off law enforcement.
I have on several occasions tried to give several security tips to average computer users about using WiFi host spots. In two instances, I barely got started before they complained that I was talking way over their head and had used unfamiliar jargon such as browsers, IE, cookies, packet sniffing, encryption and phishing. It was clear that they did not not even want to try to understand what to understand what I was trying to warn them about. They just wanted to access their email and do their on-line banking. It would be scary having some people like that in a jury in a case like that. They could easily understand the idea of someone illegally downloading child porn but not the alternative explanations of how the files got there.
That reminds me of some scenes in the movie "Idiocracy". In that movie, for the last 500 years, the dumb people in the world have been having more children than the smart people. The smart people would postpone marriage and children until they complete college and establish their careers and can afford children. By then in many cases they are less fertile. By contrast the dumb people supposedly don't worry about when they can afford to have children and frequently forget to use birth control methods so they out breeded the smarter people. After 500 years, the average IQ has fallen to an amazingly low level.
In a forgotten suspended animation experiment conducted by they Army, a soldier and a civilian hooker were test subjects who accidentally end up in suspended animation for about 500 years. After waking up, he went to a hospital but was not able to pay the hospital bill because he did not have a bar code on his forearm. He was arrested and put on trail for being un-scannable and for not paying his hospital bill. In court, he said that he was not guilty and tried to explain the Army suspended animation experiment that that he had been part of. They did not even understand much of anything that he was talking about. The prosecutor used a more effective simplistic emotionally charged strategy with little consistent logic. The jury found him guilty but he soon managed to escape from the poorly run jail.
After being recaptured and booked in jail again they discovered that he was the smartest guy in the world, so he was released and sent to the White House to become secretary of the Interior and was asked to figure out why the crops weren't growing. With the help of the hooker, they came up with the outlandish idea of watering the plants. One week after trying that, the plants had not yet grown noticeably. For reasons that I won't bother explaining, watering plants with water resulted in millions of employees of the Brondo sports drink corporation being laid off. Mobs of angry unemployed people soon appeared and he was placed on trial. He used his best logic to try to explain everything in the televised court trial. He was sentenced to death by being crushed by monster trucks on live TV, but fortunately the plants finally started to grow just in time. He soon learned to to talk dumb and properly connect with average voters and was elected president of the United States. Rita the hooker became first lady.
It was a good movie with many that in many ways reminds me of how advertising, politicians and perhaps even the courts sometimes act in real life.
Prosecutors, police and lawmakers all seem to be making the assumption that computer owners should be responsible for everything that is sent to and from the Internet. Yet, we have average people with little knowledge of computer security who are using hard to secure Windows computers. A large percentage of all Windows computer have been infected by spyware or browser hijackers or have had back doors placed in them my hackers or the malware itself. A recent New York Times article was titled the Attack of the Zombie Computers Is Growing Threat. It says that "botnet programs are present on about 11 percent of the more than 650 million computers attached to the Internet". Most of those zombie computers are probably spewing out spam for porn, pump-and-dump stock schemes, or illegal activities such as phishing schemes that steal peoples charge card numbers or passwords. Should those 70 million Windows computer owners around the world also be arrested and sentenced to years or decades in prison?
Last night on ABC, on TV, I saw a 20/20 segment about "Prison Time For Viewing Porn". In that case a teenage boy was facing the possibility of 90 years in prison because several child porn files that were found on the family computer. Police pounded on the door of their Phoenix home at 6:00 a.m. and seized the family computer. The sixteen-year-old boy offered to take a lie detector test and passed the test, but prosecutors continued to press charges. A computer expert later looked at the hard drive and found more than 200 infected files and back doors that allowed hackers to access the family computer from remote locations. Most likely someone else used the insecure Bandy family computer as a place to store the files which they did not dare store it on their own computer.
I have heard that many computer repair people spend much of their time removing spyware from computers belonging to people who complain that computers are running slowly. Prosecutors and police should take into account that these people were not using a more secure operating system such as MAC OS X, Linux or BSD. However, security problems or other misleading circumstances can occur when using Mac, Linux, or BSD. For instance, I use Linux and when I find an interesting website with various interesting Linux, ham radio, solar energy or nutrition related files, I occasionally use the wget command to download most of what is on that web page. I latter frequently am surprised to discover that the wget command also downloaded hundreds of pictures of New England covered bridges or family photos too. I most would most likely not notice if child porn photos had also automatically been downloaded into an obscure subdirectory.
How can law makers, police, prosecutors and child protection supporters seriously suggest holding people accountable for what is found computers without outlawing the use of Windows first? Furthermore, where I live the local cable companies provide their customers with broadband routers which are wide open to being used by nighbors by default. The telephone company where I live provides wireless routers which by default use insecure WEP encryption method. About half of all wireless networks do not have any security enabled and many of the others just use WEP or are still using the defalt SSID and password. Many people also do not use antivirus software, spyware removal software, properly secured firewalls or the latest security updates. Even with Windows security patches installed there are frequently unpatched zero-day exploits out there such as the one for Word documents that Microsoft failed to patch earlier this week on "patch Tuesday." How can police and lawmakers seriously suggest holding people accountable for what is on people computers in these circumstances.