Computer Viruses

In this article, a spokeman for SCO (the ultimate target of today's virulent email worm. MyDoom aka Novarg), Blake Stowell said, "SCO was the victim of three such attacks last year, and one of them was apparently orchestrated by a Linux sympathizer".

"Linux sympathizer" sounds like the language of war. And it seems that is the way that things are. Someone living under the illusion that SCO will not scalp US$695 from each user of the works of Linus Torvalds and Open Source techicians because of some legacy code that themselves are copies of basic techniques invented in the C language. Copyright is protection for publication, and if that is the case, then the Original Unix Manuals were published and have not been infringed upon by Linux. There are no manuals published for Linux.

SCO sympathizers, Microsoft, are once again embattled with yet another vulnerability. It is lucky that Bill Gates has a cure for spam 2 years down the track. Linux developers have in the meantime come up with several. One of these, Spam Assassin works on many of our email hosts.

It works by identifying emails that look like spam, and you guide its behaviour, it learns. We find it works really well.

Virus Attacks

There are two things that are stupid on the internet.

One is Microsoft's ActiveX components that provide a distributed virtual computer that can do things its should not. Windows is proving itself an unsafe internet operating system. It is a great application platform. It is not the best internet connection.

The other is our attitude that it really does not matter.

We click "yes, I accept the terms and conditions" without looking at them. (As if we had the time to read countless legal agreements).

We click on attachments to emails if we are advised in technical language and shut off, don't register, or feel embaressed that we did not understand it. Don't worry, your boss don't understand it neither.

We watch in disbelief as a programme happily follows its instructions and inflicts venom that eats your time and does the same favour to all your friends?

You can protect yourself, but the bugs are working hard on finding a way through defences. The best defence is behavioural.

Use Solaris, Linux or Mac OS X for internet access and put a firewall between it and your internal network. Do not expose Microsoft networks to the internet. For the time being, that is a safer option.

The problem is that Windows provides an insecure network infrastructure. Software fixes and internet viruses are the same thing with different intentions. Either one can be marketted to us as the other. We accept the packaging and glossy marketing as some kind of authority?

Black box operating systems give us alchemy and anarchy.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft's software targets TVs

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New York Times | Future of Portable Video Players

Different views

Steve Jobs muses about personal video players with a contrite smugness. No, Bill, I did not get sucked into that one. Bill Gates sees the dollars and sense in taking over Television, already a medium that ruins most of the art it carries with petty slogans for small ideas.

Jobs saw a market in music that was not being tapped. Napster did it first, then all sorts of illegal services. Jobs took the not too difficult applications and made them an invention of Apple with iPods now possessing the ears like plastic user friendly body snatchers, dial up appendages flauted in the range of colours by geeks as though this were a fashion statement. Thing is, it caught on, and now the iPod is the thing to be caught wearing while daydreaming through a Math lecture. Its an entirely personal revolution. Individuation nivarna. Nobody talks to anybody, everyone secretly dancing, quietly and without external movement.

Meantime Bill is enabling Grandpa to show his home movie efforts on the TV and control what programs the kids watch even when he has fallen asleep. After half an hour napping the TV suddenly plays God Save the King and Grandpa wakes up to program some more hobbies into the little tykes. Meantime they are playing X-Box and watch Grandpa's latest mini epic in the corner of the screen. Or the one that takes a wee bit of interest crashes his pod ans suffers constant derision from the agressive other. The noise dectector wakes up Arnie - the household peace agent CPU. A loud siren goes off, until each person puts his hand on the X-Peace-Out Plate and apologises.

Which world do you want to be a part of?

I prefer a world where machines do what they are told when you tell them to, and they kind of know when its you and when you have stopped using it. And when you are using it, and some else starts using it, they can not pretend to be you or make you do anything or even see you unless you wish to be seen, and then they can see you.

The computer giants are trying to find a new niche product that competes with existing inventions. Why specialise in entertainment as a priority? Computer games. Extending the power of the PC to the Nth degree is a vast market with enless lists of resources required to win. We can not all afford that, so the X-Box - a sort of super graphics speed demon that can serve games, and gee, wouldn't it just be whizz bang if these games could be displayed on the walls of our house. How long before this reality becomes the important one?

Games are more successful when they demand constant attention, especially if they threaten more deadly action as you delay in response.

Apple Review

In The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: It's time to rate Apple's performance in 2003 - a review of Apple's 2003 performance we see the inevitable rise of a Unix implementation done well.

[...]IEEE 802.11g wireless standard, which Apple dubbed AirPort Extreme, and which offers 54 megabits per second of wire-free networking.

Apple kept up the pressure, shipping Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) a year after its Jaguar update, even as Microsoft made it clear that Windows XP's successor might see the light of day in 2006.

[...]Panther wasn't polished enough to be released when it was, causing folks unexpected system problems, hard-drive erasure, and preferences loss, depending on hardware and the features they chose to turn on.

Apple have created a series of versions of their Mac OS X operating systems, each one an expansion and cohesion of the previous, each one fully coherently and fairly seamlessly integrates with earlier Mac OS software, in an ever more zippy and always stable environment. Its is bit of a shock to a Window user. It is nearly as useful as Linux. As an implementation of FreeBSD Linux, its very stable and rather superb at networking.

So a few applications crashed in OS X 10.2 codenamed Panther, but the fixes accumulated plus a wealth a new applications are included in OS X 10.3 codenamed Jaguar. So, what is with the cute marketing names and what is next? Siamese?

There is a big difference between Linux/Apple style networking and what passes as "networking" in Windows. Simply put, BSD Sockets and its stable network implemetation allows applications to be viewed on one computer while being run on a remote workstation. This allows application sharing or application control redirection, to be more precise.

Windows networking is essentially at two levels, resource sharing (sharing printers, disk drives, etc), and sharing a graphic environment (DirectX, games, video, etc). But to run an application on a remote workstation can be done and some would say that it can be done better.

Any Operating System can be better. Better design, workability and features that always work are essential. The Mac OS X gets it right on both counts.

There is a fault in way Windows works that makes it sometimes not work. That is a supreme time waster. Linux has some very difficult to understand setup task to integratate some software requiring a system adminstrator to set these up for you.

But the Mac OS X makes both levels work immediately. Superb when you are being creative. Wonderful for multimedia and all round good machines.