Blackmoor Vituperative

Microsoft zero-day vulnerabilities are increasingly so commonplace, the risk is lost with the message. On Feb. 2, Microsoft issued another security alert, this one for Excel, that largely went unnoticed.

In its security bulletin, Microsoft warned that “other Office applications are potentially vulnerable” to the zero-day flaw.

Zero-day refers to a flaw for which there is an exploit but no available fix. The Excel vulnerability is Microsoft’s fifth zero-day exploit since December, and part of an increasingly troubling trend.

(from eWeek, New Zero-Day Threat Excels)

Does a house have to fall on you? Anyone still using MS Office after all this time and all these security vulnerabilities probably shouldn’t be permitted to use a computer. Switch to OpenOffice, you blockheads.

An anonymous reader dropped us a link to this New York Times article about a ‘vast expansion’ of DNA sampling here in the US. A little-noticed rider to the January 2006 renewal of the ‘Violence Against Women Act’ allows government agencies to collect DNA samples from any individual arrested by federal authorities, and from every illegal immigrant held for any length of time by US agents. The goal is to make DNA collection as routine a part of detainment as fingerprinting and photography. Privacy experts and immigrant rights groups are decrying this initiative already. Many are also skeptical of lab throughput, as FBI analysts indicate this may increase intake by as much as a million samples per year. There is already a backlog of 150,000 samples waiting to be entered into the agency’s database.

(from Slashdot, US Set on Expansion of Security DNA Collection)

You need to see this movie. Buy it from Amazon or rent it from NetFlix. Don’t bother looking for it at Blockbuster or Wal-Mart — I do not care for seeing art bowdlerized by sniveling moral busybodies, whether its by some blue-vested crone at Wal-Mart or by some middle-aged former soccer-mom in a secret tribunal at MPAA headquarters.

By all means, label things accurately. If it has full frontal nudity, say so. If it has graphic decapitations, say so. But do not have the unmitigated arrogance to tell me what I as an adult may see or buy, or what I as a parent may allow my children to see.

Some will say that what the MPAA, Blockbuster, and Wal-Mart do is not censorship. To that, I say “bullshit”.

See this movie, and watch all of the special features. The deleted scenes are worth watching.

Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison for the crime of using a classroom computer which had been infected by malware.

Oct. 19, 2004, while substituting for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School, Amero claimed she could not control the graphic images appearing in an endless cycle on her computer.

“The pop-ups never went away,” Amero testified. “They were continuous.”

The Web sites, which police proved were accessed while Amero was in the classroom, were seen by as many as 10 minor students. Several of the students testified during the three-day trial in Norwich Superior Court to seeing images of naked men and women.

Computer expert W. Herbert Horner, testifying in Amero’s defense, said he found spyware on the computer and an innocent hair styling Web site “that led to this pornographic loop that was out of control.”

“If you try to get out of it, you’re trapped,” Horner said.

[…]

The six-person jury […] convicted Amero, 40, of Windham of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. It took them less than two hours to decide the verdict. She faces a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.

(from Norwich Bulletin, Teacher guilty in Norwich porn case)

I have said before that most people are too stupid to be allowed near computers. This is not one of those cases: Ms. Amero didn’t own the computer, and it wasn’t her responsibility to maintain it. The fault here lies with the administration of Kelly Middle School. The computer in question should never have been connected to the Internet. Its operating system was out of date, its antivirus software had expired, and the machine itself was infected by numerous pieces of spyware. When she walked into that classroom, there was a ticking bomb on her desk, and it’s the Kelly Middle School administration that is to blame for it.

As for the jury, you can bet your retirement that any potential juror who had any knowledge of computers whatsoever was eliminated during voir dire by the prosecution. Jury ignorance has become the weapon of choice of judges and prosecutors who want to control the outcome of trials. But since the jury pool (prior to voir dire) is selected randomly, there were probably very few such individuals in the first place.

This is a grotesque miscarriage of justice. However, it would be a mistake to think that Ms. Amero’s case is unusual. Miscarriages of justice happen every day: you simply do not hear about most of them.

I’ve been working with Vista since its beta days, and I started using Linux in the mid-’90s. There may be other people who have worked with both more than I have, but there can’t be many of them. Along the way, I’ve formed a strong opinion: Linux is the better of the two.

(from eWeek, Leveling the Playing Field)

Interesting. Academic, since I have no intention of buying Vista at any price, but still, it’s interesting.

A story over at InformationWeek raised our hackles a bit with the headline “Copyright Protection A Boom Business” followed by the summary saying, “Cracking down on piracy contributed to 6.6% of the U.S. gross domestic product in 2006, according to an industry lobbying group.” Just sounds like more typically inflated and ridiculous claims about piracy that regularly stream out from the content industry, which then get presented to legislators as reasons why we need more laws to bolster their aging business models. Just one problem, though: the facts of the story don’t support the headline at all.

(from Techdirt, Copy Protection A ‘Boom Business’, Except When It Isn’t)

Just more lies from the Digital Rights Mafia.