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Chances are, you don't much care for spam. Neither do I and the defense mechanisms I have in place mean that I have to see spam only when I want to review what has landed in the slop bucket. That doesn't make it any less annoying because I know that some of what I spend every year with my Internet service provider and some of what I spend ever year with my Internet presence provider goes to pay for transmission, retention, and delivery of spam.
At the right is a list of spam subject lines from messages I received in 3 hours. There are 158 subject lines there, and that's after I eliminated the duplicates. Suffice to say that the total count was well over 200 for a 3-hour period.
A 24-hour day has 8 3-hour periods, so my daily spam count exceeds 1600 messages.
Probably half or two thirds of these messages contain viruses or Trojan horses. The remaining messages are pitches for bogus drugs or scams that only a fool would fall for.
Of those 1600 messages, about 1200 are definitively identified as spam by Spam Assassin and eliminated. The other 400 or so are examined by Spam Arrest and, with about 99% accuracy, dealt with.
So what I find in the slop bucket is a small percentage of a small percentage of the messages that I receive every day.
But that doesn't make it any less annoying.
A Timely Trap
Regardless of which presidential candidate earned your vote this time around, the creeps and criminals have ways to get your attention and to steal your computer.
Here's a message that claims to be from the "McCain News Center" and the subject is "Barack Obama in Danger - McCain will fight for president post." What's inside?
A message that says:
- McCain lawyer impeach Obama! (Only the House can do that, and only when he has actually been sworn in as president.)
- McCain has reached an agreement with Obama lawyers that makes Obama resignation effective November 11. (Utter nonsense, of course; John McCain has done no such thing.)
- Barack can lost President's Chair. (20-yard penalty for lousy grammar and faulty capitalization.)
- McCain video report 7 November.
It then offers a link for the rest of the story, but only a fool would click it because.
- The listed time zone is Central. Washington, DC, where a story such as this would originate, is in the Eastern time zone.
- The "McCain News Center" says it is located at "usa.com", which is owned by somebody in New Jersey.
- It claims to be from a "2008 USA Government Official Website", but all government websites use the "gov" top-level domain.
Click the link and what you get for your trouble is an infected machine. The link will take you to "serensy.com", which is registered to a (probably fictional) "Greg Kvot" in "Sequew, North Carolina", which does not exist.
You won't get something for nothing. There is no such thing as a free lunch. "Gullible" is still listed in the dictionary. And spam news stories are still hazardous to your computer.
If you really believe that you'll get a Dell XPS laptop for free or that you can obtain an auto warranty for 0% or that generic Cialis exists, you need to have your fraud detection circuit checked.
Collecting Information
"Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one." By today's standards, that's a sexist comment, but it was understandable when A.J. Liebling, an American journalist who lived from 1904 until 1963 and who was closely associated with The New Yorker from 1935 until his death, uttered the comment. The times, as Bob Dylan once said, they are a'changing.
<Nostalgia mode on>
Once upon a time, newspapers were the primary source of information for people. They have been largely supplanted by radio and television. Newspapers are scrambling to find a business model that will work in an Internet age, but it's a challenge. Most newspapers will probably die within the next 15 to 20 years.
Radio and television appeared to be able to fill the void because the Federal Communications Commission required a certain amount of public service programming and until sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, radio stations (even the rock and roll stations) had real news departments with real reporters. That is no longer the case.
And when "consultants" became the leading designers of local news programs on television, the "if it bleeds, it leads" doctrine became firmly entrenched. Anything that is violent, amusing, or photogenic is sure to be on the evening news. If it's substantive (make that "boring" in the vernacular of Joe Sixpack*) it won't be on the news.
* Note: I wrote this segment in late September, well before the vice presidential debate in which Sarah Palin mentioned "Joe Sixpack".
So if you want information, you have to find it on your own.
<Nostalgia mode off>
What Can You Do?
There are still sources of news. Most of the nation's major newspapers have websites and, although the news hole in the papers is constantly shrinking, the websites provide useful information. Often it's free.
New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles newspapers are all available on line, along with newspapers from smaller cities all around the country.
McClatchy newspapers are well worth watching. This is the third-largest newspaper company in the US and it's fiercely independent. McClatchy papers are "steadfast defenders of First Amendment values and advocates for the communities they serve," to use the company's own terms.
But beyond those Web-based resources are others that are well worth visiting. The BBC, NPR, PBS, and others provide useful points of view. And sites such as those by the NY Times international edition (International Herald Tribune) and even unexpected sources such as Fox News and Al Jazeera.
Or maybe you want to be your own editor. In that case, you'll want a program such as RSS Owl. This is an application that reads RSS feeds from the world's media and presents summaries for your review.
In the image above, you'll see that I review news daily from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the McClatchy group, Fox News, The Chicago Tribune, the Columbus Dispatch, Al Jazeera, and more. Everyone has a point of view. An angle. I'm looking for a well-rounded review and RSS Owl helps.
RSS Owl is a cross-platform application, which means that you'll be able to use it with Windows, OS X, Linux, and Solaris. Better still, you can save the configuration file you create on your Windows machine and load it on your Mac or vice versa.
As an open source application, RSS Owl is free to use, although the authors would appreciate your donating to the cause. RSS Owl is one of several applications that collect data from RSS-compliant sites. As such, it's an "aggregator" that allows you gather, organize, update, and store information from any compliant source. RSS has several possible meanings. I consider it to mean "really simple syndication" but others say it means "rich site summary".
Bottom line: The easiest way read news feeds.
It's hard to deny 5 cats to a free application that does exactly what it's supposed to do and does it well. That's a good description of RSS Owl.
For more information, visit the RSS Owl website.
Nerdly News
Not Much Up for Patch Tuesday
This coming Tuesday (the 11th) Microsoft will push only 2 security updates to computers. Of those, only one is rated as "critical" because it responds to a remote code execution vulnerability that affects Microsoft XML Code Services versions 3, 4, and 6 on most versions of Windows.
This week's advance notification included few details, but the remote execution issue is known to affect at least Microsoft Vista, Server 2003, and Server 2008. Also involved in the security hole: Microsoft Office, the Word Viewer 2003, SharePoint Server 2007, and Groove Server 2007.
The second patch also addresses a remote code execution vulnerability, but it is rated only as "important" instead of "critical". This patch will be applied to machines that are running Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, and server 2008.
Microsoft Won't Try Again to Acquire Yahoo
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer could probably buy all existing Yahoo shares with his pocket change, but he says that the company will make no more bids for Yahoo. Yahoo shares are currently valued at less than half of what Microsoft offered for them several months ago. Ballmer said, at a technology conference in Australia, that Microsoft made two specific offers for Yahoo and Yahoo's management didn't want to sell the company. End of story.
Ballmer says that Microsoft had also attempted to partner with Yahoo on search, not advertising, but that didn't work out. "We moved on and they moved on." The phrase "move on" turned up numerous times in his discussion with journalists.
The attempted acquisition, had it been successful, would have been gigantic. But Yahoo turned down an offer of $33 per share. "Move on." The questions came up at the conference because Yahoo, illustrating uncommonly bad timing, has said that it would be willing to talk with Microsoft again now that Google has decided not to pursue a partnership with Yahoo.
Jerry Yang, Yahoo's CEO said "the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo." That would be the best thing for Yahoo, maybe, now that its share price is under $14. For Microsoft, maybe not so smart.
Looking for Spectrum in All the White Spaces
In every part of the country, large parts of the television spectrum are unused. These "white spaces" may be used to develop new versions of WiFi for computer communications. Google and Microsoft are among the companies that have been pushing the idea of allowing use of these parts of the spectrum by unlicensed devices and now the FCC has approved the idea.
Google President of Products Larry Page says new wireless devices operating in unused parts of the television spectrum can usher in widespread fast Internet access that "just works". Needless to say, broadcasters object because they fear that these devices will degrade their broadcast signals.
The advantage for Google is obvious: More use of its advertising business means more money for Google, but Page says part of the motivation is to improve people's lives through better coverage.
The FCC expects the use of these new frequencies to develop about the same way standard WiFi has. Page says hardware developers are already working on chipsets for white-space products and that the first devices could be on the market in 2010.
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