blogx
musings of mark since 2001

Once again, M$ is under the gun with just about every operating system other than Windows DOS, 98, and NT threatened with yet another new virus vulnerability. This one is even on the 5:00 o’clock news as it’s a sly one that causes a buffer overrun (this is the most common Windoze exploit, it’s practically generic in the OS) in the engine that processes JPEG files to infect the machine. Of course, Internet Exploder is affected too and you can get the new virus that turns your machine into a zombie just by visiting an infected web site.

The JPEG image-processing vulnerability is the latest flaw from Microsoft and the source of the company’s 28th advisory this year. Microsoft frequently includes multiple issues in a single advisory; four advisories in April, for example, contained more than 20 vulnerabilities.

The news item goes on about “the jpeg of death” and how the code is available on the internet already. Of course the answer according to M$ is spend more money on their operating system and upgrade. At least they are still supporting (but not for long!) Internet Exploder and you can get a patch for it here.

Glad my parents are sticking with Win98, it’s really all you need for surfing the internet and answering email as long as it’s set up to read email in plain text and ActiveX controls are not set to run automatically. A good firewall like Zone Alarm completes the picture; doesn’t hurt to use a browser like Firefox too instead of constantly updating Internet Exploder. Still hesitant to actually recommend Firefox to anyone that isn’t a power user, as having Netscape or any other Mozilla products that already installed makes the need to remove them to get a clean install of Firefox. The Flash install is easier with a plug in locator that works well for everything so far except QuickTime, but then I had it QT off my system for the past few months anyways and that may have had something to do with it.

According to geekgirl and A Loving Spoonful, in the past 3 years, all babies born in BC to HIV positive mothers are HIV negative. Pregnant women with HIV get treated with medication these days, and mothers are given infant formula so that they don’t spread the virus to their babies via breast milk. That’s a stark contrast to the rest of the world where in 2003 an estimated 700,000 children under the age of 15 became infected with HIV. The vast majority (more than 90%) acquired the infection from their mother.

Not sure if it’s a phenomenon of being in an older house, but there are bats in the belfry at times. First noticed them this morning, two of them coming out from under the eaves of the roof somewhere, swooping out in an arc, pausing almost imperceptibly, and then back over to the roof. Something good to eat for them out there in the early dawn, which was spectacular.

The fog limited itself to the continent, banks of pea soup sliding in and out of West Vancouver’s hills with the rest of the sky turning pink and red. Weather guy has this going all the way through the week for us, nice sleeping weather too.

Chris Corrigan is getting some good Google rolls out of all the places he’s been showing up on the web lately, blogdex.net had a link for a while and other blogs are linking to him and Michael Herman’s Small Change News Network (sCNN). Sounds like a really good idea, but you really have to look to find out where to join up and help out, still haven’t found it myself.

Michael does suggest posting an individual’s answers to these four questions somewhere, here’s mine:

1. What do you want (for the common good)?
   A little more balance and a lot more peace. A lot less mass media controlled by small groups of the super rich, mmmm, blogs come to mind.
2. What do you already have to offer?
   Because it’s for the common good, I would like to do something that I’m good at. One of those things would be helping people with questions about html, css etc., and another would be arbitration. Not sure if my being a Libra has anything to do with it, but have always excelled at sitting on the fence while listening to both sides of an argument from two people, and then working out their differences between them amicably.
3. What do you need from some others?
   Not much, pretty well have everything I need or want; everyone needs more love and that would include moi of course.
4. What are you willing to do with it?
   Give it forward to someone else so they may reap the benefits as well.

Interesting to watch how it all turns out for them, can’t see how it would be anything but good.

What some older folks think is pretty darn amazing; the younger ones of this world see it as just the way things are. Hence the link to this English blogger and his IM from a six year old daughter and a lesson on how easy it is to burn a CD.