This again. Security through obscurity, AKA, bullshit.

Just because your software doesn’t detect a virus/rootkit/malware etc, does not mean you’re not infected. Anti-virus is only one toll that you should have in your armoury ie. a good software firewall such as Zonealarm….malware detection like Spyware Terminator, regular windows updates and good old common sense like not opening unknown emails etc, installing hacked software etc Use WPA-PSK for wireless/hide SSID etc. Use mixed letter number upper/lowercase passwords and even consider hard disk encryption.

So basically, I should run an OS that is by its very design so insecure that I need to do all of that just to be safe? Okay to the strong passwords, and for very sensitive data, encryption, and I’m down with regular updates and some common sense for users (as if that would ever happen), but come on…antivirus (maybe additional online scans just to make sure) and a firewall and anti-spyware? If it takes that much add-on software to render the system reasonably secure–add-on software that is running atop my OS, using my system resources–seems to me that it might be time for a new OS. P.S. WPA has been broken since (at least) last month, and it’s “tool”, not “toll”, you….tool. Also, etc. needs a period after it because it’s an abbreviation. Tool.

I always hear this argument about Linux and Apple being free of viruses. Well, they are not more protected…it’s just that virus writers love attacking Window operating systems more and tend not to attack others. So, don’t fall into this false sense of security.

Bollocks. Those who write malware target Windows for three reasons; it’s the most common OS, has the highest number of clueless users, and….drum roll, please…it’s the least secure and easiest to access at the system level! To be fair, Vista’s UAC is a start, but it’s just a bolt-on, and users are so accustomed to being nagged by Windows every time they do much more than move the mouse that they’ll just click whatever it takes to make the window go away and let them do what they wanted to do. Linux (for sure) and OSX (I believe) are more protected; they don’t just pop up a cute little dialog and let you click “Allow”; they make you enter a password if you’re going to be given any write-access to system files. Psychologically, that forces the user to pay more attention to what they’re actually doing, and understand that it’s different from just clicking “Ok” to some stupid little nagging dialog box, of which Windows seems inordinately fond. If it’s something that can be installed by a user without root access, the worst it can do is fuck up his /home. Sucks for them, yes, but the system will still be fine. Some malware authors do it for the money, but not all of them. Imagine the prestige involved in writing and releasing into the wild a virus, not just proof-of-concept, for OSX or Linux…and yet there have been few, and none current. That’s because it takes more than a 14-year-old script kiddie with a pirated copy of VB to write a virus for OSX or Linux.

When you log into your computer, use an ordinary user account, so if your system is attacked, your less likely to be infected as at times it needs administrator level to install, infect etc.

A good idea….but unfortunately, not the default for a Windows install (maybe Vista? Dunno…haven’t yet had the pleasure of installing it), and also one that will prevent you from actually doing much that is useful. Fine if you’re just browsing or checking your email, or watching some jackass get whacked in the ‘nads on YouTube, but if you have to actually install something or make any changes to the system, you’ll have to log into the administrator account. There is a difference between forcing the user to notice that what they’re doing is a little more important than just acknowledging that the mouse has moved (heh) and annoying the living bejeezus out of him (grammatically correct, if not politically). The savvy user already knows, and the clueless user just wants it to be easy. The average Windows user is as clueless as they come, and will make no distinction between “browsing with IE 6 and outdated antivirus as admininstrator” and “browsing with IE 6 and outdated antivirus as a limited-privilege user”. To them, it’s all the same.

So, do your research, learn as much as you can and use good old common sense……..i mean even the likes of NSA etc have been infiltrated. So, there is no such thing as 100% secure.

No, there is no such thing as 100% secure, but there is such a thing as reasonably secure, and most certainly such a thing as more secure than Windows. That applies to practically every other OS in existence. If you are not computer-literate (or can’t be arsed to configure anything), you like pretty, are willing to accept someone else’s idea of pretty, and don’t mind vendor lock-in, then get a Mac. You don’t have to learn anything because Apple hardware is all designed to work together, and you can just sit there, saying, “Ooooh, pretty!” and let a sensible, well-designed OS protect you from yourself. If you prefer more control and don’t mind rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty, then opt for some flavour of Linux. You’ll be safe because the OS is reasonably secure by design, and it won’t take more than one or two serious fuck-ups before you’ll learn how to fix anything you break. The only people who have any business whatsoever running Windows are power users; they know how to protect the OS from itself.

I don’t understand people. Why use an OS that essentially puts its users under siege every time they boot up, and especially when there are other, better options? It’s the vicious circle of “no software available because there aren’t enough users, but there aren’t enough users because there isn’t software”, but if people would grab a clue and just start switching, there would be more software available. Maybe Windows 7 will be better, I don’t know, but then again, that’s what they promised with Longhorn, didn’t they? By the time it was Vista and made it to release, it was as much a dog as ME.

Entirely unrelated…
I had come across an article whereby the publication had asked for various people’s opinions on how difficult it is to learn Swedish. It varied, depending upon the background of the people (the American guy said “extremely difficult and some sounds are unpronounceable”, but the guy who already spoke German and Dutch said it’s relatively easy). I had to laugh, though, at the one who said that the vocabulary was easy, the grammar rather confusing, and the sounds themselves not difficult, except for the more bizarre (his word, not mine) regional accents…such as SkÃ¥nska. Hehe. 😛

When I checked yesterday, I didn’t yet have themes available, but they’re there now! I told L. about Gmail’s new themes a couple of days ago, and he thinks they’re unnecessary and make text difficult to read (Windows 3.11? Seriously?), but I think they’re pwritty! Though Terminal looked terrible with my GTK theme, and I was disappointed in the only pink theme they offered (hopefully, user-designed themes will be possible in future), I think the space theme (or whatever the hell this is) looks rather nice, and there are a couple of blue ones that are also not bad. Besides, it’s much easier on my eyes to have the dark background, especially at night when looking at a white page is like staring into the goddamned sun. People often say that it’s difficult to read light text on a dark background, but that is much easier for me; black on white will near-blind me, and even dark on light is difficult at night. White on black is a little contrast-y for my liking, but white on dark blue or grey is just right.

Thank Džesus (heh) it’s Friday. Apart from yesterday evening, this has been one helluva week and I’m sooooo glad it’s over. I went to bed too late and got up too early, so I’m tired, but that’s all right; the workload is light today, and if I want to take a nap, that’s exactly what I’m going to do…because I can!

So I don’t forget about it by the time it’s useable….

Europeana.eu launched yesterday, and ten million hits an hour brought it down, so there’s a temporary page up for now, and apparently it won’t be back up until mid-December (ooooh, jealous of European work schedules–here, they’d work their staff half to death to get it back up in eight days) but it looks like it’s going to be interesting, perhaps even qualifying for “hella interesting”. Digital library, museum and archive, “…provides an impressive multi-lingual collection of two million books and other digitized items that were treasured in European museums and archives. This is just the beginning. By 2010 you’ll be able to find about 10 million items at this unique online library.”

Two million, more to come. Yeah, I can see this taking up several hours of my time. Input. Feeeeed me…OM NOM NOM! 😀

I had to wait for a while after feeding the fish; the bettas can have their lights off straight away because they are hand-fed, but the others need a little time. I haven’t managed to get in the shower yet, so I thought I’d grab a couple of California Cuties (they’re citrus fruit, not surfer boys) and park myself in front of the TV. I checked Discovery and found a documentary called Venom Hunter that sounded as if it might be interesting. I knew they’d overdo the “fear factor” and the special effects would make me roll my eyes, and the host would be Australian or British, probably called Steve or Mike, and well-built, and he’d handle the animals like that irritating Steve Whatsisface who got skewered by a stingray, but I thought, “Meh, I’ll survive.” True to form, the host is British (and called Steve, though the only hawtness is due to dark brown eyes and fantastic delts/lats, and he’s rather annoying), and a black forest scorpion in the Amazon was described as “extremely deadly”. Extremely deadly. O RLY? It’s either deadly, or it’s not, kills you or doesn’t; dead is dead, and in the grand scheme of things, death is always at least relatively extreme. That isn’t the point of this particular rant, though; I already know that gone are the days of documentaries that are about information. Now, you’re supposed to be frightened, or revolted, or both, and if the creature is dangerous, expect the screen to look like a goddamned video game. I guess the average viewer has an attention span so short that, “Ooooh, pretty colours. Look–scary, scary!” has become necessary.

Nope, this has nothing to do with the semi-hawt and entirely annoying Brit, though I can’t wait to see him do the bullet ant “gloves” tribal ritual (hehe–that’s gonna hurt), it’s the commercials. It’s not even Thanksgiving until next weekend, yet the Christmas commercials are already in full swing. I’d originally intended to try to watch this without my trusty laptop commercial-avoider, and just mute them instead, but after the Bacardi commercial that I didn’t need to hear to know they were trying to tell me that Bacardi would make me the life of the Christmas party and all the guys would be after me, and then my old friend, “Every kiss begins with Kay’s”, I gave in and got the laptop. If it takes Kay’s jewellers to “begin” a kiss, then I think it’s time to trade for a new partner. I absolutely fucking HATE their commercials; it’s always some weenie-looking pussywhipped guy buying some ridiculously expensive diamond something-or-other for his moderately pretty wife/girlfriend/whatever, and she, of course, saves the look of utter adoration for after she opens the box. Dude may start out “meh”, but add $2000 worth of compressed carbon harvested by African slave labour, and suddenly, he’s a sex god. Christ. Are any actual men and women that fucking pathetic? Sadly, I fear some are. Not that I buy jewellery, or that P. buys much for me (I have some I never wear), but if there is a jewellery purchase in the future, it certainly won’t come from there. I know one whose kisses don’t begin with Kay’s. AMD, Intel, Asus, Nvidia, maybe, but Kay’s…nah. 😀

I have a bunch of old files that are in Real format. I was still running Gutsy back then. Helix can’t open them, and I couldn’t remember what the hell they were, only that I’d “liberated” them from BBC and for that reason, they might actually be useful, so I installed Real Player; I think it was v.11.0, might have been 10.x. Real’s Linux player doesn’t suck nearly as much as their Windows player, so I didn’t really mind having it…until I actually installed it. It took over all of my multimedia icons, and wouldn’t let me change them for file types, only for individual files. No thanks–I don’t have that much time left on earth. I uninstalled the player, even using –purge, but nope. Little fuckers were still there. I went into my /home, showed hidden files and hunted down every last reference I could find to that goddamned player. Nope. Still there. By that time, I was pissed, but decided that since Hardy’s release was imminent anyway, I’d just do my usual clean install, then never, ever install Real anything again. I googled for an answer, just in case, and although I found a couple of people who were as annoyed as I was, none of their questions had an answer. Apparently most people are slightly less fussy about their multimedia icons. Go figure. I upgraded to Hardy, then never went near Real again. I have Helix, but it’s well-behaved, so I don’t mind it. Now, I want to open one of my old files, and I know Helix can’t do it, so it’s Real or nothing. I think that if I install it and then do:

sudo /opt/real/RealPlayer/postinst/install_icon_resource.sh uninstall

I should be okay, but if that doesn’t work, I’m gonna be royally pissed. Then again, I haven’t got around to my Intrepid upgrade, though I did do a bunch of backups in preparation. I guess that if the world came to an end and I ended up with stupid, ugly Real icons, I could just light a fire under my arse and get around to the upgrade I’ve been meaning to do anyway. We’ll see. 🙂

After I lost Valerie, I moved Olena over to Val’s old house. I took some of her stuff along with her, but when I did, I forgot about an ootheca. Chinese praying mantises overwinter as oothecae here; the female deposits the case, and the little dudes hatch out when warm weather comes in spring. I have another one that I’d kept cold; I’m not sure that it’s viable, but it’s Olena’s, and she was “wild”, so it could be. Valerie’s would not be, since she never got to breed, but I left them in place in the enclosure, half out of laziness and half because…well, Valerie made them, and although she was just an insect, she was an insect I raised from a tiny hatchling.

Speaking of tiny hatchlings, the problem with my forgetting about what may have been a viable ootheca is that…it was viable, and although manti-duds are supposed to hatch in spring, it’s always spring in a heated house. As I reached to turn the light on for Olena this morning, I found a tiny mantis hatchling, proudly perched atop the light fixture. The tank was once set up for tiny nymphs, but after mine grew out a bit, I cut back some of the screen to facilitate putting in larger food for Valerie, so there was an escape route. The vast majority are still in there, but a few were out roaming. I got most of them, and there are a couple more I can’t reach, but I’ll get them later when they wander out into the open. I’m not prepared for baby mantises because my flightless fruit flies regained their dominant gene (scrapped the cultures), and certainly not 100+ (too scared to count, but it was a small ootheca) of a species that is both voracious and notoriously cannibalistic. I didn’t take Olena out, and although she gorged herself on crickets last night and doesn’t seem to notice the wee ones right beside her (makes me laugh because she’s so huge and they’re tiny, perfect replicas of her but for wings), but she’ll most likely eat at least some of them when she’s hungry again. They’ll eat each other, too, but still…they’re so itsy-bitsy and cute, I’m actually tempted to try to keep a survivor. Olena’s old, and has already lost use of one raptorial leg, so I’d been ready to lose her soon, but if I could keep just one little manti-dud alive, then I could have a mantis all winter. The pet store has fruit flies, and it’s not like I don’t know how to culture them. The bettas need them anyway. They have pinhead crickets, too, and without a mantis large enough to eat the house crickets in the enclosure now, they should breed and produce more.

I guess the most sensible thing to do is let nature take its course as much as possible. It’s my fault they’ve arrived now instead of in April or May, so they are my responsibility, but there is simply no reasonable way for me to keep that many indoors. That’s why I released all but two of the ones I hatched last spring, keeping only Valerie and the male she eventually killed. I’ve already interfered, but if I just get food for the little ones, and leave them be, with Olena in there, too (since I took down her enclosure after I lost Valerie), some of them will be eaten by her, some by their siblings, and a few should survive. They’re territorial, so eventually, there should be only one. One one hand, it seems cruel to leave helpless 1cm insects where I know the majority will not survive, especially since it is my fault they’re here in November, but I can’t set up that many homes for them. I guess I technically could because they really don’t need much more than a 1L container each, even as adults, but with a current rough estimate of 75-100 nymphs, and estimating 50% loss due to predation and cannibalism between now and L4, when they must be separated, that’s still 30-50 containers, and 30-50 hungry mouths that need live food which must be purchased since it’s out of season. That’s not reasonable, not even for tiny, adorable insects. I read somewhere that about 20% of mantis nymphs survive to adulthood, and even fewer avoid predation long enough to breed. That’s why nature makes them have hundreds of kids…low odds of survival. Anyway, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see; they don’t eat for the first couple of days anyway, so I’ll get them some fruit flies and re-cover the section of screen I’d cut out so I don’t have mantis nymphs roaming all over the house. Olena probably won’t last much longer, and she’s got more than enough crickets (and mantis nymphs…now) in there that I won’t have to feed her or open the cover so 50 tiny manti-duds go charging up the wall, and my arms.

I should have been more careful, but there is no visual difference between a viable and a non-viable ootheca, and I thought there was only the one that could even potentially hatch…into TINY, ADORABLE ITSY-BITSY BABY MANTI-DUDS! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

EDIT: Awwwww! Brand new hatchling, not even supposed to be eating at all, and bless his little manti-heart, he’s already trying to hunt. I went out to check for any escapees that might have wandered into view, and this little dude was striking out at crickets many times his size. He may be little, but he’s got the manti-tude! 🙂

All together – as one. “Okay, everybody, say it with me…all together now! Homophones are words that sound the same but mean something different!”

Altogether – entirely. “Homophones are great, but illiterate morons who don’t read enough to recognise them are an altogether different story because they make the Grammar Nazi cry.”

Christ…it’s gonna be one of those days. Illiterate morons abound!

Compliment – an expression of admiration or esteem. “The Grammar Nazi considers it a compliment to be called an annoying nitpicker.”

Complement – that which completes; makes whole. “If the Grammar Nazi must tolerate idiots, a litre of very good gin would be the perfect complement to every day.”

Don’t even get me started on those who confuse compliment and complaint when they’re writing. Those people make me want to poke out my eyes with salad forks.

Yay…new season of The IT Crowd starts on Friday!

When I forget, the entry I had to change to get paragraph spaces to show in the Manticore WP theme:

}
div.entry-content p{
margin: 10;
padding: 0;
}

The original values were, for some reason, both zero. I did try a margin of twenty, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. Zero to ten did, but ten to twenty didn’t, and neither did changing the padding value. Oh, and now the break tag has no effect, though it did yesterday, and that has nothing to do with the CSS because it did that before the edit. Go figure.

Jesus H. jumping Jesus Harold Christ. Yes, yes, yes–I get it! She takes riding lessons and TKD, and something else I don’t remember. You have an iPhone, so you can send mail anywhere, anytime. I get that, too. Please stop sending me 500 photos a week. I like the kid, but FFS, if I was that much into kids, I’d have at least one. It may have occurred to you that I do not, and that is because I don’t fucking care about kids. Sometimes I look at one or two of the shots, but for the most part, I just archive them without opening the message. Someday, I’ll have to clean out my Inbox because it’s getting scary in there, but I have other things to do ATM. Sure, send me a photo here and there so I’ll know enough that I could pick the kid out of a crowd of two, but spare me the weekly family photo album. Why is it that people with kids seem to think that those of us without kids give a goddamn? WE DON’T. That is why we don’t have them.

On a more cheerful note, I came across a site devoted to…liquorice. No joke, the entire site is nothing but “liquorice of the world”, and best of all, they have the stuff that Pia used to get from Denmark! The first time she came in and dropped a bag on my desk, I thought, “Why is she giving me black liquorice? I can buy that right up the street.” Pia was pretty much always smiling and cheerful, but that day, she had a very definite, “I’m up to something naughty” look on her face, and told me to try one. Some people just don’t like black liquorice, not even black jellybeans, but I do; developed a taste for it when Dad used to give me the little beady candies from the Bassett’s liquorice allsorts he always got at Christmas, and eventually I learned to like the others as well, plus he used to buy liquorice pipes and cigars as penny candy at Ellsworth’s store and I’d always want one so I’d be like Dad. V. and M. would eat the coloured jellybeans and leave the black ones for me and Dad. I still don’t eat the black ones along with the other flavours because the flavour is stronger, but I separate them and eat them by themselves.

Anyway, the candies Pia had were harder than any I’d seen before, but I guessed that liquorice was probably liquorice and these were maybe a little stronger or something, so I took a few from the bag. She laughed and said I might want to start with just one, though I couldn’t imagine why. She’s the Dane, though, so I took her advice, and thank Christ for that because the flavour was not what I’d expected. To me, black liquorice has the liquorice flavour, and it’s somewhat less sweet than the red stuff (which is liquorice in name only), and I was expecting strong flavour from the Danish stuff, but I was absolutely not expecting…salty. I was somewhat taken aback at first, and Pia did stand there and giggle at what was probably an odd expression on my face because I’d been expecting sugar and got salt, but after the initial WTF??, I thought, “Hm. This is pretty good!” She took some out to the front desk, and out back, but the only taker she had that day was me; everyone else thought it was horrible. It took a few before I got from “pretty good” to “goddamn..I like these”, but I did. After that, she’d often bring some to me when her mum would send a “care package” from Denmark to her, and whenever she and Søren went back to visit, she’d bring back a bunch for me. No one around here is Danish, though, and there’s no speciality store that has anything like that, so I hadn’t had any for years. B. told me once that he’d get some for me–they go to Denmark relatively often to buy booze because it’s cheaper than Systembolaget–but I knew he’d never remember, so I didn’t think too much about it. It’s not his responsibility to feed my old addiction anyway. Now, though, I can just order it online from Nebraska, and they even have Y&S liquorice cigars, which are the same ones Dad used to get at Ellsworth’s, and I used to buy by the box at Earl’s as an adult. I like the pipes a bit better because it’s fun to eat them down to the curve and eventually to the beady things at the end, but they taste the same. They also have the “dubble zout” round pastilles I’d occasionally get at the Dutch-Canadian Shoppe, but they’re rather saltier than the Danish stuff, so to me, they’re kind of like dulse…something you have to be in the right mood for. The Danish ones are great any time. 🙂

I think I was talking to L. about how Hollywood always gets computers wrong. Maybe I was just thinking about it–don’t remember–but since he’s a living, breathing database of almost every movie that’s ever been released, I described the scene and hoped he’d know what movie. Unfortunately, he didn’t. All I could remember was that it was released in the 80s, I watched it back then, and couldn’t get anything about the characters except that the guy was a computer geek, the girl had terrible hair and huge glasses, her name began with “J”, and somehow, he managed to create on-the-fly animation on a monochrome monitor to make her like computers (and him). Well, it just came to me…FFS, it was Revenge of the Nerds! Gilbert, Poindexter, Booger, Wormser, Lamar, Ogre…the girl’s name was Judy. I wonder whether I can “locate” that…haven’t seen it in a long, long time.