Month: April 2012

Posted on

Mac Warz: De Nile Ain’t Just a River in Egypt

While the Mac platform has never been truly free of malware, with the Apple platforms (Yeh, multiple: iOS and Mac) finally attaining a market penetration that makes it worth malware creators’ time and effort, real people are now seeing real malware problems more frequently on Apple platformed devices, specifically on Macs, for the most part. The recent flap about the Flashback Trojan has led knowledgeable folks such as Kapersky’s Roul Schouwenberg to observe,

“Percentage-wise, Flashback is roughly the equivalent of Conficker,” referring to the multi-vector Conficker Worm that created such a stir in 2008-2009.

Of course, Conficker on Windows computers spread for pretty much the same reason that Flashback recently spread on Macs: OS manufacturers who were slow to patch their OSes and lazy, careless users–often truly clueless naifs–who aided in the spread of the malware. And as long as Apple continues to support the idea that Macs are essentially bulletproof, the cluelessness among Mac users will persist.

But what of iOS? From a February CNet article,

Scanning hundreds of thousands of applications across the mobile landscape for its 2011 Mobile Threats Report, Juniper uncovered more than 28,000 pieces of malware last year, a rise of 155 percent from 2010.

As expected, Android was the post popular target.

Malware aimed at Google’s mobile OS surged to 13,000 samples at the end of last year

I’ll let you decide how toi do the math on that one, ‘K? 28,000 malware apps-13,000 Android malware apps leaves how much malware to divide up between Java and iOS? Recall the anti-malware patch for iOS last Fall? Just sayin’.

Of course, I don’t run any OS from The Evil Empire (do your own search for the term; it’s all over the place *heh*), but I do run a number of other OSes–some just for the fun of it–ranging from various Windows versions to various flavors of ‘nixes, and even including one Android device with its own customized front end (the Kindle Fire). All of them run with up-to-date anti-malware installed. Yes, even the BSD Unix-based compouter that uses the same Unix code base that Apple’s OSX uses (only pure Unix, instead of the bastardized thing Apple’s made of OSX). Modern anti-malware doesn’t have to exact the performance hit that early anti-malware all too often did, and wearing belt (keeping the OS properly patched) and suspenders (up-to-date anti-malware) is both easy to do and a commonsense no-brainer. Not that one would get that impression from most Mac users I know… (Not that I know all that many, since apart from iOS users–still a minority of cell phone and even tablet users around here–Apple has little penetration in America’s Third World County where people often have better things to waste their money on than kewl komputerz from The Evil Empire. *heh*)

We’ll see how this all plays out. Will Apple do the adult thing here and step up, admitting it’s not bulletproof, or will it stonewall and continue the “delayed update response” to threats as it has in the past (*cough* MacDefender *cough*) until compelled to respond to real world threats?

Based on Apple’s long and well displayed arrogance I’m betting on the latter. At least Apple is promising to include better anti-malware in upcoming versions and perhaps even updates to OS X (search Mac Gatekeeper). We’ll just have to wait and see. At least Apple’s promise of better built-in anti-malware is a tacet* admission of the problem.

BTW, for Mac users who do have their heads out of their keisters, here’s an article on commonsense steps to take.

Keep in mind, the installed base of Windows computers is somewhere north of a billion, while the threshold of increased appeal for malware creators targeting Mac computers is minuscule by comparison, given that Apple’s “huge” penetration of the desktop/notebook market is now about 63 million Mac OS X users. ‘nix boxes aren’t even on the radar with only about 1% of the desktop/notebook market (although the server and embedded segments are a far, far different story; your router, for example, is probably running Linux or some other ‘nix variant).

*No, I didn’t misspell “tacit”. “Tacet” is a musical term that means something similar to “tacit” but contains much more content, as a “tacet” passage for an instrument or voice is one of directed silence for a much longer term–frequently a whole passage or movement–than would be convenient to note simply with rests.

Posted on

Consider the Lilies…

“Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Luke 12:27

OK, so the picture isn’t of “lilies of the field” but another, as beautiful and even more useful, flower.

Consider the dandelion, cursed by dunderheaded, tasteless American enstupiates who deem it a weed simply because it can enrich their dull, boring, monochromatic lawns with glorious color and beautiful textures. This flower gifts those who aren’t too dull-witted to see with both a beautiful, slightly variegated green and a stunning, joyous yellow. Moreover, its leaves, roots and flower are all highly nutritious and, when properly prepared and served, delicious as well. Not only that, but if one were to perform a simple search for medicinal properties of dandelions, one would quickly discover that the plant has multiple medicinal properties above and beyond its nutritional values.

And the stem even has uses beyond nutritive and therapeutic values. Perform a search for “dandelion latex”. Surprising, no? (Those in the know have answered, “No.” *heh*) Moreover, the latex produced from dandelions causes far fewer allergic reactions than the common rubber plant latex.

And this wonderful plant is exceptionally hardy! Just ask any idiot who’s tried to eliminate it from their ugly, boring, monochromatic lawn. Oh, and self-propagating!

What more could one ask from a beautiful ornament of nature? Beauty, utility, hardiness and easy propagation! This wonderful flower has it all! I rejoice that my dandelion crop is so very full this year, so far, and am doing everything within my power to help my neighbors’ yards experience the same bounty.

*heh*

Oh, and my wild allium “crop” is also doing well. Happy-happy-joy-joy!

🙂

Posted on

Books

[See Update 2 below.]

I’ve said I read a lot, and I do, but I’ve still not read all the books I consider it’d take to become really literate, some of the old–and even “new”–classics, in particular. Oh, I got a set of The Great Books in high school and found them thoroughly engaging (I even “neglected” to purchase the lit–and most of the historical “source” books for a sophomore Western Civ course in college… since I already had ’em in my dorm room in my GB collection). But TGB doesn’t encompass all the useful classic literature*, and a few really powerful works have been authored in the last century or so that are worth including as “new” classics, so…

I’ve been trying to flesh out my library of readings over the past couple of decades, especially. Some barriers:

  • Local libraries are often a little thin on really significant works, and the county library here in America’s Third World County is particularly thin in that regard. Besides, libraries want the books returned, generally disapprove of notes written in the books in their collection and often have editions that are not well-formatted, especially when considering PD works, for some reason.
  • Book budget and space. Face it, I don’t have room to properly store the books I already have, and books are expensive–even used books. Often, the books I’ve been looking for have been a bit hard to find, especially in editions that are within my budget.

Enter eBooks. For several years now I’ve been collecting an eBook library I can read in text or html format on my computers. That has worked quite well, and the 1,000s of PD books available at Project Gutenberg have provided me a great selection. Storing the books has been no problem, and sorting through my electronic library is easy-peasy.

Recently, with the Kindle Fire given to me by Son&Heir as a Xmas gift, I’ve been re-downloading almost all (it’s a work in progress) the eBooks I had already downloaded in text or html as Kindle-formatted books… then uploading them to my Amazon Cloud storage. I’ve also been duplicating the Great Books collection in Kindle format so that I can eventually–hopefully–have all my library that it’s possible to have in electronic format, even, where possible (and it has proven to be possible in more cases than I had thought it would be), old sci-fi books I’ve had for 40 or more years.

Here’s one, of many, places I’ve been using to obtain PD books in Kindle format recently:

freekindlebooks.org Searches for free eBooks or free Kindle books can result in more than you’ll have time for. A lot of free eBooks are self-published, and, of course, many are dreck. Still, some new self-published eBooks are quite good.

Go ahead. Make a list of all the books you always thought you ought to read and hunt ’em down. There may well be a free eBook version available.

*For example, I had not in earlier years read Mark Twain’s “1601: Conversation, as it was the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors” but have since repaired that unfortunate lacuna in my literary education. *heh*

Update: I had scheduled some car work for this A.M., so I downloaded a couple of lightweight novels to read while keeping an eye out on the work being done. I wasn’t expecting much, but I expected that the $0.99 book would at least have had a lil better proofing than the freebie.

Oh, boy, was I wrong!

Lousy plotting. Jejune characters. And not a page without glaring grammar, punctuation and spelling errors, combined with the occasional nonsensical sentence structure, loads of misused words, misplaced apostrophes and capitalizations. Was this written when the author was in seventh grade or something and then self-published without the benefit of any proofreading at all?

And then there’s the worthless ending.

A waste of $0.99.

The freebie has at least been better edited. Oh, it’s still just a “skim once” (if that) book, but although it has some idiosyncratic word uses and lousy punctuation, at least the grammar is better* (although that’s almost damning with faint praise) and the spelling is less atrocious–almost as though this book had been exposed to a spell checker.

Update 2: OTOH, another freebie (well, I could swear it was free when I downloaded it the other day–no, really!), The Truth About Sharks and Pigeons by Matt Phillips, is as much fun as reading a Douglas Adams book, maybe more. Consider,

Dully he wondered if his whole life was about to flash before his eyes, and he wondered if it would be okay to skip that bit as it really wasn’t going to be very interesting.

Strangely, the book’s well-written enough that chuckles like that one don’t seem to get stale.

Posted on

The Zero Has No Shame

P-resident “Obama” (Why the scare quotes? Because there is strong evidence that “Obama” is a former name, assumed for whatever purposes by the adopted son of Indonesian citizen Lolo Soetoro–make of the readily available facts whatever you will) has no shame. In a bratty tantrum against the SCOTUS, The Zero, self-proclaimed constitutional scholar that he is, uttered the following nonsense,

I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.

“…strong majority”? What fairlyland is The Zero living in? “…unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed… by… Congress”? Unprecedented, Extraordinary? This comment certainly puts the definitive nail in the coffin of The Zero’s constitutional “scholarship” since even casual students are aware of Marbury v. Madison, 1803 and likely aware that the 209 years between now and then are certainly not empty of the SCOTUS voiding laws passed by Congress. Indeed, in one recent eight year period (1994-2002) the SCOTUS struck down 32 federal laws, voiding them wholly or in part. No, only the “constitutional scholar” who goes by the name of Barack Hussein Obama seems to view the SCOTUS striking down a law passed by Congress as “unprecedented” and “extraordinary”.

Dumbass.

Hamilton explained the thinking of the Founders on the matter in Federalist 78:

The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post-facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing. [emphasis added]

The Zero is a sham and a shame, and anyone thinking he has anything useful or helpful to say about anything has fewer working brain cells than a 10-year-old cracked crock of spoiled kimche.

Sidebar: I truly love it that my spell checker flags “Obama” every time I type it.

BTW, no, I did not link to Federalist 78. You should have your own copy in hardcopy and be able to get to it with no problem via any of the links on the first page of a search for “Federalist Papers,” so why link? My hardcopy is an arm’s length away from me as I type this, along with copies of the other American State Papers, and, IMO, if you are a citizen of the US, so ought yours to be. Just sayin’