It starts with an email that appears to come from the FBI. The email message lures the user to a website that has the official FBI look and feel. The site lures the user to enter personal credit information so that it can be checked against a database of stolen credit cards.
The problem: It's all fake. The credit information is actually being stolen.
My question: Why would anyone ......
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Do Not Call List Under Fire
The status of the Federal Do Not Call List is up in the air. First a judge decided that the FTC did not have the authority to operate the list. Congress quickly fixed that by clarifying the original law. And now another judge has said that the list prohibits free speech to commercial enterprises because the law excludes charity and political calls and picks on the poor marketing people.
What about the free speech of the 51 million people who have said they do not want these calls? Is no one listening. If 51 million people do not want my product or at least do not want to have it sold to them at 7:30am on a Sunday morning over the phone then I think I would get the hint.
I have an idea. Let's forward all these calls to the judges that are making these ridiculous rulings. At least let's get them all to move to California. I'm sure they could keep themselves busy there and let the 51 million of us that want to eat dinner uninterrupted by sales calls have our way.
What about the free speech of the 51 million people who have said they do not want these calls? Is no one listening. If 51 million people do not want my product or at least do not want to have it sold to them at 7:30am on a Sunday morning over the phone then I think I would get the hint.
I have an idea. Let's forward all these calls to the judges that are making these ridiculous rulings. At least let's get them all to move to California. I'm sure they could keep themselves busy there and let the 51 million of us that want to eat dinner uninterrupted by sales calls have our way.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Microsoft Takes Another Hit
It seems like Microsoft can't win lately. First, there's the monopoly thing, then all the security issues and of course the licensing that everyone seems to hate. If that's not enough, a group of 7 IT security researchers has published a paper claiming that the fact that Microsoft has an operating system monopoly is a critical national security risk.
Their premise is that because of the dominance of Windows and Office, a flaw might be discovered and if exploited would bring our whole cyberworld crashing down around us. In light of this potential disaster they are suggesting that businesses and governments factor in diversification of operating systems and applications. In addition to making Microsoft look like a potential terrorist nation, the authors claim that it is us purchasers that are dumb enough to let this happen and actually state that "the blame falls mostly on the buyers".
Some times propeller heads make me laugh but today my Microsoft stock went down $1.14! I think these guys have a plot. I wonder how many of them are ex-Novell, IBM, Sun, Unix people that simply have nothing better to do. Is there a risk? To some extent I would agree that this could be a problem. However, there are many other critical infrastructure components that could cause much more damage and much faster than by crashing my computer by breaking Outlook on me. My question to them is what specifically do they suggest other than not buying big bad Microsoft's products.
Their premise is that because of the dominance of Windows and Office, a flaw might be discovered and if exploited would bring our whole cyberworld crashing down around us. In light of this potential disaster they are suggesting that businesses and governments factor in diversification of operating systems and applications. In addition to making Microsoft look like a potential terrorist nation, the authors claim that it is us purchasers that are dumb enough to let this happen and actually state that "the blame falls mostly on the buyers".
Some times propeller heads make me laugh but today my Microsoft stock went down $1.14! I think these guys have a plot. I wonder how many of them are ex-Novell, IBM, Sun, Unix people that simply have nothing better to do. Is there a risk? To some extent I would agree that this could be a problem. However, there are many other critical infrastructure components that could cause much more damage and much faster than by crashing my computer by breaking Outlook on me. My question to them is what specifically do they suggest other than not buying big bad Microsoft's products.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Microsoft to Release New Version of Office
Microsoft will be releasing Office 2003 on October 21st. The new Office System as Microsoft is calling it, will include upgrades to all the current modules including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access and Outlook. It will also for the first time have two new modules available.
Infopath is a new Office 2003 module that allow users to create and share XML based forms. It is a very powerful form tool that integrates with other products that conform to the XML data format.
OneNote is a new application that allows users to store and retrieve information in a notebook metaphor. Notes can be taken via the keyboard, handwriting, voice recognition or any combination of methods. Searches can be performed on keyboard and handwriting text.
I will post pricing and more information on Microsoft Office 2003 here soon.
Infopath is a new Office 2003 module that allow users to create and share XML based forms. It is a very powerful form tool that integrates with other products that conform to the XML data format.
OneNote is a new application that allows users to store and retrieve information in a notebook metaphor. Notes can be taken via the keyboard, handwriting, voice recognition or any combination of methods. Searches can be performed on keyboard and handwriting text.
I will post pricing and more information on Microsoft Office 2003 here soon.
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Preparing For Isabel
At this point it looks like we won't see much of Isabel here in Connecticut. There will be rain and pretty good winds probably starting around midnight Thursday and continuing through mid-day Friday. I would think the most we might see are some power outages and possibly some wind and water damage. As most of this will be happening during a business day, I don't think any special precautions are necessary. Of course things can change.
It's always a good idea to make sure you have an off-site backup and that the tape can actually be read back. If the power does go out in your area, I would advise that at the very least you make sure any power switches on equipment are in the off position. I would actually prefer that as much equipment as possible be unplugged from the wall during a power outage. Most of the problems that occur with power outages occur when the power comes back on. The potential initial surge is the problem. If you have areas that normally flood you should move equipment out. If an area does flood and you have equipment still there be extremely careful if you try to move it, electricity and water do not mix well! It is better to leave it until you can be sure the power to it is shut off.
Over all I don't expect to see many problems here. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the mid-Atlantic coast. Call our office if you have any questions about this storm and your IT equipment.
It's always a good idea to make sure you have an off-site backup and that the tape can actually be read back. If the power does go out in your area, I would advise that at the very least you make sure any power switches on equipment are in the off position. I would actually prefer that as much equipment as possible be unplugged from the wall during a power outage. Most of the problems that occur with power outages occur when the power comes back on. The potential initial surge is the problem. If you have areas that normally flood you should move equipment out. If an area does flood and you have equipment still there be extremely careful if you try to move it, electricity and water do not mix well! It is better to leave it until you can be sure the power to it is shut off.
Over all I don't expect to see many problems here. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the mid-Atlantic coast. Call our office if you have any questions about this storm and your IT equipment.
Friday, September 05, 2003
E-Mail Virus Fall Out
Even though there is no single major virus running around (as far as we know) at the moment, we are still seeing left over problems from the rash of viruses of a couple of weeks ago. The amount of new virus activity in the last month is just amazing. Click here to see Symantec's current list.
But the fallout can be even worse. We are getting calls from Clients that are getting e-mails bounced back to them as undeliverable for various reasons. After investigating the situation we found that their domains have been blacklisted by services that are supposed to provide ISPs with domains that are suspected of being spammers. The problem is that our Clients are not spammers. How does this happen? Well, let's say one of our virus friends gets let loose on a workstation. This workstation is on the North Pole. The owner of the workstation has 1500 names in her e-mail client (Outlook of course!). The virus picks one lucky address (mine of course) and sends itself to every other e-mail address in Outlook as well as any other e-mail addresses it can find on the workstation. These e-mails are sent from the lucky address (mine). The Blacklist Services detect this mass mailing and in order to help justify the cost of subscribing to the service, add my domain to the blacklist. Note that this message was never sent from me or from anyone in my domain. However, that doesn't matter. My domain is added. Now I send a message to my lovely wife and it gets bounced back to me saying the user doesn't exit. After looking at my wallet photos to verify that I in fact have a lovely wife I start scratching my head. There are many problems here. First, the message being sent back to me does not say I am on a blacklist. It tells me the user doesn't exist, which sends me down the wrong path to try to resolve the problem. Next, some of my messages will go out and some will not. This simply depends on whether or not the receiving e-mail host subscribes to the Blacklist Service that has me blacklisted. It's a pain in the a.... neck!
While the Blacklist Services are meant to be helpful as a deterrent to spam, they in fact can be more of a problem then they are worth. Although you can get removed from these lists, it is a pain and can take some time. In the meantime the spammers already know about the Blacklist Services and are way ahead of them. What is the solution? I wish I knew! However, some basic changes to Internet E-Mail and browsing are need to insure that these problems can not exist. Internet e-mail must be reliable and secure before it can really be used for business critical processes. Until then we will still need to use the good old telephone to call and make sure the intended recipient received our e-mail!
But the fallout can be even worse. We are getting calls from Clients that are getting e-mails bounced back to them as undeliverable for various reasons. After investigating the situation we found that their domains have been blacklisted by services that are supposed to provide ISPs with domains that are suspected of being spammers. The problem is that our Clients are not spammers. How does this happen? Well, let's say one of our virus friends gets let loose on a workstation. This workstation is on the North Pole. The owner of the workstation has 1500 names in her e-mail client (Outlook of course!). The virus picks one lucky address (mine of course) and sends itself to every other e-mail address in Outlook as well as any other e-mail addresses it can find on the workstation. These e-mails are sent from the lucky address (mine). The Blacklist Services detect this mass mailing and in order to help justify the cost of subscribing to the service, add my domain to the blacklist. Note that this message was never sent from me or from anyone in my domain. However, that doesn't matter. My domain is added. Now I send a message to my lovely wife and it gets bounced back to me saying the user doesn't exit. After looking at my wallet photos to verify that I in fact have a lovely wife I start scratching my head. There are many problems here. First, the message being sent back to me does not say I am on a blacklist. It tells me the user doesn't exist, which sends me down the wrong path to try to resolve the problem. Next, some of my messages will go out and some will not. This simply depends on whether or not the receiving e-mail host subscribes to the Blacklist Service that has me blacklisted. It's a pain in the a.... neck!
While the Blacklist Services are meant to be helpful as a deterrent to spam, they in fact can be more of a problem then they are worth. Although you can get removed from these lists, it is a pain and can take some time. In the meantime the spammers already know about the Blacklist Services and are way ahead of them. What is the solution? I wish I knew! However, some basic changes to Internet E-Mail and browsing are need to insure that these problems can not exist. Internet e-mail must be reliable and secure before it can really be used for business critical processes. Until then we will still need to use the good old telephone to call and make sure the intended recipient received our e-mail!
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