Friday, October 17, 2008

Fake Microsoft Patch Tuesday malware campaign spreading | Zero Day | ZDNet.com

"Malicious attackers are once again taking advantage of event-based social engineering attacks, and are currently mass mailing fake notifications for Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday, attaching a copy of Trojan.Backdoor.Haxdoor, next to a legitimately looking PGP signature which is, of course, fake too :"

I guess this really doesn't need to be said: You never open an attachment to an email unless you know what it is. NOT what you think it is! Microsoft will NEVER send you an email about Microsoft Windows Updates.

The second Tuesday of the month is Microsoft Patch Tuesday, and if you don't have your computer set to get the patches for you or at least remind you they are ready for you to download and install. You should. Very few patches haven't worked as built. Some under special circumstance like an HP with an AMD CPU. HP uses the same build for all computers, when it has an AMD CPU they install more drivers and this has been known to cause issues. (Driver conflicts.)

So if you haven't done your Microsoft Windows updates this week, Do them!

AlaskaJoe

Sunday, October 12, 2008

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 10-12-08

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 10-12-08. You can listen live every Sunday from 10AM to 1PM Pacific that's 1PM to 4PM Eastern. Join us for the live show and chat. If you prefer, you can download the same MP3 file here via ftp.

Links from the Gregg Zone

1) Okay here we go again another week another green link to kick things off. This has to be a very cool concept, I guess it has been around for a while; I was surprised that I had not seen anything on it before. This just makes a lot of sense, how about getting money back for driving your hybrid? When you think about it the car you are driving is a power plant, it generates more power than you use, why not sell that power back to the grid. The idea here is when you plug in your car you pump the extra power stored in the battery back into the grid. You would have a plug for your hybrid that instead of charging your battery works in reverse to sell the extra power to the grid. Article here http://sci.tech-archive.net
2) Next up is one Joe sent me about a NASA site predicting a small asteroid hitting the Earth. Easy there I did say small described as few-meter sized asteroid. The big deal here is that we were able to predict the time and place of this small sized object hitting the atmosphere. It was about the size of a small car, hit over the Sudan. I have several links about it here, first the original article Joe sent me http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov , next a NASA scientist explaining in a short YouTube video, http://www.youtube.com And last, here is a comparative link to a meteoroid about the same size that was found on Earth, except this one was metallic so it survived the impact, you can see a picture of what one this size looks like. http://www.namibia-1on1.com
3) Now for some thing computer related, hope you don’t find it to disturbing. The advancement of quality of life using computers is truly amazing when considering what we may be able to accomplish for people who are severally disabled. I once carried someone in my Para-transit bus that first described this condition to me; the idea has haunted me for years. The condition is called being locked in, meaning incapable of any movement of any kind, although fully aware of all senses, you can hear fine, see though not blink, feel heat, cold, pain, touch, but not flinch, smell, and taste. The condition has several causes; the one in the story here was the result of a car accident. It was discovered that the boy could move his eyes, look up and down that was translated to yes and no. The article is about hooking him up to a computer voice synthesizer, using brain probes to detect the thoughts that control muscles used in speaking. http://www.esquire.com/
4) After something as thought provoking as that, I thought something on the lighter side may be best, so how about some survival advice. This hopefully is something you will not need, but if you do it may at least give you something to think about, for a minuet or two. I am talking about what to do if you fall out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet without a parachute. http://www.bbc.co.uk
5) Last up for the week, since I covered the computer link earlier, I thought it was time for something a little Art Bellish. This is something I ran across at Dreamland, constant U.F.O. contact, if you are not familiar with Dreamland this is a radio site that has been around since the early days of Coast to Coast, one of the first internet sites started around the Art Bell show. Here is a link to that site, http://www.unknowncountry.com/ the broadcasts from the previous month are free, you can get more by subscribing, about eleven dollars for three months. Anyway, to find the story I am talking about go to the main site and click on the dreamland link, or this should take you to the Dreamland page http://www.unknowncountry.com then the 11 Oct. 2008 link. What I am getting to here is the E.C.E.T.I. ranch by Mount Adams Washington http://www.eceti.org , last a link to the YouTube videos mentioned on the radio show. http://www.youtube.com