ShowMeBlog

Conficker Survival Guide

“Tomorrow -- April 1 -- is D-Day for Conficker, as whatever nasty payload it's packing is currently set to activate. What happens come midnight is a mystery: Will it turn the millions of infected computers into spam-sending zombie robots? Or will it start capturing everything you type -- passwords, credit card numbers, etc. -- and send that information back to its masters?

No one knows, but we'll probably find out soon.

Or not. As Slate notes, Conficker is scheduled to go "live" on April 1, but whoever's controlling it could choose not to wreak havoc but instead do absolutely nothing, waiting for a time when there's less heat. They can do this because the way Conficker is designed is extremely clever: Rather than containing a list of specific, static instructions, Conficker reaches out to the web to receive updated marching orders via a huge list of websites it creates. Conficker.C -- the latest bad boy -- will start checking 50,000 different semi-randomly-generated sites a day looking for instructions, so there's no way to shut down all of them. If just one of those sites goes live with legitimate instructions, Conficker keeps on trucking…”  From Yahoo Tech. 

Jim Howard's second job

  Here is video of me at my second job.

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Slumdog Millionaire

  I just watched “Slumdog Millionaire” on DVD.  I hated every minute of it.  I watched almost all of it and I am not sure why I watched that much of it.  This is “The FEEL GOOD film of the DECADE?” 

“Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the novel Q & A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup.

Set and filmed in India, Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of a young man from the slums of Mumbai who appears on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati, mentioned in the Hindi version) and exceeds people's expectations, arousing the suspicions of the game show host and of law enforcement officials.

After its world premiere at Telluride Film Festival and subsequent screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and the London Film Festival, Slumdog Millionaire initially had a limited North American release on 12 November 2008 by Fox Searchlight Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures, to critical acclaim and awards success. It later had a nationwide grand release in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2009 and in the United States on 23 January 2009. It premiered in Mumbai on 22 January 2009.

Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 2009 and won eight, the most for any film of 2008, including Best Picture and Best Director. It also won five Critics' Choice Awards, four Golden Globes, and seven BAFTA Awards, including Best Film. Slumdog Millionaire has stirred controversy concerning language use, its portrayals of Indians and Hinduism, and the welfare of its child actors…”

  This was NOT a good movie.  Why do I want to see that sort of stuff.  I know about the world and about the poor, sick, dirty and crime so why would I want to spend 120 minutes seeing woman and child being killed? Why do I want to spend money to see children picking and living in garbage and why do I want to see children having their eyes cut out so they can beg and make money for people.
  I was looking forward to seeing a great movie.  It was not “Slumdog Millionaire.” 

Ghost Town

  I just got done watching the movie “Ghost Town.”  I loved it.  It is my sort of movie. 

“Bertram Pincus is a man whose people skills leave much to be desired. When Pincus dies unexpectedly, but is miraculously revived after seven minutes, he wakes up to discover that he now has the annoying ability to see ghosts. Even worse, they all want something from him, particularly Frank Herlihy who pesters him into breaking up the impending marriage of his widow Gwen. That puts Pincus squarely in the middle of a triangle with spirited result. Written by Studio Approved Synopsis”

Government person at your door

“What if someone came to your door with a GPS device to beam your coordinates up to a master file and said, “It’s OK, I’m with the government”?

Prepare yourself, because beginning in a few days that may be your first encounter with the massive and looming operation called Census 2010.

A year before the first questionnaires hit the mail, the Census Bureau is about to dispatch 140,000 workers to verify more than 145 million addresses nationwide.

For the first time, canvassers will carry hand-held computers to upload the exact geographic coordinates for each household into the Census Bureau’s master address and digital map file.

The Census Bureau says the technology will virtually eliminate transcription errors.

“It is much more efficient,” said Shelly Lowe at census headquarters in Maryland. “We don’t have to print hundreds of millions of paper maps.”

The constitutional basis for the census is to pinpoint the population to draw congressional boundaries based on equal representation. Census information also affects hundreds of billions of dollars in federal appropriations…”  Kansas City Star story by Matt Campbell

  I worked the 2000 census.  I wish I could work this one.  I do not have car.  This one sounds like fun.  I guess I will have to try and work the next one.  That will be in 2020.  I will be 78 years old.  Smile
 

“…The hand-held computers can only be turned on with the worker’s password and thumbprint. They also will have encryption software, antivirus protection and automatic shutdown.

Authentic census workers will only ask to verify your address and if there are any additional living quarters on the premises, such as a spare room converted to an apartment. They will not ask for bank or Social Security information, and they are prohibited from sharing anything with any other government agency, including law enforcement or immigration control.

Each canvass worker undergoes an FBI background check, and each will carry an official Census Bureau badge…”

Internet crime jumps by a third last year

• Internet users said they were scammed out of a total of $265 million last year
• FBI: Report shows "sophisticated computer fraud schemes continue to flourish"
• Americans filed record 275,284 reports claiming to be ripped off
• Report said that about 77.4 percent of perpetrators of Internet fraud were men

  See the CNN story. 

  Most of us already know about all the scams on the Internet.  Even those of us that know the Internet well have to keep our guard up and our eyes open all the time.  It is a shame that we have to live like this when using the Internet.
  I have often told you about contests and even sites that would give you free money and very few of you would even try it.  You fear it is a scam or a trick.  That is sad that we have so much fear in us.
  I won a number of contest last year.  I told you all about the contest and I do not think one of you entered the contests.  It is the same with sites that give you money… I told you and I know a couple of you got some of the money but very few people. 
  I have said for years I wish there was a positive ID system for all Internet users.  I know I am just about the only person that wants it.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

  I signed back up with Netflix.  I watched last night “The Story of the Weeping Camel” and it was very good.  It was a documentary.  It was most interesting to see a Mongolian family and how they live.

 

“The Story of the Weeping Camel is a 2003 Mongolian documentary distributed by ThinkFilm. It was released internationally in 2004. The movie was directed and written by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni. The plot is about a family of nomadic shepherds in the Gobi desert trying to save the life of a rare white bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) calf after it was rejected by its mother. The documentary was nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Documentary at the 77th Academy Awards…”

Teacher Admits Sex with 5 Students - update

  I told you about Allenna Williams Ward the 23 year old white female teacher that had sex with five black male students.  See that report here. 

  I do not think I reported here what she got.  I found it on the Internet.  She was sentenced to 6 years in jail.  See report in UrbanGrounds. 

  I think 6 years is fair but I think race did enter into this case and the fact that she was not prettier and blonder did hurt her.

Cholesterol drug lowers blood clot risk

  Back a couple of years ago my doctor put me on a cholesterol drug. I took it for a month or two and it felt like someone had beat me with a club all over my body.  Every part of my body hurt.  I quit taking it.  That was Simvastatin.  
  A year or so later a new doctor wrote a Rx for something else but I never took it.
  My new doctor wants me to come back in month and have a blood test and put me on a anti-cholesterol drug if I need it.
  I was not going to get the Rx filled.  Because of the report below I will have to think about it now.

“ORLANDO, Fla. – Statin drugs, taken by millions of Americans to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease, also can cut the risk of developing dangerous blood clots that can lodge in the legs or lungs, a major study suggests.

The results provide a new reason for many people with normal cholesterol to consider taking these medicines, sold as Crestor, Lipitor, Zocor and in generic form, doctors say.

In the study, Crestor cut nearly in half the risk of blood clots in people with low cholesterol but high scores on a test for inflammation, which plays a role in many diseases. This same big study last fall showed that Crestor dramatically lowered rates of heart attacks, death and stroke in these people, who are not usually given statins now…”  From Yahoo News

Leaving computers on overnight = $2.8 billion a year

  I am guilty of leaving my computers on 24/7.  I been doing it for years. 

 

“Admittedly I don't think much about it at all. I leave my laptop running overnight because I know it'll take five minutes or more to get things going in the morning -- not just booting up, but launching the various apps I start the day with, downloading my overnight email, filtering out the spam, and otherwise "getting settled."

But all the power wasted while computers are sitting idle overnight adds up, and one study has finally tried to measure it. The tally: An estimated $2.8 billion wasted on excess energy costs each year in the U.S. alone.

On a CO2 basis, that's 20 million tons of carbon dioxide, about the amount produced by 4 million cars on the road.

The full report is available for download here (scroll down to "PC Energy Report US 2009")…”

  The above from Yahoo Tech.