I keep forgetting to link this video. Caught it a year or two back. Presents in laymans terms what you learned in highschool, but forgot to apply later...
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6A1FD147A45EF50D
edit: On the same topic; Wow, in the Age Newspaper today State Parliament proved they're failing to even look at our own growth statistics by proposing an irrelevant tiny expansion to the city boundaries. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/green-land-cut-back-as-melbourne-grows-much-bigger-20100729-10wvi.html?autostart=1
29 July 2010
17 July 2010
I've seen these before!!
So I'm in Big-W looking at the electrical stuff to track down an all purpose DC-output gizmo for various devices, and I stumble into this!! How completely awesome! Seems like I was making these over 2 years ago though :)
04 July 2010
More Climate Denialist stuff
Sim sent me a great compilation of direct quotes from the world leaders in climate science, business, and the likes. It's kinda past the point where this can be "discussed" any longer, we're 20 years behind where we should be on the attack front.
http://logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm
The other great, in fact AWESOME resource, is of course ye olde how to talk to global warming sceptic articles page. He's got a master page, with topics more easily categorised now also.
Don't forget to do something about it at home.
http://logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm
The other great, in fact AWESOME resource, is of course ye olde how to talk to global warming sceptic articles page. He's got a master page, with topics more easily categorised now also.
Don't forget to do something about it at home.
03 July 2010
Please uninstall your Anti Virus Software
OK, so I've just finished an epic 12hr session over the course of 2 days fixing three peoples PC's. I've seen all 3 of these PC's before, I've worked on them many times in the past. One might surmise that I'm a crappy repair-man given the repeat work. It's really easy to simply re-install the Operating System and return a perfectly fine working machine. It's another situation entirely to return it to them as though nothing happened. There is however, one recurring theme that is out of any well buffed, good looking guys hands.
The abomination that is "anti" "virus" "software".
You're driving down a road in your Triple-A-Safety rated car. You drive off a cliff. Your air-bags deploy as designed when you hit the ground. You're dead anyway. Had you not been driving as though you were invincible in the first place, this never would have happened.
Over the course of my entire lifetime, the #1 biggest virus I have ever worked against is anti virus software itself.
- 100% if the time it has been the underlying cause of an imaginary sense of security.
- 100% of the time the user has CLICKED AND RUN something they should not have, which resulted in malware, spyware, phishing scams, loss of data, loss of privacy or otherwise critical system failures.
- 100% of the time anit-virus-software has been directly responsible for automatic updates being stalled, halted, broken or otherwise not working as a result of some sort of security settings alteration it has made (of which there are literally several thousand). I cannot express how common, serious, and disastrous this is.
- 100% of the time the anit-virus-software has MADE IT DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to remove the ACTUAL PROBLEM without UNINSTALLING THE anti-virus-software first.
There are long, oh so very long, lists of variation, complexity, and just blatant stupidity associated to all four of those bullet points. The most offensive component is when anti virus software has broken something first, which resulted in situations where the user was FORCED to click something they should not have.
This includes broken script warnings that weren't broken until false-positives are reported. Popup warnings, cautions, and the like. The end user becomes SO DISMISSIVE with the continuous clicking of "yes" to make warnings go away, that they lose any sense of discerning decision making, and will click on any old rubbish. No I mean it. Anything.
Without spending HOURS explaining some of the finer technical points of why anti-virus-software is by every definition, the worst virus of them all, let me finish with a few pointers.
- If the porn site you're browsing tells you that you need to "install a media player" of any sort, and you click "yes", it's already too late for you. You need CODEC'S, not PLAYERS. Once you're running their software, you're done. The only exceptions are the the big 3: adobe, sun-java, and apple plugins.
- You're browsing the local football scores webpage, and you see some sort of official looking window, message, or popup that says "you might be infected, click here to do something about it". The host of the web page does NOT have any means of determining your actual security status. Try and be a little discerning in future please!!
- If you click ANY file to run it, without knowing its extension type, you're done.
- Why did you download the virus in the first place? What did you think you were clicking on? Were you REALLY duped? So there were no indicators that the file you ran wasn't legit?
Everyone knows the rules about web browsing, secure connections, and porn. Stop making it someone elses responsibility to protect you from yourself. I have never seen a situation first hand where any virus software actually STOPPED, PROTECTED, AND KEPT THE PC UNHARMED. I hear about it all the time. Have you? If so, do you have the technical knowledge to determine if what it told you was true, and not a false positive? Like I said. Never seen it do anything but harm.
STOP DRIVING OFF CLIFFS !!!
The abomination that is "anti" "virus" "software".
You're driving down a road in your Triple-A-Safety rated car. You drive off a cliff. Your air-bags deploy as designed when you hit the ground. You're dead anyway. Had you not been driving as though you were invincible in the first place, this never would have happened.
Over the course of my entire lifetime, the #1 biggest virus I have ever worked against is anti virus software itself.
- 100% if the time it has been the underlying cause of an imaginary sense of security.
- 100% of the time the user has CLICKED AND RUN something they should not have, which resulted in malware, spyware, phishing scams, loss of data, loss of privacy or otherwise critical system failures.
- 100% of the time anit-virus-software has been directly responsible for automatic updates being stalled, halted, broken or otherwise not working as a result of some sort of security settings alteration it has made (of which there are literally several thousand). I cannot express how common, serious, and disastrous this is.
- 100% of the time the anit-virus-software has MADE IT DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to remove the ACTUAL PROBLEM without UNINSTALLING THE anti-virus-software first.
There are long, oh so very long, lists of variation, complexity, and just blatant stupidity associated to all four of those bullet points. The most offensive component is when anti virus software has broken something first, which resulted in situations where the user was FORCED to click something they should not have.
This includes broken script warnings that weren't broken until false-positives are reported. Popup warnings, cautions, and the like. The end user becomes SO DISMISSIVE with the continuous clicking of "yes" to make warnings go away, that they lose any sense of discerning decision making, and will click on any old rubbish. No I mean it. Anything.
Without spending HOURS explaining some of the finer technical points of why anti-virus-software is by every definition, the worst virus of them all, let me finish with a few pointers.
- If the porn site you're browsing tells you that you need to "install a media player" of any sort, and you click "yes", it's already too late for you. You need CODEC'S, not PLAYERS. Once you're running their software, you're done. The only exceptions are the the big 3: adobe, sun-java, and apple plugins.
- You're browsing the local football scores webpage, and you see some sort of official looking window, message, or popup that says "you might be infected, click here to do something about it". The host of the web page does NOT have any means of determining your actual security status. Try and be a little discerning in future please!!
- If you click ANY file to run it, without knowing its extension type, you're done.
- Why did you download the virus in the first place? What did you think you were clicking on? Were you REALLY duped? So there were no indicators that the file you ran wasn't legit?
Everyone knows the rules about web browsing, secure connections, and porn. Stop making it someone elses responsibility to protect you from yourself. I have never seen a situation first hand where any virus software actually STOPPED, PROTECTED, AND KEPT THE PC UNHARMED. I hear about it all the time. Have you? If so, do you have the technical knowledge to determine if what it told you was true, and not a false positive? Like I said. Never seen it do anything but harm.
STOP DRIVING OFF CLIFFS !!!
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