Woody's Things

Ramblings and Opinons of an old man!

Memphis, TN United States

Simple site to log thoughts on current events and activity. Please feel free to give your comments.

Microsoft Makes Update Available

January 05, 2006  /  Barry Wood

FYI -- Microsoft has made their fix available and it works. After installing you can remove the temporary fix I mentioned a couple of days ago. For details follow the link.
Security Now! Notes for Episode #20
Users of Ilfak's temporary patch — which is no longer needed in the wake of Microsoft's early released official update — may rest easily. Ilfak reports that he checked-out Microsoft's new replacement GDI32.DLL . . . and it permanently does the same thing as his temporary patch: It simply revokes support for the age-old WMF "SETABORT" command from metafile processing.
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Journalist Being Checked and They Don't Like it

January 03, 2006  /  Barry Wood

Ahh shucks; Maybe they are finding out they aren't as "elite" as they thought or where told they would be at "journalism school"... Easy fix for this "being checked up on" -- get it right, don't take statements out of context, hey I got it report the news not your opinion!
Answering Back to the News Media, Using the Internet - New York Times
Subjects of newspaper articles and news broadcasts now fight back with the same methods reporters use to generate articles and broadcasts - taping interviews, gathering e-mail exchanges, taking notes on phone conversations - and publish them on their own Web sites. This new weapon in the media wars is shifting the center of gravity in the way that news is gathered and presented, and it carries implications for the future of journalism.
[...]
Interview subjects are "annoyed that they're quoted out of context, or they did a half-hour interview and only one sentence got used. Or sometimes they're just flattered that a reporter called them," she said. "If you're one of a growing number of people with a blog, you now have a place where you can set the record straight."
Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org and a former producer at ABC News and CNN, said that while the active participation by so many readers was healthy for democracy and journalism, it had allowed partisanship to mask itself as media criticism and had given rise to a new level of vitriol.
"It's now O.K. to demonize the messenger," he said. "This has led to a very uncivil discourse in which it seems to be O.K. to shout down, discredit, delegitimize and denigrate the people who are reporting stories and to pick at their methodology and ascribe motives to them that are often unfair."

Now let me get this straight -- Mr. Schechter has a problem with "demonizing the messenger", I wonder if he has a problem with the "demonizing" of anyone you choose for any reason (i.e. they disagree with you, they didn't give you an interview, you just don't like, to sway public opinion, etc.) -- you know the elitist behavior of many journalist's.

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More on the Vulnerability

January 03, 2006  /  Barry Wood

Just wanted to provide more on the vulnerability in all versions of windows. Don't forget the fix I reported yesterday.
FT.com / By industry / IT - Windows PCs face ‘huge’ virus threat
“The potential [security threat] is huge,” said Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at F-Secure, an antivirus company. “It’s probably bigger than for any other vulnerability we’ve seen. Any version of Windows is vulnerable right now.” The flaw, which allows hackers to infect computers using programs maliciously inserted into seemingly innocuous image files, was first discovered last week. But the potential for damaging attacks increased dramatically at the weekend after a group of computer hackers published the source code they used to exploit it. Unlike most attacks, which require victims to download or execute a suspect file, the new vulnerability makes it possible for users to infect their computers with spyware or a virus simply by viewing a web page, e-mail or instant message that contains a contaminated image. “We haven’t seen anything that bad yet, but multiple individuals and groups are exploiting this vulnerability,” Mr Hyppönen said. He said that every Windows system shipped since 1990 contained the flaw. Microsoft said in a security bulletin on its website that it was aware that the vulnerability was being actively exploited. However an official patch to correct the flaw was not expected to be released until January 10.
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Unbuffered Leftest Rhetoric

December 30, 2005  /  Barry Wood

Well the MSM blatantly uses known lefties for their experts now -- got to love the desperation.

ABC Fails to Note Bush-Bashing “Constitutional Scholar” Writes for Far-Left Magazine | NewsBusters.org

Without identifying David Cole as the “legal affairs correspondent” for the far-left magazine The Nation, Friday’s World News Tonight on ABC featured his denigration of the probe into who leaked the secret eavesdropping story to the New York Times and his expert declaration that “the President of the United States violated a clear criminal prohibition on warrantless wiretapping.”

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Why Speed Cameras are Bad

December 30, 2005  /  Barry Wood

I cannot stand the idea of speed cameras or stop light cameras for that matter... In this case, if you follow all the links, you will find that the man was actaully going 18mph but the camera got him going 47mph -- what if he wasn't an engineer. BTW engineers rock!
Engineer Bryn Carlyon was issued a ticket by a traffic speed camera in Cardiff, UK. But he used multiple timed snaps by the camera, plus a little basic math, to prove that he could not have been traveling at the speed on his citation.


read more | digg story
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Just an FYI

December 29, 2005  /  Barry Wood

Another flaw and an FYI for those that read this blog!
Techworld.com - Hackers exploit Windows flaw
Security firms have warned that patched systems running Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 can be successfully attacked by malicious hackers. The attacks can be carried out thanks to a newly discovered vulnerability in those operating systems' handling of corrupted .WMF (Windows Metafile) graphic files.
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To the ACLU -- Make Up Your Mind!

December 29, 2005  /  Barry Wood

The ACLU cannot make up their mind! They have campaigned against "racial profile" in favor for "behavioral profile" over and over and over.... Now they are proving they don't want "behavioral profiling" either -- please, MAKE UP YOUR MIND. (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

American Civil Liberties Union : ACLU Letter to the House Urging Members to Co-Sponsor the End Racial Profiling Act of 2004
Law enforcement based on general characteristics such as race, religion and national origin, rather than on the observation of an individual's behavior, is not only an inefficient technique;

Safe and Free // Post - 9/11 Resources: Racial Profiling, Discrimination and Immigrants’ Rights
Racial profiling is as flawed an approach to the war on terrorism as it was to the war on drugs. The ACLU is not alone in this belief: shortly after September 11, leading intelligence experts cautioned against using this counterproductive tool. In Assessing Behaviors, a memorandum first reported in the Boston Globe, the specialists advised law enforcement to focus on behavior, not race, in efforts to foil terrorist plots.

Behavior detection implemented at Maine airports - Boston.com
The federal Transportation Security Administration implemented its pilot program for behavior detection -- the practice of analyzing people's actions to determine if they have something to hide -- at Boston's Logan International Airport in 2002.
[...]
The TSA is facing opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts last year claiming behavior detection can be easily abused because TSA officers have to guess who is suspicious, leading to racial profiling.
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Ahh Shucks!

December 23, 2005  /  Barry Wood

Wondering why democrats are not trumpeting the "polls" -- well a quick glance shows the polls are moving in the wrong direction for them and doesn't support their "gloom and doom" wishes.
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A Little Longer

December 22, 2005  /  Barry Wood

Well at least we are proactively pursuing terrorist for a little longer -- I just don't get the problem. The NYT says it can't find anyone that has been wronged utilizing this, and we all know they would try to find anything to make the President look bad, and senators agree we need something to ensure 9/11 doesn't happen again. What is the problem? Are we just going to extend this thing six-months at a time like renting an apartment.
Senate Votes to Extend Patriot Act for 6 Months
A much-debated domestic surveillance law won a reprieve last night when senators agreed to continue it for six months to allow House and Senate negotiators to resume efforts next year to rewrite it for the longer term.
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This is Scary - no Sad

December 21, 2005  /  Barry Wood

Trust me -- "there is no atheist in a foxhole"! Trying to censor a chaplain, officially or unofficially, is wrong. If the only chaplain at your disposal is of the Jewish faith we (military members) are intelligent to know that "in Jesus name" want be used, but most are aware if the chaplain's faith is Protestant then surely they will use "in Jesus name".
Military chaplains told to shy from Jesus -The Washington Times
I am a Navy chaplain being fired because I pray in Jesus' name,' said Navy Lt. Gordon Klingenschmitt, who will be holding 6 p.m. prayer vigils daily in Lafayette Park.
[...]
[b]About 80 percent of U.S. troops are Christian[/b], the legislators wrote, adding that military "censorship" of chaplains' prayers disenfranchises "hundreds of thousands of Christian soldiers in the military who look to their chaplains for comfort, inspiration and support."
Official military policy allows any sort of prayer, but Lt. Klingenschmitt says that in reality, evangelical Protestant prayers are censored. He cites his training at the Navy Chaplains School in Newport, R.I., where "they have clipboards and evaluators who evaluate your prayers, and they praise you if you pray just to God," he said. "But if you pray in Jesus' name, they counsel you."
Muslim, Jewish and Roman Catholic chaplains are likewise told not to pray in the name of Allah, in Hebrew or in the name of the Trinity, he added.
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