September 19, 2004
Expressing Terror by Example
Cyber Terrorism (supposedly) uses keyword profiling but targets terms expressing dissatisfaction and grief. Plus OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta Sneak Peek, GMail helper apps, Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 Beta update and (perhaps) a chance to acquire a free GMail account
Do you have anything against stripping down in public? Or don't mind the possibility of being included in the US Government's list of a potential terrorist threats? Now all you gotta do to become Public Enemy #1 is use words associated with terror (like so) and death (again so). And the immediate chances of your email not being delivered to a US recipient will increase to 100% almost immediately. Or so the media would have us believe.
In between all the techno-babble there's the technology oxymoron 'ethical hacking'. If its hacking there can be nothing ethical about it. And if you had good ethics you wouldn't hack. Security scans are something completely different in my book. But that's going off-topic. In the current context there's another media feeding-frenzy in the making over intelligence agencies snooping on web pages, email and telephone and fax transmissions. I presume Blogs like this one too will become targets eventually.
The media hype about the US National Security Agency (NSA) tapping into your data posted or exchanged on the World Wide Web isn't new. Any spy thriller from the 1970s onwards details, often in excruciating detail, just what the NSA (and other such agencies) are up to and how they regularly violates the individual's basic rights to privacy and security. Its also a subject dear to Hollywood and there are several excellent films on the subject. Tow of which I saw recently--Conspiracy Theory (1997. Dir: Richard Donner. Starring Mel Gibson & Julia Roberts) and Enemy of the State (1998. Dir: Tony Scott. Starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman).
A supposed advantage computers have over us (more intelligent) humans is they can process more information faster. But then again, computers are only as intelligent (or idiotic) as the people who program them. And the current US obsession with terms like 'terror', 'death' and 'Al-Qaida' remind me of the 'breast' controversy of the mid-1990s. When presumably well-meaning administrators at AOL (America Online) decided to protect users against pornography by blocking all instances of the string 'breast'. Which pretty much blocked out health care, medical information, language tutorials and any web content that included terms like abreast and breastfeeding! After the uproar died down and AOL could see it had done (itself) more harm than good the restrictions were quietly removed.
If you have a Linux box running Python do check out GmailFS that offers a mountable Linux file system that piggyback on an existing GMail account as its storage medium. Files are stored as messages. GmailFS uses the FUSE userland file system infrastructure and uses libgmail (GMail-Lite) to communicate with GMail. It supports operations such as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename.
There's also a GMail-powered blogging proof-of-concept that also uses the GMail-Lite class and stores posts as messages. You can also use categories for posts based on GMail's label system. And if the blog owner opens public posting, all the contributor has to do is mail the blog owner's GMail account. And if you already have a GMail account, but don't feel like staying logged in to check your Inbox condition. There are several helper applications.
Google's developing their GMail Notifier, a Windows-only program that keeps you posted via System Tray alerts. Download if you are a GMailer. There are also several .Net Framework-powered GMail aides like gNotify that runs in the System Tray and uses balloon tips or audible alerts when you receive new GMail. gPopper (formerly PGtGM) that acts as local server enabling you to use email clients like Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird to send and receive GMail messages.
I like the GMail Notifier (161 kB, freeware) that tells you when you have new GMail messages. It runs in the System Tray as a background process, checks your account at a user-determined interval and displays Inbox message headers in a pop-up window.
Updated 10/28/04 -- No Gmail invites left. Better luck next time.
I'd also recommend downloading and using the OpenOffice.org v2.0 Beta office suite that combines word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation graphics (Impress) and vector-drawing tool (Draw). But what makes it stand out from competition like Microsoft Office 2003 is native support for an XML-derived compressed document format, ability to export to PDF. And Impress exports PowerPoint-type presentations to SWF (Macromedia Flash format). Of course by using OpenOffice, you may expose yourself to the possibility of being sued by Microsoft based on the terms of a joint agreement reached between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft!
Any rumors about the early demise of Microsoft's ActiveX technology are just rumors. Because the software giant has now instituted an online Software License Checkpoint. This (optionally) requires that Windows XP/2003 and later operating systems need to validate activation status before you can download files from the Microsoft Download Center. I'm not sure if this policy has been extended to updates as well.
I butted up against the check (I'm very wary about downloading ActiveX controls in general) when I went to download Microsoft's Calculator Plus. This update skins the calculator and add conversion to the standard and scientific options. However, currency conversion is still not really usable unless your base currency is the Euro. For which you can download a daily exchange rate from the Central European Bank. For other currencies you need to manually add the prevailing rate of exchange. You can also add currencies of choice. But need to define the separate conversion rates. Until I can find a way to manage this automatically, I'm going to leave currency conversions to the excellent Currency Converter plugin for Maxthon/MyIE2.
Also updated is Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.05. This includes some gobbledygook called Code Sequence Identification (CSI) technology that supposedly protect users from known content as well as unknown variants. It also scans and list Alternate Data Streams (ADS) in NTFS enabled volumes. There are other bug fixes and feature enhancements too numerous to mention here.
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 Beta is a security upgrade of the stable 0.7.3 branch. I download a copy and was pleased to find that the update uses fewer system resources, and overall is a lot smoother and more intuitive to use. The Junk Mail controls too have been enhanced, and if you want junk mail deleted without your express permission, the feature actually works unsupervised. Also new in 0.8 is a feature to stream multiple POP3 accounts into a single global Inbox. Instead of the account-unique Inbox of previous versions. There's also an RSS reader included.
And if you still use, or have Windows 98 SE someplace but lack access to the system updates since this product is no longer officially supported. Don't despair. Just deploy the Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 1.6.1. This however excludes updates for MSIE, DirectX and Media Player.
That's it for this week. Until next time Happy Surfing and Stay Safe
Click Here to Email Me
I like the GMail Notifier (161 kB, freeware) that tells you when you have new GMail messages. It runs in the System Tray as a background process, checks your account at a user-determined interval and displays Inbox message headers in a pop-up window.
Updated 10/28/04 -- No Gmail invites left. Better luck next time.
I'd also recommend downloading and using the OpenOffice.org v2.0 Beta office suite that combines word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation graphics (Impress) and vector-drawing tool (Draw). But what makes it stand out from competition like Microsoft Office 2003 is native support for an XML-derived compressed document format, ability to export to PDF. And Impress exports PowerPoint-type presentations to SWF (Macromedia Flash format). Of course by using OpenOffice, you may expose yourself to the possibility of being sued by Microsoft based on the terms of a joint agreement reached between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft!
Any rumors about the early demise of Microsoft's ActiveX technology are just rumors. Because the software giant has now instituted an online Software License Checkpoint. This (optionally) requires that Windows XP/2003 and later operating systems need to validate activation status before you can download files from the Microsoft Download Center. I'm not sure if this policy has been extended to updates as well.
I butted up against the check (I'm very wary about downloading ActiveX controls in general) when I went to download Microsoft's Calculator Plus. This update skins the calculator and add conversion to the standard and scientific options. However, currency conversion is still not really usable unless your base currency is the Euro. For which you can download a daily exchange rate from the Central European Bank. For other currencies you need to manually add the prevailing rate of exchange. You can also add currencies of choice. But need to define the separate conversion rates. Until I can find a way to manage this automatically, I'm going to leave currency conversions to the excellent Currency Converter plugin for Maxthon/MyIE2.
Also updated is Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.05. This includes some gobbledygook called Code Sequence Identification (CSI) technology that supposedly protect users from known content as well as unknown variants. It also scans and list Alternate Data Streams (ADS) in NTFS enabled volumes. There are other bug fixes and feature enhancements too numerous to mention here.
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 Beta is a security upgrade of the stable 0.7.3 branch. I download a copy and was pleased to find that the update uses fewer system resources, and overall is a lot smoother and more intuitive to use. The Junk Mail controls too have been enhanced, and if you want junk mail deleted without your express permission, the feature actually works unsupervised. Also new in 0.8 is a feature to stream multiple POP3 accounts into a single global Inbox. Instead of the account-unique Inbox of previous versions. There's also an RSS reader included.
And if you still use, or have Windows 98 SE someplace but lack access to the system updates since this product is no longer officially supported. Don't despair. Just deploy the Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 1.6.1. This however excludes updates for MSIE, DirectX and Media Player.
That's it for this week. Until next time Happy Surfing and Stay Safe
Click Here to Email Me
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