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Fanboys, unite!

Slashdot has posted information on a cancelled contest of writing a Mac OSX virus to put to rest the recent debate of OS X being no more secure than Windows.

Now is it just me, or do I feel that people are just too damn defensive of OS X? I mean I love it. I’m using it. I can even claim that it is more “secure” than Windows. But I’ve never in my life assumed that it was invincible. And another thing, since when did it become a Apple vs MS thing again? The whole premise of the contest/post isn’t even valid since it should never had compared the two in the first place.

If I’m not mistaken, the article(s) that triggered this whole debate was from ZDNet (at least as far as [Slashdot]0 was concerned), which can be read here and here. They document Symantec’s claims of OS X’s increasing “attractiveness” of being a malware target.

In no way did I construe the article as trying to suggest any of the OSes being better than the other.

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I’m glad I ain’t a woman

Being a DIY (Do It Yourself) type of person, I took the cue of following and article describing the process of cleaning your dSLR sensor without having to spend more than $100 (the price of one of the best cleaning kits available for the task).

The gist of the article is that the natural property of Visible Dusts’ famous cleaning kit, the Sensor Brush, can be attained by using a regular, synthetic nylon cosmetics brush.

Suffice to say that the article was convincing enough to make me a believer. Today, I went with my mom to the department store in search of this so called “mask brush.”

And the trouble we had to go through for a brush really made me glad I wasn’t a woman.

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Rainbow

This is an insanely hilarious video of an actual broadcasted version of a European children’s TV show called “Rainbow.” I personally don’t know about the show, but here’s what it says in the site:

For those of you who don’t have kids or are far too young to remember the splendid children’s TV programme “Rainbow”, this may be a little lost on you… but it must have been a great episode to watch! Almost too ridiculous to believe… These are taken from original Rainbow scripts and there’s no way these could have been done by accident. Innuendo all the way….

The accents are obviously british, and since the video’s audio quality isn’t quite “pristine,” its not easily understood unless you’re used to their way of speaking. They’ve transcribed the script… but of course since the video was on the same page, it was impossible to read and view at the same time.

I’ve pasted the dialog below, which you can read while viewing the video on a separate browser window. Read More

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What I think about the Schiavo case

Here’s one of the better articles regarding the Terri Schiavo case. The article simply presents objective facts leaving the floor open to debate.

At the risk of being judged as an evil person – I would have to take the side of Mr. Schiavo. But hear me out before you judge me.

If I, for one, should be in a state wherein absolutely no possible chance of recovery can be found through empirical means; I would like to say that I’m fine with killing me off – I don’t want to be baggage for my loved ones. Sure, I’d like to recover and live if possible, but if the time/money/emotional stress it takes for me to recover is beyond reasonable, then I would hold no I’ll will against anyone wanting to pull th plug – regardless how I think (if I’m still thinking that is). Even if it was my wife herself who requested it, I wouldn’t blame her. I’d imagine I would love my wife, and would rather see her happy going on with her life, wether it be independently, or in another man’s arms, than wasting it taking care of a helpless vegetable who cannot give her anything but misery and emotional stress.

Besides, I want to live my life, not merely “live.” If there is a Heaven, then I’d imagine wanting to get there ASAP than just sit here idly, oblivious to the world, for 15 or more years.

But that’s just me.

Personally, I think that all individuals, upon reaching legal age (or not) to simply state their views regarding sensitive issues such as these. Not so much to start debates, but simply to apply the law to them accordingly should they meet such unfortunate fates. Have them sign legal documents if need be. I guess it would be like signing a card agreeing to give away your organs should you die. Maybe you’d want to clarify if you want to be buried or cremated should you die. That sort of stuff.

Starving her to death however, is too brutal for my taste (more on this later).

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Checkmate

The whole Symantec “fear-factor” article/stunt has brought the Mac world up-in-arms. I find it sad that most of the negative feedback come from people who are merely over-confident, or complacent… and do not know the real danger that may happen. It’s one thing to be confident in your system – hell even I am confident in my systems (both Windows and Mac), but quite another to expect them to be bullet-proof.

While again, the security architecture of the Unix framework is a formidable barrier for the most part, it still doesn’t mean that it cannot be cracked.

A post I read on a messageboard should put things into perspective:

Complacency will get you 0wn3d.. we should remember there are some fairly serious unpatched vulns still out there in the default install (e.g. iSync), and rootkits in development.

(For an explanation of the vuln, see: http://secunia.com/advisories/13965/. For a fix, see: http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000411.html)

Are you sure that update/game/photoshop filter you just got from p2p is not a trojan that will rootkit your box and turn it into a spambot/kiddiepornserver etc ?

Do you know how to check ? Could you find out if it had happened ?

Since it is a local vulnerability, this is the type of thing someone exploits to completely own your box once they’ve gotten onto your system another way. Meaning if they have direct access to your system (i.e. using the machine themselves, or you running something that allows them access)

In the scenarios mentioned above, this is nothing different from running an infected program from a download, email, etc. The number of incidents involving these types of exploits may be rare, but they are out there. And Symantec’s argument would actually be valid if taken in such context.

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