Joy Unbound

Source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/11/27/1910232/DHS-Seizes-75-Domain-Names

Many readers have sent in an update to yesterday’s story about the Department of Homeland Security’s seizure of torrent-finder.com, a domain they believe to be involved in online piracy. As it turns out, this was just one of dozens of websites that were targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“In announcing that operation, John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of ICE, and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America called it a long-term effort against online piracy, and said that suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world. ‘American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates every day, seven days a week,’ Mr. Morton said. ‘Criminals are stealing American ideas and products and distributing them over the Internet.’”

The TorrentFreak article we discussed yesterday has been updated with a list of the blocked sites.

Source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/11/26/1450257/US-Government-Seizes-Torrent-Search-Engine-Domain

Voulnet writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak:

“This morning, visitors to the Torrent-Finder.com site are greeted with an ominous graphic which indicates that ICE has seized the site’s domain. ‘My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!’ the exasperated owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak this morning. ‘I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy, I noticed the DNS had changed. GoDaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN,’ he explained. Aside from the fact that domains are being seized seemingly at will, there is a very serious problem with the action against Torrent-Finder. Not only does the site not host or even link to any torrents whatsoever, it actually only returns searches through embedded iframes which display other sites that are not under the control of the Torrent-Finder owner.”

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/do-you-really-need-antivirus-software/2685

Do you need antivirus software on your PC?
If you’re not sure of the answer to that question, then the short answer is yes. The longer answer is that security software is only one piece of what should be a simple, straightforward, and systematic approach to your PC’s health. I’ll outline my recommendations in this post. If you’re visiting the family over the holidays, you might want to take my list along with you.

But first, let me rant a bit. It’s no secret that I dislike the security software industry. In one of my very first posts here, nearly four years ago, I called it a “protection racket” and said, “I can already see the beginnings of an ‘arms war’ among security software companies, with ads and whisper campaigns based on fear.” Back in 2005, I wrote a post arguing, “The security software industry wants you to be afraid.”

I have deeply mixed feelings about antivirus software, especially when it’s part of a big security suite that tries to protect you from every imaginable form of online threat. The companies that sell you that software have an interest in keeping you afraid, and so they publish countless studies proving how dangerous the online world is.

They also have a vested interest in proving that you haven’t wasted your subscription dollars on their product, so they need to occasionally (or continually) pop up messages and alerts and reminders to show you exactly which threats they’ve blocked. Even when those “threats” are trivial or nonexistent.

Just how dangerous is it out there? Here’s what you need to know:

• No computing environment is immune. Every platform can be exploited by an attacker. This month’s Mac OS X v10.6.5 and Security Update 2010-007 included well over 100 fixes to critical security vulnerabilities, many of which could lead to arbitrary code execution. These are exactly the same types of vulnerabilities that Windows malware writers take advantage of. Fortunately for Mac (and Linux) users, their worldwide market share is small enough that malware writers simply haven’t bothered with them. If you use OS X on a Mac, I don’t think you need to install security software, but that recommendation could change someday if Apple’s platform continues to grow in popularity and attracts enough attention from bad guys.
• Good behavior alone is not enough to protect you from attacks. Visiting porn sites and downloading pirated software puts you at a much higher risk of infection, but even legitimate web sites can be compromised, and seemingly innocent results in a search engine can lead to hostile sites.
• Antivirus software is one layer among several. Depending on the type of threat, it can be very helpful, even if you consider yourself an expert PC user. But it is not a magic bullet, and it is no replacement for a well-rounded approach to security.
• No antivirus software is perfect. It is literally impossible for any security product to identify every possible threat, especially when malware writers are constantly updating their products to avoid detection. Most of the leading antivirus programs can identify and block the overwhelming majority of threats you’re likely to encounter online. The fact that they can’t reach 100% protection is why security software is only one part of a layered security strategy.
• Many types of malware are installed voluntarily. Among the most common threats are Trojans, which spread via social engineering. The job of a malware writer is to convince you to run his innocent-sounding program, which secretly does something other than its stated purpose. It might claim to be a new video playback plugin (like the one I saw last week) but actually turns out to be a program that hides on your PC and steals passwords or sends spam. Social engineering explains how an entire class of malicious fake antivirus programs made it onto the top 10 malware list for the first half of this year.
• Malware writers make their living exploiting unpatched systems. One of the top 10 threats found and removed from Windows PCs in the first half of this year was Win32/Conficker. The vulnerability that Conficker exploits was blocked by a Microsoft patch released in October 2008. In fact, that’s true of most of the top PC malware variants found in the wild. Four of the entries on the top 10 list for 2010 are based on vulnerabilities that were identified and patched in 2007 or 2008, and none of the others could have been installed without explicit user interaction on a fully updated copy of Windows.
• It’s not just Windows that needs patching. Some of the most effective malware vectors these days are coming through vulnerabilities in products like Adobe Flash and Reader, in the Java runtime, and in Microsoft Office. In most cases, the vulnerabilities were patched quickly by the software maker, but if you didn’t apply that update, you remain vulnerable. Ironically, most of these exploited programs are cross-platform; in theory, malware authors can add code to their PDF or Java exploits that target Macs or Linux PCs. So far, they haven’t done that.
• Attacks via zero-day exploits are rare. Zero-day exploits get a lot of publicity, but they rarely have a widespread impact. The worst variants of these attacks are the ones aimed at specific companies, like the targeted wave of attacks against Adobe, Google, and other high-profile companies in early 2010. And even those only succeeded because they exploited unpatched systems using an outdated browser.

HardForum Discussion: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1563906

Since the last time I had an anti-virus discussion on HardForum (at least 6 if not more months ago), it is evident through the overall replies in the thread that either (1) a lot of people have realized that anti-virus software is really not as beneficial and core-critical as they originally thought it was, or (2) a lot of the people who participated in the last discussion I was in who were extremely-for anti-virus software are not participating in this discussion. I think this is good though because it goes to show that at least some people are thinking and evaluating situations for themselves.

So what would be the “right” way?

Absolutely I wouldn’t be able to tell you because I am not God. However, I think there is a better-than-norm way of securing oneself; I would not recommend this to any amateurs or computer illiterate folks because they are simply not tech savvy enough (and for this crowd I would recommend “the norm” way of things of simply just having an anti-virus program installed and running).

1. One of the most important things is intelligence and maturity. Without it, not even the most secure Linux distribution will save you
2. Secure your network and browsing experience
3. Every month, or two months, or three months, or six months (at the most, and depending on how paranoid you are) you want to do a checkup just to make sure you are clean

That is how I roll (and successfully for the past 5-7 or so years since I gave up anti-virus software).

If this article is a re-post and has already been posted on Joy Unbound, I apologize; I could not find the existing article.

Source: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/st_thompson

Bernie Krause listens to nature for a living. The 69-year-old is a field recording scientist: He heads into the wilderness to document the noises made by native fauna — crickets chirping in the Amazon rain forest, frogs croaking in the Australian outback.

But Krause has noticed something alarming. The natural sound of the world is vanishing. He’ll be deep inside the Amazon, recording that cricket, but when he listens carefully he also hears machinery: The distant howl of a 747 or the dull roar of a Hummer miles way.

Krause has a word for the pristine acoustics of nature: biophony. It’s what the world sounds like in the absence of humans. But in 40 percent of the locations where Krause has recorded over the past 40 years, human-generated noise has infiltrated the wilderness. “It’s getting harder and harder to find places that aren’t contaminated,” he says.

This isn’t just a matter of aesthetics. The contamination of biophony may soon become a serious environmental issue — Krause says that man-made sounds are already wreaking havoc with animal communication. We worry about the carbon emissions from SUVs and airplanes; maybe we should be equally concerned about the racket they cause.

Krause’s argument is simple. In a biophony, animals divide up the acoustic spectrum so they don’t interfere with one another’s voices. He shows me a spectrogram of a wilderness recording, in which all the component noises are mapped according to pitch. It looks like the musical score for an orchestra, with each instrument in its place. No two species are using the same frequency. “That’s part of how they coexist so well,” Krause says. When they issue mating calls or all-important warning cries, they aren’t masked by the noises of other animals.

But what happens when man-made noise — anthrophony, as Krause dubs it — intrudes on the natural symphony? Maybe it’s the low rumble of nearby construction or the high whine of a turboprop. Either way, it interferes with a segment of the spectrum already in use, and suddenly some animal can’t make itself heard. The information flow in the jungle is compromised.

Krause has heard this happen all over the world. For example, the population of spadefoot toads in the Yosemite region of the Sierras is declining rapidly, and Krause thinks it’s because of low-flying military training missions in the area. The toad calls lose their synchronicity, and coyotes and owls home in on individual frogs trying to rejoin the chorus.

And as Krause has discovered, it doesn’t take much to disrupt a soundscape. California’s Lincoln Meadow, for example, has undergone only a tiny bit of logging, but the acoustic imprint of the region has completely changed in tandem with the landscape, and some species seem to have been displaced. The area looks the same as ever, “but if you listen to it, the density and diversity of sound is diminished,” Krause says. “It has a weird feeling.”

Biologists were initially skeptical of Krause’s theory, but he’s slowly gaining converts. Now even bigwigs like Harvard’s E. O. Wilson have gone on record in support.

So how do you quiet an increasingly cacophonous world? Perhaps we should be developing not just clean tech but “quiet” tech, industrial machinery designed to run as silently as possible. More regulations could help, too. Cities have long had noise ordinances; wilderness areas could benefit from tighter protections as well.

Some of this is just about educating ourselves. We all recognize ecological tragedies by sight — when we see pictures of clear-cut areas, say, or melting Arctic ice shelves. Now we need to learn to listen to the earth, too.

Last year, Krause brought biophony to the masses by creating an extraordinarily cool add-on for Google Earth. Download it from his WildSanctuary.com site and you can click on dozens of locations worldwide to hear snippets of their soundscape.

I select the Amazon rain forest and my office is suddenly filled with a mesmerizing mix of hoots, cries, and rustling. It’s spooky — like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

And like nothing I’ll ever hear again, if we don’t watch out. “Earth has a voice,” Krause says. “We can’t let it go silent.”

Email cli...@clivethompson.net.

As of the recent months, I have been feeling very lonely in the context of companionship and close, intimate social relationship. It has almost just about become one of my main daily struggles; some nights are worse than others, and it definitely makes life more difficult. The problem is that I lack maturity in some aspects. Actually, there is also another problem: I’m impossible. There’s just simply no one for me.

A year or two ago my father and I had some kind of conflict with each other; I do not remember what this conflict was. But of all that happened in dialogue there is one thing that embossed itself into my mind, and that was when during dialogue my father had told me that I will never be better than him (immediately after having said that I am not, which is relative to the situation at the time and is undoubtedly true).

My parents marriage relationship isn’t quite the best example out there. They aren’t exactly a compatible match or the most fitting for each other (says my parents). And so if I will never be better than him, I will never have anything better by material, experience, and virtue than what he has. So as the day-to-day things go by and I observe the conflicts and stressors within the family and between my parents, it is all the more discouraging and dismantling. The limits of the pictures are so “poor” that I have often queried myself, “Is this really all that is available for me? Because if it is, which I will presume as true, then I honestly and to the utmost genuinely have no desire or interest in marriage.. at all!”

Secondly, I am physically weak and financially immature (and likely in other aspects as well). I cannot protect anyone, and I am poor with money. I always try to save my money and not spend it, I really do, but the fact that it isn’t and hasn’t been happening testifies the effectiveness of my continuous attempts.

Third, if I have the opportunity to quite possibly easily find a spouse through friendly outlets, why not be satisfied with that regardless of race, personality, background, etcetera? God gives, and God takes, and if I’m not satisfied with the least that which I have then I deserve and shall have none of it! To top it off, the slightest hesitation because of race or culture or background kind of goes to show that there is something that just isn’t quite right about the image I present. Race, color, ethnicity, background — none of these should matter if we’re all of the body of Christ!

I will go ahead and further conclude that if that’s what stops me, then what is my motivation? What do I really want? Certainly, as I am implying, something is wrong and incorrect.

Fourth, I have stripped life and its supplemental gifts of its dignity and reduced them to mere matter and dust. Michael Ramsden, an apologetic team member of the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, in one broadcast spoke on this topic and best illustrated it with, “instead of ‘I love you,’ it was ‘Honey, I’m having a chemical reaction’.” If all dignity is stripped away and the perspective left to know only matter as matter, then how can one’s dignity be recovered? How?

I have taken away from my spouse and robbed her of what is hers; I would not be surprised if it would pain the both of us if you were on higher and purer grounds than I, and that is precisely why I would be more willing to accept one that has robbed as much as I have robbed from them. I cannot and will not expect God for anything better than I or what my parents have. To expect better would be like, you’ve just committed a crime and sure you repent of your sins and are forgiven, but then you are given in reward precisely what you have been stealing.

Or it is like you honor and respect God enough to where you make the most of your life to not commit adultery of any kind, and basically practice celibacy and do it perfectly despite the hardship involved. God then arranges for your spouse to cross your paths, and then it’s like, you have been working so hard to maintain said honor and respect and made it so far and now it’s time to just throw all that hard work, struggle and effort away? Come on, no way!

Fifth, I am impossible! That’s right, impossible! I don’t see how there is any combination of personality, characteristics, background, etcetera that could complement my weaknesses. I’m too unique. (Sure, who isn’t unique? Right? Just like everyone else, hmm?)

Sixth, I need to remember and take into account all the bad memories, all the negative observations, and all the wisdom I have received that is against getting married (but not in any way supportive of “premarital anything”). Countless times I have been told over the past decade never to get married by countless people. The kids, the wife (or the husband), oh the stresses and the horrors and so forth! I have also been innumerably been told (and observed) that she’ll remember everything clear as sunlight from day number one. More importantly, I have to meditate on negative observations, bad experiences, etcetera. The examples mentioned and illustrated in this fraction are nothing compared the the whole list.

And finally, seventh, this article alone should indicate “just how difficult” I would be.