Jared Mauch's Comments

I’ve always thought about the idea of “Good” malware as a solution to some of the problems out there. The idea being that you use the same techniques used to compromise systems but to change some settings to a more secure value, but using some of the subversive methods to propogate.

Some of the settings that I consider a good default to change:
* Daily checks for software updates + Auto-Install of these updates
* Disable compromising features (eg: AutoRun)

Things to perhaps change
* Disable ActiveX
* Enable firewall (w/ exception handling)
* Nuke all AutoRun items
* Nuke all MSIE malware/extensions except “safe” plugins, eg: flash, quicktime, silverlight, etc..

The natural problem with this is doing good things with these bad techniques would likely get you classified as a virus/malware, and certainly if you attempt to do some of the network-scanning activities to distribute yourself. Too bad one cannot justify such activities legally.

After doing some test work with some various types of trim, it turns out that the installation of Azek wood trim is the best thing to do these days.  It avoids the challenges of painting and rotting that may happen with wood trim.  Personally, I’m in love outside of the expensive nature of the wood trim.

If you are like me, and don’t want to watch streaming video in a browser window, and would rather use VLC, you can find links such as http://cnn-cnnlive-2-primary.wm.llnwd.net/cnn_cnnlive_2_primary?MSWMExt=.asf by carefully tracking the browser path.  Looks like they’re using Limelight for this.  Interesting.

Personally, I find the pick interesting because he has issues staying on message and can easily get himself in trouble with words, but it does provide balance to Obama who is well polished in his speaking and manners.  Also, our current president isn’t exactly known for being a perfect orator.  We’ll see if the Romney prediction is correct in the future.

Well, this isn’t exactly as bad as it sounds actually, but it’s worth noting that some people have not learned from the aol.com and other dns server redirections in the past.  What happens is someone submits a web form or spoofs an email and it moves the dns for your domain to some other servers.  In this case, the fallout will be felt for up to two days by some people.  This can seriously hurt your reputation as folks may think that the security of your relationship with your registrar is congruent with your overall security strategy.  Most (All?) registrars allow you to put your domain in some form of a locked mode.  My domain (nether.net) has the following flag set: clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited, clientDeleteProhibited

It may be time to review what your settings are and make sure history does not repeat itself on your domains.

Some folks are looking at the problems that Sprint/Nextel had monetizing their “merger of equals” several years ago.  The Wall Street Journal have taken a brief look at this and the huge losses over the lifetime of the merger.  I doubt that AT&T or Verizon will acquire Sprint.  You may recall that MCI/Worldcom tried to acquire Sprint and was rebuffed by regulators.  Possible acquisitions could come from anyone from ISPs to other telcos.  This could range from Cogent to Level3 or Qwest. Personally I had always wondered how they would merge two networks that used different technologies for a win.  Nextel had higher revenue per subscriber due to their two-way feature, but Sprint hasn’t had any compelling products in recent years as AT&T(Cingular) launched the iPhone, and others attempt to compete. 

Talk about a small filter, there is a company in the UK that has shown off a water filter that costs 190GBP and will provide drinkable water as the output even if it has fecal matter in it. Seems like something quite valuable, and should be added to most folks home emergency kits. Time to hunt one down.