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Face facts: Macs get malware, people look at porn

Some days (like today) I get thoroughly annoyed with society’s continual states of denial. Yes, “states” plural. This BBC news story about the “first” Trojan Horse for the Mac is wrong in four important ways — and it perpetuates another “myth of denial”.

[T]he first serious threat to Mac users has been observed “in the wild”.

It’s a Trojan Horse, a piece of code that pretends to do one thing but actually compromises your computer.

This one spreads through online video sites…

That puts my son right in the middle of the vulnerable population because he likes to watch video clips via sites like YouTube and Flixster…

The Trojan sits behind an online video and when you try to play it you get a message from Quicktime telling you to get a new codec, and if you follow the link you’ll be sent to a site that hosts the malicious software.

Click “ok” and enter your systems administrator’s password and it will be installed on your computer with full system access after which you are, to use the jargon, “pwned”, or scuppered.

And you don’t even get to see the video you were after….

At the moment the fake codec is being spread via porn sites, but it will quickly spread to more mainstream sites, and that’s when it will get dangerous…

Here’s why this article is wrong…

Continue reading “Face facts: Macs get malware, people look at porn”

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How this ordinary aircraft will change my life

Photograph of Thai Airways International Boeing 747-400 at Sydney Airport

This Boeing 747-400, photographed at Sydney airport last Friday, belongs to Thai Airways International. If you happen to have decent eyesight, you can confirm this by the fact that it has “Thai” painted on the side. Ownership is not about paint, however.

If you paint “Thai” on my side, I do not then become the property of Thai Airways, not even if you’re employed by Thai Airways to do so. Paint is just paint, whereas ownership of property is an abstract concept. A concept which can be supported or asserted by paint or other physical signs, but still an abstract concept which can only be agreed upon by sentient beings.

But what about another concept: nationality?

Nationality is not about paint either. Paint “Thai” on my side if you like. If you use the right brush I might even enjoy it. But I won’t become even remotely Thai. However is nationality something which is just agreed upon? Or is there something essential — in the core meaning of the word, having to do with essence — which makes someone immutably Thai or Australian or Czech or Chinese?

And how does nationality relate to similar concepts, such as ethnicity or race or culture?

I usually don’t think about these categories. The variation within them outweighs the supposed differences. People of every nationality range from amiable to arsehole. However that aircraft — that specific aircraft — has brought it all into focus.

Continue reading “How this ordinary aircraft will change my life”

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Toy of the Year’s “Magic Beads” are… magic beads!

The Hong Kong-manufactured craft toy Bindeez, named as Australia’s Toy of the Year, is being withdrawn because its “magic beads” turn into the drug GHB (“fantasy”) when you ingest them.

Sydney-based poisons specialist Dr Naren Gunja said the list of Bindeez’s ingredients supplied by the manufacturer said it should contain the non-toxic chemical known as 1,5-pentanediol.

“What we’ve found in the beads from testing done … by our hospital scientists is that it contains 1,4-butanediol,” Dr Gunja said, adding that this chemical was metabolised by the body into GHB.

“Magic beads” indeed. Get ’em while they last.

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793k/second

I must admit, since upgrading our Internet link to ADSL2+ it is rather nice seeing notices like “download 793k bytes per second”.