House of the rising Moonglum

So it seems obvious at this point, but don’t open files that you don’t know where they came from.

I am excited that Leopard includes the ability for developers to sign their applications, but if you download it and run it on your own, well there is only so much they can do. One of the first trojans for Mac OS X has appeared, and it looks like some people are falling for it. Ironically the sites that are spreading it, for now, appear to be pr0n sites.

New free advice rule: If you are going to be an idiot and download and run random untrusted files, DON’T DO IT FROM A PORN SITE.

*ahem*

Having said all that, this one actually looks kind of clever. It attacks through your DNS client. (Which incidentally means that the people do ran these programs had to give it their administrator password as well.) The DNS system, in case you don’t know, is an important part of how the internet (small i, invented before Al Gore) works. You see, computers all have addresses, which are numbers. So those nice word addresses (e.g. lair.haggisnet.net) need to be translated to numbers for your computer to find them. A DNS server does that for you. Your computer has a DNS client which knows the number for a DNS server, normally run by your internet provider. Well this trojan horse changes that number to one of it’s own choosing. So let’s say you type in www.mybank.com, it can give your computer whatever address it likes. For example, some computer that looks exactly like mybank.com and waits for your password, and then hands you off to the real site, while all your funds are busily transferred to pornomatic.aw. The real question of how bad this one will get is, a) how cleverer they get about having people download it and b) how clever they are with the DNS servers once they have you hooked into theirs. Stealing all your money is the obvious thing to do, but I’m sure cleverer people than me can come up with much worse.

And the worst part of all? This affects the one security flaw that will never be fixed, the one that exists between the chair and the keyboard. (EBCAK for those following along at home.)

Mac OS X 10.5 just came out, but I’ll wait until 10.5.1 thank you very much. I’ve read a couple reviews now, and there are many many awesome things: from redone networking preferences, to an updated Objective C runtime, to FSEvents and actual use of the file system based metadata. Best for anyone that I support: trivial backups. I’m not sure I totally like the way they did it, but it is so unimaginably easy that anyone who loses data from a disk failure on 10.5 gets no sympathy from me. But even with all this coolness, my favorite feature is super lame. Accurate date on the calendar program icon when it is not running. It isn’t July 17th anymore! Quote from ars technica:

“Apple has finally submitted to adding what must be quite a hack to get the iCal application icon to show the correct date on its Dock icon, even when the application is not running.” Quite a hack indeed.

On Friday the family went downtown to the Auditorium Theater to see the Joffrey Ballet performing “Giselle“. If the only ballet you have ever seen is “The Nutcracker”, this one provides an excellent contrast to what ballet is all about. It also has a nice spooky Halloween feel to it with the entire second half being about the ghosts of jilted lovers sending unwary men to their graves. (What is it about the Rheinland and spooky women sending men to their graves anyway?) The initial Entrée of the Willis is particularly chilling. The orchestra was pretty good, but the dancing and setting was superb. They did an amazing job showing the dichotomy of the harvest festival and the graveyard with lighting on the same backdrop.

It is ballet, so it is pretty expensive, but no more than a popular concert, and this is definitely a fun one if you have limited experience with ballets.

24/7 NOH has a interesting view on the taxes. If you ban the thing you are taxing, don’t be surprised if you don’t make money off of it.

The Trib points out the obvious. They are raising taxes because they can. I mean, c’mon if Stroger can get elected, they can pretty much do whatever they want and we won’t do anything about it.

I’ve been busy lately and haven’t had much time to post, but I have been collecting articles from our local bloggers, and the newspapers, and I have to say: a) I am really glad I didn’t vote for Stroger and b) Dailey needs to go too and c) So does the CTA board. Dude, this place is falling apart:

City. The mayor is in a hurry to raise taxes. Of course you get to pay higher taxes while the value of your home drops. It is no wonder that he needs more money though, given that a huge chunk of what they take in is being thrown away on graft. As if that weren’t enough, most of the city’s revenue is held up by TIFs and SSAs. Interestingly the aldermen and the county seem to be fighting this one a bit. The aldermen are passing through a bit of the hate that they have been picking up from citizens, while the TIFs reduce the county’s cut at well. Speaking of the county…

County. Apparently the way to “cut fat” if you are the product of that fat to begin with is to actually make more fat and raise taxes to cover the difference. He wants to up the county’s portion of sales, gas and parking taxes. He initially wanted to raise the taxes before showing the budget, and now that he has shown this insanely bloated budget I know why. And that is not all Stroger’s woes, the board to evaluate the hospital says that the county shouldn’t run it any more, because THEY SUCK! Well they said, “We don’t believe the governance is adequate at the present time to address this crisis”, but really that is the same thing.

Everything Else. And if tripling taxes wasn’t enough to scare business out of Chicago, how about combining that with increased electric rates? Or perhaps insane public transit? The CTA keeps pissing about needing more money and are talking about cutting HALF OF ALL THE BUS LINES IN THE CITY! The best part is this is going on while the olympic committee is coming to check out Chicago as an olympic venue. Maybe I should get into transit? How hard would it be to get the right of way to run a street-car line? I bet I could cut some sort of deal with the RTA where we share cards, and they get a cut of my profits. Upfront cost would be large, but it seems like this could be made to work, especially if it promised a certain amount of street work/beautification to the city.

OK, sorry to whine, but I just had to get that all off my chest. We now return you to our regular programming.

Holy Crap! I just saw Lynn Cheney on the Daily Show.

What an uncomfortable and open and honest moment. Color me impressed. Both Lynn and Jon were impressive. Jon asked the questions we all have, but had the temerity to be embarrassed about it, and Lynn had the grace to answer openly. Just wow.

The BBC has an article pointing out the rather unsurprising result of a study done in the UK pointing out that 1 in 7 parents are putting off having kids because of the insecurity in the world. Fortunately this doesn’t seem to be stopping most of my friends.