THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 184 December 17 - 23, 2001

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Highlights this week:

• Orchid and Onion Parade: Nominations open
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And it is TIME for NOMINATIONS for the annual Chaos Manor Orchids and Onions Awards.

Send your nominations with a BRIEF statement on why this should be to me at jerryp@jerrypournelle.com with the word ORCHIDS or the word ONIONS (or both words but don't run them together, my rules want whole words) in the subject line).

I have mailed another VIRUS WARNING to subscribers. See Mail.

And I remind you, there is now a Windows version of Roberta Pournelle's reading program. For my general observations, click here.

And let me add my daily -- hourly -- gripe that the World Wide Wait will drive you mad. And if you have to use DirecPC to access it, the process will be faster.  Page error after page error.  Why? So let this be my ritual denunciation of the Internet and especially of DirecPC.

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Consider my ritual groan about the World Wide Wait at least as experienced with DirectPC to have been made. I would guess that 60% of the pages I access have to be requested more than once, and it takes several seconds to determine that the request didn't work. At well.

If you play Asheron's Call you need to look at:

The steps in this article usually fix the problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q303/1/13.asp 

which seems to tell how to fix sound problems.

And I am finishing up more work on an essay on .NET and its promises and problems.

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Hiding out

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This week:

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I'm hiding out to get some writing done.

I look at email infrequently. There is some mail.

Roland and WinShare report an oldie but goodie virus kicking about:

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2833811,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1tp02 

It's a variant of one we have seen before, and it purports to send you a Christmas card. As always, be sure your security patches are up to date, your virus scan is up to date, and never open mail attachments you don't know all about.

And:

Jerry, MAJOR security hole in WinXP. Kit kitcase@home.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7050-2001Dec20.html 

Sigh. If  you run XP and have not fixed this, DO SO NOW.

(And see Tomorrow's VIEW)

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Roland says the one above is new, not one of the older ones resurfacing, and the following are particularly urgent. 

http://www.eeye.com/html/press/PR20011220.html 

and

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/
treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-059.asp 

AND

http://www.datafellows.com/v-descs/welyah.shtml 

also JoAnne Dow says:

http://www.incidents.org/diary/diary.php?id=129 

This describes a major complete take over the machine direct Internet exploit for Windows XP. This appears to be the worst hole that any Windows OS has yet experienced. An employee of "eEye" discovered it.

{^_^}

If you haven't seen this already:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7050-2001Dec20.html 

Hackers can assume control of your XP machine remotely. Fix available.

Carey Gage

And Roland has found yet  more:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/
treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-060.asp

and

http://www.eeye.com/html/press/PR20011220.html 

and

http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/vulns-item.pl?section=discussion&id=3703 

And James Post says:

This is worth a second look

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/1217excel.html 

thanks, James

Ye flipping gods!

Beware!

I think it is time to go to Linux as a primary connection to the Internet. Inside that one may be able to use Windows for applications you don't have under Linux. Of course I already do much of that.

WinProxy downloads new anti-virus definitions every 4 hours or so automatically, and sent a warning (which I didn't see because I am not at home) yesterday; if you share your Internet connection in your home, you might think in terms of using WinProxy, which will be a lot better than nothing. It is, alas, my primary protection when I am using the satellite, until I get a better high speed connection and can use a Linux box.

Downstream from there, Joel Rosenberg's positive experiences with Mandrake Linux have sparked others to try to become a "Microsoft free environment." I find Microsoft applications pretty good for much of what I do, and I have already described ways to use Microsoft applications in a Linux environment.

I expect Microsoft to fix some of this latest spate of holes, but I can't think all this bodes well for the atmosphere of trust that .NET will need.

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I am working. 

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Coming home.

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