I offer my condolences to those whose lives have been devastated by Katrina. I wonder when the last time was that a major city was destroyed so thoroughly. I have a feeling the most recent examples are Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Dresden, and London...
In other news, the victims of the Baghdad stampede and their loved ones have my sympathy.
Most computer viruses attack vulnerabilites that have already been patched; they simply prey on the idiots who don't keep their software up to date. The funny thing is that there are also perfectly intelligent people who don't patch their OS and/or browser (the two biggest sources of critical security flaws).
I think the central issue is that, by and large, people don't realize that computers have not yet been dumbed down to the level of 'appliance'. In this respect they are analagous to cars: they can be operated by pretty much any idiot and can handle quite a bit of abuse, but if maintenance is totally neglected they can do some ugly things.
Whether we're talking about replacing brake pads or downloading patches, it is your responsibility to keep up on the maintenance of your equipment. I hate to get all catch-phrasey, but we share the information superhighway just as much as any physical road. Your spam-sending, virus-spreading, zombified computer is just as bad as that smoke-belching, no-taillight rattletrap you curse at as he cuts you off in traffic.
So, everybody, the moral of the story is simple: Keep your software up to date! To that end...
If you use Windows:
First, get Firefox. It's a solid, extensible browser that is also free (as-in-beer and as-in-speech).
Next, visit Windows Update. MS wants you to use their browser to get their OS updates, but you can point Firefox to WindizUpdate and get all the Windows patches you need!
If you use Mac OS or *nix:
Congrats, you are pretty dang secure (through obscurity) already! Stick with a distro/release that is recent enough to be supported with security updates, and you should be good to go.
In movies about the future there are displays and speakers all over the place. It's always the government or MegaHugeCorp saying happy things in a soothing voice while showing smiling faces dancing in sunny fields. "Thanks to the brilliant technology of MegaHugeCorp, today's radiation danger level is only UV8. Please remember to use SPF 1337 or greater, and have a super day!"
Today I realized that my office already has these citizen-placating happy boxes! They spit out yummy profit numbers, the show pics of the winner of a company raffle, or maybe feature a marketing drone going on about our 'success' (so easily definable...) at the latest trade show. Though they can be somewhat informative, these annoying propaganda boxes really only have one redeeming factor: I'm getting prepared for The FutureTM!
It seems I've gone off the deep end. I just got back from taking a walk outside, only it wasn't actually a walk. It was a jog. Note that I was not bribed, blackmailed, threatened, coerced, manipulated, or brainwashed. I was not sleepwalking, drunk, or possessed by the devil. I actually did it on purpose.
It was postulated in high school that my intelligence as a function of time, I(t), was accurately modeled by a simple inverse relationship of the form
I(t) = -A * t
where A > 0 and A [=] IQ Points / Year. It follows from the above equation that my mental decline is inevitable, but I didn't realize that A had such a large value. I fear that I'll soon be able to do little else besides scooting around in a motorized wheelchair, yelling "Bennay!"
It looks like the Atkins Diet works just as well on your wallet as on your gut; Atkins Nutritionals has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It serves those a-holes right for pulling what was surely one of the biggest fad diet scams of all time.
What don't people understand about 'diet and exercise'? Consume less calories, burn more calories --> lose weight. I just gave you the Cliffs Notes to Weight Loss for Dummies. For free. You're welcome.
It saddens me to think that there are people even less motivated and more gluttonous than I am. I'm happy to do nothing all day but sit around and stuff my face, and I _still_ lost 60 lbs in a year...sheesh.
