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WMF and Funky Cat Maybe
Jan. 3rd, 2006 08:29 pmFirst, the fun stuff: Thanks Tamakun, you're in trouble big time, with the psychiatrists who are going to have to treat me. I've become addicted to Funky Cat Maybe. Want one. Or two. ^_^ (By the way, my sensei loved it too.)
***
And on to more serious stuff - unless you happen to be a Mac, Linux or other *nix user, in which case you can sit back and laugh.
That WMF hole? The crackers and other black hats are busy creating malicious websites, e-mails, IM's and anything else they can think of to try to lure you into viewing pretty pictures with ugly scripts.
We always joke that with Windows, it isn't a bug, it's a "feature". In this case it really is - and in the early days this scripting was needed. It just hasn't BEEN needed for the better part of the last decade, but the programmers who installed this feature never quite got around to uninstalling it - it's just been kicking around from version to version to version, hoping that someone will rediscover it and discover a new reason for it to exist. Fortunately, somebody did, but unfortunately that somebody wears a black hat.
I can only say this: If you're running Windows anything, it's time to start leaving it. Let's start simple, shall we? Get yourself a "live distro" of Linux, like Knoppix or Damn Small. When you want to surf the net, slap that disk into your CD or DVD drive, restart your machine, and surf the net as securely as you can get (difficult to drop malware onto the disk when it's burned onto a CD - try that with your typical hard drive! Disclaimer: assumes you've got and are using the disk in a read-only CD or DVD drive, and not a burner drive.)
Better yet, if you need and want to keep Windows for some tasks (games, tax returns), get someone you know and trust to dual-boot your machine with a newbie-friendly distribution like Ubuntu, Mandriva or Linspire. Keep the Windows for the games if you must, but turn off its Internet access, and use Open Source software to surf the Net.
***
And on to more serious stuff - unless you happen to be a Mac, Linux or other *nix user, in which case you can sit back and laugh.
That WMF hole? The crackers and other black hats are busy creating malicious websites, e-mails, IM's and anything else they can think of to try to lure you into viewing pretty pictures with ugly scripts.
We always joke that with Windows, it isn't a bug, it's a "feature". In this case it really is - and in the early days this scripting was needed. It just hasn't BEEN needed for the better part of the last decade, but the programmers who installed this feature never quite got around to uninstalling it - it's just been kicking around from version to version to version, hoping that someone will rediscover it and discover a new reason for it to exist. Fortunately, somebody did, but unfortunately that somebody wears a black hat.
I can only say this: If you're running Windows anything, it's time to start leaving it. Let's start simple, shall we? Get yourself a "live distro" of Linux, like Knoppix or Damn Small. When you want to surf the net, slap that disk into your CD or DVD drive, restart your machine, and surf the net as securely as you can get (difficult to drop malware onto the disk when it's burned onto a CD - try that with your typical hard drive! Disclaimer: assumes you've got and are using the disk in a read-only CD or DVD drive, and not a burner drive.)
Better yet, if you need and want to keep Windows for some tasks (games, tax returns), get someone you know and trust to dual-boot your machine with a newbie-friendly distribution like Ubuntu, Mandriva or Linspire. Keep the Windows for the games if you must, but turn off its Internet access, and use Open Source software to surf the Net.
