Net, etc. Issue 170

This week , an article from the last issue of Newyorktimes Magazine attracted the public attention. This interest is clear: it is about those who write viruses and prefers anonymity. Virus writers became more careful. As a rule, they themselves do not release from the bottle of the genies they created, instead laying the code on their sites, where anyone can take it - and for any purpose. The statement sounds that today's viral plague has generated the symbiosis of those who are smart enough to write a virus, and those who are stupid enough to start it. But why write a malicious code, if not distributed it? Yes, these are just intellectual entertainment, anonymous creators answer, such a competition, you know, in the shortness and effectiveness of the code, and compare their fun with the art of versification. As for the ethics of actions, the authors of the viruses do not consider themselves responsible for the actions of other people and ask a counter question: is the production of weapons is considered a crime? By the way, virus -writers interviewed in the article claim that they send every new creation to antivirus companies. They believe that their creations, indicating vulnerabilities, thereby increase the immunity of the network and make the world better and more stable. Such cute children.

The labor of "a New Kind of Science", released in 2002 by physicist, produced the effect of an exploding bomb in scientific circles. Now this extremely interesting and easily reading book is in the public domain . Tolfram believes that the world does not consist of particles and waves, but of short programs that form all the phenomena of the physical world - from space and time to the human body. The scientist admits that his "comparatic" ideas are partly dictated by time - just like the idea of ​​channels on Mars appeared at a time when the construction of earthly channels was in full swing.

Supporters of the ban or outsourcing restriction have a new argument. This argument was the story told in Newyorktimes William Safir.

In June 1982, an explosion thundered in Siberia, which, based on its revenge (about three kilotons), was first taken as a nuclear one. The explosion was visible from the space, but neither the satellites nor the monitors of Norad pointed to the surge of the electromagnetic impulse characteristic of the nuclear explosion. In the press, at that time, such incidents were not reported. The number of victims remains unknown. Using the declassified CIA dossier, Safir tells the background of this story, called "Farewell Operation".
After the ban on the export of computers and the software imposed by Nixon in 1974, Soviet intelligence with tripled force took up computer technology. Programs, chips, machines - all this was sneaked or bought through fake persons. CIA analysts who were retrained in historians today stated that in the 80s the US military-industrial complex actually joined the arms race with himself. However, in order.
At a conference in Ottawa on July 19, 1981, French President Mitteran confidentially informed US President Reagan about the success of French intelligence, who recruited an employee of scientific and technical foreign intelligence Lt. Col. Vetrov. Vetrov announced a plan for the production of computer technology, which, among other things, were intended for the control systems for the Trans -Siberian gas pipeline. One of the Canadian companies was planned to get programs. The Americans did not make obstacles. Instead, at the proposal of Gas Weiss, one of the economists of the US National Security Council, an operation to disinform intelligence of the USSR was developed. She was given the name Farewell.
During the operation, special chips were developed, which, during testing, gave satisfactory results, but in the process of work, they were caught and failed. And in the software for the control systems of gas pipelines, what was later called the "Trojan horse" was introduced. The control program was deliberately compiled with errors that caused a mismatch of the work of pumps, turbines and gates. It was this in June 1982 that on one of the sections of the gas pipeline caused an increase in gas pressure above the critical and the explosion, the causes of which we learn - with well -known reservations - only today.
After the true culprit of the disaster was determined - a false program - suspicion fell on all Western software. Safir believes that this fatally influenced the work of many thousands of Soviet scientists and engineers.
Arguments in favor of national security, still expressed in outsourcing discussions only occasionally, can drown out everyone else - about the floating to India, China and Russia of the workplaces and about the fall of the development level.

The industry, which regularly plants spy and advertising blocks on our computers, tracking the actions and habits of users, is experiencing a real boom. After all, the information obtained by these programs allow online merchants to "spill" a potential client more aimed. But the trouble is: the user stubbornly downloads the programs that kill bold and spies, and the providers of the Internet access are increasingly following the example of Earthlink and American Online, providing their customers with a service that removes this rubbish from the computer. One of the battles of this quiet war became known only this week: a small but extremely angry group of users revealed a whole network of sites, where, under the guise of software that removes spy and advertising blocks from computers, these same spy programs slip. Spies have attractive names like Spyban or, say, Spyhunter. Incidentally, the developer of the wonderful Spybot Search & Destroy , who found a strange advertisement that appeared on the Google results after the corresponding request, was the first to have a wonderful network. (According to some, the search engine to a certain extent can be considered guilty of complicity to deceivers.)

A year ago, the British government published a dossier on security services and intelligence agents Iraq. This dossier was represented at the UN Colin Powell, and then embarrassment happened. The Cambridge teacher discovered that the dossier hastily casts out of three articles, one of which was written by a graduate student - cast a copy -piston by any student. How did this become known? The fact is that the list of the last ten documents edited in MS Word indicates the names of people who worked with the file. Usually these logs are hidden and you can’t see them directly from Word.
The MS Word text editor is sadly known to save private information in the file headings. But after a shameful case when society became aware of the hack work of government officials, this is over. Microsoft has released a program that cleans the metadata from the documents that are edited with the help of its software without unnecessary noise. The program is called Remove Hidden Data Add-in and deleys the "surplus" from the MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint files. The program works only with Windows XP and Office 2003 files. It will undoubtedly be in high demand among schoolchildren, students and bureaucracy around the world.

Australian sound recording companies received a search warrant in the office of Sharman Networks, the owner of the KazA -File Enchanting Network, the houses of two leaders of the company, at three Australian universities and worshipers. The search was carried out, nothing is reported about the results - because there are simply no results and cannot be. This, however, should have expected: disputed files that, without permission from copyright holders, exchange tens of millions of KazA -KAZA users are stored on user computers, and not in offices and not at home at the owners of Sharman Networks. But maybe sound recordings simply do not know this?

By publishing a link to the book of lawyer Boris Dulnev (ZIP, 150 KB) on how to check documents by police and what a citizen can do in this situation, I hope that you will never come in handy for practical knowledge.

Who wants his name, address, phone and email to be known to the whole world? Nobody wants it. Even the owners of registered sites, whose data, is supposed to be available to everyone. And therefore often in the data laid out by the company-registrar on the web, there are very few truths. The US Congress does not like this, and therefore the use for crimes on the Internet of sites registered under a false name is proposed to be considered fraud and a virtual branch, which is punishable by a prison term of up to seven years and, of course, large fines. These punishments are threatened, however, only to those who lied when registering their resource in order to hide the crime - for example, if the site is used for fraudulent purposes or copyrights are violated there.

Sea garbage

Zoom project: video images of objects from various materials with the gradual penetration of "orally" - to the subatomic level.

An interesting and funny The Skeptic's Dictionary can be called the closest relative of the famous Snopes.com city myths site. This is a collection of strange beliefs, entertaining fabrications and dangerous delusions - in a word, truly easy and fun reading. If your interlocutor began to grind nonsense, feel free to send it to Skepdic.com.

Classification can be subjected to everything - even stupidity. And classifying computer nonsense is easier: operating systems, paranoia, mouse, printers, amnesia, smoke, technical support, madness and so on, and so on.

“Labbed Pictures” Larry Finn - social photographs that continue the artistic tradition of George Gross, Otto Dix and Max Bekman.