Shanktified!

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and its partner, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), have received reports of recent spam e-mails spreading the Storm Worm malicious software, known as malware. These e-mails, which contain the phrase “F.B.I. vs. facebook,” direct e-mail recipients to click on a link to view an article about the FBI and Facebook, a popular social networking website. The Storm Worm virus has also been spread in the past in e-mails advertising a holiday e-card link. Clicking on the link downloads malware onto the Internet connected device, causing it to become infected with the virus and part of the Storm Worm botnet.

“The spammers spreading this virus are preying on Internet users and making their computers an unwitting part of criminal botnet activity. We urge citizens to help prevent the spread of botnets by becoming web-savvy. Following some simple computer security practices will reduce the risk that their computers will be compromised,” said Special Agent Richard Kolko, Chief, FBI National Press Office.

Everyone should consider the following:

* Do not respond to unsolicited (spam) e-mail.

* Be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as officials soliciting personal information via e-mail.

* Do not click on links contained within an unsolicited e-mail.

* Be cautious of e-mail claiming to contain pictures in attached files, as the files may contain viruses. Only open attachments from known senders.

* Validate the legitimacy of the organization by directly accessing the organization’s website rather than following an alleged link to the site.

* Do not provide personal or financial information to anyone who solicits information.

More here: Optimus Media News » FBI Warns of Storm Worm Virus.

With excitement I read Google’s calendar will now support CalDAV. Yeah, now I can sync Lightening (Thunderbird’s Sunbird plugin) with Google, right?  Nope. I can’t. It only works on Apple’s iCal.  From Google help pages:

“While other calendar applications support CalDAV (including Mozilla Sunbird), Google Calendar only supports CalDAV using iCal.”

Bummer.

UPDATE: I have found a solution, another problem and a solution to that problem.

Lightning: It’s a Sunbird plug-in for Thunderbird.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2313

Provider for Google Calendar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631

I have installed Thunderbird and Lightning from Ubuntu repos (via Synaptic).  But couldn’t get Provider to work or allow me to add a new calendar.  Finally I found a post in a forum that helped.  The issue is you are missing libstdc++ 5. Install that from Synaptic and you are good to go.

This is a hit and run how to. It assumes you know all of the terms used and you have installed add-ons in thunderbird and from Synaptic before. But if you haven’t and need more detail on how to do anything, please feel free to ask.

CNET News.com reports:

Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a “new” operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that “Mojave” was actually Windows Vista.

Sounds a little like the “Folger’s Switch” from years ago.

Instead trying this on XP fans, try it with some Mac-vangelists or fellow Linux fans.  Then you’ll impress me.

ZDNet.com has news about Ubuntu available at BestBuy for 20 bucks, writing:

So what do you get for your twenty bucks? The retail box contains ”Ubuntu 8.04 CD, a Quick Start Guide and 60 days of support from the ValuSoft team, trained and backed by the Canonical support guys. The support covers installation and getting started using Ubuntu and is priced at $19.99.”

This is good news from a marketing standpoint; pushing Linux even more main stream.  Will they sell a lot of boxes?  Probably not.  But this is still a good move. Or at least it can be.  I’d like to see what they wrote on the box.  There is still a lot of misunderstanding about Linux and how something free can be as good (or arguably better) than a 200-300 dollar operating system.  There’s also a great deal of misconception about what software will work and won’t work on it.

Back to the article:  I agree 2 month’s of support is not worth the 20 bucks.  Download the ISO and burn a disk. Don’t know how or what I even just said?  Click here.

Continue reading »

And you gotta wonder how many folks are also doing like I did, and going to Linux?

Vista woes fuel Mac sales surge - analyst | Register Hardware
The 3G iPhone may be getting all the attention this week, but let’s not forget Apple’s other product line, the Mac family, which is enjoying new-found success thanks to… Microsoft.

According to US investment house BMO Capital Markets, cited by AppleInsider, Apple will have shipped up to 2.5m Macs between April and June inclusive - enough for a 39 per cent year-on-year growth rate.

More to the point, that rate of increase is more than three times the industry average of 12.2 per cent.

Thanks again to the always-has-an-answer Ubuntu Forum.  I have E-sword running perfectly in Linux (under Wine).  Here’s the link

The only thing that would make me happier would be for Rick to release the e-Sword code as Open Source or at least make a full blown Linux version.  “Me toos!” and other comments welcome.

Try as I might, I could not get java to run in Firefox 3 on Ubuntu 8.04.  Turns out to be a really simple fix.

Eirik Hoem’s Blog had the answer to my problem:

I’ve been struggling with lava support for Firefox after upgrading from Ubunut 7.10 to 8.04. All I had to do was to remove the package called icedtea-gcjwebplugin. Now, I don’t know my way around java anymore, but at least it did the trick. Worth a shot if you have problems.

There are a growing number of reports that this is a false positive within AGV.

I’ll update you with more soon, but for now check out this excellent post on the topic (translated to English here). Complete with screen shots and search engine analysis.

Please leave a comment if you have any information to share. Unlike the AVG Forum, stupid questions will not be deleted nor the questioners abused. We were all stupid at some point so, chill-out folks.

Update: I have found AVG to do find this with multiple PCs in separate locations. It’s definitely a false positive (misreading from the AVG software). (A note to AVG users, don’t let this bother you, I’ve been using AVG for years and I think this is only the 2nd time Its found a false positive.)

Another Update: AVG will not quarantine Quickbooks files, but it will quarantine Quicken files automatically (in many cases). If you get a message that says the files were deleted you can get them out of AVG’s Virus Vault.

Update #3: I see that the folks at Quickbooks are aware of the issue and are working with AVG to repair it.