Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Thursday

This linkfest is for the 31st of May, 2007.

If you have something interesting you'd like to share, feel free to link it here and leave a trackback.

Just remember the trackback policy.

For the best exposure, go to the blogger's oasis and use the linkfest chooser to choose the posts you'd like to hook up with.

A victory for the people!

Maybe a small one, but it's a start. 

Sonics and Storm owner Clay Bennett says he's "out of ideas" for landing an arena deal in Seattle and plans to file this November with the NBA for permission to move the teams after next season.

It will be a shame that two of the area's major sports teams are leaving. Even so, it's about time that multi-million-dollar professional sports organizations had their bluff called when they try to blackmail the public out of massive amounts of funding with threats to leave.

Let's just hope the state legislature doesn't decide that it's an emergency and give them a half billion dollars just to spite the people, like they've done with other sports teams. If professional sports can't stand on their own then maybe we don't need them all that much after all.

Perhaps professional sports organizations might learn from this, but I doubt it. It's long been my belief, especially when it comes to basketball, that professional athletes are paid considerably more than they're worth.

They don't serve as good role models anymore either, unless the roles you want modeled include criminal behavior. Do we really want our children learning that it's OK to take illegal drugs if it helps you ignore pain, or bulk up just so you can hit a baseball a few extra feet? Do we really want them to believe that the risk of cancer is worth a few extra rushing yards per play?

People have long complained that sports stars are paid to much and get away with too much bad behavior. The sports fanatic's answer has been that they're worth it, because otherwise the people wouldn't come to see them. It looks like both sides are right, because the people aren't coming in enough numbers to keep the teams off of the public dole.

Good riddance to the Sonics. Good riddance to another extortionist organization that can't pay it's own way without public funding. We don't need them nearly as much as they need us.

Cross posted to NW Bloggers.

Notorious spammer arrested

At least one spammer may actually end up going to jail for the unethical tactics he allegedly used. He's run afoul of anti-spam legislation in the past, including a $10million judgement against him in Oklahoma for violations of the CanSPAM act. It's too bad that the CanSPAM act doesn't have more teeth than it does. Fortunately though, spammers do a whole lot more than violate CanSPAM when they flood our inboxes with trash.

A notorious spammer once sued by Microsoft was arrested in Seattle this morning, a week after a federal grand jury indicted him under seal for allegedly illegal — and prolific — spamming.

Robert Alan Soloway, 27, is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon in U.S. District Court on 35 counts of mail and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering and fraud in connection with electronic mail. The indictment was unsealed after Soloway's arrest just before 8 a.m.

Thirty-five counts. Thirty-five. That should be enough to put Mr. Soloway behind bars for a long time, especially since some of the charges are for federal felonies. Now if only this type of action could be taken against ALL spammers, whether they be e-mail spammers or not.

Soloway is accused of, among other things, defrauding customers who paid him to send out high-volume commercial e-mail messages or who bought his software to send the spam themselves. For $495, customers reportedly could have Soloway send e-mails to 20 million addresses for 15 days or sell them 80,000 e-mail addresses.

Imagine that. A spammer being defrauded by another spammer. Isn't that poetic justice? He's accused of defrauding customers "who bought his software to send the spam themselves." So when will those spammers be arrested? I'm not holding my breath.

Another security myth busted

Remember those "Mac Vs. PC" commercials? Do you remember how some of them tout Apple's superior record with regard to software security?

Mac Guy: "Hello, I'm a Mac."

PC Guy: "And I'm <sniffle> a PC"

Mac Guy: "What's wrong?"

PC Guy: "Oh, just this virus."

Mac Guy: "Achoo!"

I've never believed that Macs are inherently more secure than Windows systems. Name an operating system, and it's just about a sure bet that there are security vulnerabilities waiting to be discovered. Windows is famous for them simply because they're a bigger target than other systems, but they're not alone in practicing "security through obscurity".

For the second time this month and the fourth time this year, Apple Inc. has patched its QuickTime media player to close critical holes.

The security update for QuickTime 7.1.6 that Apple posted today comes on the heels of a 17-patch collection for Mac OS X unveiled last Thursday and fixes two bugs in the software's handling of Java. One of the pair could result in what Apple traditionally calls "arbitrary code execution," which means that an attacker could hijack the computer. "By enticing a user to visit a Web page containing a maliciously crafted Java applet, an attacker can trigger the issue," Apple's advisory warned.

The second vulnerability, Apple said, could give an attacker access to data in the computer's memory, which might include sensitive or confidential information such as passwords for logging onto a network or Web site.

On May 1, Apple released new versions of QuickTime for both Mac OS X and Windows to plug a hole uncovered during a highly publicized $10,000 hack challenge at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Before the hacking contest bug fix, Apple had issued QuickTime security updates on March 5 and Jan. 23.

Earlier this month, Copenhagen-based security company Secunia ApS released data that showed one in three installed copies of QuickTime were not fully patched, making it three times more likely to pose a threat than Internet Explorer and six times more likely than Firefox.

Apple's Quicktime is three times as likely to pose a threat as Internet Explorer? Tell me again which system has the better reputation for security?

Wednesday

This linkfest is for the 30th of May, 2007.

If you have something interesting you'd like to share, feel free to link it here and leave a trackback.

Just remember the trackback policy.

For the best exposure, go to the blogger's oasis and use the linkfest chooser to choose the posts you'd like to hook up with.