I Upgraded - OR - Do You Ubuntu?

It is here, and probably has been for a while before I upgraded.

So efficient.

What a week

It has been one heckuvu week here at my office working for a very large undisclosed company.

Some of you know what I do for my main job. For those who do not, I am an Info Security guy for a very large company. I work in the Antivirus Support realm of the protectorate.

I have been busy this week working on keeping the rest of us safe from gullible people.

There are emails that float around the Internet at large that tell people that they have special "e-cards" waiting for them. The messages say that either a family member, friend, or school mate has sent them a greeting card online. It then tells them that they can go to a website to view the card that is waiting for them. Once they get to the site they see a message saying "We are currently testing a new feature on this website. If you cannot see your card then click on the link that says "ECard.exe." The user then does that and gets infected with a virus.

These viruses are messy. They wreak havoc on people's computers. They cause network administrators to go into lock-down mode. They cause IT management to freak out.

A word to the wise- viruses are meant for the gullible.

Don't open messages or go to websites if-
You don't know who it is from
You don't recognize the sender's email address
The message doesn't specify exactly who sent it
You have to go to another website that prompts you to download anything
You are even remotely suspicious of the content

In addition to this warning, make sure that your computer security software is up to date and that you have some type of intrusion detection and antivirus software. Otherwise your computer could also become a host for the type of websites mentioned above.

We can all now die in peace

Over the weekend Apple released its newest gadget, the iPhone.

This new little number will truly revolutionize mobile technology. A phone, a web browser, multimedia player; everything that is needed for mobile communication and entertainment.

Many are saying that this device is the release of the century. I have to agree, but I am just anxious to see how long it takes before all of the techno-short-circuiters have this thing hacked. I'll be interested to read the blogs in the upcoming months as everyone gets their hands on these.

A report I heard this morning said that someone bought one of these on eBay for $12K. Let's see; you can either buy it at a retail store for $600 or you can go onto eBay and buy one for $12K.

In talking with a co-worker of mine today we have come to think that this could have been a publicity stunt on behalf of Apple. They can go and spend that much for their own product on eBay, and then turn around and get all kinds of additional free publicity from television news, talk radio, blogs like mine...etc.

Another report that I saw said that over the weekend they sold an estimated 525K of these babies! @ $600 a piece we're looking at a total of over $315,000,000. HOLY CRAP!!! That's just from one weekend...

Congratulations Apple. I can't afford one and it's too much phone for me.