My view of the world

The latest attack on M$ is the windows wmf problem. There are plenty of workarounds out now including the one at hexblog.
The basic problem is quite simply, that Windows was built to sing, dance and make coffee automatically. This, by very definition, is a bad thing, if the so called good guys can modify or run things on your computer so can the bad guys.

Did you know that on windows xp there is a hidden user “support_xxxxxx” with full admin rights and that the easiest way into the average xp machine is to change to safe mode and login as administrator with no password.

M$ uses the” guid” for almost everything and swears there’s no personaly identifying information in it, it is however linked to the mac address(the identifying numbers on your network adapter) of your machine.
This is not quite a lie, but the first time you register with any company that M$ can buy or recieve data from, they record the guid and now it’s linked to the personal data you had to give to register.
In the technical sense you social security number contains no personally identifying data, until it’s cross linked to a database.
If you read any M$ privacy statement, it basically says they can do anything they damn well please with your data.

This is not so much a rant against M$, as an example of what real life has become.
The average person doesn’t care what goes on in their machine or on the net. There are a large number of boxes out there with no anti-virus, no fire wall and an operator with no clue.

We live in a world where the information about your online habits is worth more than the OS you’re running. Ads are becoming more and more personalized(according to the advertisers this is what we want) and spyware has become big business.

Our security is our problem and you will never convince me otherwise.
A major third party credit card handler was hacked and the number of people who’s information was exposed was into the hundreds of thousands, possibly more, and yet this company contiues to operate, because it would be too much work for the banks to change over to a new company, assuming that there is another company out there with the servers, backbones and software in place.

Tell me again how any of the major players in any field are there for our benefit. You and I are simply data to be traded at will, with no regard for how it affects us.

This could go on for days, but you get the hint.
Watchout for youself, check you credit report, keep track of your bank and creditcards and for gods sake get a virus scanner and since most problems are invited in by clicking on an email or a banner, ad infinitum, get a firewall that keeps shit from calling out.
Finally: Just because someone asks for your information, doesn’t mean they have any right to it.