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6-9-05
Something that constantly amazes me is the reports of losses due to piracy and costs of virus infections due to hacking. How in the world do the companies and organizations involved come up with these figures and keep a straight face?
Lets take the MPAA. They claim losses of $3.5 billion in 2004 due to piracy, not counting file-sharing losses. I’m at a loss as to how they came up with this figure. Did they take the number of pirated DVDs sold, multiply that by the cost of a legitimate copy and say, “See, here’s what we lost?”
If so, that’s wildly misleading. How can they make the assumption that someone who buys a pirated copy of “Catwoman” for $5 would still buy it legally for $20? I rented it since my hometown is not exactly a hotbed of DVD piracy, but I don’t think I would have bought it. Not even for $5.
If not (and I believe this to be the case) where do they come up with these numbers? And how do they count a sale that never would have happened anyway as a loss?
And look at “Star Wars Episode III”. It was available online for download even before the movie premiered in theatres and the MPAA immediately screamed about losing money, yet the movie broke the single day sales record of $50 million. How can you predict how many of those geeks who downloaded the Japanese version with English subtitles and only available for display in 640x480 in a 2” square on a computer screen would skip paying $9 to see it at the local movie house?
I’m guessing the MPAA and RIAA have Psychic departments, where scores of Ms. Cleos fondle crystal balls and spout alternate dimension sales figures.
The figures touted by corporations and government agencies are even more questionable. The recent arrest of Gary McKinnon, the “world’s biggest hacker”, for breaking into US Military and NASA computers is a case in point. The US government claims he caused $1 billion in damage over the span of 12 months.
$1 billion?!? Please. The only damage this whack job actually did (he was searching for proof that these agencies were hiding evidence of UFOs) was delete 1300 user accounts and deleted some “critical” system files. The “hacking” involved 92 networks, which would come to a little under $11 million per network to maybe do a few format and reloads, set up some users, change some security settings and install security updates.
Oh, wait, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/19164714?source=Evening%20Standard&ct=5 says the money included tracking down the “super hacker”. So basically a bunch of people already on the payroll, who may have been sitting around with their feet up if they hadn’t had to fix the security holes they left open in the first place. And the FBI didn’t hire more agents for this one, I’m pretty certain.
So the next time you see a news piece talking about a virus attack or P2P networks resulting in the ridiculous monetary damages stop and think a minute. How much of that was actually lost sales, repair costs and consultant fees and how much was created out of thin air?
On a completely different tack, how can news outlets be calling this guy the “world’s biggest hacker”, or even a “hacker” at all? He’s a Script Kiddie! According to the article linked above he used “software available on the internet” to gain access to poorly secured networks, then exploited weak passwords (like “12345”, “password” and “sex”) to get into individual computers.
Any tech savvy 12 year old can do that! It takes no knowledge beyond a link to www.astalavista.com and knowing how lax people in government service are when it comes to security issues like patching their PCs and servers and using strong passwords.
I’m gonna go hack my computer by changing the wallpaper to a picture I found on the interwebs. Riiiggghhht…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
By now you know
that Apple is going to begin using Intel chips in
Macs and PowerBooks.
While developers and end-users may be excited,
are resellers
jazzed?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1825904,00.asp
Is
that slow 80GB drive in your laptop cramping your style? Seagate's
new
160GB for laptops will have you once again putting everything
under the sun
in your 'My Documents' folder:
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050609SeagateGivesLaptopsBigStorageIncrease.html
Afraid
of the steep fines leveled against people who use pirated
copies of
Windows? If you work for the Indonesian government, you
have nothing to
worry about:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4076982.stm
Ma Bell, we hardly know ya: Bellsouth is jumping into the
wireless
broadband market:
http://www.forbes.com/technology/wireless/feeds/wireless/2005/06/08/wirelessm2c_2005_06_08_ibn_0000-0185-ibn_200506081200031.html
Copy
us on the good stuff ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.opaquelucidity.com
I'm back again
with another great extension that will make your Web browsing a little
easier!
This week we cover an extension called Launchy, which you can get
from: https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=81
Launchy
is an extension that will let you launch links in web pages many
different
ways. Let's say you have a link to a movie file in the web
page you
are on. Normally if you wanted to watch it you'd have to
click the
link, then tell Firefox that you want to open it and not save
it, then you'd
have to pick the program that you wanted to watch it in,
then it would
finally open that program and play the file. With Launchy
installed
all you have to do is to right click the link to the file in
the web page,
go down to Launchy, then pick the program from the
menu. No more
having to click dozens of times, no having to find the
program that you want
to use. Launchy puts it all a right
click away.
It
automatically detects the programs that are on your computer and
puts them
in the right-click menu listing for you.
That way it does all
the configuring and you don't have to. The
other main use I have found
for this is if the page doesn't look right in
Firefox, and the only way
it will look right is to go back to IE, you can
right click anywhere on
the page, go down to Launchy and hit "Open in
Internet Explorer". Only
use this in extreme cases ;-) There are
many more things you can
do with Launchy, just play around with it and see
if you can find some
handy use for it that I didn't cover. Don't
worry; you can't break
anything (too badly).
This extension can come
in handy, and I hope it finds some use in your
daily browsing.
Remember: Browse Happy!
--
Daniel A. Williams
daniel@thepcgurus.com
I warned you I was going to do this ;) This week’s download is our old friend Spybot Search and Destroy, now at version 1.4.
This new version offers a new set of icons to make it a bit more attractive, but it’s the changes under the hood that make this a must have. The first of two major improvements is the speed of the scan. This thing flies compared to 1.3! And it now has the ability to scan inactive registry files, which is extremely useful if you need to pull your teenager’s hard drive and slave it into your machine to check it for viruses and spyware.
Download the newest version free from http://www..safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html.
Q: Something has happened to my computer.
It kept locking up right in the
middle of things. I tried to do a defrag, but
it kept locking up. I
finally got it to defrag in Safe Mode after several
times of locking
up and the only way I could shut it off was
manually.
After it finally defraged it went back in time I guess, a
window
opened up and ask me to check my time as the time had changed
to
Eastern ( that happened a long time ago)
Now, I don't have any names in
my address book. Do you think a hacker
got them and is there a way to
get my addresses back?
Thanks a bunch…
A: I doubt it was a hacker. Sounds
more like some serious file
corruption. Even a system restore to an
earlier restore point
shouldn't have erased your address
book.
You can try searching for
*.wab files (Start/Search/All files and
folders in XP, Start/Find/Files and
folders in 98). Look in drive C:
and be sure to include
subfolders.
Any file that finds that
is larger than 173 KB contains data and
may be your lost address
book.
If you find any of those
make a note of where they are located and
email me back. I'll help you
import the addresses and that may fix
things.
Keep me posted
;)
Kevin Mefford
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