Rick's World

And now for something much lighter...

ABC, as previously announced started streaming entire episodes of several of there shows on the Internet today. These episodes are the entire episode with a couple of commercials thrown in. The idea behind their technology is that you can fast forward and rewind the episodes, but not skip the commercials. I was at first hesitent about this. I figured they would require you to download some kind of video player in order to watch them. It turns out I was wrong.

I decided to try out this feature by watching the latest episode of 'Lost'. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it works. The video streaming is done entirely inside a browser window, with apparently no special video player required. There were no pauses or other signs of lag in the video. The sound quality and picture quality were both quite good. What was the most surprising was how few commercials there were. In the entire 43 minute episode there was maybe 3-4 30 second 'web commercials' scattered throughout the video. This commerical works as follows. You start playing the video. The video plays for a while and then stops. A button appears that you click on to move on to the commercial. The commercial shows up as a web page with some voice over. Then when the commercial is done, another button appears that you click on to continue the show. It was only a single 30 second commercial at a time. All in all, it was about 2 minutes of commercials in a 43 minute episode. Not bad at all.

I think ABC has a potential winner here. By providing customers with the ability to see their shows whenever they want, they are actually increasing their viewer potential. If you can sample a show at any time and not need a VCR/DVR, whatever to do it, it really opens up new possibilities. Right now it appears that they are only showing 4 shows, and then only the latest episode of each show. If they expanded this to the entire series of each show, then I would definately be spending more time on their site. I've been interested in 'Lost', but never wanted to spend the money on an expensive season pack. If I could sample the episodes this way, I'd be much more likely to add it to the DVR as a regular 'must-see TV' show.

When did defying the law become acceptable in this country?

Today, immigrants across the country left work to protest for immigration reform. The news media is calling today "A Day Without Immigrants". What they should be calling today is "A Day Without Illegal Immigrants." There is an important word being conveniently left out. That word is 'illegal.' The problem is, that one missing word is the key to all of this. 'Illegal' means you are breaking the law! Illegal immigrants have been protesting lately saying, "I am not a criminal!". Yes you are! If you are an illegal immigrant that means you are breaking the law. If you are breaking the law, you are a criminal. Maybe you haven't killed someone or anything like that, but the point is, you are breaking the law.

If you don't like a law, you campaign to change it. You don't choose to ignore it. If someone decided that they didn't like the laws against murder, and went out and killed someone, then they broke the law. The fact that you don't agree with a law doesn't give you the ability to ignore it. The protests today are immigrants way of campaigning to change the law. I'm fine with that and I applaud it. However, I also don't think that just 'waving your hands' and making all illegal immigrants legal is the answer either. By doing this, you are not only saying that it's OK, to break the law, you are encouraging further people to immigrate! If suddenly illegal immigration became legal, there would be a flood of immigrants coming into the US from all over the world. The US cannot handle a massive flood like this.

About a month ago, I adopted a second cat - Jewel. She's a black and white tiger kitten about 6 months old. She still has all her claws. This is unlike my first cat, Tiger who I had declawed shortly after I got him. Why did I declaw Tiger? Because everyone said I should. Everyone said that he would tear up the furniture with his claws if I didn't have him declawed. I had it done one day, by the vet, and honestly I've felt very guilty about doing it to him every since. Now I am facing the same decision again with Jewel. Should I declaw her or not? I really do not want to do that to her. If I can find any way to avoid it, I am going to try to NOT do it. So far, in the last month that she's been here, she's been great. She hasn't clawed up the furniture, scratched me, or been a pest in any way. I think I've learned some things in the 3 years since I got Tiger. I am handling her better since I know what to expect. Everyone tells me that I should declaw her. I took their advice before, with Tiger, because I didn't know any better. I think I know better now and I'm going to make my own decision here.

Unless it really becomes necessary, she is going to keep her claws.

The linked article reveals that Broward County, Florida (the county I live in!) is posting resident's social security numbers and other private data in their public records section! This can lead to a rash of identity theft! Not good.

1. Check the file out of Source Safe. Make the minor change and check it in. Make sure to ALWAYS add a comment to the file in Source Safe or any release of this file will get rejected.
2. Write a Bill of Materials in Excel listing all the files that changed, what the change is, where the change is going, what the client impact is, who wrote the change, who tested it.
3. Fill out a QA database change form, listing in detail every change made to the database. This means list every stored procedure, every table, every field of every table, every key, every index, every database that the change has to be applied to.
4. Fill out a Production database change form listing all the same data as the QA database change form.
5. Submit the Bill of Materials, and both DB change forms to the Security Audit team for approval. Wait for a response here...
6. Once the Security team approves it, they forward the info to the QA/CM department who implements in the QA database. QA/CM also creates a PMF (Production Migration Form) at this point.
7. Pass on the changes to your assigned QA resource who goes through and tests the changes in QA. The QA testing approval is then added to the PMF.
8. Once it passes QA testing, the changes are then requested to move to the UAT (User Acceptance Testing)
9. The QA resource then retests the change in the UAT environment and adds their approval for this step to the PMF.
10. Obtain business approval from the project manager and client.
11. Submit a requested implementation date/time. Implementations ONLY go out on Tuesday mornings.
12. All the changes up to this point have to have been completed by Friday at noon. *any* mistakes along the way and the whole process gets rejected and has to be corrected and started again.
13. Assuming all approvals are in by Friday at noon, wait until Monday at noon at which time the PMF either gets approved for implementation or postponed / rejected.
14. If all goes well, you show up Tuesday morning at 6am at the data center and wait while they implement your change. Then you and your QA resource test the changes in production. If there are ANY problems, your change is removed and you have to go back and fix it. Which takes another week...
15. If you fix a bug in Wednesday, you realisticly have 1-2 days to get it fixed, shoved through this convoluted process, and done by Friday at noon in order to get it implemented the following Tuesday!

I'm a very technical person. I spent 8 hours (or more) a day using computers so I quickly learn what you should and should not do when it comes to the Internet. Unfortunately, 99% of the world is not so lucky. I've been dealing more and more in the 'ma & pa' side of the Internet. What I mean by 'ma & pa' is the average Internet user who is not aware of the hazards out there. I've been working on a friends old laptop trying to clean it up. It's amazing the number of virii & spyware I'm finding on this one little laptop, that's (so they tell me) hardly ever on the Internet and when it is, it's through dial-up. I thought I'd write a short blog with some recommendations on how to minimize these problems.

1. Run a Spyware checker regularly. The two best ones are Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy (run them BOTH regularly). Both are free to download and use.
2. Install a good virus scanner and update it regularly. One example of a good, free virus scanner is Grisoft's AVG Anti Virus Free Edition. This is a 'set it and forget it' virus scanner. It will automatically update itself everyday to catch the latest virii and it's free. You are now essentially safe from virii for life for free!
3. If you receive a scary sounding email from your bank, credit union, eBay, Paypal, etc stating that your account information needs to be updated due to an attack, or to prevent your account from being shut down, do NOT click on the link in the email. This is a scam called phishing that is designed to steal your bank account information. Someone sets up a web site that looks identical to the real web site and makes an email designed to look identical to an 'officiel' email from the site. Then when you login to update your information, you end up at the scammer's web site. By 'updating' your information on this web site, you are actually giving the criminal all the information he needs to empty your bank account, steal your identity, ruin your credit and basically make your life hell.
4. If you are using Windows 2000 or XP, go to Control Panel, Automatic Updates and turn on Automatic Updates. This will set Windows to automatically download and install security updates to itself whenever a new security hole is found. This alone will save you from many attacks that take advantage of security holes in Windows that are constantly being discovered.
5. Do NOT use Internet Explorer to browse the web. This browser is highly insecure and is frequently the source of the spyware, adware, and virii installed secretly on your machine. Use Firefox instead. It works just as well as Internet Explorer (better in fact) and does not have the security risks that Internet Explorer does.
6. Do NOT use Outlook Express as an email program. Use Thunderbird instead. Thunderbird has MUCH better spam handling, is more secure, and will often catch phishing emails when they are sent and warn you before you click on the links.
7. If you have young kids, install filtering software such as Net Nanny. There is WAY too much porn and other questionable material out there that young children should be subjected to.
8. If you have young kids, WATCH EVERY MOVE THEY MAKE ONLINE. Yes this an 'invasion of their privacy'. Tough. If you see them doing something you don't like, stop them. Do not put the computer in their room where they can do things in private. Put it in a public place in the house where things can be monitored.
9. Create separate user accounts on your computer for each kid. Set these accounts to NOT have administrative priveleges. Restrict these accounts to the minimum features possible. Let them surf the web, read email, and do IM. That's IT. Do NOT let them install software. Do not let them have administrator access (or know your administrator password). If they need to install software they have to ask you first. This will minimize the installation of adware and spyware and prevent them from trying to get around your filtering software too!
10. Be very WARY of any site that has links to WMF (Windows Meta File) images. If you see a site with these and your browser asks what to do with the WMF file, DO NOT view it or do anything with it. WMF files are the source of an exploit that has been running rampant on the internet lately. If these WMF files are viewed, you stand the chance of having spyware or adware installed secretly on your computer.

Ok, so I've been commenting lately about how the referer spammers are attempting to use blogs around the world to spread virii in order to possibly take over your computer remotely. Turns out, I was right and have confirmation of it. My virus scanner found this today in my temporary files. I never ran the file and my machine has been updated to not be suseptible to this virus, so I am safe, but there are many who arent. See the link for this blog for info on the virus.

cyber-search.biz is spreading this virus intentially all over the Internet! Either that or they've been compromised themself by someone else to spread this virus unknowingly.