Email and Forum Questions Profiles in IT: Robert M. McCool Application of the Week: Gladinet China Deployment of Hardened OS Google Chrome 2 Released Obama on cybersecurity: We're not that prepared Obama Confirmed Campaign Was Hacked Turkish hackers breach US Army servers Japanese University Uses iPhones Food Science: Foods with Heat
Email from Little Dog: Dear Tech Talk, Do you of a free virus program I can download for 98. AVG has dropped theirs for 98 and older. Thanks, Littledog
Tech Talk Answers: I would suggest Avast Home Edition. It is free and certified to be spyware free and awarded five stars by Download.com. It supports Windows 98 through Windows Vista. I have not used this software, it is appears to be your best option.
Littledog, you have even more of a problem. On July 11th, 2006, Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows ME. No more security updates, no more technical support.
Email from Ngoc: Dear Tech Talk. How do I block people from finding me and information about me on the internet? How do I stop my name and my information from showing when people Google me? I enjoy listening to the show over the Internet. Thanks, Ngoc
Tech Talk Answers: If information is on the web in the wild, you can’t stop the search engines from spidering it. Not putting information on the web is the only cure. Even a listed phone number is entered into Google reverse lookup engine.
Assume that everything you put on the internet will remain there forever, and will be viewed in the worst possible light. Party photos may not be the best thing to post. You also can’t control what others say or post about you, including news articles, public records, and discussions groups. All of these are ways you can show up online.
The only way to truly remove yourself is to ask each and every one of those sites to remove the information that pertains to you. If you can achieve that, you still have the Google cache to deal with or the Internet archive engine
Profiles in IT: Robert M. McCool
Rob McCool was the author of the original NCSA HTTPd web server. NSCA is National Center for Supercomputing Applications
His NCSA httpd project formed the basis of Apache, and its CGI interface became a de facto standard for web server software.
Until Apache version 2.2, the configuration files contained comments with his name.
Robert M. McCool was born in 1973 in Aurora , Illinois
He graduated from the Illinois Math and Science Academy in Aurora in 1991.
He received his BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1995 along with his twin brother.
He wrote the first version while he was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was working with the original NCSA Mosaic team.
One of Robert McCool’s many contributions was in drafting the initial specification of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) in collaboration with others.
He provided a reference implementation of CGI in version 1.0 of the NCSA HTTPd web server.
The CGI specification, introduced in December 1993, turned out to be a key element in making the World Wide Web dynamic and interactive.
Rob McCool worked at Netscape from May 1994 to Sept 1998 with his twin brother.
The McCool twins were early Netscape employees with one on the server team and the other on the browser team.
Rob McCool designs with Netscape regarding the performance and modular API have also been widely adopted.
McCool was hired by Geocast Network Systems in 2000
He was co-founder on Alpiri, Inc in January 2001. Alpiri was a 10 employee Information Technology and Services Company which ended operation in 2002.
McCool joined the Stanford University Knowledge Systems Laboratory in May 2002 where he worked on AI based reasoning systems.
He was a research programmer with the Knowledge Systems Laboratory at Stanford University researching next generation Web infrastructure.
At Stanford, he co-authored the TAP and KDD (Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination) systems for automatic augmentation of human-generated web content.
TAP is a project to take the existing human web, and solve certain key problems to making that data available in a machine-understandable XML format in real time.
KDD relates to building knowledge bases and metadata from documents including news articles, and assists in the production of machine-readable "reports."
McCool was hired as Technical Yahoo and Yahoo Architect in September 2005. He worked on automated question answering.
He joined the technical staff of OnLive, Inc, in November 2007.
While all of the above free online storage programs give you great storage and backup for your data files, it can be a bit of a hassle to access these files when you need them.
Typically, you have to login to the online storage website, find your file, and download it to your hard drive.
Not a big deal, but wouldn’t it be much easier if you could treat your web-based storage like a local hard drive?
One solution to this problem is to use a cloud integration program like Gladinet. This program will provide you with a quick link between your desktop and the files you are storing online.
Gladinet allows users of Google Docs, SkyDrive, ADrive (and a few other online storage services) to access their web-based files just as if they were in a folder on a local hard drive. T
This program also offers extra encryption and upload/download acceleration for added convenience.
Gladinet works on Windows XP/Vista, with Mac support coming soon.
China Deployment of Hardened OS
China has developed its own operating system for cyber war with U.S.
China has developed its own ultra-secure operating system for a strategic edge in its cyber warfare with U.S. computer systems.
Kevin G. Coleman, a specialist with the Technolytics Institute and consultant to the office of the Director of National Intelligence said in congressional testimony that the United States is woefully unprepared to counter cyber attacks on its electronic infrastructures.
Part of the cyber arms race includes China ‘s creation of Kylin, a new "hardened" operating system
It began converting systems to it in 2007, according to the current edition of East-Asia-Intel.com.
The Chinese Kylin operating system is only a copy of the freely downloadable FreeBSD operating system (which has been around for years) with the name changed to Kylin.
The Chinese have simply customized FreeBSD slightly and set the operating system language to use Chinese characters.
China’s military strategists view our dependence on space assets and information technology as ?soft ribs’ and a strategic weakness, Coleman told the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission.
This action also made our offensive cyber capabilities ineffective against them, given the cyber weapons were designed to be used against Linux, UNIX and Windows, he said.
Some reports have claimed that China scanning the U.S. power grid and operates a cyber spying network in 103 countries.
For over two decades, China has been attempting to do what the Soviet Union never accomplished ? covertly acquire Western technology, then use it to move ahead of the West, according to Coleman.
Coleman also noted that the U.S. government has been unable to determine when a cyber attack constitutes an act of war.
Google Chrome 2 Released
Apart from the speed and stability increases, Chrome users can also expect:
Faster JavaScript engine to handle complex scripts.
Improved New Tab Page: The most requested feature from users was the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page. Now you can finally hide that embarrassing gossip blog from the Most Visited section.
Full Screen Mode: If you’ve ever given a presentation or watched a large video using Google Chrome, you might have wished you could use every last pixel on your screen for the content. Now you can hide the title bar and the rest of the browser window by hitting F11 or selecting the option in the Tools menu.
Form Autofill: Form autofill helps by showing information you’ve previously entered into the same form fields automatically. If at any point you want to clear out your information, that’s easy to do from the Tools menu.
Obama on cybersecurity: We’re not that prepared
President Obama on Friday said the U.S. government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions caused by computer or Internet attacks.
He then announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff.
The coordinator will oversee a new bureaucracy tasked with digital infrastructure protection, which had previously been handled by the Department of Homeland Security.
During his remarks in the White House’s East Room on Friday, Obama also seemed to seek a balance between warning of the dangers of terrorists using the Internet and saying the government will not go too far.
Some outside groups to argue that cybersecurity efforts should be taken over by the National Security Agency, which already is responsible for protecting government computers through its "information assurance" arm.
Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair suggested to a House committee that the NSA was ready for the job.
Rod Beckström, director of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Center . resigned in March complaining about the NSA power grab.
In a similar vein, the Pentagon is preparing a new military command for cyberspace that would operate in parallel with the civilian effort.
Obama Confirmed Campaign Was Hacked
Between the months of August and October, Obama said, hackers accessed files including policy papers and travel plans.
Files pertaining to fundraising information were left untouched.
Obama noted that his campaign’s vulnerabilities reflected those of the rest of the world.
The campaign worked with federal agents and hired security consultants to address the breach,.
In November that federal agents were investigating cyberbreaches of both the Obama and McCain campaigns.
Turkish hackers breach US Army servers
US government investigators are probing breaches of two sensitive Army webservers by suspected Turkish hackers.
One of the servers, located at the Army’s McAlester Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma , was penetrated on January 26.
The hack was carried out by a Turkey-based collective known as "m0sted" and caused people attempting to access the site to be redirected to a webpage protesting climate change.
A separate security lapse occurred in September 2007, when the same band of attackers broke into Army Corps of Engineers’ servers. They sent site visitors to m0sted.com, which at the time contained anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric and images.
It was unclear if either hack allowed the hackers access to sensitive information.
The breaches on the Army websites were likely the result of SQL injection attacks that allowed the hackers access to the server databases. Such attacks generally take advantage of web applications that fail to properly sanitize text entered into search boxes and other website fields. By entering SQL commands, the hackers can gain control over vulnerable sites.
Investigators for the Department of Defense and other agencies have subpoenaed records from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others in an attempt to learn the identities of the hackers.
Japanese University Uses iPhones
Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo is giving iPhone to 550 students in its School of Social Informatics , which studies the use of Internet and computer technology in society.
The iPhone will be used to relay course materials, lecture videos and tests.
The phone will work as a tool for studies, but it also comes with GPS, a satellite navigation system that automatically checks on its location.
The university plans to use that as a way check attendance.
Students who skip class could still fake attendance by giving their iPhone to a friend who goes to class. However, students aren’t likely to lend their mobile phones, which are packed with personal information and email.
The university hopes students will develop software applications and other lifestyle uses for the cellphone
Food Science: Foods with Heat
Heat
The heat, or burning sensation, experienced when consuming hot sauce is caused by capsaicin.
The seemingly subjective perceived heat of hot sauces can be measured by the Scoville Scale. The hottest hot sauce scientifically possible is one rated at 16,000,000 Scoville units, which makes it pure capsaicin.
It is named after Wilbur Scoville, who developed the Scoville Organoleptic Testin in 1912.
16 Scoville units is equivalent to one part capsaicin per million, thus the highest concentration corresponds to 16,000,000 Scoville units.
Tabasco sauce is rated between 2,500 and 5,000 Scoville units.
Styles of Hot Sauce
Louisiana-style: the most popular syle in America . Louisiana-style hot sauce contains peppers, vinegar and water. Tabasco sauce, Texas Pete, and Frank’s Red Hot are all examples of Louisiana-style sauce.
Mexican: Mexican hot sauce typically focuses more on flavor than on intense heat. The sauces are hot, but the individual flavors of the peppers are pronounced. Vinegar is used sparingly or not at all.
Chipotle is a very popular Mexican hot sauce, which uses smoked jalapenos for its flavor. Some sauces produced in Mexico are high vinegar content Louisiana-style sauces.
Asian: Asian sauces generally contain more ingredients than Louisiana or Mexican. These sauces are generally sweeter and often rely on garlic or other seasonings for their flavor. Thai and Indian sauces are some of the hottest sauces made.
Remedies
Capsaicin is an alkaloid oil and is, as such, soluble in acid, fat or alcohol. The effects of ingestion of a hot sauce deemed ‘too hot’ by the consumer can be partially remedied by drinking such things as milk which binds with the capsaicin alkaloid, neutralizing it.