Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Yes...

Yes.  Via my lovely bride...


The ultimate commute?

The ultimate commute?  Shift change at a French lighthouse...

A really bad spam mail...

A really bad spam mail...  Got this one last night:
Dear

Today we have transfer the advance payment USD331,000 into your account. Find below the swift copy and please kindly let us know when the shipment will be ready.

NB: Open the attach file with java application.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Regards.
Sales manager
alfouad-trading co.
Attached is a file named “331,000 $ SWIFT.jpg.jar”

Obviously, I did not run that jar file.  For the non-geeks out there, a “jar” file contains a program written in Java that can do just about any damn thing it wants to on your system.  Running a jar file that you got from someone you don't know is a really, really bad idea.  It could ruin your whole day.  Actually, a lot of whole days...

There are enough red flags for anyone reading this (poor English, missing name, unlikely monetary pitch, etc.) that I think it's unlikely they'll fool many people.  At least, I hope that's the case!  On the other hand, I can imagine that there are a lot of people who don't realize that running a jar file can do really bad things...

Hiccups...

Hiccups ... are still a complete mystery.  The philosopher in me says that this is evidence that if there is (or was) a Creator, he (or she) had a sense of humor.  The software engineer in me says: “Bug!”