Lemur z i l l a Zone News

Saturday, October 12, 2002

what's hot what's not

A lot of folks were at DIDW who blogged about their experiences. I am glad I stayed home. I would have liked to seen Doc again, met Phil Windley and AKMA in the flesh, but there will be other opportunities that will be more productive.

Big Businesses are the last folks I would trust with my digital identity. Current ideas regarding Customer Service on a personal level end with a telephone and a mind numbing series of choices that before you ever speak to someone with lungs, brains being optional, you are threatened with your message being recorded for "quality control or training purposes". Trust me, it hasn't worked. No, I don't think I want to entrust my digital identity to a company who would only share it with their subsidiaries, trading partners, and anyone with a checkbook if they were having a disappointing quarter. Nor would I let them help me to establish one.

See the Microsoft Patch o' the Day section below for the latest argument against letting Microsoft manage Digital Identity.

The Politech Newsletter brings us this nugget about the Adult Entertainment Industry on the web.

The Adult Entertainment portion of the Internet is one of the successful segments of the Pay for Content markets. Visa and Mastercard is poised to change this.

"On their face, the new regulations - the majority of which are being implemented by VISA - are couched in language that is aimed at giving the credit card companies greater control over an industry that knows no geographical boundaries and historically has been susceptible to high chargebacks and fraud."

Being quizzed by your significant other about a couple of hundred bucks of charges from Sadies House of Bondage on your Visa statement may account for some of the chargeback activity.

Another Turn of the Screw
read here - go there
Source:avnonline.com

Steve Champeon brings us a look at what Markup is and why you should understand it.

"Markup" is information that you add to a text document in order to delimit — contain, or define the borders of — certain content.

The Secret Life of Markup
read here - go there
Source: webmonkey

Wired has redesigned in XHTML and CSS. Devedge has an Interview with Doug Bowman.

An Interview With Douglas Bowman of Wired News
read here - go there
Source:

The latest reason that Microsoft is the last company on the planet to manage Digital Identities.

An Unchecked Buffer in Outlook Express S/MIME Parsing May Permit System Compromise

To permit Outlook Express to verify the authenticity of mail messages, Outlook Express supports digital signing of messages by using Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME). The code that generates a warning message when a particular error condition occurs contains a buffer overrun vulnerability. That error condition is associated with digital signatures.

If an attacker creates a digitally signed e-mail message, edits it to introduce specific data, and then sends it to another user, the attacker may cause one of two effects to occur when the recipient opens or previews the e-mail message:

In the less serious case, the attacker may cause the mail client to stop responding. If this problem occurs, the recipient can restart the mail client, and then delete the offending mail to resume ordinary operation.

In the more serious case, the attacker may cause the mail client to run code of the attacker's choice on the user's computer. Such code can take any action that the attacker wants, limited only by the permissions of the recipient on the computer.

Q328676: Security Update (Outlook Express 6)
read here - go there
Source: Microsoft

This could be considered a public service if you wish. But is is really about my clients. This way I can ensure that my clients who are still using Windows are up to date.

It's Time to Stop the Music

I want you to stop buying Commercial Music and going to Movies for six months.
Because if You do not cut off their money they will cut off your Internet access. They have already killed Internet Radio.This is not about the short term pain of your favorite musician, they have already been screwed so royally that it is amazing that you can even recognize them.

It's Time to Stop the Music
read here - go there
Source: the head lemur

Shelley Powers
Some folks can work with technology, some folks can write, very few can do both. Shelley does.

p i x e l v i e w - Shelley Powers
read here - go there