Good thing we have FBI and Gates on case
Alan T. Saracevic
Sunday, August 31, 2003
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The FBI arrested an 18-year-old in Minnesota this week for being a "key
player" in the Blaster worm fiasco, which infected more than 500,000
computers this month.
How can the FBI stand there with a straight face and pat itself on the
back for busting this loser? In reality, agents caught an extremely
uninspired script-kid wannabe who allegedly copied and renamed the
original Blaster code. And they did it by acting on a tip that turned
the youngster over like a pancake. And it took 'em 10 days to do that!
As U.S. Attorney John McKay, who is taking credit for this sleuthing
coup, put it: "I find it difficult sometimes to click the on button."
Best part is they put this 6-foot-4-inch, 320-pound fellow under home
detention. From what I can tell, doesn't sound like young Jeffrey Lee
Parson got out much in the first place.
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Oh, wait. Even better than that was the actual complaint filed
electronically by federal prosecutors Friday. It wasn't very legible,
because the super cybersleuths who chased down this menace to society
had scanned the legal document sideways. The PDF files that folks were
trying to read on this matter showed only half of each page, laid out
vertically across the horizontal format.
Now, if these geniuses can't scan a document right, how did they ever
corner a mastermind like Parson? They had help from Bill Gates. That's how.
$ $ $
Indeed, the real heroes here were the vigilant engineers at Microsoft
Corp.,
who worked hand-in-hand with the FBI to bring this elusive hacker to
justice.
Once again, I find myself grasping for answers. How, oh how, can
Microsoft stand right next to the FBI and pat itself on the back for
working with law enforcement to bust this poor patsy? Har.
It's been a year and a half since Bill Gates promised he would commit
his entire company to security issues. In that time, my blue screens of
death have been outnumbered only by penis enlargement e-mails and worm
viruses.
Get it together, Bill. Your Windows are holier than the Dalai Lama.
Speaking of which . . .
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Goodbye Dalai. Hello snark.
S.F. dot-com Salesforce.com was busy wiping a four-egg omelet off its
face this week for mistakenly using an image of the Dalai Lama to
promote its suite of office software applications. When the Dalai's
people balked, CEO Marc Benioff had to cancel invites to 500 people he'd
asked to come see the Tibetan holy man speak.
It should be noted that our pumped-up candidate for governor, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, had no qualms shilling Salesforce.com products a month
earlier at a "Terminator 3" party sponsored by the dot-com. But anyway,
this is about the Dalai Lama, so lemme say this.
Benioff is normally a genius of self-promotion. Doesn't he know that
Steve Jobs already cornered the market on using the good Dalai to pimp
technology? Think different, dude.
Adding insult to injury, the shame wasn't cold before Salesforce.com's
chief competitor was making digs. NetLedger, an Oracle partner that
competes with Benioff for small-business customers, immediately sent out
the following invite for a product launch:
"Although the Dalai Lama, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Moses are unable to
attend, you will hear from the leading visionaries and companies that
are delivering on the promise of an intelligent, complete, simple and
integrated application for mid-sized businesses."
Love it.
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And I love beer. But we've gone over that ground before. I'd like to
take some time out on this Labor Day weekend to pay respects to the beer
industry, which not only provides us with beer but also does more for
the economy than Arnold Schwarzenegger did for Speedos.
The National Beer Wholesalers Association, representing more than 2,200
beer distributors nationwide, and the Beer Institute, representing
America's brewers, recently released its 2003 Beer Industry Economic
Impact study.
According to the study's findings, the beer industry provides 182,860
jobs for California residents and generates more than $6 billion in
annual wages.
Now I know why we call it the Golden State.
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
Killer Trees. After opining in August 1980 that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do," Reagan arrived at a campaign rally to find a tree decorated with this sign: "Chop me down before I kill again."
California is the world's 5th largest economy, outranking the country of France.
Wal-Mart is the 19th largest economy in the world ranking between the countries of Belgium and Sweden. Yet Wal-Mart only pays its workers an average of $7.50 an hour. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50881-2003Aug26.html
