Malware attacks U.S. Marshals & FBI

The solutions were bought and paid for, but installations of them are months & years behind. PC security has to be a priority even when it seems like a waste of time. This is one reason why turning on automated updates is important for personal and business systems.

Malware knocks out U.S. Marshals Service network - Network World:
"Malware Wednesday crippled Windows-based computer systems at the U.S. Marshals Service, which hunts federal fugitives and operates the country's witness protection program, knocking the agency’s network offline.

The agency's press office confirmed it was having network problems and that its e-mail system was down this morning, but it was unclear if the outage extended across the entire network.
. . .
The agency's Web site was up and running this morning, but a receptionist in the press office said "the agency's whole e-mail system is down, and the agency is unable to receive e-mail."

Later, another press office staffer confirmed that there were network problems.

Members of the agency's IT staff were communicating with vendors via Gmail accounts as they attempted to work through the issue.
. . .
The U.S. Marshals Service runs Trend Micro’s OfficeScan, an anti-malware software that installs on desktops, laptops and mobile devices.

The agency, however, runs the 5.0 version, which is more than three years old. Trend Micro says protection against Neeris has been in OfficeScan since version 8. The current version is 10.

'[Their version] is a vastly out-of-date, end-of-life product,' said Sweeny.

In addition, Sweeny said the U.S. Marshals Service maintenance contract was up-to-date, meaning the agency had paid for upgrades to the software but had failed to install them.
. . .
23 of 24 major federal agencies had weaknesses in their agency-wide information security programs. Those agencies included the DOJ.

While the Neeris worm has been around since 2005, a new version was discovered just last month that used the same vulnerability targeted by Conficker. The new version spreads via the Windows "autorun" command.

A patch to close the critically-rated vulnerability that Neeris and Conficker exploit was issued in October by Microsoft."

The FBI was also affected but is saying less.

Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected:
"Law enforcement computers were struck by a mystery computer virus Thursday, forcing the FBI and the U.S. Marshals to shut down part of their networks as a precaution.

The U.S. Marshals confirmed it disconnected from the Justice Department's computers as a protective measure after being hit by the virus; an FBI official said only that that agency was experiencing similar issues and was working on the problem.
. . .
Marshals spokeswoman Nikki Credic said the agency's computer problem began Thursday morning. The FBI began experiencing similar problems earlier.
. . .
In addition to their external networks, most federal law enforcement agencies have an internal-only network to prevent cyber-snoopers from sensitive data.

In Thursday's incident, the Marshals Service shut down its Internet access and some e-mail while staff worked on the problem. The FBI made similar moves to protect its system."

Hubble serviced for last time

One of NASA's successes (eventually) - the Hubble Telescope has changed humanity's understanding of the universe.

Gearlog - Gadget Guide by Geeks for Geeks: "And that's a wrap: Space shuttle Atlantis crew member Megan McArthur used the shuttle's robotic arm to release the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit at 8:57 a.m. EST Tuesday, CNN reports. The mission marks the last time humans will touch the 19-year old telescope. Hubble has taken hundreds of thousands of high-resolution images--all free of the earth's murky atmosphere.

'With soft separation burn, Atlantis now is slowly backing away from the telescope,' NASA said in a statement. '"

Ubuntu up & running (again)

I had Ubuntu (version 7.04) running 18 months ago, but when I upgraded that desktop PC with a new BioStar motherboard (P4M900-M4 - socket 478) Ubuntu seemed to have incurable problems with the on-board video. I tried version 8.04 without success and gave up on it for a while. (It runs fine with Windows & IDE drives. . .)

I recently installed Ubuntu version 9.04 and it seems to be running very well. I guess they finally incorporated workable video drivers for this chip set. I still need to install video drivers that take full advantage of this chip set (S3 Chrome 9HC IGP), but at least now I can use the system to connect to the Internet, use Open Office, and learn about Linux.

On the other hand, I have a Seagate SATA drive that won't boot with this or another BioStar motherboard (P4M890-M7 TE - socket 775) - perhaps the drive itself has a problem - more testing required. Oddly, the drive was only recognized on one of the 2 SATA ports (now that one doesn't recognize it either), leading me to wonder about the board itself.

If you're building your own PC, take care to read the motherboard reviews before selecting one.

IBM ThinkPad R31 laptop hard drive upgrade

Our ThinkPad has been acting really cranky lately, and I discovered it had only 3% of the (20 GB) disk space available. Deleting and zipping some files gained very little space – easily swallowed up by the next WinXP update. It was time for a new hard drive. Checking online, I found that “4 All Memory” had 160 GB drives available for the R31.

Like most, our laptop only accepts one hard drive at a time, so the common desktop method of installing the new drive and copying the old one won’t work. I downloaded the DriveImage XML software (free for home use) and started learning how to make a drive image. The plan was to copy the 20GB drive to an external, USB drive, and then copy that image back to new drive (after it was installed). Because there is no space left on the old drive, and because it wouldn’t be available to restore the image anyway, I decide to load the software on a bootable CD-R disk.

DriveImage XML recommends the Bart PE – PE Builder software because it creates a bootable WinXP disc that runs a graphical environment. The very first CD I burned was bootable, but I had forgotten to download and install the DriveImage XML plug-in. The 2nd disc booted, loaded DriveImage XML, and successfully created the drive image on the external drive – this took about 5 hours. After installing the new drive, I tried to restore the image – the software, quite reasonably, expected the new drive to be partitioned before proceeding. DriveImage recommended a couple of methods to partition the drive, but none worked for me.

I finally swapped the laptop's CD drive for a floppy drive and broke out the old Partition Magic diskettes. After a couple of false starts it began the partitioning process – this was about 10% complete after an hour, so I went to bed.

In the morning with the Primary partition created & set to active, I swapped the CD drive back in and rebooted to run DriveImage XML again. This time everything appeared to be working. The status screen didn’t show much, but about 5 hours later (about the same time as it took to create the image – probably limited by the USB 1 port speed) . . . It copied correctly, but wouldn’t boot. Fortunately, after googling a while, I learned I could boot from a WinXP CD and in the Repair mode, enter the "fixmbr" command. It now appears to be running as before, but with a much larger disk drive (and no cranky behavior).

Montana takes a stand for States Rights

States rights encompasses far more than this firearms legislation. In a time when our federal government is looking like a WW-II fascist dictatorship it is about time some states started pushing back. Kudos to Montana.

Wisconsin Gun Rights Examiner: Montana draws a deep line for states rights:

"This bill has just been signed into law in Montana. I understand Texas is considering enacting a similar law.

Let’s hope more states will find the courage to tell the over reaching federal government to shove it.

HOUSE BILL NO. 246

INTRODUCED BY J. BONIEK, BENNETT, BUTCHER, CURTISS, RANDALL, WARBURTON

AN ACT EXEMPTING FROM FEDERAL REGULATION UNDER THE COMMERCE CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES A FIREARM, A FIREARM ACCESSORY, OR AMMUNITION MANUFACTURED AND RETAINED IN MONTANA; AND PROVIDING AN APPLICABILITY DATE.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MONTANA:
Section 1. Short title. [Sections 1 through 6] may be cited as the “Montana Firearms Freedom Act”.

Section 2. Legislative declarations of authority. The legislature declares that the authority for [sections 1 through 6] is the following:

(1) The 10th amendment to the United States constitution guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the constitution and reserves to the state and people of Montana certain powers as they were understood at the time that Montana was admitted to statehood in 1889. The guaranty of those powers is a matter of contract between the state and people of Montana and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Montana and the United States in 1889.
. . ."

Emphasis added

Energy Regulatory Chief Jon Wellinghoff speaks

Chairman Wellinghof clearly doesn't understand the computing power used to make (for example) airline reservations or credit card processing (only mainframes can do big jobs like this cost effectively), so how can we accept his word on energy production? The point of growing our baseline power is to ensure that needed energy is available on a continuous basis. Brownouts & rolling blackouts are bad for people and expensive to industries and eventually their customers.

Solar and wind energy can't be used as baseline power without resorting to costly storage systems (like a big pile of batteries). Nuclear power can be provided at a price that competes very well with both solar and wind power (particularly for the 2nd - nth plants of the same design), and nuclear takes far less space than a solar or wind farm. Coal has plenty of issues, but it currently provides about half of all electricity produced here, and we can produce that electricity much more cleanly if we build modern facilities. This experience would also enable us to compete in supplying other countries that are building their energy infrastructures.

This blindness to our reality of a growing population and a (hopefully) growing economy is a terrible attribute for a policy maker in this position.

Energy Regulatory Chief Says New Coal, Nuclear Plants May Be Unnecessary - NYTimes.com:
"No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said today.

'We may not need any, ever,' Jon Wellinghoff told reporters at a U.S. Energy Association forum.

The FERC chairman's comments go beyond those of other Obama administration officials, who have strongly endorsed greater efficiency and renewables deployment but also say nuclear and fossil energies will continue playing a major role.
. . .
Jay Apt, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Electricity Industry Center, expressed skepticism about the feasibility of relying so heavily on renewable energy. "I don't think we're where Chairman Wellinghoff would like us to be," Apt said. "You need firm power to fill in when the wind doesn't blow. There is just no getting around that."

Some combination of more gas- or coal-fired generation, or nuclear power, will be needed, he said. "Demand response can provide a significant buffering of the power fluctuations coming from wind. Interacting widely scattered wind farms cannot provide smooth power."

Wellinghoff said renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands. Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive, he added.

"I think baseload capacity is going to become an anachronism," he said. "Baseload capacity really used to only mean in an economic dispatch, which you dispatch first, what would be the cheapest thing to do. Well, ultimately wind's going to be the cheapest thing to do, so you'll dispatch that first."

He added, "People talk about, 'Oh, we need baseload.' It's like people saying we need more computing power, we need mainframes. We don't need mainframes, we have distributed computing."

The technology for renewable energies has come far enough to allow his vision to move forward, he said. For instance, there are systems now available for concentrated solar plants that can provide 15 hours of storage.
. . .
"I think it's being settled by the digital grid moving forward," he said. "We are going to have to go to a smart grid to get to this point I'm talking about. But if we don't go to that digital grid, we're not going to be able to move these renewables, anyway. So it's all going to be an integral part of operating that grid efficiently."
. . .
Congress created significant financial incentives to encourage the construction of perhaps a half-dozen nuclear plants with innovative designs, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu has promised Congress to accelerate awards of federal loan guarantees for some of these proposals.

But a major expansion in U.S. nuclear energy would require a high effective tax on carbon emissions from coal plants, or an extended loan guarantee and tax incentive policy, according to the Congressional Research Service and outside consultants. The leading energy bills before Congress do not provide more loan guarantees.

"If expansion of nuclear plants is the nation's policy, then Congress has to recognize that the U.S. energy companies cannot afford to do this alone," said Paul Genoa, policy director for the Nuclear Energy Institute, in a recent interview.

"The president needs to show his cards on nuclear energy," said energy consultant Joseph Stanislaw, a Duke University professor. "He cannot keep this industry, which must make investments with a 50-year or longer horizon, in limbo for much longer."
. . .
Unlike coal and nuclear, natural gas will continue to play a role in generating electricity, he said.

"Natural gas is going to be there for a while, because it's going to be there to get us through this transition that's going to take 30 or more years."

Chu reiterated before the House Energy and Commerce Committee today that he supports loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants and is working with the White House on the issue.

"I believe nuclear power has to be part of the energy mix in this century," Chu said.

Chu also noted today that nuclear technology, along with renewables, is an area where the United States has lost its lead. "We are trying to start the American nuclear industry again," he said.

Coal currently provides half of U.S. power, while nuclear energy accounts for about 20 percent."

Harnessing Power From the Sea

Science Fiction slowly becoming reality - this is one component amongst the many we need to keep bringing the benefits of technology to the world with a reduced environmental cost.

Renewing Efforts to Harness Power From the Sea - NYTimes.com:
"LOCKHEED MARTIN is best known for building stealth fighters, satellites and other military equipment. But since late 2006 the company has taken on a different kind of enterprise — generating renewable power from the ocean.
. . .
Lockheed and a few other companies are pursuing ocean thermal energy conversion, which uses the difference in temperature between the ocean’s warm surface and its chilly depths to generate electricity.

Experts say that the balmy waters off Hawaii and Puerto Rico, as well as near United States military bases on islands like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or Guam in the Pacific, would be good sites for developing this type of energy.
. . .
In the approach that Lockheed is pursuing (with another company, Makai Ocean Engineering), the water on the ocean’s surface is used to heat a pressurized liquid, usually ammonia, which boils at a temperature slightly below that of warm seawater. That liquid becomes gas, which powers a turbine generator. Cold water is then pumped from the ocean’s depths through a giant pipe to condense the gas back into a liquid, and the cycle is repeated.

An important advantage of this method of producing energy is that it could run all the time, unlike solar plants, which cannot work at night, or wind turbines, which stop in calm conditions.

But the technology is expensive and can work in only a limited number of places, like the tropics, where there is a large difference in temperature between the ocean’s layers. This excludes many major population centers, although proponents hope that Florida and the Gulf Coast could also be markets. (Other types of ocean energy being explored would harness the tides and waves.)
. . .
Lockheed and the federal government have worked on this type of energy before, after the 1970s oil crises. In 1979, a 50-kilowatt test project was briefly run off the coast of Hawaii’s Big Island. Financing for ocean-energy projects was slashed significantly by the Reagan administration, and Lockheed abandoned its pursuit of the technology in the mid-1980s.

Proponents say that since the last attempt to develop it, the technology has improved enormously. Offshore oil platforms similar to the platforms needed for the ocean energy system have become more sophisticated, for example in their ability to withstand hurricanes and to moor in deeper water.
. . .
Robert Varley, who is helping to lead Lockheed’s efforts, estimated that just 3.5 percent of the potential energy from the warm water pumped might actually be used. “In reality that doesn’t matter — the fuel is free,” he said.

But building and operating the platform will be costly. Harry Jackson, the president of Ocees International, an engineering firm based in Honolulu also working on the technology, estimated that a test plant of the size Hawaii is planning — which is still far smaller than commercial scale — would cost $150 million to $250 million.

Some environmental groups are cautiously embracing the technology as one of many approaches that could help reduce fossil fuel consumption and thus combat climate change."

UAW will sell Chrysler stock

While probably a reasonable strategy, this isn't the headline the union needs now - it makes some folks think that the union leadership doesn't expect Chrysler to survive.

UAW Says Won't Control Chrysler - WSJ.com:
"The United Auto Workers president is seeking to distance his union from direct responsibility for the future of Chrysler LLC, noting 55% of the auto maker will be owned by a retiree health care trust fund and not the union itself.
. . .
The trust--known as a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, or VEBA--is supposed to take ownership of 55% of Chrysler as part of a government-brokered cost-cutting plan that union workers ratified earlier this week. Chrysler filed for federal bankruptcy protection Thursday.
. . .
As part of a restructuring worked out before the bankruptcy filing Thursday, the UAW agreed to take half of its debt obligation to its retiree health care trust in equity.
. . .
"This creates additional risk for the retirees' health care; however, with the company being successful, we'll need to turn that stock around, and we have provisions worked in the agreement that even though it won't be a public company until later on, we'll be able to sell those shares under certain circumstances," Mr. Gettelfinger said in his television interview.

Here is another take on the same story.

Health Care Marketplace UAW Planning To Sell Chrysler Stock Obtained From Bankruptcy Deal To Fund VEBA - Kaisernetwork.org:
"United Auto Workers will sell its 55% stake in the reorganized Chrysler as soon as possible to fund a trust that will cover retirees' health care costs, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said Monday, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports. Chrysler owes about $10.9 billion to the UAW-operated voluntary employees' beneficiary association, which will cover health benefits for about 82,000 retirees and their spouses, as well as future retirees. The trust will start paying out in 2010.

Gettelfinger expressed confidence in the fund but said that it 'will be on life support initially.' Dental and vision benefits for retirees already have been cut from the VEBA, and further cuts are possible, he said (Johnson, AP/Houston Chronicle, 5/4). The fund will start with $1.5 billion from an existing health care trust, and will receive about $300 million from Chrysler next year. Gettelfinger added that all money from the sale of the Chrysler stock will go to the VEBA (Bennett, Wall Street Journal, 5/5)."

Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan

Where are the lawyers? This seems like WW-II era Italy

Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan Is Announced - NYTimes.com:
"WASHINGTON — President Obama forced Chrysler into federal bankruptcy protection on Thursday so it could pursue a lifesaving alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat, in yet another extraordinary intervention into private industry by the federal government.
. . .
The arrangement came after an intensive round of White House-sponsored negotiations among the Treasury Department, the union and Chrysler’s executives and creditors. After working through the night, a small group of debtholders balked at Mr. Obama’s final terms, leading the president to decide that bankruptcy could not be averted.

It was a stark moment, and one unseen in modern times, as the fledgling president deepened his involvement in a struggling but iconic American company. Chrysler, which Mr. Obama called “a pillar” of the industrial economy, invented the minivan and owns the Jeep brand.

With Thursday’s filing, Chrysler became the first major American automaker to seek bankruptcy protection since Studebaker did so in 1933."