EDIT 4/3/09: Quick and easy way to see if you're infected, redux:

The Conficker Eyechart

From the site:

Conficker (aka Downadup, Kido) is known to block access to over 100 anti-virus and security websites.
If you are blocked from loading the remote images in the first row of the top table above (AV/security sites) but not blocked from loading the remote images in the second row (websites of alternative operating systems) then your Windows PC may be infected by Conficker (or some other malicious software).

/EDIT

Earlier tonight, my dad walked in here and warned me about the "April Fool's virus," also known as Conficker.C. I brushed this off after a quick check of my updates. Then my mother, who knows little about the ways of computers, offered me the same warning. My interest was piqued.

As it turns out, ABC 7 aired a highly sensationalistic segment about Conficker, which of course embarrassed me to no end. When these stories come about, I sometimes -- very quietly, and in the back of my brain -- balk at becoming a journalist. (I almost lost it and had to stop the video at "It may be one of the most dangerous computer viruses ever!" [Emphasis added].)

I'm not exactly technically inclined, but I do lurk around the geekier circles of the Internet. I am very painfully aware what role the media tends to play in f'ing up the details when it comes to reporting on science and technology. I've been cringing through the hype. Part of me is glad that this increases awareness of overall computer safety by offering people all the defensive tips that they should be doing anyway (a lot of antivirus company reps, who I will not link here, are jumping to offer their quotes and figures). But part of me wants responsible journalism and good solid facts.

Not that this media frenzy is entirely unwarranted. It's true that Conficker executes its call home function on April 1. It's true that no one really knows what will happen when the virus accesses its hundreds -- soon to be tens of thousands -- designated websites and (maybe) collects whatever its instructions will be from its writer.

Theoretically, Conficker could update on April 1. Part of this could hypothetically mean gathering keyloggers out to steal your passwords and bank information. But overall this "April 1" thing seems to mean that Conficker will simply activate a new algorithm that generates the domain names for the web sites that tell it what to do. But this is not its payload: it could maybe possibly download a payload, and that's what's got security experts watching closely. No one knows what it's going to do just yet.


Rick Romero, ABC7 Consumer Specialist.

Conflicker has been closely watched since its first version, Conflicker.A, came about, and the scariest thing about it so far is its ingenious evolution over subsequent versions. It sneaks in though an unpatched flaw in Windows XP and Vista or through an infected USB device or CDs (in my reading, it can even infect XP boot discs, the little bastard). Once it's in your system, there's not much you can do; it disrupts antivirus software and Windows updates, booting up in safe mode, and access to PC security-oriented websites aimed at eradicating it. It's a nasty worm all around.

I apologize in advance for my own vague understanding of this threat. I realize this leaves me open to a lot of ribbing. Sometimes I wonder if I should add some diversity to my classes and up science classes. I think my dream job might have something to do with helping the media get the layman translation for pure science out to the general public. That way I wouldn't feel so much of the "GET HEADLINE OUT THERE" pressure and I'd learn some pretty neat stuff all the time. Though I suppose this kind of publicity helps with funding for projects. I digress.

A quick and easy way to check if you're infected with Conficker: try accessing any site that offers help, like Microsoft or Symantec. The virus will block access to these sites, which makes Rick Romero's link to Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool a little moot, but who knows.

Photo credit: Frants on Flickr via Creative Commons
I just spent an engrossing couple of hours going through the "Our Favorites" section at This American Life's website. TAL is a weekly radio show that showcases various stories (fiction, nonfiction, shorts, anything really fascinating or engaging) surrounding a different theme for each episode.

"Switched at Birth" struck me as particularly poignant (it's also the first on the list, heh heh). It tells the story of two women who learn that they were switched at birth -- from one of the mothers who knew about it for over four decades before telling either of them.

What's also striking to me, though is the photograph accompanying the story on its page. My sister recently came home from a friend's house carrying a large flat rate USPS box full to brimming with photographs, postcards, and newspaper clippings from the early 1910s through the 1970s. Piecing together this family's life -- the births, birthdays, and deaths -- gave me goosebumps. I spent hours in that box, finding in turns the library card, social security card, draft card (for the Vietnam War), letters and clippings, and the obituary of a 26-year-old veteran from Lancaster who died in a car accident.

There are road trip shots, Rose Parade shots (in front of Vroman's, circa 1972! There's a head shot, battered and torn, with some film credits and a physical description handwritten neatly on the back, an airbrushed portrait, a 30th anniversary Disneyland parking stub. There's so much that I feel like I should keep quiet about them until I'm ready.

I may post some of the less identifiable photographs at a later time. Right now it's just an odd and emotional concept to me. One day, your whole family can fit into a box of photographs. Our generation will have simple data that will be wiped off this planet as quickly as I could take a lighter to this box in my living room.

It's hard living in Southern California if you're a non-driver. My oddness in this became more pronounced when I started my commute to Walnut, which at first seemed to me a most suffocatingly suburban city and an unwalkable wasteland. The area surrounding Mt. SAC isn't bad, I'm sure -- I probably just see the blankness of Grand and the endless parking lots saturated with cars and not the wilderness and (maybe) the walking-distance destinations tucked into some undiscovered corner.

I hate driving. It's been on my mind for the last few weeks, now that I'm cramming for the DMV test and practicing. I've been asked by a lot of people why I despise it so much. Why is it that you take the bus to school so far away? What on earth do you do for 90 minutes on those horrible smelly things? It's an honestly innocuous question, but it gets me every time. I bristle and get defensive. It's irrational and rude but I hate to have to justify myself for what is, to me, such a personal decision.

Maybe it's because I don't support myself as my Mountie compatriots do, but I'm keenly aware of what a financial burden my driving would have on my family. I'm always (maybe egoistically) astounded by the costs otherwise perfectly reasonable human beings just get accustomed to: gas, insurance, and maintenance of a vehicle just don't make financial sense when some if not most people can easily do without a car altogether. My bus pass costs $36 a month, and even then I feel guilty asking my parents for that money when I'm already 18 and still at home.

I'm not advocating public transportation for everyone, though. The biggest costs I incur on the Metro are time and, I'll admit, my sanity. I'm probably just desensitized to the stresses of a 90 minute public-transport commute and the constant friction with other people on the bus as the drivers in this world are to the concept of traffic.

I've seen some awful things on the Metro, and my claustrophobia's forced me to (rather rudely) push past the crowd to jump off the bus at my stop, gasping and shaking and near tears. I'm not terribly social and being around so many people is really overwhelming sometimes, especially when the collective mood is tense after a long workday when everyone is tired and grimy and hateful. I came come from school sobbing for the first few days at Mt. SAC.

Driving is another process entirely. I can't jump out of the car when I'm on the 10 feeling the same sense of restlessness I get while on any road. On the bus I can read. I can catch up on my podcasts and listen to the news. I can do my homework and guarantee myself one-and-a-half hours of continuous studying without the distraction of Internet.

There's also the little matter that I cannot kill anybody by simply boarding a bus. Sometimes I feel like people completely fail to understand that they are accepting a shitload of responsibility by taking the wheel of a fascinating bundle of potentially deadly and complex machinery. I'm working toward being a good driver by compensating for my lack of peripheral vision (I'm nearsighted and I wear glasses) and for my own mental problems (I zone out and have trouble paying attention to what other people are doing. Imagine this applied to the friggin' road!), but I seriously doubt that I can master it and not do something stupid and avoidable at some point.

Peer pressure has given in, though. It's increasingly obvious that I need a car if I'm going to be here for much longer, and I cannot hope to find a walker's paradise until I get my act together and move out into the world. I'm learning the workings of driving itself and it's not fun. I'll tolerate it, though; who knows -- maybe I'll find that having control over something on my own will heal rather than harm.

I've never had Peeps in this color before! This lively orange (along with grass-green) is a new addition to the traditional spectrum of these adorable, classic, irresistible, and utterly inedible-looking quasi-foodstuffs. I was intrigued by these guys as I inhaled them; how did Just Born Inc. know that tic-tac orange and kelly green are my two favorite colors*, and that I'd never thought to eat a marshmallowey sweet that looks vaguely like vomit or vegetables? They certainly look unique, unlike their snooty pastel-colored brethren. Look at that misshapen eye! What's not to love?!

Add to this my love of wasting time watching people microwave Peeps on YouTube, and I was all set.

Then an unconscious tug of memory washed over me (it's standard with a post-Peeps gorging). Why was I so intrigued by the traffic-cone orangeness of this particular package of Peeps?

D:





*actually, these are my favorite colors! go figure.

While eating lunch in by the fountain in front of the library today, I was harassed repeatedly by a squirrel. I didn't mind at first except that the friggin' thing was frighteningly persistent. Someone had obviously fed it from a brown paper Crustano's bag before, and the rodent repeatedly jumped up right next to me, garnering some unwanted attention my way.

"Aww, look, a squirrel!" a girl crooned.

This made it very uncomfortable for me to try to feign kicks and to aim swears at the furry little thing, but I did it. Dirty looks ensued.

I love squirrels and fuzzy little animals. I hate rabies shots. I haven't had any shots, but I will do anything in my power not to be several thousand dollars in the hole just because I thought OHMYGOODNESS FLUFFY ANIMAL WON'T BITE.

I have a responsibility to protect the squirrels, too! Squirrels are wild animals. Wild animals that don't run at the sight of humans become dependent on them or overly trusting and susceptible to attack.

I was ready to write a post railing against the injustice of awarding bonuses to several members of AIG's Financial Products Unit, using millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars to do so. I was fully prepared to go on about the way that money should have been used, ready to go off Yahoo's front page and condemn Senator Chris Dodd (see "Dodd facing fresh political firestorm," Mar. 18) in all this reprehensible extravagant bonus muck. But the wonders of the ENDLESSLY FRUSTRATING Complicated Nature of Reality and Fact Checking have stopped me in my single-minded tracks.

And it is indeed complicated. So complicated, in fact, that CNN has opted to create a primer for what they've called an "ugly, ugly" bailout. They outline things nicely here.

From the beginning, the point was to keep AIG out of bankruptcy and afloat long enough so its dangerous financial bets could be unwound and its valuable units sold off to raise cash to pay back Uncle Sam. ...

Last Friday, AIG paid out about $165 million in bonus checks to employees who worked in the troubled AIG Financial Products unit. The bonuses were part of a larger package, some $450 million due to these employees in 2008-2009.

New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday said that 73 employees got more than $1 million each, including 11 people who don't even work for AIG anymore.

About the Yahoo! News story (the "scapegoat Dodd" angle played out at CNN too): it is completely incorrect.
Senator Dodd is not to blame, according to factcheck.org (full analysis):

The public record shows Dodd authored an amendment that would have prevented "any bonus" being paid to top executives of firms getting bailout money. It was the White House and the Treasury Department that insisted Dodd's amendment be watered down to apply only to bonuses paid under agreements signed in the past five weeks. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has taken public responsibility for that.

... so it looks like Geithner is either stretching the truth, or very, very bad at his job, if this bit from the previously-mentioned CNN Money is of any merit. (Hint: it is.)

Treasury chief Tim Geithner says he found out about the bonuses last week, although AIG revealed in regulatory filings last year that it was giving such bonuses. The contracts had been set up months before the government became a nearly 80% owner in the company. Treasury's lawyers said it would be legally difficult to block the bonuses.

Let's talk about money.

Look. According to google's calculator, 165 million divided by 170 billion = 0.000970588235.

To get the percentage of how much of our bailout money is taxpayer money, multiply that by 100.

0.000970588235 times 100 = 0.0970588235% of the bailout money.

This is $165 million.

$165,000,000

This is $170 billion.

$170,000,000,000

This is $2 trillion.

$2,000,000,000,000

I cannot even picture numbers this big, which is why the folks at mint.com put this ingenious series of images together. You see, the Fed is racking up another trillion dollars in bonds in order to inflate the economy, we're throwing money at our ongoing war on terror, and in the meantime we're lopping off teachers, books, scholarships and letting our infrastructure go to shit. And you know what? AIG sounds like a big enough monster in which to direct my anger.

Only it isn't one simple monster.

I leave you with the maddeningly logical comments of reddit user aGorilla , bestof'd here.

About the current CEO:

• He's being paid 1 dollar a year.
• He gets no bonuses, either way.
• He gets no stocks.
• He didn't sign these contracts, he inherited them.
  

About the people who tanked AIG:

• They are gone.
• They were few.
  

About the people who received the bonuses:

• They did not kill AIG
• They were offered these bonuses last year, to stay for another year, and clean up the mess.
• They reduced $2.7 trillion of shit to $1.6 trillion of shit.
  

About the bonuses:

• They are less than .1% of the bailout money.
  
• They were offered last year, to retain people until they cleaned up the mess.
• They were NOT meant to retain people for next year.
  

What if we didn't pay them?

• The people who are (successfully) cleaning up the mess, would leave.
• Then, they would sue (rightfully so).
• AIG would have to try to replace them, while trying to prevent losses on the suddenly 'unmanaged' accounts.
• AIG might be forced into bankruptcy, for defaulting (aka: we lose).
• AIG might survive, but take further losses, and need more help (aka: we lose).
  

This is where I heave a big sigh and tear out some of my hair.