Mac users have often extolled the virtues of security relating to their numbers, or rather lack thereof… surely such a niche market can’t be as vulenerable to attack as, say, Windows users, because writing malicious code for such a small segment wouldn’t be worth it. Can it?

Well, Mac users have a very false sense of securty. And the Witty worm is living historical proof.

Unlike the major virii that make headlines today and could potentially infect millions of unprotected computers, the targeted audience for Witty was a mere 12,000 workstations – those running BlackICE technology, found in certain niche firewall programs. And it managed to infect every one of them in less than 45 minutes. And not only did it infect with prodigious speed, but it destroyed with equal prowess too: Witty’s destructive payload would select a random 65K segment of a computer’s hard drive, and delete it, slowly rendering the host machine unusable.

To quote bynkii.com:

On March 8th, 2004, eEye Digital Security discovered a vulnerability in ISS’s BlackICE/RealSecure products. On March 9th, ISS released a patch for the vulnerability.

On March 18th, eEye published a high-level description of the vulnerability. 36 hours later, Witty was released into the wild.

Witty was only 637 bytes long.

Moral of this story? There is no such thing as a lack of interest through lack of numbers.

It would appear that both the main presidential candidates have decided together that the public should not be allowed to see those same candidates for who they really are. As such, they’ve chosen to give the public a heavily restricted, pre-packaged event this time around during the presidential debates. Things as minute as the room temperature are now strictly governed by a set of rules devised by an accord reached between both camps:

When the first of the three debates starts Thursday, the candidates will wait for a cue from the moderator and then “proceed to center stage, shake hands and proceed directly to their positions behind their podiums.”

Those lecterns must be set 10 feet apart and equally canted toward center stage, measuring 50 inches tall from the audience’s view and 48 inches tall to the writing surface on the candidates’ side. No risers, chairs or stools permitted.

And from CNN:

The 32-page agreement sets out the rules for the debates with great specificity, down to details such as the temperature of the hall, what kind of paper can be used to take notes and who can stand in the wings.

News networks are evidently not immune from the agreement. Even though none of the networks were involved in the agreement or have agreed to abide by these rules, the restrictions mandate that the journalistic pool camera televising the event is not allowed to show cadidates’ reactions to their opponent’s comments, any unfavorable behind-the-head shots, or audience or family members’ reactions.

In other words, if there’s any possibility of a gaffe or the showing of anything, well, human among the two candidates, it’s just not allowed.

Fox News, who will be running the cameras on behalf of the journalistic pool (gee, already this seems “fair and balanced,” eh?), says they will not abide by the agreement… fair enough, considering they didn’t even sign off on it. We’ll see if this truly ends up being the case though, or if they decide last-minute to capitulate.

Looks like it takes a former president to point out the flaws in the efforts to get Florida back in the game with equitable and fair elections:

“The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely,” Carter wrote in The Washington Post. He called Florida election officials “highly partisan” in favor of Republican President Bush and charged them with “brazenly violating” basic tenets of fair, unbiased and trustworthy elections.

Florida officials said they were stunned by the tone and sweep of Carter’s criticism and that Carter had erred in his characterization of the state’s election process. Others said that Carter’s staunchly partisan work on behalf of John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, called his criticism into question.

Of course Florida election officials would be stunned. It’s not like they’ve done anything to disenfranchise minority voters who are likely to vote Democrat. Oh no, not at all.

Of course, our fine Congress was too busy pursuing other important, pressing business of the day rather than look at these issues.

Name: “Morbid Centre”
Subject: Live subject, on still life
Medium: Nikon F5, T-MAX 3200 film
Date: April 16, 1999

Now that Britney Spears is married (again) and the snickering over how long this one will last has died down, she claims the next step is to become a mom:

Although rumor doubted her wedding license, Britney Spears, 22, has already hoped to have a baby in her second marriage.

Spears told People magazine today that she wanted to be “a young mom”.

Spears, who would become stepmother to her husband’s two children from a previous relationship, said she wanted to have baby next year. “I can see us as parents. I can see myself as a mom. Next year, at 23, I am so there,” she said.

Good! maybe then we’ll so not have to hear her overproduced, post-processed voice again.