Blog for "the-enabler" of the letsnet.org network

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No one's perfect, and we all make poor money-spending decisions from time to time, but single parents are notorious for falling into one or more of these money traps. Keep these tips in mind during the holiday spending season.

Confusing wants and needs: Your first priority should be to take care of your family's needs. The wants come later — if you have any money left over.

Using credit cards to buy stuff: Unless you're able to pay the balance off within the grace period, stay away from the plastic. Put down the item, keep that card in your wallet, and slowly step away from the sales counter. If you can't pay off your credit cards totally every 30 days, you're buying things you can't afford. In other words, you're livingabove your means.

Spending guilt money on your children: When your kids beg for something at the mall, don't give in. Keep that ATM card safely tucked away. If your kids have faced a lot of upheaval due to a divorce or the trauma associated with the death of their parent, don't try to compensate by spending big bucks on pricey entertainment. You can't buy your kids' love, and you can't replace what they've lost, so forget the cruise with the famous mouse and instead treat them to a day at the zoo (or something even less expensive like hiking at a state park). What your kids need is your love and your time, neither one of which costs a dime.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

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If the ruler isn't visible at the top of the typing area, select Ruler from the View menu. Create a tab stop by clicking on Format | Tabs. In the Tab stop position field, enter the inch number on the ruler (6, for example) where the right margin begins. Check the Alignment option titled Right, select a Leader character if you wish, and click on OK. This will result in the effect you want.


On each line, type the item name, press the Tab key, then type the issue date. All the dates will line up at the right margin. If you're applying this formatting to text that's already typed, select all the text before you set the tab.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

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Everyone who uses Windows XP needs a user account. A user account is like a cocktail party nametag that helps Windows recognize who's sitting at the keyboard. Windows XP dishes out three types of user accounts: Administrator, Limited, and Guest.

Each type of account gets to do different functions on the computer. If the computer were an apartment building, the administrator would be the manager, the limited accounts would be the tenants, and guests would only get to drop by and use the bathroom in the lobby.

In computer lingo that means the administrator controls the entire computer, deciding who gets to use it and what they can do on it. Limited accounts can use most of the computer, but they can't make any big changes to it. And guests, well, they can use the computer, but because the computer doesn't recognize them by name, their actions are tightly restricted.





MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 25, @12:02PM
From the brace-yourself-for-fun-and-excitement dept.
Kobalt writes "A few news services are reporting that Russian computer expert, Aleksandr Gostev from Kaspersky Labs, has predicted that a large chunk of the Internet will be shut down tomorrow by cyber terrorists."


MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

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By Larry Seltzer
July 19, 2004

A British Web developer has revealed a new form of a cross-site scripting, or XSS, attack that facilitates phishing activities.

The attack, demonstrated by the developer on his own site, allows an attacker to execute scripts in the context of another Web site. Testing by eWEEK.com indicates that the attack works on both Internet Explorer on Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (Release Candidate 2) and on the Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1 browser.

After executing the attack, the user is brought to a Web page running on the victim site (a banking site, for example), but incorporating script from the attacker site. The main, obvious effect of the attack is that the page appears to be running in the victim site, but is incorporating elements from the attacker site. An attacker could therefore use the technique to persuade a user to provide personal information. The effect is more difficult to detect by casual observation than many other previous phishing techniques.

According to an analysis of the technique by British security consulting firm Netcraft, "Having the ability to run their code from the financial institution's own site is a big step forward for fraudsters, as it makes their attack much more plausible, and will almost certainly lead fraudsters to seek out banking sites vulnerable to cross site scripting as a refinement on current phishing attacks which depend upon obscuring the true location of a window prompting for bank account authentication details."

Cross-site scripting attacks have been a hot item recently in security circles, but usually as a way to run scripts in the local machine context for a browser user and attack that computer. Using it against a Web site to spoof that site is new.

Netcraft adds: "Although cross-site scripting has been a well known technique for over four years, it is an easy mistake for programmers to make, and can be an awkward one to test thoroughly."

Sorry about this, but you should know this stuff...

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

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Link to the website that well gave you one idea

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

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Linux Journal, Posted on Friday, August 20, 2004 by Tom Adelstein

LAMP is at the heart of Emergency Response Network Systems and is saving lives.


Like many government contractors, the provider of ERN (Emergency Response Network) Systems maintains a low profile. When you ask the CEO, Jo Balderas, for references she politely says, "the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Homeland Security". That's quite an impressive list, and it represents only a few of the company's clients.

When you ask for a technology snapshot Jo says, "currently we use an enterprise open-source software stack known as LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). We also use an appliance to support rapid deployment and to minimize total cost of ownership. Our roadmap has us integrating the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) version 1.0 and Justice XML standards within six months."

CAP enables the exchange of emergency alert and public warning information over data networks and computer-controlled warning systems. Justice XML is evolving into a method for justice and public-safety groups to import and export data from multiple databases and publish it in various formats. Justice XML officially is known as the Global Justice XML Data Model.

ERN Systems has supported the Dallas FBI Emergency Response Network since May 2001, through both the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. On September 11, 2001, the FBI used ERN to immediately locate InfraGard personnel to confirm their immediate statuses and any anomalies. Within minutes, InfraGard partners such as American Airlines, EDS, Sabre and members of the banking and defense industry provided status reports and contact numbers. The Dallas FBI began to use ERN to communicate with InfaGard in the post-9/11 investigation period and continues to use it today.

On February 1, 2003, the FBI used ERN during the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. The crash occurred at 8:05 am. By 8:10 am, FEMA had contacted FBI Dallas requesting a phone number for Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, as no one (FBI, FBI HQ, FEMA, OHS) could reach the published number. FBI used ERN to locate all law enforcement personnel in the Houston area. A Houston intelligence officer provided the cell phone for JSC's Director of Security. By 8:15 am, using ERN, all 800 numbers and JSC instructions were transmitted by the FBI to the public and to first responders.

ERN Roll-Out--Will It Scale?
On June 23, 2004, DHS and the FBI launched the first Homeland Security Information Network-Critical Infrastructure Program in Dallas using ERN. Additional implementations are scheduled to follow in Seattle, Indianapolis and Atlanta. Homeland Security decided to turn the initiative into a pilot program. Each site will operate this year to determine if ERN can become the application for other cities across the country. One might think that ERN's three-year history of reliable and critical performance would prove sufficient evidence.

After spending time with the founders and creators of the ERN project, I quickly realized that they could face a critical political challenge from the vendor lobby. As noted in last week's article, "law enforcement cannot work effectively when the people in decision-making positions in our government fail to empower them. Currently, the evidence points vividly to state CIOs who have failed to implement any of the "value add" they claim to have."

The same possibly holds true now that ERN officially is out of the bag. Will we discover that "the biggest barriers still remain cultural components, legal components [and] political components", as Tom Richey said. Will those components in regional offices of DHS hamper the rapid deployment of ERN? Will using Linux and open-source components require leaders within DHS to put aside their unfounded prejudices and embrace this technology as the multiplier for solving our security problems? Will they put the nation's interests ahead of their loyalties to larger and more influential vendors?

One would expect Red Hat to assist in this effort because the solution uses Red Hat's Enterprise Linux product. With ERN gaining public exposure, will Red Hat recognize this opportunity quickly? It certainly provides the company with a serious entry into this vital area.

One has to wonder if ERN will run into the regional hurdles of DHS because of the special interests. Will decision makers use their standard techniques of "delay and bury", or will they overcome their allegiances to, say, Microsoft? Simply put, will they give ERN a chance to prove itself?

If not, the country will have to ask some hard questions: Can DHS make sound technology decisions by breaking the hold of influence peddlers? Perhaps, we even could re-form the question by asking: Given the rise of other technologies, such as the LAMP stack, can we trust bureaucrats who have made questionable or inferior technological decisions in the past to make better technological decisions in the future? Or will the sway and tug of marketing, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" rationale and other reductionist thinking continue to hold?

A Critical DHS Application
Few of us realize that the permanent government runs the country, and that's not necessarily our elected and appointed officials. Actually, one even might say that the permanent government doesn't do that work, at least sometimes not efficiently. The permanent government consists of the long-term civil servants who operate in fiefdoms. When someone gets the blame for the failure of a department, its usually an elected official whose inheritance is his or her agency.

The Dallas FBI worked to put ERN into place. Here's a part of the permanent government that does work and works for the people. Now, they want to share this incredible software solution with the rest of the nation. Will they succeed?

Currently, the Dallas FBI has the ERN system. It has run for three years and uses Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Look elsewhere, and the remainder of the country lacks such a critical application. When you want to report an incident or a suspicious activity, if it doesn't make it to the ERN system, it falls into a hole.

ERN has a database of strategic contacts that includes local, national and international individuals in both public and private sectors. The dynamic alert and notification system supports broadcast and targeted distribution of information, such as:

10,000 voice calls per minute

30,000 simultaneous inbound hotline calls

3,000 simultaneous faxes

5,000 simultaneous e-mails

5,000 simultaneous text messages

Immediate Web site changes.

And additional notification technology currently is being added quarterly.

ERN provides dynamic and unobstructed information sharing between program partners at every level of government and the private sector. This system even alerts providers to the location of supplies and equipment so offices quickly can assign those critical assets in case of a crisis. Those assets include personnel, equipment and vehicles available in daily-use or crisis-use situations. In other words, ERN can provide immediate dispatch of the country's assets to disaster areas.

Why wouldn't every citizen in the US and across the globe want this system active and operational today?

The rest of the story


MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".