Oct 24
Last week I experienced something that all web page owners dread. My website, timepage.org, was hacked.Â
I only noticed it because some of the formatting suddenly became garbled. I didn’t see any new comments or activity. When I went into the web files I saw that most of them had long bits of random spam inserted into the code.  I, being the strong logical person that I am, immediately panicked and started flailing around the web directories, trying to see if I could figure out some pattern. It soon became apparent that it was a pretty complete graffiti attack.
Eventually I had the web people restore a backup (Thank goodness for those.) and I have been fiddling around with various permissions and file updates all week to get it back to where it was. I think I may be OK now. We’ll see.
The really bad part is the insecurity it has introduced into my computing life. We had a break-in at our house many years ago and I remember how we felt violated and vulnerable for a long time. It seems that way again. They apparently had used a password to gain access. My ISP thinks that they must have got the password off of my personal computer with some kind of virus/malware that I picked up. I can’t find any such application with any of the pile of security applications I know about and have access to.  Very disturbing. I am in the process of removing password caches from my browsers and applications and changing passwords to more secure versions.  Who knows where he got the darn things.
Computers were supposed to make thing easier, remember? When something like this happens, all of the efficiencies you have spent all this time building up go down the toilet. It is really getting harder and harder to have fun on these things.
Tagged with: tech • timepage
Jun 23
Well, I have stepped over a controversial threshold. I received a Kindle for Father’s Day. As a book reader and a technical consumer it may seem like a no brainer but it will still be a difficult commitment. I am old enough that for most of my life information was books. There were no options.  Then when computers came along, although it got pretty fuzzy pretty quickly, you had a choice as to where you wanted to grab your information. I, and I think most of us really, made a choice to accept working with small bits of information on the computer but, when it came to digging into a great amount of written material, we still preferred Ol’ Gutenberg’s book.  There were electronic book programs, and even a couple of e-book reading devices, but they all had the drawback of forcing us to try reading on some form of electronic, pulsating video screen.  I stayed with books.Â
But now there is really an option.  The Kindle display is calm, clear and simple. Easy on the eyes but still with the advantage of word search and annotation. The book files are generally lower priced than their printed counterpart and very easy to download. I did find some that were more expensive than I expected and, actually, I couldn’t find several books ( I think most of them were older books). On the whole, however, there is a great selection. A lot of books are free and, if you get your free books elsewhere, .txt and .doc files can be converted and loaded onto the Kindle. The new Kindle 2 even has a text to voice option.
But I haven’t made up my mind yet. I will have to overcome my loss of the book itself. A proprietary digital file just can’t match up I’m afraid. I will let you know when I have spent enough time to really know. For now, I did buy my first book which, I think we can all agree,  is trully the nature of the beast.
Tagged with: tech
