First, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Second, since I wasn’t planning on writing something of my own, I thought I would reward you for stopping by by offering you some links to good posts I read today:

• The Animal School: A fable from A Day in Our Lives.
• Working and Learning at Home from Here in the Bonny Glen.
• Chose to homeschool. (HT: Daryl)
• And this: (HT: Carlotta) On the other hand, I don’t think that people become competent by mindless memorization and repetition of factoids, which is the way many people from so-called “traditional” backgrounds were instructed. Most of my students from Southern and Eastern Asia were schooled in such a way. They work very hard, but they stumble just as badly as their American born peers when asked what they think.

Finally, if I’m a bit spotty over the next week or 2 it is because I mostly took the last couple weeks off before beginning a job search in earnest. The decision I arrived at today was that each day I would choose 1 job to apply for each day.

Yesterday I received an email from a reputable company which included the following statement:

“…new viruses and worms are being identified every day, a current anti-virus subscription is imperative to keep your computer clean of these threats… “

Really.

Ironically, we’ve had a number of PC’s over the last 15 years and none of them have had a current anti-virus (AV) subscription. In fact, none of them have ever had AV software installed on them. Nor have we had a virus on any of them. I’ve never considered it imperative.

A virus is just one type of malware. But, of all of the current flavours of malware, viruses are the easiest to avoid. Malware is the word created to refer to malicious software. Depending on who is classifying malware you might get a variety of types of malware. I’m going to divide malware into the following list:

• worm
• trojan horse
• adware
• spyware
• virus

Worm stands for Write Once Read Many. Worms rarely cause damage to systems. Generally, they copy themselves around. They get their name from the fact that after each is written to a system once it is copied many times to other systems (or to the same system). Almost all worms currently in circulation rely on security holes in Windows and/or instant messaging systems for windows (eg. ICQ, MSN Messenger, AIM).

A trojan horse is an innocent looking piece of software that has a hidden malicious component included in it. Most of the trojan horses I’ve had to deal with (personally and professionally) relied on worm methodologies to spread themselves.

If you have hi-speed internet, the simplest and surest method of preventing a worm implementation from finding your system is to install a router (~$30-50) between your computer and the internet. The router will connect to the internet and provides a firewall between your computer and the internet. Unless you reconfigure your router, your computer(s) cannot be accessed from the internet side and to a worm your computer(s) are invisible.

Adware and spyware are often lumped together into a single group because the most of it is authored by the same people. If they are writing both adware and spyware, why not combined the two purposes in a single program. In other words, most adware is also spyware.

If you have UBE‘s (Unexpected Browser Events) like homepage changes or random popups, it is likely that you have adware. It is adware that does the popup windows or url redirects. Adware existed before the current implementations of spyware. Spyware was created in hopes of making adware more effective. Spyware reports back to a server information on where you have browsed. This information is then used to target adware toward companies providing similar products or services to the ones you viewed (or to products or services which are statistically bought more often by people who bought things you looked at).

Last night, I took the liberty of saving the terms of use agreement for the MSN Toolbar. Here is an excerpt:

10. PERFORMANCE AND USAGE INFORMATION
Microsoft may automatically upload performance and usage information for evaluating the MSN Software and the MSN search services associated with it…

As part of their terms of use you have to agree to allow the toolbar to spy on you. Do MSN sites advertise? Yes they do. Do they try to target their advertising? Yes, they do.

To the best of my knowledge, all of the current spyware and adware has been written to work with Internet Explorer. There are 2 reasons for this. The most important is that IE is installed on the vast majority of computers that browse the internet. Secondly, IE allows extensions called Browser Helper Objects (BHOs). The thing is, once you’ve approved a BHO to be installed, you have also given the BHO permission to download and install ‘components’ that it ‘needs’ to function.

I recently cleaned a system that had over 70 of these ‘components’. The person who brought it to me said the popups were so bad that they couldn’t browse with it. The simple solution to adware and spyware is to use a browser other than IE. Spyware and Adware written for IE do not function in other browsers. The browser we use is FireFox (Open Source).

Finally, viruses need to be executed to infect a system. Most of the viruses being developed today rely on active content in email clients. If you use an email client that has active content enabled and you cannot disable the active content, uninstall it from your system. The email client we use is Thunderbird (also Open Source).

I received an email forward today and thought it was worth sharing:

An Old Farmer’s Advice:

* Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight, and bull-strong.

* Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance.

* Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

* A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.

* Words that soak into your ears are whispered…not yelled.

* Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight.

* Forgive your enemies.? It messes up their heads.

* Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.

* It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.

* You cannot unsay a cruel word.

* _Every_ path has a few puddles.

* When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.

* The best sermons are lived, not preached.

* Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen, anyway.

* Don’t judge folks by their relatives.

* Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

* Live a good, honorable life.? Then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.

* Don’t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t botherin’ you none.

* Timing has a lot t! o do with the outcome of a rain dance.

* If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.
*
** Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
*
** The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’.”

* Always drink upstream from the herd.

* Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
*
** Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back in.

* If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.

* Live simply.? Love generously.? Care deeply.? Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

It was still snowing this morning. I waded around the house to take another picture of the snow out from. Where I took the picture I was standing in about 3 ft of snow. It had drifted so it isn’t that deep everywhere. I’m surprised at how close I got to the same shot.

I just wanted to add a brief note to thank the folks who either nominated or voted for us (either here or atypicalife) in the 2005 Homeschool Blog Awards.

I thought of the title when I was outside shoveling snow today and remembered an episode of Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) . She was nominated for an award (the humbolts or something) and that was the line she had prepared to say in the event that she lost. What I couldn’t remember was if it was also how she was going to begin her acceptance speech. I hope that no one nominated pined away over these awards the way Murphy did hers.

Henry and Janine Cate at Why Homeschool have started a Carnival of Homeschooling.

Slip over and submit a blog post..

Depending on where you live, you may or may not celebrate Boxing Day. In Canada, it is a day off for most.

Until now, we haven’t had alot of snow. It snowed on and off both Christmas Eve and Day. We ended up with 4-6 inches of snow. Sometime early in the evening, it decided to start snowing and overnight decided to snow in earnest. By 11 this morning the plow had been by twice and the bank at the end of the driveway was about 2′ deep. Because the wind is blowing the snow around it is hard to tell how much is out there. By now we have well over a foot.

I took this picture outside, but it is pretty much what you would see if you were to look out one of our front windows.

Our house finally has the look of Christmas.

I can remember while growing up that I would often be outside working for the afternoon. The best season to cut wood (in the forest) was winter. Snow and ice made possible going places that were inaccessible to machinery in any other season. There were a few times that we would be out working in a day like today and my eyes would freeze shut. The thing was that they weren’t entirely closed. I would have them closed enough to keep the snow from landing on the surface of my eye, but open enough that I could see between the eyelashes. The other strange thing that would happen is a layer of ice would form over my face about 1/8″ from the skin. It would freeze onto the hairs (which were standing up to help keep the skin from freezing). It would proably take about 2 hours for a whole skin of ice to form. The irony is that even though the layer of ice sounds cold, it meant that we could stay out for hours with being terrribly concerned about frostbite. The ice served as a layer of protection and insulation. The start of the ice looked something like this (Andrea manages to snag some amazing pics btw).

Here is the weather forecast I looked up this morning (30 cm = approx 1 foot, 80 km/hr = approx 50 mph). Time to snuggle in and enjoy indoor things

Blizzard warning for
Miramichi and area continued

This is a warning that blizzard conditions with near-zero visibilities are expected or occurring in these regions. Monitor weather conditions..Listen for updated statements.

An intense low pressure system will move slowly northeastward over Nova Scotia later today. Snow at times heavy is expected today and tonight over northern and central New Brunswick with total snowfall amounts 40 to 60 centimetres possible by early Tuesday morning.

The rain over southern regions will change back to snow overnight with snowfall amounts of 20 to 30 centimetres possible over southeast New Brunswick by Tuesday afternoon.

East to northeast winds will also continue to increase during the day causing blizzard-like conditions over the Acadian Peninsula as well as the Bathurst and Miramichi regions.

Northeasterly winds gusting to 90 km/h will develop over eastern New Brunswick early this evening resulting in large and potentially damaging seas to the gulf coast of New Brunswick tonight and Tuesday with somewhat elevated water levels. Minor flooding is possibly close to the shoreline as is the possiblity of coastal infrastructure damage and coastal erosion. The areas most likely to be affected are from Miscou Island to Shediac bay.

Per Christine‘s request , I’ve added more gingerbread photos to the gallery.

With that, I’m off for a couple days. Will be back on Boxing Day.

Have a Merry Christmas