BL> How about I'm a respected site (like Borland), and I send you a
BL> trojan cookie. And then I decide that it's time to wipe all the
BL> Borland free programs past their use-by (because some bastard
BL> has cracked the codes). Now, when you update I activate my
BL> "cookie" and wipe your hard drive of the pirated software. Is
BL> that enough specific "somethign else" for you?

DD> How would you "activate" this cookie if I'm not using your
DD> vesion of a browser?

 I couldn't... unless I knew there was a fatal flaw (or a backdoor)
in the browser. The problem is that when we say "browser" we actually
mean IE. It's the universal browser, and a backdoor gives access to
95% of all computers including commercial installations.

 I talk to yanks, and I'm amazed by their paranoia. They *actually*
feel personally threatened. They believe there are powerful forces out
there, actively working to destroy their delightful way of life, to
destroy democracy, christianity, and Aryan culture (there's a joke...
what culture?).

 Myself, I see terrorists as poor pathetic little losers like Amrosi
who blew up innocents in Bali, a second-rate car mechanic who still
thinks he'll share paradise with Allah and 47 virgins - haters who
can't succeed in this world so they aim for the next. So they kill a
very few of us - who cares? It's the cost of doing business in a
free society. You are always going to get a few haters (like the
five Muslim-Paki brothers who rape our women), but you also get a lot
of nice people - you don't shape your life and your society around a
minority of mandmen.

 I have come to believe that America (and "patriotic" American
companies) will do *anything* to impose their safety on the rest of
us. The "land of the free" grabs Australians and holds them without
charge for two years when they have obviously not broken any laws
either in Afghanistan, the USA or here. A threat to *Israel* caused
the Iraqi catastrophe which continues more and more to look like
Vietnam (they're even using "hearts and minds" now, complete with
American men behaving badly), so why wouldn't Microsoft be part of a
conspiracy to "protect" the Land of the Brave and the Free against
computer crime and organise a nice little backdoor in IE?

 Myself, I'd be amazed if M$ had not built a backdoor into their
products. For this reason, I will not connect to the Net until I have
a firewall I can trust and by that I mean *another* computer I can
physically disconnect. When I decided to encrypt my books that should
have been protectedby copyright, I actually wrote my own encryption
program - because I expect that M$ and even the Linux encryption is
already broken. My encryption may be simple, but at least I know it
isn't broken.

 Is is paranioa when they are *really* conspiring against you?

 BTW, I notice that yet *another* worm has infected WindowsXP and
2000. Microsoft say you can fix it with a patch. So where does that
leave your assertion that all you have to do be secure, is *NOT* run
the EXEs? What is it that needs a patch to stop Windows running the
worm?

 Apparently, it infects any machine to which you connect, and its
effect is to become TSR and reboot... continually. The patch is
supposed to fix it, but the TV News did not say what was patched, IE
or WinXP itself. Of course, Gates has made then pretty-much the same
thing anyway.

Regards,
Bob
 

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5