Monday, October 22, 2007

Double Dose of Fear

I have recently dug up two frightening tidbits of information that I feel the need to share with you, my beloved blogees. And somehow, neither of them are about Global Warming or Meat. Intrigued? Well read on!

The first one is a frightening news article from the good people at The Observer it is about a computer worm going around referred to as "Storm". Now this originally came hidden in e-mail attachments with the line "230 dead as storm batters Europe", but has since changed into all sorts of different forms from eCards, to spamming on blog comments, to YouTube invites. According to the article, the worm is particularly insidious since it does not show any immediate symptoms. Instead, it gives hosts certain roles, like an insect colony. Some computers are assigned to spread the worm, some are designed as "Host Servers" to control the spread of the worm and others are currently waiting for other assigned tasks. Creepy eh?

Nobody really has any ideas who the makers of Storm are, how many people have been infected, and worst of all, what they plan on doing with the infected computers. If the estimates as high as 50 million infected computers is right, then whoever is controlling this worm could spread some major havoc if they really want to.

So I really urge everyone out there to not open any suspicious e-mails of any kind, just flat out delete them, and if you get anything weird from me, please let me know!

Secondly on my pre-Hallowe'en fear fest, is an eerie video featuring some former employees of Fox News. As scary as a potentially apocalyptic computer virus may be, the thought of people telling a series of half-truths and/or blatant lies under the guise of being "Fair and Balanced" has far more dire consequences.




If the line "We weren't necessarily, as it was told to us, a news gathering organization, so much as we were a proponent of a point of view" by Jon Du Pre doesn't send shivers down your spine then I don't know what will. It is frightening that this sort of vicious propaganda can be pushed under the guise of legitimate news. While this clip only targets Fox, there are many other media outlets that are just as guilty of this sort of behaviour.

This is a prime example of one of the greatest ironies of our time is that quite literally, every piece of information is available at our fingertips, yet the truth has never been so hard to come by.

Until next time,

G

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very 1984. Spooky.