Category: General

More than 50 flights had to be cancelled all over Norway on Monday, after dozens of cockpit personnel for airline SAS Braathens called in sick.

That was the news story yesterday

Today it all continued with:

Passengers flying with SAS Braathens faced another day of delays and flight cancellations on Tuesday, even if SAS' pilots reported for work. By late morning, 70 flights were cancelled and more were expected, disrupting plans for as many as 10,000 travelers.

Okay, so this isn't a strike. It does however show how easy it is to exploit the norwegian healthcare-system for ones own financial gain. Should fire them all.

James Ancheta aka "Resjames" or "Botmaster" pleaded quilty in Los Angeles yesterday for running a botnet and selling bots.

He faces up to six years in prison. He will also have to pay restitution and give back about $60,000 and his BMW, bought with botnet money.

Ancheta was active in 2004. With another bot herder known as "SoBe", they infected more than 400,000 computers.

They were making money by selling bots to spammers, and by signing up as affiliates in adware install programs run by Gammacash and Loudcash (both are owned by 180Solutions nowadays). This way they earned money every time they installed an adware program to an infected machine.

You can read the full story at fsecure.com

Good that they cought up with the spammer, althought this is one of many. The only way to improve the situation is if the user get some responsibility. Please, do your best to read up and learn about securing your own system. Hopefully secure-my-internet.com can guide you on the way.

JANUARY 24, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - A majority of 1,017 Americans, 56%, who responded to a survey by Ponemon Institute LLC said they do not believe Google should turn over Web search information to the U.S. government.

The Department of Justice recently asked a California court to force Google Inc. to turn over information about how the company's search engine is used to find pornography on the Internet. Justice officials say they need the Google usage records to prepare their case to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which the Supreme Court blocked from taking effect two years ago.. But Google has so far resisted the subpoena (see "Update: Feds wrestle Google over search records").

The full story can be read at computerworld.com

Hopefully Google does the right thing and keep the data for themselves unlike the other major search engine vendors.

Some might ask why it is important, what is wrong with making some data available to the feds as an "anti-terrorist" measure. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes; but who will watch the watchers? Personally I believe giving up fundamental freedom result in a situation worse than without the forementioned measures. The subject deserve a couple of quotes:

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
-Abraham Lincoln

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
-Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952

It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.
-Dick Cheney