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Fahrenheit 9/11 Does Not Even Deserve the Dubious-Yet-Ubiquitous Description “Based on a True Story”

See this article at Slate for an unusually detailed (for a Web article) look at the highly controversial leftist propaganda piece. Here is an excerpt:

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.

… And I thought the end of the Cold War had also brought an end to the great age of propaganda!

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What If They Opened a Highway, and Nobody Came?

Yesterday the slowpokes widening Route 3 announced the first section to have all three lanes (and two shoulders) opened, which was Route 3 northbound, between Drum Hill (Route 4) and the New Hampshire border.

I was very pleased, as I usually go home by driving up to Drum Hill through Chelmsford side roads to get onto Route 3, rather than trying to go through the four-lanes-becoming-two-lanes nightmare currently at the 495 interchange.

So, I got the e-mail notice yesterday, but discovered that almost no one was actually using the newly-opened right lane. I guess that most people did not know the lane was opened, and definitely did not know that it was open all the way to New Hampshire.

In a related effect, we have been waiting all summer for the paving to be finished over the railroad grade crossing in Nashua that is on our way to church in Litchfield. The grade crossing was in such a bad condition that any speed over about 1 MPH would virtually guarantee significant damage to one’s vehicle. Well, a few days ago, they finally finished the top coat paving, making the grade crossing passable for the first time in months. However, people are so conditioned to driving over it at extremely slow speeds, that they are still doing so.

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John Makes the Soccer Team

Congratulations to John, who has been officially awarded a starting fullback position on Tabernacle Christian School’s soccer team.

John starts ninth grade on August 30. His good friend Jay Mavrogeorge did the appropriate arm-twisting, and succeeded indoing what we could not, getting John to try out for the team.

(I’d add w00t! but John would consider that too geeky.)

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David Now Has His Own Web Site

It’s in development, but being documented as it is built. http://david.wilcoxfamily.net/ Part of the trouble was trying to explain to him what I can and cannot do on a Web site. He plays the Flash- and Shockwave-based games online quite often, and figured that I could just whip up one of my own in about half an hour. There is more detail on the site, including my commentary from his perspective. Enjoy.

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Nightmares

[doug][david]

Our son, David, is at the age where nightmares are common, and often wakes us up when he’s had a bad dream.

Sometimes as adults we forget how troubling a bad dream can be, as our nightmares (for most of us anyway) are very infrequent.

It has been a very stressful week. Work was busy, and worst of all, our station wagon died, leaving us with a 6-person family and a 5-passenger car. Last night I had a horrible dream, for which I am holding my co-worker Doug “JavaDoug” Ross partially responsible:

I dreamed that, despite the fact that our SMC router's firewall prevents detection of machines behind it, and protection via Norton Antivirus (I do not recommend any other product), our two computers were infected by a trojan that allowed someone from outside to remote control the machines.

No matter what I tried, the remote-operator would write taunts to the screen, install and launch games one after another (Duke Nukem was one, for some reason), and prevent me from using the machines.

What was really scary is that in the dream I hit the button which disconnects the cable modem from the outside world, to eliminate the attacker’s access and start cleaning the damage, but the malicious remote operation didn’t stop!

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Rust in Piece

It appears that the last straw has been added to the problems with our still-beloved 1994 Buick Century station wagon.

Although the car is now 11 years old, we were hoping to get another year or two out of it. Instead, the past two repairs have included one big electrical system problem ($300+), a leaky oil seal ($650+), and a blown head gasket ($1,000+).

Today the car was hesitating, so Nichelle took it in to a mechanic. He found the transmission fluid was 2 quarts down, and that there was rust on the transmission fluid dipstick. This appears to be caused by contamination between the transmission cooling system and the engine cooling system. Eventually, this kind of corrosion wipes out the transmission, but he thought it could last up to a year, if we watch the fluid levels. It would cost about $2,000 to actually fix the problem. He added the transmission fluid, and gave the car a test drive.

Nichelle started up the street, and within sight of the mechanic's place, the car died completely. A police officer pushed it with his car into a McDonald’s parking lot.

At any rate, it looks like we’ll need to get a new[er] car, which we need to see if we can actualy afford. This eliminates, at least temporarily, our ability to go anywhere together. Thankfully, lots of people from church live near us, and will help out.

Time to start praying about this latest issue, and the obvious anxiety it brings!

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How Accurate Is Our Perspective on the War in Iraq?

Commentator Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, says American troops returning from Iraq are surprised to find such a pessimistic view of the war in the media.

Listen to his commentary at this National Public Radio archive site.

Interestingly, Mark Bowden is actually against the war, given the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

I still find it interesting that we have forgotten that Bill Clinton believed Iraq had WMDs, that he failed to transfer information on current terrorist threats to the Bush administration, went soft on terror, crippled the military, and even failed to eliminate Osama Bin Laden when given the opportunity.

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All You Need Is Jesus (So I Need the Light Saber)

[david]David, who turned 5 the day we moved in January, re-discovered my light saber keychain, that came as a promo with Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. He has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get me to give it to him for a couple of weeks. The other day he found an angle that he was sure would work.

“Dad, when you’re saved, all you need is Jesus, right?” I looked at his face, and noticed that he had an odd-but-very-cute, somewhat droll smile that I’ve seen before, usually when he thinks he’s figured out a way to get more allowance money.

As he’d been pestering me for several days about the keychain, and I was in its general vicinity, it only took me a few seconds to see where he was going with this. “So,” I said, “you are saying that I only need Jesus, and I don’t need the light saber, so I should give it to you!” His smile broadened, as he was obviously pleased that I saw things his way. “Unfortunately, even though I don’t need the light saber, I still want the light saber, so you can’t have it.” (Plus he has broken it twice.)

Maybe I’ll get him one for Christmas. Of course, he’s already asking for Christmas gifts early (wanting me to order them online immediately), specifically two Lego Spider-Man sets.

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Slaying Dragons: Scumware Removal

I spent a number of hours this weekend removing scumware from a friend-of-the-family’s machine. The following Q&A pretty much sums up what I went through.

Q: What caused all this mess?
A: All these problems were caused by a class of programs known as “adware,” or “spyware,” often called “scumware.” At the most basic level, adware is software that, once installed on your computer, displays advertisements, usually associated with Web sites you visit, and typically in the form of other Internet windows that open.

There are many varieties of this adware. All varieties are annoying, but have to be installed at the users choice, and can be uninstalled easily via the Control Panel. Unfortunately, many types of adware are not so easily removed, and are extremely intrusive in what they do. Even worse varieties are nothing less than viral infections that require extreme measures to remove. (The courts and Congress are finally beginning to take action against this latter type.) And in a few cases, these software packages will install without even asking the user permission, although they usually rely on unpatched software and lack of virus protection to do so.

Q: Why did Norton Antivirus not take care of this when it all started?
A: These problems are a fairly recent phenomenon. Until Norton Antivirus 2004, this type of problem was not addressed by antivirus software (you have Norton 2002, which is excellent, but won’t stop this particular problem from happening).

Q: What can I be aware of so it doesn’t do it again?
A: Most of these ad programs, and many viruses, get in through Internet Explorer. There are a couple of reasons for this. Internet Explorer has a couple of known “holes” in its security, and (in addition) unsuspecting users often install things via ActiveX controls (those windows that say, “Do you want to install such-and-such?”) that allow companies to take over search results, the default home page, and even worse, as you found out. You might be interested in this related link on my BLOG: http://blog.wilcoxfamily.net/?p=142. It was probably the case that these adware things were installed when you accidentally clicked “yes” on one of these controls.

However, in a few cases, just visiting a site can install these browser helper objects. My advice to users for the time being is avoid Internet Explorer (switch to Mozilla) until Microsoft patches these critical holes.

Also be sure you run the Windows Update Service (it probably reminds you automatically) to keep Windows ME updated with the latest patches, and be extremely religious about updates to PestPatrol and Norton AntiVirus. Run virus and PestPatrol scans at least weekly. (I use a daily scan now.)

Q: Will all the new things we installed keep everything out?
A: Between Norton AntiVirus, BHODemon, PestPatrol, and switching to Mozilla, I think you’re in good shape as far as protection goes. You seem to pay good attention to how your computer is operating, and running a PestPatrol scan now and then should keep you free from trouble. Like Norton, PestPatrol works constantly, and should prevent something like this from happening in the future. At the worst, you’ll know when it happens, and we can get it cleaned out.

Q: Can you explain what each one does, so that I (a know-nothing-about-it guy) will be able to understand.
A: We installed two new things. The first, is BHODemon. As you’re not using Internet Explorer now, you don’t have to pay too much attention to it. What it does is show you which Browser Helper Objects (little programs that attach to Internet Explorer) are installed, and let you disable them. This was helpful in showing me that you had several obviously malicious Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) installed, and let me disable most of them. There is one on the list that is disabled, but still in existence. Next time I’m working on your computer, I’ll get rid of it, but it isn’t doing any harm right now, as BHODemon is keeping it dead.

The second piece of software is PestPatrol. PestPatrol is designed to fill in the gap where Norton Antivirus doesn’t typically operate, and completely remove all the little pieces of these nasty programs we’ve been talking about. Like Norton AntiVirus, PestPatrol runs all the time, and will offers good protection and removal of these threats. Like Norton AntiVirus, PestPatrol has an auto-update feature (right-click on the icon in the system tray to run it), and like Norton AntiVirus, you should run a full scan about once a week. Don’t worry about any Spyware Cookies that are reported. They do no harm.

Q: When we installed Mozilla, you showed me a way to have 2 or 3 subjects up and could go from one to the other, I do not remember how. Can you explain or tell me how to grt that information, from the program.

A: The “tabbed browsing” is my favorite feature of Mozilla. To open a new tab, just press CTRL-T or choose File –> New –> Navigator Tab. You can also open a link on one page into a new tab, by CTRL-clicking on that link.

Q: Just out of curiosity,when did you finish up with this?
A: I think it was about 12:45, but I actually didn’t spend that much time at the computer. Mostly it was a case of running a scan, using PestPatrol to remove files, then restarting and rerunning the scan. After a few cycles, we got down to only one piece of scumware left: CleverIEHooker, which consumed most of my time.

I spent quite a bit of time with PestPatrol, PestPatrol’s Web site, a startup configuration utility from Microsoft called MSConfig, and the Windows Registry Editor to get rid of CleverIEHooker. It turned out that this program was replacing a registry key every time I removed it, which is why PestPatrol didn’t clean it out completely. I found and deleted the program that was replacing the registry key, got rid of the key, and on the next reboot, was able to remove the remaining pieces.
Once I was done, I did a final reboot, verified there was nothing else hiding, and set VNC (the remote-control software) back to its original mode, where you’ll have to activate it if you need my help.
Overall, this was at times annoying, but I’ve learned some excellent scumware removal procedures from it. I’m glad I could help.

—Doug