Protect Yourself

I'm a little late on this Flashback scourge infecting the internet. As recounted on the TenFourFox development blog, it's a virus that takes advantage of a weakness in java to gain access to your system. Apple has a patch for this, but unfortunately it's for Snow Leopard and up, so PowerPC users are left to the wolves. The good news is there's no evidence Flashback has been compiled to run on PowerPC computers, but that won't necessarily remain true, so in order to keep safe you need to disable the java plug-in in all your browsers. In the preferences for Camino and Safari, there's a checkbox you can uncheck, and in TenFourFox, if you have plug-ins enabled, go to the add-ons manager and click the disable button for the java plug-in. I briefly looked into removing java system-wide, but read indications that it would involve extensive surgery and that it wasn't really necessary anyway. But this is a serious threat, so it's highly recommended you disable java in your browsers (Leopard users can also open Java Preferences in the Utilities folder and disable java applets).

In other news, apparently there's a twelve percent chance all our motherboards are gonna be fried in an apocalyptic solar storm by 2020, if you believe the prognosticators. Something like this actually happened before in 1859; there's all sorts of fascinating reading on the Carrington Event. The only thing electronic in the day was the telegraph machine and there was much mayhem. Fortunately if something like that happened again, we'd have at least a few hours warning, so we can all rush and turn off our electronic devices before the storm arrives. Although I'm not sure what people are supposed to do if they have those cars where the computer system is always on. Hello, $30,000 brick. Anyway, the point of all this longwindedness is to say it's probably a good idea to back up your data not only in the cloud but on physical media, too. It doesn't take long to burn a disc and it's good to have peace of mind. And it's not only solar storms after servers. It's also hackers, and they don't wait 150 years between major events.

"Prepping" For the Coming Apocalypse

I came across a new social movement the other day that I'd never heard of before. It's called the "Prepper" movement, and the gist of it is they're a bunch of individuals and families who believe some kind of apocalyptic event is approaching and they're "prepping" for it by buying and stocking up on wholesale goods like flower, rice, and freeze dried foods. This sounds a lot like the survivalists from the Cold War and Y2K days, but what's new is that wholesale outlets are now catering to this new crowd and reaching out for their business. Apparently there are enough of them to make a buck off of.



Anyway, all this apocalyptic talk got me thinking, "What's gonna happen to my blog?" What if the end of the world comes and Blogger pulls a Geocities with no warning? I need to back it up. I need to back it up on a hard drive. I need to back it up on disc. Hell, I need to transcribe it on stone tablet and bury it in the sand.



It turns out backing up your blog on Blogger is a simple affair. First, you sign in and go to your Dashboard and click on Settings. Right at the top are links Import Blog, Export Blog, and Delete Blog. First, put a post-it note on your screen over Delete Blog saying "DO NOT CLICK!" Then go over to Export Blog, click on it, and on the following page click the Download Blog button. An XML file containing all your posts and comments will be downloaded to your hard drive. Also, you might want to back up your blog template, so click on the Design tab at the top of the page, then hit the Edit HTML option and at the top will be a Download Full Template link. Click on it and you'll download another XML file containing your blog template. And you're done. As for transcribing it on stone tablets, I'll keep you updated on where to find a good chisel.



There's one other thing that got me thinking. Maybe these preppers are on to something. When hyperinflation or massive solar flares bring down the world order, we'll all be reduced to caveman technologies like manual can openers, hand crank generators, and... PowerPC! Think of the power we'll wield. Soon everyone will be turning to us for guidance. And when they ask us, "How do we turn off that darn fangled Spotlight?" we will tell them. And when they say, "How do I use this cotton pickin' Youtube?" we will show them the way. But I plead with you, fellow PowerPCers, show humility. They're likely to be traumatized, refugees in the truest sense. And don't make judgy comments about their tattered clothes. We must all survive together, PowerPCers, Intel refugees, tattered clothes and dirty faces and all.