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Read Email, Get Toasted (8/26/99)
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You know things are slow in the world of Apple when we resort to telling you about the latest Microsoft security flaws, but hey, it's the silence before Seybold, you know? So until Steve takes the podium and announces new "Yikes!" G4 Power Macs in Salmon and Burnt Umber and the next big controversy erupts once John Dvorak proclaims that only child molesters would ever buy a G4, well, we'll take what we can get. Besides, this latest Microsoft hole looks to be pretty major. As in, "massive data loss" major.
In fact, you remember all the hubbub that ensued when the Melissa virus emerged? (Mac users were generally safe, so maybe you don't-- but trust us, it was a wild week in the Wintel world.) A Wired article quotes Dan Wallach, a computer science assistant professor at Rice University, as saying that this latest flaw is "the Melissa virus, but even worse." Basically it's a bug in Microsoft's implementation of Java, which allows malicious souls to gain access to a Wintel computer's data just by sending email or having said computer browse a web site. If the hapless victim opens the message or visits the site, he or she may find the system's hard disk being reformatted. Whoops! Yeah, we'd call that a pretty big security hole.
For what it's worth, Microsoft has issued a fix for the problem, which is freely available at the company's web site. But the flaw exists in millions of unpatched copies of Windows 95/98, and we think it's a safe bet that not everyone's going to apply the patch. If you use Windows, we suggest you look into it. A couple of noteworthy facts: if you use Netscape instead of Internet Explorer, you're safe from web sites that may exploit the problem, since Netscape fixed the bug long ago; and "users of Unix, Linux, and Macintosh computers are not affected," apparently even if you're running a Mac version of IE using Microsoft's Java virtual machine. So most of us can relax.
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SceneLink (1745)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 8/26/99 episode: August 26, 1999: Amazon.com takes some heat over revealing what people from different companies are reading; the top sellers to Apple employees might surprise you. Meanwhile, Bill Gates finally comments on the historical inaccuracy of "Pirates of Silicon Valley," and the Java built into Windows contains a nasty security hole, but if you use a Mac, you're in the clear...
Other scenes from that episode: 1743: It's All In The Books (8/26/99) Remember Apple's brain drain a couple of years ago? Back when the "Cupertino Titanic" was most definitely a sinking ship, the talent was heading for the lifeboats quicker than The Mod Squad came to home video... 1744: Scheming Geek Speaks (8/26/99) Speaking of company histories, we know where Steve Jobs stands on TNT's made-for-cable romp, "Pirates of Silicon Valley." He actually invited his buddy Oracle CEO Larry Ellison over to watch it on the night it premiered, and while Steve wasn't too thrilled with having been written as a big meanie, he did keep his sense of humor...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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