The Wind Through The Keyhole

I'm a huge Stephen King fan like so many others, but somewhere along the lines I slowed my intake and almost stopped, until recently. He is almost too prolific. I had heard of the Dark Tower series but have still not gotten into it. The series was supposed to have wrapped up back in 2004 but he just couldn't leave it alone. Perhaps he has a touch of George RR Martin in him. At any rate, he felt he had one more story in him for Roland, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake and so we have The Wind Through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel. I did read the two books that he wrote with Peter Straub—The Talisman and Black House. I understand that The Talisman was somewhat of a foreshadowing of things to come. I'm sure that I will start reading the series sometime soon, I just hope that they are more in the vein of The Talisman instead The Black House.

Is Your Mac Infected?

Yes, it is rare. Most Mac users work with the relatively safe feeling that Macs don't get viruses. Don't get lulled into a false sense of security. With the surging popularity of all things Mac, your trusty and reliable Mac is now a target more than ever. And that means you are too!

CNET reports that over 600,000, almost 60% of Mac users in the U.S. alone, are infected with the Flashback botnet/Trojan that was designed to steal sensitive information and send it to identity thieves. The Trojan originally came packaged as a wrongly named Adobe Flash Player plug-in installer back in September. The new tactic, Flashback.N is a modified version that searches for Java vulnerabilities and installs itself when you visit an infected web site. If you have visited one of those sites your computer is at risk. It appears that Flashback is using Twitter to deliver commands and directions.

Apple issued an update for its OS X operating system to patch the problem on April 4. If you want to be sure that you AREN'T infected, there is a manual check that you can perform using Terminal and simple cut-and-paste to see if you are infected.