The future is tomorrow’s present. Many have tried to predict it using silly or scientific methods, from chiromancy (palm reading), aleuromancy (fortune cookies), and other -mancies, to the three Ps (possible, probable, and preferable futures) and a W (or wildcard—low-probability events with a high impact on the future) used in futurology. Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time around 1995, the well-known American agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), decided that there was no computer operating system that was adequately secure for their needs.  In analyzing the risks, they found that while UNIX was the most secure, they needed additional protection. They looked at the industry of anti-virus protection, at problems with Trojan software, at the problem of keeping up with virus authors, and at the requirement for government level security to prevent a corrupted module from secretly penetrating their operating or business system environment. Their conclusion was that “anti-virus blacklisting” is ineffective and isn’t worth a pinch of dung.

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