“We are The Borg - resistance is futile."

Recent headlines, particularly this one from the Washington Post’s washingtonpost.com column Fast Forward entitled “Have Your Mac and Windows XP, Too” about the Mac adopting a program routine that allows users to run their computer on the same Windows XP the rest of the world uses, prompted this exchange with a number of prominent computer journalists:

“We are The Borg - resistance is futile."

So it is that the Mac becomes just another WinTel machine.

All the fuss about the Mac has been for years just giddy chattering by elitist writers. They think that knowing what so few know - or more accurately what so many have no care whatsoever to know - about the Mac makes them "special" in the true Gnostic sense.

Rubbish.

The truth is that the Mac survives on cachet. It is style over substance, supported by fanatical users who deny anything negative about owning a machine rejected by 97 percent of the marketplace.

To them, that 97 percent rejection merely reinforces their self-anointed place as the "true holders of special knowledge" that the rest of the unwashed mass fails to grasp with their innate intelligence - being so much lower than that of the Mac fanatics' . . . so the Mac fanatics tell themselves anyway.

But reality being what it is, the collapse of the Mac myth is accelerating with irrepressible speed. First, it was the Intel chip, now the switch to Windows.

The dirty little secret is that the Mac has always been on a path separate from the rest of the computer universe; it is a path replete with quirky ideas promoted by quirky people desperate to reinforce their quirky image as quirky computer geeks. Mac fanatics lust to be known as isolated pseudo-intellectuals expressed through their quirky concept of contrarian rebellion.

It is proven true again as Mac adopts Intel at the same time the universe is now adopting the AMD chip as its processor of choice. Its uselessness would have made the Mac just another Commodore 64 but for the by-lined writers in major publications who exercise the power to promote their quirky personal tastes to an audience of readers miniscule enough to spike any other story.

They write, but nobody reads. It is self-delusion feeding the egos of journalists otherwise sensible about honestly assessing the import of a story by the depth of its readership reach. It has no reach because the Mac has so few users; ergo it is ego, not essentialism, which drives the waste of ink and paper.

Mac fanatics will still argue they are a different species because it is essential to their self-concept of being themselves a separate species than the rest of humanity, but reality trumps their delusion: The Mac is just another WinTel machine. And as such, there is no reason to own a Mac other than to delude oneself into thinking he or she is part of something intrinsically different, intrinsically superior to everyone else.

No, there is no reason to own a Mac. Nothing exists but self-delusion.

They assimilated into The Borg - resistance proved futile.

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This appears in Mr. Lamb’s blog, Staying CyberSmart! (TM) with "The CyberMeister" (R) at http://cybersmart.blogspot.com/

See all of Mr. Lamb’s blogs at http://www.blogger.com/profile/14444338

Is your debit card safe?

Bank security experts are warning consumers who own a bank debit card issued by "Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual, as well as smaller banks" which issue cards to customers to avoid using it at store checkouts.

 
The list of banks compromised last week by a massive international computer hack appeared in a report by TechNet, which quoted Gartner Research expert Avivah Litan.


Litan added those specific banks are "only the tip of the iceberg" and the damage will continue to spread over the coming weeks.

 
Law enforcement officials believe thieves broke into the system of a credit card processor interacting with the banks. They first stole the encrypting keys that unscramble the PIN (Personal Identification Number) associated with debit cards.

They then took advantage of lax security at retail chain stores that didn't clear the data from the checkout touch pads where customers input their PIN. This security failure allowed the hackers to combine the debit card number with the associated PIN.

To protect themselves, customers should always press the "Cancel" choice that appears on the touch pad when the sale is completed and the computer asks for the PIN. The store's computer will then process the sale as if the debit card were a credit card and the customer's PIN will not be available for hackers to steal.

In addition, customers should tell their bank or other financial institution to issue a new card to them with a new PIN. Even if the bank or institution they use is not currently listed, it is no guarantee that the institution's PIN files are still safe; it just means that in the 1 week since the hack, there are not yet any public reports of theft in the area. All cards issued using the hacked PIN code - which means all cards issued before the discovery of the hack last week - are vulnerable to theft, and should be replaced with a new card and PIN which will use the new, unhacked, PIN code.

Debit cards are pitched to banking customers as safer than regular checks. They are told that the PIN required to process the card at the checkout means that if the card is lost or stolen, the card can't be used by someone else who doesn't know the PIN.

That advice only applies to a card used at an ATM located at the issuing bank. That is because the transaction is processed directly at the bank, and never goes through a third-party processor.

But that promise of safety is not true if the card is being used at a retail checkout. If the PIN is not punched into the register's touchpad, the card is processed anyway. The card offers no more protection at the checkout than a regular check or credit card.

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