The Wednesday Round-Up

Oooh …

Had a brief worrying moment, there …

When the little save button at the bottom of the ‘New Post’ page had a ‘Could Not Contact Blogger …’ moment … !

Which didn’t seem to last, thankfully …

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But, at any rate, do you remember me telling you — last week — that I’d emailed the Gazette … ?

You don’t … ?

You should, it’s getting to be a habit …

Well …

Yes, I think definitely ‘a habit’ is the phrase.

Rather than, say, an ‘addiction’.

Says I, whilst waiting for the “I’ve Just Got a Touch of ’Flu, Today” gags to die down …

At any rate …

What I was going to tell you about was the simple fact that my letter last week, got published.

And that — just to kind of hammer home the point about Windoze security — the BBC news channel’s 5 o’clock bulletin had a rather serious piece.

According to their breaking report*, there’s a Trojan doing the ’rounds: one aimed at users of an as-yet-unnamed high street bank. Along with the clear implication that the Trojan — apparently, a Zeus v3 which includes a key logger set to go off under very specific circumstances — in question was aimed at Windoze users.

One that only activates when it detects a user logs into the banks online pages.

‘Records’ the login-details.

And — here’s the nasty bit — only shifts money out of the account if it detects more than £800 in it.

Now, I know I’m not directly affected: from what the report said, along with it’s interview with a spokes-body from computer security film, Sophos, this is a Windoze-only bug, aimed at people whose monthly income is a lot greater than mine. It’s many folks minimum income, at a guess.

But I’d be being irresponsible not to mention it, wouldn’t I … ?

And definitely not myself if I didn’t smirk, like the smug git I can be, sometimes … !

Mind you, I should be.

After all, as many of my Windoze using friends of mine will remind me, Apple’s mobile devices haven’t exactly not had their share of (thankfully corrected) problems …

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Let’s move on, shall we … ?

What I meant to tell you was …

Well …

That security threat was one of them.

But one of the others … ?

Was the simple fact that I’d sent off another email … !!

Sparked, this time, by a couple of articles: one about proposals for renovating the area around the ruined chapel at the centre of Brentwood High Street and another about the various cuts that Brentwood Council are planning.

Here’s what I wrote …

Dear Editor,

I’ve got to confess, I’m really rather confused … !

No, really …

On the one hand we seemingly have a council who’re planning cuts at a rate of knots.

On the other … ?

We have a joint venture between St Thomas’ and English Heritage to improve the area around the Chapel ruins outside the Bay-Tree Centre.

Now, granted Brentwood Council’s trying to save money.

Granted, they’ve asked us to suggest where to save money: and there’s TONS I could be saying about open-source software, there.

But couldn’t they have spent a few extra bob of taxpayers money in doing the proposed changes, themselves … ? As they were spending money on the revamp of the High Street, anyway … ?

Either way, I can’t help but think it’s a pointless effort.

Or pointless, in view of the increasing unlikelihood of any kind of replacement for the Ritz and Odeon cinemas.

After all, do we really need to re-focus attention on the centre of town …

When the proposed development possibly isn’t going to be moving attention away from it … … ?

Yours

Whether that’ll get published is a whole other issue: after all, the William Hunter Way development and the High Street’s make-over has generated some column inches … !

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Oh …

Just one more thing …

(To coin a phrase … !)

I’ve noticed a bit of good news for those of us who were glued to Sherlock for the past three Sundays.

It’ll be back … !!

* As of this writing, the BBC have only reported it on the BBC News channel, rather than also on the website. As and when it does, I’ll add it to this page.