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The other night I was on my laptop, working out some lyrics for a new
song, and as I sometimes do, I brought it upstairs with me to work on before I
went to sleep. When I had finished for the night, I turned it off and put it on
the floor next to my bed; there was no room on my end table. That was my big
mistake. In the middle of the night, as I got up out of bed to answer one of Nature’s
ever more frequent calls, I stepped on the laptop. It did not think this was a big
problem until later that day, when I tried to turn the laptop on, and the
screen looked like bad modern art. Of course I then had a mild freak out,
wondering if the whole computer was toast. I am sure many of you have had that
nauseating feeling before, suddenly realizing all of the information on your
computer might be lost, and wondering if you had all of it backed up (knowing
you probably didn’t).
I hooked the laptop up to our television set with an HDMI cable, and sure
enough, the computer still worked. Hallelujah! But the screen was a goner. I
can get a replacement screen for this laptop (from Dell), but it will take some
time to acquire, and with installation, it won’t be cheap. I have it
hooked up to one of our small televisions, and that will suffice for now.
You’re never too old to do really stupid things! The experience has reminded me
how much I have come to rely on this computer, and I immediately did a current
back up of my information so as to be protected should the hard drive fail. I
rail on computers all the time, but I am a whiney hypocrite, because I am every
bit as much a prisoner to its allures as the next misinformation junkie. That
laptop is my filing cabinet for over 3000 photographs, and every song lyric,
every letter, every Oppenheimer Report I have written since 1992, email
correspondences, invoices, recorded demo songs, legal documents, etc. And I
never thought I’d get sucked into the Face Book death star, but I’m there every day (and it’s amazing how many
other people are as well). I’m watching my distant nieces and nephews grow up
day by day, and with the click of a mouse I can catch up with a high school
class mate whom I have not seen or heard from in forty years. Gone are the days
when I took the time to compose a well-thought out letter. Now I can fire off
some abbreviated and un-retractable “witticism” on the internet, which I later
deem to be off the meter on the poor taste scale. Which brings me to my next
deep thought: are we not living in a house of cards when so much of our
information is “out there” to be stolen and used against us by strangers?
I heard on the news the other night that authorities have caught and
arrested the hacker responsible for unleashing that much-publicized Heart Bleed
virus which so compromised Canada’s online banking and tax filing system. It
turns out the culprit was nineteen years
old, I believe from the Great Toronto area, and the only reason he got
caught is because he was foolish enough not to disguise his distinguishing IP
address. His father is a computer guy in the business of data mining, and I
guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He must be so proud of his son.
This virus had a ripple effect on online banking, online retail, etc. and it
means that hundreds of thousands of social insurance numbers, Canada’s
equivalent to the U.S social security number, might have been revealed to
nefarious third parties. It all reminds me of that prescient movie War Games, wherein a teenager computer
whiz almost unleashes WWIII. The specter of identity theft looms ever higher
with each one of these cyber breaches and it is a wake-up call to all of us who
use computers. Wireless technology, and the omnipresence of the internet in
almost every form of commerce, leave us vulnerable to cyber terrorism. Some of
us think that if we don’t do our banking or shopping online, we are safe from
cyber crime, but if you have a bank account, or a credit card, or a telephone,
or any number of other utilities, the horse is probably out of the barn
already, and he didn’t look before he leaped. I continue to delude myself that
the powers that be have taken proper security precautions to ensure that
nothing bad happens, but clearly this latest heartworm thing proves I have my
head in the sand. If some enterprising teen can breach allegedly impenetrable
security, how many other serious cyber threats are out there in the wings? Our
governments for instance.
Final notes … the death toll is now 60 and climbing as rescuers attempt
to recover over two hundred missing passengers, most of them high school kids, from
that horrific ferry accident off the southwest coast f S. Korea. Looks as if the
captain and the crew are largely responsible for the magnitude of the tragedy,
and once again I ask, “who’s driving that thing anyway?” Violence continues to
spread cross the Ukraine, and The Toronto Raptors managed to do what the Leafs
failed to do: make the playoffs. A belated Happy
Easter to all my gentile friends, and to all my fellow members of the tribe,
Happy Passover. Thankfully Passover is over on Tuesday. Matzo plugs me up big
time.
Written by Jamie
Oppenheimer c2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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