Last year, a company called MailFrontier produced their Phishing IQ test. Phishing is a form of fraud, where the bad guys set up web sites to collect personal data and then send out emails to get you to visit the web sites. More often than not, the web sites look at least semi-official, and at times they look like the real thing. While financial institutions are the most frequent targets (emails and web sites that look like they came from a bank, but did not), insurance companies ad other online merchants are also often spoofed in these phishing scams.

Now MailFrontier has a new Phishing IQ Test:

Ready for more? Over 225,000 people took the first MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test, successfully raising "phishing" awareness to an all-time high in both the industry and consumer media. But with phishing emails increasing daily—and the online holiday shopping season officially open--it's time for a whole new challenge: the MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test II.

We're back with 10 new suspect "phish" fresh from our collection – all actually received by real people like you. Whether you're brand new or a repeat tester, the question is the same: If you received one of these emails in your inbox – what would you do?

Take the Phishing IQ Test II

Now on eBay - You can bid to purchase absolutely nothing. Bidding started at £1.00 and is now (at the time of this post) up to £1,000,100.00, which means if the bidding progresses at a constant rate until the auction closes is 8 days, 18 hours, the closing price will be something like, ohhhh maybe £9,000,100.00... What a bargain!

From the auction listing:

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This is a fantastic, once in a lifetime opportunity to buy absolutely nothing! The successful bidder will receive absolutely nothing direct from me.

• The perfect gift for the person who has everything.
• Takes up no space. Easy to store.
• Helps fight capitalism. Possibly.
• No postage required.
• Environmentally friendly, 100% organic and edible.

(Note. It is not recommended that you eat absolutely nothing for prolonged periods.)

 Bid now on this once in a lifetime opportunity!

Please note. This is a genuine auction, and the successful bidder will receive absolutely nothing.

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Also note the Photo of Absolutely Nothing at http://www.fotothing.com/dom/photo/ea67a03a320c1f80a5a3ca95dd975952/

Wow. I'm in!

Jeremy Zawodny points out the Blogger's Bill of Rights and gives his opinion on the matter. He doesn't like it. Neither do I. It's just another example of people making something out of nothing, and trying to avoid personal responsibility in the good name of free speech. Here's where I speak up and say why I think it's crap, too...

Now, I'm a fairly outspoken person. I've also had a tendency in the past to open my big mouth, say exactly what I think, and then go into another room to extract my foot from my esophagus. But when I stick my foot in my mouth, I am keenly aware that it's my foot, it's my mouth and it's my choice - regardless of whether or not I thought it through ahead of time. Whether or not I was correct isn't relevant. You can be correct every time, but that doesn't necessarily make you right.

People, this is all about responsibility and ownership. You want to say something? Fine, but ya gotta own it, like it or not.

Let's define a couple of terms for the purposes of the discussion:

• Consequences: The results of something one chooses to do, or not to do. All choices have results, both good and bad. Some of those results impact the chooser, some impact others.
• Speech: Pretty much any form of communication - collective, individual or otherwise - in a variety of forms. In this context, we'll keep it somewhat simple (since we are talking about individual weblogs) and say it's an individual's written or spoken words.

Okay so - Right up front I'll say this: There is no special, magical set of rights that bloggers can (or should) expect, not with regard to employers, husbands/wives, boyfriends/girlfriends, coworkers, friends, family members, governments, or anyone else. The idea that blogs are somehow special or different and should be treated differently is arrogant and probably and indicator of the root of the problem - people think they are entitled to say whatever they want, however they want, with no consequences. Sorry, Charlie. Ain't happening.

• Your right to free speech does not apply to the specific medium in which you exercise it. Speech is protected in certain circumstances, in certain locations, regardless of the form that speech takes. You have no more right to expect protection on a blog than anywhere else. Your rights are reasonable to expect, but when your exercising of your rights infringes upon the rights of another, you're crossing a line.
• If you shoot off your mouth on your weblog, it's not an ollie-ollie-oxen-free home-base super-top-secret say-anything-I-want kind of thing. You are responsible for what you say, at the time you say it.
• Speech is behavior. In a previous career I was always amazed at the idiots who thought if they could just get their car into the driveway, they were safe, regardless of the level of alcohol in their blood while there were on the street that got them to their driveways. It's not where you land, it's who and what you affect along the way.
• Your speech is your speech, and with it come consequences. If you choose to say or write something on a weblog, keep in mind, it's speech in a public place and you are making a choice, and with that choice comes certain consequences. Your choices may impact others (coworkers and employers), and as a result, the very second you post your words, you choose to accept all of the consequences of that speech, regardless of whether or not you have taken the time to think about said consequences.
• Your employer can hire and fire based on the quality of your behavior and how it impacts business, your performance, personalities, coworkers, morale, anything. You should remember this before you post on your weblog for everyone to read. And comment on. And quote. And read again. And copy/paste/email to your coworkers and your boss and his/her boss. And to end up on the Wayback Machine.

It's not about who yells the loudest or who thinks/knows they're right. What it is about is being responsible for oneself and thinking ahead about the impact of exercising one's right to free speech.

One important aspect of thinking ahead is considering the consequences and weighing the risks. Preferably before speaking. But if you don't take the time to do that, it shouldn't be (and isn't) someone else's problem.

Anyhow, that's about all I have to say about that.

According to a part-time tutor at Cardiff University, Monday will be the crappiest day of the year. He even has a formula used to determine that fact.

It might be a good day to sleep in, says the BBC.

JANUARY BLUES DAY FORMULA:

1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA

• W: Weather
• D: Debt
• d: Money due in January pay
• T: Time since Christmas
• Q: Time since failed quit attempt
• M: General motivational levels
• NA: The need to take action

Stan Lee dreamed up Spiderman way, way, way back when. Until today, he's never really gotten his due. People don't realize that he's never really been compensated, other than as an employee, for the Spiderman franchise's income.

He sued, and a judge has ruled that Stan the Man should get 10% of Marvel Comics' earning from Spiderman sales since 1998.

Marvel, of course, says they'll appeal. Hmmm... Can anyone say DC?

"The ruling is a long time coming. Lee began with Marvel in 1939, and served as writer, editor, art director, head writer and publisher for the company before effectively retiring from active duty and becoming chairman emeritus. He filed the lawsuit in November 2002, pointing out a clause in his contract that entitled him to 10 percent of TV, movie and merchandising deals, an amount he thought was significantly higher than the $1 million-per-year salary he currently receives. Marvel tried to find a loophole in the wording...

"...Lee's lawyer says the victory is bittersweet.

"The foundation of [Marvel] was based on characters he created, and to have to ultimately sue to enforce an agreement under which they were supposed to give him his fair share was very disturbing," Graff told the Hollywood Reporter. "We're certainly hoping that Marvel, after they recover from the sting of this decision, will determine that it's time to own up to its obligations to Mr. Lee."

(from Yahoo News)

Finally!!! I have been struggling with the fact that there has never been an IFilter available for CHM (Microsoft compiled help) files. But now there is!

UPDATED INFO: Apparently there is another relatively new freeware CHM IFilter avalable in addition to the commercial one mentioned below. I have not had a chance to check it out, and documentation is pretty much non-existant on the web site, but check out Citeknet. They have a CHM IFilter, a tool called IFilter Explorer that you can use to examine your system's IFilters, and a bunch of other IFilters (CAB, CHM, HLP, MHT, ZIP) on their web site. Thanks to Sean for the comment and the pointer - I stand corrected. I think IFilters in general deserve another post here (click to read the followup), especially with the genesis of these new desktop search applications and new activity/interest in IFilters in general.

If you use a system that can leverage IFilters to index or discover the content inside of proprietary files (systems like SharePoint or Windows built-in search, for example), this is for you. There are IFilters for all kinds of binary formats, such as PDF, TIFF files with optical character recognition (OCR), etc... And now, CHM!

In fact, IFilterShop has a whole slew of filters for sale:

• CHM IFilter
• MindManager IFilter
• Inventor IFilter
• WMV/WMA IFilter
• SHTML IFilter
• WF IFilter
• Msg IFilter
• PDF+ IFilter
• Zip IFilter
• XMP IFilter
• StarOffice IFilter
• OpenOffice IFilter
• vCard IFilter

There are also a whole bunch of free IFilters available on the Internet.

Here is the official announcement:

IFilterShop releases CHM IFilter 1.0

IFilterShop is pleased to announce the release of new product CHM IFilter.

CHM IFilter extends Microsoft Indexing Service to extract content from Compiled HTML Help (CHM) documents. Microsoft HTML Help is Microsoft's online Help authoring system. It is designed for use by authors or developers who create Help for software programs, multimedia titles, intranets, extranets, or the Internet. CHM IFilter makes Microsoft HTML Help files instantly searchable in all products built on Microsoft Search technology.

For more information, please visit our website at:

http://www.ifiltershop.com/chm-ifilter.html

(ED: removed direct reference to .exe file)