There is no antibiotic for this virus
This week I joined a small, but very select club, one whose membership is growing rapidly.
It’s called the W32.Sircam.worm@mm Computer Virus Club. All you need to do to join this club is to open any e-mail with an attachment that contains the computer virus. Immediately you can become a card-carrying member of the club in good standing.
As part of your bonus for joining, the virus swiftly goes through your computer and sends out a bunch of e-mail messages from your computer to a bunch of your friends and colleagues whose e-mail addresses are somewhere in your hard drive. It selects topics from your computer memory so that the e-mail has your name on it and a topic that sounds familiar, like the “Civic Center.”
The message says:
Hi! How are you?
I send you this file in order to have your advice.
See you later. Thanks.
The attachment to that message contains the virus and you soon know it because you get back from lunch and your e-mail and voice mail filled with unhappy messages, and you begin to understand how a leper must feel.
You definitely have the feeling that you passed on some sort of a social disease and many are not pleased. No matter that you swear that you have no control over the virus. No matter that the virus decides what and who to send itself to. No matter that the virus has its own little SMTP engine, which, as explained to me, means it does not even need your computer’s cooperation.
The virus is the son of an earlier virus called W32.Magistr.Worm, so I expect somewhere in our future its grandchild is headed our way. About all you can do is unplug your computer and get some pro to clean it up.
So, to those of you whose computers I’ve contaminated–mea culpa, mea culpa. In the future I promise to practice “safe computering.” In the future, if you want to send me anything, please cut and paste it into the e-mail which I’ve been told is safer. The virus hides in the attachment portion of the e-mail, and as long as you don’t open the attachment, you’re safe, for now anyway, until some 14-year-old computer whiz figures their way around that one.
The local coastal Plan (LCP) is on its way
Last Monday night the Malibu City Council stiffened its spine. After seemingly endless objections from the old zero-growth crowd, the council voted to send its current version of the Malibu Local Coastal Plan off to the California Coastal Commission.
Earlier on Monday, the Malibu Township Council went to court in Santa Monica to try and block that from happening but the judge turned them down cold and, in effect, said the city can send the Coastal Commission whatever it pleases.
The irony of all this is that the entire battle may be over nothing because it may not make one iota of difference what Malibu does.
Despite promises that the Coastal Commission would try and cooperate with the city, the rumor is it simply has not been the case.
The Coastal Commission has virtually ignored Malibu, or at least turned a very cold shoulder to the city. It’s becoming abundantly clear that Malibu’s LCP is going to be written by Peter Douglas, the executive director of the Coastal Commission, who is certainly no lover of Malibu, and probably Sara Wan, the Coastal Commission chair.
Last year’s Assembly Bill 998 passed and was signed into law giving the Coastal Commission the power to write Malibu’s LCP. It’s a reasonable bet that is exactly what it intends to do. If the city doesn’t like it, that’s just tough, because under the law the commission is not required to listen to the city.
Depending on what it comes up with, the city’s only option may be to go to court. But, generally speaking, that’s an expensive and not very productive alternative because even if the city wins, a judge ends up making the final decision anyway.
Drug rehab has become a cottage industry
Another piece of legislation whose effect is just beginning to be felt is Proposition 36, which mandated the treatment of certain drug offenders rather than imprisonment. Drug treatment is going to become big business, and apparently Malibu is an area of choice for high-end drug treatment facilities. As long as it’s six or less patients in treatment, state law seems to say it can be in a private home in an RR1 (single-family residential) neighborhood, and there is nothing the local jurisdiction can do.
My guess is this is so because most neighborhoods don’t want drug treatment facilities so the Legislature decided to insulate facilities from local attack. This battle is probably going to rage up and down the state, probably in all of the choicer urban and suburban neighborhoods, because treatment at $30,000 plus per month per patient means they can afford to locate the facility almost anywhere.