The joy of system security
Trog is a sysadmin who gets a special thrill from keeping the crackers away from his system:
Despite the fact that most Crackers couldn't crack their way out of a raw egg, there are a minority of truly skilled intruders out there. To constantly raise the bar, to make it more and more difficult for the kiddies to break what you worked so hard to build, gives me a huge feeling of accomplishment.
Linux for real dummies
Joeri Sebrechts, meanwhile, has another take on security: He argues Linux has become too easy to install for its own good and the result is a wave of script-kiddie attacks.Morons are now able to install Linux. Not that everyone who installs Linux is a dumb moron, just that it's way too easy to install for its own good. And that has as a consequence something dreaded. The average security of a Linux install now equals that of the default install, because there are that many of them.
09/21/00
Getting rid of those AOL disks
Sure, you could just toss them in the trash. Or use them as a coaster.Now there's an alternative. Ultimatechaos.com is sponsoring The Great AOL CD Invention Contest to come up with inventive ways to reuse the damn things. Some suggestions and rules:
No, popping them in the microwave is not original. Using them as Frisbees or coasters is also not original. Using them as brake discs on your ’84 Caprice is DAMN original and will probably win you the contest. But we’d better see you driving.The submissions must contain at LEAST one AOL CD used creatively. The more you use, however, the better your chances of winning. You can use as many CD’s as you like, but the discs must be the central focus of your project (i.e. duct-taping the CD to an F-16 is cool and all, but the disc does not provide any function).
The CD(s) must be readily recognizable as an AOL CD. Let that logo show!
Not so cool CueCat?
Is there *anybody* who finds the thing useful? I keep running across articles like this one, which asks the question "Can Wired's CueCat giveaway turn us into a nation of bar-code-reading clerks?" You can guess the answer from this paragraph:The CueCat doesn't even merit the status of a kludge, since it doesn't seem to work very well and doesn't really solve a problem; it's more of a Rube Goldberg contraption, an improbable creation that accomplishes nothing but that's absurd in its complexity. Rube Goldberg contraptions, of course, are intended to amuse, not work.
Those aren't tears of joy
Do you always find yourself weepy when sitting in front of your monitor? It may not be your joy at that perfect coding you've just done. You could be allergic to your monitor, specifically to a chemical commonly used to make plastic monitor cases. Swedish researchers report the chemical, triphenyl phosphate, is emitted as a gas when the monitor's temperature rises (like, after you've turned it on). The good news: Emissions decrease as the monitor gets older, so all your CGA users should be OK.
09/20/00
Will DNA help build strong computers 12 ways?
You may recall a few years ago when researchers announced they had gotten a test tube full of water and DNA to do computations. And you may recall some bold statements about how this was the future of computing, because those little test tubes could do massively parallel computing on a scale just not possible in silicon.Turns out that may not be the case after all. "We are still doing toy problems," one DNA-computing researcher tells Forbes. But the Forbes report says those vials could still help revolutionize computing - by getting those DNA molecules to build micro machines that could in turn build better chips or devices.
Does X mark the spot for Intel PCs?
If you need more proof that there really is a Web site for everything these days, check out OsXonIntel. It's basically an online petition to try to convince Apple to release its upcoming Unixish operating system on the Intel platform. All together now: "Yeah, right."09/18/00
Citius, Altius, IBMius
An Olympic correspondent for the Register reports that Olympic guards are forcing reporters and other laptop-wielding people to put black tape over their computers' logos if said logos don't spell IBM. IBM's a sponsor of the games, natch, and the Aussies have agreed to black out "offending" comepting brands. Guards are also checking incoming spectators for weapons, liquor and Pepsi cans (Coke being another corporate sponsor).
Flash in the pan?
John Rhodes is sick to death of Flash, that Macromedia multimedia thingee that seems to infest so many Web sites these days.Flash sure is popular but I think it is mostly popular with designers. I love designers, but I hate Flash. It is not a tool to help general web users or e-business customers.
In fact, Rhodes is so convinced of Flash's uselessness as a serious business tool that he's started the Flash Usability Challenge. He dares Flash designers to show him an example of a site that is actually using Flash to make money. "I don't think it can be done," he says. Convince him otherwise and you win $150.
09/18/00
AltaVista retreat good news for users
If not for the workers given the boot when the CMGI unit decided it couldn't really compete with Yahoo after all.AltaVista is basically getting back to its roots as a developer of search software. Couple that with Inktomi's rescue of the former Infoseek from Disney and you've now got two established players trying to figure out the best way to find information on the Internet (not to mention a bunch of start-ups with interesting ideas).
Reinvigorating the search-engine biz couldn't come at a better time. Now maybe we'll get true natural-language querying for end users and the ability to have a single search ferret out info both on static pages and in databases at the same time (Infoseek, now known as Ultraseek, is already heading down that path - its search engine can be mapped to an XML database).
Somebody else's complete waste of time
Maybe you waste your time trying out silly online games. Plucky Australian Les Stewart wastes (or rather, wasted) his time by typing every number between 1 and 1 million. With one finger. On a manual typewriter. Took him 16 years to complete the task.
Free and open
For those of you who like your religious debates to focus on things such as the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin comes Hugo Gayosso's Definitions For a Free and Open World on OSOpinion:The FREE SOFTWARE movement and the OPEN SOURCE movement are TWO DIFFERENT movements!
RELATED LINKS
Compendium archive: Week of 01/21/02 Week of 01/14/02 Week of 01/07/02 Week of 01/02/02 Week of 12/03/01 Week of 11/26/01 Week of 11/19/01 Week of 11/12/01 Week of 11/05/01 Week of 10/29/01 Week of 10/22/01 Week of 10/15/01 Week of 10/08/01 Week of 10/01/01 Week of 9/24/01 Weeks of 9/10/01 - 9/17/01 Week of 9/3/01 Week of 8/27/01 Week of 8/20/01 Week of 8/13/01 Week of 8/6/01 Note: Compendium's entire staff took the week of 7/30 off. Week of 7/23/01 Week of 7/16/01 Week of 7/9/01 Week of 7/2/01 Week of 6/25/01 Week of 6/18/01 Week of 6/11/01 Week of 6/4/01
Tracking down a stolen Mac; Dead C Scrolls; Googlewhacking; How bad is it in the Valley?; Storage lessons from the Wayback Machine; The pub-seeking handheld; Internet gang wars; Outlook XP breaks MIME.
Why should iMac owners have all the eye candy?; Luxo Redux; So you think your job is bad; Google as a DNS replacement? Not so fast; Nokia exec cites stock plunge in speeding-fine appeal; The tragedy of the .coms; The Google parlor game; Some people *like* Steve the Dell Guy; Ban all Microsoft attachments?
Dot-com to bare all; iMac Dance; Wendy's remembers Dave; Search engine bites the dust; Wendy's Web site ignores Dave's death; Geek comic strip; Youngest security expert ever; Spam poetry; Confessions of a hacker; Breathless Apple; Dave Barry does Windows XP.
Dropping everything to vote; The best Apple rumors, ever; Guess Steve Case isn't getting into Harvard; Make your own O'Reilly cover; Boosting your wireless juice; Telnet lives!
This space intentionally left blank (vacation).
The most useless software ever; Is Microsoft getting ready to squash PC vendors?; Excite@Home: The Watergate of the New Economy?; No more 3Com Park. Is CMGI Field next?; Are you an e-bore?; This site'll have you coming and going; Entertainment Weekly's loss of innocence; Ensign Crusher as Entertainer of the Year; Oh, for the old days.
The Museum of Broken Packets; Just in time for Thanksgiving; Tourist Guy found; Why virtual offices suck; A domain ruling that sucks; Hacking the iPod.
Why you shouldn't ship computers via UPS; When .Net requires Java; High-tech grafitti artists; Spam from beyond the grave; New group tries to oversee the whole Internet; Paging Dick Tracy; Students use PDAs to cheat; Windaz for Aussies, Newfies; Another alternative to Passport; A virtual honeynet
Bill Gates: Father of open source; Verizon exec: Monopoly is good; Weird molecule names; E-mail: too much of a good thing?; A cluster of one; More woes for dot-bombers; Spam as weapon in the war on crime; Just when you think the Web can't get any better; Just when you think the Web can't get any worse; More proof I shouldn't be a wiseass; Using your Web logs to ID hacker attacks; Help save the FAQs; Who do you trust, baby?; Powerpuff Girls powerless against virus; Big IP pipe between US, Europe.
The profit of turning thugs into programmers; Work Name Generator; A programmer's lament; The world's best ATM; Are anti-spammers killing people?; Web services and storage; Get your Aerons here; Perl for the XXI-imum century; Microsoft's blocking of non-IE browsers.
Government info taken off the Web since 9/11; Beware hackers who talk too much; A contest you can enter sitting down; Now don't try this in the office; Bob Patterson must die; Finally, a useful 404 page; Tech calls from hell; Teletubbies XP; More XP fun; Anthrax and e-mail; Larry's ID card; World's longest gum-wrapper chain.
Let's drop PDAs on Afghanistan; Voice control? Try grunt control; Spam gets back to business; A content-management portal; Share your system tray with the world; Would you let the recording industry onto your network?; Al Queda's low-tech high tech; 9/11 archive; Shoe company gets open source after all; Pod people, coming soon to a cube near you.
Larry and Scott's dueling ID cards; Cringely: Broadband is dead; The dangers of Photoshop; The dangers of copy protection; Microsoft mining whois for telephone solicitations?; How to REALLY throw a LAN party; Good fences don't make good 'Net neighbors; How Google adapted to 9/11 news; Web services as over-hyped hooey; Why shoe guys shouldn't do open source; Online air hockey.
AT&T waives 9/11 wireless charges for some; Shifting gears; Craig Burton on the Novell/Microsoft suit; In search of the post-PC interface; Vibrating PDAs and wearable phones; Gary Condit's Web site; No, that isn't a real photo of a WTC tourist; How to throw a LAN party; How sucky is your intranet?
For grizzled 'Net veterans; UK ISP forced to pull deceptive ads; Pretty Good encryption controversy; Are you as smart as Miss America?; Really securing your computer; Still lots of insecure IIS servers; Kids, don't try this at home; Anthrax Kills; Larry's national database; Nimda hysteria?
Attack and post-attack items.
999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall; Finally, a wind-up cell phone; Enough with the ringing!; The VoIP calculator; 802.11b insecurity; Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf explains IOS DHCP; Is ENUM the mark of the devil?; AOL gives user permanent demerit; The Ballmer music video; Cleveland news flash: Y2K was last year.
Re-routing around censorship; Us vs. them in scripting; The boss button; Fighting off the hackers for fun; Peer computing as a weapon of war; Unix poetry; The Windows Fatal Exception Decoder; New Fusion widget: Getting rid of spyware; The sound of 200 cell phones going off at once; Taleban Web site hacked; Hey, sysadmin, remember Sircam?
On the importance of flame wars; Bill Gates sees dead people?; A markup language for grunts and groans; Is Microsoft leaking those Ballmer dance videos?; Good Samaritan not so good?; Steve Ballmer works up a sweat; Open-source wireless cracking; When technology goes too far; Another dumb computer arrest?; Is Cisco Communist?
Moron marketers threaten 'Net users; Finding free wireless access; Complete wastes of time; OS holy war flares in North Carolina; Are programmers weird?; Somebody actually buys an X10 camera; We're number, uh, two!; Those after-hours computer discussions; An entire city running on Linux; Distributed spam fighter under development; Could a Warhol virus infect the entire 'Net in 15 minutes?; Tell AOL what to do with its CDs.
Fusion shatters a myth; Bridging .Net and Java?; AT&T Broadband cuts off non-IIS servers to fight Code Red; Bluetoothless; Tennessee town bites into Apple; And you thought TI-99/4A fans were over the edge; Biometrics coming to your local supermarket; Steve Ballmer a-hootin' and a-hollerin'; Speaking of Web images; Just how far PC prices have fallen; Does Starbucks' CEO get his own wireless strategy?
Crackers getting more sophisticated; Sex and Microsoft Office; The wonders of science, part MXXII; Finally, a useful virus; A shocking game controller; Big Ball of Mud school of programming; Two vitally important new resources; Adobe: Ooops; Eudora Welty, dead at 92; Centralizing Unix administration in Perl; Spellchecking the entire Web.
Worm turns on Microsoft Web servers; The day the ISP died; Cell-phone users have no shame; Even Internet consultants can screw up the 'Net; Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers; The ultimate cup of coffee; The solar-powered ISP; Everhost; Internet VCer: Oops; The Lego Palm and the pink fuzzy laptop; The Microsoft-English dictionary; Putting a loved one in the home.
Saving those all important VoIP calls; This site is a bright idea; Could wireless end messy divorces?; How much will that software really cost you?; Ghosts of failed dot-coms; The spy's guide to securing your Cisco routers; Oprah for Internet czarina?; What's Microsoft doing at an open-source conference?; Like a big pizza pi; Cyber-bullies; Better check your phone bill; Have some birthday pi.
How HP wastes energy to save energy; New toy for the bored and lonely; Weird programming languages; When sponsors are speakers; The case of the disturbing backwards monitor; Congress to ICANN: Drop dead; Yet another video game made into a movie; Smile, you're on Candid (Police) Camera; High-speed hotels; Network Solutions blocking name transfers?
One of the fathers of Usenet dead at 45; Are you ready for insta-spam?; Diary of a site collapse; Skirting the issue; Assimiliating the Web; Trolling for help; Software wars; Rating the rater; True tales from the help desk; How about spam embedded in your mail?
Unix diapers; A beautiful waste of time; A P2P taxonomy; This page is too stupid; Homeless dot-commer bogus?; Whee, Linux is fun!; Blue Screens everywhere; Forget viruses: This fungus eats CDs; Microsoft revises Smart Tags a bit; Homeless dot-commers.
Slashdot crashes the NSA; They may be Smart Tags, but they're not Original Tags; What open source and California wines have in common; Jakob Nielsen no tyro; How to make Windows 2000 really, really secure; Where the Internet begins; A useful computer bug; The clothes make the geek; The end of the Internet; Why PDF bites; Novel use of a wireless phone; Hidden info; When Web sites tell too much.
DSL modems are so '90s; Bye-bye Netscape; Get ready to upgrade those mail servers; The anti-.Net; The real reason to buy a Palm; Anatomy of a DDoS attack; Pain is good.
