Re-routing around censorship
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the U.S. government hopes to use a peer-to-peer application to circumvent Chineses Internet censorship.
SafeWeb's Triangle Boy uses encrypted and spoofed packets via a client app to let an end user circumvent content filters (hmm, so all your admins busy installing content filters take note). Oh, and digital certificates are involved, so users can be sure they're connecting via a real Triangle Boy site, not a government honeypot. SafeWeb is partially funded by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture-capital wing. Says the Chronicle:
This new effort by the United States would allow Chinese citizens to visit Web sites their government believes are subversive -- including the sites of Voice of America, Amnesty International and the Washington Post as well as sites related to the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Internet service providers in China are required to block those Web sites because of rules against pornography, violence and criticism of the Communist Party.
Us vs. them in scripting
Dave Winer, scripting-to-the-people guy, has put up a diagram showing what Internet-based languages would look like in the year 2005, once Microsoft's .Net is underway. You'll note he didn't use Visio.Via CamWorld.
The boss button
We remember back in the early days (you know, when you had to walk uphill both ways in a snow storm just to get a telnet session), when you could buy a "boss button" TSR to turn that game into a spreadsheet when you heard ominious footsteps behind you.
Now Headhunter.net, an online employment site, has its own boss button. Download a copy of Triangle Boy (see above) and you're good to go, no?
Via ps -aux.
08/30/01
Fighting off the hackers for fun
Verado 2.0 bills itself as the "world's first game for computer professionals" (the creators obviously are unaware of Doom as a tool for system administration, however):
You: An overworked, underpaid IT network dude.
Them: An oddball assortment of hackers, crackers, thieves and freaks with one goal: getting to your data.
The game is sort of like Space Invaders, only horizontal - the bad guys keep throwing things at you. As you come under attack, you have to decide which of the tools in your armament to use: the shredder, the flamethrower, CD starts, a garbage-can lid, a staple gun, a PDA and, of course, a log. There's 14 levels of graphical challenges, so set a few hours aside (call it "a training session."
Make sure your speakers are cranked way up (so everybody else can enjoy some head-bangin' music), then go to the download page and download the Windows or Mac version. What? No Unix version?
Peer computing as a weapon of war
Think of peer-to-peer and the first thing that comes to mind is probably Napster or, if you're old enough, Windows for Workgroups.
But now the military thinks it's discovered ways to use P2P in time of war, according to a Q&A on openp2p.com. Seems the decentralized nature of the beast helps create an information network very resistant to complete destruction, since information is stored all over, instead of in just one centralized server (hey, where have we heard that concept before?). It's especially suited to training uses, one military scientist says.
08/29/01
Unix poetry
Following up on yesterday's discussion (see below) of new-wavey, high-techy cell-phone music, let's return to the classics of yore, such as that immortal poem, "Wacka Wacka Bang Splat:"
<>!*''#
^"'$$-
&[]../
@=<>,,SYSTEM HALTED
Or, in translation:
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.
Naturally, somebody has put this to music.
The Windows Fatal Exception Decoder
Finally, no more head scratching while staring at a BSOD. Just type in the fatal exception number on this form and see what it really means (after you reboot, of course).
Via Weblog Wannabe.
08/28/01
New Fusion widget: Getting rid of spyware
Yesterday, a co-worker wondered why certain words on Web pages were now highlighted in yellow - and why she seemed to be getting even more pop-up (and pop-under) windows than ever before.
Turns out her PC was infested with numerous spyware applications. These apps are stealthy (dare I say virus-like?) things that are typically bundled with other programs a user really wants to download (such as, say, file-sharing software). Once unleashed, the spyware does everything from installing tracking software to monitor where you go to modifying your TCP/IP stack. In a word: Ugh!
Ad-aware from Lavasoft to the rescue. This nifty application scans a PC looking for spyware (or scumware if you really don't like it), then gives you a list to delete and repair all the DLLs, executables, registry entries, etc. these things scatter on your hard drive (in the co-worker's case, that was an amazing 86 files and registry entries; along with a modified TCP/IP stack).
It seems to work very nicely and the base model is free, so I've added it to the list of useful Fusion widgets. Now if only there were a server version!
The sound of 200 cell phones going off at once
You'd think it'd be quite the cacophony. But a group of Austrian musicians hope to turn it into a thing of aural beauty.
As part of the 2001 Ars Electronica Festival, they'll be asking concert-goers to register their cellphones at a kiosk, where they'll get their tickets and new ring-tones for their phones for this Telesymphony. Once they're seated, the musicians will dial up the cell phones:
During the concert itself, the audience's mobile phones are brought to life by a small group of musicians, who perform the phones en masse by dialing them up with a specially designed, visual-musical software instrument. Because the audience's positions and sounds are known to the Dialtones computer system, the performers can create spatially-distributed melodies and chords, as well as novel textural phenomena like waves of polyphony which cascade across the crowd; these musical structures, moreover, are visualized by a large projection system connected to the performers' interfaces. Towards the end of its half-hour composition, Dialtones builds to a stunning crescendo in which nearly two hundred mobile phones peal simultaneously.
The site has some sample mini-concerts. They sound a bit like Bach. Really.
Via Boing Boing.
08/27/01
Taleban Web site hacked
Now, Web sites getting broken into and defaced almost isn't news anymore. But who knew the Taleban, those conservative types who run Afghanistan, even had a Web site? They do, and the BBC reports somebody managed to get in and deface it.
The hacker publicised the fact that, while the Taleban have banned their citizens from accessing the internet, they and their supporters have been using it for external publicity for years.
Would it surprise anybody terribly to learn that www.taleban.com (registered to the Afghan Taleban Mission to the U.N.) is running Microsoft IIS? Give 'em credit, though - at least they (or rather, their Web hoster, Interland) are using Windows 2000.
Hey, sysadmin, remember Sircam?
<Monday-grumpiness>Based on my e-mail, there are an awful lot of people out there who are still running Windows systems infected with the Sircam system. Alas, our crack IS department has installed the latest anti-virus patches on the server, so I can no longer read the entertaining documents all these people I've never heard of insist on sending me, but still, it is kind of annoying to open my inbox first thing and see all these dumb messages. So could somebody please go around the office today and smack these people (or their sysadmins) upside the head.</Monday-grumpiness>
Next up: All those letters from the wives of dead African dictators!
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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.
