999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall
That's about how many bottles you'd need to celebrate tomorrow's big Unix Gigasecond.
At 1:46:39 a.m., UTC on Sept. 9 (or 9:46 p.m. and change EDT on Sept. 8), Unix clocks around the world will reach their 1 billionth second - all, of course, having been set to have Time Zero as Jan. 1, 1970.
'Course, for all you worrywarts, now's the time to prepare for the impending Unix Clock Meltdown on Jan. 19, 2038, when the clocks on 32-bit systems reach 2,147,483,648 and crash, because that's all the numbers their tiny brains can hold. Or, if you prefer, the Mayan End of Time in 2012.
Via MetaFilter
Finally, a wind-up cell phone
The Times of London reports that a company called Freeplay Energy has developed a cranking device that can recharge any cell phone:
Winding the hand-sized charger for 30 seconds will produce six minutes of talk time or two hours on standby.
Via Boing Boing.
Enough with the ringing!
Speaking of cell phones, 250 people in England set a record yesterday when all their cell phones rang at once. No, twasn't a voice spammer run amok, but instead an attempt to, of course, get into the Guiness Book of World Records. Ananova reports:
Tourists, shoppers and workers enjoying their lunch break in London's Leicester Square joined together to play the distinctive Pearl & Dean tune.
Stuart Claxton, from the Guinness Book of World Records, confirmed the record of 254 people adding: "It's not such a huge achievement because no previous record stood."
09/06/01
The VoIP calculator
Westbay Engineers has a number of free online calculators, including one that can be used to estimate the bandwidth needed for a fixed number of voice paths through an IP network.Via ITPRC.
802.11b insecurity
ExtremeTech drives around New York and Boston and finds numerous "private" wireless LANs completely open to anybody with half a brain. It doesn't have to be that way, though - ExtremeTech also provides tips on protecting your wireless LAN.
Via Slashdot.
Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf explains IOS DHCP
News that Hank the ADD died this week wistfully reminded us of his exclusive "interview" on RouterGod on how IOS implements DHCP:
OK, first off let's do a little review, since I'm only 4 feet tall, a "little" review is all yer gonna get..ha ha, come on folks, that was funny, I'm here all week, don't forget to tip your waitress...uh. Why do you suppose we need a Dynamic configuration protocol anyway? That's right, it's because the network administrator is a lazy bastard and doesn't want to manually configure every workstation in his network!
09/05/01
Is ENUM the mark of the devil?
Here we thought ENUM was just a way to link phone and IP networks. But it turns out the proposed directory system is raising some serious privacy concerns. The Los Angeles Times reports on a proposal that would dole out a unique 11-digit identifier to, well, pretty much everyone on the planet.
"We believe that ENUM raises serious questions about privacy and security that need to be addressed before it's widely deployed," said Alan Davidson, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy watchdog group based in Washington. "They are promoting this as a system that is going to make it really easy for people to find you in all kinds of ways. Well, we want to make sure that consumers can opt out if they don't want to be found."
AOL gives user permanent demerit
Seems a UK user of AOL called for some technical support and mentioned she was using Internet Explorer. According to the Register report, the customer "support" person reacted thusly:
"I'm sorry, Madam, I will have to put a note to that effect against your file; by using Explorer you have forfeited your right to technical support from us in the future."
The woman then promised to switch back to the default AOL browser, but was told that it was "too late."
09/04/01
The Ballmer music video
By now, of course, you've seen (more than once), the Steve Ballmer Dance Monkey Boy video and the Sweaty Steve and the Developers loop.
Now get ready for the ultimate in Ballmermania: Ballmerfunk Music Video.
After seeing this techno-funk classic, you'll never hear the word "developers" the same way again.
Via Metafilter.
Cleveland news flash: Y2K was last year
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports the city council wants to know why the city is continuing to pay millions of dollars on Y2K preparedness:Via Fark.One firm's invoices list names of employees and how much they worked each month. The other firm repeatedly lists the same three services: Microsoft licensing, firewall security and Y2K follow-up.
(Mayor) White refused to explain what the companies were doing or why the city needed to follow up on Y2K when no city computer
broke down 20 months ago.
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.
