Bill Gates: Father of open source
Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds might disagree, but Bill Gates says he and Microsoft deserve a good share of the credit for today's open source software. The Seattle Times quotes him:
Really, the reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines.
Verizon exec: Monopoly is good
Meanwhile, over on the East Coast, Verizon Chairman Charles Lee said what's good for Verizon is good for America. The Boston Globe reports on a speech he gave in which he said only a big company like Verizon could have recovered from the 9/11 attacks, which took out a key switching station in lower Manhattan. He added:
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Populist sentiments aside, sometimes consolidation can actually be the best thing for consumers, especially if it creates strong, viable companies in vital, capital-intensive industries.
Weird molecule names
Dave Kearns points out today's complete (but educational!) waste of time: Molecules with Silly or Unusual Names. From arsole (an arsenic ring) to draculin (an anti-coagulant protein produced by vampire bats, this site catalogs them all.
11/08/01
E-mail: too much of a good thing?
It's the question posed by Gerry McGovern, who curmudgeonly answers yes:
The business world can't sustain 36 billion email messages a day. It's time for some form of limit, some form of penalty for those who clog up the information arteries.
Via WebWord.
A cluster of one
Programmer Jacques Gelinas has come up with a Linux kernel patch that lets you run multiple virtual Linux servers on a single CPU.Via Slashdot.
More woes for dot-bombers AP reports
John Schuett got laid off from a Silicon Valley telecom firm -- and then his former employer told Schuett to repay $1,250 worth of a signing bonus because he didn't stay at the firm a full year.
Speaking of which, the Dismal Scientist Layoff Calculator will help you calculate when you might get the ax.
11/07/01
Amsterdam police have come up with a novel way to deal with a problem of stolen cell phones: Spam the thieves until they get so exasperated they give up the phones.
In the Netherlands, as in much of Europe, the short messaging system (SMS), which is sort of an Instant Messenger for cell phones, is very popular. So when a phone is reported stolen, the police get the local phone company to spam the stolen phone every three to five minutes with a message that the phone is stolen, Newsbytes reports.
Just when you think the Web can't get any better
Along comes a site like The Condiment Packet Museum. It's a graphical catalog of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, salt and pepper packets from restaurants around the world. But not sugar, because they "are currently well documented by other sources."
Via Memepool.
Just when you think the Web can't get any worse
An intern at the University of Montana posted detailed psychological records on a university Web site of 62 children and adults under the care of university psychologists. The files were online for eight days until the local paper wrote about them. The Los Angeles Times interviewed the mother of one of the patients:She recalled attending her son's therapy sessions and watched the therapist "taking notes in her book, and [I] thought maybe that was the extent of it. I guess I was kind of naive about that."
More proof I shouldn't be a wiseass
Zenomorph, who wrote the paper I mentioned yesterday about Web-attack "fingerprints," says there's a reason he left out FrontPage pecularities:I gave examples of what each signature would look like in an attack. Refrencing frontpage attacks would be refrencing 1 particular attack. The files I refrences below are commonly requests in all command execution CGI holes.
11/06/01
Using your Web logs to ID hacker attacks
Fingerprinting Port 80 Attacks that shows you what to look for in your server logs to detect possible attempts by hackers to break into your site via HTTP holes.
The paper did miss one particular signature, perhaps because it's the kind only the newbiest script kiddie would try: /_vti_ requests, which indictates somebody trying to screw around with FrontPage stuff on your site.
Via fozbaca.org.
Help save the FAQs
FAQs.org has been an ad-free HTML repository of Usenet FAQs since 1996. Now owner Kent Landfield is looking for donations to pay for the bandwidth the site consumes - without enough of them, he says he'll have to shut the site down.
To be sure, there'll always be rtfm.mit.edu, but FAQs.org is a bit more, shall we say, user friendly.
11/05/01
Who do you trust, baby?
Not Microsoft, huh? Redmond's plans for a national ID database, um, universal e-commerce "wallet," ran into a wee bit of trouble last week when Marc Slemko published details of how to crack the system and get credit-card info out of it. Of course, he put a report up of the exploit, which forced Microsoft to shut Passport down for awhile, even as it was trying to put the whole thing in a good light (hey, there's no proof anybody's credit-card numbers were actually compromised).
Now, was this one of those vulnerabilities Microsoft says we shouldn't be talking about?
Powerpuff Girls powerless against virus
In other security Opinion Sophos reports that a new Powerpuff Girls DVD, "Meet the the Beat Alls" (you 60s types might get the pun) is infected with the Fun Love virus. Good news for those of you needing an excuse to ban the poorly animated Girls from your house.
Via Jason Meserve.
Big IP pipe between US, Europe
This summary page for Telegeography's Packet Geography 2002, shows the relative sizes of IP capacity between the U.S. and other continents. The bandwith is biggest between the U.S. and Europe (more than four times as much as that between the U.S. and Asia, surprisingly), thinnest between here and Africa. There's no doubt plenty more statistics in the guide, but it's $1,995.
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.
