::: Friday, August 30 ::: Uhm: Microsoft Security Essays Anyone else see the tacit humor in that title? Do we really want to go down that road? Next thing you know we'll have a site titled "P. Diddy's Originality Essays". 2:36 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Yep: Very Big Blog (8/29/02) I couldn't have said it better myself. 1:49 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Heh: Bulldozer starts wrecking wrong house with couple inside I hope they had their towel with them. 10:14 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Whatever: Spam hits 36 percent of e-mail traffic "A year ago, he estimated the company saw one spam for every 20 legitimate e-mail messages; today the ratio is closer to one in four." I long for the days when my e-mail was only 25% or even 36% spam. If you disregard my Hotmail account (which gets nothing but spam - sometimes hundreds per day), I get around 60 e-mails per day. Of that, maybe 10-15 are not spam. 36% would be bliss. 9:35 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Here, here: Games push for more than pretty faces I couldn't agree more. I love a well rendered game as much as anyone else, but when the gameplay takes a backseat to the visuals there's no way that the game won't suffer for it. After all, we didn't play Zelda on the NES for days on end because of its graphics. 9:25 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Ack: Spyware Trojan sends Hotmail to your boss Some might compare eBlaster to handing someone a loaded gun. It's actually worse, however, because with the gun you have a pretty good chance that the user will shoot themselves rather than someone else. "Tools" like eBlaster ensure that the damage can only be inflicted in an outward direction. 9:19 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Ah, well: MP3 codecs no longer free for GPL use Everyone knew this was coming, it was merely a question of when. My only quibble with the whole mess is that developers really don't have any way of being completely certain they are in the clear. Uncertainty breeds distrust. 9:11 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Thursday, August 29 ::: Gak: Who's the Boss? Fan Fiction I simply do not have the words. [thanks to Ryan for the link] 1:19 PM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Monday, August 26 ::: w00t: BT loses hypertext claim Nice to see some good news for a change. 2:37 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Thppt: Those MS API disclosures - errors, incomplete, useless? Same as it ever was. 2:35 PM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Friday, August 23 ::: Whoa: Adolf Hitler, thespian Der Führer was apparently a quite prolific actor. Who knew? [link courtesy of The Mighty Kymm] 2:33 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Good Lord: Not one, not two, but three Quite a red letter day for the Microsoft clan. The first alert is the funniest -- if indeed anything can be funny about such a serious flaw -- in which Microsoft reveals that disabling LanMan services "may not be suitable on a file and print sharing server". Unless I'm mistaken the LanMan service is responsible for all file and printer sharing on NT networks, so, yeah, it would be pretty pointless to disable it. I'll bet unplugging your server would prevent the attack as well. 8:41 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Wednesday, August 21 ::: I promise I'm not dead... just very busy. I'm not quite sure when situations will improve, but I'm hoping to get back to some sort of regular schedule by September. Perhaps these folks can help occupy your time? 10:12 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Thursday, August 15 ::: One of the things I do to unwind in the evening is solve crossword puzzles. I find it helps me to think about something else before laying down to keep my mind from going in circles thinking about things which I likely can't control, and even if I can I certainly can't do anything at 2am. If I work crosswords until I'm nodding off, then I can often fall asleep immediately. So, anyway, I'm working this puzzle the other night and the clue was "dot matrix printer"... five letters... first letter "L". I wracked my brain for probably five or ten minutes over that answer to no avail. Eventually I gave up and looked up the answer in the back of the book. Astute readers may have already guessed that the answer was indeed "LASER". The polar fucking opposite of dot fucking matrix at least in the traditional sense. Some days it just doesn't pay to be a geek. 4:42 PM CST  ::  1 comment Ahem: Davey and Goliath "We got hosed, Tommy... we got hosed." 3:58 PM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Monday, August 12 ::: Whoa: SSL defeated in IE and Konqueror What a way to start the week... 8:50 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Friday, August 9 ::: Ugh: Macromedia Flash Malformed Header Vulnerability Looks like a nastry one. Luckily a patch is available... unfortunately it involves a complete download of the new version which can be somewhat painful for modem users. 11:37 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Thppt: Gnutella bandwidth bandits Well, duh. We'd all like to have lived in the Old West if it wasn't for the killing and the lack of decent food and water... oh, and health care. It's time these guys learned that there's no such thing as "controlled chaos". When you reap the benefit you reap the blight as well. 8:53 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Surprise: Dangers of the Google tool bar exposed I just knew that thing was trouble. 8:37 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Uhm, yeah: The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins Conclusive proof that there was rampant drug use in the sixties. [thanks to Josh for the link] 8:03 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Thursday, August 8 ::: Booyah: FCC proposes $5,379,000 fine against fax.com Now *that's* what I call a fine. Bravo, FCC. 10:34 AM CST  ::  tell me a story In Tribute: Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930 - 2002) The author of "Goto Considered Harmful" dies at 72. Mr. Dijkstra made many important contributions to computer science and he shall be missed. 10:19 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Wednesday, August 7 ::: No thanks: Programming tool makes bugs sing I have enough to worry about trying to program with constant interruptions without having to listen ever so carefully for bugs. Thankyouverymuch. I am, however, somewhat amused by how closely this software resembles the "Anthem" program described by Douglas Adams in the first Dirk Gently novel. 4:26 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Whew: TiVo Might Rue Arrival of DTV I knew there was a reason I hadn't bought a TiVo yet. I'm not cheap, I'm saavy! 4:13 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Wonderful: Flaw opens door in Windows, Mac, Linux So... Apple has fixed the problem in OSX. Most of the *nix vendors have followed suit. Microsoft? Well, Microsoft is "still investigating how Windows is affected by the problem". Surprised? 4:08 PM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Tuesday, August 6 ::: Yep: 'Mini-Me' will lead Oktoberfest chicken dance Proof that truth is stranger than fiction. [link courtesy of The Obscure Store] 9:28 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Ahem: Microsoft puts security to the test Q: I understand security was not your original calling, so to speak. A: I'm a lawyer by training That quote could have been offered as the answer for every question in this interview. He talks a lot, but he doesn't say much. 9:21 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Friday, August 2 ::: Woo: A Sinister Union Congratulations, Alexis and Josh! Here's to many more happy years. 3:02 PM CST  ::  tell me a story dinoneil[at]newdream[dot]net