Ramblings & ephemera
From Jeff Bertolucci’s “Windows 7 Ads: Microsoft Tarts Up the Desktop” (PC World: 13 November 2009):
Microsoft has announced plans to peddle Windows 7 desktop space to advertisers, who’ll create Windows UI themes–customized backgrounds, audio clips, and other elements–that highlight their brand, Computerworld reports. In fact, some advertiser themes are already available in the Windows 7 [...]
Posted on December 1st, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Diana B. Henrioques’s “Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders” (The New York Times: 20 December 2008):
But whatever else Mr. Madoff’s game was, it was certainly this: The first worldwide Ponzi scheme — a fraud that lasted longer, reached wider and cut deeper than any similar scheme in history, entirely eclipsing the puny regional [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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Q: How do you tell an introverted computer scientist from an extroverted computer scientist?
A: An extroverted computer scientist looks at your shoes when he talks to you.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
very long pause….
Java.
Saying that Java is nice because it works on every OS is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on every gender.
A [...]
Posted on October 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: cool stuff, language & literature | No Comments »
Image via CrunchBase
From Doc Searls’s “The Most Personal Device” (Linux Journal: 1 March 2009):
My friend Keith Hopper made an interesting observation recently. He said one of Apple’s roles in the world is finding categories where progress is logjammed, and opening things up by coming out with a single solution that takes care of everything, from [...]
Posted on August 11th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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Image by Dim Sum! via Flickr
From Tim Greene’s “Black Hat set to expose new attacks” (Network World: 27 July 2009):
Black Hat USA 2009, considered a premier venue for publicizing new exploits with an eye toward neutralizing them, is expected to draw thousands to hear presentations from academics, vendors and private crackers.
For instance, one talk will [...]
Posted on August 3rd, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Jim Giles’ “The inside story of the Conficker worm” (New Scientist: 12 June 2009):
23 October 2008 … The dry, technical language of Microsoft’s October update did not indicate anything particularly untoward. A security flaw in a port that Windows-based PCs use to send and receive network signals, it said, might be used [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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Back in 2004 or so, I was asked to write an outline for a college textbook that would be used in courses on Linux. I happily complied, producing the outline you can see on my website. The editor on the project loved the outline & showed it several professors to get their reactions, which were [...]
Posted on June 18th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: on writing, personal, security | No Comments »
From Rob Cottingham’s “From blocking to botnet: Censorship isn’t the only problem with China’s new Internet blocking software” (Social Signal: 10 June 2009):
Any blocking software needs to update itself from time to time: at the very least to freshen its database of forbidden content, and more than likely to fix bugs, add features and [...]
Posted on June 13th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Steven Levy’s “OK, Mac, Make a Wish: Apple’s ‘computer for the rest of us’ is, insanely, 20” (Newsweek: 2 February 2004):
If that’s so, then why is the Mac market share, even after Apple’s recent revival, sputtering at a measly 5 percent? Jobs has a theory about that, too. Once a company devises a great [...]
Posted on May 1st, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Joe Clark’s “The extreme Google brain” (Fawny: 26 April 2009):
… Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox, which explains, using scientific findings, why large majorities of girls and women behave almost identically at different stages of their lives – while large minorities of boys and men show vast variability compared to each other and to male [...]
Posted on April 28th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Catey Hill’s “Massive ATM heist! $9M stolen in only 30 minutes” (New York Daily News: 12 February 2009)
With information stolen from only 100 ATM cards, thieves made off with $9 million in cash, according to published reports. It only took 30 minutes.
“We’ve seen similar attempts to defraud a bank through ATM machines but not, [...]
Posted on March 18th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Natalie Angier’s “In One Ear and Out the Other” (The New York Times: 16 March 2009):
In understanding human memory and its tics, Scott A. Small, a neurologist and memory researcher at Columbia, suggests the familiar analogy with computer memory.
We have our version of a buffer, he said, a short-term working memory of limited scope [...]
Posted on March 17th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, language & literature, science | No Comments »
From danah boyd’s “Social Media is Here to Stay… Now What?” at the Microsoft Research Tech Fest, Redmond, Washington (danah: 26 February 2009):
Social media is the latest buzzword in a long line of buzzwords. It is often used to describe the collection of software that enables individuals and communities to gather, communicate, share, and in [...]
Posted on March 17th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Paul Graham’s “Why TV Lost” (Paul Graham: March 2009):
The somewhat more surprising force was one specific type of innovation: social applications. The average teenage kid has a pretty much infinite capacity for talking to their friends. But they can’t physically be with them all the time. When I was in high school the solution [...]
Posted on March 17th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Paul Graham’s “Why TV Lost” (Paul Graham: March 2009):
About twenty years ago people noticed computers and TV were on a collision course and started to speculate about what they’d produce when they converged. We now know the answer: computers. It’s clear now that even by using the word “convergence” we were giving TV too [...]
Posted on March 17th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Robert Graham’s “PHPBB Password Analysis” (Dark Reading: 6 February 2009):
A popular Website, phpbb.com, was recently hacked. The hacker published approximately 20,000 user passwords from the site. …
This incident is similar to one two years ago when MySpace was hacked, revealing about 30,000 passwords. …
The striking different between the two incidents is that the phpbb [...]
Posted on March 10th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From “Missing SFO Laptop With Sensitive Data Found” (CBS5: 5 August 2008):
The company that runs a fast-pass security prescreening program at San Francisco International Airport said Tuesday that it found a laptop containing the personal information of 33,000 people more than a week after it apparently went missing.
The Transportation Security Administration announced late Monday that [...]
Posted on February 12th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, politics, security, tech in changing society, technology | No Comments »
From “Storm Worm botnet cracked wide open” (Heise Security: 9 January 2009):
A team of researchers from Bonn University and RWTH Aachen University have analysed the notorious Storm Worm botnet, and concluded it certainly isn’t as invulnerable as it once seemed. Quite the reverse, for in theory it can be rapidly eliminated using software developed and [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Kelly Jackson Higgins’ “The World’s Biggest Botnets” (Dark Reading: 9 November 2007):
You know about the Storm Trojan, which is spread by the world’s largest botnet. But what you may not know is there’s now a new peer-to-peer based botnet emerging that could blow Storm away.
“We’re investigating a new peer-to-peer botnet that may wind up [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Gregg Keizer’s “Dutch Botnet Bigger Than Expected” (InformationWeek: 21 October 2005):
Dutch prosecutors who last month arrested a trio of young men for creating a large botnet allegedly used to extort a U.S. company, steal identities, and distribute spyware now say they bagged bigger prey: a botnet of 1.5 million machines.
According to Wim de Bruin, [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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