Light & Dark

Tech support giggles.

This is especially for Greg, and anybody else who's ever done computer support.
Don't look at the picture until after you've read the post.

Trick or treat, geek style.

You figure it out.

There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.

I was afraid this was going to happen

Remember my bitching about Microsoft and all their buffer overflow bugs? Well it looks like the one that affected a core component of all their operating systems is about to jump up and bite the Internet in the ass. And it's specifically targetting MS to boot. The experts are still speculating on its severity, but the Blaster worm is in the wild, and could be infecting several hundred thousand machines already. While it doesn't have a major payload, its spread has the capability to cause massive overloads in network traffic, just like Code Red & others. It's that slowdown that does the damage, as ATM's go offline, airline reservation systems go down, corporate networks crash, etc.

The cute twist to this one is that the worm is set to launch a Denial of Service attack against Microsoft's Window's Update site starting on Aug 16. This is the very site users must go to, in order to download the patch that will protect their systems. The worm particularly targets Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

It's late, and I'm too tired to find the specific patch tonight, but I have the info on my work machine and will post it tomorrow, along with an interesting take on the whole Homeland Security warning involved in this mess.

This is another example of why closing the door after the horse has bolted just doesn't work. There's just no way the same # of systems will be protected by patching as if the patching was done by Microsoft when they built the damn stuff. How much will their mistake cost businesses this time?

Oh yea, and experts say a flaw in the way the worm was written is slowing its spread. Any takers on how long it'll be before somebody rewrites it correcting the flaw? I give it 3 days. Then it's a whole new ballgame.

From a Washington Post article:

Experts expect the worm to reach its peak infection rate by late Tuesday, but say new, more virulent versions of the worm are likely to be released in the coming days.

"If someone writes a more efficient variant of this worm, and there's a very good chance they will, this thing could be with us for a very long time," Symantec's Huger said.

Great.

Charity begins at home.

The folks at Six Apart, who created TypePad, are talking about putting together some branded Tshirts & stuff for sale. Looks like they better give the first batch to their own staff! This photograph of Anil Dash, their marketing guy (!) is from co-founder Ben Trott's own photoblog of shots from when they moved into their new offices a couple of weeks ago. I swear that's a Blogger shirt he's wearing! Better update the wardrobe post haste, Mr. Dash!

Virus Warnings

Nyuk, Nyuk...Greg is such a geek.

My favourite is the Newfie virus.

It arrives in an email which says:

Hi, you have just been infected by the Newfoundland virus. Delete everything on your hard drive after forwarding this message to everyone you know.

Alternatives to Microsoft

My post about Microsoft's ongoing bug infestation has generated some really interesting observations and intelligent commentary. Not the usual finger pointing and name calling into which most such discussions degenerate. You folks rock!

Greg (who now tag team blogs with da Goddess - glad you guys are settling in to the new place!) took me to task on my comment that I couldn't wait until up and coming software became viable alternatives to the MS Machine. He says:

Linux already is a viable alternative. I have used it and FreeBSD 100% since 1996. EVERYTHING I did under windows I do under Linux - web browsing (Mozilla, Opera) word processing/spread sheets (OpenOffice.org), cd burning (XCDRoast), mp3 playing (xmms), movie (online and DVD) watching (mplayer/xmms). You name it, there IS a way to do it with Linux.

This has really struck a LOUD chord with me, as one of my projects in the fall is to set up a moderately low end computer (translation: cheap!) using only opensource products and freeware, and try it for all my day to day needs. I'm really excited to see all the work Greg's done to provide sources for some of the stuff I want to check out.

Is Microsoft really that stupid?

OK, it's a rhetorical question. But here's why I ask.

Pretty much once a week, at least, and for several years Microsoft has been announcing patches for security flaws in their software caused by buffer overruns. Now, I know next to nothing about the actual writing of software. But as a reasonable person, if a huge number of my products kept demonstrating the same weakness for months, I would say to myself: Hmmm...seems to be a systemic problem here. I better put a team in place to inspect that aspect of every one of my products right now, so we can take care of it once and for all. And I better make sure that my designers are trained to look for that specific problem in every piece of code they write! And double check it before it's released!