I guess this is kind of a continuation of yesterday’s post… I have one invitation to Gmail to give away. So, if you read this site and you’d like a free, 1 GB e-mail account, then either e-mail me or post a comment below.
This would be perfect for someone with a silly Yahoo.com account, like for example progrock_nutball. Let me know if you’re interested.
Scrivs over at Forever Geek is giving out an invitation to GMail to anyone who links to his site. Since I visit the site daily and enjoy the content. I’d be glad to link to it.
If you’re at least a little bit geeky, you’ll probably enjoy his site. He covers news on several different topics like Gadgets, Programming, and Open Source. Lately, he’s been reviewing a lot of Anime. I haven’t watched much anime since Robotech (back then we still called it Japanimation), but some of the new stuff looks interesting.
Here’s a bit of a warning for all of you Internet Explorer users out there. CNET News has an article up right now called Researchers warn of infectious Web sites. In it, they discuss two flaws in Internet Explorer that could let someone take over your computer. The difference this time is that you can get infected just by browsing the web. Here’s the meat of the article:
…online organized crime groups are breaking into Web servers and surreptitiously inserting code that takes advantage of two flaws in Internet Explorer that Microsoft has not yet fixed. Those flaws allow the Web server to install a program that takes control of the user’s computer.
And in case you’re wondering why your computer is running so slow and you’re getting so many popups, this article addresses that, too:
Earlier this month, an independent security researcher found an aggressive advertising program, known as adware, that installed itself onto a victim’s computer via the same two flaws in Internet Explorer.
Nice. At this point you’re saying to yourself “It’s OK, I have antivirus software!”
The group also pointed out that the malicious program uploaded to a victim’s computer is not currently detected as a virus by most antivirus software.
Ouch. So what’s my advice? Simple, don’t use Internet Explorer. Go to http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ and install Firefox.
Firefox is the best web browser I’ve ever used. It’s a great way to avoid all of the flaws in Internet Explorer and at the same time introduce yourself to some open-source software.
History was made today.
Scaled Composites became the first private company to launch a manned craft into space this morning. Mike Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne 62 miles above the Earth’s surface to the edge of space.
He experienced three minutes of weightlessness. While weightless he opened a bag of M&M’s and watched them float around the cockpit.
After that, he landed successfully back where he started in the Mojave desert.
You can get all of the details in this CNN.com article.
Things like this restore my faith in humanity.
Ever wonder what it’s like to be a network manager? Well, wonder no more…
I noticed a little problem with one of the servers at the high school today. This is the server that holds all of the students’ home folders. Here’s a breakdown of how much space is used by each grade:
Freshmen – 1.13 GB
Sophomores – 3.37 GB
Juniors – 7.61 GB
Seniors – 6.88 GB
Not too bad, except for the fact that all of these files are stored on a 16 GB partition. Do the math and you’ll find that even with compression, that drive is full. Oops.
Now I have the thrilling task of digging through about a thousand student folders and deciding what to delete and what to keep. But it’s really not that bad. I always find the strangest things in student folders.
For example, one student downloaded a program and installed it to his folder on the server. They aren’t suppossed to do this, but many do it anyway. He must’ve been afraid someone would find the program and delete it. After he installed it, he made 40 copies of the complete installation directory. That just made it even more obvious.
I’m working on a new style for the site. The home page is pretty much done. I’ll do my best to finish up the rest of the pages this weekend.
Let me know what you think…
Have you every received a post card?
You know, an old-school piece of paper with a picture on one side and writing on the other. It goes without saying that anyone can write anything on a postcard. I could go out and get a postcard with a picture of the White House on it and write “Wish you were here. Love, Dubya” on the back. If I send it to your address and put 1600 Pennsylvania Ave as the return address, then you have no way of knowing who really sent it.
E-mail works exactly the same way as a postcard. It’s so easy to forge the from address on an e-mail that even a child could do it (and many of them do). It’s even easier to send you an e-mail from dubya@whitehouse.gov than it is to send you a fake postcard. The differences are, it doesn’t cost me anything to send you an e-mail and there are programs that let me send thousands of e-mails with a single mouse-click.
With all of these facts in mind, it should be obvious to even the most inept computer user that you can’t trust the from address on an e-mail.
So why is it that I still receive complaints like this at least daily: “I got a spam e-mail from your address so you better check your computer, it’s sending spam!” To which I reply: “Every spam these days has a fake from address so you don’t know who really sent it.”
Here’s another one that I frequently get: “Someone at Paris ISD sent me a virus so you should check all of your computers!” Again I reply: “Every virus these days makes up a fake from address so you don’t know who really sent it. And, I monitor every message that goes through our server, so if one of our users has a virus I’ll know about it immediately.”
Finally, my all time favorite complaint: “I received an e-mail from you with a strange message and an attachment. I tried several times to open it, but never could make it work. Also, my computer is running really slow now and I think some of my files are missing…” You can make up your own reply for this one.
To make matters even worse, some mail server admins have set up their spam filters and anti-virus software to return bad e-mail to the (fake) sender. So people receive automatically genereated e-mail from a mail server saying something like “You sent an illegal e-mail to a user on our domain. If you continue to disrupt our network this way, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” I will never understand how these idiots get jobs running company networks.
Now, I know some of you out there are really clever and you’re saying “Wait a second, I can tell where your postcard came from by looking at the postmark.” If that’s you then you’re exactly right. All of those evenings spent watching CSI have finally paid off. E-mail has a similar feature where you can look in the message header and see what IP address actually sent the message. Unfortunately, even this can be spoofed by a clever virus or spammer, and most users don’t ever take them time to look at it.
What should you do with all of this new knowledge? First, never trust the from address on an e-mail again. Next, never open an attachment unless you’re absolutely sure what it is and why it was sent to you. If you have any doubts about a message, pick up the phone and call the sender. If you still have any questions about the origin or purpose of a message, just delete it. Don’t bother notifying the sender or e-mailing a warning to everyone in your address book. Just click delete and move on with your life.
Happy E-mailing!
Amazon.com has (finally) added a priority option to wish lists. This is something they’ve needed to do for a while. Instead of just seeing all of the items listed by date or price, you can sort the wishlist by how bad the person wants each item.
If you want to see an example of how this works, check out my wish list. This is really helpful since some of the things I really want are on the second page of my wishlist and no one ever notices them.
I couldn’t stand it any longer. Today I cancelled my dial-up account and switched back to a cable modem.
I’m paying twice as much, but my connection speed went from around 30 Kbps to about 1000 Kbps.
The Internet was abuzz this weekend with talk about the leaked (stolen?) source code to Microsoft Windows. There are two different files circulating on the file-sharing networks. One contains code for Windows NT 4.0 and the other contains Windows 2000.
covering the investigation into how the code got out. In the article they also mention the fact that the source code is “riddled with hidden notes and profanity”
I have not looked at the source code, and I don’t want to see it. I’m sure all developers of open source software feel the same way. Examaining this code would legally “taint” any programmer so that Microsoft could then sue them for copyright violation if any of the ideas from the code were reimplemented in another program.
Of course this hasn’t stopped the crackers. According to SecurityTracker.com an exploint based on the leaked source code has already been released. Proof once again that “security throught obscurity” (i.e. hiding your source code from the public), is a terrible way to run a software company.
Finally, just in case anyone feels safe because they’re running Windows XP, keep in mind that Windows XP is just the latest evolution of this same family of code. Windows 2000 is actually version 5.0 and Windows XP is version 5.1. Exploits discovered in this code will most likely affect Windows XP as well.