Google put their Response to the DoJ motion online. It's an interesting read. I'd like to see Cutts' declaration if anyone knows if it's available. For those not even wanting to read the intro (I recommend reading the whole thing), the key arguments are:
Sub-points to the third are it's also a compromise of user privacy and trust, and sub-points to the fourth are that some information is covered under various government privacy acts that may not be covered by a subpoena or require advance notification of the user. Like I said, it's an interesting read.
$ grep -c "Wed Feb 15 ..:..:.. 2006" ~jmooney/procmail.log 16542 $
There were apparently locking issues as that should have been closer to 19k. Average for me appears to be in the mid to upper 300s. Any remaining questions as to why the email system had issues today? :) This time I didn't even mailbomb myself, it was the doing of somebody else.
They released lots of security patches to help make your computer all nice and "secure" (at least until next month). Only big ones noted. First on the list is MS06-007, also known as TCP/IP DOS vulnerability. It's IGMP based, and the Windows firewall will block unicast attacks. Sounds great, except IGMP relates to multicasting, so it's vulnerable to multicast attacks, and the Windows firewall won't stop those. So basically you can attack the entire network easier than you can attack a single machine. Fun.
Second fun one is that the WebDAV client is remotely exploitable. One wonders why a client is accessible remotely over SMB ports, but it's not too surprising.
Third is not only is PowerPoint bad for you, but now it's also bad for your data security (at least viewing it embedded in web sites is). This one's sorta cheating because it's IE only.
There were more, but of course they're IE and Windows Media Player related. I say those don't count anymore since they seem to get major patches almost every cycle - if you're still using them you're just asking for trouble.
Apparently some lady in Texas is pressing charges for assault because another lady tapped her on the shoulder when asking her to hang up the phone during the movie. Apparently she could use some advice. On the plus side, apparently the cops weren't so thrilled and told her if she made the complaint they'd charge her with disorderly conduct and profanity. Probably the first time in a while they actually charged someone with that, especially for the offense occurring during a movie rated R for language. Apparently not being asked to not talk on the phone in theaters is too important to her and now it'll be a matter of public record that she's a pompous jerk.
Most of you probably have seen my hacked laser pointer in action. For those who haven't, I have one that I got at some point in high school. Usual small handheld type, ran on some little batteries. So of course I figured those batteries are expensive and don't last all that long anyways under any load, so may as well build a better power source. Thus the cord out the back leading to a homebuilt battery pack. That thing was very bright.
So I'm reading a page on hacking laser pointers and ones that are hackable. Then I recognize the box of my source pointer. A footnote says Don K pushed these things to the 7-9mW range, and with an external power source up to the 10mW range. I should probably be more careful with that thing... Like never taking it out of the house again...
CGNU Fight Song. If you don't remember or otherwise have no clue what that is, see Mascot.
I was reading Why do we still believe in group brainstorming? and it hit me that this is basically why geeks and meetings don't get along. The basic premise is that people feel that the time is more productive when in a group because of the more continuous ideas. Combine this with a mind heavily oriented towards logic, and you end up reducing the ideas such that lots of discussion is not equivalent to actually producing stuff. Add in the social aspects of things like it being rude to go off ignoring everyone on your own brainstorming, and trying to keep people in sync and evaluating together rather than independently expanding and filtering and bringing only at least semi-evaluated things back, and you get the opinion that it's a complete waste of time.
Advisory 913333 was published yesterday, it being another remote WMF vulnerability (just get the user's computer to display it). This one requires <IE 6 on 2000 SP4 or ME though, IE6 (and thus XP and 2003) aren't affected. My guess is there won't be a patch, as the recommendation is just to download and install IE6. Fun.
As a semi-related note, Advisory 914457 gives another reason to upgrade XP/2003 to the latest service pack.
Finally, a BK-style commercial that's actually funny. The BK Safety Dance. Warning: lots of double deuces (Stinkoman style).
Copyright ©2000-2008 Jeremy Mooney (jeremy-at-qux-dot-net)
