June 29, 2004
Codename Tiger
Is there such a shortage of good codenames that companies can't pick an original one for their flagship product? Sun's Java 1.5, which is nearing release, has been codenamed "Tiger" for quite a while and now what has Apple done? Released their own "Tiger" (OS X 10.4) today at Apple's developers conference. To top things off, I hear there's even a professional golfer going by this codename now...
June 16, 2004
Comment spammed again!
I received 15 more comment spams today and I've decided to start working on getting .Text setup to replace MovableType. MovableType is a fine piece of software that was easy to setup, but customizing the mess of perl code would be a nightmare. I'm looking forward to being able to tinker under the hood of .Text to try some comment spam countermeasures.
The only thing standing in my way now is the fact that SQL Server refuses to install on my Windows server. Long ago, an MSDE uninstall failed mid-way through and no amount of work on my part can convince SQL Server that everything is all right. This might be a good opportunity to just re-pave the system and upgrade to Windows Server 2003.
June 09, 2004
Security through obscurity - web style
I found a hilarious example of security through obscurity on a doctors' office web site today. I right clicked a link so I could do Open in New Window, but some javascript caught my right-click and popped this up instead:
Not only does this annoy users and look unprofessional, but it protects nothing! You could click View -> Source or open the files from the IE cache if you really wanted to copy some code. I can't even figure out what they think they're protecting since the majority of the javascript on the page is just for popping up that annoying message box.
I was curious to see what kind of web development outfit would use such ridiculous security measures, so I clicked their link at the bottom of the page. I laughed out loud when I saw their web server had apparently been protected about as well as their HTML. Hackers had replaced their homepage with the following message:
I'm still chuckling about this one.
June 03, 2004
Engrish e-mail scam
It's a good thing the people running the following scam speak Engrish or more people might have fallen for it. We'll really be in trouble if criminals ever learn grammar secrets such as which words to capitalize, avoiding comma splices, and not to preface everything with "the".
By the way, the URL in the email looks legitimate, but the actual link goes to some IP address where they ask for your bank account numbers, mother's maiden name, etc.
June 02, 2004
Downtime
Sorry for all the downtime lately. My network decided to start going crazy a couple weeks ago and I think I might have finally fixed it. It appears to have been a bad firmware upgrade on one of my routers that worked for a while before it started causing problems. I downgraded back to the previous version and it seems that all is well for the moment. I'm crossing my fingers...