Hell Of Being Skinned Alive

That's where it's going to feel like you are after reading this post. Yes I've been slacking again, so this will be a long rambling article that will jump from subject to subject without any cohesiveness.

Actually, I had written this article once before, about 3 days ago. Spent an hour or so writing it, and it was witty, well written, humorous, and something everyone would want to read. Well, that's the story I am sticking to, and you can't go back and see what I typed up to prove differently, because its gone.

Long gone.

You see, I was doing the article on my laptop, like I am now, only I was running Linux. I was typing it in Blogger's interface and copying and pasting the article as I went along to Open Office Writer. Open Office is a free "Office" Suite that is very similar to Microsoft Office. It has Writer (Like Word), and also an Excel and Powerpoint Knockoff, as well as a few others. It comes in Linux and Windows versions. If you can't afford $400 for a Microsoft Office Professional License, and you aren't a student, give it a try. It will read Office formatted files, so you can still open Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents you get mailed to you.

Anyway, you are probably thinking at this point that Blogger crashed and lost my article. Nope. It was Open Office's fault, I was using the spell-checker, and it spawned a runaway process. No, the machine didn't try to run away, but the process was so bad that I couldn't do anything but reboot, and I lost the whole document.

So here I am again, going to give it the old college try again. Only this time I am in Windows 2000, and using UltraEdit as the master copy, and will paste it into Blogger once I am done. Speaking of Blogger, James over at Hell In a Handbasket has moved off Blogger and onto a Hosting Service using Movable Type. Damn, now I have to update my blogroll. I understand the draw on moving off, and I was thinking about it myself, but I've been too busy/lazy.

Speaking of laziness, that leads me into something that pisses me off to no end. I recently bought a bike, and have been tooling around the neighborhood getting some lower-body exercise, and chasing the kids around too. There's a Super-Megastore about two-miles ride from my house (much closer as the crow flies, but longer taking the back roads), and I've been biking up there. Well one day the weather looked a little dark, and so I drove up, not wanting to ride back in the pouring rain. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon on a weekday, so the parking lot was pretty empty.

Other than the shopping carts.

Meijers, like many other stores, has those 'cart corrals' where you can place your shopping cart after you empty the contents into your vehicle. The corral keeps the lot clear of those kamikaze carts that seem to be pointed in just the right direction to get blown by a slight breeze and crash into the side of your or someone else's brand new car, putting quite a dent in it.

However, as I have noticed before, there are carts left out in the open, but within six feet of the nearest corral! [That's 2 meters for those not in the US]

Now Come-on People! I'm a reasonable guy, but I'm seeing a very unreasonable thing. I mean, we're not talking about pushing an empty cart that far. OK - I'm no skinny-mini (though I'm trying to get there), but dammit, you used your carb-bloated body to push the cart full of twinkies, bon-bons, potato chips, and other sugar-laden items to your car, at least you can have some consideration and waddle your cart over to the corral. You might burn off a half a bite of that melted Snicker's bar you have in your hand. I wouldn't have been so miffed if it was one or two carts, but it had to be at least 15-20. If you're an old Granny with a walker, get one of the Meijer's baggers to take your stuff out to the car. Dammit.

Speaking of Mega-stores, why do I shop at Walmart? The parking lot is full almost everyday, but there's more teeth in a toddler's head than there is in the whole store. Maybe its for the greasy hair and tattoo show? No, dammit, its the prices. My friends over at Chaos Theory call me the "Ferengi", and I suppose its somewhat true, and I can't argue with saving the money when stuff is considerably cheaper. We even have a "Super" Walmart with Groceries as well.

(Insert your favorite Redneck joke here)

Walmart is a cultural melting pot. I can get as much culture as I can possibly stand there, though not of the kind I'd like. Maybe I'm getting to elitist - oh well, so be it.

Speaking of Culture Shock, I received an emergency call through a Sales Dude at a large Telecom provider. Seems one of his clients had a major routing problem, and it had taken one of their manufacturing centers off-line. Those if you in manufacturing know that having a plant down is a bad thing, especially if its due to computer failure. You're losing money each minute the assembly line isn't running.

This however, was a new and strange experience for me.

The company headquarters is in the Far East, and the main facility in Ohio was where I was headed after speaking with the IT Manager there. It's about a 30-minute drive from my place.

Once I arrived, I could see that the plant was run just like it is over in that country in the Far East. It was strange, there were few "offices" as most everyone worked out in the open and wore a single-colored coverall with the with company name and their surname on it. Even the executives and managers wore them, so you really couldn't tell who was who in the pecking order. There seemed also to be two distinct "chains of command" and separation depending on what language was your native tongue.

It seemed to be quite a chore to get anyone to make a decision, in fact, there was argument about replacing some defective network equipment, which along with my charges were minimal compared to the money being lost due to the connection to one of the other plants being down. Once they decided to order the equipment, it was going to be a day before the stuff got there, so they sent me on a two-hour drive to the remote plant the next day to configure the router on that end.

I discovered the "Certified" Network Admin, who kept offering excuses why he didn't know how to work on the equipment, was pretty clueless, even in the stuff he "knew". The defective routers were a different brand than his certification, however I have discovered that a router is a router is a router (at the lower levels), the interface is just a little different. So I walked him over the phone getting his side configured as well. Everyone thanked me for the job well done, and I was on my way. I have a feeling the IT Manager will be calling me straight away next time there is a critical system down.

Speaking of people calling for business, I was at my eldest daughter's last day of school pool party. She's starting 2nd grade next school year, and one of the pools local to the school opened up just for the kids getting out that day. I was headed over to the concession stand, feeling like a dirty-old man (did the Senior girls look like THAT when I was in school? Wow.), when the owner of the pool walked up and said "Hey, aren't you that computer guy?"

I had no idea who he was or how he knew me.

Feigning familiarity, I nodded in the affirmative. He asked for my business card, which I retrieved from my car. He was muttering something about a crashed computer and a family member, and he'd need my help. It was neat, I had never had that happen before, and the wife was speechless as well. She couldn't believe it either.

Speaking of the computer business (I'm trying to tie these sections together, OK?), James sent me two articles. One was about FastTCP, which supposedly was going to speed TCP/IP connections up to 6,000 times. Problem is, the author of the article either misunderstood or fell victim to some tech-speak from some money-hungry researchers. Sure, TCP/IP has some overhead, but not nearly enough to account for that much of an increase. It takes bandwidth, not just fancy packet-mangling.

The other article was about a Professor of Video Gaming. This guy wants to start a curriculum that focuses in creating and programming video games. Now you might think this is a little bit of a stretch, but in reality, computer games are about the only software that pushes current systems anywhere near their capacity to perform. However, the guy in the picture looks too young and geeky to be taken seriously.

I have been interested in High-Speed Internet Access Over Power Lines. There was a company during the hey-day of the DotComs that was working on transmitting 4Mb/s (about 2x faster than the fastest common home high-speed connection) over the nation's power grid. This would have been perfect, and allowed those out in the boonies instant access to a much faster internet experience. However, the transformers along the way blocked the signal, and they were unable to work around it. Well, they've finally come up with a solution, but it is quite expensive.

Finally, I leave you with this. Click it if you dare.

"I like da moon...."

It's Not Supposed To Be Funny...

Most of you have probably heard of Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPG) like Everquest, Ultima Online, or others.

Well, it seems that one of these MMORPG's, Shadowbane was cracked by some players who turned it into a massive bloodfest.

Now, breaking into systems is against the law, and people put lots of time into these types of games. But I found myself laughing out loud as I read what the people who broke into the games' code did. It was interesting to read that some players in the game also found it funny, but I'm sure there were those (who live their lives in games like this) that were mortified.

(Via www.hackinthebox.org)

Look at this Cool T-Shirt

Many of you have asked "Who is Jack Burton?", and I have directed you over to The Wingkong Exchange, an awesome website run by Josh Horowitz. It's probably the best website around for Big Trouble In Little China - the movie of which Jack Burton in the main character.

Josh has gone and had the original shirt that Jack Burton wore in the movie recreated. So head over there and get one (or two, or more). You can also read all about the best movie ever made (In my not so humble opinion).

More on SARS and ARDS

A while back I posted about SARS and ARDS. I didn't quite understand ARDS and how it related to SARS. In fact, I wasn't sure if it was a disease or simply the results of another disease and/or injury.

Eileen Rubin Zacharias, President of the ARDS Foundation was kind enough to send me an e-mail explaining:

"Jack, unfortunately, ARDS can be caused by anything. Currently, there are approximately sixty known precipitating causes. And one of our doctors, in fact, one from Toronto, verified that SARS has indeed become yet another precipitating cause to ARDS; Every ARDS patient is ventilated mechanically, most put into a drug induced coma for days, weeks or months. Half of those who get ARDS die. No prevention and no cure for ARDS. No press, either.

Dick Schaap, sports commentator, died from ARDS about a year ago, last January, after knee replacement surgery. (article copied at the bottom of the email) Jim Henson died from ARDS, but that was five years before I got it, and I was ill in 1995;

Here are all of our SARS/ARDS posts:

http://www.ardsil.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=15&t=000040

http://www.ardsil.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=23&t=000012

And this is what ARDS patients look like in crisis: http://ardsusa.org/patientphotos.htm"

People, January 14, 2002

Copyright 2002 Time Inc.
People

January 14, 2002

SECTION: TRIBUTE; Pg. 119

LENGTH: 314 words

HEADLINE: Great Sport;
A gift for storytelling--and making friends--defined sportscaster Dick Schaap

BODY:
Dick Schaap's last weeks were nothing like his vibrant life. The celebrated sportscaster checked into Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital Sept. 19 for what he thought would be routine hip replacement surgery. But acute respiratory distress syndrome, a rare complication of surgery, caused his lungs to fail, and the normally garrulous Schaap, 67, lay still and silent in intensive care for 13 weeks before he died on Dec. 21. "It's unbelievable," says his son Jeremy, 32, a fellow ESPN sportscaster. "He was perfectly healthy when he walked in, other than a sore hip. He couldn't have been busier." (Lenox Hill declined to comment.) Known for his quick wit and graceful writing style, Schaap will be most remembered for the passion he brought to his work. Born in Brooklyn, he was a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune before branching out to television in 1971 to report for NBC and later ABC. His poignant, intimate stories, such as one on AIDS-stricken decathlete Tom Waddell, were landmark features, and he would go on to win six Emmys. But Schaap also took on politics and pop culture, writing more than 30 books, including the seminal 1968 sports confessional Instant Replay with Green Bay Packer Jerry Kramer. "He was the smartest, funniest, quickest guy in the room," says Mike Lupica, his friendly sparring partner for the last 12 years on ESPN's The Sports Reporters. "You couldn't top him."

Yet the outgoing Schaap, who was married three times and fathered six children, took as much pride in his legion of friends as in his work. In his last days, though, only flashes of his lively, generous spirit remained. When Lupica came by the hospital, Schaap, by then unable to speak, slowly lifted his IV-strapped hand. "He gave me the finger," says Lupica with a laugh. "It was like he was saying, I'm not in great shape, but I'm still me. It was pure Schaap."


GRAPHIC: COLOR PHOTO: NEIL LEIFER, "I collect people," Schaap (with Muhammad Ali and Billy Crystal in '01) once said.; COLOR PHOTO: ADAM SCULL/RANGEFINDERS/GLOBE PHOTOS, "He had so much respect for those he covered," his son Jeremy says of Schapp (in '00).

LOAD-DATE: January 3, 2002


I suggest you head over to the ARDS Foundation Website and read about it. I don't see any links for donations, but if you are interested, drop a line to Eileen, and I'm sure she could arrange something.

Come-on, Give Me A Break

"Now this really pisses me off to no end!" - David Lo Pan, Big Trouble In Little China

Excuse me, but I am tired of the sycophantic, whiny, brain-dead morons who insist that because some money gets taken away from them due to their cavernous piehole spewing forth unintelligent political statements against the people who are giving them the money that their "rights" have been abridged.

What am I talking about?

Well, Jack's referring to Mr. Theo de Raadt (Is it pronounced "Rat"? It should be), the lead developer of OpenBSD, an allegedly secure Operating System (Based on Berkley's BSD Unix-like system). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded a 2.3 million dollar grant to Mr. Raadt's group to increase security and do other research and development with the software system to make it even more secure, so the military may use it as well.

You would think that a person with a highly developed technical brain would figure out it was asinine to make disparaging statements about the organization giving him the money.

Let's see, someone hands you millions of dollars from another country to help you work on your project, and you say things like: "I actually am fairly uncomfortable about it, even if our firm stipulation was that they cannot tell us what to do. We are simply doing what we do anyways — securing software — and they have no say in the matter," Mr. de Raadt said in a recent e-mail exchange. "I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn't get built." He also goes on to say: "We're not doing anything for them. They just fund us to do what we do," said Mr. de Raadt, a 35-year-old graduate of the University of Calgary's computer science program. Mr. de Raadt is no fan of the U.S. military at the moment. He calls the war in Iraq an oil grab. "It just sickens me."

Then, he has the gall to whine, bitch, moan, and complain when the military pulls funding for the project.

What the hell was he thinking? Obviously there's little in his brain other than 1s, 0s, and computer code. If he's going to shoot off his mouth, he has to understand there will be consequences. Then get this, somehow he relates the money-pull to somehow limiting his speech: "In the United States today, free speech is just a myth," de Raadt said.

WTF? I just don't get how these people's brains are wired. I always knew that programmers were a different sort. Though you have to be to sit in front of a little computer screen and type out excruciatingly tedious and meticulous instructions for your very stupid but very fast computer to follow. How in the hell is this limiting his free speech? I didn't see the military holding a gun to his head and forcing him to take the money. I don't think he's in jail or has been charged with any crime, other than gross stupidity.

However, the sugar daddy took the cookie jar away, and now he's whining and crying like a 3-year old.

This is US Taxpayer money Mr. Raadt, we've worked hard for it, don't slap us in the face with your emotional rants and then complain when we take it back.

If he didn't agree with the US Government (and especially the military), which he is welcome to do, he should have never taken the money in the first place. Of course, most of the time those researchers have no idea how to put that amount of money to good use. They were using some of the cash to foot the bill for a conference of some sort, and now they can't pay for it. Serves them right.

Wow, I Found My Champions Stats

Champions is a role-playing game (Dungeons & Dragons is probably the most famous) where the participants create and play Super-Hero type characters.

You know: the Flash, Spiderman, Superman, Batman - those types of guys.

Seems that someone made up the Champions' Stats for Jack Burton. Even if you don't understand most of the article, it makes for an interesting read.

Check it out.

I Don't Usually Spam E-mail

But this was cute:

Subject: Snappy Answers to ........

Young Americans will die in battle.
-- Would you prefer they die in skyscrapers?

The United States is taking unilateral action against Iraq!
--So far, it's a 90-member worldwide "unilateral" coalition.

We are in a rush to war.
--A 12-year rush?

Tough inspections can disarm Saddam Hussein without invading Iraq.
--12 years of inspections have done wonders so far.

We should let the inspectors finish their job.
-- We did. They didn't. We will.

Why fight? The Iraqi military is weaker than in 1991.
-- But their biological weapons and chemical weapons are much more dangerous.

There's no proof of weapons.
-- We know they have 'em, we know they hide 'em, and we have tape recordings and photographs. What more is needed? An Iraqi rocket in Martin Sheen's shorts?

If we invade, Saddam Hussein might use those weapons of mass destruction against us.
-- I thought you said Iraq didn't have them?

But terrorists might attack if we invade Iraq.
--Oh, so if we don't attack Iraq, terrorists will never strike again?

We shouldn't go to war without a UN resolution.
-- ANOTHER resolution? What about the last 18 resolutions? Shall we use them as wallpaper? Or shall we use the same resolutions Bill Clinton used in Bosnia? (he didn't go to the UN on Bosnia)

We don't have a real declaration for war.
--It's called "Joint Congressional Resolution #114."

We are giving 20 billion dollars to Turkey. We could use that money at home.
--OK, we'll use that money to strengthen our Iraqi border with Wyoming.

If North Korea has nuclear weapons, why aren't we invading them first?
-- Uh...hello...isn't that the point?

European leaders are against the war.
-- The Reichstag wasn't attacked. The Grande Place wasn't attacked. The Kremlin wasn't attacked. And the Jerry Lewis Lifetime Achievement Museum wasn't attacked. America was attacked. And besides, except for the
tantrums of France, Belgium and Germany, only three European nations aren't willing to defend freedom. The entire rest of Europe is with America.

The French don't support the war.
-- Oh, did they surrender already?

Germany objects to this war.
-- Germany objected to Reagan's "attitude" towards the Soviet Union. Of course, they objected to our presence in 1943 as well.

Belgians are against the war.
-- I can live without waffles and ice cream.

Russia doesn't support the war.
-- They are still angry over Reagan's brilliant Cold War victory.

Polls show Europeans are against this war.
-- Polls show Europeans believe their freedom was achieved by endlessly debating in marvelous dining halls, conveniently forgetting their right to be pompous blowhards was granted with American blood, not fabulous wine
and brie.

We should build a coalition with our friends.
-- With friends like these, who needs enemies?

What happens if we can't build a United Nations coalition?
-- Who cares?

But the UN is the world's most respected governing body.
-- Not as respected as the US military.

America has always waited until enemies attacked.
--Now that oceans can't hold back enemies, pre-emptive war is forever a necessity.

War will cost billions!
-- So how much is YOUR city worth?

President Bush says he's willing to violate the 1976 executive order forbidding assassinations of foreign leaders.
-- As soon as the ink is dry on rescinding that idiotic order, will someone please pull the trigger? The line forms to the right.

Many Senators don't support Bush.
-- Are you speaking of the Senators from Bordeaux?

Tom Daschle says George Bush has a "credibility gap"
-- When was the last time we came to Tom Daschle for the truth???

These problems didn't happen under Clinton.
-- Actually, they happened. But Clinton ignored them. Now, Bush will clean up his mess.

But Clinton didn't start a war.
-- Unless his girlfriend was testifying before congress.

Bush senior should have taken out Hussein in '91.
-- That 1991 UN resolution forbade a march on Baghdad. Remember?

Millions of peace activists are demanding we stop the war.
--Millions of Iraqi's are begging for us to start the war.

Thousands of innocents will be killed or injured.
-- That's a lot less than Hussein is killing right now.

Protesters have genuine objections to war
-- Just like they did in WWII? Korea? Vietnam? Panama? The Gulf War? Somalia? Haiti? Bosnia? Afghanistan?

People are coming from all over the world to act as "human shields".
-- Quick...hurry up...before the bombs start dropping.
This is about American Imperialism.
-- So which country do we own? Name our colonies? What nation sends us their tax dollars? If America was imperialist, we'd already own the entire world. Who could stand in our way?

This is Blood for Oil
-- The only blood is the Iraqi people tortured, starved and killed while Hussein builds massive palaces to hide nuclear weapons...all financed with Iraqi oil.

This is a racist war.
-- America happily endorses a multi-cultural attitude towards anyone who dares to take away our freedom. Regardless of race, color, or creed; we will hunt them down and kill them.

A U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is a great recruiting tool for terrorists.
-- Have fun recruiting people into oppressive misery as they enjoy their first taste of freedom.

An attack on Iraq could seriously undermine and destabilize Arab nations.
-- Destabilize the region? What stability? The sooner we topple these oppressive 14th century terrorist regimes the better.

Are we prepared for a multi-billion dollar occupation?
-- Were we prepared to liberate Europe and Japan in 1945? South Korea in 1953? Grenada? El Salvador? Kuwait? The Eastern Bloc? Afghanistan? Nations always love Americans when we rescue them from tyranny. The price of freedom is never free.

Polls show Americans are more concerned about the threat from al Qaeda than from Iraq.
-- It's not a war against Al Qaeda. It's not a war against Iraq. It's a war against terrorism. Anywhere we find it. One nation at a time.

American opinion is against the war.
-- No, it's not. A majority of Americans want to fight now, not later.

According to a recent poll. . .
-- You know what? Screw those polls. We're in a war against terrorism. If you don't want to fight the ones who would murder you and your family in a heartbeat, get the hell out of the way. Go visit Paris. Or Antwerp. Or Berlin. Or Moscow. And stay there. Forever. But this time, don't call us when the heathens are at the gates.

Coming soon to an e-mail box near you...

Source of Maps of the Middle East

People have been looking for more detailed maps of the Middle East on-line. Here's a few:

Iraq
Baghdad (area)

Kuwait (Political)
Kuwait (Relief)

Qatar

Iran

Syria

Turkey (4016K)

Saudi Arabia

Jordan

Middle East

Hope you find these links useful.

I Guess I'm One of The Lucky Ones Too

"We are the lucky ones"

Yeah, OK, I can hear some of you now (those people who live in negativity-land) who will grouse that those days were full of hidden child and spousal abuse, alcoholism, and racism. Well, we could have fixed all those things without changing the good things, no?

It's Getting Worse

As you can see from this article, the SARS situation is getting worse. It appears that this outbreak started with a doctor from China (the area where SARS is thought to have come from) that was visiting a hotel in Hong Kong.

Cases have now been seen in Switzerland and New York City. I think this is going to get much worse before it gets any better. Since we have no treatment for this particular virus family, it's quite chilling to think what could happen in the next few months.

Hopefully Medical Technology Can Stop This One

Today the World Heath Organization and the U.S. Center for Disease Control released warnings about a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). You can read a FAQ about the little we know about the disease here.

Due to the mobility of our population, the disease seems to be spreading rapidly. It seems to me to have some of the same characteristics of the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. The theory at this time is that it started somewhere in the Far East (China, Vietnam, etc). At this time, 9 of the 150 known persons with the syndrome have died, which is a 6% mortality rate. Pretty darned high. It's a little early to panic, but there seems to be a lot of genuine concern in the medical community about this one.

I did some searching, and came across something that looked similar, the Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) which has been around a while. ARDS is not a disease in itself, its what happens to persons when they have some injury to the lungs or already have pneumonia. I found a treatment for ARDS, which may be what the medical community is using to treat this one. ARDS seems to be a direct consequence of SARS, though they seem almost the same.

The Spanish Flu Pandemic (so called due to the fact that reporting about it wasn't censored in neutral Spain) appeared and disappeared quite quickly. In fact, in 1999 this article asks if it could happen again. (The article is Part 1 or 2, but I couldn't find part 2). In 1997, a new strain of Influenza that is carried by birds was passed to humans in Hong Kong.

Both this Flu and the Spanish Flu died off quickly. Which seems very odd to me. In 1918 there was little ability to fight it. What caused it to go dormant?

Also, at the time draconian laws were passed to try to limit the spread of the disease. People are complaining about the Patriot Act now, imagine what will have to happen if this syndrome manifests itself in the same manner as the Spanish Flu did. We can communicate warnings much better now than in 1918, and medical researchers can share information, but we also travel more freely, and the disease may spread more quickly than anything before unless we do something about it.

This, along with West Nile Virus are a little disconcerting to me. Hopefully technology can nip this one before anything bad happens. At a 6% mortality rate, and with one-quarter of the US getting the Spanish Flu in 1918, we could see 4.2 million fatalities if the same rates of infection occur.

I hope history doesn't repeat itself.

This Is A Great Country

[shallowjack]
I'm sitting here, blogging and getting paid. Another Computer Forensics case, this time looking for porn. So I'm getting paid to look at porn. What a great country, no? Of course, having to wait for the computer to do keyword searches of a large hard drives entire contents can take a while, so I have to wait before I find the stuff.

I started the case this weekend, and while I was waiting for an md5sum to generate after a dd bit-copy of a forensic image to an analysis drive I turned on the TV. It takes a while on some of these drives for the copy and checksum to generate.

So I'm flipping channels, and I come across The Quick And The Dead. Yeah, so the plot is no different than a million other spaghetti westerns, except this one skips most of the hoopla and gets right into gunfight after gunfight. Way cool. To top it off, Gene Hackman is the bad guy, and Sharon Stone is the main character. So we have one of my favorite actors to watch, and one of my favorite actresses to look at, along with gratuitous violence and debauchery.

I don't know how personable Gene Hackman is in real life, but he is a great actor. I've enjoyed him in all the films I've seen him in, from Lex Luthor in the Superman movies, to the conspiracy theorist in Enemy of The State. In this one, he is the guy we all love to hate, and Sharon Stone is the one who is looking to take him out. For some reason (yeah, right!) they have Sharon Stone sleeping with no pants, but still wearing her boots. Oh well, its a fun movie to watch if you don't need a complex story-line. It's just good entertainment. Then again, my moniker comes from my favorite movie of all time, Big Trouble In Little China, so who I am to say what is bad?

Anyway, I see the DVD (yes, it's out on DVD) can be had for around $10, so I think I'm going to try to find a copy locally and pick it up.
[/shallowjack]

A Little Young To Be A Designated Driver

Maybe Dad had been drinking? Hmmmm. My oldest is 7, I don't think she could see to drive the car.

Could Blogging Be Dangerous To Your Health?

You...yes....YOU! Get up off your arse and get moving. Don't spend all day reading blogs, chatting, or playing your favorite on-line games! According to the European Repiratory Journal you can die from sitting in front of your computer for too long. Check out some of the comments to the article as well, you might find a few of them interesting. One woman claims her husband died from it. Of course, she says 1995 was when he died, long before the Internet was a popular as it is today. Probably died from a heart attack. Another guy built a computer desk that makes him stand to use it. Wow, that would just be too uncomfortable for me.

Well, do Jack a favor and move around a bit, wouldn't want you to die of a blood clot because you were spending too much time reading my blog.

New Worm Crippling the Internet

If you have noticed that many sites are off-line or hard to get to, it is due to a new worm that is affecting servers running Microsoft SQL. It's affecting the core Internet routers. Here's a picture of the state of the Internet as of 8:00AM GMT 1/25/2003:



The techy explanation (Thanks to HD Moore (sflist_at_digitaloffense.net and Worm Info) for this):

A worm which exploits a (new?) vulnerability in SQL Server is bringing the core routers to a grinding halt. The speed of the propagation can be attributed to the attack method and simplicity of the code. The worm sends a 376-byte UDP packet to port 1434 of each random target, each vulnerable system will immediately start propagating itself. Since UDP is connection-less, the worm is able to spread much more quickly than those using your standard TCP-based attack vectors (no connect timeouts).

And also from HD Moore:

While there were some intermittent network problems before, it wasn't until about 12:00 AM CST (01/25/03) that the worm started causing seriouis trauma to UUNET/Worldcom's backbone.

The worm appears to be abusing a stack overflow vulnerability reported a few months ago by David Litchfield, the original advisory can be found here:

http://www.nextgenss.com/advisories/mssql-udp.txt

There are still reports of the worm successfully exploiting patched systems as well, but I have not been able to verify that.

Disabling the worm is as easy as killing the sqlserver.exe process or just rebooting the box. Just make sure that you unplug the system from the network before it comes back up.

The patch: Q323875_SQL2000_SP2_en.EXE

More disassemblies:

http://www.boredom.org/~cstone/worm-annotated.txt
http://www.snafu.freedom.org/tmp/1434-probe.txt


I posted a local mirror to the Switch to....Linux post I made below because it was offline, and wondered what was going on. This explains it.

More "Switch" Hitters

I have many Canadian friends, and in keeping with the 'Switch To' thread, here's another interesting one:

Switch to.....Canada?

Not really funny (well it could be, depending on your political leanings) but the site is interesting. Please link all the psycho anti-war activists you know to it. Maybe we can jettison a few....

Do We Really Want This?

The Pentagon is deploying videophones to "public affairs officers" in order to "counter hostile propaganda". So now when some knob of a 'journalist' reports that the US military has bombed some civilian target near the front lines without verifying the information, the Pentagon can counter with video feed directly from the front lines.

Sounds all well and good, and might actually show some of the more empty-headed anti-war protesters that they shouldn't take every word that comes from a foreign (hostile) country's government as their gospel. But what happens if one of these public affairs officers (PAO) is in the midst of giving a 'report' and the enemy forces penetrate the area during a counter-attack? You could potentially have very graphic scenes of American soldiers (or the PAO) being killed or severely injured. They are also talking about putting one of these video phones with a B-2 bomber crew. What happens if the plane gets shot down (I know, very unlikely) or has a malfunction and crashes? I don't think that would have the desired effect that the Pentagon is hoping for by deploying this new technology.

Of course, the video feed is supposed to go to 'journalists' who would hopefully edit out such events, or choose to report them without the accompanying video. However, we all know that the broadcast news media will at one point just start streaming the information 'live' and without any editing, or choose to release the whole grizzly affair anyway, saying that the people have a 'right to know'.

The only thing that might save it from this fate is the rate of transfer. That videophones have a maximum bandwidth of 128 kilobits per second, just a little more than twice as fast as a dial-up modem connection, only since there is no analog to digital conversion, its the equivalent of a dual-channel ISDN line, which is sufficient for 30 frames per second video if the subject isn't making quick movements. I also don't think the cameras in the videophones have as high a resolution as standard television crews cameras, so you probably won't get the greatest details. It might make quick-moving battle scenes look quite garbled.

One can only hope.

James Can Relate To This One

There was this guy who used to get arrested regularly around here, and he had the misfortune of having a smiley face in the center of one of his fingerprints. Wasn't even necessary to check his prints against the database, everyone knew who he was as soon as the prints were taken, yet he still tried to lie about who he was.

Oh well, criminals who try to change their identities aren't rocket scientists...

But a few of them might be hackers.

;)

Talk about Expensive Cartridges

Go ahead, print yourself some organs.

Brings a whole new meaning to buying refills, and you thought ink carts were expensive before, ha!

Switch to....

You might have seen the Apple "Switch" commericals which try to convince you to switch from "PCs" to Macs. There's a couple of good parodies that can be found...

Switch to....Mac?

Switch to....Linux (Eeeevil Distro)

(25 Jan 03) UPDATE: Looks like she canna take it anymore Cap'n - www.ubergeek.tv where the Switch to....Linux parody is at must be overloaded. I have it mirrored here - Without permission of course, the site is down, I don't know who to ask permission of. So if someone from ubergeek wants me to take it down, just drop me a line and it will be gone.