Re: Lots of funny feeling
Yep - Yep and Yep even more (jumping up and down, YEP)

It's not easy to let go of all of those million little things. I think we all want to hold on to those millions of little things and control them as much as possible. It just ain't our job. Thanks God!

Let the important people in your life know you love them.
5:50:44 PM  #     comment []  trackback []

NYTimes: Boston Church Paid at Least $21.2 Million in Abuse Settlements
Records were released publicly showing the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston paid at least $21.2 million in settlements to 149 people from 1994 to 2001. By The Associated Press.
5:13:40 PM  #     comment []  trackback []

NYTimes: U.S. Troops Capture One of Hussein's Bodyguards
U.S. soldiers today also captured an Iraqi general who was a senior Baath Party official, the U.S. military said. By The Associated Press.
5:10:45 PM  #     comment []  trackback []

Windows vulnerability
Yesterday I got to see a Windows XP system shutdown over the net because of a windows vulnerability. The problem was already fixed by Microsoft a while ago. This is the problem where the Messenger service receives an RPC and decides that the RPC service went down, so it must shutdown the system in sixty seconds. This happened within a few minutes of being online. There are lots of different problems here - the computer should have been protected better (firewalled, up to date security patches), Microsoft should have set better defaults for home users (like enabling the firewall and not running all the services that enable this type of activity - like terminal services or remote registry access, dumb services to run on a home system), the ISP has some of the fault too - they should have had a filter on the network preventing RPCs from getting to home users. Since it was a system that used dialup, there wasn't a firewall (i.e. high speed internet access folks should be using a firewall! At least get a linksys and your systems will be safer).

The way to get around it until the system was updated was to simply enable the firewall for the internet connection - which blocked the RPC so that the system wouldn't shutdown. Easy work around, but it's hard to explain such a problem to folks who just use a computer without understanding how it actually works.

If you're running Windows XP Professional and having this kind of problem (get online and within a few minutes your system shuts down), the directions to workaround it are: While you are offline (i.e. DO NOT DIALUP THE INTERNET YET), Click the start menu, control panel, Network connections, right click your connection to the internet (i.e. your dialup connection), select properties. A new window will appear, click the Advanced tab and enable the Internet Firewall checkbox, click OK and close the windows for network connections and the control panel. Dialup your ISP to get online and use the Windows Update to get the latest fixes - which will fix the vulnerability.
4:26:25 PM  #     comment []  trackback []

The Independent: US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq
The Pentagon denied using napalm at the time, but Marine pilots and their commanders have confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon against dug-in positions. They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy. (via Adam Curry's weblog)
2:54:10 PM  #     comment []  trackback []