Saturday, June 7, 2003

Slammer: What Really Happened? The Slammer virus was ruthless and quick in its attack, spreading hundreds of times faster than the Code Red virus or Nimda worm. Yet the onslaught started with a single killer packet. By Paul Boutin from Wired magazine. [Wired News] We continue to build network infrastructure using primitive languages that allow buffer overflow attacks. Even if better languages are somewhat less efficient, the cost of the extra hardware must be trivial compared with the costs causes by these attacks. The real hurdle is that the designers and implementers of network systems are still stuck into an obsolete performance-at-all-costs mindset. Systems programmers look down on strongly-typed, bounds-checked languages as crutches for the feeble-minded. Open source, closed source, it's all the same. 6:28:55 PM

Every now and again I feel compelled to praise a product and this time it is the combination of iTunes 4, the iPod and Etymotic Research ER-6 Earphones. [Steve Crandall's Surf Report 2.0] Nods. Same setup, same experience. I've re-ripped almost all my library at 160kb AAC, except for a couple of CDs that seem to have been "borrowed." 4:52:26 PM